Self-Driving Cars Raise Questions About Who Carries Insurance

Google self-driving cars are shown outside the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif., in May 2014. Google self-driving cars are shown outside the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif., in May 2014. An accident last month in Tempe, Ariz., involving a self-driving Uber car highlighted some novel new issues regarding fault and liability that experts say will come up more often as autonomous vehicles hit the road. And that will having an increasing impact on an insurance industry that so far has no road map for how to deal with the new technologies. Billionaire investor Warren Buffett, whose company, Berkshire Hathaway, owns the insurance giant Geico, told CNBC in a February interview: "If the day comes when a significant portion of the cars on the road are autonomous, it will hurt Geico's business very significantly." That would seem to make sense.