Bloomberg's new report is worrisome--it suggests that the fragmented US regulatory system for road safety and driving is leading the US to fall behind in testing and innovation in the area of autonomous vehicles. There is the same concern in the insurtech/insurance innovation area.
The large potential US market--whether for autonomous vehicles or for innovative insurance products--means that innovations and their related benefits will likely come to the US sooner or later. However, falling behind in innovation could mean that the wealth from such innovations will be created in other jurisdictions. For instance, while Silicon Valley companies such as Apple, Google and Facebook obviously have employees and investments around the world, the greatest wealth creation from their businesses still is in the US.
Cars that drive themselves are finding the clearest paths to showrooms in the U.K., Germany, South Korea and Singapore, where governments have enacted legislation allowing autonomous vehicles to be tested on public roads. And China’s not far behind. Those nations are outpacing the U.S., where the absence of national legislation to clarify a “checkerboard of state rules” hampers the deployment of driverless cars, Bloomberg New Energy Finance said in a report. California and Arizona lead the 50 states in allowing tests of driverless cars and host the largest fleets, according to the report released Tuesday.
https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2018/05/15/489307.htm
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