If you’re a company planning to test your autonomous vehicles in Washington state, we have some unfortunate news for you. Starting Jan. 1, 2023, the state will require companies testing self-driving technology to have an insurance policy that covers at least $5 million.
To put that in perspective, a normal, human-driven car only needs to have $25,000 worth of insurance to drive on public roads so we’re talking about a 200% increase. This policy isn’t surprising given how many high-profile autonomous crashes we’ve seen recently. The technology is very unproven, so it makes sense that a city would no longer blindly trust a Model S to get the job done.
