Originally Posted by
KayPam
Your reasoning has a bias.
Why would the insurance rates go up ? Because airplanes would crash more.
Therefore it would be inefficient, since passengers care so much about safety (or rather, since passengers overestimate so much the danger of flying)
It may be that the autonomous aircraft are safer - however, the
perception (shown here) is that they will be less safe. It is just a perception without supporting evidence. Nevertheless, initially I would expect insurance rates could reflect the perceived risk until there was sufficient history to demonstrate whether the perception was soundly based or not. If the savings to the operators are significant a rise in rates may not be a disincentive.