An insurance company based in Ohio will slash car insurance rates if you use Tesla's autopilot feature on your vehicle. Insurance company Root will give discounts to vehicle owners with the automated driving technology, believing that it makes drivers safer. The offer was started after the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found in the six-month federal investigation of a road accident that a Tesla vehicle can make driving up to 40 percent safer.
“Self-driving cars are making our roads safer and that means less risk and less expense for everyone,” Root CEO Alex Timm said. He added that it’s only fair to pass those savings along to the customers who invest in self-driving cars. The company rolled out a new program that gives discounts to drivers who use Elon Musk's semi-autonomous driver assistance software.
Tesla's autopilot software has long been touted by Musk as a technology that will pave the way to safer roads. Recognizing these benefits, Root is joining in the campaign to embrace self-driving cars by rewarding drivers who purchase the software. Interested clients just have to download an app and then take a test drive over the course of two or three weeks, per Torque News.
If they pass all the criteria, this will entitle them to swap insurance policies all through the app. The app started launching last week, which measures auto steer eligibility throughout the test drive. A tiered discount is applied to the policy, increasing as more highway miles are driven with the semi-autonomous driving technology, the Inverse reports.
In some ways, it's not surprising that car insurance companies recognize Tesla's autopilot safety benefits. Musk has previously stated that Autopilot makes the Model S and Model X “by far the safest cars on the road”. The combination of cameras and radars can spot risks far before the human eye can detect them, making Tesla crash rates drop 40 percent after Autopilot became available.
