Liability & Insurance panel at the Autonomous Vehicle Legal Summit

My notes from BLG’s inaugural AV Legal Summit, Feb 20, 2020

Panelists:

• Benjamin Lewis, Liberty Mutual
• Sukhjit Dhaliwal, Intact Insurance
• Mario Fiorino, Insurance Bureau of Canada
• David Adams, Global Automakers of Canada
• Moderator: Bob Love, BLG

I attended BLG’s AV Legal Summit last week in Toronto, ON. The event presented a well balanced view of the non-technical aspects of AVs. There were panels on federal and provincial regulations, mobility as a service and smart infrastructure, financing and startup activity, electrification, liability & insurance and privacy & cybersecurity. Given my interest in actionable metrics for AV development and deployment, I took particular interest in the liability & insurance panel. To me insurance plays a major role in offering a market based validation to this new technology through quantifying the associated risks.

After initial introductions, Bob made it clear that the discussions were focused on L3 and L4 vehicles only. He went on to give an overview of the three types of auto insurance claims:

1. Manufacturing defect