Self-driving - the person in (or supposed to be) behind the wheel.
Driverless - The company that owns the vehicle, at the moment, would be primarily responsible. There's going to be a total mess behind the scenes regarding who ultimately pays, but to protect consumers, the insurance company for the owner of the driverless vehicle would make the payouts to the vicitims of the at-fault driverless vehicle.



Teslas are very expensive to repair, and that is factored in to rates. With regard to the self-driving features, that's less clear because this technology is so new and constantly evolving, that insurers aren't saying a word about how they are rating these vehicles with regard to that technology.

In my job, I'm heavily involved in the discussions regarding liability/subrogation aspects of autonomous vehicles. Most insurers are lobbying to keep things simple up front, as I noted above. Person behind the wheel/person responsible for the vehicle is the at fault party, and they/their insurance pays. If the loss was ultimately the result of a programming or technological issue, the insurers will almost certainly be going after the manufacturers via subrogation or lawsuit to force the OEM's to reimburse for the settlement and claims costs. The OEM's (Musk in particular) will undoubtedly push back.

It would be interesting to see what the repair bill that Tesla owners insurance will get for his lack of attention when using the summon feature with his phone.
My clubs Cirrus SR20 hit a bird putting a small crack in the composite material on the leading edge of a wing and the repair bill was around $5000.
I’ve hit birds with aluminum skinned wings and it just leaves some blood and gore to clean up, unless you hit something big like a goose.
Composite material on airplanes is really expensive to fix.

I'm going to bet that the owner of the Tesla has either $100k or $250k in property damage insurance coverage. The auto summon feature is absolutely going to jack up rates for Tesla owners IF there is coverage provided while using that feature. Don't be surprised if at some point, it's excluded from coverage. Tesla is selling insurance themselves, and of course, they will cover it, but if you own a Tesla or any other vehicle that has this type of technology, don't be shocked if you are on the hook for damages/injuries caused when using the summon feature. Insurers are looking at exclusions like that when they re-write their policies for submission to the state Departments of Insurance for approval.

Developing smarter cars only results in dumber drivers.

I used to work with programmers at Motorola, probably 80 of them in the division I was a part of (IDEN more commonly known as NEXTEL). Some of the most un-common sense people I have ever been around. If they couldn't figure out a bug they would make it a feature...LOL..