The AV Ecosystem: Part One

There’s not much in business that is as rewarding and productive as networking. Done right it’s both enjoyable (meeting new and exciting people) and productive (paying dividends down the road). Networking in the AV space is essential to the overall success of our industry.

The IOA Innovation Group makes it a daily habit to reach out to stakeholders in the autonomy ecosystem and learn about services, connect people and companies, and facilitate as much success as possible.

Recently we’ve spoken to the following companies offering unique solutions to insurance and risk in autonomy:

• Netradyne
  Traditional telematics (a strange phrase) are concerned with driver actions (hard braking, acceleration, cornering). Near misses are not usually contemplate. After speaking with Ashley Bryant we’re confident there’s a better way.

  Netradyne’s Driveri solution improves driver outcomes through a next generation, AI driven perception system. Data is not just gathered from an active driver error, but from near misses and events that would otherwise not be recorded. This enables transportation fleets to analyze and coach driver behavior.

• Ometry
  Nationwide shelter-in-place orders resulted in reduced losses for insurers, obviously. Except they didn’t. Miles traveled were down, but severity of accidents increased. Turns out those empty roads led to speeding. In the midst of these severity increases the insurance industry was returning millions of dollars of premium to customers. Great PR, but probably ill-advised according to risk.

  Ometry aims to update the way our industry underwrites and evaluates risk. Their data driven solution helps identify safe routes to travel. This is not telematics, tracking the habits of a single driver. Ometry looks at where accidents happen most frequently, and scores routes and roads by safety.

  Carey Anne Nadeau and her team are doing visionary work. Here’s to hoping the insurance industry adopts these methods soon.

• Thomson Hine, LLP

  Thompson Hine, LLP is one of the nation’s most innovative Law Firms. They have specialists dedicated to regulatory and legal considerations for future mobility, including autonomy, electrification, vehicle subscription, and the gig economy. Tim Goodman (Partner) and Will Godfrey (Director, Mobility, Automation and Safety) both have backgrounds with US Regulatory agencies that help them counsel their clients on how to develop and deploy compliant, safe products.

  The IOA Innovation Group is fond of saying “we don’t know for sure where liability will sit with AV, but we’ll be the first ones to find out.” Given Tim and Will’s previous work at NHTSA and their current engagement with transportation companies ranging from start-up to fortune 500 perhaps we’ll modify our phrasing a bit: we’ll be the second ones to find out!

• Edge Case Research

  Edge Case Research is at the forefront of AV safety. They are committed to building safety into autonomous systems from the ground up. Their Hologram solution helps identify, analyze, and mitigate edge cases. They recently published UL 6400, an industry first in establishing criteria to evaluate the safety of autonomous vehicles and other applications.

  Over numerous conversations with Mike Wagner and Eric Gillespie it’s clear that this team will do any much as any to help ensure the industry moves forward safely and educates all stakeholders and regulators to ensure thoughtful deployments of the technology.

• REIN.ai

  Underwriting in Future Mobility relies on building personal partnerships and garnering executive-level carrier support. The industry needs to supplement this legacy method with a leap forward in next-level data-driven underwriting. We recently had the opportunity (facilitated by Jill Federico, VP Insurance Programs) to address the REIN.ai team during a digital lunch & learn.

  REIN creates collaborative insurance programs between carriers and data-driven ecosystems. Through its configurable Insuretechs platform, REIN enables rapid program deployment while improving risk analysis. REIN empowers insurers and ecosystems to better engage their customers by offering embedded insurance products where they are, when they need it.