[throwaway22032]

I agree with you that driving manually will become a luxury but it's important to recognise that it will manifest as a discount on self driving, not a surcharge on manual.

The only way in which I can see a surcharge on manual happening is if it becomes so incredibly rare that it becomes a niche product, or if there ends up being a bias e.g. it turns out that the pool of manual drivers is now biased towards people who like to drive in a risky manner.

If anything, in a competitive market that is able to price individual risk appropriately, the cost of manual insurance for you or I should be lower in the self driving world, because most other drivers are now "superhuman" and thus we should get into fewer accidents.

[azthecx]

And historically has this competitive market manifested itself? Or have insurance companies instead vastly changed from their 'distributed risk' origins and instead act more as corporate entities with profits at the forefront, where the moment you actually use them the cost of being insured rises?

[throwaway2037]

I don't think insurance companies need to distribute risk from auto insurance. They do, however, need it for property insurance. Floods, earthquakes, and fires and level thousands of homes quickly. There isn't any risk like that for driving.