Bot Auto, an autonomous trucking company and Transportation-as-a-Service (TaaS) provider, announced Wednesday that it has secured a comprehensive insurance program for its driverless fleet. What is notable is that this program will scale as the company ramps up deployment of its autonomous truck fleet. Compared to a regular fleet of all human drivers, an autonomous truck insurance policy requires new benchmarks for transparency, insurability and operational accountability.
To do that, Bot Auto enlisted the help of Marsh, an A-rated insurance carrier and a global name in the insurance brokering and risk management space. The specialized plan provides Bot Auto with auto liability, property, general liability, cargo and inland marine protection, complemented by a separate cyber policy, according to the release.
Autonomy-native fleet operations also require a fundamentally different risk profile in the eyes of an insurance company. Compared to traditional trucking operations, which currently face increasing legal, financial and reputational exposures, autonomous trucking companies can show more data, partly because their trucks are covered in an array of cameras, radar, lidar and other sensors.
“Safety isn’t a feature we layer in, it’s the foundation of how we operate,” said Brian Moore, chief policy officer at Bot Auto. “Our autonomous trucks are engineered to behave predictably, operate within strict parameters, and log everything. That allows us to respond faster, explain outcomes clearly, and continuously improve our systems.”
This transparency represents a truckload-sized shift. Questions that once devolved into contentious courtroom debates—What happened in the moments before a collision? Was the driver distracted? Did fatigue play a role?—can now be answered definitively through incontrovertible data streams. Risk becomes something measurable, traceable and actively managed.
With insurance coverage now in place, Bot Auto operates daily commercial loads between Houston and San Antonio, with additional lane expansions planned. This follows the company’s successful completion of driverless runs on public roads in Houston.
“Qualifying for Marsh’s AV insurance program requires a comprehensive risk mitigation approach that goes beyond standard industry practices,” Owen Oakley, managing director at Marsh, said in the release. “This placement of Bot Auto’s insurance program thus marks another milestone in the advancement of autonomous trucking in the U.S. and underscores the important role the insurance industry plays in its development.”
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