Uber Technologies Inc. won’t renew a license to operate self-driving cars in California while the company evaluates how one of its vehicles killed a pedestrian in Arizona last week.

The San Francisco-based company told the California Department of Motor Vehicles that it will let its license expire at the end of the month, according to a letter from the department’s deputy director. The self-driving car program is under intense scrutiny following a collision on March 18 that killed a woman in Tempe, Arizona. All of Uber’s autonomous-vehicle tests have been on pause since the incident.

Insurance broker Paul Marshall can count on his phone ringing in the aftermath of a school shooting.

Since the Feb. 14 shooting at a Florida high school, where 17 people were killed and more than a dozen injured, seven South Florida school district have bought $3 million worth of “active shooter” coverage that Marshall’s Ohio-based employer, the McGowan Companies, began selling in 2016.

(Reuters) - A team of engineers that worked on self-driving cars and helped invent Google Street View wants to help people guard their homes against intruders using the same style of facial recognition that unlocks smart phones.

Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones revealed that insurers have received nearly 45,000 insurance claims totaling more than $11.79 billion in losses after a spell of wildfires affected California in the last three months of 2017.

Thirty-two thousand (32,000) homes, 4,300 businesses, and 8,200 vehicles, watercraft, farm vehicles and other equipment have been destroyed.

California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones issued a formal notice to all property and casualty insurance companies on Jan. 29 regarding homeowners’ claims from the recent mudslides and debris flows.

The notice acknowledges that homeowners’ and certain commercial property insurance policies frequently have exclusions for losses from mudflow, debris flow, mudslide, landslide or other similar events. Under California insurance law, the exclusions are not enforceable if the facts establish that the wildfire, which is a covered peril, was the “efficient proximate cause” of the subsequent flowing, mudflow, debris flow, mudslide, landslide, or other similar events.

Drones, or unmanned aerial systems (UAS), are rapidly gaining the attention of virtually every industry as a means of gaining greater efficiency in operations and reducing costs.

Drone use has grown exponentially over the past few years, following development of drones for personal and commercial use. Because the use of drones has grown so rapidly, it has been difficult to keep up with the opportunities they offer to industries, including the insurance industry.

California’s Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones and legislators from wildfire-damaged communities across the Golden State unveiled a series of new laws designed to strengthen consumer protections for wildfire survivors making insurance claims who struggle to recover, rebuild, and move forward.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) supported 59 major disaster declarations and 16 emergency declarations in 2017, a year during which unprecedented disasters affected more than 25 million Americans, almost eight percent of the U.S. population.

In its year-end review, FEMA notes it was a record busy year for FEMA employees and for state and local emergency responders across the country, as well for the federal flood insurance program, which FEMA manages. Thousands of emergency workers remain engaged in recovery efforts including in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

It's no secret that extensive property-related data can enable a greater level of risk awareness and location intelligence, reducing risk for insurers and improving customer communications and service.

In the aftermath of the Northern California wildfires, on Nov. 20, Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones directed the California Department of Insurance to issue a formal notice to insurers, licensed public adjusters and admitted carriers to make sure all claims adjusters assigned to wildfire claims, including those not licensed in California, are properly trained on the California Unfair Practices Act, Fair Claims Settlement Practices Regulations, and all laws relating to property and casualty insurance claims handling.

The guidance continues to be important as Southern Californians deal with wildfires in the Los Angeles area.