(Bloomberg) – Allstate Corp., thelargest publicly traded U.S. home and auto insurer, said thecountry's transportation network is highly inefficient, withvehicles sitting idle for most of the day, and that the company isbetting on inevitable changes to the system.

"Even moderate increases in effectiveness and efficiency havethe potential to raise household income by 5 percent annually,"Allstate Chief Executive Officer Tom Wilson saidTuesday at a conference held by Barclays Plc. "I know of no othereconomic opportunity to generate this much wealth for Americans.Now, Allstate is leaning in to this opportunity."

Some patterns have already shifted, with many young adultsshunning car ownership and preferring to arrange trips throughride-sharing services such as Uber Technologies Inc. That companyhas announced plans to allow consumers in downtown Pittsburgh tosummon self-driving cars from their phones.

The trends will eventually lead to safer roads and decrease theneed for traditional car insurance, Wilson said. He still expectspremium revenue to climb for at least another 10 years, partlybecause it will take many people that long to adapt newertechnologies.

Empty cars

Telematics, which allows insurers to track customers and chargelower rates to the safest drivers, has become more important toAllstate. The company has set up a unit, called Arity, that can collect data on drivers and sellanalytic products to third parties, Wilson said in August.

Operators of toll roads might count on such data to calculatehow much drivers owe for a trip, he said Tuesday. He previouslysaid that doughnut shops and other eateries might pay forinformation on which customers are passing their locations, and atwhat time in the day.

Drastic changes in driving patterns

No matter what, Allstate must be prepared for drastic changes indriving patterns, he said. The U.S. vehicle fleet of cars and lighttrucks is valued at about $4 trillion, and annual direct costs inthe personal transportation system are more than $2 trillion,according to a presentation from the company.

"If you owned the personal-transportation industry and you werespending all that money, you'd shut it down today," he said. "You'dredo it and have everybody go to work a different way. You wouldn'tneed to drive, you wouldn't have empty cars everywhere, youwouldn't have parking lots everywhere."

Allstate slipped 61 cents to $67.87 at 1:08 p.m. in New York asbroader markets slumped. Still, the Northbrook, Illinois-basedcompany has advanced more than 9 percent this year, beating the 3percent gain of the 21-company S&P 500 Insurance Index.

Related: 5 reasons to embrace telematics for the connectedcar: What insurers need to know