Who's Liable For Driverless Car Crashes?

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Ummm, the answer to this question seems rather obvious, doesn't it? The company with the logo on the car and the deepest pockets would be the obvious choice. ;)

"It's absolutely the case that after the first accident involving an automated vehicle, there will be an automated ambulance chaser following," says Robert Hartwig, president of the Insurance Information Institute. The auto industry is aware of the legal risk. "We have great exposure as an industry in terms of product liability," says Dan Gage of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers. "And I think as an industry ... most of us suspect that there will always be someone in that driver's seat."
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Really? They're comparing vaccines to automated cars? This is a joke, right?
 
Anyone with half a brain stem should see that the answer is easy. It's whoever produced the car, and advertised it as 100% safe and error free.
 
Doesn't matter much in my state, all accidents are pretty much no fault so each insurance company essentially just covers cost of their customer...

Supposedly there are cases where insurance companies can find fault but that never happens.
 
I suspect, at least initially, that to help protect themselves from liability the auto makers are going to tell people to keep their hands on the wheel and their eyes on the road and be ready to disengage the auto-driver and take control of the vehicle at the first sign of trouble.
 
GaryJohnson said:
I suspect, at least initially, that to help protect themselves from liability the auto makers are going to tell people to keep their hands on the wheel and their eyes on the road and be ready to disengage the auto-driver and take control of the vehicle at the first sign of trouble.
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THis++. There will ALWAYS be a manual override. If you aren't paying attention & let the car crash itself you are liable.

With that said, who wants to buy a driverless car that you have to pay attention in anyhow?
 
Everybody's responsible, same as now. 'No fault' insurance means both drivers are responsible, and so both driver's insurance companies can raise their rates. A 'win win' situation for everyone but the poor schmuck that got hit. A great improvement over the old 'at fault' system, where the insurance companies actually had to pay lawyers to fight it out over who was at fault. This way they don't have to pay the lawyers, and they get to raise everyone's rates.
How do I know? Had an accident. Or, I should say, my car had an accident. I was stopped at a traffic light, and was rear ended. When I found out my insurance company had assigned me 'insurance points', I called to find out why. They said in every accident, each driver is assigned a percentage of fault. So basically, the insurance companies had legislation passed so they can get the maximum payments from all their customers, and of course, you HAVE to buy it, it's mandatory. Great business. Force the customers to buy your product, and raise the rates so you are guaranteed a profit.
 
Well if its anything like many states are doing, they'll just snap a picture of the license plate and send the ticket to whom ever owns the plate. This makes it easier to get around the constitution.
 
If the car maker doesn't take the liability, who in the hell in their right mind is going to ride in such a vehicle? Basically saying that I trust these car makers with my life to engineer a faultless system which there is no such thing to begin with.
 
Robstar said:
THis++. There will ALWAYS be a manual override. If you aren't paying attention & let the car crash itself you are liable.

With that said, who wants to buy a driverless car that you have to pay attention in anyhow?
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When they first introduced those radar cruise controls they deliberately made them so that they couldn't bring the car to a full stop (even though engineers had made it possible) fearing liability. In the most recent batch of cars those systems even work in stop and go traffic and can bring the cars to a full stop. With some of these cars the vehicle won't let you hit an obstacle with the driver aids on meaning that you couldn't run someone down or back into your trash can even if you wanted to (without turning the computerized nanny off). The point being, ALWAYS doesn't really mean forever. It just means, until people get used to it and the lawyers get comfortable with it.
 
dandirk said:
Doesn't matter much in my state, all accidents are pretty much no fault so each insurance company essentially just covers cost of their customer...

Supposedly there are cases where insurance companies can find fault but that never happens.
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I would absolutely hate that and I am glad my state is no like that, if some jackass is at fault I would hope they would be 100% responsible financially. I've had two instances where a dash-cam laid full blame on another driver..

I would asume with a driverless car, the person in the car would be at fault due to the manual overrides. If you're going to nap in your car, whether or not it drives itself, you should be at fault.
 
MRAB54 said:
If the car maker doesn't take the liability, who in the hell in their right mind is going to ride in such a vehicle? Basically saying that I trust these car makers with my life to engineer a faultless system which there is no such thing to begin with.
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Do I trust that car makers can engineer a car that can drive better than humans?

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.
 
Robstar said:
THis++. There will ALWAYS be a manual override. If you aren't paying attention & let the car crash itself you are liable.

With that said, who wants to buy a driverless car that you have to pay attention in anyhow?
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That's right. People want autonomous cars so they can do tother things like use their phone, read or sleep. They will not be paying attention. They will be driverless robot cars for all intents and purposes.
 
My 2 cents is whoever is in the car and in charge of the car's destination should be considered the driver.
 
The day will come. Human drivers will cost too much to insure when compared to a driver less vehicle.

Greed > Autonomy
 
Robstar said:
THis++. There will ALWAYS be a manual override. If you aren't paying attention & let the car crash itself you are liable.

With that said, who wants to buy a driverless car that you have to pay attention in anyhow?
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Hopefully there is a delay in the manual override that tells all the other driverless cars someone is "going off the grid", or situations where it can't be overridden because you know there will be some scenario where a bunch of driverless cars will be zipping along in the "driverless car lane" at 70 on the freeway, each almost bumper to bumper zooming along while traffic is stuck at a halt and some dumbass will realize they just missed their exit, engage manual driving mode and cause a massive pileup.
 
In theory the driverless car should ever be in an at fault accident if it follows all traffic rules. Too bad following all traffic rules would result in not being able to drive normally. Think about trying to change lanes if you followed the rules about following distance and waited for a gap that big.
 
the only possible implementation right now think virtual train tracks... specialized lanes for special cars, There might be accidents, but you would have to program it so the cars can stop on time from each other.
that's it, fully automated driving... it might be somewhat more feasible if there was 100% forced adoption.
 
john doe 182 said:
In theory the driverless car should ever be in an at fault accident if it follows all traffic rules. Too bad following all traffic rules would result in not being able to drive normally. Think about trying to change lanes if you followed the rules about following distance and waited for a gap that big.
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Driving normally results in more deaths per year in the US than the Vietnam War and every other war since then combined.
 
aside from weather / outside forces I don't imagine there being any crashes. it's gonna be some asshole like Del Spooner driving manually causing a crash
 
We're still a long way from Minority Report autonomous vehicles and the ones from the newer Total Recall movie.

In both, the vehicles were tied to specialized highways that provided traction and power. We do not have that.

Putting autonomous vehicles up against road-ragers, cellphone distracted drivers, drunk drivers, or sensory-reduced 70-plus year old divers is going to be a dangerous combination.

That's unless they program the car's AI with aggressive vehicle avoidance algorithms, the responsibility should fall on the car's primary operator whether that be a private company or local government transit authority.

If the vehicle has a manual override, then partial responsibility is on the passenger themselves.
 
The "person" at fault will be whoever was manually driving their car and caused an accident ;)
 
randomdean100 said:
No, no, a thousand times no.
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The person who decides to abdicate control to a computer should take responsibility.

The funny thing people here think they can pass the responsibility onto companies like Google or an Auto company. If you do, you'll never get robot drivers. They will cost way too much. These companies have 'deep pockets' if you look case by case. But if everyone gets their car accidents paid for by these companies, they can't shrug it off for a few bucks.
 
evilsofa said:
Do I trust that car makers can engineer a car that can drive better than humans?

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.
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For a lot of people, yes that may be the case. But you still have imperfect humans engineering the software. By all means, go ahead and put your own financial and physical well being on the line for the sake of convenience.

Myself, I'm a perfect driver. I scored one point off on my drivers test simply because my instructor claimed that she doesn't give perfect scores. ;)
 
It's fairly simple. INSURANCE. The insurance will pay the liability. Insuance companies themselves will be happy to insure driverless cars for the right price. Whether it costs more or less than a human driver will depend on the statistics.
 
An 8088 running IBMDOS 1.0 would do a better job driving than most drivers today. Today's drivers are seldom in control of their vehicles. They have better things to do when speeding in a deadly weapon.

Now, The Blame Game:

Morally, you are the Captain of your Car. You are responsible for maintaining it, operating it correctly, and avoiding collisions. Whether you have Free Scheduled Maintenance, Passed Driver's School, Know Not To Hit Stuff.

If you nap with the Cruise Control on, is the Car MFR to blame? If you forget to turn on Stability Control, and loop it, is it the MFR? It should not be different with total cruise control (FMS like aircraft have had for decades).

But lawyers would not stand for it, so we will blame the Cruise Control for our lack of intelligence. Stupidity seldom has deep pockets, but people who design high technology do.
 
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