4 ms·

> Legal liability will shift to the manufacturers Nah.. Manufacturers will even invest heavily in lobby efforts for this to never happen. Even if consumers wil

> Legal liability will shift to the manufacturers Nah.. Manufacturers will even invest heavily in lobby efforts for this to never happen. Even if consumers will likely not own the car as they currently do (see the growing trend that you're not actually owning the car but you're paying for the license to use it indefinitely) they will be responsible for keeping it running will be the de-facto 'operators' regardless if the car is driving itself. The car will probably not store itself, not maintain/clean itself, will not keep it's radars/cameras active and not blocked by dirt/snow/etc.. Call me a pessimist but the consumers will likely get shafted.

kardos 8y ago
> Call me a pessimist but the consumers will likely get shafted. You're a pessimist! Actually I don't see that there would be much difference. The car will perform at some level of skill and have an associated risk, lets say that amounts to $50/mo. The customer could pay the manufacturer to pay the insurance company, or the customer could pay directly -- same thing?
riskneutral 8y ago
The end game is that almost no one will own a car, and most people will use fully autonomous taxis for transportation. If and when fully autonomous vehicles become a reality, auto insurance will die along with car ownership and parking lots.
- AnimalMuppet 8y ago
  I see little reason to suppose that that will be the end game. Those for whom the total cost of ownership of a car are lower than the cost of taxis will continue to own a car. What fraction of people that currently own cars will that be? Probably depends on where you live. Taxi will probably never be the popular choice in, say, South Dakota. The economics just don't work out.
  - stormbrew 8y ago
    The cost of autonomous cars, especially in terms of maintenance, is likely to be higher. And autonomous taxis will be cheaper to operate because drivers are a very expensive part of them. The number of people for whom owning a car makes sense will definitely go down when prices on cars rise and prices on taxis and public transportation drop. This is ignoring the fact that having an unproductive self driving car sitting in your garage becomes a significant opportunity cost itself.
- twblalock 8y ago
  I really doubt that. Shared autonomous cars would end up being treated even worse than rental cars. People would smoke in them, vomit in them, damage the upholstery, steal the radios, let their pets go to the bathroom, spill all kinds of stuff in them on the way home from Home Depot, and so forth. Anyone who can afford it and has a place to park it will want to have their own self-driving car to avoid having to put up with the shared ones. Ownership will also be more convenient, e.g. you can leave your stuff in your car when you park it. Your car is reserved for you to use whenever you want, so you don't need to wait for a shared car to become available.
  - taktoa 8y ago
    Stick a video camera inside the car. If an ML algorithm detects anything too far outside of the norm, send the video to a human. If the human notices damage, the riders are banned from the system. Banned rider lists could be shared between autonomous taxi providers. End result: no one will fuck with the cars.
    - gambiting 8y ago
      Except that we are humans not robots. You never picked up a friend after a night out who got sick in your car? Or had a baby that decided to smear poop all over the seats? Spilled coffee in the car? Know someone who likes to smoke in the car? That stuff happens, and if there was even a slight risk that it would get you banned from convenient transportation then yeah, people will buy their own so they don't need to worry about this. Pretty much everyone who has kids has to keep extra stuff in the car just in case - ergo, they will always go with personal vehicles. Otherwise, we'd see far more people switching to taxis than driving their own cars, especially compared to new cars, as monthly taxi cost can easily be lower than car/insurance/tax/fuel payments on a new vehicle, and yet people keep buying them.
gamblor956 8y ago
This is a battle they lost decades ago. Product liability laws have been on our books for more than a century, and the general gist is that everyone from the owner to the manufacturer is jointly and severally liable to various degrees depending on the circumstances of the failure. A failure to do poor maintenance shifts the liability almost entirely to the owner, but a defect puts liability almost entirely on the manufacturer. (But note: "jointly and severally liable" means that they're all on the hook with respect to the plaintiff's award. The assignment of liability is how the plaintiffs ultimately settle the bill amongst themselves.)
- decebalus1 8y ago
  > This is a battle they lost decades ago. Product liability laws have been on our books for more than a century, and the general gist is that everyone from the owner to the manufacturer is jointly and severally liable to various degrees depending on the circumstances of the failure. If the battle was lost, where's Tesla wrt to the deaths caused by autopilot? Or was the manufacturer's disclaimer enough to blame the dead operators?

kardos 8y ago

> Call me a pessimist but the consumers will likely get shafted. You're a pessimist! Actually I don't see that there would be much difference. The car will perform at some level of skill and have an associated risk, lets say that amounts to $50/mo. The customer could pay the manufacturer to pay the insurance company, or the customer could pay directly -- same thing?

riskneutral 8y ago

The end game is that almost no one will own a car, and most people will use fully autonomous taxis for transportation. If and when fully autonomous vehicles become a reality, auto insurance will die along with car ownership and parking lots.

AnimalMuppet 8y ago
I see little reason to suppose that that will be the end game. Those for whom the total cost of ownership of a car are lower than the cost of taxis will continue to own a car. What fraction of people that currently own cars will that be? Probably depends on where you live. Taxi will probably never be the popular choice in, say, South Dakota. The economics just don't work out.
- stormbrew 8y ago
  The cost of autonomous cars, especially in terms of maintenance, is likely to be higher. And autonomous taxis will be cheaper to operate because drivers are a very expensive part of them. The number of people for whom owning a car makes sense will definitely go down when prices on cars rise and prices on taxis and public transportation drop. This is ignoring the fact that having an unproductive self driving car sitting in your garage becomes a significant opportunity cost itself.
twblalock 8y ago
I really doubt that. Shared autonomous cars would end up being treated even worse than rental cars. People would smoke in them, vomit in them, damage the upholstery, steal the radios, let their pets go to the bathroom, spill all kinds of stuff in them on the way home from Home Depot, and so forth. Anyone who can afford it and has a place to park it will want to have their own self-driving car to avoid having to put up with the shared ones. Ownership will also be more convenient, e.g. you can leave your stuff in your car when you park it. Your car is reserved for you to use whenever you want, so you don't need to wait for a shared car to become available.
- taktoa 8y ago
  Stick a video camera inside the car. If an ML algorithm detects anything too far outside of the norm, send the video to a human. If the human notices damage, the riders are banned from the system. Banned rider lists could be shared between autonomous taxi providers. End result: no one will fuck with the cars.
  - gambiting 8y ago
    Except that we are humans not robots. You never picked up a friend after a night out who got sick in your car? Or had a baby that decided to smear poop all over the seats? Spilled coffee in the car? Know someone who likes to smoke in the car? That stuff happens, and if there was even a slight risk that it would get you banned from convenient transportation then yeah, people will buy their own so they don't need to worry about this. Pretty much everyone who has kids has to keep extra stuff in the car just in case - ergo, they will always go with personal vehicles. Otherwise, we'd see far more people switching to taxis than driving their own cars, especially compared to new cars, as monthly taxi cost can easily be lower than car/insurance/tax/fuel payments on a new vehicle, and yet people keep buying them.

gamblor956 8y ago

This is a battle they lost decades ago. Product liability laws have been on our books for more than a century, and the general gist is that everyone from the owner to the manufacturer is jointly and severally liable to various degrees depending on the circumstances of the failure. A failure to do poor maintenance shifts the liability almost entirely to the owner, but a defect puts liability almost entirely on the manufacturer. (But note: "jointly and severally liable" means that they're all on the hook with respect to the plaintiff's award. The assignment of liability is how the plaintiffs ultimately settle the bill amongst themselves.)

decebalus1 8y ago
> This is a battle they lost decades ago. Product liability laws have been on our books for more than a century, and the general gist is that everyone from the owner to the manufacturer is jointly and severally liable to various degrees depending on the circumstances of the failure. If the battle was lost, where's Tesla wrt to the deaths caused by autopilot? Or was the manufacturer's disclaimer enough to blame the dead operators?