I don't think that really will, or should happen, if you compare to similar systems. For example, the owner of an aggressive dog breed will be held liable for

I don't think that really will, or should happen, if you compare to similar systems. For example, the owner of an aggressive dog breed will be held liable for attacks from that dog, even though the dog is acting "autonomously". But the dog breeder typically isn't held liable, even if they are responsible for selecting for certain aggressive traits. So the question is: is a manufacture of (semi) autonomous systems really much different? Now this can be different if the autonomous car is owned by an entity other than the primary user (for example, an auto cab -- the passengers in a regular cab aren't responsible for the cab driver, so they wouldn't be liable for a computerized cab driver either).