6 ms·

Is that actually the case? In Germany you are always liable for all damage your car does, no matter whether it is caused by your own mistakes or because of a t

by ugh 15y ago

Is that actually the case? In Germany you are always liable for all damage your car does, no matter whether it is caused by your own mistakes or because of a technical failure. This might not seem fair but the second piece to this puzzle is that you are also forced to have insurance. Making it clear and unmistakable who is liable makes sure that it is always clear who has to pay for the damage done by cars. The insurance makes sure that whoever is liable can also actually pay. That way the victims don’t get left with the costs (no matter how much money the liable person has) and for the liable person accidents don’t turn into life-destroying events. This is a working system and I see no reason why it wouldn’t work with driverless cars. (Even if you want to change it and switch liability from the owner to the manufacturer, that’s not really an insurmountable problem. The solution is – as always – called insurance. Google would just have to insure every car they sell. That’s no big deal, seeing as cars are already pretty much all insured. The cars would get more expensive but the cost of ownership would decrease since it wouldn’t be necessary any longer to pay for insurance. Such a change would be pretty pointless, though. It would only serve to switch around who pays. In the end, though, the owner still has to bear the costs.)

dmooney1 15y ago
I agree the manufacturer would not necessarily take on the bulk of the risk. However, there is supposed to be less risk once this technology is perfected. If the technology is indeed superior to human drivers, auto insurers will offer discounts to self-driving car owners. Furthermore, autonomous cars make more sense economically if they are part of a fleet service like a robotic taxi service. The future subscription-based Zipcar or ad-based Google Cars service would carry the insurance. The human is just a passenger no more responsible for an accident than a human-driven-taxi passenger.
- JabavuAdams 15y ago
  > auto insurers will offer discounts to self-driving car owners No, the market doesn't work like that. Auto insurers will raise the price for human-driven car owners.
  - jemfinch 15y ago
    You mis-parsed his statement. It's ((self-driving car) owners), not (self-driving (car owners)).
    - a_m0d 15y ago
      I don't think that was mis-parsed - I think that JabavuAdams is (rightfully ?) cynical that the insurance companies will lower prices. Rather, they will make the current price the standard for (self-driving cars), and increase the price for (human-driven cars), thereby ensuring more money for themselves.
      - jemfinch 15y ago
        Ah, then I misunderstood JabavuAdams's post. That's a good point.
    - redthrowaway 15y ago
      if car.self_driving.safe? car.human_driven.price_to_insure.raise elsif 1==0 car.any.price_to_insure.lower end
- einhverfr 15y ago
  But in the US, one is not held to be responsible just because something bad happens. It has to be negligence at least. So the idea here is that if the car crashes, people find out that an algorithm didn't handle a situation very well, and they sue the manufacturer over negligence regarding product safety.
  - oelewapperke 15y ago
    The same, btw, is true in Germany. Germany has western law, which means that before you are responsible 3 things have to be true : 1) you must have violated the law 2) someone must have actually lost money, life or property. Trespassing is perfectly A-OK in undeveloped desert. 3) there must be some direct causal connection between 1 and 2 (this is in practice the trickiest part) This means that the parent poster is not right. There are tons of cases where nobody is responsible in German road accidents. For instance, an emergency vehicle somehow causes 2 other vehicles to collide. Result: nobody responsible, government pays (even if the emergency vehicle was not part of the government, e.g. an ambulance of a catholic hospital) The problem with these laws is a little further down the road : who is responsible for algorithms that get lost under perfectly predictable conditions that are forbidden by law ? An example would be an autonomous car driving off a cliff because a road led straight to the ledge without the government having planted the legally required indicator on the road (same for road works ...). Or autonomous cars having unavoidable accidents, which are due more to the state of the road (doubly complicated on private roads) than to any property of the car or driver. And what if an autonomous car is accepted into society, and after a few years every type of accident except one is almost unheard of. The one that is heard of ? Human error, of course (and human malice). Probable result, in a machine-human collision 99.99% of the time, judges will simply blame the human (as will everybody else btw. "Why were you even driving ?"). Eventually imho this will lead to outlawing controlling your own vehicle (just look at what is considered safe driving in "I, Robot". Wouldn't you agree that it's extremely irresponsible to drive yourself under those circumstances ?) What with autonomous cars with hacked algorithms ? Hacked by the owner, or worse, a third party. Worse even, an unknown third party.
feralchimp 15y ago
I like the clarity you describe in the German system, but the introduction of autonomous-mode-enabling infrastructure adds a point of "technical failure" that is way outside the vehicle owner's maintenance responsibility. The concept of "damage my car does" becomes murky if an infrastructure-level failure causes my vehicle to come in contact with another, especially if both vehicles are provably-in-autonomous-mode at the time of the accident. Which isn't to say that owner-pays wouldn't work, but we do want the system provider to have skin in the game, and such a policy could dramatically slow adoption of the technology by anyone who doesn't also want to assume liability for something they probably just massively funded through taxes (for example). A solvable problem, in any case, and it's great that the tech is getting to the point where details like insurance effects are worth working on.
- ugh 15y ago
  I think with autonomous cars it’s even easier to just split liability 50:50 (or any other way) when there is doubt about the cause. That already happens now, and if there are no egos but only machines involved I’m guessing it’s even easier. I do agree that manufacturers have to have skin in the game, but that doesn’t necessarily have to happen through liability (though that’s certainly a possibility). I would imagine that there will, for example, be very tight and thorough certification of any new autonomous car. This is in any way a very interesting topic to think about and I think that all the legal hurdles are very solvable once the technology is solid. (By the way, I only added the remark about the German system because it’s the only one I know. I was under the impression that there are similar systems in place elsewhere, I’m just not sure about that.)

by ugh 15y ago

dmooney1 15y ago

I agree the manufacturer would not necessarily take on the bulk of the risk. However, there is supposed to be less risk once this technology is perfected. If the technology is indeed superior to human drivers, auto insurers will offer discounts to self-driving car owners. Furthermore, autonomous cars make more sense economically if they are part of a fleet service like a robotic taxi service. The future subscription-based Zipcar or ad-based Google Cars service would carry the insurance. The human is just a passenger no more responsible for an accident than a human-driven-taxi passenger.

JabavuAdams 15y ago
> auto insurers will offer discounts to self-driving car owners No, the market doesn't work like that. Auto insurers will raise the price for human-driven car owners.
- jemfinch 15y ago
  You mis-parsed his statement. It's ((self-driving car) owners), not (self-driving (car owners)).
  - a_m0d 15y ago
    I don't think that was mis-parsed - I think that JabavuAdams is (rightfully ?) cynical that the insurance companies will lower prices. Rather, they will make the current price the standard for (self-driving cars), and increase the price for (human-driven cars), thereby ensuring more money for themselves.
    - jemfinch 15y ago
      Ah, then I misunderstood JabavuAdams's post. That's a good point.
  - redthrowaway 15y ago
    if car.self_driving.safe? car.human_driven.price_to_insure.raise elsif 1==0 car.any.price_to_insure.lower end
einhverfr 15y ago
But in the US, one is not held to be responsible just because something bad happens. It has to be negligence at least. So the idea here is that if the car crashes, people find out that an algorithm didn't handle a situation very well, and they sue the manufacturer over negligence regarding product safety.
- oelewapperke 15y ago
  The same, btw, is true in Germany. Germany has western law, which means that before you are responsible 3 things have to be true : 1) you must have violated the law 2) someone must have actually lost money, life or property. Trespassing is perfectly A-OK in undeveloped desert. 3) there must be some direct causal connection between 1 and 2 (this is in practice the trickiest part) This means that the parent poster is not right. There are tons of cases where nobody is responsible in German road accidents. For instance, an emergency vehicle somehow causes 2 other vehicles to collide. Result: nobody responsible, government pays (even if the emergency vehicle was not part of the government, e.g. an ambulance of a catholic hospital) The problem with these laws is a little further down the road : who is responsible for algorithms that get lost under perfectly predictable conditions that are forbidden by law ? An example would be an autonomous car driving off a cliff because a road led straight to the ledge without the government having planted the legally required indicator on the road (same for road works ...). Or autonomous cars having unavoidable accidents, which are due more to the state of the road (doubly complicated on private roads) than to any property of the car or driver. And what if an autonomous car is accepted into society, and after a few years every type of accident except one is almost unheard of. The one that is heard of ? Human error, of course (and human malice). Probable result, in a machine-human collision 99.99% of the time, judges will simply blame the human (as will everybody else btw. "Why were you even driving ?"). Eventually imho this will lead to outlawing controlling your own vehicle (just look at what is considered safe driving in "I, Robot". Wouldn't you agree that it's extremely irresponsible to drive yourself under those circumstances ?) What with autonomous cars with hacked algorithms ? Hacked by the owner, or worse, a third party. Worse even, an unknown third party.

feralchimp 15y ago

I like the clarity you describe in the German system, but the introduction of autonomous-mode-enabling infrastructure adds a point of "technical failure" that is way outside the vehicle owner's maintenance responsibility. The concept of "damage my car does" becomes murky if an infrastructure-level failure causes my vehicle to come in contact with another, especially if both vehicles are provably-in-autonomous-mode at the time of the accident. Which isn't to say that owner-pays wouldn't work, but we do want the system provider to have skin in the game, and such a policy could dramatically slow adoption of the technology by anyone who doesn't also want to assume liability for something they probably just massively funded through taxes (for example). A solvable problem, in any case, and it's great that the tech is getting to the point where details like insurance effects are worth working on.

ugh 15y ago
I think with autonomous cars it’s even easier to just split liability 50:50 (or any other way) when there is doubt about the cause. That already happens now, and if there are no egos but only machines involved I’m guessing it’s even easier. I do agree that manufacturers have to have skin in the game, but that doesn’t necessarily have to happen through liability (though that’s certainly a possibility). I would imagine that there will, for example, be very tight and thorough certification of any new autonomous car. This is in any way a very interesting topic to think about and I think that all the legal hurdles are very solvable once the technology is solid. (By the way, I only added the remark about the German system because it’s the only one I know. I was under the impression that there are similar systems in place elsewhere, I’m just not sure about that.)