5 ms·

If A Driverless Car Crashes, Who's Liable?

45 points by antr 14y ago

AnthonyMouse 14y ago
The insurance company. How is this different than no fault insurance, or accidents caused by any other mechanical failure?
- damoncali 14y ago
  Scale. They won't do it if they can't make it work out financially. And who pays them? There are paralells with the banking industry here. If a banker insures a derivative, and it goes bad, no big deal. If every banker insures the same type of derivative at the same time, and they all go bad for the same reason, you have economic meltdown. We don't want that to happen with cars.
  - 3pt14159 14y ago
    Then that is the market's way of pointing out that driverless cars have more accidents? You need insurance to be on the road. If you insure your driverless car, then it is insured. End of story.
    - jiggy2011 14y ago
      The total number may not be higher. But you may have one manufacturer that introduces a bug in a firmware update that kills a huge number of people in one go. The next week they issue an update to fix the problem. Does it make sense to increase the driver's insurance premium because they (unknowingly) bought a faulty product?
      - rayiner 14y ago
        so join the manufacturer as a defendent or sue for contribution. Self driving cars would not be the first time in history where a third person was injured by a defective product used by a diffrent person.
      - 3pt14159 14y ago
        If the insurance market trusts it then yes. This isn't a hard concept. The same lines of reasoning govern planes with autopilot, or even automatic fridges. Insurance + engineering standards = alignment of incentives and economic growth.
  - AnthonyMouse 14y ago
    >Scale. They won't do it if they can't make it work out financially. By all accounts driverless cars are expected to significantly reduce the number of collisions. I don't see how that could be less viable than the existing system. >And who pays them? Who pays them now?
    - damoncali 14y ago
      You would hope so. But you cannot deny that the system will have to be different. The interconnected nature of the cars will matter. People may object to insuring the manufacturer of the software responsible for the crash. There is a lot to sort out that makes it a pretty tricky subject for the insurance companies, manufacturers and owners. I'm sure it can be done, but it's a big thing. I'm thinking int he context where every car is driverless. It's probably even more complex when they aren't all driverless.
      - dragonwriter 14y ago
        > People may object to insuring the manufacturer of the software responsible for the crash. What people? The manufacturer either self-insures or buys insurance on the open market, just like everyone else that has a civil liability risk, and builds the cost of that insurance into the price they pay to the work. I mean, public opposition could, in theory, lead to a law against third-party insurance for this use (though its hard to see, given the wide range of things for which insurance is marketed -- if public opposition was going to ban insuring industries, there are a lot of existing industries that you'd think would run into problems way before vehicle-control-software manufacturers), but nothing can stop them from self-insuring. There is really nothing special or unusual about this. > I'm thinking int he context where every car is driverless. It's probably even more complex when they aren't all driverless. Its probably not at all that complex in either case. As now, the operator is probably liable for damages resulting from operation outside of the bounds of legal parameters -- including failure to maintain the vehicle in safe operating condition, and the manufacturer is probably liable from harms from manufacturing defects, and these liabilities often overlap. The particular types of manufacturing defects that are possible change, but that doesn't really change the basic equation.
- Spooky23 14y ago
  No fault only applies to personal injury. If I'm driving along, over-correct on a turn and smash into your fence, it's my responsibility. If I do nothing wrong, but my tire blows out, I'm still responsible. If my tire blows out because the repair shop over-inflated it, or because there is a material defect in the tire, that's where responsibility lands. The question is, when my robot car overcorrects (ie. driver error), am I responsible, or is the manufacturer? And in what circumstances is the manufacturer negligent? I'd dare say that once automated cars move out of California and Nevada and start showing up in Minnesota and New York, things will get complex quickly.
  - drivingmenuts 14y ago
    If you are not in control of the car at the moment of the accident, then the manufacturer is liable for providing faulty equipment. Good intentions does not do away with liability. For that matter, why would you even purchase insurance for a vehicle like that. It should be supplied by the manufacturer. Possibly even the car should not be owned by you, since you are not 100% in control at all times. But that's debatable, since people are attached to car ownership.
    - stonemetal 14y ago
      is liable for providing faulty equipment. If a street racer modifies their car? If you didn't perform routine car washing so the sensors where unable to sense? The car was in a wreck last month and the repair shop didn't do as good a job as they should have? The car is 30 years old and stuff naturally wears out? There are so many variables that manufacturer pays maybe a first approximation to an answer but no where near the whole answer.
      - drivingmenuts 14y ago
        All of that is part of the reason why I will never own a robot car until they hammer out those details. Currently, when I buy a car, the manufacturer/dealer specifies what they are responsible for and how long. The rest is on me. So I have to purchase driver's insurance. A robot car? I'm not the driver. The manufacturer is, by robot proxy. So, perhaps the manufacturer should be insuring the car. After all, at that point, I'm just a passenger.
damoncali 14y ago
In the 1980s, the rising threat of liability prompted vaccine manufacturers to pull out of the business. So Congress stepped in and created a new system for people who are injured by vaccines. Cases are handled in special hearings, and victims are paid out of a fund created by a special tax on vaccines. That is interesting. I can't imagine the car manufacturers will be able to handle the costs of the liability by themselves (using our current model of car insurance), and you have to wonder if they should have to (how much is the "driver" responsible for? Is a "driver" in Manhattan riskier than one in Wyoming?) It's also interesting that we might not even care if it weren't for the fact that we all have to pay for car insurance now. I mean, nobody wonders who's going to cover the liability of a subway system. Perhaps this will wind up a government service, out of reach of the personal injury lawyers. Or like guns, which enjoy some specific protections from lawsuits.
- steven777400 14y ago
  I know that small airplane manufacturers stopped production in the 80s for the same reason (liability costs) and didn't resume until a special liability limitation was passed in Congress (General Aviation Revitalization Act, 1994). I think it shows a significant failure in our tort system that so many industries are crippled by liability unless they receive special treatment, and even then, sometimes it's not enough.
- rayiner 14y ago
  Why would the manufacturer be liable? An automated car crashing isn't necessarily a design defect. driving inherently creates risk, whether automated or not, and that risk should be carried by the owner of the car and his insurer.
  - damoncali 14y ago
    You're riding along in your self driving car, and it suddenly veers off to the side, killing a pedestrian (or a pedestrian jumps in front, killing himself in the process). Who is at fault there? It's not black and white, but I'm going to say it's more on the manufacturer than the owner - either way, someone is getting sued and we need a legal/financial system that can handle the new paradigm.
aoetr 14y ago
Of course, the authors of the driving software of the car at fault need to be the ones liable, since they are the only ones that can prevent the issue. So, Google is liable, if all driving software ends up being licensed from them.
Irregardless 14y ago
The same entities who would be responsible if engines started randomly falling out of cars: automakers. If driving becomes a feature of the car itself and that feature fails in a way that causes and accident, there's no other answer. Maybe they'll find some kind of loophole where the self-driving feature is only covered for X years under a warranty? I don't think it would be too far-fetched for them to argue that the sensors for automated driving can deteriorate over time, at which point the consumer's insurer would become responsible for damages caused by any failure. That being said, it might be in our best interest (or Google's?) to shoulder some of the liability if this issue would otherwise be a major hurdle preventing the adoption of self-driving technology by automakers.
- dicroce 14y ago
  On the contrary, I think that if you as an owner of a self driving vehicle put it on the road, you are taking responsibility. BTW, this exact problem currently exists: Audi makes a car that can park itself. Is Audi responsible if it crashes? nope. If you don't want to take responsibility for that feature, don't use it.
  - nnnnni 14y ago
    That's a car that CAN park itself. It's not a car that ONLY drives itself.
    - lawtguy 14y ago
      I suspect that the we won't jump from fully manual cars to fully automatic cars. It will likely be similar to the auto-park function: we'll see more and more cases where automation is available at the request of the driver. As car makers add these new functions, we'll start to get an idea of how liability will work with them. Some driver is going to get into an accident using this and then claim that the automation made a mistake. Should result in a very interesting trial. It might end up taking a very long time to have the manual controls removed simply due to liability: as long as you can control it, it's your responsibility. Without the controls, it much easier to argue that Ford/GM/Toyata/Google/etc is really at fault for the accident.
squozzer 14y ago
Joint and several liability = almost everyone.
rayiner 14y ago
Just like with human drivers: insurance companies. It's just the same as no fault auto insurance always is.
- thrill 14y ago
  Exactly right. A self driving car is not something easily done without a fairly sophisticated control system, part of which can be providing insurance compliance to 'electronic checkpoints' (you fail - you park). The new smart kids doing data mining can find those nuggets of information that allow their particular underwriters to make a better profit than someone else's. The question of liability can now be fought where it should be - between insurance providers. That said, I'm sure there's already legislation being prepared to make it an easier thing for the favored than for others.
- jackalope 14y ago
  Yes. If self-driving cars significantly reduce accidents, insurance companies can use it as incentive to lower rates. The rates for cars that can only be driven manually might even skyrocket.
  - crusso 14y ago
    Just imagine once drivers of autonomous vehicles take manual drivers to court for causing fatal accidents "that could have been avoided by using a cheaply available autonomous vehicle". The word "negligence" will be thrown around. Some law suits will succeed in some states. Insurance rates for manual driving will rocket skyward, making buying that new autonomous car or kit for your current car cheaper than buying the insurance for 2 years.
Datsundere 14y ago
this is not a problem because if other cars with the same program don't crash it's not the programmer's. The owner of the vehicle will pay. But if others also crash with similar situations, then the programmer/company will pay. That said, I will never get a self driving car. I like automation in everything except cars. Driving should be a fun experience.
- crusso 14y ago
  You won't have a choice. At some point, automated driving cars will drive better than people statistically speaking. They'll save more fuel and traffic will flow much more efficiently. Imagine if 4+ vehicles make it through every busy intersection light because autonomous vehicles are never busy daydreaming or checking text messages. Imagine if the oscillation of busy traffic on the interstate basically went away so you didn't have random stop-n-go (think metering lights but much more efficient). Once some of these things begin to be proven - something that Google and other manufacturers will be guaranteed to demonstrate early on - legislation will quickly follow mandating that all new cars be autonomous. Liability insurance for non-autonomous vehicles will skyrocket. Driving yourself will be something you only do on specialized entertainment tracks and video games.
  - babesh 14y ago
    How would you explain planes then? We have had autopilot for awhile but there is no law that planes be autonomous. Anyway, the question is who is liable. If we take the plane industry as an example, then if the autopilot is at fault the seller is liable. It is not reasonable for an autonomous vehicle to say 'I give up, have the controls back' whenever it is about to crash. Especially not if the would be driver cannot drive (blind, elderly, young children, etc...) The only issue is that Google and other autonomous car manufacturers don't want to be liable because the potential liability will be enormous but they want autonomous cars. The prediction is that those companies will try/are trying to get legislation to shift liability to the owners of the cars possibly as part of their insurance (autonomous car coverage). Another question is if a machine kills a human even if by accident, is the entity who created the machine at fault? Again, it will be a matter of politics and power rather than right and wrong. If it was otherwise, corporate officeholders would have long been in jail.
venus 14y ago
In theory, self-driving cars should all perform equally within the same range and, probably, within the same manufacturer - you'd assume they'd put the same system into each car, and keep it updated to their latest best effort. In fact, this principle should perhaps be enshrined in law. Therefore, individual owners do not need to be taken into account. Simply calculate the average cost of an accident and multiply it by the likelihood of that maker's system causing a crash, and send the owners a bill each year. It doesn't even really need to be determined who "caused" the crash in each specific instance. It should be plainly obvious, statistically, which self-driving systems are more likely to be involved in accidents - premiums would be weighted to reflect that, and this would encourage a virtuous cycle of improvement incentivisation.
- ed209 14y ago
  But some people will be on the road more often than others, so the likelihood of an incident will be different. I think it would be much better to add a premium onto the fuel the car uses and all claims would go to a central organisation. Self driving cars should level out risk we currently have in different driving demographics i.e. a teenager in car is as likely to crash as someone who has been on the road for 20 years. So it's not like you'd be paying more "liability coverage" than you should.
  - venus 14y ago
    Ah yes that is a good point. Fuel use would be a reasonable start as a proxy for kilometers driven, but why not just go the whole way and measure the actual kilometers? I agree about the central organisation. I don't believe private insurance companies add much value and with the removal of personal driver fault they add no value at all. There is no reason it can't be managed via a not-for-profit, competent central organisation similar to any other aspect of registration.
    - ed209 14y ago
      the reason I prefer measuring energy use rather than distance travelled is that it also taxes less efficient cars. safe + efficient is the goal for transport in my view!
wgirish 14y ago
Its hard for IT folks NOT to 'Download & Apply' the latest release to get 'that' feature. I have learned over period off time to wait for a stable release. Its possible that Car Maker releases a bug, which lets say " doesn't apply the brakes" in time. What happens say 100,000 ppl 'Download the latest automatically at night 3:00 AM " ? Who is responsible ?
- dsr_ 14y ago
  Some obvious implementation details that spring to mind... Whoever owns the code, owns the car's liability. It is in the best interests of the manufacturer to be able to detect a vehicle not running a signed release, and require an explicit liability acceptance from the owner. Doing so whenever registration changes hands is probably a requirement, too. Or disable the ability to change the code unless you ask for an individual key that requires you to accept liability when you use it. No reason to roll out to all the 2017 Toyota AutoCorolla Xv examples at once -- after QA acceptance, do staged roll-outs to increasing group sizes. Best if the first few hundred were all Toyota employees. Roll-back to the previous version or a "known good" release, should be simple and obvious.
  - gte910h 14y ago
    "The first group that we'll roll out to is the cars that drive your children. Cheers!" Interesting, if not very threatening
- Flenser 14y ago
  The automakers could do what some web apps do, roll out new releases to a percentage of users. They could start with cars in areas where accidents are less likely to cause injuries (not densely populated, flat terrain).
adventured 14y ago
Auto makers and car insurance companies will not go quietly into the night when it comes to allowing drivers to shift liability. They both profit too dramatically from things as they are, to just let drivers suddenly not carry the coverage. We might very well wake up to a comedy of drivers still having to carry their full insurance on their driverless cars (it'll be argued that it's part of the privilege and responsibility of owning a vehicle).
wtvanhest 14y ago
Liability would be determined by a court on a case by case basis. The Deep Water Horizon Oil Spill will be a good guide. Multiple manufacturers involved in a difficult court battle. 1) First, you would determine which vehicle malfunctioned. If a blowout of a tire is the malfunction rather than the automated driving system only, the court would need to assign damages to A) the tire manufacturer for the blowout and B) the automation creation company for not designing a system that detects the blowout and prevents the crash... In this example, 100% of the blame may fall on the tire manufacturer if it is determined that there is no way for the automated system to do anything else. Like a near by cliff with an oncoming truck for example. Most cases should assign damages based on percent of fault. Overtime, legislators will probably set rules to make legal actions happen faster and with more efficiency. This entire process will be lengthy, expensive and challenging. But, the overall net benefit of going through the process will be driverless cars and we call all agree that the benefits of driverless cars will be amazing. Note: Google Chrome says the word "driverless" is misspelled, they should add it to their dictionary.
toddmorey 14y ago
One thing the article didn't discuss: the massive amount of data that driverless cars will collect and store. The "automotive black boxes" will help us analyze and simulate accidents in ways we just can't now. As the responsibility for driving switches to the manufacturers, so will the liability. However, with fewer accidents and better data (when an accident does occur) the industry should be well positioned to bear the burden.
lucian1900 14y ago
Who cares? It will almost never happen, compared to how often humans crash cars. There will be some convention and eventually laws about this.
martinced 14y ago
It's much more complex than that. We're in 2013 and there are still major companies being breached within due to buffer-overflow based security exploits. Buffer overflows. That's just one example: there are countless of zero days exploits and, if anything, security has only been getting worse and worse, with more and more insecure technologies that we rely upon daily. What makes you think these cars are going to be secure? What makes you think the company providing the roadmap data is going to be secure? What makes you these cars are going to be running on a separate network and what makes you think that network would be secure? Regarding liability and thinking that "automakers" are going to be the one liable is an over-simplification: just look at the latest Boeing. It's back an forth between at least three companies to determine who's liable. Who is going to be reliable when there shall be a human death involving a security exploit in the OS / software stack in one of these cars? The question is not if, it's when btw.
- danielweber 14y ago
  There isn't just one OS in these cars running a monolithic instance of DRIVE.EXE. If one sensor sees a person and another sensor does not, the car doesn't flip a coin before driving through that spot. It doesn't drive through that spot. The real failure mode for automated cars will be how easy it is to make them stop in their tracks because someone fooled just one of the sensors into seeing a human.
yk 14y ago
I actually think that the entire problem is that currently cars have drivers. So the current situation is that drivers are forced to behave reasonable. But this is because there is a human in the loop, who will act due to distractions (or malice) less than optimal. On the other hand a driverless car always performs as designed and therefore there are a lot less possible failure modes involved, in fact I think essentially the only two failure modes are failures due to improper testing and design flaws ( the manufacturer is responsible) or due to neglected maintenance or actually unforeseeable conditions ( the owners insurance is liable). So I think that a driverless car should be viewed like a malfunctioning coffee machine instead of like a car that is involved in an accident.
ryusage 14y ago
Is it possible for a manufacturer to just provide a statement upfront when you buy the car that they can't guarantee that the car is 100% accident-proof, and you use the car at your own risk? That might put people off initially, but as people get more exposure and realize the cars are more or less safe, they'd be willing to use them and just get insurance like they currently do.

45 points by antr 14y ago

The insurance company. How is this different than no fault insurance, or accidents caused by any other mechanical failure?

damoncali 14y ago
Scale. They won't do it if they can't make it work out financially. And who pays them? There are paralells with the banking industry here. If a banker insures a derivative, and it goes bad, no big deal. If every banker insures the same type of derivative at the same time, and they all go bad for the same reason, you have economic meltdown. We don't want that to happen with cars.
- 3pt14159 14y ago
  Then that is the market's way of pointing out that driverless cars have more accidents? You need insurance to be on the road. If you insure your driverless car, then it is insured. End of story.
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    The total number may not be higher. But you may have one manufacturer that introduces a bug in a firmware update that kills a huge number of people in one go. The next week they issue an update to fix the problem. Does it make sense to increase the driver's insurance premium because they (unknowingly) bought a faulty product?
    - rayiner 14y ago
      so join the manufacturer as a defendent or sue for contribution. Self driving cars would not be the first time in history where a third person was injured by a defective product used by a diffrent person.
    - 3pt14159 14y ago
      If the insurance market trusts it then yes. This isn't a hard concept. The same lines of reasoning govern planes with autopilot, or even automatic fridges. Insurance + engineering standards = alignment of incentives and economic growth.
- AnthonyMouse 14y ago
  >Scale. They won't do it if they can't make it work out financially. By all accounts driverless cars are expected to significantly reduce the number of collisions. I don't see how that could be less viable than the existing system. >And who pays them? Who pays them now?
  - damoncali 14y ago
    You would hope so. But you cannot deny that the system will have to be different. The interconnected nature of the cars will matter. People may object to insuring the manufacturer of the software responsible for the crash. There is a lot to sort out that makes it a pretty tricky subject for the insurance companies, manufacturers and owners. I'm sure it can be done, but it's a big thing. I'm thinking int he context where every car is driverless. It's probably even more complex when they aren't all driverless.
    - dragonwriter 14y ago
      > People may object to insuring the manufacturer of the software responsible for the crash. What people? The manufacturer either self-insures or buys insurance on the open market, just like everyone else that has a civil liability risk, and builds the cost of that insurance into the price they pay to the work. I mean, public opposition could, in theory, lead to a law against third-party insurance for this use (though its hard to see, given the wide range of things for which insurance is marketed -- if public opposition was going to ban insuring industries, there are a lot of existing industries that you'd think would run into problems way before vehicle-control-software manufacturers), but nothing can stop them from self-insuring. There is really nothing special or unusual about this. > I'm thinking int he context where every car is driverless. It's probably even more complex when they aren't all driverless. Its probably not at all that complex in either case. As now, the operator is probably liable for damages resulting from operation outside of the bounds of legal parameters -- including failure to maintain the vehicle in safe operating condition, and the manufacturer is probably liable from harms from manufacturing defects, and these liabilities often overlap. The particular types of manufacturing defects that are possible change, but that doesn't really change the basic equation.
Spooky23 14y ago
No fault only applies to personal injury. If I'm driving along, over-correct on a turn and smash into your fence, it's my responsibility. If I do nothing wrong, but my tire blows out, I'm still responsible. If my tire blows out because the repair shop over-inflated it, or because there is a material defect in the tire, that's where responsibility lands. The question is, when my robot car overcorrects (ie. driver error), am I responsible, or is the manufacturer? And in what circumstances is the manufacturer negligent? I'd dare say that once automated cars move out of California and Nevada and start showing up in Minnesota and New York, things will get complex quickly.
- drivingmenuts 14y ago
  If you are not in control of the car at the moment of the accident, then the manufacturer is liable for providing faulty equipment. Good intentions does not do away with liability. For that matter, why would you even purchase insurance for a vehicle like that. It should be supplied by the manufacturer. Possibly even the car should not be owned by you, since you are not 100% in control at all times. But that's debatable, since people are attached to car ownership.
  - stonemetal 14y ago
    is liable for providing faulty equipment. If a street racer modifies their car? If you didn't perform routine car washing so the sensors where unable to sense? The car was in a wreck last month and the repair shop didn't do as good a job as they should have? The car is 30 years old and stuff naturally wears out? There are so many variables that manufacturer pays maybe a first approximation to an answer but no where near the whole answer.
    - drivingmenuts 14y ago
      All of that is part of the reason why I will never own a robot car until they hammer out those details. Currently, when I buy a car, the manufacturer/dealer specifies what they are responsible for and how long. The rest is on me. So I have to purchase driver's insurance. A robot car? I'm not the driver. The manufacturer is, by robot proxy. So, perhaps the manufacturer should be insuring the car. After all, at that point, I'm just a passenger.

damoncali 14y ago

In the 1980s, the rising threat of liability prompted vaccine manufacturers to pull out of the business. So Congress stepped in and created a new system for people who are injured by vaccines. Cases are handled in special hearings, and victims are paid out of a fund created by a special tax on vaccines. That is interesting. I can't imagine the car manufacturers will be able to handle the costs of the liability by themselves (using our current model of car insurance), and you have to wonder if they should have to (how much is the "driver" responsible for? Is a "driver" in Manhattan riskier than one in Wyoming?) It's also interesting that we might not even care if it weren't for the fact that we all have to pay for car insurance now. I mean, nobody wonders who's going to cover the liability of a subway system. Perhaps this will wind up a government service, out of reach of the personal injury lawyers. Or like guns, which enjoy some specific protections from lawsuits.

steven777400 14y ago
I know that small airplane manufacturers stopped production in the 80s for the same reason (liability costs) and didn't resume until a special liability limitation was passed in Congress (General Aviation Revitalization Act, 1994). I think it shows a significant failure in our tort system that so many industries are crippled by liability unless they receive special treatment, and even then, sometimes it's not enough.
rayiner 14y ago
Why would the manufacturer be liable? An automated car crashing isn't necessarily a design defect. driving inherently creates risk, whether automated or not, and that risk should be carried by the owner of the car and his insurer.
- damoncali 14y ago
  You're riding along in your self driving car, and it suddenly veers off to the side, killing a pedestrian (or a pedestrian jumps in front, killing himself in the process). Who is at fault there? It's not black and white, but I'm going to say it's more on the manufacturer than the owner - either way, someone is getting sued and we need a legal/financial system that can handle the new paradigm.

aoetr 14y ago

Of course, the authors of the driving software of the car at fault need to be the ones liable, since they are the only ones that can prevent the issue. So, Google is liable, if all driving software ends up being licensed from them.

Irregardless 14y ago

The same entities who would be responsible if engines started randomly falling out of cars: automakers. If driving becomes a feature of the car itself and that feature fails in a way that causes and accident, there's no other answer. Maybe they'll find some kind of loophole where the self-driving feature is only covered for X years under a warranty? I don't think it would be too far-fetched for them to argue that the sensors for automated driving can deteriorate over time, at which point the consumer's insurer would become responsible for damages caused by any failure. That being said, it might be in our best interest (or Google's?) to shoulder some of the liability if this issue would otherwise be a major hurdle preventing the adoption of self-driving technology by automakers.

dicroce 14y ago
On the contrary, I think that if you as an owner of a self driving vehicle put it on the road, you are taking responsibility. BTW, this exact problem currently exists: Audi makes a car that can park itself. Is Audi responsible if it crashes? nope. If you don't want to take responsibility for that feature, don't use it.
- nnnnni 14y ago
  That's a car that CAN park itself. It's not a car that ONLY drives itself.
  - lawtguy 14y ago
    I suspect that the we won't jump from fully manual cars to fully automatic cars. It will likely be similar to the auto-park function: we'll see more and more cases where automation is available at the request of the driver. As car makers add these new functions, we'll start to get an idea of how liability will work with them. Some driver is going to get into an accident using this and then claim that the automation made a mistake. Should result in a very interesting trial. It might end up taking a very long time to have the manual controls removed simply due to liability: as long as you can control it, it's your responsibility. Without the controls, it much easier to argue that Ford/GM/Toyata/Google/etc is really at fault for the accident.

squozzer 14y ago

Joint and several liability = almost everyone.

rayiner 14y ago

Just like with human drivers: insurance companies. It's just the same as no fault auto insurance always is.

thrill 14y ago
Exactly right. A self driving car is not something easily done without a fairly sophisticated control system, part of which can be providing insurance compliance to 'electronic checkpoints' (you fail - you park). The new smart kids doing data mining can find those nuggets of information that allow their particular underwriters to make a better profit than someone else's. The question of liability can now be fought where it should be - between insurance providers. That said, I'm sure there's already legislation being prepared to make it an easier thing for the favored than for others.
jackalope 14y ago
Yes. If self-driving cars significantly reduce accidents, insurance companies can use it as incentive to lower rates. The rates for cars that can only be driven manually might even skyrocket.
- crusso 14y ago
  Just imagine once drivers of autonomous vehicles take manual drivers to court for causing fatal accidents "that could have been avoided by using a cheaply available autonomous vehicle". The word "negligence" will be thrown around. Some law suits will succeed in some states. Insurance rates for manual driving will rocket skyward, making buying that new autonomous car or kit for your current car cheaper than buying the insurance for 2 years.

Datsundere 14y ago

this is not a problem because if other cars with the same program don't crash it's not the programmer's. The owner of the vehicle will pay. But if others also crash with similar situations, then the programmer/company will pay. That said, I will never get a self driving car. I like automation in everything except cars. Driving should be a fun experience.

crusso 14y ago
You won't have a choice. At some point, automated driving cars will drive better than people statistically speaking. They'll save more fuel and traffic will flow much more efficiently. Imagine if 4+ vehicles make it through every busy intersection light because autonomous vehicles are never busy daydreaming or checking text messages. Imagine if the oscillation of busy traffic on the interstate basically went away so you didn't have random stop-n-go (think metering lights but much more efficient). Once some of these things begin to be proven - something that Google and other manufacturers will be guaranteed to demonstrate early on - legislation will quickly follow mandating that all new cars be autonomous. Liability insurance for non-autonomous vehicles will skyrocket. Driving yourself will be something you only do on specialized entertainment tracks and video games.
- babesh 14y ago
  How would you explain planes then? We have had autopilot for awhile but there is no law that planes be autonomous. Anyway, the question is who is liable. If we take the plane industry as an example, then if the autopilot is at fault the seller is liable. It is not reasonable for an autonomous vehicle to say 'I give up, have the controls back' whenever it is about to crash. Especially not if the would be driver cannot drive (blind, elderly, young children, etc...) The only issue is that Google and other autonomous car manufacturers don't want to be liable because the potential liability will be enormous but they want autonomous cars. The prediction is that those companies will try/are trying to get legislation to shift liability to the owners of the cars possibly as part of their insurance (autonomous car coverage). Another question is if a machine kills a human even if by accident, is the entity who created the machine at fault? Again, it will be a matter of politics and power rather than right and wrong. If it was otherwise, corporate officeholders would have long been in jail.

venus 14y ago

In theory, self-driving cars should all perform equally within the same range and, probably, within the same manufacturer - you'd assume they'd put the same system into each car, and keep it updated to their latest best effort. In fact, this principle should perhaps be enshrined in law. Therefore, individual owners do not need to be taken into account. Simply calculate the average cost of an accident and multiply it by the likelihood of that maker's system causing a crash, and send the owners a bill each year. It doesn't even really need to be determined who "caused" the crash in each specific instance. It should be plainly obvious, statistically, which self-driving systems are more likely to be involved in accidents - premiums would be weighted to reflect that, and this would encourage a virtuous cycle of improvement incentivisation.

ed209 14y ago
But some people will be on the road more often than others, so the likelihood of an incident will be different. I think it would be much better to add a premium onto the fuel the car uses and all claims would go to a central organisation. Self driving cars should level out risk we currently have in different driving demographics i.e. a teenager in car is as likely to crash as someone who has been on the road for 20 years. So it's not like you'd be paying more "liability coverage" than you should.
- venus 14y ago
  Ah yes that is a good point. Fuel use would be a reasonable start as a proxy for kilometers driven, but why not just go the whole way and measure the actual kilometers? I agree about the central organisation. I don't believe private insurance companies add much value and with the removal of personal driver fault they add no value at all. There is no reason it can't be managed via a not-for-profit, competent central organisation similar to any other aspect of registration.
  - ed209 14y ago
    the reason I prefer measuring energy use rather than distance travelled is that it also taxes less efficient cars. safe + efficient is the goal for transport in my view!

wgirish 14y ago

Its hard for IT folks NOT to 'Download & Apply' the latest release to get 'that' feature. I have learned over period off time to wait for a stable release. Its possible that Car Maker releases a bug, which lets say " doesn't apply the brakes" in time. What happens say 100,000 ppl 'Download the latest automatically at night 3:00 AM " ? Who is responsible ?

dsr_ 14y ago
Some obvious implementation details that spring to mind... Whoever owns the code, owns the car's liability. It is in the best interests of the manufacturer to be able to detect a vehicle not running a signed release, and require an explicit liability acceptance from the owner. Doing so whenever registration changes hands is probably a requirement, too. Or disable the ability to change the code unless you ask for an individual key that requires you to accept liability when you use it. No reason to roll out to all the 2017 Toyota AutoCorolla Xv examples at once -- after QA acceptance, do staged roll-outs to increasing group sizes. Best if the first few hundred were all Toyota employees. Roll-back to the previous version or a "known good" release, should be simple and obvious.
- gte910h 14y ago
  "The first group that we'll roll out to is the cars that drive your children. Cheers!" Interesting, if not very threatening
Flenser 14y ago
The automakers could do what some web apps do, roll out new releases to a percentage of users. They could start with cars in areas where accidents are less likely to cause injuries (not densely populated, flat terrain).

adventured 14y ago

Auto makers and car insurance companies will not go quietly into the night when it comes to allowing drivers to shift liability. They both profit too dramatically from things as they are, to just let drivers suddenly not carry the coverage. We might very well wake up to a comedy of drivers still having to carry their full insurance on their driverless cars (it'll be argued that it's part of the privilege and responsibility of owning a vehicle).

wtvanhest 14y ago

Liability would be determined by a court on a case by case basis. The Deep Water Horizon Oil Spill will be a good guide. Multiple manufacturers involved in a difficult court battle. 1) First, you would determine which vehicle malfunctioned. If a blowout of a tire is the malfunction rather than the automated driving system only, the court would need to assign damages to A) the tire manufacturer for the blowout and B) the automation creation company for not designing a system that detects the blowout and prevents the crash... In this example, 100% of the blame may fall on the tire manufacturer if it is determined that there is no way for the automated system to do anything else. Like a near by cliff with an oncoming truck for example. Most cases should assign damages based on percent of fault. Overtime, legislators will probably set rules to make legal actions happen faster and with more efficiency. This entire process will be lengthy, expensive and challenging. But, the overall net benefit of going through the process will be driverless cars and we call all agree that the benefits of driverless cars will be amazing. Note: Google Chrome says the word "driverless" is misspelled, they should add it to their dictionary.

toddmorey 14y ago

One thing the article didn't discuss: the massive amount of data that driverless cars will collect and store. The "automotive black boxes" will help us analyze and simulate accidents in ways we just can't now. As the responsibility for driving switches to the manufacturers, so will the liability. However, with fewer accidents and better data (when an accident does occur) the industry should be well positioned to bear the burden.

lucian1900 14y ago

Who cares? It will almost never happen, compared to how often humans crash cars. There will be some convention and eventually laws about this.

martinced 14y ago

It's much more complex than that. We're in 2013 and there are still major companies being breached within due to buffer-overflow based security exploits. Buffer overflows. That's just one example: there are countless of zero days exploits and, if anything, security has only been getting worse and worse, with more and more insecure technologies that we rely upon daily. What makes you think these cars are going to be secure? What makes you think the company providing the roadmap data is going to be secure? What makes you these cars are going to be running on a separate network and what makes you think that network would be secure? Regarding liability and thinking that "automakers" are going to be the one liable is an over-simplification: just look at the latest Boeing. It's back an forth between at least three companies to determine who's liable. Who is going to be reliable when there shall be a human death involving a security exploit in the OS / software stack in one of these cars? The question is not if, it's when btw.

danielweber 14y ago
There isn't just one OS in these cars running a monolithic instance of DRIVE.EXE. If one sensor sees a person and another sensor does not, the car doesn't flip a coin before driving through that spot. It doesn't drive through that spot. The real failure mode for automated cars will be how easy it is to make them stop in their tracks because someone fooled just one of the sensors into seeing a human.

yk 14y ago

I actually think that the entire problem is that currently cars have drivers. So the current situation is that drivers are forced to behave reasonable. But this is because there is a human in the loop, who will act due to distractions (or malice) less than optimal. On the other hand a driverless car always performs as designed and therefore there are a lot less possible failure modes involved, in fact I think essentially the only two failure modes are failures due to improper testing and design flaws ( the manufacturer is responsible) or due to neglected maintenance or actually unforeseeable conditions ( the owners insurance is liable). So I think that a driverless car should be viewed like a malfunctioning coffee machine instead of like a car that is involved in an accident.

ryusage 14y ago

Is it possible for a manufacturer to just provide a statement upfront when you buy the car that they can't guarantee that the car is 100% accident-proof, and you use the car at your own risk? That might put people off initially, but as people get more exposure and realize the cars are more or less safe, they'd be willing to use them and just get insurance like they currently do.