And in return for the modest price increase you get a self-driving car!
Also consider that there are more people who can sue per accident, because humans aren't responsible anymore. Today if you're driving the car and get in a accident and it's your fault, you can't sue anyone. Now you can. That's one more party per accident, and a whole category of single-vehicle accidents than now result in lawsuits.
1. Airplanes have highly trained trained human pilots who are highly vigilant and often in semi-manual control during takeoff and landing. Not a valid comparison.
2. Typical auto insurance policies have liability limits of around $100K. In cases of serious injury or death, tort damages often exceed that tremendously and bankrupt the responsible person. The solution is to get the legislature to cap tort damages for killing someone at ~$100K? Not going to happen.
I do agree with you that until the manufacturers liability is solved there won’t be autonomous cars sold.
And you're forgetting that, to the extent that such injuries can be laid at the food of manufacturers' defects, manufacturers are already liable for them, and since plaintiffs are unlikely to be able to fully collect from drivers, will often be sued now, so self-driving cars don't actually change things that much.
> Also consider that there are more people who can sue per accident, because humans aren't responsible anymore.
Incorrect.
> Today if you're driving the car and get in a accident and it's your fault, you can't sue anyone.
Incorrect. If you get in an accident and suffer damages and you allege that this is due to a manufacturer's defect, this is a basis for suit against the manufacturer. Now, you won't win if the manufacturer can show by a preponderance of the evidence that the accident was your fault rather than theirs. [0]
Similarly, quite likely, in a self-driving car regime, if your car crashes you can sue the manufacturer and claim a defect was responsible, but if they can prove its the fault of something else (such as your own failure to properly maintain the vehicle), they won't be liable to you.
[0] http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/product-liability-cla...
>"If you get in an accident and suffer damages and you allege that this is due to a manufacturer's defect, this is a basis for suit against the manufacturer."
Right now, this is an edge case. The self driving car may cause it to become common.
Yes, because exactly those cases where the driver (as operator, as distinct from the -- often the same person's role as -- owner-as-maintainer) is responsible now become the manufacturer's responsibility. But, again, that's exactly what insurance covers.
But, again, we know the cost of that liability is -- its the cost of driver's insurance.
A major corporation does not have the same practical ability to cap their damages. I am not convinced it's a straight comparable cost as you keep saying. The two risks are not exactly comparable, thus I would not expect the insurance costs to be the same.
I have $2 million liability coverage (in BC Canada) and it's not that unusual or that expensive - is that very uncommon in the US?
Edit: And I rent, so I bought an explicit $2mm umbrella policy, it's $267/year. That's a lot less than my car insurance, and a bit more than my renter's insurance.
Umm... That's pretty much exactly what liability insurance covers. Even with maximums, insurance companies frequently have to pay the whole amount regardless of what the policy says.
Anyone who is collectible (i.e, who can't just declare bankruptcy in the case of a multi-million dollar settlement) should carry umbrella coverage, though, because the insurance company may try to come back to you to collect.
It's cheap compared to car insurance, and it can cover into the millions.
>and a whole category of single-vehicle accidents than now result in lawsuits.
If you're talking about single-vehicle accidents where the human is at fault, then I wouldn't be surprised if those dropped to almost zero for self-driving cars. The place where self-driving cars have the most trouble is in complex situations involving multiple moving objects; most situations where the car just runs into something, harming its occupants, would rightfully be considered a defect.
And as others have mentioned, manufacturers already factor in the cost of defects into the total cost of producing a car.
Except juries invariably award much larger damages against companies then against individuals; particularly when the individual is dead or permanently disabled by the accident. People will be reluctant to levy a multi-million dollar award against a reckless driver's widow, but will be perfectly happy to award it against a multi-billion dollar corporation.
Not true--consumer auto insurance premiums do not encompass the cost of consumer lawsuits against manufacturers, because of course manufacturers do not buy consumer auto insurance.
For example Toyota settled their unintended acceleration lawsuits for $1.2 billion dollars or so. GM's ignition switch problems cost them $900 million to settle. How much will Volkswagon's diesel fraud cost them?
None of these costs are covered by consumer auto insurance. Instead they're covered by the capital of the corporation, which ultimately comes from investors or customers.
Now imagine a self-driving world in which every accident opens up the possibility of such class action settlements. In the absence of legislation to cap damages, companies would have to set aside huge pools of money to defend and settle such lawsuits. That means less investment, lower returns, or higher prices--any of which tend to hurt the long-term viability of a company.
They encompass the cost of the liability that would be transferred from drivers to manufacturers if all liability that drivers have now was transferred. They don't cover the liabilities manufacturers already have, but those liabilities are an existing part of the cost of doing business in the auto industry, not something new with automated vehicles.
You've written this in several posts and I think it's wrong. Consumer class actions are typically done on contingency, or with 3rd party financing, which means that cases must be somewhat likely to win before they even get filed.
Thus while it's true in theory that anyone can sue an auto manufacturer in any given accident, most accidents do not result in such suits. Consider that the GM ignition switch problem caused a number of deaths over the course of years before a suit was even filed on it. Auto manufacturers self-insure based on the expected rate of such lawsuits, and they obviously have very good data about that, as the movie Fight Club so memorably illustrated.
In a fully autonomous car a driver is not making any decisions at all, so how can they be liable? The balance would certainly shift toward more suits against manufacturers.
In a fully autonomous car, the owner is making decisions about maintenance, and in almost any case of claimed manufacturer's defect, distinguishing whether the cause is, in fact, a manufacturer's defect rather than a failure of maintenance will be important.
> The balance would certainly shift toward more suits against manufacturers.
Sure, because exactly the things that drivers-as-operators (rather than owners-as-maintainers) are now liable for would usually be the responsibility of the manufacturer. The amount of liability that represents is, to a close approximation, the cost of insurance coverage for the vehicle, so its essentially transferring the cost of drivers insurance to the manufacturer (who will roll it into the purchase price.)
(1) Maintaining a self-driving car is more than maintaining software,
(2) Even in the case of software, an owner might have responsibilities with regard to maintenance (not in the sense of "maintaining software" in the programming sense, but in the sense of ensuring that, e.g., updates released by the manufacturer are downloaded and installed -- even if this is an automated, the owner may be responsible for making sure the vehicle is kept where that process can successfully complete and not interfering with it.)
> And it is the software that is the distinguishing characteristic of a fully autonomous self-driving car.
The "distinguishing characteristic" of a self-driving car is not the only thing relevant to liability.
There are a lot of ways the manufacturer can increase safety that might have negative consequences. For example, what happens if a manufacturer decides that all models over 10 years old are too risky? How do you separate their legitimate desire to ensure safety in their own self interest from their desire to sell more cars?
You might need to bring a lawyer when buying a car in the future.
In cars today only certain problems rise to the level of class action suits. Let's say a driver thinks there's a cat in the road and swerves and hits a tree. No lawyer is going to sue a manufacturer on contingency for that accident.
Now let's say a self-driving car does the same thing. Yes, a lawyer will take that case.