I expect self driving car liability to end up similar to vaccine liability. A fund and adjudication process is created to compensate those who have an adverse outcome.
I actually agree that vaccines (and really drugs more broadly) are a rather unusual example of products that can be used as directed and things can still go bad--without the manufacturer necessarily being "at fault." [Edit: Where it's not the fault of the user or other human.]
We'd probably also need some amount of limits on full tort liability though since the manufactures would be bigger targets for lawyers than individuals.
This is the exact problem I'm targeting. You need to cut attorneys out of the mix.
The only exception I'd make to that would be cases of withholding a known defect, like the self driving car equivalent of the Takata exploding airbag fiasco.
But a car crash will be very easy to figure out who's at fault. Why would such a fund exist for something that can be pin-pointed directly at the party at fault?
There are lots of scenarios where a person avoids an accident that isn't clearly another driver's fault--skidding on ice, debris on road... Also cases involving pedestrians and bicyclists where it's arguably their fault but drivers still generally have the responsibility to not hit a child running out into the road.
Sort of. Self-driving vehicle manufacturers would self-insure.
I assume there would still be insurance. But if my self-driving car causes an accident, I certainly shouldn't be "at fault" from the perspective of my insurance premiums nor should I be able to be sued--as would be the case today.
People should still be compensated when accidents happen, without the drag caused by trial attorneys attempting to extract as much as possible from self-driving vehicle manufacturers (which is going to slow down progress).
The benefits of self-driving vehicles from reduced fatalities and accidents alone are so great that a process and funding needs to be in place to allow continued innovation (if done with safety put first).
Of course but the current laws today can drag this out when people are involved; why would cars be any different?
> The benefits of self-driving vehicles from reduced fatalities and accidents alone are so great that a process and funding needs to be in place to allow continued innovation (if done with safety put first).
We don't do this in any other industry as far as I know. It's a weird mechanic to make the manufacturers of automatically driving cars off the hook from accidents.
I understand the intent but I don't know how that works within our current legal system and wouldn't that encourage cheap, shitty-built cars since companies won't need to be liable?
It works if you allow self-driving vehicle algorithms to be patented. You could then open them for public examination by a government agency.
If the algorithm performed to regulation agency expectations, accident victims would still be compensated for losses without punitive damages exacted.
Regulation will never cover all possibilities of a company acting shitty; if companies find ways to doing things cheaper and still being able to check that box just so they have no liability then they will do it.
I don't think these types of get-out-of-jail-free-cards, even though they're very well intentioned, are ultimately a good thing.
But time will tell either way :)
The discovery phase of a case is how truly damning evidence often comes to light. A fantastic example of this would be the Toyota unintended acceleration debacle.[0] If it weren't for the discovery process in those cases, nobody would really know what a total mess Toyota's code was.
As far as self-driving cars are concerned, I've no doubt top tier companies like Google and Tesla are going to do the best job they can, but eventually everyone is going to be in the space, and when a company with an institutional disdain for proper safety-critical software engineering practices ends up killing people, I want their feet held to the fire.
At its current state, self driving cars are not perfect. Roads were designed to be driven by people and it may take many years for road infrastructure and total adoption to properly support self driving cars. The one thing many will be able to agree on is there will be accidents and some people will be hurt at the fault of self driving cars but ultimately removing humans from driving will make roads a much safer place. The reason behind this particular vaccine fund (see link above) appears to align with problems that we will soon see as self driving cars hit the road and make mistakes but for the overall good.