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Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

> Legal liability will shift to the manufacturers

No, it probably won't. Owners will probably remain liable in the first instance, for maintaining th vehicle in a safe operating condition; manufacturers (and the whole chain of commerce) will be liable, as they are now, for defects that exist at the time of sale, and will be (as they are now) attractive deep-pockets defendants.

But, for that reason, they will probably get very good at playing off failures (since drivers aren't in the picture to blame) as maintenance failures rather manufacturing defects.

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The concept of "Owners" is an interesting one in the context of self-driving, manufacturer-insured vehicles. I'd imagine that self-diagnostics would have to get very very good to the point of not starting when a single sensor is unavailable - nobody would want to ride in "their" car if it has a chance of causing a crash and them being legally liable despite not driving it.

But, for that reason, they will probably get very good at playing off failures (since drivers aren't in the picture to blame) as maintenance failures rather manufacturing defects.

Manufacturers already do that now...Ford was doing that back in the Pinto days.

The change to self-driving cars will make maintenance (and maintenance records) more important for drivers for liability purposes, but will also make it more difficult for the manufacturers to avoid liability.

I was recently wondering why new cars don't come with factory fitted dashcams. Perhaps a law should mandate their inclusion, along with other data logging mechanisms.

Tesla does. Stick a usb stick in my model 3 and it uses the storage to record off the cameras. They just added a mode to record video when the car is “threatened” while parked.

> The change to self-driving cars will make maintenance (and maintenance records) more important for drivers for liability purposes

For owners. Until we recognize AIs as legal persons, self-driving car drivers don't have liability concerns.

No, it probably will. In the same way that you are not liabile for any accidents if you are a passenger in a taxi. It will take some time for legal scholars to work out all the details (e.g. gross negligence, etc), but it is very obvious that passengers in fully autonomous vehicles cannot be legally liable to the same extent that drivers are liable today.

> In the same way that you are not liabile for any accidents if you are a passenger in a taxi.

A passenger is neither an owner, an operator, nor a manufacturer of a taxi.

Owners, operators, and manufacturers tend to be liable; passengers not under normal circumstances. If I get hit by a bus (to escape the taxi situation where the operator is usually the owner), the bus driver, bus line, and bus manufacturer can all be liable. Replacing the operator with a piece of equipment manufactured by the manufacturer and maintained by the owner takes the driver out of the equation, but there is no logical reason why it would remove liability from the owner.

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