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Comment by ArnoVW | Hacker News Reader

Criminal liability aside, if I am in a wheelchair all my life, requiring expensive medical care, someone will need to pay for that. So civil liability will need to be sonewhere.

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The manufacturer would still be liable, same as if the brakes malfunctioned.

Is that not precisely the point of the current discussion? Currently, the manufacturer is not liable. The liability can not be delegated by the driver.

The manufacturers of a self-driving car can be held and are held liable today, same as if the brakes were defective (strict product liability) or improperly marketed (negligence). That doesn't mean the driver might not also be liable. It all depends on why an accident occurred and a host of other factors. There's really nothing special about self-driving cars in this respect, except that litigation can be much more factually complicated. For failing breaks, it's relatively clear given X speed and Y distance, and assuming they were engaged, whether they worked. Then you work backwards from there. Negligent driving? Poor maintenance (driver or mechanic)? Defective design? But in driver assistance and automation systems there are many more questions about what was actually expected to happen, or what was reasonable to expect to happen.

Good luck suing the manufacturer if they have explicitly rejected responsibility.

This is what I have been saying for 10 years. You will know when that the era of AV has arrived when manufacturers start accepting liability.

Maybe once there are enough statistics so that insurance companies will cover the manifacturer. The day will come, at some point.

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