The Murky Side Of Self-Driven Cars - The Blame-Game & Lawsuit

With all the advantages that self-driven cars might use to entice a consumer - time economy, nearly fool-proof safety and a hassle-free driving, when a computerized driver replaces a human one, experts say the companies behind the software and hardware sit in the legal liability chain—not the car owner or the person's insurance company. Eventually, and inevitably, the carmakers will have to take the blame. It is a relatively safe bet for driverless carmakers to say they will foot the bill for everything from fender benders to violent crashes because semi-autonomy is showing that computer drivers are likely safer than human ones.

Data from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, for instance, have found that crash-avoidance braking can reduce total rear-end collisions by 40 percent. But all arguments in favour of the fully automated cars do not rule out the credibility deficit because the data put up by the antagonists largely falsifies the protagonists' claim on advantages of these vehicles especially from the viewpoint of the threat and implications of endless lawsuits. 'Since 2014, there have only been 34 reported accidents involving self-driving cars on California roads, according to state incident reports — and most happened when a human-driven car rear-ended or bumped into a self-driving car stopped at a red light or stop sign, or driving at low speed,' says Reisinger (2018). Humans seem to be a major obstacle in getting self-driving cars on the roads safely.

A report is said to have revealed that people were responsible for 81 of the 88 accidents involving autonomous vehicles. Four years and thirty four accidents in the State of California alone, may, by all stretch of imagination, not seem significant in terms of seriousness of the problem in focus, but there is every possibility that it could be just a tip of the ice-berg compared to what happened in other States of the American Continent, in Europe or elsewhere ! However, when we look at this baffling scenario with a whiff of objectivity, the answer may not be far away from the periphery of our instant perception. It is difficult to evaluate what this accident means for the future of autonomous cars. Crashes, injuries, and fatalities were a certainty as driverless vehicles began moving from a state of experiment to that of reality. The hard reality of the situation is explicitly revealed in Ben-Shahar's (2016) report: ' Earlier this year, a Tesla Model S car operating on autopilot crashed into a rear of a truck. The car’s artificial intelligence (Rose Frank, 1986) did not identify the truck in the bright sky.

The driver was watching a movie at the time of impact and failed to override the autopilot system to avoid the collision. He died in the crash. This was not the first such episode. Another Tesla fatal accident occurred four months earlier in China, after which a first of its kind lawsuit has been filed. The lawsuit alleges that Tesla is at fault for selling a car with defective self-driving system. The two accidents would not have happened had drivers complied with the agreement. But the lawsuits raise a fundamental question that lawmakers would have to address in the coming months and years, as cars with fully autonomous control and no human intervention begin to roll out. Who should be liable when a self-driving car crashes is the moot point. When a man-driven car crashes or meets with an accident, more often than not, the blame is slapped on the car driver, rarely on car manufacturing technology. On the other hand, when a driverless vehicle meets the same fate in the same manner, the probing finger gets pointed out at the carmaker for a faulty system e. g. poor sensors, fitted in the car. Irrespective of the distinction between the two types of cases, damage to man and machine is incalculable.

In the long run, it is the human factor that is crucial directly or indirectly. And yet when law suits follow, it could be a win-win situation either way - the driver or the carmaker. The accident statistics in such cases are rarely skewed. In most cases, the answer our legal system would provide is predictable: carmakers would have to take the blame. In the United States, it could be elsewhere too, State courts adjudicating future products liability lawsuits against automakers may be easily seduced by a simple logic leading to this conclusion. These cars will be fully equipped with autonomous driving capability and marketed as substitute to human driving.

There will be no drivers to blame, and the only remaining culprit would be the technology. In nutshell, holding carmakers liable for accidents involving self-driving cars makes good sense. It takes the insurance service from traditional insurance companies and transfers it to the manufacturers. Rather than buying separate auto insurance as drivers now do, the insurance would be bundled into the purchase of the car, liberating drivers from the agony of insurance markets and simplifying one of the busiest areas of American tort law. Corinne lozio (2016) is vociferous-enough in arguing that when a computerized driver replaces a human one, experts say the companies behind the software and hardware sit in the legal liability chain—not the car owner or the person's insurance company. Eventually, and inevitably no doubt, the carmakers will have to take the blame.