- Pamela Hammersley Not this decade? :o
- Alan Petrillo Alas, no.
- Tristan Rabello My solution is to hold drivers 100% responsible for accidents that occur. Ultimately it's up to the person in the driver's seat to drive operate it safely. That means paying attention to the self driving car. Leave the person in the driver's seat the ability to drive the car.
It's fantasy (for legal reasons) to believe that totally autonomous cars will exist any time soon. - Alan Petrillo Precisely my point.
- John Robarts This article is completely bogus. It is precisely the removal of the human driver that will drive the cost of liability down. Every time a human driver hits an autonomous car the headlines will scream that they must no longer be allowed to drive.
- Alan Petrillo History indicates otherwise.
- John Robarts History is quickly losing its relevance in many areas.
- Alan Petrillo History never loses relevance.
- Alan Petrillo As I wrote, Tesla is already facing the first lawsuit to test how liability is going to work with semi-autonomous cars. We'll have to see how that plays out before we will know anything about how liability will work with fully autonomous cars.
- Tristan Rabello "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"
- Alan Petrillo Tristan Rabello Those who do remember the past are condemned to watch helplessly as others repeat it.
- John Robarts But now we are entering a world the past could hardly imagine.
- Thomas Trumpinski I think that your analysis is spot-on, Alan, even if it ignores the potential for extreme measures by the Teamsters' Union to block implementation of the technology lest it be used to replace semi-truck drivers.
- Alan Petrillo Indeed. As much as I am a union man, I do acknowledge that some unions, such as the Teamsters hamper progress in areas such as automated fixed-guideway transportation systems, specifically because they don't require human drivers.
Then there's the snubbing the Teamsters gave TWU555 during contract negotiations with Southwest Airlines. I haven't forgotten that. - Jay Ashworth It was just noted in an article *somewhere* yesterday on FB that OTR trucks were a *better* candidate for automation, though I suspect those people forgot cities and loading docks...
- Thomas Trumpinski OTR-automatons are currently being tested on the autobahn.
- John Robarts The Luddites tried and failed. This will be no different.
- Alan Petrillo The Luddites didn't have armies of lawyers.
- John Robarts Of course they did. Lawyers today are no less the plaque they were then, all the way back to Sumer, and every when in between.
- Ryk Spoor Eventually there will be completely automated, safe vehicles for all purposes. And that "eventually" will probably happen in my lifetime, if nothing terrible happens to me before my normal lifespan ends.
And eventually *all* jobs, or virtually all, will be automated. This will put rather a strain on civilization, as we still tend to go by the assumption that people have to work to be supported. - John Robarts Half of all jobs gone in ten years.
- Alan Petrillo Robert B. Westerfield made a little wager at Necronomicon, Inc. He says we will see acceptance of self-driving cars within 5 years. I disagree. While I would like to see automated vehicles see widespread acceptance, I don't expect it to happen anywhere nearly that quickly. It is a bet I hope to lose, but I don't expect I will.
- John Robarts It's happening already. First beer run already made.
Despite the desire of many drivers, car owners, and car commuters, completely autonomous self-driving cars won’t be here anytime soon. The reason is not technological or regulatory, but rather legal. Specifically, the problem is liability.
Here is the question: If two self-driving cars collide and kill their occupants then who is liable? For conventional, manually driven cars the answer is the driver of the vehicle that caused the collision. For autonomous, self-driving cars the answer, most likely, would be the manufacturer.
As we’ve seen with the recent death of a Tesla driver who was using Tesla’s autopilot function while apparently playing with his phone, and died in the collision when the car drove itself under a truck, the answer is somewhat murky. Since Tesla’s system requires input from the driver, and periodically tests to make sure the driver is paying attention, would the driver still be liable? Would the manufacturer? A pending lawsuit will set the precedent to answer that question. In the case of a completely autonomous vehicle, driving itself without input from either a central controlling agency or an onboard driver, the answer is most likely the manufacturer.
The deck is already stacked against manufacturers. As we saw in the lawsuit that killed Piper Aircraft, even if the operator of a vehicle does everything wrong, a good team of lawyers can still find some property of the vehicle for which the manufacturer can be held liable. For this reason, every autonomous vehicle on the road represents a liability exposure to the company that manufactured it.
The dream of having millions of autonomous vehicles driving themselves around our roads, letting us play with our phones, watch movies, play games, interact with social media, or do work while we travel along our daily commutes, eliminating the need for traffic lights, increasing the carrying capacity of our infrastructure without upgrades, and all of the other promises of autonomous vehicles, will remain just a dream for the foreseeable future. Each one of those autonomous vehicles would represent a liability exposure to the company that manufactured it. No company with management in its right mind would sell a product with that much liability exposure, and no insurance company with management in its right mind would write them a policy.
As much promise as autonomous vehicles hold for the future of transportation, we should not expect to see them in the foreseeable future, because of the issue of liability.
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