Absolving user of blame in driverless cars could accelerate adoption

TU-Automotive’s editor, Paul Myles, reports that “British lawyers are calling for automakers to shoulder unlimited legal responsibility for a driverless vehicle’s actions on the roads.”

Subsequently, drivers will become users-in-charge, absolving human drivers of any blame for the “vehicle’s driving tasks in the event of an accident or breach of any highway regulations. As reported by the BBC, the UK’s Law Commission was asked in 2018 to come up with a series of reports on the regulatory framework for automated vehicles and their use on public roads.”

While there is an ongoing discussion about connected and autonomous vehicle (CAV) liability in terms of who or what is responsible whenever an accident occurs, in a telephone conversation with TU-Automotive, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) was keen to point out that there are currently no plans to make automakers 100% responsible for accidents caused by one of their vehicles in semi or fully autonomous mode. However, there is still a discussion to be had about it and in, certain circumstances such as an accident caused by a technical fault when a human driver is not in charge of a vehicle, there is the persistent view that they should be liable.

Legal framework

Mike Hawes, chief executive of the SMMT, stresses: “The Law Commission’s recommendation does not make vehicle manufacturers 100% liable. In fact, its recommendation is rooted in the Automated & Electric Vehicles Act 2018, which provides a legal framework for insuring automated vehicles. It is, therefore, already written in law that should an automated vehicle be involved in an accident, regardless of whose fault it is, the victims shall be compensated by the insurer in the same way as today.”

In turn the insurer would then have the right to recover its costs, which would normally be assessed backed on an investigation that’s increasingly assisted by data. If found in the insurers’ favor, the liable party would be required to compensate the insurer. “This could be the Authorized Self-Driving Entity (which could be the vehicle manufacturer, software provider or fleet operator) as per the Law Commission’s proposal – should evidence point to software malfunction or other deficiencies for which the [accident] is responsible.”

Alternatively, whenever the vehicle is human-driven at the point of an incident and where no technical fault occurs, the liability party could still be that individual rather than a manufacturer. This would equally apply to traditional cars, for example, or to semi-autonomous vehicles that are driven manually. Another scenario could be a traditional, manual car being driven by a human driver found liable for driving into an autonomous vehicle; or the culprit might be someone who’s tampered with the sensors of a CAV, thereby causing a crash that would otherwise have been avoided.

To read the complete article, visit TU Automotive.