Robot Cars Don’t Need 100% Safety

Nice write-up by Nicholas Deleon in Why Google’s Self-Driving Car Crash Doesn’t Change Anything.

As I told him, I think it’s wrong to expect robot cars to be 100% safe; so having a Google self-driving car in a fender-bender is of no real significance. There are a lot of issues with self-driving cars, but their failure to be perfect is not in my opinion one of them. Indeed, until all cars on the road are controlled by compatible (note I said compatible, not centrally controlled!) systems, the interaction between, excuse the term, legacy cars and robotic cars — not to mention pedestrians, stray animals, and debris on the road — means accidents will happen.

As I told Delon, one issue is whether the robot car is (provably) safer than the average human. Another issue is who should pay when the robot car is at fault, wholly or partly, for the accidents. The law has not determined how to allocate responsibility between the passenger, the owner, the programmer, and the manufacturer. We could treat this as a straight-forward problem of product liability law, or we could be more creative. I’m thinking on it.

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2 Responses to Robot Cars Don’t Need 100% Safety

  1. Vic says:

    Or you could simply wonder how enforceable against the manufacturer are the manufacturer’s previous claims that it would be responsible for all accidents caused by their cars. Google and another company (Tesla?) made a big deal out of this issue a while back and both made statements that it’s all THEIR fault if something happens.

    You can see the lawyers circling already.

  2. justsomeguy69 says:

    if there is on thing I am certain of, it is that humans are bad at taking responsibility for their actions, especially as it will cost them money. The manufacturers will NEVER perfect automated cars. Read that word again; NEVER

    we were all supposed to be in flying cars by now, the super-rich and their similarly rich lick-spittles have all the robotics they need now for everything, expect a socialist pogrom under the guise of ‘saving the planet’, I don’t see my name in that sentence or anyone else’s. “Saving humanity” also sounds good, until you realize the elite consider anyone that isn’t them to be an animal. But you fanboys and girls just keep hoping for the best

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