Omri Ben-Shahar: Carmakers Should Be Liable When A Self-Driving Car Crashes

Should Carmakers Be Liable When A Self-Driving Car Crashes?

Earlier this year, a Tesla Model S car operating on autopilot crashed into a rear of a truck. The car’s artificial intelligence 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 Tesla lawsuit is a long shot, because Tesla buyers agree to contract terms that require drivers to keep hands on the steering wheel at all times, even when operating the autopilot. 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?

The answer our legal system would provide is predictable: carmakers would have to take the blame. 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.

Requiring carmakers to compensate victims of driverless accidents may be the inevitable legal solution, but it also seems paradoxical. Self-driving cars are unquestionably safer, why should their makers have to bear greater liability than makers of ordinary driver-controlled cars?

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