TGR Staff - 08/19/2021
Life is always full of surprises. It's never boring. And if you work in law, you will be thrilled to know, there is a storm brewing with your name on it. Well, if you drive, you too will be undoubtedly dragged into this one. The issue is, do driverless cars equate to blameless cars? What happens when a driverless car is involved in an accident with another driverless or human-driven car? Who is to blame? Is it the software? The car brand? The person who ordered the driverless taxi on his or her phone? Or maybe it's the fault of the state because the computers in the driverless cars were confused by the lack of markings on the road? It's going to be a giant head-scratching exercise. Take a deep breath, and let’s explore this further.
Do you trust anything man-made?
Hold on, we’re going to get a little philosophical. We are still talking about cars though, so don’t raise your eyebrows too much. The question is, do you trust anything that is made by mankind? The answer probably is, ‘up to a point. Right, up to a point. Everyone expects their phone to turn on if they hold the power button. But in the back of our mind, we wouldn’t be shocked if it didn’t one day.
Mankind is not perfect, and therefore, nothing it ever makes will be either. So now the question is, do you consider cars weapons or life-threatening? Chances are, yes you do. Can you see where this is going? This hype about driverless cars is purely a mixture of childish sci-fi dreams and pure convenience for those who can now get drunk and get home ‘safe’.
Sense of security
Okay, so let’s not be too harsh on driverless cars. They are after all, most likely going to be far more reliable than human beings. Computers are made by humans, and they work pretty much like clockwork. So cars too, which are now just big computers with wheels, they too can work like clockwork right? Yes and no.
It's true that one day, driverless cars will be able to steer with pinpoint precision. They will be able to get through gaps that human beings would struggle to. They will also have great acceleration and braking control. But all this is a false sense of security. What driverless cars cannot do, is judge the situation through human eyes. So what do you say? Well, a human will be in the front or back seats, so how the driverless car behaves will affect us. If driving becomes purely an academic exercise, do you want to be the one time where the calculations were slightly wrong and ended up in a crash? Even a relatively unintelligent human being, is afraid of behaving stupidly behind the wheel. Does the driverless car feel what we feel in terms of nervousness, anxiety, fear, precaution?
Who will be to blame?
The heart and soul of this are all going to be centered around who or what is to be blamed should a crash occur. A driverless car poses a brand new challenge for a car accident lawyer who evaluates claims, gathers evidence, files claims, litigation, etc. If the driverless car was hacked, is the brand to blame or the cybercriminals? Shouldn’t the brand of car have protections in place to protect their vehicles? Should the hacker, if caught, be forced to pay for his or her crimes? Yes, they should, but will they ever be caught? Probably not.
What if the driverless car just shuts down, due to a malfunction with the computer system? What if the brand creates updates that cause errors in the coding, causing the cars to treat 20mph as 10mph? There is any number of issues that could happen, which could cause a crash, injury, and even death. So who is to blame for all of this? Someone or some entity will have to take responsibility, but unless governments create laws to clearly say who should be blamed, victims of driverless car crashes will be left to pick up the pieces.
Watch this space
If you want to know which states have passed and are working on driverless car legislation, watch this space. It's starting off simple, with driverless cars needing to have sensors that meet a standard, a limited number of passengers, and only certain vehicles have been approved. Since these driverless cars don’t have the human feel, making sure the brakes, tires, and motor system is working properly has to be regulated by the brand or company that runs the cars.
Driverless cars present a new philosophical and legal challenge for society. Who is to blame when things go wrong? Do you feel confident in using such machines?
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