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Volvo Will Accept Liability For Self-Driving Car Crashes (bbc.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Volvo has announced it will accept "full liability" for accidents when one of its cars is driving autonomously. It joins Mercedes and Google in this claim, hoping to convince regulators that it's worthwhile to allow testing of such vehicles on public roads. Volvo's CTO said, "Everybody is aware of the fact that driverless technology will never be perfect — one day there will be an accident. So the question becomes who is responsible and we think it's unrealistic to put that responsibility on our customers." Of course, this is limited to flaws in the self-driving system. If the driver does something inappropriate, or if another vehicle causes the accident, then they're still liable. It's also questionable how the courts would treat a promise for liability, but presumably this can be cleared up with agreements when customers start actually using the technology.
Given that Volvo is now a PRC-backed concern under Geely, it's easy for them to just throw out money.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Even though they'll take responsibility, in every state in the US you must still have liability coverage. If these companies are to be their own underwriters so to speak then they'd have to jump through hurdles to be approved to operate as an insurance company as well. They could obviously partner with insurance companies as well.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
civil and criminal court will also have a very different view.
Now down the road can they pass the blame with stuff like.
The driver did not hit the red E-stop button.
The sensors messed up.
Bad map data.
Bad road data / live reporting.
Car to car network error
That was a MS car and they don't follow standers fully so we are not at fault for miss reading it's status.
That farmers market failed to set the road closed tag we are not at fault for damage / deaths.
that work crew should had there beacons to set that lane as not open it's not are fault that concast cable failed to give them to there subcontractors go sue them.
It's not are fault the city rules say that the power co can't use more then there own Cones and not setup with the right flags to slow down the auto cars.
Also, self-insuring is not as big a deal some people seem to think it is. Yes, there will be some legal/regulatory hurdles, but a lot of the that has to do with financial resources to pay it off, which VW will either still have or be out of business.
More importantly, it will eventually lead to huge profits as current computers are already far safer drivers than human beings.
Always remember it's like being chased by a bear - you don't have to be faster than the bear, just faster than your competitors.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Will the CTO be willing to due hard time it a case of an accident with death / deaths and it can be shown that the software messed up?
In a world where car manufacturers indemnify car owners against liability; how will insurance companies rob consumers?
I'm curious about the point in which we have autonomous and "manned" cars on the road simultaneously.
What sort of response will the human make to machine organized traffic.
Road rage maybe? Or a more peaceful driving experience, until that is, autonomous is all there is.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Any small-time insurance company accepts crash liabilities. Why would computers make things any different?
Once self-driving cars take off, insurers will be fighting each other for the new, extra-safe customers.
Many people seem to have the attitude that the issue of who is liable for accidents involving an autonomous vehicle is some sort of show-stopper issue, that should keep autonomous vehicles off the road even if they are significantly safer than human drivers. Which is a frankly stupid way of thinking. But this is the manufacturers taking that issue out of the equation in any case, one less stumbling block on the road to progress.
How long will your friend have a job if insurance companies only have to deal with a few car companies?
How long will car insurance companies be around? The car manufacturers will self insure with re-insurance to stave of massive catastrophe.
Claims adjusters are pencil pushing paper shufflers. I'm married to one. Assuming self driving cars and the inevitability of the manufacturers matching Volvo's tactic, there will be no claims adjusters.
>> Of course, this is limited to flaws in the self-driving system.
Oh your car chose to kill a kid on a bike instead of hit an old person crossing the road? Yeah sorry you're on your own since we arbitrarily choose to not identify that as a flaw in our system.
the car companys acceptance of "full liability" will end.
Don't kid yourself people, the much larger issue will be when these vehicles significantly slow traffic daily, everywhere, when they attempt to respond to the infinite number of scenarios that occur on the roadways.
I hope it turns out better for them than when they held a press conference to demonstrate their new crash avoidance system: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... http://jalopnik.com/5533328/vo... ....or a few months later when their pedestrian avoidance tech proved to be a autonomous Death Race 2000 contender:
http://jalopnik.com/5648126/vo...
Who or what would that benefit other than your own sense of self-righteousness?
I can't imagine the big auto's pushing for any other policy. What better way to ensure that no new competition ever emerges. No more pesky start ups like Tesla showing up and disrupting things, nope if you are not already established with billions of dollars in assets, you need not apply.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
to render you obsolete, to thwart foreign competition in the U.S market. They had been waiting for the right time to drop the hammer on VW after having that information for long, now they're going after Toyota by accusing them of selling to terrorists, and your generosity, Volvo, will be used to get at you.
This is definitely a context where Volvo's obsession with safety and their reputation for it will pay off in spades, both with regulators and the marketplace.
-Styopa
Um, society? By not allowing corporate numb-wits to make grand statements accepting all liability which implies criminal liability as well?
Right. Of course if it rams into you, you will have to prove that the code was flawed. The *proprietary* code that is protected by the DMCA. Good luck with that.
I think I'm going to need the see the fine print on that promise... the words "$corporation will accept liability" are rarely written without conditions a truck could drive itself through.
Log in or piss off.
You can't trust these European car makers. The fine print will say "contract valid only when driven on test tracks instrumented by Volvo a priori"
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
As more companies adopt this "we cover it" guarantee, they're going to start having more "costs" dealing with human drivers. Accidents, time/speed inefficiencies (vs. following the letter of the law), etc.
As a result, they'll start pushing the driverless cars harder. For those they can't convince with the carrot of incentives to make the switch, they'll eventually pull out the stick of passing the costs to those human drivers through various lobbying channels - forcing them to deal with higher insurance premiums, more tracking technology, tiered registration costs for cars, etc.
Corporations with any clout always try to cut their costs - one way or another.
So that it avoids all accidents when it detects it is under test.
Given that self driving cars don't work in snow (let alone something as common and blinding as a good lake effect storm)...I don't see any effect on insurance at all, at least in the North East.
Corporations are people, except when it comes to criminal liability.
Car companies have a very poor track record when it comes to liability. They tend to fight responsibility for years. Is that what people are willing to accept if they have had their lives shattered by some badly written code that caused a car to cripple them?
Unless there is a clear and transparent translation as to what "liability" they are taking on means, we can expect that all lawsuits will get met with typical car company fervor, with stonewalling for access to technical documents and code being more likely than not. It is easier for a company with a fleet of lawyers to make these offers than for me to accept such an offer.
You have to show malicious intent for criminality otherwise few people would work on things that save lives, but could potentially cause death.
Would you really want to be a geologist trying to predict a volcanic eruption if you were wrong? Would you want to work on an insulin pump if, despite all of your best efforts, a very subtle software/hardware bug killed someone? Nothing, despite all the best efforts made by anyone or group of people, can be metaphysically provable 100% safe and error free.
Corporations are people, except when it comes to criminal liability.
Right. Because you cannot put a corporation in jail, but corporate executives can and have been put in jail for corporate misdeeds. It is pretty easy to Google a list of high ranking CEO/etc corporate people who have gone to prison, or would have if they hadn't died before being convicted. Can we put to rest the canard that criminal liability is avoided by corporate "persons"?
"Corporations" have the right to free speech because the corporations are made up of people who do not abandon that right by forming a corporation. That's Citizen's United in a nutshell.
Car companies have a very poor track record when it comes to liability. They tend to fight responsibility for years.
That's absolutely true. Every company fights against liability suits. Just like most people who are sued fight back.
I see this as just another publicity stunt/spin tactic, and the result will be the answer "the driver is at fault for not taking control at the appropriate time", just as "pilot error" is the usual cause of aircraft accidents.
+1 would read troll again
"In regards to the self driving car accident, we have investigated our selves and found us not liable. The occupants were. They were taking selfies which is inappropriate and caused the car to crash"
Yeah, there is no such thing as CRIMINAL NEGLIGENCE.
What this really tells us is how the justice system values human life.
Say someone is killed by a self-driving car in a way that's obviously not an hard-to-avoid accident but a clear malfunction of the device. One might expect the liable party to face fairly astronomical damages for designing and marketing a killing machine. But we know they won't. They'll say "That guy made $30k/year and was 10 years from retirement. Here's $300k. We're even." And the courts will say, "ya, that sounds fair.". Maybe a few percent tacked on for the family's pain and suffering or something. But in general, I bet the courts will screw the little guy on this one.
"Corporations" have the right to free speech because the corporations are made up of people who do not abandon that right by forming a corporation. That's Citizen's United in a nutshell.
If CEO of a corporation decides to donate corporate money (not his or her own, but the shareholder's money) to a political candidate, they are effectively speaking on behalf of all the employees and shareholders of the company.
That makes a huge assumption that all the shareholders and employees agree with the CEO.
All the employees and shareholders are already people and can donate their own personal funds any time - the corporation does not need to exists as an additional 'person' - all of it's component persons are already real people persons.
Lawyers will probably be lining up for contingency fees to go after the corp.
Assuming that Volvo does the 'smart' thing and retains an insurance company to act as a *processor* for claims, they might not be so ready to line up. Volvo would be able to show, in most cases at least, that a reasonable payment offer was extended. This tends to limit punitive damages, which is where they can really make their money.
At least until Volvo has enough self-driving cars to justify having their own claims office and people.
I don't read AC A human right
The indemnification itself may not mean much, but the fact that the car manufacturer can offer it implies that the car will maintain a full and highly detailed record of your travels, and that this record will be persistent and tamperproof.
And that will have plenty of meaning, but in directions entirely unrelated to accident indemnification.
If CEO of a corporation decides to donate corporate money (not his or her own, but the shareholder's money) to a political candidate, they are effectively speaking on behalf of all the employees and shareholders of the company.
In CU, the "CEO" was using "corporate money", which was provided to him by the shareholders explicitly for that use. If they hadn't wanted it used that way, they wouldn't have used it to form the company. In the case of trade unions, most, if not all states, have laws that say that union members who do not want their money used for political purposes can withhold that part of their dues used for political purposes. This ignores the huge social pressure put upon anyone who does so, and ignores the difficulty in accurately assigning union expenditures to political or non-political purposes. This should be a reason for those who oppose "corporate speech" to rail against unions that do this all the time, but few people who were leaping on the anti-corporate speech bandwagon dared oppose unions who do the same thing.
That makes a huge assumption that all the shareholders and employees agree with the CEO.
That's why there are already laws against such things. Those laws do not remove the rights of the individuals involved in corporations.
After looking at your new documents and not making a choice there.
http://vignette4.wikia.nocooki...
I now have some new ones.
Train
Cliff
High speed chase
Crash the gates of local army base.
Fact of the matter is, providing comprehensive insurance as part of the package for buying a new car is actually a thing over in Europe. They're generally economy shitboxes that a person could probably stop with a hard shove, but a lot of new/bad drivers end up buying said new cars because it's the cheapest option - over even buying a used one because the insurance costs are so high otherwise.
Liability for a new driver overwhelms the expense of everything else. If the self-driving cars have half the *average* accident rate, it'll be an OOM better than the 'new driver' accident rate. So self-insuring will be quite affordable even without playing games.
After that, consider that once a person is used to using a self-driving car that it'll be like automatic transmissions in the USA. They'll tend to stick with self-driving. Successful upsale!
I don't read AC A human right
Even without self driving cars, it is quite possible that you can be found to have 0 liability for injuring someone:
It was dark, you were driving with your headlight on the highway. As you turn the corner a small kid is out on the street chasing after her ball. You slam the breaks, but you still hit her. Your car was in full working order, and you reacted as fast as reasonably expected. Good chance that the judge finds no one liable, or maybe the parent of the kid for letting them be in a dangerous situation.
You are driving along, and hit the break at a stop light. Your breaks fail and you get into an accident. You've had a recent checkup, and you took all reasonable steps to ensure a safe car. Maybe the manufacture is responsible, maybe the last mechanic you saw, maybe no one.
The only case I see for someone being liable for an accident using self-driving car is:
1. Not keeping your software updated. It would be like not responding to a car recall.
2. Using unauthorized software,, beta software, or software that isn't compatible with your car (including modifying your car).
3. Operating the car beyond the safe operating parameters. Like running the car in extreme weather (in this case the car should detect this and pull over or not start unless the user enables an override, which may be needed in case of emergency).
Exactly this.
As a matter of fact, the computer will know about the problem long (hundreds of milliseconds) before you see it and will already be reacting.
The idea that you could react faster or make a better critical decision than the computer is sort of funny actually.
Like those web crawling bots that so easily fill in the captcha boxes? Matter of fact they must be filling it in before i even start to process what is even happening! More like it will be a true revolution when sensor fusion algorithms work half as well as distracted drivers. We are still decades away from even writing algorithms capable of interpreting patterns half as good as an average Joe.
It already drives better than people. Insurance companies better insure them I mean already less pay out, if they do not they will lose all their business as everyone will be using this and to cede it to car companies sets a new paradime.
Each time someone suffers a broken bone, the damage is mysteriously directed to a member of the Volvo board?
Awesome. Even more impressive than self-driving car tech. You should focus on this as your core product.
Requiem for the American Dream
Then drop the BS claim that self-driving cars are already better than human drivers. (See your grand-parent poster and many, many similar claims sprayed all over these articles and threads.)
The current spin is that they are better, except when they haven't yet been programmed for condition X. And Y. And Z. And infinitum.
The last 10% of programming takes 90% of the effort, and this rule is recursive. So-called autonomous cars are currently a pipe dream, and may very likely become this generation's AI.
"In only ten years we will have fully autonomous cars!" Yeah, and flying ones as well.
It's not hard to be better than a significant portion of today's drivers. I look forward to the day I can get in a car and just ride to work while reading a book and not having to worry about the fucking morons that don't know what a turn indicator is or that they are supposed to turn on their lights in a driving rain. The ones that blow by me in the other lane then swerve in front of me to turn into a gas and grocery quick stop. The one's that turn right from the left lane right in front of me. The ones that like to ride 6 feet off my bumper when I'm doing 65 in a 55 zone and I'm still going 15mph too slow for them. The one that ran the light and I just managed to dodge in the intersection and saw them tapping at the phone propped on their steering wheel. Yeah, the bar isn't that fucking high.
This may take some time, but after the technology proves itself, the cost of insurance on self-driving models, or even models that employ automatic emergency accident avoidance, should start to go down considerably. Volvo just seems to be shouldering the initial risk factor. Honestly, I don't think I would ever be happy with a fully self-driving car (I like driving my standard transmission vehicles), but they will be a lot better at avoiding those common human error accidents. Unfortunately, getting off the beaten path might be a pain. Imagine trying to backseat drive when a computer is behind the wheel!!
1. They will take full responsibilities regardless!!!
2. Majority of insurance premium is based on driver's DMV records, including accidents, tickets, other citations. Now that it's not being driven by a person anymore... how will insurance companies make money? Remember that the automobile company takes risks... I think this significantly reduces profitability for insurance companies.