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.

Comments

Your Friend's Job

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:This guy should be a lawyer

[The-Ixian]

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.