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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.
But it will have to be made to mean something.
I've been saying for quite a while that self-driving cars can't just go into a failure mode which says "OK, meat sock, you do it I'm confused" and expect humans to be able to respond or take liability.
It's completely unrealistic to expect humans to transition from not actively driving to being required to take over in the event of an emergency.
Why would I pay insurance on a self-driving car? That would be idiotic, and basically means everyone else is footing the bill for the adoption of unfinished technology.
If the passengers aren't the source of the risk, they sure as hell shouldn't be the ones pay for the insurance.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Volvo is offering to indemnifying individual owners against flaws in the self-driving system. Of course, you'd have to prove somehow that the self-driving system was responsible, and do it by going up against a massive corporation's legal department.
No, the EULA on the software will be changed and THEN manufacturer liability will end when you accept the 30 page license after they push the next software upgrade Tuesday night.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
What? Why do you think that a car would be programmed to hit "obstacle B" when "obstacle A" appears in front of it?
Instead, wouldn't the car be programmed to avoid ALL obstacles and apply the brakes with maximum efficiency?
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.
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
You erect the straw man "computers are infallible" to attempt to defeat the claim that computers react more quickly than humans. Fail.
Also, the thing you drove wasn't a commercially available self-driving car, it was a different thing, very primitive with a limited intended function that is different than a self-driving car. One could almost think you were comparing apples to oranges, but in this case it is more like comparing an apple to a cartoon orange sticker.
He didn't say computers were infallible, just better than the average driver. That's not hard at all.