IF the car does hit the children even while driving autonomously the driver will be held responsible regardless of overrides. If someone dies, someone is going to jail until the justice system works through it.
I do agree tho, “no steering wheel, no responsibility” should be explicit in law.
If the owner is responsible for any deaths caused by their car, the owner will have an incentive to choose a car that has a good safety record, and to keep that car in proper working order.
Conversely, if a corporation is responsible, they can only be punished with fines for causing a fatal accident, and those fines will be considered a cost of doing business. Also, the corporation will have a lot more money to invest in lobbying for laws (and judges) to make those fines as small as possible.
Let us not forget the infamous "Pinto Memo":
https://www.spokesman.com/blogs/autos/2008/oct/17/pinto-memo...
Well, I meant “no responsibility for the passengers”.
The owner should have some limited liability as you say, but primarily liability should be with the manufacturer. The way I view it AVs should have similar liability as an elevator. The manufacturer and the maintainer should have liability, but never the passengers.
Ideally, the manufacturer keeps enough sensors on the thing such that the car doesn’t move without the proper maintenance. But at that point is it truly ownership?
My preference is to just have many services competing that make them relatively cheap.