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Comment by cortesoft | Hacker News Reader

You are already going to be to blamed if you get in an accident for most hardware failures in a car. Why is this one so different?

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Uh, no?

If the car's brakes don't work due to a defect, you are not liable at all.

And if you show reasonable due diligence, that is regular maintenance, the same applies doubly so.

Beyond that, I've seen a lot of accidents, and none of them were the car's fault.

All were literally human error, or external factors. EG, deer leaping on to road, too many frogs on the road, etc

"If the car's brakes don't work due to a defect, you are not liable at all."

Morally perhaps but if you drive into the back of me because your brakes have a manufacturing fault I would still expect you to pay for the damage. The manufacturer may then be liable to you but that that is your business.

It goes beyond morals.

If you are driving a car and an crash occurs due to a manufacturing defect, you'll probaly not be found criminally liable.

This becomes super important if someone gets injured or killed.

You'd don't expect the driver to pay, you just expect to be paid. Doesn't matter to you if it is OP, his insurance company or his car manufacturer. It does matter to the driver though, which is the reason of this discussion on liability.

Yeah, and if the self driving functionality doesn't work at all, it would be the manufacturers fault as well. The liability would work the same.

I guess because appropriate usage and maitenance makes that kind of hardware failure extremely unlikely, no?

I can be "warned" to check for issues if the car is older, creaking, seems to be "driving" different etc

A mistake in a mostly completely uninterpretable bundle of software is definetely much sneakier. You can't prepare for it

So I guess that's one argument.

The other aspect of the same argument would be that if you're in an accident due to your car breaking in a way that is obviously the fault of the maker, they will absolutely eat the liability. I think this is how a few recall cases get kickstarted

I don't think the GP is 100% correct anyway, it depends a great deal on what happened to cause the accident. Brakes fail because you haven't changed the pads? Your fault. Steering shaft u-joint comes loose on your 2020 Ford? You were never expected to maintain that item in that time frame so is it your fault?

Because none of the other hardware features give the driver a false sense of being able to not do their job. It doesn't matter how many times the owner is told, we have already seen people are not smart about this. Drivers shooting video of them being in the passenger seat, people shooting porn while the car is driving, and several other stupid things that people will do just because they think it that's what self-driving is meant to do.

Because you can't control it. Drivers aren't liable for design flaws in their cars be they faulty self-driving, unintended acceleration, etc.

The overwhelming majority of crashes are because of human error, not hardware failure.

Because we have rigorous laws and liability managing hardware quality and maintenance.

If liability for software will rest with the driver, there are no laws regulating it's quality and maintenance, what is the basis to believe it will be anywhere near ad reliable?

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