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Comment by Irregardless | Hacker News Reader

The same entities who would be responsible if engines started randomly falling out of cars: automakers.

If driving becomes a feature of the car itself and that feature fails in a way that causes and accident, there's no other answer. Maybe they'll find some kind of loophole where the self-driving feature is only covered for X years under a warranty? I don't think it would be too far-fetched for them to argue that the sensors for automated driving can deteriorate over time, at which point the consumer's insurer would become responsible for damages caused by any failure.

That being said, it might be in our best interest (or Google's?) to shoulder some of the liability if this issue would otherwise be a major hurdle preventing the adoption of self-driving technology by automakers.

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The big problem is that current liability is relatively limited by fleet diversity.

Toyota has enough variation in their fleet that even if a floor mat can cause a stuck accelerator, it's only an issue for certain models of certain cars. Similarly, GM only had certain models with sidesaddle gas tanks, so even if someone causes an outcry with a doctored video, it only applied to some models of some vehicles.

But if Google had a bug, would they have the same variation in driving logic to limit the scope of the fallout? Wouldn't it more likely relate to all their cars?

What if an unforeseen environmental event compromises sensors in a way they didn't code for? Say a rare particulate cloud due a mining operation, or building collapse, that doesn't blanket the sensors with noise, but merely distorts their readings such that a large spate of crashes occur.

What if a more mundane overflow or date bug causes enough slightly-less-optimal decisions to be made that there's a jump in accidents that can be traced back to that bug?

What if someone discovers a 'blind-spot' in Google's logic that could be leveraged to reliably cause relatively-low-risk accidents and black-hats use that to perpetrate a sudden and distributed insurance fraud scam. Would they even be able to withstand the fallout of a "massive jump in Google car accident rates" story, until the truth was ferreted out? What happens to Google if that gets shared online? Is Google going to be able to withstand the fallout of the public realizing their cars can be scammed unless they're diligently watched? (which defeats the entire purpose of having purchased a driverless car)

All of those edge cases are what courts are for.

The question is: at scale, is that a risk a company can reasonably carry on its own? And is that a risk we want to see a court handle in the usual way?

A massive manufacturing failure run through the courts can ruin an automaker. If such a failure was related to an inherent risk to driverless cars, it might ruin the industry if we allow it to run through the courts in the usual manner. (an automaker is ruined, premiums for remaining makers explode, it becomes near-impossible to turn a profit, the market collapses)

But the net impact of driverless cars might include broad social gains, rather than simply direct profit to the maker. [1] So if the risks materialize into a large charge quite early on, absent some mediation by society writ large, allowing that to be processed by the courts normally could spell the end to the industry and leave society at a net loss.

[1] driverless cars are likely to send impaired/distracted driving accidents trending towards zero. That's a social gain even for people who never own a car. But it's a gain that wouldn't directly translate into profits for the makers of driverless cars, that they could use to offset the incredibly high insurance premiums they would have to carry, to survive a fifty-year-storm sort of risk showing up five or ten years into the life of the company.

I understand that the scale might be an issue, but I really think you are worrying about it too early.

1st, Google will likely transfer all IP to a subsidiary which they own all the equity to.

2nd, If a lawsuit takes place and it is a specific make/model of car and it is due to world wide failures, it will likely take down 1 manufacturer, not the whole industry.

3rd, in the event that situation does raise risk profiles of automakers (more likely represented by higher require rates of returns for stock investors over insurance premiums), there will still be somebody who will try it. The reason is that if someone succeeds, they will have 100% of the market while everyone else will have 0% of the market for cars.

4th, if Google's subsidiary is sued and goes bankrupt, the IP will be sold in an IP auction which will likely go to someone else who will create self driving cars.

The end game is self driving cars, how we get there is anyone's guess, but edge cases will be handled by courts. I can't imagine any scenario which cannot be resolved.

In the event all scenarios fail, legislators will hopefully step in and create an imperfect, but practical framework.

>If driving becomes a feature of the car itself and that feature fails in a way that causes and accident, there's no other answer.

That is one answer but it is not the right answer if you want to encourage driver-less car use. A better answer is to put together a set of standards to govern the proper behavior of a vehicle operating systems (VOS). These standards could encompass, a proper dashboard, the ability for the driver to take control, how a car should act under various scenarios (e.g. some key sensor stops working on the highway). If the VOS follows the proper behavior, than there is no liability to the automaker, if it doesn't, the automaker is liable.

Agreed. I think it also means that driver-less cars will have copious amounts of telemetry and video/audio recordings, so they can assign blame to drivers of other cars, when possible.

However engines falling out of cars do not injure other parties. Driver less cars have the possibility of injuring others. Currently the blame would reside with the operator, but I am pretty sure some certain Texas courts would let the creator of the car, the software, the electronics, and whomever else had big pockets, get sued and lose.

Unless they totally remove the ability for the driver to take over control of the car I do not see how you remove fault from the person in that seat.

I'd think an engine failure has a similar capacity to injure other parties.

The automation has to get to the stability where such failures happen about the same amount of time as engine failures (rarely).

The automaker would still be responsible. As long as the user didn't do something to mess up the programming.

On the contrary, I think that if you as an owner of a self driving vehicle put it on the road, you are taking responsibility. BTW, this exact problem currently exists: Audi makes a car that can park itself. Is Audi responsible if it crashes? nope. If you don't want to take responsibility for that feature, don't use it.

That's a car that CAN park itself. It's not a car that ONLY drives itself.

I suspect that the we won't jump from fully manual cars to fully automatic cars. It will likely be similar to the auto-park function: we'll see more and more cases where automation is available at the request of the driver.

As car makers add these new functions, we'll start to get an idea of how liability will work with them. Some driver is going to get into an accident using this and then claim that the automation made a mistake. Should result in a very interesting trial.

It might end up taking a very long time to have the manual controls removed simply due to liability: as long as you can control it, it's your responsibility. Without the controls, it much easier to argue that Ford/GM/Toyata/Google/etc is really at fault for the accident.

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