When you get into a car accident, who is at fault? Typically, if the driver was negligent, we would say that he or she was at fault. If there was a faulty mechanism in the car, we would say that the manufacturer was at fault.
What if the car is partially controlled by an engineer, but the car has no driver – who is to blame? The new generation of smart cars has provoked interesting questions with regards to determining fault in a car accident.
As you will remember in a previous blog post, Google Inc. has its own fleet of driverless cars. However, Google is not the only one with these “smart cars.” Volvo and Mercedes-Benz have also engineered their own.
As smart as these vehicles are, many of them have already been in accidents. When a Volvo employee tried to demonstrate safety features in one of their smart cars, the car drove into the crowd of people. Despite the employee’s assumption, these cars were not equipped with an option that detects pedestrians and brakes automatically. Who was to blame there, the employee or the manufacturer of the car? Here, we can reasonably assume that the employee was at fault, but in some scenarios the interplay between employee and car is not always very clear.
You will also remember from a previous blog post that a few of Google’s cars have already been rear-ended, with Google reporting 13 accidents within the last six years. Again, who is to blame? Is it the employee remotely operating the vehicle or the manufacturer?
“As cars do more of the driving themselves, alternating control between the machine and a distractible human is going to be a tough issue,” said Philippe Crist, an Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development economist who coordinated a May 28 report on autonomous driving. “That’s a big reason why many automakers probably won’t introduce completely automated cars any time soon. Plus, there’s a risk that such vehicles will result in new types of crashes,” he said.
Automated cars do have some advantages. 94 percent of crashes are linked to some kind of driver error. Thus, conceivably, if computers have more control, there would be fewer crashes – that is, only if the computer is infallible.
If equipped with a collision-avoidance system, many smart cars can tighten the seat belts and brake before the driver has time to react. That said, human drivers are more reactive than cars, which explains the number of accidents, especially where the Google cars are concerned.
In the event of possible litigation, it will be interesting to see how the courts apportion and attribute fault in a car accident involving cars that may not be as smart as their name suggests. If you have been involved in an accident with a smart car, consult with an accident lawyer to protect your rights.
Source: https://www.bnn.ca/News/2015/6/8/Cars-Smart-Enough-to-Drive-Still-Need-to-Overcome-Human-Error.aspx