If I'm driving along, over-correct on a turn and smash into your fence, it's my responsibility. If I do nothing wrong, but my tire blows out, I'm still responsible.
If my tire blows out because the repair shop over-inflated it, or because there is a material defect in the tire, that's where responsibility lands.
The question is, when my robot car overcorrects (ie. driver error), am I responsible, or is the manufacturer? And in what circumstances is the manufacturer negligent?
I'd dare say that once automated cars move out of California and Nevada and start showing up in Minnesota and New York, things will get complex quickly.
I get that liability rules would not be simple, but how would they be different? If a car manufacturer sells cars whose brakes fade quickly and a collision occurs as a result of a driver not being able to stop fast enough, whose fault is it? It's not immediately obvious, but we have a ton of existing law to deal with situations like that.
I mean go through your examples. If your self-driving car crashes because you maintained or modified it improperly, it's your fault. If your maintenance shop did the bad maintaining or modifying, it's their fault. If there was a design or manufacturing defect, it was the manufacturer's fault. If it was nobody's fault (e.g. meteor hits car) then the insurance company pays if you insured against it and nobody is "liable" (i.e. property owner takes the loss) if you didn't.
What's the new thing? Why is it different that a car crashed because its computer improperly decided to turn left vs. because its mechanical steering mechanism failed?
This seems like a situation where something has been discovered to have a computer in it and now some people think we have to throw away the existing rules and start over for no apparent reason.
If you are not in control of the car at the moment of the accident, then the manufacturer is liable for providing faulty equipment.
Good intentions does not do away with liability.
For that matter, why would you even purchase insurance for a vehicle like that. It should be supplied by the manufacturer.
Possibly even the car should not be owned by you, since you are not 100% in control at all times. But that's debatable, since people are attached to car ownership.
If a street racer modifies their car? If you didn't perform routine car washing so the sensors where unable to sense? The car was in a wreck last month and the repair shop didn't do as good a job as they should have? The car is 30 years old and stuff naturally wears out? There are so many variables that manufacturer pays maybe a first approximation to an answer but no where near the whole answer.
All of that is part of the reason why I will never own a robot car until they hammer out those details. Currently, when I buy a car, the manufacturer/dealer specifies what they are responsible for and how long. The rest is on me. So I have to purchase driver's insurance.
A robot car? I'm not the driver. The manufacturer is, by robot proxy. So, perhaps the manufacturer should be insuring the car. After all, at that point, I'm just a passenger.
If I'm driving along, over-correct on a turn and smash into your fence, it's my responsibility. If I do nothing wrong, but my tire blows out, I'm still responsible.
If my tire blows out because the repair shop over-inflated it, or because there is a material defect in the tire, that's where responsibility lands.
The question is, when my robot car overcorrects (ie. driver error), am I responsible, or is the manufacturer? And in what circumstances is the manufacturer negligent?
I'd dare say that once automated cars move out of California and Nevada and start showing up in Minnesota and New York, things will get complex quickly.