Who's Responsible if a Tesla on Autopilot Kills Someone?

[BobC]

Originally Posted by steve B

Is there some sort of service override control? Like if it breaks down while the wheels are in a turn, moving it around the lot at a service place will be challenging.

The tech is cool, but I'll keep doing my own driving.

Unfortunately, that doesn't help if the car in the lane next to you is a driverless car that suddenly has a failure, and takes you out.

If they begin building cars that have no manual controls for the passengers, then clearly any accidents caused by them are not the fault of the passengers. Unless the passenger/owner was supposed to keep up some maintenance/repair regime that a manufacturer can claim they failed to do and thus push the fault (and liability) over to the owner/passenger. And we all know that will be one of the first things any manufacturer, and their insurance company, will try to do.

And in the end, that "cost" will be considered as nothing more than a cost of doing business, and will ultimately be passed on to consumers buying driverless vehicles. Someone will come up with statistics that show that fewer people end up dying or being hurt from driverless vehicles than from drunk or distracted drivers, and therefore the additional costs are all worth it. Meanwhile, big business saves money by no longer having to employ people to drive trucks and delivery vehicles, operate taxis or Ubers, nor deliver food to people's door, and such, and now even more people are out of jobs.

Technology is great, until it isn't. While technology and computers can make our lives easier and better, and tremendously increase production and efficiency, they also put people out of work, make us more dependent on them, and make all of us subject to much greater overall harm and damage, not if, but when, such technology and their related systems ultimately do fail or break down.

From what I've seen, we finally need to amend the list of certainties in everyone's lives from not just death and taxes, but now include that any technology being used will eventually get hacked and/or fail!