The results of the first accident with human fatalities involving an autonomous vehicle are in. As Alexis Madrigal notes in the Atlantic, the vehicle was functioning as designed.
Strict liability is a standard of liability making the person or corporation responsible for the damage and loss they cause regardless of negligence, fault, or intent. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The way to deal with autonomous vehicles and the Internet of Things more generally is strict liability.
Yeah, I have a feeling that that the public will view accidents involving self driving vehicles differently than accidents caused by human error. Even if our entire moving fleet of vehicles were replaced by S D V s and fatalities reduced 50% the result will be a flood of lawsuits charging design flaw that standard vehicle insurance won’t cover.
Out of my depth but it seems the entire automobile insurance industry would need to be redesigned. Or maybe every incident, not being an accident, will be a comprehensive claim, like hail?