Uber Self Driving Car Operator Charged with Homicide

[AgronAlum]

Uber self-driving car operator charged in pedestrian death

The Uber test driver who was responsible for monitoring one of the company's self-driving cars that hit and killed a pedestrian in 2018 was charged with negligent homicide this week.

www.cnn.com

This is going to be a weird trial to follow with the inevitable future of self driving cars. It’s laying a precedent for who is liable for accidents.

 

[mywayorcyway]

Yeah, this is going to get complicated. While the driver certainly should have paid attention, from what I've seen even if the driver had been 100% alert this would have happened. It was dark, the person was crossing in the middle of the street in a dark area, and multiple people have stated it would have been impossible to avoid in a normal vehicle.

In my opinion, Uber was let off the hook for this when they should have been liable. At the time their performance was nowhere near the other companies who are testing vehicles and the vehicle LIDAR should have been able to detect the person in the dark where a human couldn't. I suspect Uber got it brushed under the rug with county "support".

Perhaps no one should have been liable and a person shouldn't have been crossing the middle of the street in the dark.

 

[CycloneDaddy]

Pretty straight forward since the person was on their phone. If the person was actually doing their job then it would have been interesting in the outcome.

 

[Sigmapolis]

Even if the technology worked, trying to figure out the liability system for accidents... is it whoever made the software? The car manufacturer? The person driving the car? What exactly...?

...is going to be nightmare. It might hold the technology back for a good amount of time.

Nobody is going to want the precedent that it is on them.

 

[wxman1]

Even if the technology worked, trying to figure out the liability system for accidents... is it whoever made the software? The car manufacturer? The person driving the car? What exactly...?

...is going to be nightmare. It might hold the technology back for a good amount of time.

Nobody is going to want the precedent that it is on them.

FWIW this is one reason why every little thing in aviation costs so much new. Liability nearly killed the industry.

 

[BryceC]

Even if the technology worked, trying to figure out the liability system for accidents... is it whoever made the software? The car manufacturer? The person driving the car? What exactly...?

...is going to be nightmare. It might hold the technology back for a good amount of time.

Nobody is going to want the precedent that it is on them.

IMO the manufacturer has the liability because they are either developing the self driving software themselves, or they are contracting it. They can get a massive policy that covers all vehicles while in self driving mode. Ultimately unless there is a hack that compromises all of these vehicles I bet they are much, much more safe than ape operated vehicles in aggregate.

 

[Sigmapolis]

IMO the manufacturer has the liability because they are either developing the self driving software themselves, or they are contracting it. They can get a massive policy that covers all vehicles while in self driving mode. Ultimately unless there is a hack that compromises all of these vehicles I bet they are much, much more safe than ape operated vehicles in aggregate.

My statement about the technology working kind of implies we assume the self-driving cars work at least as well (if not significantly better) than the human-piloted versions by whatever reasonable metric of safety.

I thought this was a nice summary of some ideas...

Right now, in the overwhelming majority of car accidents, the liability resides with the driver. That places sharp limits on how much a plaintiff can expect to recover, because most people do not have much in the way of assets in excess of the value of their liability insurance. The expected value of an average personal injury suit is therefore modest.

Suing Ford, on the other hand, is a very different matter. Ford has a lot of assets, and juries are not shy about giving it to sympathetic people who have had something terrible happen. Self-driving cars will move the liability for accidents from drivers to deep-pocketed companies, so even though the number of accidents will go down, the expected value of filing a lawsuit will go up.

Ideally, regulators will establish some sort of safe harbor for companies that make these systems: comply with these standards, and you will be deemed to be shielded from judgment. Even more ideally, we’d move toward a no-fault standard for self-driving car accidents, something like our national vaccine injury program: Everyone pays into the pool, and people who, say, get hit by a self-driving car that met applicable regulatory standards, will be eligible for scheduled damages without having to prove fault on the part of the manufacturer.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/a...driving-cars-will-thrive-with-more-regulation

 

[isucy86]

I was surprised that Uber was exempted from the lawsuit. They should be liability since they lacked oversite of their employee. If they can develop a self driving car, they can sure as heck put a camera in the car and monitor the employee.

Once self-driving vehicles go main-stream seems that software companies should not be liable for every accident/fatality related to self driving vehicles. I would think there would be a standard established and if accidents/fatalities exceed a certain level for a company then they could be liable as part of a class action lawsuit that would be presented by a government oversite entity vs. a personal injury lawyer.

The exception would be if negligence was established.

 

[ArgentCy]

Who would be willing to ride 8n these cats if they are going to be liable for accidents? Only morons. If we're going to have self driving cars then the technology will be responsible and the car makers responsible. They can carry a large policy to cover the fleet. And if their tech sucks so bad no one will insure them then they will be gone.