Troubling Concerns Autonomous Cars Will Bring To The Road
Posted by admin at 14 December 2017, at 14 : 06 PM
By now you have probably heard all about autonomous cars and if you haven’t now would be as good of a time as any to catch up. Autonomous cars are cars that drive themselves and contrary to popular belief the tech isn’t actually that advanced. While a car that drives itself is undoubtedly impressive each current model on the market has issues. For instance, Volvo were caught with an autonomous car that decided to try and crash into a bunch of watching civilians.
An autonomous car was also being driven when it hurtled into a barrier, killing the driver. That one was made by the tech geniuses at Tesla. As such, autonomous technology does bring issues for drivers and indeed car manufacturers, and it is interesting to explore some of the problems.
Hey, Who Do I Sue?
One of the biggest issues with autonomous drivers is figuring out who is responsible for the accident says car accident injury lawyers at the Crockett Law Group. Is it the driver? One could argue that since they’re not driving the car they can’t be held accountable. Ah okay, it’s the manufacturer then. But this makes things more difficult because rather than suing an individual you’re hitting back at a company. We’ll get to those pesky insurance providers a little further down. Right now, let’s figure out who you go after if an autonomous car crashes into you and for now we will keep things simple and focus on Tesla. You see, Tesla state quite clearly that ‘drivers’ of their cars should keep both hands on the wheel at all times. This is their way of saying, hey if you crash, we’re not taking the blame. We told you to keep the hands on the wheel. That leaves firms like laventlaw to pursue damages from the insurance company and the driver.
Of course, the problem is that eventually, a car producer is going to be confident enough not to use this type of legal disclaimer. At that point, it will be a struggle to go after the driver even if they were in the pilot seat of the car that caused the crash.
Struggles For Insurance Providers
We already mentioned insurance providers, and they are certain to have other issues. They’ll have to figure out whether insurance rises or falls based on the abilities of a self-driving car. That’s a complicated issue because right now autonomous cars are always going to be more expensive, but they are also arguably safer. As far as we know providers haven’t quite figured out how to deal with this issue. That’s not even considering what happens when Volvo gets their wish of no accidents in a car created by them on the road. At this point, it could be argued drivers don’t even need insurance.
Hang On, We Want To Drive
To finish off, we need to look way into the future. Eventually, this tech is going to progress to the point where the tech is so safe that governments want it to be the only type on the road. What about people who love driving. We’re sure the boys at Top Gear are going to have an issue with this type of legislation, and you can bet once the tech advances far enough, this will be an issue. It will be interesting to see how it’s handled.