Okay so, I suspect while you are learning how to drive your parents told you to be careful. You probably often said; “I am very careful when I drive you don’t have anything to worry about.” And then your parents said; “it’s not you that I worry about, it’s all the other crazy drivers out there, so be careful.” Indeed, this is very true. But what happens if you are a robotic car, and you are programmed to be careful? You still have to watch out for all the crazy humans out there who are also driving around on the same road right?
Sure you should, and I suppose like you, I have prevented numerous accidents when other people make mistakes. Just because another driver makes a mistake, runs a stop sign, or breaks a traffic law, doesn’t mean you are allowed to hit them, and then blame it on them for being their fault. It may very well be their fault, and their insurance will have to pay, unless you are in a no-fault state, but that doesn’t help you or the rest of your week without a car while it is getting fixed.
Now then, there was an interesting piece recently on the Car Tech Blog titled; “Google Driver Crashes Autonomous Car” by Wayne Cunningham published on August 5, 2011. The article stated;
“The Google Prius and another Prius were involved in a minor collision, although there are no details as to which driver might have been at fault. When Google revealed that its autonomous cars had been road testing in California a few years ago, it acknowledged that there had been one minor accident, but that the other car was at fault. During its testing of the cars, a driver has been at the wheel, ready to take over if the self-driving systems should fail.”
Perhaps it was inevitable that a robotic car would get in an accident with the human. It wasn’t something that I would have suspected would happen in the year 2011, it’s more of a 2025 type thing. Nevertheless, it has happened, and this opens up a real can of worms for traffic law, and perhaps this will go down in the Guinness Book of World Records as the first robotic/human traffic accident. This will also set a precedent.
Indeed, I am sure that in a traffic court a human would win, because folks don’t trust robotic or autonomous vehicles yet. However, in the future, the robotic car will do everything in its power to avoid an accident, and therefore it’s more than likely that the human will be cited, and deemed at fault in the accident. Indeed I hope you will please consider all this and think on it.
Tags: Claws On law, Law Articel