Although Google’s self-driving car, among others, is years away from being commercially available, there is a debate over the legislative implications it will have. There is much talk about liability in case of a crash, and who will be blamed if an accident occurs as a result of a defect in the autonomous driving technology (or in some cases a rational response to its surroundings). The operation of driverless cars will certainly bring about many questions, such as whether the owner of the car should be held responsible in case it causes an accident, or the car’s manufacturer should take the blame and pay for car damages from crashes.
While driverless cars are certainly going to be safer than conventional cars, since they will eliminate human error, which is the single biggest cause of crashes, they will still get involved in accidents, albeit at a far lower rate. No matter how hard Google or other companies are working on it, the autonomous driving software, like any other software won’t be flawless, as there is no such thing as “perfect software”, and it will almost certainly be prone to defects and hacking attacks, which might lead to a collision.
In a situation like that, when a self-driving car gets in a crash, or commits a minor traffic violation, such as running a red light or speeding, the main question that arises is who should get a ticket and be held responsible. Police officers will be faced with a dilemma, given that current laws say that the person seated at the driver’s seat is responsible for any movement that the vehicle makes, but with autonomous cars, which can drive themselves without the input of a human driver, the person should not be blamed for any potential mistakes the car makes.
If the car’s owner is not held liable, then the other options include penalizing the software developer, the person who designed the vehicle, or the car manufacturer. Google, for its part, is ready to accept responsibility in case some of its cars commit a traffic violation, and says that it should get the ticket, instead of the individual in the driver’s seat. “What we’ve been saying to the folks in the DMV, even in public session, for unmanned vehicles, we think the ticket should go to the company. Because the decisions are not being made by the individual,” safety director for Google’s self-driving car program Ron Medford, who used to work at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration as a deputy administrator, told The Atlantic.
In addition to traffic tickets, there is the issue of whether the person who is at the helm of a driverless car should have demerit points added against their driver’s license if the car gets pulled over for speeding or running a red light. The California DMV, which is the first DMV in the U.S. to start writing rules to regulate driverless cars, has held a couple of public workshops to allow the public to help resolve some of the issues involving self-driving cars, such as whether they should be allowed to be operated without a driver or someone should be seated behind the wheel at all times, what requirements these vehicles should meet in order to be eligible for registration, as well as what safety standards they should comply with.