A Look at the Legal Environment for Driverless Vehicles (2016) / Chapter Skim
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Pages 30-40
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From page 30... ...
30 more reliable and more private than current online ride-service programs in which vehicles come with human drivers. Variations on use of on-demand driverless vehicles appear likely to include cooperatives in which fleets of driverless vehicles are owned in common by groups and made available for personal or shared use by members of a driverless vehicle cooperative.
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From page 31... ...
31 counterparts.251 Yet even if driverless vehicles are safer than other methods of transportation, they will still get into accidents.252 When this happens, questions will arise regarding who should have to bear the costs of these accidents. There exists a well-established body of law that prescribes the legal liabilities of manufacturers and operators of conventional automobiles when these devices injure people or property.
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From page 32... ...
32 • The defendant's negligence also must represent a "proximate cause" of the plaintiff's harm, meaning that a reasonable person in the defendant's position at the time of his or her claimed negligence would have foreseen that their negligent behavior could lead to harm of the general sort suffered by the plaintiff;258 and • Damages.259 The duty element of a negligence claim is a "matter of law," meaning that judges, rather than juries, ordinarily ascertain whether a defendant owed a plaintiff a duty.260 With conventional automobile accidents, the existence of a duty is only rarely a disputed issue.261 Matters that are contested more often concern whether the defendant breached his or her duty of reasonable care, whether this breach caused the plaintiff's injuries, the extent of the plaintiff's damages, and whether these damages are wholly or in part due to the plaintiff's own negligence. The last of these matters represents a defense commonly referred to as "comparative negligence" or "comparative fault."262 Unlike questions of duty, these issues are left to juries to decide, unless the parties have stipulated to a trial before a judge, or a judge determines that given the facts involved, all reasonable juries would have to agree how an issue should be decided.
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From page 33... ...
33 There exist three such forms of "strict products liability," which are distinguished from one another by the nature of the defect that the product is alleged to contain: • Manufacturing Defects. A product contains a "manufacturing defect" when it "departs from its intended design even though all possible care was exercised in the preparation and marketing of the product."269 This sort of defect applies to products that are "physically flawed, damaged, or incorrectly assembled,"270 such as a soda bottle cast with glass less thick than the manufacturer specified, making the bottle prone to break.
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From page 34... ...
34 autopilot functions on airplanes,285 and aeronautical charts.286 As to certain issues, these cases have produced a robust body of seemingly pertinent case law; as to other topics, there are fewer decisions on point. Furthermore, the risks and benefits of driverless vehicles may be sufficiently distinctive that these decisions may not provide useful references in all circumstances.
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From page 35... ...
35 Communications Decency Act of 1996299 greatly limited plaintiffs' ability to recover against the operators of Internet websites for content generated by third parties. • Preemption by Regulation: Administrative regulations enacted under the authority conferred by statute also may preempt tort remedies.
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From page 36... ...
36 Each of these uncertainties could have a profound effect on the civil liability rules associated with driverless vehicles. Greater reliance on a V2I system than is presently anticipated, for instance, likely would necessitate substantial government engagement in the development of the necessary infrastructure, which in turn could create a larger aperture for negligence claims against state and local authorities (and implication of the various immunities that can apply to government decision making)
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From page 37... ...
37 reevaluation and possible alteration of these rules― whether through federal preemption or otherwise. To the extent that litigation concerning driverless vehicles does arise during this span, the immaturity of the technology and plaintiffs' evolving "claim consciousness" suggests a bias toward lawsuits that attack 1)
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From page 38... ...
38 especially in jurisdictions that permit the introduction of such remedial measures in court.324 As suggested before, depending upon their number, cost, and outcome, early design and warning defect cases may cause manufacturers to press for liability-lessening measures. One such option would involve the creation of "safe harbors" through legislation or regulation, whereby the satisfaction of a safety standard would provide an affirmative defense to liability.
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From page 39... ...
39 these sorts of decisions, and have their conduct reviewed after the fact for reasonableness by judges and juries. Yet the need to have these matters resolved in advance within a vehicle's software code may provide a basis for manufacturers or software suppliers to push for the promulgation of liabilitylimiting standards for the algorithms used in these contexts.
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From page 40... ...
40 personal injury claims involving vehicles, owing to the safety benefits of driverless vehicles relative to conventional vehicles and the former's replacement of the latter on the nation's highways. It is unclear whether persons who suffer injuries associated with driverless vehicles during this mature stage will seek relief primarily through the courts, or through other avenues.
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