I saw a headline about Mercedes offering an autopilot that doesn't require the driver to monitor, so it's going to be interesting to see how laws play out. The Waymo taxi service in Phoenix seems to occasionally run in with the law, and a remote service advisor has to field the call, advising the officer the company is responsible for the car's behavior, not the passenger.
So in theory the manufacturer takes responsibility because they trust their software. This puts the oness on them and their insurance, thereby reducing your insurance considerably. In actuality your insurance doesn't go down because insurance companies.
It's the reason why they prefer to offer only assistence systems. Aside from warning they can act, but they don't drive on there own. EU will even require some systems for new cars. They'll especially annoy people who ignore speed limits and don't use turn lights.
Nope, it should be law that if an auto manufacturer sells an autonomous driving system that they advertise being able to use while driving distracted then they are liable if someone uses it as advertised and per instructions.
What you wrote is probably an auto manufacturer executive's wet dream.
"You used our autonomous system to drive you home after drinking completely within advertised use and per manufacturer instructions and still got in an accident? Oh well tough shit the driver is liable for everything no matter what™️"
When autonomous cars are good enough to just drive people around then yeah the companies should be liable, but right now they're not and drivers should be fully alert as if they are driving a regular vehicle.
Fair, but when a company is given the authority to run fully autonomous taxis in cities that's a huge accomplishment. Granted they are cities that don't see things like snow storms and I'm sure there is a good reason for that.
What's the point of automated steering if you have to remain 100 % attentive? To spare the driver the terrible burden of moving the wheel a couple mm either way? It is well studied and observed that people are less attentive when they're not actively driving, which, FUCKING DUH.
Manufacturers provide this feature for the implicit purpose of enabling distracted driving. Yet they will not accept liability if someone drives distractedly.
Next in We Are Not Liable For How Consumers Use Our Product, Elon will replace the speedometer by Candy Crush with small text that says "pwease do not use while dwiving UwU".
You choose to activate that mode, while I understand your sentiment and do agree, it's not as cut and dry as 'company liable' or 'driver liable', both can be at fault. Taking blame off drivers entirely could make people even less attentive and the safety of lives is more important than some fines to a car manufacturer.
The real problem is that mode being allowed to exist at all. It's clearly not ready for use on public roads and companies are just abusing advertising to try and pin their 'autopilot' as something it isn't.
Also note: Some manufacturers (Volvo & Mercedes, that I know of) have already said they will claim full responsibility for their cars in self-driving mode.
It's still in its infacy, eventually it will replace humans entirely and the roads will be much safer. Right now it's just like improved cruise control and kind of pointless.
Some manufacturers have already said they will claim full responsibility for their cars in self-driving mode, which makes sense to do.
I'll clarify: what is the actual purpose of giving customers access to this infantile technology? It doesn't make following traffic laws easier like cruise control does, it doesn't make drivers better at driving or safer behind the wheel, and it merely encourages distracted driving.
So why did they ship this product? Again, it just seems like a dangerous toy.