Re:Uber will not re-apply for self-driving car permit in Cal...
by usrusr on Wednesday March 28, 2018 @04:10AM
(#16696221)
I think that by the letter of the law, liability would be strictly with the "safety driver" (aka scapegoat on duty). They were surely told to keep attentive all the time and - surprise - it did not happen.
The root cause, in my opinion, is allowing cars on the road that inevitably lull their nominal driver into inattentiveness.
There might be ways to keep a safety driver engaged so that the chance of attention failure is significantly lower than inevitable, but it doesn't seem like Uber had been looking for them very hard.
These things and liability should have been decided before the cars were allowed on the road. But when Congress deregulated them at the federal level everyone hailed it as a good thing and completely ignored all the potential negatives of that.
Now, even if Uber is found guilty, it may get away with it, because there may be no law clearly attributing guilt to a self-driving car maker in case of accidents like these.