I'd go further than that. If a vehicle's automated systems caused or contributed to an accident or a road rule violation, the car manufacturer should be held responsible.

If your company's automated emergency braking, or lane assist, or adaptive cruise control - causes or contributes to a problem, someone from that company should be in court next to the driver facing judgement for the consequences.

(I'd even go so far as to suggest if the existence of a system leads to a situation where an incident occurred because of the driver's assumption that the automated system would prevent it, then the company should need to justify why the driver should be held responsible instead of the software. If your advertising claims "autopilot!", you're going to be apportioned a significant portion of liability even if your fine print says "Drivers must keep alert and ready to take control at all times" - you should be judged based on a reasonable persons expectation from the language you use to promote your vehicles, not some w4easel words in your T&Cs.)

Unfortunately, pretty much every automobile safety improvement in the last century (which collectively have saved ~millions of lives) also occasionally kills people. Airbags can propel objects into people, seatbelts can trap someone in a burning car, antilock brakes perform worse on sand, etc.

In practice, putting the responsibilty on auto manufacturers for every specific injury or death that happens due to a safety system, without somehow giving them "positive credit" for lives saved, massively delays or entirely prevents these sort of advancements from being made. We definitely need processes to verify that new features are actually functional, typically through recalls and product liability suits, but simply putting blame on manufacturers for all accidents is a terrible idea.

Automation issues may fall into the category of manufacturer/developer negligence; you seem to be suggesting some sort of burden shifting.

When you say that a manufacturer should be held liable if their system '... contributes to a problem...', it seems like you're suggesting adoption of the (notoriously problematic) 'if not but for' test. This sort of test is used in negligence cases, but can be useless, as almost anything satisfies it (i.e. slow service at a coffee shop may have been a necessary condition for the timing of that exact accident).

I feel the "driver" of the driverless car should be responsible too. We are nowhere near actual full unsupervised autonomy - people should still be actively looking out for the car doing the wrong thing.

You don't get to abdicate responsibility on the road just because you bought in to some corporations marketing.

non autonomous cars have driver assists now that slam on the brakes when they think you’re about to crash. Statistically a huge improvement to active safety, and then there’s cattle grids.

Imagine you’re driving along in full control on an empty country road. Out of nowhere your car panics, slams in the brakes, deploys seatbelt tensioners, and flashes bright warning lights because clearly you fell asleep or something if you cant see that big wall.

Would you react? Maybe swerve coz you’re startled?

You don't get to abdicate responsibility for your vehicle's "autopilot" just because that was only corporate marketing.

Words mean things. You don't get to say they mean different things when you say them just because it helps you sell more cars. Not in the fine print, and not in a court.

There's no way a "driver" can autocorrect for a vehicle that makes an emergency stop out of the blue -- the vehicle is still stopped, and now poses a safety hazard for the surrounding traffic.

Absolutely true, although the corporate liability thing really depends on whether the engineering takes after software or aviation (to pick two widely contrasting examples).

And I notice the "phone with wheels" built by mostly software engineers chooses to use words with well known meanings from the aviation industry without a) any of the rigour behind the regulations and certifications or b) much in the way of acknowledging the differences between the challenges of an "autopilot" safely managing to traverse the airspace 37,000 feet above Hawaii, compared to a rural lane in the UK (or 280 between the valley and the city).

(While, sadly, at the same time it seems from the outside that the ACAS code got written by the same outsourced dev team that work on their website the rest of the time. :sigh: )

> it's not unreasonable to build a standard basket of problematic road signs which the car must pass

I'm wondering how you would get around metaparameter optimization here, or the fact that it's too easy to optimize to a known test procedure rather than the real world?

> but if a driverless car doesn't stop for a speed limit outside a school the company should have some liability.

This is a particular challenge in California because our school zone signs specify that the limit only applies "when children are present."

In Germany, when a speed limit of 30kmh is introduced because of a school, it is usually on applicable for school days and hours (e.g. Mo-Fri 8-18) only. After school hours or non school days you are allowed to drive at normal speed of 50kmh.

How are you meant to know whether children are present in time if you're not doing the lower speed limit?

It weirded me out when I moved here, but in practice, it's enforced like anywhere else: at the beginning and end of school days.

Since a large fraction of kids are driven to school (at least in southern California), you know that this is happening because of the massive traffic jam near the school.

Illinois has these "no turn on red when pedestrians present" signs and I have no clue how thats supposed to help anyone because pedestrians usually get hit because they aren't seen by the car.

The idea is that you would be going slow enough already (and if not, slow down). Then, if there’s no children, you can speed up.