As excitement grows for driverless cars, consensus is building around the idea that automakers, not drivers, will be held responsible for crashes in the future, as our Tanya Snyder reports for Pros. Knowing that they would face legal responsibility, manufacturers could hesitate to roll out self-driving vehicles or jack up their prices to recover projected costs, which would slow widespread use.
Drivers aren’t off the hook yet: Still, Tanya points out that cars without steering wheels or pedals probably won’t become the norm on American roads for decades. In the meantime, human drivers could be found at fault for accidents for a number of reasons: They didn’t take over steering when the vehicle warned them to do so, they didn’t get a broken sensor replaced or they used the car in circumstances that the automaker warned it couldn’t handle.