Self-driving cars and the law

So what happens if you are in an accident with a self-driving car? Or what happens if a self-driving car hits a pedestrian?

Legally speaking, myriad issues are at play. A few that come to mind are product liability, negligence, and, of course, insurance. So how do we make sense of it all? Under California's jury instructions on strict liability (CACI 1200), a plaintiff who claims he or she was harmed by a self-driving car distributed, manufactured, or sold by a defendant must show that the manufacturing contained a defect, that it was defectively designed, or that the vehicle did not include sufficient instructions or warnings of potential safety hazards. Note that the distributor, the manufacturer, and the dealer (seller) are all potentially liable.

With the advent of this new technology, our justice system and laws will evolve to accommodate new scenarios and facts arising in each new case. But looking at prior cases remains the stepping stone for the future. At some point the "horse and buggy" laws will be obsolete; until then, our judges have no option but to draw parallels to existing law. A few cases are worth mentioning:

"A manufacturer, distributor, or retailer is liable in tort if a defect in the manufacture or design of its product causes injury while the product is being used in a reasonably foreseeable way." — Soule v. GM Corp. (1994) 8 Cal.4th 548, 560.

Foreseeability is the cornerstone of our justice system when it comes to new technology. By definition, with something new we cannot yet know what is foreseeable, because we are in a sphere of events and laws yet to be developed.

"Strict liability has been invoked for three types of defects — manufacturing defects, design defects, and 'warning defects,' i.e., inadequate warnings or failures to warn." — Anderson v. Owens-Corning Fiberglas Corp. (1991) 53 Cal.3d 987, 995.

"A manufacturer is strictly liable in tort when an article he places on the market, knowing that it is to be used without inspection for defects, proves to have a defect that causes injury to a human being. The purpose of such liability is to insure that the costs of injuries resulting from defective products are borne by the manufacturers that put such products on the market rather than by the injured persons who are powerless to protect themselves." — Greenman v. Yuba Power Products, Inc. (1963) 59 Cal.2d 57, 62–63.

Consider the difference between the visual warning system (the driver) and the collision-warning system (the onboard computer) of a self-driving car. It is an exciting area of law yet to be developed.

"Beyond manufacturers, anyone identifiable as 'an integral part of the overall producing and marketing enterprise' is subject to strict liability." — Arriaga v. CitiCapital Commercial Corp. (2008) 167 Cal.App.4th 1527, 1534.

I can just see new practice areas for our young lawyers developing in the conference rooms of our law firms — eventually codified by law and studied in law schools around the world. I would expect a new area of law to develop around artificial intelligence to accommodate what is to come. We certainly live in interesting times, and it is exciting to be a lawyer with so much yet to come.

Source for CACI 1200: Justia.