Earlier this month, Google revealed that it has been busy inventing a new technology that allows cars to drive themselves. We applaud their ambitions (safety and efficiency) and their progress on such a challenging feat. Google has been testing their technology on the California roads and has already logged over 140,000 miles. The testing has been covert in the eyes of the general public, but Google has worked with the local police on the project. While the cars can operate autonomously, for safety reasons, they never do and always have a human driver ready to take over if needed.
This is no doubt fascinating technology, but what is the legal impact of such an equipped vehicle? The impacts can be split into two categories, legislative and liability.
Legislative
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has the power to mandate certain safety aspects of vehicles sold in the United States, but highway laws vary from state to state so it is difficult to make specific predictions. For example, seatbelts were first introduced in 1950 and the NHTSA mandated that all new cars include them in 1968. However, it wasn’t until 1984 that New York created the first law requiring their use. Ultimately, it will be up to individual states to create laws around the training and usage of automated driving systems. In Colorado, laws and insurance policies use the term “operator” to refer to the person in control of a motor vehicle. This allows the same term to be used for both cars, motorcycles and any other motorized vehicles that may be invented and approved for use on public roads. Self-driving software would change the notion of who is actually in control of the vehicle. Laws and insurance would need to change to address the new situations that could arise from such a technology. We predict that (at least in Colorado) laws would likely change to require a true human operator to be ultimately responsible for control of the vehicle. Speculation on training requirements and/or a special driver’s license endorsement is beyond the scope of this discussion but certainly the potential for such requirements exist.
Liability
If Colorado and most other states change their laws to keep the ultimate responsibility on the operator, the operator’s liability would not change much from what it is now. However, a manufacturer’s product liability would likely change. Should Google’s technology advance to a point where it is ready for the public, it will raise the possibility of product liability claims against the manufacturers should an alleged failure happen. To understand how Google’s liability may change, we use cruise control as an example since one could argue that Google’s technology is a highly advanced form of cruise control. The liability impacts of cruise control are still being debated. Just earlier this year, the South Carolina Supreme Court overturned a product liability case involving cruise control (Watson v. Ford Motor Company). The initial outcome of the lawsuit found the Ford Motor Company liable for an accident resulting from an alleged cruise control malfunction. It was overturned because of an error in the usage of expert witnesses and precedence, but the point is liability is never clear and manufacturers have an inherent risk exposure.
Continuing down this thought experiment leads us to the possibility of a far distant future technology that has better judgment than that of a human driver. If we were to ever get to that point, the possibility exists that such a technology could be considered a safety feature and some states may even mandate its usage. This paradigm has the potential to dramatically shift the legal, political and ethical landscapes. Such changes are also beyond the scope of this discussion.History has shown us that we are a society that pursues technology that benefits society and increases the safety of our highways. Just as we can expect those technologies to evolve, we can expect the legal issues surrounding them to evolve too.
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