Who Pays for Injuries in a Self-Driving Car Crash?

Self-driving cars mark a significant step in automobile innovation. This technology has a wide range of benefits, including safety improvements, better traffic flow, enhanced access to mobility, economic savings, and environmental advantages. (Not to mention the time and stress saved by human drivers.)

Unfortunately, this technology is far from perfect. Self-driving technology is still developing and shouldn’t be operated without human oversight. This begs an important question: who is responsible for damages when a driverless car causes an accident? Humans? Manufacturers? Or someone else?

Here’s what you need to know about liability in a self-driving car accident and what the experienced attorneys at Sommers Schwartz can do to help you navigate these evolving legal questions.

Why Do Self-Driving Cars Have Accidents?

Automobile enthusiasts often tout the safety benefits of self-driving cars. However, this technology is still developing, and early studies show that driverless cars cause more accidents than the human-operated variety (albeit at a much smaller fatality and injury rate).

When this happens, it’s usually because the car had trouble:

• Adapting to unexpected road conditions.
• Responding to a complex interaction with human-driven vehicles.
• Interpreting the actions of a human-driven car.
• Interpreting the actions of outside pedestrians (especially in highly populated urban areas).
• Adapting to a fringe case scenario.
• Analyzing data due to sensor failure in its cameras, radar, or other equipment.
• Operating on faulty or outdated software codes.
• Executing a route due to outdated mapping data.

Hacking and cyberterrorism are also concerns. All these issues highlight some of the safety concerns with driverless cars and raise important liability questions.

Breaking Down Damages: Who’s Responsible and When

In Michigan, the court assigns damages based on your percentage of fault. Our state laws heavily emphasize holding autonomous car manufacturers accountable for making safe vehicles and software. However, that doesn’t mean drivers are entirely off the hook.

Like most personal injury cases, assigning liability in a self-driving car accident isn’t straightforward and usually comes down to several individualized facts. Here’s a closer look at the whos and whys. 

Vehicle Manufacturer Liability

Self-driving car manufacturers are responsible for providing safe products. They must produce safe designs and follow safe product construction practices. If a flaw or defect in either area leads to an accident, the manufacturer could be liable for those damages.

Where autonomous cars are concerned, this might happen if:

• The autonomous system was inherently unsafe.
• The vehicle’s design was unreasonably dangerous.
• The autonomous software was not integrated with the vehicle properly.
• The manufacturer deviated from the original design.

Manufacturers are also liable for failing to warn consumers about the system’s limitations and how to use the vehicle properly. 

Software Developer Liability

Software developers are responsible for meeting the same safety standards—in both design and execution—as manufacturers. When they don’t, they, too, may be liable for damages.

Poor software development, inadequate testing, defective algorithms, overlooking known risks, and failure to address known issues are all examples of how a software developer could be liable in autonomous car accidents.

Driver Liability

So far, 100% autonomous cars aren’t available to the public, which means driver error can still play a role in self-driving accidents. As a result, one of the court’s biggest considerations when determining driver fault is how autonomous the car is.

There are five levels of self-driving cars, including:

• Level 0: No automation. The driver performs all tasks.
• Level 1: Driver assistance. The driver controls most tasks, with helpful aid from cruise control and lane assist.
• Level 2: Partial automation. The system can control steering and acceleration/breaking simultaneously.
• Level 3: Conditional automation. The system can perform all driving tasks under certain conditions.
• Level 4: High automation. The system can perform all driving tasks without human intervention within specific domains.
• Level 5: Full automation. The system can perform all driving tasks under all conditions.

All publicly available options in this list require a driver to take control in certain situations. Hence, a driver who wasn’t paying attention—and didn’t take control when needed—could be liable for causing an accident.

Comparative Fault in Michigan

Under Michigan’s personal injury fault rules, you can only recover damages if you are less than 50% liable for the accident. These rules compare your fault to everyone else’s—including manufacturers and software developers. Hence, keeping good records is crucial if you own and operate a self-driving car. Some of these essential documents include:

• All software updates.
• Service history documents.
• Communications with the manufacturer about systems issues.
• Proof of compliance with any recall notices.

These documents can help prove you were on top of your car’s maintenance and that a failure in the system was not your fault. If you are in an accident, carefully preserve your car’s electronic data and talk to an experienced accident attorney as soon as possible.

Were You Injured in a Driverless Car Accident? 

Car accidents are stressful. But the good news is you don’t have to navigate your fight for damages alone. If you were involved in a driverless car accident, we want to hear from you. Contact Sommers Schwartz for a free consultation and let our team of highly experienced accident attorneys help you get the compensation you deserve.