Self-driving cars will not be able to catch on without legislation limiting damages to manufacturers.
Proponents of self-driving cars predict ~90% reduction in fatalities. What this means is that over 3000 people per year will be killed by self-driving cars. This is way better than what we have now, but in fatal car crashes, often the driver at fault is killed, and juries tend to assess much lower damages against dead people than against large corporations.
Combine that with the fact that there typically aren't any damages at all awarded for single-occupant single-car collisions where the driver is at fault, and it seems entirely possible that the total damages awarded for traffic fatalities could stay at the current level, or even go up, leaving the manufacturers of self-driving cars to foot the bill.
Now, I generally think that laws to cap damages are not good policy, as it does make it harder to discourage negligence or even malfeasance.
What this means is that over 3000 people per year will be killed by self-driving cars
I appreciate this point, but there are two big assumptions hidden in there.
1. That number turns 30,000 accidents into 3,000 accidents, but that's assuming all cars are self-driving.
2. It assumes that in those 3,000 accidents, the self-driving cars are "at fault." But those last 10% of accidents are things in which driver error is not a factor. If a cinderblock falls off a bridge onto my self-driving car, it would take an incredibly aggressive jury[1] to blame that on the car.
What is the cause of those last 10% of accidents? Is it things like manufacturing faults, in which case the manufacturer is already absorbing the risk? (And a computer-driven car could handle a blowout better than a human could.)
Oh, I found an NHTSA paper[2] that gives that "90% due to human error" figure, and puts 4 to 13% on "vehicle factors (brake failure, tire problems, etc.)." So I think my point in the preceding paragraph holds: a big company is already on the line, the automatic car could do better health checks to prevent them, and it could have a better way of dealing with mechanical failure.
I think you missed the poster's overall point: how people perceive accidents matters. This is independent of what the actual causes are, and if there are less of them. When automation is involved, people may perceive that someone did something wrong, even though that automatic thing outperformed what a human could achieve.
I think manufacturers are already facing damages for those remaining 3000 fatalities. I assert "deep pockets" is the overriding factor.
I'd really like to get a sampling of those 3000 non-driver-error fatalities.
I think the term of art is "vehicle factors." Using that I found http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17916886 which suggests that manufacturers could address "the majority" of them, and I don't think I'm being crazy by suggesting self-driving vehicles already include a lot of them, since they aren't exactly Geo Metros.
Self driving cars will get into accidents that are not currently "vehicle factors" since they will be superior drivers, not perfect drivers. Just imagine the headline: "A computer killed my son."
I've long said that people would rather a human kill 1000 people than a computer kill one.
Although the limited self driving systems we have already on Audis and the like are catching on already. I guess the driver has overall control so it's treated legally like a cruise control or similar. I think the main barrier at the moment to the adoption of the current limited systems is cost. If it became a $500 option I think basically all new cars would have it.
Proponents of self-driving cars predict ~90% reduction in fatalities. What this means is that over 3000 people per year will be killed by self-driving cars. This is way better than what we have now, but in fatal car crashes, often the driver at fault is killed, and juries tend to assess much lower damages against dead people than against large corporations.
Combine that with the fact that there typically aren't any damages at all awarded for single-occupant single-car collisions where the driver is at fault, and it seems entirely possible that the total damages awarded for traffic fatalities could stay at the current level, or even go up, leaving the manufacturers of self-driving cars to foot the bill.
Now, I generally think that laws to cap damages are not good policy, as it does make it harder to discourage negligence or even malfeasance.