This will probably be a huge liability headache for Uber, and reflects the broader liability problem for self-driving cars. Even if self-driving cars are much safer than human-driven cars, they...
This will probably be a huge liability headache for Uber, and reflects the broader liability problem for self-driving cars.
Even if self-driving cars are much safer than human-driven cars, they may cost more in liability than human-driven cars.
The reason for this is that carmakers have much deeper pockets than individuals.
So for roughly 1/3 of crashes, we'd expect a recovery of under $50,000 to be possible. Spitballing, but let's say the max recoverable in a car crash averages about $200,000. (There's gonna be some high outliers when multimillionaires crash their cars).
With a human life often being given a dollar value in the multiple millions of dollars, this implies we're about an order of magnitude off in undercompensating victims of vehicular crashes. If self-driving carmakers face full tort liability, they'd need to be more than 10x as safe as human drivers to see any savings, though the social savings would be large even below that, as we would much more generously compensate victims of car crashes and their families.
You would feel similar to Roger Boisjoly, I imagine. He wasn't even responsible for the Challenger explosion, he tried to stop it because he saw the problem ahead of time when nobody else did, yet...
You would feel similar to Roger Boisjoly, I imagine. He wasn't even responsible for the Challenger explosion, he tried to stop it because he saw the problem ahead of time when nobody else did, yet he was still haunted by it until his death because he felt like he didn't fight hard enough to stop the launch. So I can't imagine the guilt someone would feel when they were actually directly responsible for the deaths of so many others, even if through pure accident, honest mistake or negligence. :(
This will probably be a huge liability headache for Uber, and reflects the broader liability problem for self-driving cars.
Even if self-driving cars are much safer than human-driven cars, they may cost more in liability than human-driven cars.
The reason for this is that carmakers have much deeper pockets than individuals.
The median net worth in the US is about $50,000, and most of that is judgment proof for most individuals (home equity, retirement accounts). So most of the time, when someone is at fault in a car crash, they're only going to be able to be sued for their insurance. According to the NYT quoting an industry group, about 13% of Americans have no insurance, and 20% buy the state minimum insurance.
So for roughly 1/3 of crashes, we'd expect a recovery of under $50,000 to be possible. Spitballing, but let's say the max recoverable in a car crash averages about $200,000. (There's gonna be some high outliers when multimillionaires crash their cars).
With a human life often being given a dollar value in the multiple millions of dollars, this implies we're about an order of magnitude off in undercompensating victims of vehicular crashes. If self-driving carmakers face full tort liability, they'd need to be more than 10x as safe as human drivers to see any savings, though the social savings would be large even below that, as we would much more generously compensate victims of car crashes and their families.
Imagine you find out you're the programmer who caused that bug.
You would feel similar to Roger Boisjoly, I imagine. He wasn't even responsible for the Challenger explosion, he tried to stop it because he saw the problem ahead of time when nobody else did, yet he was still haunted by it until his death because he felt like he didn't fight hard enough to stop the launch. So I can't imagine the guilt someone would feel when they were actually directly responsible for the deaths of so many others, even if through pure accident, honest mistake or negligence. :(
This is one of the worst ones that I know of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25
Good lord, that is horrifying. Dying from radiation poisoning is one of the worst ways to go, too.