Carmakers: Admit liability!

Most carmakers are busy developing autonomous or self-driving vehicles but keeping quiet on the question of liability if something goes wrong and these cars are involved in accidents.
Most car manufacturers wait for legal frameworks to allow for these cars to run on the streets but lawmakers need to identify ultimate liability before they can allow self-driving cars on public roads.
Volvo has broken the silence and admitted that they would accept liability for driverless accidents.
This is likely to give a boost for the development of self-diving cars by removing a main obstacle to use of these cars.
The company’s CEO Hakan Samuelsson said that when a car is driving autonomously, it is like taking an elevator — the driver does nothing….if there is a crash because of a failure of the car itself, we have liability.”
No other car manufacturer has taken a clear position on liability and this is why the issue of autonomous driving has been stalling for a long time.
The industry should take steps to clarify the situation to law-makers by admitting full responsibility for their vehicles as much as drivers are now responsible for driving their cars.
The Volvo step has encouraged the Swedish city of Gothenburg to approve a trial planned for 2017 when 100 autonomous cars will take to the streets. There are similar plans in Britain but no specific events are planned yet.
It is believed that first trials in Britain would be on motorways and in slow-moving queues.
A British law firm predicts that other car manufacturers would now have to follow suit and admit liability for their cars.
Caroline Coates, head of the automotive sector of the law firm DWF, said: “If a car is driving autonomously, you would expect to look at the vehicle first rather than the driver when assigning liability.”
Until carmakers come to that conclusion, autonomous driving is unlikely to progress further.

— Adel Murad is a senior motoring and business journalist, based in London.
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