Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Autonomous Vehicles, Technological Progress, and the Scope Problem in Products Liability

Autonomous Vehicles, Technological Progress, and the Scope Problem in Products Liability AbstractAutonomous vehicles are widely expected to save tens of thousands of lives each year by making car crashes attributable to human error – currently the overwhelming majority of fatal crashes – a thing of the past. How the legal system should attribute responsibility for the (hopefully few) crashes autonomous vehicles cause is an open and hotly debated question.Most tort scholars approach this question by asking what liability rule is most likely to achieve the desired policy outcome: promoting the adoption of this lifesaving technology without destroying manufacturers’ incentives to optimize it. This approach has led to a wide range of proposals, many of which suggest replacing standard rules of products liability with some new system crafted specifically for autonomous vehicles and creating immunity or absolute liability or something in between.But, I argue, the relative safety of autonomous vehicles should not be relevant in determining whether and in what ways manufacturers are held liable for their crashes. The history of products liability litigation over motor vehicle design shows that the tort system has been hesitant to indulge in such comparisons, as it generally declines both to impose liability on older, more dangerous cars simply because they lack the latest safety features and to grant immunity to newer, safer cars simply because of their superior aggregate performance. These are instances in which products liability law fails to promote efficient outcomes and instead provides redress for those who have been wronged by defective products.Applying these ideas to the four fatalities that have so far been caused by autonomous vehicles suggests that just as conventional vehicles should not be considered defective in relying on a human driver, autonomous vehicles should not be immune when their defects cause injury. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of Tort Law de Gruyter

Autonomous Vehicles, Technological Progress, and the Scope Problem in Products Liability

Lemann, Alexander B.
Journal of Tort Law , Volume 12 (2): 56 – Nov 18, 2019
Download PDF
56 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/de-gruyter/autonomous-vehicles-technological-progress-and-the-scope-problem-in-NxgUZyD3Sa
Publisher
de Gruyter
Copyright
© 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
ISSN
1932-9148
eISSN
1932-9148
DOI
10.1515/jtl-2019-0029
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

AbstractAutonomous vehicles are widely expected to save tens of thousands of lives each year by making car crashes attributable to human error – currently the overwhelming majority of fatal crashes – a thing of the past. How the legal system should attribute responsibility for the (hopefully few) crashes autonomous vehicles cause is an open and hotly debated question.Most tort scholars approach this question by asking what liability rule is most likely to achieve the desired policy outcome: promoting the adoption of this lifesaving technology without destroying manufacturers’ incentives to optimize it. This approach has led to a wide range of proposals, many of which suggest replacing standard rules of products liability with some new system crafted specifically for autonomous vehicles and creating immunity or absolute liability or something in between.But, I argue, the relative safety of autonomous vehicles should not be relevant in determining whether and in what ways manufacturers are held liable for their crashes. The history of products liability litigation over motor vehicle design shows that the tort system has been hesitant to indulge in such comparisons, as it generally declines both to impose liability on older, more dangerous cars simply because they lack the latest safety features and to grant immunity to newer, safer cars simply because of their superior aggregate performance. These are instances in which products liability law fails to promote efficient outcomes and instead provides redress for those who have been wronged by defective products.Applying these ideas to the four fatalities that have so far been caused by autonomous vehicles suggests that just as conventional vehicles should not be considered defective in relying on a human driver, autonomous vehicles should not be immune when their defects cause injury.

Journal

Journal of Tort Law – de Gruyter

Published: Nov 18, 2019

There are no references for this article.