Driverless Cars Give Lawyers Bottomless List Of Defendants

Imagine a robot car with no one behind the wheel hitting another driverless car. Who’s at fault?

The answer: No one knows. But plaintiff’s lawyers are salivating at the prospects for big paydays from such accidents. If computers routinely crash, they say, then so will cars operated by them. And with no one behind the wheel, lawyers say they can go after almost anyone even remotely involved.

“You’re going to get a whole host of new defendants,” said Kevin Dean, who is suing General Motors Co. over its faulty ignition switches and Takata Corp. over air-bag failures. “Computer programmers, computer companies, designers of algorithms, Google, mapping companies, even states. It’s going to be very fertile ground for lawyers.”

Driverless cars from Google Inc. and other manufacturers are touted as leading to an accident-free future, where precise, robot reflexes keep passengers out of harm’s way. That automotive utopia may one day eliminate death on the highway, proponents say. But before then, it’s inevitable that first- generation robot cars are going to collide with other driverless vehicles and those with accident-prone humans behind the wheel.

Possible Roadblock

“There is going to be a moment in time when there’s going to be a crash and it’s going to be undetermined who or what was at fault,” said David Strickland, former head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and now a partner at the Venable LLP law firm in Washington. “That’s where the difficulty begins.”

Consumer concerns about liability could represent a roadblock to acceptance of driverless cars. That’s why Volvo Cars, Google and Daimler AG’s Mercedes-Benz have all pledged to accept liability if their vehicles cause an accident.

“We want customers to trust we’ve done a really good job,” said Anders Eugensson, Volvo’s director of government affairs. “That’s why we say if anything happens, we assume liability. We feel we can’t launch vehicles to customers unless we’re able to make that statement.”

But plaintiff’s lawyers don’t make much of that pledge, which they see as merely a marketing ploy.