As self-driving cars become more popular in mainstream society, they're also raising lots of questions about safety. One of the more interesting involves the inevitable accidents and how blame will be assigned. This is important because in the car insurance industry, blame helps determine which insurance company pays for damages.
Is a human driver free of blame if a vehicle was on autopilot at the time of a crash? Does the maker of the car assume liability? Or should the driver or passenger be expected to step in and resolve any issues before they result in an accident? Is there any precedent for this sort of thing? Let's take a look.
|Automakers are confident
Automakers and the tech companies behind self-driving cars are extremely confident in their creations. Tesla, one of the most famous proponents of autonomous vehicles, is so sure of the safety of its vehicles that it has started offering insurance for life for purchasers of new Tesla vehicles. Waymo, a division of Google's parent company Alphabet, also recently announced a similar initiative, providing insurance free of cost to passengers in Waymo's autonomous ride-hailing vehicles.
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