AV FAQ7: Who is responsible when an autonomous car causes a crash?

Stories of crashes involving autonomous cars have been widely published in the media, with Googles or Teslas cast as villains. I am not here to play the defense lawyer for them but I will play the engineer (which I actually am).?

Autonomous driving systems and algorithms are "work in progress", "under construction", "going through the training" ... whichever term you want to use. And just like humans under training, they might make mistakes (and just like humans, there is no guarantee that absolutely zero mistakes will be made once they have obtained their "license"). But unlike humans, these systems and algorithms 1) don't make mistakes as often (number of mistakes per thousand or million kilometer driven is significantly less for the machines as compared to humans), 2) don't drink and drive, 3) don't text / call and drive, 4) don't drive when extremely sleepy, tired or emotional, and 4) don't cut corners (sometimes literally) to save a few seconds and end up causing mile-long traffic jams or worse - fatal accidents.?

Because accidents caused by human drivers is a ubiquitous and everyday thing, we don't pay attention to it. But every little incident involving autonomous cars makes big news because autonomous cars are a novelty and because such crashes give fodder to our suspicion of new technologies or big corporations.?

As an engineer, I can tell you that the technology does a wonderful job making things safer out on the road. Yeah, it may not be as adept to novel traffic situations as humans but it is good with repetitive and mundane driving tasks that we humans so loathe (and isn't every technology bad and good at the same time!?). What I am saying is that we don't have to bash the technology every time it makes a little mistake. One, it is still improving. And two, it is already doing a much better job at many aspects of driving than us humans. Though, I might be biased because apart from being an automotive engineer, I am also a terrible driver and would give anything for a car that can park, drive, merge, exit, and park. (I know I mentioned parking twice; I am that bad at it!)

Sorry for going on a tirade without answering your question - who is responsible when an autonomous car causes a crash. Well, so far, it's the car maker that's solely responsible but I think that it's a bit unfair and also unwise. Firstly, in a number of those crashes involving Tesla or Google, it was a human who made an error (for example - not taking over the control correctly when the car requested it) but humans are also still learning how to behave around autonomous cars.?

Secondly, as I already said twice before, the number of possible traffic scenarios are infinite and the car makers can only test so many. We might have to draw a line somewhere. For example - some industry people talk about "one billion km" as a number to test the algorithms (in simulation, not in the real world). Of course, there is no guarantee that there won't be any crash after a billion kms but we have to draw a line somewhere.?

Thirdly, the environment is equally responsible for the performance of autonomous cars. For example - if the cars rely on camera-based detection of lane markings, the quality of lane markings on the street is a big factor. So, the road operating authorities will have to share some responsibility if the car misjudges the lane and causes a dangerous situation. Also, if the other cars on the street are "behaving badly", either due to their human driver or their faulty systems/algorithms, the blame has to be shared. Of course, this calls for a detailed logging of environment data and keeping it in the blackbox of the car so that it can be analyzed after an incident, just like they do with the blackbox of aircrafts.

This reminds me of a story. I was talking about autonomous cars with a woman who worked in insurance. At one point she had a flashbulb moment and said - "huh! Maybe in the future, it might be the car makers who would want to buy insurance to cover their expenses in case they are sued after an accident caused by one of their autonomous cars!" Yes, quite possible!