Posted by Sherman in Idaho [162.158.106.45] on Wednesday, November 08, 2017 at 22:35:30 :
In Reply to: Re: better hurry Kiss the good times goodbye posted by Kaegi [108.162.245.247] on Wednesday, November 08, 2017 at 20:24:07 :
Right now if some uninsured doofus causes a wreck, they're rarely worth suing because they don't have enough money to buy a good lawyer lunch. But with robot cars, there's no way the "driver/passenger" can be held liable. The lawyers will go after the manufacturers and the software makers, and when there's a whole network of cars all talking to each other, the neighboring ones can probably get sued too. And if nobody owns their own car, but just uses an Uber/Lyft "taxi", then that's one more big company to sue.
If cars were invented nowadays, all the early car companies would be sued into bankruptcy and we'd still be riding horses. Cars are basically being re-invented nowadays, though, and the only way to avoid spectacular lawsuits is if the car/software/taxi lobbyists can get congress to pass legislation strictly limiting their liability.
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