Liability Rules for Automated Vehicles: Definitions and Details

Abstract

This paper explains how the law ought to assign liability for automated vehicle accidents by providing an example of a proposed statute. We advocate for the creation of the legal fiction of a “Computer Driver,” which can have negligence liability, anytime a court or jury determines that the Computer Driver’s behavior failed to imitate or exceed the level of care we would expect of an attentive and unimpaired Human Driver in similar circumstances. We then use this concept to explain how to determine contributory negligence and comparative fault when control of a vehicle is transferred from a Computer Driver to a Human Driver by specifying a portion of time during the take-over transition period in which the Human Driver cannot have contributory negligence or comparative fault as a matter of law. We have proposed and defended these views in contemporaneous traditional law review articles, but to achieve the needed regulatory reform, our suggestions must be presented in a form containing proposed statutory language for adoption by a legislature. To that end, we make our case in this paper by presenting proposed legal definitions and explanatory legislative history for use by legislatures to implement our recommended structure. We use this non-traditional presentation because we believe the complexity associated with automated driving technology can only be fully conveyed by providing the details in a precise way, with technical definitions and wording that should be familiar to engineers and safety specialists.