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There's all sorts of cases in real life now when defining fault is not at all easy. Children and animals are two examples of 'autonomous' individuals who's liability may lie with another party (parent/owner), buy also may not, depending on the circumstances.

Additionally, who's at 'fault' really doesn't matter when in most cases the damages are fully outsourced to insurance providers. In the case of autonomous driving, this insurance burden is shifted up a level to the automaker, but this cost will be passed on to the car's owner in some way, either in the cost of the car or a subscription to autonomous driving.

However if autonomous driving is safer than non-autonomous driving, premiums will go down, probably dramatically. Insurance companies can much more easily monitor the quality of autonomous driving for various automakers / cars either by the testing specification that they meet or the real-world statistics. Are autonomous Tesla's in less accidents than autonomous Volvo's? Cheaper premiums for Tesla.

This is exactly the situation you want to be in. Premiums for individuals are blunt instrument... it's hard to change many individuals behavior, the rewards may be low for the individual (save $3 on your premium!), and the penalties can be pretty random (you sped that one time so you're a high risk driver... or are there just more police in your city?). It's way better to incentivize at a higher level, like the automaker.

The only case where automakers would truly be at risk is something they should control, and that is if they pulled a VW and committed fraud on their autonomous driving tests, or were negligent in overlooking scenarios or providing updates.




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