Emerging Technologies Blog

One of the most important questions people asked about besides how self-driving cars work is, ''who will be liable when a self-driving car gets into an accident?'' The car manufacturer, software company or the human in the vehicle? While  answers to this question may vary depending on the situation, one major automaker says it would take full responsibility whenever its self-driven vehicle crashes or involved in an accident.

Volvo Group, the Swedish carmaker, revealed this through its President and Chief Executive Officer Hakan Samuelsson at a Washington event on the future of self-driving cars. Samuelsson, while calling on the US government to come up with regulations to fast-track  test and deployment of autonomous vehicles at least to continue to stay ahead of the game, says its company would will be held liable in self-driving car accidents, if the accident was caused by its Volvo driverless car while in autonomous mode. This bold statement makes Volvo the first automaker to accept liability for accidents involving self-driving cars.
What this means is that if you are riding in or own a Volvo autonomous car and something goes wrong and led to a crash, you can sue Volvo and get your ''reward'' if they discovered that the disaster was a result of the software/hardware defects in their car. However, in the event that a customer misuses the technology or if there is another road user that causes an accident, neither Volvo or you who are to blame, it’s the third party.

Volvo says it would teach its customers how to use its self-driving cars once they become available, at least to avoid any form of drama.The Swedish automaker will allow some select customers who are for and against autonomous cars to be familiar with its SDCs(self-driving cars). Hopefully the ones who are afraid driverless cars might get used to it.