As the autonomous capabilities of vehicles increases, attention has understandably shifted to how those capabilities are judged during any accidents that occur on the road.  New research from the University of Exeter explored who we’re most likely to blame in the event of a semi-autonomous vehicle being involved in an accident, and they found that we’re more likely to pin the blame on the human driver than the technology.

The researchers believe that their findings not only matter in the design of autonomous vehicles, but especially in the way juries might apportion blame in any legal cases involving such vehicles.  This is especially important as while so much hype has surrounded fully autonomous vehicles, the reality is that they are some way off yet, and our near future is more likely to be filled with semi-autonomous vehicles with an autopilot feature for human drivers to use.

Shared responsibility

This shift creates an obvious change in responsibility for the vehicle, from humans having full control, and therefore full responsibility, for their vehicle, towards a new system where responsibility and blame should be shared more equally between the driver and the car itself.

The researchers quizzed members of the public and asked them to consider a range of hypothetical cases in which a pedestrian had been killed by a semi-autonomous vehicle.  Each volunteer was asked to state who was at fault for the incident, and how much blame should be split between the driver and the car.

The results reveal that when one driver makes a mistake, they tend to get blamed more, regardless of whether that driver was human or a machine.  When both man and machine contributed to the accident however, the blame was heaped more onto the shoulders of the human driver than it was the car itself.

The researchers believe this indicates the willingness of the public to place too much faith in the reliability of technology, and therefore underestimate the potential for it to malfunction.  They tend to believe humans are far more fallible, and therefore were more likely to have been at fault.

The team believe that this could result in de-facto standards being decided upon in courts that fail to properly regulate the safety of semi-autonomous vehicles.  It’s a potential situation that they believe can be mitigated by a more top-down approach that would see federal laws created to ensure that responsibility is properly and fairly attributed.

“It seems like if we leave it to the general public, they may unintentionally go soft on AV manufacturers to improve their safety standards,” the authors conclude.