In the years to come, autonomous cars may be appearing on Colorado roads, but that possibility raises the question of who will be responsible in an accident. It has been claimed that 94 percent of motor vehicle accidents are due to human error, but that leaves 6 percent of accidents that may not be prevented by autonomous cars.
One example might be a car that is on a busy city street when a multicar pileup occurs. The driver in such a case might have to choose between hitting the pileup or potentially hitting people on the sidewalk. With an autonomous car, the driver would have no control over that choice.Volvo, Mercedes Benz and Google have all stated that they would accept liability in such cases. This could be risky for car companies because testing so far has indicated that there is a large margin for error in autonomous cars. They tend to perform poorly in adverse weather conditions and do not always accurately interpret the gestures of other drivers and pedestrians.
The president of Volvo has called on the United States to allow more testing and to begin putting regulations in place in anticipation of autonomous vehicles becoming available to consumers. Currently, testing autonomous cars on public roads is only permitted in Michigan, Nevada, California and Florida.
Even with autonomous cars on the horizon, it seems that roads will not be made entirely safe. Whether a person is involved in a motor vehicle accident with a human driving or with an autonomous car, injuries may be serious. As autonomous cars come onto the market, regulations may be put into place covering liability and the process by which people can make a claim. In other cases, insurance companies should pay out enough to cover expenses, but this does not always happen. In these circumstances, injured victims may wish to consult an attorney about filing a personal injury lawsuit against the responsible party or parties
.