Volvo Will Take The Blame If Your Autonomous Car Crashes

Published on October 9, 2015 in Technology/Autonomous Vehicles by Frédérick Boucher-Gaulin
Volvo XC90

Recently, Volvo’s CEO gave a speech at the Swedish embassy in Washington D.C.; among other things, he spoke about his company’s autonomous vehicles, and more specifically about what would happen if a computer-controlled vehicle screwed up and hit another vehicle.

According to Mr. Håkan Samuelsson, Volvo will actually cover the associated expenses if your car causes an accident while in fully-autonomous mode. For example, if your car were to hit another one while trying to fit into a parking space while you weren’t driving it, Volvo would foot both cars’ repair bills.

Even better, according to various sources Mercedes-Benz and Google also said they were looking into taking full responsibility if their autonomous vehicles had problems and crashed.

This will certainly open more than one legal issue: for example, what would happen if an autonomous car caused a deadly accident? Would the car’s manufacturer be responsible for the death?

It will be interesting to see how the autonomous car’s responsibility evolves with the technology.