What if the person doesn't maintain their car? What if they drive through mud that partially covers some sensors? It seems like there are lots of things outside the control of the manufacturer. It's probably best to see if any future accidents are because of errors with the system or end user errors. Anything else is doomed to failure.
The manufacturer controls the only thing that matters: whether the autonomous driving system will engage. If the sensors are covered in mud or the tires are detected to be bald, the system can choose not to engage, disengage with a window for a human driver to take over, or pull over and disengage.
having a system that can detect the current state of all safety-related components of the car seems like an unreasonably high bar. humans are driving around right now with bald tires, loose lug nuts, bumpers held on by scotch tape and a dream, the list goes on.
It's probably easier to test for bald tires and loose lug nuts than you think. Don't know about bumpers, but I doubt something like that would be covered by the manufacturer's liability. I assume any collision involving the self-driving systems would have an investigation to determine fault, much the same way they do already
should be easy to test for loose lug nuts, I agree. bald tires (or inappropriate tires for the season, just as bad) I'm not so sure of though. afaik, limit of traction can only be determined by exceeding it.
> I assume any collision involving the self-driving systems would have an investigation to determine fault, much the same way they do already
agreed. specifically, I feel the manufacturer should design the system against some minimum level of maintenance and publish that. they would be liable for any mishaps that occur within design parameters. the driver/owner should be responsible for actually keeping the vehicle within that envelope. I don't feel that's an unreasonable burden.
No maintenance and self driving is disabled.
If sensors aren't working then self driving will be disabled, if currently in use then some kind of safe mode should be available to safely stop the car.
