Recent Poll Highlights Public Leeriness Of Self-Driving Cars
On behalf of Lovett Law Firm posted in Car Accidents on Wednesday, February 5, 2014.
In a post last month we talked to our readers about the push by car manufacturers to introduce the first self-driving car and the potential liability concerns that this new technology brings with it. While experts in transportation safety argue that self-driving cars will be far safer than human drivers, we asked our readers to consider what this would mean in terms of personal injury, especially in the event that a self-driving car’s systems failed and the vehicle were to get into an accident.
Well, according to a recent article in the Dallas Morning News, it would appear as if readers here in El Paso County are not the only ones with these concerns. According to the article, a recent gallop poll of more than 2,000 adults concluded that a large number of people — more than 80 percent — not only have reservations about self-driving cars on a whole but more than half of all respondents were concerned about liability issues just like the ones we brought up in our January post.
Much of the liability issues revolved around system failures that could occur in the vehicles while on roadways. Seventy-nine percent of respondents worried that the car’s equipment would fail and likely wondered what steps could be taken by the car’s occupants to avoid being injured in a car accident. Although much of the concern about system failures involved automotive defects or software glitches, more than half of the respondents were astute enough to notice that manufacturers may not plan ahead for the potential of hackers who could easily manipulate a car’s systems into crashing the vehicle.
Although this gallop poll only shows residents here in small portion of the population, the results do show a startling number of people who might feel as some of our readers do when it comes to the safety of these upcoming vehicles. Because they present several liability issues the question still remains: are state laws equipped to handle the cases to come?
Source: The Dallas Morning News, “Most adults in Harris Poll don’t trust driverless cars,” Terry Box, Feb. 3, 2014