Car without driver creates a dilemma for the Justice

Arizona State lawmakers, in the South of the United States, were debating last year a law that set out guidelines for a new technology: vehicles that drive alone, without driver. Then they encountered an issue that failed to solve: who will be blamed if a car without driver crash?
If anyone is heading, the answer is complicated and the list of possible targets of processes grows. Is the company who designed the technology? Is the owner of the car, or a passenger who should have taken control? The automaker that made the car?
Concerns arising from the latter group helped to delay a vote on a bill under discussion in Arizona. "Fear [of automakers] is that someone come and change the vehicle and they could be liable if the technology doesn't work," said Jeff Dial, parliamentarian who presented the project.
If nobody directs who is to blame in the event of an accident? The automaker, the owner of the car or of pillion?
The dispute around the laws to allow cars without driver is a lesson of the difficulties that arise when new technologies start to exit the artboard and enter the stage practice of how to get to market.
All cars without drivers who can take someone from home to work with the simple push of a button are still years away, experts say. But automakers and technology companies, like Google Inc., have been testing the technology for years and claim that it can lead to streets and roads safer, faster and less polluted.
At the Detroit Auto Show this month, the President and CEO of Nissan Motor Co., Carlos Ghosn, predicted that driverless cars would be at dealerships there by 2020. Audi AG and Toyota Motor Corp. exhibited self-direction technology at Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this month.
Some American States are starting to discuss how the legal landscape would change to vehicles that are not always under the control of one driver.
Arizona is one of several States that came to discuss draft bills to the streets without a driver. But only California, Nevada and Florida already have approved laws on the subject. And most of them was not far away.
The main effect of a law passed last year in California was to instruct the State Highway Department to set rules until 2015. The Florida legislature gave its equivalent Agency until 2014 to deliver a study on the cars.
Nevada, where lawmakers more advanced, became in 2011 the first u.s. State to pass a law on the topic. By instruction of the legislature, the Department of highways of Nevada developed 22 pages of rules for vehicles without drivers and authorized the Google, Audi and auto parts maker Continental AG to test them on public roads, said the Agency's Director, Troy Dillard.
For now, Nevada does not allow a autodirigíveis, except for testing purposes. The first vehicles need to pass for 10,000 hours of testing on closed tracks and whom the tests must deposit at least $ 1 billion in guarantees to cover a possible accident.
Special licenses for owners of vehicles without driver are on the horizon, said Dillard. "This has never been done before anywhere in the world," he said.
Bryant Walker Smith, an expert at Stanford Law School who has studied non-motorised vehicles, said that the new laws leave many questions unanswered. In part, this is because fully motorised vehicles are years away.
"We don't have a fully autoguiado car," said Smith. "We don't know how many aspects that will emerge. We don't know how they are going to play or how far are ' safe ' [...] It would be much easier to analyze the legal uncertainty if we had real product out there. "
Legal liability is a point of contention in Arizona, said Dial, parliamentarian State. After presenting his project, he was contacted by a local representative of the main American automakers organization, the Alliance of automobile manufacturers, which raised questions about the responsibility of automakers. Last week, he presented a new project that he hoped would solve these problems, although now he is being seriously questioned by the insurance industry, he said.
"You see more and more people interested in developing these cars," Dial said. "I would like to give some clarity, since we are seeing these cars already being demonstrated."
Florida has adopted interim actions to deal with the legal responsibility. A recent amendment to the State law exempts the original car manufacturer if injuries result from a modification made to a vehicle autodirigível. The provision was championed by the Alliance of automobile manufacturers.
The group claimed the Governor of California, Jerry Brown, in September, that veto the legislation of the State, which did not have an exemption similar to that of Florida. But the Governor signed the law.
Alardearam automakers the potential security benefits of cars without driver, stating that could relieve congestion and respond more rapidly to dangerous situations.
There is "enormous benefits" in technology, said Gloria Bergquist, Vice President of the entity of automakers. But she said that it is preferable to have civil liability laws at the federal level to avoid a patchwork of State laws. "The costs of liability can be immense," she said.
The federal Government, however, has done little about it. The road safety agency reported in October that the u.s. plan to conduct research on a automatic steering, but not downloaded any rule.