Upon hearing of an accident that involved a self-driving car, many people assume that the autonomous vehicle, or at least its manufacturer, is at fault for the crash. However, that does not seem to be the case. Axios has conducted a study between 2014 and 2018 in which they reviewed crash data from the California Department of Motor Vehicles. The results showed that, in fact, it is likely the humans inside the car that are at fault for an accident. That study showed that people were at fault for 81 of the 88 accidents studied that involved autonomous vehicles. It is unlikely that the numbers are any different in other states.
The study also found that when drivers are in control of the vehicle, the cars are much more likely to get into an accident than they are when the cars are in autonomous mode. In all accidents studied, only one of 62 occurred while the vehicle was in autonomous mode. The study also concluded that another driver likely caused this crash. When a person was in control of the vehicle, these vehicles caused 6 of 26 accidents.
“Human error will always occur on the roads as long as people are behind the wheel,” says personal injury attorney Jacob Kimball of Springs Law Group. “People always need to pay attention to their surroundings, follow all traffic laws, and focus on the road in front of them in order to prevent an accident from occurring. These rules are important no matter the type of vehicle drivers are operating or if they are in control of their car.”
In an odd turn in the report, however, it was also found that drivers are not always the only ones responsible for accidents. In three of the accidents, people outside of the vehicle were also at fault. Individuals would hit or climb on top of the cars, although it was not clear why. So, even if there is a future world in which all vehicles are replaced by autonomous cars, there still may be many accidents that involve these cars due to human error.
