Loophole could protect self-driving car companies from lawsuits
People who get badly injured while riding in self-driving cars may one day be prohibited from filing a lawsuit against the manufacturer, should legislation under consideration in the Senate get passed — requiring such disputes to be settled in arbitration.
Critics of the bill, dubbed the AV Start Act, believe it will have enormous effects on the way autonomous vehicles are viewed in the public, since claims would be settled behind closed doors, if approved.
“The nightmare scenario is that someone is hurt because of a defect and it’s dealt with through a confidential arbitration proceeding that nobody knows about, and then more people are hurt because no one found out about it,” Ed Walters, robotics law professor at Georgetown Law and Cornell Tech, told CNN.
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“Congress could stick up for the right to sue by prohibiting these kind of clauses, but so far they haven’t,” he said.
If the pending legislation gets pushed through and passed, people who get injured while riding in a self-driving car would not only be barred from suing the manufacturer, but the maker of the technology, as well.
Disputes would instead be settled by arbitrators, meaning quicker and more cost-effective proceedings.
“It’s another example of large companies being able to tilt the table their way in terms of service agreements,” Walters said. “It’s a power shift created in a contract that nobody reads. Everybody clicks ‘I accept.’ You have rights to sue unless you sign them away. And companies have gotten very good at making you sign them away.”
Longtime consumer advocate and political activist Ralph Nader told CNN that he had “never seen a more brazen attempt to escape the rule of safety law” in all his years.
“With their unproven, secretive technology that’s fully hackable, the autonomous vehicle industry wants to close the door on federal safety protection and close the door to the court room,” Nader said.
Some of the biggest companies currently invested in the autonomous car industry include Ford, Toyota, Tesla, Uber and Lyft. They all declined to comment when reached by CNN.
Uber and Lyft already have forced arbitration clauses in their terms of service contracts with passengers, according to CNN.
“Imagine if I put my daughter in the back of a self-driving Uber to get to soccer practice, and the vehicle can’t see in the fog or rain, and there’s a tragedy,” said Jason K. Levine, executive director of the non-profit advocacy group, Center for Auto Safety.
“My level of ability to hold the company accountable is entirely constricted by something buried in tons and tons of pages of terms of service, for downloading the app.”
He added, “No one is suggesting anyone is looking to intentionally put something dangerous on the road. But it’s human nature that the less trouble we’re going to get in, the less cautious we may choose to be.”