Get drunk, take a robotaxi. That’s the smart thing to do, right? Well, maybe it’s not that simple, according to researchers.
William H. Widen, a professor at the University of Miami’s School of Law, told Gazetteer SF that there are legitimate liability concerns for robotaxi passengers, especially if they’re intoxicated.
In a conversation with Gazetteer — as well as in a research paper he co-authored last month — Widen argued that the current legal framework, coupled with the presence of safety features that allow passengers to terminate rides early, could pose liability risks to passengers in robotaxis. Down the road, when people have personal autonomous vehicles and rent them out, vicarious liability concerns abound.
With certain features present, like a panic button or one that lets passengers end a ride early (a feature already present in Waymo), riders have a certain level of control over the vehicle, Widen said.
“I think it’s a real problem because there’s nothing [riders] can do,” Widen said. “You’re either going to take the robotaxi or not. And once you’re taking it, the presence of the feature is what creates the risk.”
In a Waymo, for example, passengers have the ability to tap a button in the app for the car to pull over and stop a ride before it reaches the final destination.
“That gives you a certain amount of control,” Widen said.
In that case, the passenger is instructing Waymo — at least to some extent — how to behave. In the event a Waymo, occupied by a drunk passenger, gets into a car accident, criminal liability around DUI manslaughter, for example, could come down to interpretations of “operator” and “drive,” Widen said.
In California, for example, the state vehicle code defines an “operator” of an autonomous vehicle as the person seated in the driver’s seat. But if there’s no one in the driver’s seat, then it’s whoever “causes the autonomous technology to engage.” The state’s vehicle code on DUIs, meanwhile, simply states it’s illegal for someone under the influence to “drive a vehicle.”
Waymo spokesperson Julia Ilina, in an email to Gazetteer, said the company doesn’t “have anything to say about the research” but that “to the extent a Waymo vehicle was involved in a collision that caused injury or property damage, Waymo would be responsible for the liability imposed on it by law and passengers would not take on responsibility for the injury or property damage caused by the vehicle.”
But state laws, which vary state by state, ultimately have too much gray area, according to Widen. That’s really where the issue lies, he said.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty around the concept of a driver and who’s driving, and there’s a surprisingly low threshold for the amount of human control that is necessary to trigger this status of, if you will, of being a driver,” Widen said.
When customers eventually own vehicles that can operate fully autonomously, but may also feature the ability to toggle off autonomous mode, navigating liability could become even trickier. The issue could compound if AV owners rent out their vehicle to someone, or enlists it for a rideshare program.
In February, for example, Lyft CEO David Risher published a blog post with details about how “Lyft-ready” AV features could be standard in every car, meaning anyone who owns an autonomous vehicle could easily rent out their car via Lyft.
“This will be the tipping point for the revolution,” Risher wrote.
Philip Koopman, an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon in electrical and computer engineering, and recognized expert on autonomous vehicle safety, told Gazetteer these liability issues are “a loose end” that the industry needs to address. But it’s unclear what, if anything, the industry will do about it, he said.
“Are they going to wait for some poor person to be the poster child?” Koopman wondered. “The industry is still moving fast and breaking things. This is one of the things they will break if they’re not careful. What I say to the industry is, ‘The ball’s in your court. Are you going to take this on or let it slide until something happens?’ This is not theoretical anymore.”
Ultimately, both Koopman and Widen believe lawmakers need to address this liability issue at the state or federal level, changing the law to explicitly place liability on robotaxi and autonomous vehicle companies rather than a passenger — that is, as long as the passenger was not behaving recklessly or negligently.
“From an ethical and moral sense, that is the absolute right thing to do,” Koopman said. “The drunk person should have no culpability at all. You would think that would be a slam dunk law reform.”
But what has typically happened, Koopman said, is that the industry typically does “whatever is possible to shove liability anywhere other than on them.”
AVIA, a lobbying group that pushes for AV deployment and counts companies like Waymo, Lyft, Zoox, and Uber as members, has advocated for various state and federal laws that get more autonomous vehicles on the road.
Koopman said the industry group could push for these liability issues to be addressed through state or federal law.
“There are a bunch of things they could do but the question is, are they going to do any of it?,” Koopman wondered. Widen shared that sentiment, saying that “companies don’t have any incentive to get it right.”
Jeff Farah, the CEO of AVIA, touted how autonomous vehicles make roads safer by eliminating the two most dangerous causes of accidents: distracted and impaired driving, he told Gazetteer via email.
Farah did not comment specifically on Widen’s research and the liability concerns put forth in his paper, but said “policymakers must put in place legal frameworks that support the safe and timely deployment of autonomous vehicles.”
He added that AVIA has urged and will continue to urge state and federal policymakers to adopt clear and consistent regulations for AV development, “with AVs integrating into the liability regimes in place today.”
Widen, however, sees that differently. He believes there needs to be federal legislation that explicitly addresses these liability concerns. Unfortunately, Widen said, there has not been any statute proposal or bill “that’s been any good.”
