Fact-Checked: Why Trust Rittgers Rittgers & Nakajima Driverless commercial vehicles, and the safety risks they bring with them, are here. According to the Wall Street Journal, there are at least nine autonomous-truck companies operating in the United States currently, including major players like PepsiCo.
While Pepsi’s Senior VP of Supply Chain asserts that driverless trucks are “more reliable than human drivers,” the safety risks of this technology are immense. Look no further than the Tesla Model 3 that violently crashed into a house and killed a woman while in autonomous mode. A Tesla Model 3 weighs between 3,000 and 4,000 pounds. In fact, additional reporting has revealed that the steady increase in the average weight of even non-commercial vehicles explains why the U.S. has experienced a 75% increase in traffic fatalities over the last 10 years, unlike the rest of the world. A tractor-trailer is many times more dangerous because in the U.S. it weighs, on average, roughly 35,000 pounds—-the risk to the public is obvious.
Who is Held Liable for a Driverless Truck Accident?
Currently there are “no federal laws regulating autonomous vehicles” and thus they are governed solely by state regulations. As truck accident lawyers, we cannot stress enough how important it is that these interstate trucking companies be regulated to ensure the safety of the public.
Who is to blame for a crash if there is no driver? Well, just like in any commercial vehicle case, it will be the trucking company that will ultimately be responsible. (It could also be the broker that connected the shipper with the trucking company, but that is a blog for another day.) The company is responsible for the vehicle’s maintenance, its inspections, and, in today’s world, its software and algorithms.
Uncovering Critical Evidence After a Crash
While you might be tempted to think that fewer drivers means less evidence if you are hit by an autonomous truck, remember that these vehicles now have “multiple cameras mounted at the front and back, as well as radar and lidar equipment that help determine what’s on the road,” as the WSJ reports. These are vital sources of information about how the crash occurred, and often only with an experienced truck accident lawyer will you ever have a chance of retrieving these videos before they are destroyed.
Many of these trucks, while operating autonomously, often have a human “safety driver” present in the vehicle that is watching and overseeing the new technology. These individuals would be key witnesses in any collision—-again, often an attorney will be needed to sleuth out whether such a person was present.
The Importance of Specialized Expert Witnesses
Finally, the technological component of these autonomous commercial vehicles will require specialized experts to immediately examine the vehicle and download any relevant data. An experienced attorney is your gateway to hiring such an expert to build your case if you are injured in a crash with an autonomous vehicle.
There is no stopping the autonomous vehicle revolution, but there should also be no stopping your right to recover for all harms and losses that you incur due to a collision with one of these vehicles. If you have been a victim of an autonomous commercial vehicle crash, contact Rittgers Rittgers & Nakajima for a free case evaluation.