Who Is Liable for Injuries in a Colorado Self-Driving Truck Accident?

 Posted on March 23, 2020 in Car Accident

Just last month, the Colorado company Outrider announced it has received $53 million in investments to kickstart its autonomous truck fleets. While Outrider’s fleets will be used mostly in truck yards and not on the highway, at least not right away, there are plenty of other well-funded self-driving truck companies that are on their way to putting whole fleets on the roads across America. What does this mean for you? You could see trucks without drivers passing you by on the highway within a year or two. Without even considering the economic impact of this fact, it is worth noting the possibility of personal injuries from self-driving truck accidents. 

How Safe Are Self-Driving Trucks?

Companies in the self-driving vehicle manufacturing industry insist that autonomous trucks, which are often operated and maintained through SaaS (software-as-a-service) from remote locations, will not only increase productivity and efficiency but also improve the environment and highway safety as well. However, early results from self-driving experiments with other vehicles, such as numerous crashes over the last two years involving Tesla vehicles using autopilot, suggest that these automated means of transportation that lack human intervention might be far from perfect, and this means they will not be completely safe.

Who Is at Fault in a Self-Driving Truck Accident?

In all likelihood, we could be seeing these autonomous truck fleets on the highways very soon, delivering a variety of goods to and from different parts of the country with no drivers behind the wheel. If you are involved in an accident with one of these vehicles, many parties could be held responsible. Among the possible parties who could be held accountable are:

• The company that manufactured the truck may face a product liability claim due to its failure to produce a safe product

• The company that created the software from which the truck receives its commands may also face a product liability claim because of faulty programming that made the truck unsafe

• A human controlling the truck remotely who did not properly operate the truck

• A human in the truck cab who was partially in control despite the truck’s autonomous capabilities

• The trucking company itself for allowing a possibly unvetted or not adequately tested self-driving truck fleet to deliver its shipments

Contact a Larimer County Personal Injury Lawyer

As you can see, self-driving truck accidents are likely to be very complicated when it comes to who is responsible for the personal injuries and fatalities in these incidents. With this being an entirely new way of transporting goods, without comparable precedent, determining the proper strategy to employ when litigating a personal injury case is likely to be a complex matter. If you or your loved one is hurt in a collision, our qualified Fort Collins truck accident attorneys will examine the details of your self-driving truck accident and build a case to help you recover compensation for your injuries. Call the Hoggatt Law Office, P.C. at 970-225-2190 for a free consultation.

Sources:
https://venturebeat.com/2020/02/19/outrider-raises-53-million-to-develop-autonomous-truck-technology/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/driverless-trucks-could-disrupt-the-trucking-industry-as-soon-as-2021-60-minutes-2020-03-15/
https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/teslas-autopilot-fatality-demonstrates-that-world-isnt-yet-ready-for-self-driving-cars.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/25/business/tesla-autopilot-ntsb.html