Will Autonomous Vehicles Mean Fewer Lawsuits?

Full disclosure # 1: I, the author of this blog post, am a trial lawyer. Full disclosure # 2: The law firm that allows the publication of this blog post has many, many, many more trial lawyers. Without disputes that could go to trial, we all need to find more work.

Of course, this also means that we like to argue. Thankfully, we can now argue about whether autonomous vehicles will lead to a large wave of lawsuits. The fear of a crushing legal liability underpins a proposal published on Slate "to limit liability in some fashion to avoid the chilling effect [of] excessive litigation" once everyone drives autonomous vehicles. What that article misses is that the result of autonomous vehicles being ubiquitous will almost certainly be fewer lawsuits, which are also much simpler because they will not involve a defense of "driver error."