April 7, 2016—Belal Hamideh, Long Beach accident attorney, in a statement Wednesday questioned what the arrival of the autonomous car will mean legally for insurance liability.
Citing that the main cause for collisions is human error and that motor fatalities have decreased from 48 to 28 deaths per million according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, Belal Hamideh said that the arrival of autonomous cars would greatly affect the auto insurance industry, since insurance is meant to insure human error.
A product liability lawsuit would follow an accident involving an autonomous vehicle because it would mean a design or manufacturing defect, Belal Hamideh said. Auto related fatalities will decrease significantly, especially in densely populated areas, when autonomous cars arrive en masse around 2050, according to an IIHS estimate.
