Skip to main content

Drivers need clarity on liability with automated vehicles, says FIA

FIA Region I recently presented the consumer view on liability and automated driving at the Driving Future platform, where it stressed the need to increase consumer confidence in driverless technologies by guaranteeing safety and swift compensation for traffic victims. FIA believes the transition to fully autonomous vehicles will take time, during which different levels of automation will coexist on our roads, creating challenges for the current insurance model. It says there must be differentiation
March 14, 2017 Read time: 2 mins
8054 FIA Region I recently presented the consumer view on liability and automated driving at the Driving Future platform, where it stressed the need to increase consumer confidence in driverless technologies by guaranteeing safety and swift compensation for traffic victims.

FIA believes the transition to fully autonomous vehicles will take time, during which different levels of automation will coexist on our roads, creating challenges for the current insurance model.

It says there must be differentiation between lower levels of automation and the higher levels of automation. Up to SAE level 2, driver interaction is required in some form and therefore drivers should remain liable, provided the systems are properly designed and the driver is aware of their function, limits and constraints. For higher levels of automation, drivers can be asked to take over only under certain circumstances. In those circumstances, the recording of a limited set of data will be needed to establish liability in case of an accident.

FIA Region I interim director general, Laurianne Krid, said: "Drivers need to be properly informed about upcoming automated systems and their responsibilities to make correct use of the technology as it is released. At higher automation levels, drivers expect to be able to engage in other tasks and should, in our view, not be held liable in case of accident or infringement. Limited data recording through a Data Storage Systems should help clarify liability in case of doubt.”

Related Content

  • November 28, 2013
    User based insurance is helping good drivers and identifying the bad ones
    Thomas Hallauer gives an overview of Usage Based Insurance (UBI), an industry that is putting telematic devices into more vehicles than fleet management ever did. The insurance market is going through a transformation phase never seen before. Insurers have not only started to track individual cars for Usage Based Insurance (UBI), they are also using the technology to enhance consumer services as more drivers join up to these schemes. Progressive Insurance in the US has 1.4 million customers signed up to
  • January 19, 2012
    ITS industry needs more effort to get to the future
    Eric Sampson, visiting professor at Newcastle University and City University London and ambassador for ITS-UK, provides a retrospective on the last couple of decades and takes a look at what the ITS industry still needs to do to get to where it needs to be
  • December 13, 2013
    Daimler’s double take sees machine vision move in-vehicle
    Jason Barnes looks at Daimler’s Intelligent Drive programme to consider how machine vision has advanced the state of the art of vision-based in-vehicle systems. Traditionally, radar was the in-vehicle Driver Assistance System (DAS) technology of choice, particularly for applications such as adaptive cruise control and pre-crash warning generation. Although vision-based technology has made greater inroads more recently, it is not a case of ‘one sensor wins’. Radar and vision are complementary and redundancy
  • June 7, 2017
    Technology and finance shapes up to make MaaS happen
    The technology and finance aspects needed for Mobility as a Service (MaaS) to become widely adopted are taking shape as Geoff Hadwick and Colin Sowman hear. Sampo Hietanen, CEO of MaaS Global and ‘father’ of MaaS, started his address to ITS International’s recent MaaS Market conference in London by saying: “All of the problems that can be solved by a company or group of companies have already been solved, and now we are left with the big ones such as housing, transport and health. He called MaaS the “Netfli