| I don't see it being very long until all vehicles will be required to have a 'black-box' like aircraft. Basically, in the event of an accident that is serious, both black boxes from each vehicle can be submitted to ...somebody, and the the account of what happened will be recorded in perfect detail. This would probably be able to settle fault in a high percentage of cases. Now for the case of people jumping out in front of vehicles like they do in Russia...many vehicles will have cameras and lasers on board which will be used both as safety features (automatic collision avoidance) and autonomous driving. Every bit of data from these will also be recorded. There will come a point in the future, (< 10 years), where most vehicles on the road will have all of these features and disputed accident claims, fraud, people suing the driver after they intentionally jump in front of a vehicle, will all be the past. Data storage is cheap. It will also change all statistics about insurance and driving. New models will come about, including the insurance per mile, etc. And How much of the time is spent under fully autonomous driving versus driving yourself. If you are fully autonomous on most streets all the time, I can imagine a very low insurance premium. |
2016 vehicles are already shipping either as options or as standard in some trims, safety features which can detect obstructions and take automated action (collision avoidance systems). Some are aimed only at detecting other vehicles ahead, but some are specifically designed to detect and avoid pedestrians/cyclists.
These systems utilise lasers and cameras. They aren't currently being used as a black box but it is practically turn-key, no additional hardware would be required except maybe an SD card and encoder to add a built in car-cam.
I agree that it may take ten years for this stuff to become standard in all new cars, but in the next two or three years if someone wants this in their new car they may very well be able to buy it.
Toyota are adding many of these features to their 2016 cars as a $500 option (lane departure, collision avoidance, etc) on all trims as far as I know.