[mtnygard]

I don't want to get into the particulars of this single wreck.

But it does make me think that we're going to need some new laws as we adapt to a mixed use on the roads:

1. The self-driving car & its operating company must retain all sensor and video data. No "oops we lost it" when going to court.

2. There has to be some way for the human driver to know what legal entity is operating the car. It's pretty easy to imagine driverless hit-and-run accidents.

3. Human drivers have to be able to get insurance information from the automated vehicle. (I have no idea how! But humans are able to work out an ad-hoc protocol to exchange insurance info on the spot. Automated vehicles would need to have something predefined.)

Basically, _when_ an accident occurs, the human and the human's insurance company has to have some way to connect with the insurance company of the automated car and its operator.

[dragonwriter]

#2 and #3 can be resolved, in the worst case, by existing public ownership and insurance registries and making any collision involving a self-driven vehicle without a human representative of the owner who can provide registration & insurance info require police response and identification of that information based on license and/or VIN. (As this potentially increases public expense for that mode of operation, licensing for it may be more expensive.)