[elipsey]

IANAL, but it seems like the most conservative expectation (baring some new law or clarification) would be that you're simply liable in the same way as if you were driving if something bad happens. Similarly, someone with standing might try suing the automaker if autopilot was implicated as defective or unsafe.

It's probably not clear yet how safe the "summon" feature is. Presumably the sample of it's performance is still small, but those videos don't look very encouraging, not just in the sense the car made "mistakes" like failing to yield, but also qualitatively. I would certainly have misgivings about being responsible for the results.

It seems like a less risky strategy to improve fully autonomous operation this way then on the freeway, but still risky. Perhaps the thinking is that parking lots are expected to be low speed, low stakes environments, and the car is pretty good at detecting pedestrians and avoiding low speed collisions, so the likeliest problem is property damage. However, people have a way of occasionally doing things that are hard to predict or imagine when we are defining our safety assumptions.

In the worst case, a wrongful death suit or something similar might be affordable in dollars but probably not publicity. Even a few less severe accidents seem likely to test the patience of both regulators and the public. Maybe autopilot will get better with more real world use and training data. Or maybe it won’t, or not fast enough. I’m really curious to see how this turns out, but not be being personally responsible when somebody gets hurt :(