Who to sue if hit by an autonomous vehicle?

Question

My understanding is that if one has a collision with another vehicle in which the other driver is at fault then you can sue the other driver for the loss incurred. If the other driver was employed by a company and driving a vehicle owned by that company then that company is likely to pick up the bill, but the suit would be directed at the individual in the first case. This would be the case whether the collision occurred on private or public land.

There is currently a fully autonomous shuttle driving around a privately owned campus in the UK. It has a habit of starting off after picking up passengers while it is being overtaken, in a way that is contrary to the highway code guidance. I think a human driver would be at fault if they drove in this manner.

I think this vehicle is owned by a French company, operating under a contract with the owner of the campus and supported by multiple organizations on and off site. It is insured and heavily sponsored by Aviva such that this is the prime company one would associate with the vehicle from viewing it.

If one had a collision with this vehicle in a way that a human driver of that vehicle would be at fault, who should one sue?

Answer 1

[if] the other driver is at fault then you can sue the other driver for the loss incurred. If the other driver was employed by a company [...] then that company is likely to pick up the bill...

Not necessarily.

I would say that losses are usually covered by the at-fault driver's insurance (or the MIB if uninsured).

Either way, according to the OP's link "the shuttle is insured by Aviva" so they would seem to be liable under section 2 of the Automated and Electric Vehicles Act 2018:

Liability of insurers etc where accident caused by automated vehicle

(1) Where—

• (a) an accident is caused by an automated vehicle when driving itself on a road or other public place in Great Britain,

• (b) the vehicle is insured at the time of the accident, and

• (c) an insured person or any other person suffers damage as a result of the accident,

the insurer is liable for that damage.

Answer 2

This is a general answer not specific to the UK, but I would imagine it would nonetheless apply generally.

Autonomous vehicles with supervising/backup driver

Most autonomous testing takes place with a driver at the wheel who can, with limited, effort intervene. They are there to do just that. The case is most similar to liability in professional driving schools where the instructor typically don’t even have an additional steering wheel on their side to constantly hold on to but not use force against where the wheel turns based on the student driver’s operation of the vehicle until it is needed for a safety reason. In those cases generally the instructor would be liable. Especially where both the pedals and the wheel is duplicated for the instructor who is probably either covered by a liability insurance or otherwise.

The matter can become complex depending on whether the manufacturer/developer knew or should have known about a present safety issue and how they reacted, whether the vehicle/model was built/developed, for e.g., negligently, but the argument that the driver signs a contract acknowledging the possibility of any sudden, unexpected event and taking full responsibility to be there and overtake, really, doesn’t make it that complex. Of course, anyone can sue anyone for anything. The issue is more serious with non-professional driving supervision (consumers buying under-testing autonomous vehicles) and never signing similar acknowledgments. One more scenario that could be possible, but I don’t know any actual examples of, would be a third party company contracted to provide supervising driver — all the U.S. examples I am aware of it is either the AI model’s devs or the manufacturer who provides the driver.

Unsupervised/no-backup driver

In the case where there isn’t human supervision, will head toward to the manufacturer and/or the party liable for the AI model unless they are the same company — this latter is rather common. (As pointed out in the comments, in the U.S., this would be a products liability matter requiring no proof of negligence merely that the design or manufacture caused the accident) Authorities negligently permitting testing or similar theories would rather fall on the frivolous side, and there aren’t really many more possibilities.