Memes

With full self driving, there's still major legal hurdles involved. If a self-driving car kills someone, who's to blame? The driver not driving? The programmers? The company? It's a serious issue that I think will kill the whole concept.

The same entity that is responsible when an industrial machine malfunctions and kills someone. The same entity that is responsible when a light falls from the ceiling and hits a member of the audience, or a plane's engine falls off and lands in someone's house. Responsibility could fall on the engineer who designed the machine, or the installer who put in the lights, or the maintainer who failed to perform required inspections, or the operator of the facility, or the owner of the equipment.

It really isn't a complicated issue, it just hasn't been investigated and brought to the courts yet. The plaintiffs will be pointing the finger at the entity with the most money; the defendants will be pointing at the plaintiffs if they can, and at their co-defendants if they can't.