Liability of Tesla's Autopilot System Under California Tort Law

Abstract

On September 19, 2016, the U.S. Department of Transportation ("DOT") published federal policy guidelines on automated vehicles in which it expressed its support for the development of autonomous vehicles and stated the potential of autonomous vehicles to drastically improve people's safety and mobility. In order to address safety concerns, the Department released guidelines instructing states to close the gap between regulations that govern human-driven vehicles from self-driving ones by allocating tort liability among Highly Automated Vehicle ("HAV") owners, operators, passengers, manufacturers and others when a crash occurs, while providing very little guidance in doing so. This approach encourages innovation while allowing states to experiment with different ways to regulate autonomous vehicles.