The Herculean Task Required To Reduce Liability Claims Involving Autonomous Vehicles

Autonomous vehicles need their own space to operate, a report says, and auto executives agree that putting them on the same roads as human-driven cars in a mixed-use environment will only increase liability claims.

“As autonomous technology develops and matures, executives are increasingly also understanding its limitations — including its unfeasible application in mixed traffic,” says the 2020 Global Automotive Executive Survey from business advisory firm KPMG.

KPMG’s Automotive Institute also believes it’s not safe for human drivers to operate vehicles next to autonomous automobiles in mixed traffic.

What the group prefers instead is what it refers to as “islands of autonomy,” where self-driving cars drive alongside others of the same kind, separated from non-autonomous vehicles.

In this scenario, self-driving cars can follow the same sets of rules, based on swarm intelligence — each member moves in the same direction and at the same speed, all while maintaining the same distance to one another. It’s similar to how flocks of birds or schools of fish move.