It's Always Human Error

The recent flurry of news stories sparked by the release of information on accidents involving  experimental driverless cars belonging to Google had us thinking about an all too obvious fact relating to personal injury cases. It's this: while its probably true that the 11 or so car collisions involving the new cars were the fault of human drivers, ALL accidents are and will continue to be the result of human error -- it's just a matter of proving which human made the error!

If, for example, an accident occurs someday that a skilled personal injury lawyer can prove is the result of a preventable malfunction of a driverless car, the fault of the accident will be with the human(s) who designed, built, or programmed the car. After all, "Terminator" movies notwithstanding, at least so far our machines are only as good as the people who build them. An inanimate object can't really be said to make a mistake...though using that object ill-advisedly can definitely qualify as an error. For the time being, at least, even the most sophisticated car-computer hybrid we can imagine will still be an inanimate object.

The reality that Los Angeles personal injury attorneys like us are going to have to deal with is reminding juries and the authorities that even the most sophisticated machines are built and manufactured by humans who are ultimately going to be responsible for any flaws in their creations that might endanger the public. It's a tough job, but nobody every said personal injury lawyering was going to be easy!