Mass Litigation Events

 Mass Litigation Events

 

There’s been talk lately about self-driving cars. One of the advantages attributed to them is greater safety; so much so that some plan to create dense caravans of self-driving cars at freeway speeds. Have the caravan go at high speed, tightly packed. How efficient! What could possibly go wrong?

Murphy’s Law, for one. Also recall the 90-10 rule: humans are 90% useful and 10% useless, all of the time: but cybernetic systems are 100% useful 90% of the time, and 100% useless 10% of the time. So most of the time those high-speed tightly-packed caravans will be perfectly safe; but every so often they will be not safe at all, for a lot of people, all at once.

After the mass crash, and the mass casualty event, lawyers will converge on the corporate entities responsible. Car crashes by individuals can be litigated only to the fiscal limits of mere humans; but corporations have deep pockets. Ka-ching!

I therefore predict that autonomous-car companies will be vulnerable to mass litigation events.

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