Houston accident lawyers suggest you fast forward to the future: you’re relaxed in the back seat of car peacefully browsing the news on your e-reader as an automated car whisks you to an important meeting. Suddenly there’s a crash. Your e-reader goes flying from your hand and you hurtle into the car door, where an airbag quickly inflates and deflates to partially cushion the impact. Tires squeal and passengers scream all around you as automated systems bring other vehicles to a rapid halt to avoid your wreck. Signals go out to systems controllers, insurance companies, emergency response agencies, and emergency contacts listed in your vehicle’s memory.
Science fiction, or just the next step in transportation technology? Some researchers think the day when we’ll all sit back and let the computers do the driving is just around the corner. A team at the University of Texas at Austin has designed an Autonomous Intersection Management (AIM) system that they maintain can move traffic more efficiently and eliminate many of the human error problems that plague traffic today. Our Houston accident lawyers agree that eliminating drunk driving, road rage, driver fatigue, and driver distraction could drastically cut down on the number of traffic accidents.
But how many of you out there would really want to bet your lives on the reliable and consistent operation of automated cars and AIM systems? As any of you who rely on computers know, advanced technology leads to problems like unexplained glitches and computer crashes.
Not only would generic malicious hackers probably try to break the systems just for fun, specific malicious hackers might target particular individuals for money, politics, or payback. Programmer errors in the control systems might lead to timing errors, the failure to note some vehicles in the system, or any number of other problems. Manufacturing defects in car and computer components could lead to sudden failures in the ability of the systems to read and respond to signals. Anything could happen. And it appears to our Houston accident lawyers that the car’s occupants would have no control over the situation whatsoever. Riders would be victims waiting to happen.
It would be nice to think that automated systems might solve current traffic problems. But I suspect they’ll only lead to new and different problems. And insurers would have to look at accidents in new ways to discover the underlying causes. Complex technology with its redundancies might make it more difficult to shift the blame for an accident. But it will probably also make it easier to distribute the blame to multiple causes.
The injured accident victim will probably need even more shrewd and savvy legal help than he needs today in order to receive adequate compensation for his harm from the wreck. And accident investigations will involve several more layers of complexity than today. Welcome to the future. Be sure to bring your lawyer; you’ll probably need him.
For a look at the steps you need to take after a collision caused by a non-automated driver at fault for your injury accident, download our Houston accident lawyers’ free book on making a compensation claim after a serious Houston wreck. It’s free to our readers. Just click and download from our webpage. And consider that the descendents of the technology that allows you to download our free e-books may one day be driving your car for you and deciding when your vehicle may cross a busy intersection.