Hank Stout, co-founder of Sutliff & Stout, Injury & Accident Law Firm. (Courtesy photo)

Self-driving cars may be the future thanks to the innovative Tesla, Uber and Volvo, but are they the future for personal injury law?

This is the question that drives the thinking in regard to personal injury. Self-driving cars are safer. They have quick-time reactions due to their high-level technology. They aren't distracted like drivers, and they can't become intoxicated. With self-driving cars, accidents may be a thing of the past. While there have been two reported accidents from self-driving cars in March 2018, it doesn't compare to the hundreds upon thousands upon hundred thousands of deaths that occur from human drivers.

Self-driving cars are under high scrutiny, but we shouldn't ignore the impact they will have on the world once the world accepts their innovative technology. With that being said, how will personal injury law firms adjust?

How Could It Be Dangerous

The first question we should be asking is how safe self-driving cars are?

In a nutshell, we already have self-driving functions. There is cruise control in vehicles and even airplanes have auto-pilot. These are designed to be safe already. But permanent self-automated functions could potentially be dangerous. With airplanes, they fly mostly on auto-pilot and they have technology to see if they are about to run into any other airplanes. With cars, we rely on our eyesight and rearview mirrors rather than our technology. We have more liabilities on the road when it comes to vehicles. This alone is why self-driving vehicles can be so dangerous. Without eyesight, how can cars know not to cause an accident? If reliant on technology and that technology fails us, where do we go next? We are on the brink of a technological revolution, so it's best we stay vigilant in terms of safety and security.

Thankfully all these are simply fears rather than facts. Who knows if any of the above will happen?

Legally Speaking

Potential dangers aside, where does this stand in the legal field?

With self-driving cars, it seems as if negligence will shift from the driver to the vehicle. But this shift muddles the field of filing claims and determining who is at-fault. Will the claim be against the technology or the car company? Or a third party who installed the parts? Once self-driving cars dominate the roads, it'll be more difficult to identify a claim or who is at-fault, and then it'll be difficult to be compensated. Products liability cases take years to litigate, and if people get involved in an accident with a self-driving vehicle, it's more than likely it'll end up as a product liability case. Whatever the case, with a driver out of the picture, it will be harder for damages to be compensated since car companies and manufacturers have highly-skilled lawyers backing them up, not to mention their deep pockets. These are one of the realities we will have to face when accepting self-driving cars.

In addition, the state of personal insurance can change. Insurance adjusters rely on human error to exploit victims, so with human error out of the picture, what will they use now? Self-driving cars will no doubt alter the state of the insurance company industry, impacting them worse than personal injury firms. With the losses they're about to receive from the total emergence of self-driving cars, could this be the end of personal insurance?

The emergence of self-driving cars brings forth the most important question for personal injury lawyers: is this the end of our normal process of personal injury law? There have been fewer accidents on the road. With fewer wrecks, there will be fewer cases. Fewer cases can mean the downfall of the business. And eventually the industry.

But will it fall or will we adapt?

The transition can lead to new approaches to cases, as described above, as well as approaches to serving justice. Only time will tell, but it's safe to say fellow personal injury lawyers better prepare for this impending future rather than focusing on the now.

Hank Stout co-founded Sutliff & Stout, Injury & Accident Law Firm to protect and pursue the rights of people who were harmed by the carelessness of others. He is Board-Certified in personal injury trial law and has been actively trying cases for over 15 years. In recognition of his accomplishments and results, he has been selected by Thompson Reuters as a Super Lawyer since 2014 (a distinction given to less than 1% of the lawyers in the state of Texas) and has been selected as Lead Counsel.