When the car was driving: fault, assist systems and autonomy
Most of the vehicles on California roads now have some form of driver assistance, and a growing number of driverless vehicles operate commercially here. The liability questions are newer than the law, but less exotic than people assume.
Assistance is not autonomy
The distinction doing almost all the work is between a system that assists a driver who remains responsible, and a system that is actually driving.
Adaptive cruise control, lane keeping, automatic emergency braking and most of what is marketed with confident names are assistance features. The human remains the driver, remains responsible for the vehicle, and remains liable for a collision. "The car was in lane keeping" is not a defense; it is closer to an admission of inattention.
A genuinely driverless vehicle operating without a human driver is a different matter, and in California those operate under permits with substantial insurance requirements and reporting obligations — including the requirement to report collisions to the DMV, which produces a public record that would not exist for an ordinary crash.
Where a product claim comes in
Alongside the driver, a claim may lie against the manufacturer where the system itself was defective — in design, in manufacture, or in the warnings and marketing around it.
- Did the system fail to perform as a reasonable consumer would expect? That is one of California's two tests for design defect, and it fits this technology unusually well.
- Was the driver monitoring adequate to ensure the human stayed engaged, given a foreseeable tendency to over-rely on the system?
- Did the marketing create an expectation the system could not meet? Names and promotional material matter to a failure-to-warn analysis.
- Was there a known defect, a recall or a software update addressing the behavior that caused the crash?
The evidence is unusually good, and unusually perishable
These vehicles record a great deal: system state, driver input, hands-on-wheel detection, camera and sensor data, and in some cases video. That is far better evidence than a conventional crash produces.
Questions people ask
The other driver says their car was in self-driving mode. Does that excuse them?
Almost certainly not. The systems on nearly all consumer vehicles are driver assistance, not autonomy — the human remains the driver and remains responsible. Saying the system was engaged tends to support an inattention argument rather than answer it.
Can I claim against the manufacturer?
Potentially, where the system itself was defective in design, manufacture or warnings. California's consumer expectation test fits this technology well. It is usually a claim alongside the one against the driver rather than instead of it.
I was hit by a driverless vehicle.
Those operate in California under permits with substantial insurance requirements and collision reporting obligations to the DMV, which creates a public record. The vehicle will also hold extensive sensor data. A preservation demand to the operator should go out immediately.
Related
Reviewed October 2026 by Simon Aziz Budhwani, Esq., the attorney responsible for this site. Legal statements here name the California code section they rely on, so you can check them rather than trust them. This is information about the law in general, not advice about your situation.
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