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44 F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 7 w w w . C A N A D I A N L a w y e r m a g . c o m issues of full driverless operation of cars that it just highlights the inability and unwillingness by lawmakers to step anywhere close to putting on paper any rules for AV operation without a human being inside as a potential driver," says Elliott Ambridge, name partner at Ambridge Law in Toronto. "We think it's going to be a long time and our careers will be long over before any of that is introduced on the roads," he adds, saying semi-autonomous cars or autonomous public transporta- tion vehicles are more likely. "Some cars might be introduced, but for a long time, there will probably be more human-driven cars than automated cars — not everybody will adopt technology so fast." Litwiniuk agrees that younger personal injury lawyers are probably the ones who will be focusing on these changes, saying business in general "tends to be more reactive than proactive with things like this." David Parker, partner at Boyneclarke LLP in Dartmouth, N.S., says the continued developments in Ontario "certainly cause us to pause." One of the big questions is who, with no "driver," would be liable if something goes wrong with an autonomous car and somebody is injured. But he has reservations about widespread, individual, fully autonomous vehicles. "I could see it becoming a little bit more complicated [to find the defendant], but I'm not sure there could ever be a technology that could eliminate accidents," he says. Ambridge agrees with him, saying people equate driverless cars with no accidents, but that's not the case. If a driverless car is programmed to be risk averse, it would have trouble making the risky decisions humans are capable of making that actually help to avoid accidents. Also, Ambridge and Litwiniuk both point to the "crossover" time when people are transitioning to autonomous or semi-auton- omous vehicles. The biggest dangers for self-driven cars are human-driven cars because people "will not be able to analyze the mind and the risk-averse behaviour of this computer," Ambridge says. "We might have an influx of accidents happening especially in the beginning of this technology being widely introduced." There's a middle ground that Ambridge thinks we're headed toward with this technology — a semi-autonomous car that still requires an alert and able passenger who would be responsible IF THERE IS A WAY FOR THE PASSENGER TO AFFECT THE VEHICLE AND TAKE CONTROL OF IT IN ANY WAY, THERE'S ALWAYS THE POSSIBILITY TO ALLOCATE 100 PER CENT OF LIABILITY TOWARD THAT PERSON. ELLIOTT AMBRIDGE, Ambridge Law Are your clients growing impatient? Are their bills piling up? Do they need money? 1 866-800-2100 easylegal.ca CALL US - WE CAN HELP! A settlement loan from Easy Legal Finance can relieve your client's financial burden, allowing you to maintain focus and control over the litigation process. asyLegal_CL_Feb_17.indd 1 2017-01-11 12:03 PM Untitled-1 1 2017-01-23 8:37 AM

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