(logo whooshing)
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- [Narrator] As connected and automated vehicles
become more prevalent on Texas roads,
legal questions have arisen surrounding this new technology.
Who will be liable when a fully autonomous vehicle
is involved in an incident?
What role will TxDOT and other state DOTs have?
The Texas Department of Transportation
and researchers with the Texas A&M Transportation Institute
have examined potential scenarios involving C/AV technology
to provide answers.
- We wanted to look at, what was the liability to TxDOT
if we use this and we put them on the road ourselves,
if we put our staff into these vehicles,
and also then, what was the liability to TxDOT
as far as the communication aspect
of vehicles using connected technology
with our road features?
- We haven't really tried any of these situations.
Incidents have occurred, but nothing's gone to trial,
so no one has a legal precedent for how to deal with it.
All of the questions that everyone
is asking these days are pretty vague,
so what TxDOT did that was really valuable and unique
was to actually develop hypothetical questions
that are very, very fact-specific.
We're not gonna get any further speculating
in very vague generalities until somebody really starts
to ask questions about very specific facts,
and that's what we did.
- We were in hopes to kind of centralize all of this
into one area so people could just come to this
and look to see what everyone else was doing.
So we hope to continue to put information into our database
that we've created through this research project
and keep it as a live document.
- So one of the main findings from this project
is that governmental entities like TxDOT
are pretty well protected from tort liability.
The Texas Tort Claims Act provides a large degree
of sovereign immunity for governmental entities.
We have caps on damages,
which discourage plaintiffs from bringing suits,
and we have shared liability,
which can lower the liability for a governmental entity.
So all in all, we have really solid protections
here in Texas for governmental entities
against tort liabilities.
TxDOT now has a really comprehensive,
solid foundation collection inventory
of statutes, case law, practices, operations,
all in one place that help them to move forward and prepare
and mitigate for any potential liability they may face
as a result of automated vehicles on the roadway.
- [Narrator] For more information
and to find the publications for this project,
please visit the TxDOT Research Library
at the link shown below.