The Passengers (The Dark Future Series)

by John Marrs

“But in accordance with the Road Traffic Act Autonomous Car Provisions, I’m obliged to remind you that I am calling a start to meeting number 3121 of the Vehicle Inquest Jury. Our purpose is to hear what each car’s ‘black box’ has to say about an accident and thus apportion liability. Today, the burden of responsibility will be upon you to decide whether people involved in fatal collisions with driverless vehicles were killed either lawfully or unlawfully. Either man or machine is to blame, and you will decide.”

Using cameras and a vehicle’s black box data, the jury decided if a fatality was the fault of a vehicle’s AI or the Passenger. If it was the former, manufacturers and insurers jointly faced compensation claims. Adequate and costly software reprogramming would also be necessary to ensure the error was not repeated. But Libby knew how rarely the inquests blamed AI, a system seen as virtually infallible. She had read about angry, bereaved families protesting the jury’s unjust verdicts placing the cause of a fatal accident squarely upon their loved ones. Those related to the dead had no right to appeal, and as a result, some next of kin who had lost their main bread-winner went on to lose their homes too.

“You know very well that we don’t ever refer to the deceased as ‘victims,’” he said. “There are no victims here unless we judge they have been unlawfully killed.”

Libby reflected upon her own late teenage years, specifically how her attitude towards her life changed the day her brother took his. Nothing had ever been the same again after she found Nicky’s body hanging from a light fitting in his bedroom.

I don’t expect someone like you to grasp the ins and outs of software development. I do, however, expect you to trust what your government has told you. The software used in AI has been embedded with human principles to help to guide the vehicle’s decision-making process.”