“It’s imperfect,” said University of South Carolina law professor Bryant Walker Smith, whose work focuses on AVs. “Crash responders have remarked that to communicate with a vehicle on a crash scene that’s blocking a car in an emergency, they’ve had to stick their head in the window and yell because there was no way that they could hear or speak with that assistant from outside the vehicle.”

The beginning of the process is expected to look similar to how drivers navigate crashes with other humans, even if there is no other human. After a crash with an AV, a human driver would exit their vehicle, contact law enforcement and inform their insurance company of the collision. If the AV is at fault, the driver’s insurance company would contact the AV manufacturer or developer to determine a settlement.