I can't even imagine the legal repercussions of giant robotic trucks killing motorists. I would be cheaper to keep hiring drivers than paying tens and hundreds of millions for wrongful death suites.
After enough accidents, many municipalities and states would prohibit such trucks, that would render them useless.
Interestingly, even if the number of fatal accidents caused by robot trucks was less than the number of accidents caused by human trucks, it would be unacceptable to the public.
The number of fatal accidents would have to go close to zero.
I wonder if human nature might help make robot trucks safer on the road, by the magic of risk compensation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_compensation). A robot truck will most certainly be marked distinctively so the human drivers know there's a computer at the wheel. Human drivers will perceive this robot truck as dangerous (at least I would, and I doubt I'm alone in that prejudice) and thus drive a little safer in its vicinity to compensate. Possibly, driving a robot truck down a street would even reduce the human-on-human accident rate.
And the robot truck companies would be insane not to protect themselves. They would be wise to take a page out of the commercial aircraft industry's playbook, and instrument the hell out of each vehicle. Continuous engine telemetry and redundant camera views of the immediate vicinity recorded on a 30-minute loop, frozen after a crash and a core dump of the "driver" appended to the record for crash reconstruction. It'll be a tough sell emotionally, that the robot truck was following the speed limit and stop lights, but we'll get there.
Pie in the sky idea: if politicians had spines they could pass laws that required damages given in cases of robotic accidents to be no higher than damages given in accidents caused by humans, which is an obvious and sensible solution to the problem.
We (politicians and non politicians) are not rational creatures. An airplane bomb scares us more then a .5% increase in road deaths, a shooting more then an infection, etc. I am not immune to this. Getting squashed by a robot truck scares me.
Right, that's why the hope is that politicians will put aside their irrationality and do what is best for the people, even if the people don't want it. It's a pie in the sky idea because it would require politicians (and those who would replace the ones who get voted out due to popular ire) have moral backbone and courage to do unpopular but right things.
I don't want to be uncharitable so let me make sure I'm understanding you. Are you embracing the same rhetorical sequence that others often use to argue that mandatory vaccination is a bad thing? I.e. are you arguing that people's fear of a thing ought to be as significant a consideration as the real benefits it brings to them and others around them?
I think it's all a matter of degrees. If the "right" policy offends people's religious ideas, nationalism, instinctive irrationality's, or whatever else, this might have consequences that outweigh the benefits of this policy. People being irrational can do damage.
An obvious example is civil unrest which is often a good reason not to implement liberal/libertarian policies in many places.
> An obvious example is civil unrest which is often a good reason not to implement liberal/libertarian policies in many places.
It's only a good reason because there are other good reasons to implement those policies too. Civil unrest would not be a good reason to begin beheading petty criminals, no matter how scared people were of being pick-pocketed. I'll give it to you that it is a matter of degrees, but the amount of fear that would be required to outweigh even the smallest iota of real benefit would have to be enormous. If robot trucks saved just one life per year on average, it would be morally unacceptable to obstruct their implementation even if they induced the same amount of fear as all the fears of planes crashing and terrorist attacks.
If Robot trucks saved 1 life per year, they would be killing people every week (assuming they replaced all trucks). Every week you would have reports about faulty software, potential hacks and such. It would be massive scares.
There are lots of places where lives are lost because a certain narrative is something that the public can swallow. You could spend billions of virtually useless aviation security dollars to save many lives. How would the public react to 50 terrorism deaths, twice a decade?
In the US, regulation of robotic long-haul trucks will probably be almost entirely at the federal level (interstate commerce). So I doubt municipalities will have the authority to prohibit them.
After enough accidents, many municipalities and states would prohibit such trucks, that would render them useless.