Accident liability poses major headache for manufacturers, owners of self-driving cars

The human driver was distracted and watching television on a smartphone at the time of the accident, however. Uber itself skirted charges mainly because it had a paid employee at the wheel whose job was to monitor the self-driving car. At the moment, though, there are few laws and regulations governing self-driving cars on the books. Auto safety advocates see that as a problem given the rate of recent accidents associated with self-driving cars. A report by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found that over a 10-month period, there were nearly 400 collisions involving self-driving vehicles.