In my previous articles I considered legal technologies and how it would affect law firms, their clients or their profitability. In this article I want to consider the prospect of changing areas of practice and how that is likely to affect lawyers. One area I consider to be ripe for technological change is that of car on car road accidents and the determination of fault.

I have never been in a road traffic accident myself but from previous legal work experience I’ve understood it to be quite a long process, especially in relation to the determination of quantum. So how could technology make changes to this area?

Most insurers these days have provided their insured’s with the option to fit a telematics device. The device tracks the insured while they are driving and provides the insurer with an accurate picture of how safe a driver they are. The telematics device records details such as speed, location and braking behaviour.

As it stands, there is a choice to have a telematics device or not and those that choose to have one fitted tend to do so for the reduction in insurance premiums it provides. In the longer term though, it may be the case that everyone has one fitted by default, as it would be beneficial for disputes to have the data from any two cars that have been involved in an accident.

Thinking a little further ahead, I consider that these disputes may not be allowed to materialise in the first place. With artificial intelligence I believe it would be possible to use telematics and GPS data to determine who was at fault. The AI would be able to determine the speed of each car, the type of road, the weather conditions, and the driving behaviour of each driver immediately prior to the accident.

With that sort of data, and possibly data from a series of previous similar accidents, I don’t see why AI could not make an accurate determination of fault without the need for witness statements and possibly even lawyers getting involved. I would hope that with a significant amount of accurate data and the consideration of previous precedents would make the AI’s determination fairly indisputable. With no dispute there would be no litigation, and with no litigation there would be little need for lawyers.

Of course there is also the need to consider personal injury but I am sure that could also be done using previous precedents of the same or similar type of accident, along with the type of injury. Overall the AI would be capable of determining who was at fault, in what percentages and the likely amount of quantum.

Road traffic accident lawyers may consider my thinking to be a gross oversimplification of what they do. That may be the case but the concepts that I have detailed are sound. A computer can after all assimilate complex data much faster than a human can, and quantitative data from telematics devices must be significantly more accurate than qualitative data from witness statements.

There is another layer on top of this again with driverless cars. If this is to be the future then either there will no accidents at all, or fault in accidents will be determined by the data only. Either way it is hard to see how lawyers will deal with disputes in this area in the not too distant future.

This article is merely a picture of how the future may look in this area, and of course may not end up this way at all. It could end up completely different. However, it is definitely an area that technology could influence and if it does will radically alter the way lawyers practice in this area.