Manufacturers of autonomous cars will have to accept liability in the event of an accident involving one of their vehicles – according to the specialist in charge of Toyota’s project to develop its own self-driving technology.

Dr Gill Pratt, CEO of Toyota Research Institute, says that manufacturers “won’t have a choice” but to accept that without a human driver to blame for an accident, the law is likely to turn to the companies who make the vehicles instead.

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“As we move towards autonomous cars, the crash rate will be lower than now but it will not be zero,” Pratt told Auto Express. “When that does happen, there will really only be one thing left to take responsibility – the company that made the product.

“The reality is that no one has a choice,” Pratt said. “The law dictates what we will have to do. Different parts of the world have different laws, and we follow the law.”

Pratt, whose division has developed a running Toyota prototype with integrated Lidar sensors that’s capable of Level 4 Autonomy, where the driver can take their hands completely off the wheel – admitted that the predicted roll-out of autonomous cars has slipped slightly over the past 18 months.