Most drivers on the road are effectively being subsidized by bankruptcy protection, because most cannot possibly cover the liability they are exposing themselves to by driving. This "subsidy" is far less valuable to a self driving car manufacturer than individual drivers.
I mean, sure, you can come up with some scenario where the liability exceeded the insurance coverage, but I haven't heard of many of those. Anyway, it comes from somewhere. If bankruptcy protects drivers, it also exposes them to the risk that they will suffer damage that isn't compensated.
Regardless, expecting a legal loophole to preserve the status quo indefinitely seems quite unrealistic and inherently unstable. If that actually holds up something that could massively benefit society (both economically and in saving lives), we simply legislate liability limits.
Liability you can incur while driving is almost arbitrarily high. Individual drivers rely on the existence of bankruptcy protection to cover these rare scenarios, or simply don't think about or plan for this at all.
> but I haven't heard of many of those.
How many do you think it takes to put a self driving car manufacturer out of business?
I'm not saying the status quo is a great situation, or that this is a good or bad argument for or against self driving cars. Only that it's a description of the current situation, and why legal issues might be a much bigger problem for self driving car manufacturers than individual drivers.
