Putting the Internet in front of drivers is the classic example of companies choosing profit over safety. It is beyond any reasonable question that encouraging and enabling drivers to text or do web searching while they are driving will lead to more automobile accidents personal injuries and wrongful deaths. So what is "driving" this trend to treat the drivers seat like an office chair? Profits! The car companies will sell more cars at higher margins, the tech companies will sell more chips and screens and Google will sell more of everything. It will be interesting to see how product liability law evolves around this new phenomenon. generally a person injured by a defective product may sue the manufacturer or seller of the product for injuries sustained due to the defective product. The product may be defective due to a failure of the manufacturer to issue a warning on the product to avoid certain latent risks. I am sure the car companies will provide appropriate warnings. A second theory against a product's manufacturer is if the product is defectively designed. This is going to be a fertile area for cases in which people are seriously injured or killed due to driver inattention using dashboard computers. I believe it is extremely forseeable that drivers will be distracted and thus much more likely to injure and kill other drivers and pedestrians. One major issue is whether the federal government sets standards that permits in dash Internet, which would substantially reduce the consumers ability to bring product liability cases against the manufacturers due to the federal preemption of state law. The bottom line is that many lives are going to be ruined and lost so drivers have access to the Internet as they are driving. This seems like a bad trade off to me. Subinlaw
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/07/technology/07distracted.html
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