Insights

If you’ve spent much time driving in San Francisco, Detroit, or Pittsburgh, you may well have shared the road with an autonomous vehicle guiding itself down the highway. The same is true in a variety of other locations, as dozens of companies conduct trials of their self- driving cars and trucks.

"A trend to watch in the coming year is the growth of technology-based products and possible litigation risks, including both potential privacy and product liability claims," says Cheryl Falvey, co-chair of Crowell & Moring's Advertising & Product Risk Management Group and former general counsel of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). Products are becoming smart and interconnected, she says, "and these developments are raising questions about how the new technologies fit into the more traditional product liability laws."