> I think its an open question how nice society will be to participant unable to retaliate.
I suspect that the initial implied liability carried by the first batch of commercially sold self-driving vehicles will lead to extensive sensor logs and 360° dash cam recordings. In the event a human driver tries to game a self-driving vehicle and it causes an accident, the extensive data logging will supply far more than traffic courts and insurance companies have ordinarily dealt with before, and likely lead to new legal precedents.
If the LIDAR data logging shows a human driver recklessly accelerated towards the self-driving car (presumably thinking it would get out of the way) and the path of least damage correctly chosen was to stay put because of merging cars on either side, then most attorneys and insurance companies will find it hard to challenge sub-second LIDAR data that can be reconstructed to overlay data on the video log.
One potential development out of this push for self-driving vehicles that might catch us by surprise is ubiquitous, extensive data logging in vehicles, both human- and computer-driven. In order to sell the tech at a mass scale, all sorts of sensors must sell much cheaper than even today, and they won't necessarily be limited to only computer-driven cars. Like cell phone cameras made solid-state cameras and storing large amounts of photos and videos cheaper than the mass market imagined possible only 30 years ago, and now people are putting those camera sub-assemblies to use outside of cell phones.