I've yet to read Nevada's regulations, but having it be the same as for regular cars would make the most sense. In an isolated accident, the operator's insurance company is liable. If there's a fundamental flaw with the cars, the manufacturer issues a recall. It's far more likely that an inattentive human driver will smash into a driverless car than the reverse, though.
I guess what I was trying to say is that cars were designed to be driven by humans, and although there are situations where machine's fault is hard to prove [1], in reality adding additional layer of decision-making piece of hardware will make it even harder to determine who's fault was when my children, hypothetically, died in a car accident smashed by a second car.
Almost all auto fatalities are caused by human error. I think saving 1 million+ lives per year is worth the legal wrangling to determine fault for the remaining few accidents.
There are already rules applied by insurance companies for deciding liability in an accident. Just apply those same rules as if your over-the-top rhetorically invoked children were killed by a human driver. Retributive criminal penalties for accidents should be done away with in favor of civil action handled by insurance companies, except in cases of gross negligence or willful harm (e.g. the owner of the car instructed the computer to cause an accident).
