In technical fields (notably very much not including anything involving a computer or software) there is also 'criminal negligence'. In things like construction, if the executives ignore and disempower the engineers and put business goals ahead of things like structural integrity or safety of the public, those executives go to prison. I'm not sure how much longer that will remain absent from anything computer-related but thus far companies can straight up kill people out of bold aggressive negligence of this sort and the courts just shrug their shoulders. We saw that with Toyota and their "unintended acceleration" killings. Multiple bodies, but when charged with criminal negligence, the courts basically said 'its computers, nobody knows how they work.'
It didn't matter that Toyota lied and claimed their cars computers used error correcting RAM but they cheaped out and saved a fraction of a cent on each car by using non-error-correcting RAM. It didn't matter that their developers didn't even have access to a bug tracker. It didn't matter that they didn't have access to static analysis tools (which when used on the code afterward found the problem instantly). It didn't matter that the automotive industry has 90+ practices recognized as "required" or "recommended" and Toyotas code followed only 4 of them.
There is literally no degree of negligence which is great enough to cause a court (in the US anyway) to judge a corporation as having been criminally negligent if a computer or software is involved. And it's reflected in the established business practices of most companies. They hire the cheapest "labor" they can find, deprive them of the tools and work environment needed to do their job competently, ignore any warnings about safety, security, correctness, or other technical issues in deference to business goals, etc.
And it'll be the worst of the worst who gets a fully autonomous car on the market and careening down your street first. And when it hits your car or (hopefully not) your kid - the company will skate away absolutely unscathed.
Criminal negligence is, indeed, rare in the courts. However, in civil cases there's still regular old negligence, gross negligence, and in some states, "active negligence," not to mention all the other causes of action which can put punitive damages on the table.
