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U.S. House approves proposal to speed the deployment of self-driving cars

reuters.com

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Re: U.S. House approves proposal to speed the deployment of self-driving cars

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people who pay for self driving car accidents will be the same people as those that pay for them today. The insurance companies. Only now, these insurance companies will be paying 1/4th the amount of money they were before, because of the reduced number of accidents.

That is not quite how it works in most US states. Insurance companies cover up to a maximum amount, which is usually enough to cover all damages. However, when the maximum amount is breached, the cost is then bourne by some party which "caused" the accident. Suppose the "driver" of the SDC isnt even driving -- who is that other party? The manufacturer? The algo writer?

As with everything in life it depends. Where did the error occur? Did the brakes fail? MFG of the car. Did the software fail to register the red light? Software MFG. I'm confident regardless of circumstances they can find who is at fault, and worst case scenario of multiple parties at fault - place an appropriate percentage of blame. You know... just like with ever other lawsuit dating back to the beginning of our justice system.

Re: U.S. House approves proposal to speed the deployment of self-driving cars

#42
post #34
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

25k is less than 1% of most major auto manufacturers yearly production numbers. No article I've read on this news has put that into context and instead praises the legislation as liberating car manufacturers to bring FSD cars to the masses. Most people don't read past the headline let alone look into the facts of the article. Also nothing good EVER gets passed legislation unanimously. Last time the House passed legis…

Given that this is from a base of zero, and the cap is set to rise by 4x to 100k by 2020 (which is when Waymo plans to start introducing driverless cars), I do not think that this is at all a slow pace.

GM sells sells 10M cars per year so 100k would be 1% of that. Also who's Waymo? Tesla is planning to demonstrate a CA to NY trip with zero human intervention in just a few months and Elon has said they're shooting for 2019 for L5 FSD for their entire fleet made past October 2016 (they've already put in the hardware necessary for FSD so when the software is ready a simple OTA software update is all that's necessary for you're car to have full L5 autonomy)

Re: U.S. House approves proposal to speed the deployment of self-driving cars

#43
Question: Is it expected that, as a result of this legislation, there will be rigorous behavioral and performance definitions and standards that self-driving cars, however that is defined, will have to meet?

IOW, similar to, or in addition to, the FMVSS, will manufacturers have a series of regulations that define the minimum requirements of objective performance criteria for cars sold as "self-driving"? If so, what would those criteria be? Will there be software source code audits to exhibit that the software wasn't written specifically for the testing (vis-a-vis VW)? Finally, will superior test results become marketing fodder for manufacturers in the way acceleration and cornering are now?

Re: U.S. House approves proposal to speed the deployment of self-driving cars

#44

Question: Is it expected that, as a result of this legislation, there will be rigorous behavioral and performance definitions and standards that self-driving cars, however that is defined, will have to meet? IOW, similar to, or in addition to, the FMVSS, will manufacturers have a series of regulations that define the minimum requirements of objective performance criteria for cars sold as "self-driving"? If so, what w…

It seems like the legislation would delegate responsibility for coming up with such policies to the Secretary of transportation and gives them 24 months to come up with such rules.

‘‘§ 30129. Updated or new motor vehicle safety stand- 10 ards for highly automated vehicles 11 ‘‘(a) SAFETY ASSESSMENT CERTIFICATION.— 12 ‘‘(1) FINAL RULE.—Not later than 24 months 13 after the date of the enactment of this section, the 14 Secretary of Transportation shall issue a final rule 15 requiring the submission of safety assessment certifi- 16 cations regarding how safety is being addressed by 17 each entity developing a highly automated vehicle or 18 an automated driving system. Such rule shall in- 19 clude— 20 ‘‘(A) a specification of which entities are 21 required to submit such certifications; 22 ‘‘(B) a clear description of the relevant test 23 results, data, and other contents required to be 24 submitted by such entity, in order to dem- 25 onstrate that such entity’s vehicles are likely to

http://docs.house.gov/meetings/IF/IF00/20170727/106347/BILLS...

Re: U.S. House approves proposal to speed the deployment of self-driving cars

#45

> Advocates hope self-driving cars can help reduce U.S. road deaths, which rose 7.7 percent in 2015, the highest annual jump since 1966. This was a news story in itself [1]. It was attributed to increased driving, encouraged by economic factors such as higher employment and lower gas prices. [1] http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/02/18/467230965/...

Which is fitting that nobody says how many deaths will result from starvation that results by being fired from UPS and FedEx

UPS has 400,000 employees. Autonomous driving would pay itself off very quickly even if one of uber's cars personally murdered every single UPS and FedEx employee. Of course, the issue at play isn't joblessness, but the lack of a safety net for when people lose their jobs. Still, in the u.s., very few people actually starve to death, even when unemployed.

Perhaps lack of health care will kill them all. But was their health care that good to begin with? Perhaps an actual solution for root problems is the better route.

Re: U.S. House approves proposal to speed the deployment of self-driving cars

#46
post #40
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea what Subaru's reaction would be, but in general you can certainly be held responsible if you allow a bug in self-driving software to cause an accident. The manufacturer simply has to state that while the software is in control and you are sitting idle, you must continue to pay attention and re-take control if anything goes awry. In the event of an accident, the manufacturer can then state that the acci…

>if the driver had maintained control Then it is not a self-driving car. There's definitely a point where cars will be nominally just assistive driving under some set of circumstances but people won't pay attention because they normally don't need to. This is one of the things that will need to be worked out as the tech gets better over time. Liability is a big deal. If the car is billed as fully self-driving, the dr…

I really hope we just skip over that and go straight from 0 to completely self driving. It creates all sorts of messier legal tangles when it could be either the human or the car's fault, instead of making it entirely the car's fault.

Re: U.S. House approves proposal to speed the deployment of self-driving cars

#47
post #27

Question: Does this undermine California's safety standards for self-driving cars? I was very pleased with how quickly California slapped down Uber. Will California still be able to do that? For those who don't remember: Uber was clearly experimenting with unready software on the roads with insufficient safety processes in place. When caught on camera running a red light, Uber blamed the human operator and weasel-wor…

Yes, it seems to prevent states from having their own safety policies. It makes an exemption for "performance standards" which I guess is omissions.

Page 2: http://docs.house.gov/meetings/IF/IF00/20170727/106347/BILLS...

Re: U.S. House approves proposal to speed the deployment of self-driving cars

#48
post #42
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that this is from a base of zero, and the cap is set to rise by 4x to 100k by 2020 (which is when Waymo plans to start introducing driverless cars), I do not think that this is at all a slow pace.

GM sells sells 10M cars per year so 100k would be 1% of that. Also who's Waymo? Tesla is planning to demonstrate a CA to NY trip with zero human intervention in just a few months and Elon has said they're shooting for 2019 for L5 FSD for their entire fleet made past October 2016 (they've already put in the hardware necessary for FSD so when the software is ready a simple OTA software update is all that's necessary fo…

> Also who's Waymo?

You serious? It's Google's self-driving car company.

Re: U.S. House approves proposal to speed the deployment of self-driving cars

#49
On the one side - i find this quite extraordinary- a government ready to push new technologys, instead of inhibiting it- on the other (slightly paranoid) side- what is in it for the senators?

Huge portions of traffic automated, because they really love new tech? Nah. They could have forwarded hyperloops and public traffic ages ago.

Do they get a bonus point for the next vote? Certainly not, a large part of the population earns its "good" livelihood with what this law is about to destroy.

So one wonders- can you push and incentivize the trading of still green bananas to the market- and the watch the populous lynch the producers/cripple with regulation, after the expected large failure happens? You would be seen as tech loving - and you could prevent social turmoil + reap large lobbyist gift basket.

Of course that would be very cynical and presume foresight on the part of the politician. Still.

Re: U.S. House approves proposal to speed the deployment of self-driving cars

#50
post #42
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that this is from a base of zero, and the cap is set to rise by 4x to 100k by 2020 (which is when Waymo plans to start introducing driverless cars), I do not think that this is at all a slow pace.

GM sells sells 10M cars per year so 100k would be 1% of that. Also who's Waymo? Tesla is planning to demonstrate a CA to NY trip with zero human intervention in just a few months and Elon has said they're shooting for 2019 for L5 FSD for their entire fleet made past October 2016 (they've already put in the hardware necessary for FSD so when the software is ready a simple OTA software update is all that's necessary fo…

> they've already put in the hardware necessary for FSD so when the software is ready a simple OTA software update is all that's necessary for you're car to have full L5 autonomy

That's bull. Every other company working on fully autonomous driving is using Lidar for obstacle detection, but Tesla's cars have none (only radar and cameras). I see no reason to think their software is any better than anyone else's (in fact I would say Waymo almost certainly ahead of them there).

Why should I have any confidence that they will be able to get better results than anybody else using cheaper hardware?

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