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Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

nytimes.com

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Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

#91

Post by ajays »

jfager wrote: post #75
alextgordon wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Civil liability is only half the issue. What about criminal liability? If your autonomous vehicle runs someone down because of a bug, who goes to jail?

We deal with that issue today. Who is liable when brakes fail? It's usually determined on a case-by-case basis. Why would this system be any different?

Failure is one aspect. But what if there's a bug?

Suppose there's an extreme edge case where a bicyclists fluorescent jacket appears as a road to the car; so the car chases down the cyclist and runs him over. This is not a hardware failure, but an active decision made by the car to cause injury to a person. So in such a situation, who would be responsible? I guess it is a question for technolawyers to decide.

Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

#92

Post by Someone »

jfager wrote: post #75
alextgordon wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Civil liability is only half the issue. What about criminal liability? If your autonomous vehicle runs someone down because of a bug, who goes to jail?

We deal with that issue today. Who is liable when brakes fail? It's usually determined on a case-by-case basis. Why would this system be any different?

I guess this could be different just because 'the public' does not accept it to be the same. That may be irrational, but it also is quite natural. We accept traffic deaths more than plane crashes, invest disproportionately in research on some diseases, etc.

Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

#93

Post by Someone »

olefoo wrote: post #34
borism wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The insurance company, just like today. Possibly paid for by the manufacturer and entirely included in the sales price, or possibly paid for by the driver/owner like today. duh, of course! The question is - at what premium? Because you know, actually it's customer in the end who pays the price.

The first few years the premium would probably be much higher, especially since these would be luxury cars and you just know there would be attempts to fool the cars into compromising situations (or simply steal them). After the adoption curve hits the early majority the premium balance will shift the other direction (you'll pay more if your car doesn't have the safety feature of being able to drive itself). And at s…

Looking ahead, I fear that insurance premiums would decline, provided that you run anti-virus software on your car at $$$ a month.

Of course, there also will be a government required back door to stop cars that are being used in terrorist attacks.

Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

#94

Post by jfager »

ajays wrote: post #91
jfager wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We deal with that issue today. Who is liable when brakes fail? It's usually determined on a case-by-case basis. Why would this system be any different?

Failure is one aspect. But what if there's a bug? Suppose there's an extreme edge case where a bicyclists fluorescent jacket appears as a road to the car; so the car chases down the cyclist and runs him over. This is not a hardware failure, but an active decision made by the car to cause injury to a person. So in such a situation, who would be responsible? I guess it is a question for technolawyers to decide.

How is that not a system failure? Because the car has some kind of intent? Well, we have an analogue for that today, too: who gets punished when a dog attacks someone?

I'm not saying there are no details to work out. I'm just saying that it's not some unfathomable chasm we have to cross. We deal with similar questions all the time right now.

Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

#96

Post by alextgordon »

tbrownaw wrote: post #79
alextgordon wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Civil liability is only half the issue. What about criminal liability? If your autonomous vehicle runs someone down because of a bug, who goes to jail?

My understanding is that criminal liability almost always requires either intent negligence. If the automated system is less error-prone than a human, the driver can't reasonably be negligent for doing nothing ("it would be incredibly foolish and arrogant for me to think I could handle that situation better than a computer designed by 10 Phds, especially when the insurance company agrees that the computer drives bett…

This is surely the rational way to handle it. But I'm not convinced a judge and jury would see it the same way.

The prosecution would likely argue that no computer program can be a match for a human's ability handle new and surprising situations: the "driver" must still pay full attention to the road, whether a computer is driving or not. It would not be enough for a computer to be statistically better at driving, it would also have to not make mistakes that a reasonable person wouldn't make.

Also, we don't have information on how error-prone this system actually is. All we know is that a car it was driving had one accident. We don't know how many times the human driver had to take control because it would have otherwise crashed.

[obligatory IANAL]

Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

#98

Post by modeless »

eogas wrote: post #30

I wonder if this is legal. I mean, if one of these cars went haywire and mowed down a bunch of pedestrians before the "driver" was able to take control, I reckon Google would have some splainin to do. With autonomous vehicles coming closer and closer to a reality, it's somewhat alarming that there appears to be no legal body attempting to define some guidelines on this subject. At the rate our government works, we'll…

Well, cruise control is legal, and since there's a trained professional behind the wheel at all times accepting liability there's no legal issue. The real issue comes when you want to let the car drive itself alone...

Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

#99

Post by kjksf »

megablast wrote: post #90
gojomo wrote: post #29

Finally! A giant step towards 'packet-switched' personal transport, using dynamically-routed, market-dispatched autonomous cars on standard roads. Cancel the bullet train, and instead plow all that money into rapidly deploying this.

This is not a solution to much, apart from getting stupid people away from control of vehicles. We still need to move to mass transportation, to reduce pollution, decrease traffic, stop our reliance on fossil fuels, increase productivity, remove noise, free up space in cities, and lots of other reasons.

While cars that drive themselves are not the final solution they could be a necessary stepping stone to mass transportation.

Imagine a future where cars are not owned by individuals but are owned by few companies (or maybe even government, the way public transport is) and participate in what is essentially a global taxi network.

Instead of using your own car you would just step out of your home, enter destination address into your phone and press a button. That would be sent to a server which given your location, position and destination of all existing cars in route would pick one that is the closest to you that has available seat and goes in that direction. That car would just pull up and you would be notified in real time how far it is from you.

If a car is not available, it would be dispatched from the closest holding area.

Think ZipCar except with cars that come to you, drive themselves and you can share with other people while it drives itself (or you can have it for yourself, if you prefer, except at a higher cost).

This kind of a network would drastically reduce number of cars needed to drive people around and given global knowledge of where people are and where they want to go, it could plan the absolutely most efficient route.

For popular routes (e.g. if it detects a pattern that a lot of people commute from San Francisco to Mountain View around 9 AM on Mondays through Fridays) it could deploy bigger cars (i.e. buses), further reducing traffic.

When you think about it, it's not surprising that car companies will not work on a technology like that since it would drastically reduce demand for cars and if this comes anywhere close to reality, expect lots of legislative and political battles (after all, this will mean that Americans in Detroit will loose jobs).

Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

#100

Post by fizx »

The thing that excites me about this isn't the driving, it's the parking. Living in SF, it would be AMAZING to be able to pull up to whereever you were going, get out, and tell your car to go find it's own parking spot. Then, when it's time to leave, click that button on the key fob, and the car is waiting outside in five minutes.
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