Issue the tickets anyway. Impound the vehicles. Make the companies fight to get them back.
Driverless cars immune from traffic tickets in California under current laws
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Re: Driverless cars immune from traffic tickets in California under current laws
#12> According to the Texas Transportation Code, the owner of a driverless car is “considered the operator” and can be cited for breaking traffic laws “regardless of whether the person is physically present in the vehicle.” This is all well and good when the owner is Waymo or Cruise and actually has direct control over the code that caused the vehicle to fail, but for consumer cars it brings up important questions of wh…
> It doesn't seem reasonable to me to hold an individual consumer liable for bugs in a machine that they are unable to fully control. They chose to buy it. Manufacturers should also be potentially liable for some classes of problem, but consumers are the ones pressing the "run the self-driving car" button. The court system exists to apportion liability properly past that.
They chose to buy a product with a set of known characteristics
The manufacturer then changed those characteristics.
If a manufacturer makes changes post purchase to a product resulting in harm, they should bear the majority of the liability, if not all of it.
If I had a microwave that for years cooked a potato in 3 minutes safely, but then was modified by an update to catch fire under the same conditions, I shouldn't be the one on the hook for pushing that button.
Re: Driverless cars immune from traffic tickets in California under current laws
#13> According to the Texas Transportation Code, the owner of a driverless car is “considered the operator” and can be cited for breaking traffic laws “regardless of whether the person is physically present in the vehicle.” This is all well and good when the owner is Waymo or Cruise and actually has direct control over the code that caused the vehicle to fail, but for consumer cars it brings up important questions of wh…
> It doesn't seem reasonable to me to hold an individual consumer liable for bugs in a machine that they are unable to fully control. They chose to buy it. Manufacturers should also be potentially liable for some classes of problem, but consumers are the ones pressing the "run the self-driving car" button. The court system exists to apportion liability properly past that.
So we should just plan on every self-driving vehicle ticket ending up in the court system so that we can properly apportion liability between the consumer (who pressed the button) and the manufacturer (who designed the car, wrote the code, advertised the vehicle, and then updated it many times after the consumer purchased it)?
Re: Driverless cars immune from traffic tickets in California under current laws
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is why the judicial system exists.
Usually invoked after some harm has been caused. Perhaps there is something we can do before the, nearly obvious, harm occurs.
What is the utility for deciding is one party or another is liable first? Since self driving accidents are rare, we could just have shared liability and defer to courts. I’d imagine a lot of these accidents go to court now. National streamlined processes could be established as more motorists opt into self driving technology.
Re: Driverless cars immune from traffic tickets in California under current laws
#15> According to the Texas Transportation Code, the owner of a driverless car is “considered the operator” and can be cited for breaking traffic laws “regardless of whether the person is physically present in the vehicle.” This is all well and good when the owner is Waymo or Cruise and actually has direct control over the code that caused the vehicle to fail, but for consumer cars it brings up important questions of wh…
> one day the manufacturer pushes a mandatory, automatic over-the-air update that contains a critical bug, and my car suddenly starts misbehaving and I get ticketed
Don’t buy it if the company who controls it does not put it in writing that they indemnify you properly.
Re: Driverless cars immune from traffic tickets in California under current laws
#16> According to the Texas Transportation Code, the owner of a driverless car is “considered the operator” and can be cited for breaking traffic laws “regardless of whether the person is physically present in the vehicle.” This is all well and good when the owner is Waymo or Cruise and actually has direct control over the code that caused the vehicle to fail, but for consumer cars it brings up important questions of wh…
>how many of us have "owned" a product that has suddenly changed its behavior in undesirable ways after we purchased it? I'd be interested in some examples, as I can't think of any offhand, despite your claim that this "isn't unlikely". Also, when it comes to vehicles misbehaving in traffic, I'd say "harmful" is a more apt term than "undesirable".
Really any cloud-connected device would fit this bill. Many have gone out of business and turned off their backends or changed the way they work in a way that is incompatible with the original purchasing intent of the user. Not to mention software products that evolve in ways the user doesn't like all the time. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-64249388 is an article with some more specific hardware examples if that's what you're looking for.
Re: Driverless cars immune from traffic tickets in California under current laws
#17Good citizen transportation.
Another government incentive, to help usher in further loss of personal autonomy - appeal to greed version.
Re: Driverless cars immune from traffic tickets in California under current laws
#18> According to the Texas Transportation Code, the owner of a driverless car is “considered the operator” and can be cited for breaking traffic laws “regardless of whether the person is physically present in the vehicle.” This is all well and good when the owner is Waymo or Cruise and actually has direct control over the code that caused the vehicle to fail, but for consumer cars it brings up important questions of wh…
>how many of us have "owned" a product that has suddenly changed its behavior in undesirable ways after we purchased it? I'd be interested in some examples, as I can't think of any offhand, despite your claim that this "isn't unlikely". Also, when it comes to vehicles misbehaving in traffic, I'd say "harmful" is a more apt term than "undesirable".
Here is a (very) incomplete list. Not all are ones that I've personally experienced, but they're all products that either I or someone in my direct acquaintance have owned/used.
* Microsoft Windows starts showing ads in new and creative places, even though I shelled out $200 for the Pro version.
* An Android update broke my preferred home screen.
* Roomba vacuums go through regular periods of stupidity in between software updates. One day it's able to dodge obstacles, the next it's sucking up anything and everything.
* Basically every SaaS product changes its UI on a semi-regular basis in ways that throw off existing workflows.
EDIT: Oh, and a bonus one that's more on topic—Tesla recently rushed an update to their software and introduced a lot of bugs:
https://www.autoevolution.com/news/tesla-s-holiday-update-sc...
Re: Driverless cars immune from traffic tickets in California under current laws
#19> According to the Texas Transportation Code, the owner of a driverless car is “considered the operator” and can be cited for breaking traffic laws “regardless of whether the person is physically present in the vehicle.” This is all well and good when the owner is Waymo or Cruise and actually has direct control over the code that caused the vehicle to fail, but for consumer cars it brings up important questions of wh…
>how many of us have "owned" a product that has suddenly changed its behavior in undesirable ways after we purchased it? I'd be interested in some examples, as I can't think of any offhand, despite your claim that this "isn't unlikely". Also, when it comes to vehicles misbehaving in traffic, I'd say "harmful" is a more apt term than "undesirable".
Basically any current operating system, except Linux.
Windows, macOS, iOS, ipadOS, android. All try to ram updates down your throat, and make it difficult or impossible (android) to disable.
Re: Driverless cars immune from traffic tickets in California under current laws
#20> According to the Texas Transportation Code, the owner of a driverless car is “considered the operator” and can be cited for breaking traffic laws “regardless of whether the person is physically present in the vehicle.” This is all well and good when the owner is Waymo or Cruise and actually has direct control over the code that caused the vehicle to fail, but for consumer cars it brings up important questions of wh…
> one day the manufacturer pushes a mandatory, automatic over-the-air update that contains a critical bug
This is a hidden two-fault scenario, which isn't always "bad engineering" but is usually a smell in that direction. You're (1) accepting that the operator/owner/whatever of the vehicle is technically responsible, (2) acknowledging that this supervision is likely to work in practice, then (3) imagining a hardware/systems failure in the car and simultaneously (4) supposing that the supervision you took for granted in (2) fails at the same time.
Basically, you don't need point 3 to make your point about safety logically. You added it to change the villain from the driver to the manufacturer.