Driverless cars immune from traffic tickets in California under current laws • Hacker News Board

Re: Driverless cars immune from traffic tickets in California under current laws

#31

Post by bluescrn » Sat, Dec 30, 2023, 3:51 PM UTC

lolinder wrote: post #2

> 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…

As individuals we are never going to own self-driving cars.

If buying the hardware is even an option to begin with, there's going to be a hefty fee to subscribe to the required 'cloud based' self-driving service.

(And there's certainly no way individuals/small businesses will be able to buy such a car and run a self-driving taxi service profitably when a megacorporation could have all the income from all the cars)

Re: Driverless cars immune from traffic tickets in California under current laws

#32

Post by kelnos » Sat, Dec 30, 2023, 3:52 PM UTC

They shouldn't be immune from traffic tickets, but manufacturers should be the target of those tickets, under the condition that the driverless features were used in the way the manufacturer intended.

I'm not liable for a traffic ticket when I get in a taxi or on a bus and the driver does something wrong. In a driverless system, the "driver" is the manufacturer, or whoever wrote and updates the self-driving software.

But this also needs to come with some regulation. Driverless mode needs to be audited and certified against a standard, by a third party. Similar (in spirit, anyway) to how human drivers take a driving test before being issued a license.

Re: Driverless cars immune from traffic tickets in California under current laws

#33

Post by tallowen » Sat, Dec 30, 2023, 3:52 PM UTC

epistasis wrote: post #25

lolinder wrote: post #2

> 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…

In this case the consumer should of course still be held responsible, and if they think it's wrong they can join in on the class action lawsuit against the manufacturer. Or, owners should enter into a pre-existing legal relationship with the manufacturer to get reimbursed for any manufacturer error that gets pushed out. Those who choose to operate driverless vehicles must have some skin in the game in order for this…

Going to repeated class action lawsuits every time there is a bad software update sounds like an inefficient use of the court system to me.

I think most people will eventually want the manufacturer to be the defendant in court cases that result from crashes due to a manufacturer updating cars. I can only imagine NHTSA (US Auto Regulator) will evolve to make this the case.

Re: Driverless cars immune from traffic tickets in California under current laws

#34

Post by Swizec » Sat, Dec 30, 2023, 3:52 PM UTC

lolinder wrote: post #2

> 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…

We already have laws that make it so the driver is liable for infractions, crashes, etc. Even if you own the car, but someone else drives, driver gets the ticket. If this weren’t the case, rent-a-car agencies wouldn’t exist.

The same rule should extend to self-driving cars. The manufacturer is driving, ergo they should be liable for everything the car does.

Mercedes’s approach to self-driving feels the most promising here. Afaik they are so far the only manufacturer who has said “we’re driving, we’ll take the liability” – https://insideevs.com/news/575160/mercedes-accepts-legal-res...

Re: Driverless cars immune from traffic tickets in California under current laws

#35

Post by eropple » Sat, Dec 30, 2023, 3:52 PM UTC

stavros wrote: post #8

eropple wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

If I buy a defective toaster and it burns down my house, am I liable for choosing to buy it?

If it isn't UL or ETL certified? You very well might be, depending on circumstances. Your insurer may treat all fire as covered peril, but it is not guaranteed.

Re: Driverless cars immune from traffic tickets in California under current laws

#36

Post by solardev » Sat, Dec 30, 2023, 3:52 PM UTC

lolinder wrote: post #30

solardev wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Either manufacturers need to be required to provide important software freedoms to vehicle owners FOSS robot cars seem like a great way to bypass emissions controls, safety regulations, and plain common sense. It'd take what, half a day, for some teenager to modify the firmware to double the 0-60 and blow up the battery pack at the same time? I'd want the opposite: for self-driving firmware to be locked down and ha…

That's a reasonable argument. In that case, I argue that the manufacturer who wrote and signed the firmware should be liable as the operator of the vehicle.

Sorry, I edited my comment as you were replying.

Do you think it would be possible (and desirable) to split liability, or should it remain solely the manufacturer's?

Re: Driverless cars immune from traffic tickets in California under current laws

#37

Post by ajross » Sat, Dec 30, 2023, 3:53 PM UTC

lolinder wrote: post #27

ajross wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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/…

I'm explicitly not accepting points 1 or 2. I set up the scenario to show that no matter how careful the consumer is, their supervision will not work in practice (since the vehicle's behavior can change at any time and without warning) and therefore they cannot be held responsible for the behavior of the vehicle. Either the manufacturer should not be allowed to market it (because it cannot be operated safely) or the…

> I set up the scenario to show that no matter how careful the consumer is, their supervision will not work in practice (since the vehicle's behavior can change at any time and without warning)

Sorry, can you explain that better? The whole point to the metaphor of "supervision" (e.g. of party A by party B) is that party A is not trusted to behave correctly in all circumstances. You seem to be saying that supervision can only work if B is never required to intervene at all (and by extension, won't, if A's behavior changes)? In which case there's no supervision happening, right?

Again, it really seems like you're just playing tricks to make the manufacturer into an unsolvable villain. I mean, you get that's ridiculous right? We trust our cars not to fail already. And have, for a century. And sometimes they do fail, and when that happens we adjust regulatory strategies to minimize risk. Why is any of that different when there's a scary robot involved?

Re: Driverless cars immune from traffic tickets in California under current laws

#38

Post by beretguy » Sat, Dec 30, 2023, 3:55 PM UTC

lolinder wrote: post #18

PopAlongKid wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 sof…

* Amazon Prime Video is now showing ads.

Re: Driverless cars immune from traffic tickets in California under current laws

#39

Post by eropple » Sat, Dec 30, 2023, 3:57 PM UTC

maxsilver wrote: post #26

eropple wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 it. No, absolutely not, never ever. This just highly incentivizes Manufacturers to dump trash garbage into the market (since you've just forced consumers to bear all liability for Manufacturer failures). You do this once, and you might as well kiss all of society away. Imagine a toy that kills children, and you tell parents, "well, you pressed the 'On' button, so it's your fault". Imagine a furnac…

> Imagine a toy that kills children, and you tell parents, "well, you pressed the 'On' button, so it's your fault". Imagine a furnace that burns down your house, and you tell homeowners, "well, you pressed the 'heat' button, what did you expect?". No one would be willing to buy anything at all, because every manufacturer would be in a race to see the shittiest thing they could trick people into buying. Every product on every shelf would be snake oil.

You're totally right! This is why we have in the past had a regulatory (and partial participatory) state that, prior to decades of attacks and gutting, prevented that stuff from being sold. Perhaps the self-driving car hypemen need their own equivalent of UL/ETL and need to convince insurers and the NHTSA that they have a sufficient story--and perhaps they shouldn't be allowed to sell cars that sport those features at all until they do!

Re: Driverless cars immune from traffic tickets in California under current laws

#40

Post by lolinder » Sat, Dec 30, 2023, 3:57 PM UTC

solardev wrote: post #36

lolinder wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a reasonable argument. In that case, I argue that the manufacturer who wrote and signed the firmware should be liable as the operator of the vehicle.

Sorry, I edited my comment as you were replying. Do you think it would be possible (and desirable) to split liability, or should it remain solely the manufacturer's?

Since we're talking about traffic tickets, which are (currently) routine and generally try to avoid the court system as much as possible, I'd say that we need laws that provide no ambiguity, and I'd rather those laws place the blame on the party with the most control.