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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

#71

Post by bluejekyll »

serf wrote: post #59
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…

>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? generally we don't pen laws in order to save a singular idiot teenager -- more-so the aforementioned teenager bought a product and then ruined it; the teenager already rece…

> the teenager already received the punishment for his actions by the destruction of their own property

> Cars have always been dangerous, and aside from gross safety and emissions laws, we're allowed to modify them.

These statements are inherently ignoring the externalities that the dangers pose to others on the roads and streets. For years we’ve allowed people to essentially modify their cars however they want, we’re allowing car companies to build vehicles that are literally killing people on the streets with little action to prevent it.

This status quo is really bad and we should fix it. People should not be allowed to drive lifted vehicles on urban streets. If modifying your car was only something that negatively impacted the owner, that would be fine. But the fact is that modifying cars tends to make them more dangerous to others on the street, not just the occupants of the car. We need more safety controls on car companies, not less. We need cars to have automatic speed controls that limit them to the speed limit on the street.

This isn’t a debate about if people should be allowed to modify their equipment, but if they do, they shouldn’t be allowed to drive that on public roads. Take it to the track or some off-roading specific place, not our public streets where we’re now seeing the highest pedestrian death rates in the last 40 years.

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

#72

Post by djbusby »

ajross wrote: post #37
lolinder wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Did you miss the part where the automobile features and behaviors can suddenly change because of software?

But my 1971 Buick is almost exactly the same as it was. There are no sudden changes.

When the operator doesn't have full Agency of their hardware, can they be held accountable for it's unexpected behavior?

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

#73

Post by coryrc »

eropple wrote: post #39
maxsilver wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Our regulatory state mandates small airplanes use leaded gasoline and has for many decades, literally harming poor children the most.

Our regulatory state drives up the cost of housing in numerous ways (zoning, arc-fault breakers, "look and feel", etc). Children don't hardly see their parents because they must drive long distances to commute, they don't get adequate supervision.

Our culture is what allows this to continue. We culturally don't demand excellence. We denigrate smart people. We refuse to have standards for raising children, leading to inter-generational idiocy. And now those idiots vote to keep making more idiots ("don't say gay", anti-abortion, no free BC, etc.) Regulation won't fix a broken culture.

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

#74

Post by anileated »

crazygringo wrote: post #52

Maybe this is an unpopular opinion here, but "tickets" don't make any conceptual sense for driverless cars. The entire concept of tickets and fines are to act as a deterrent to individual drivers who might make unsafe choices -- that they'll actively choose whether to obey a speed limit or not. Driverless cars don't seem to be programmed to break laws in the first place. They're incapable of making a choice to break…

> Tickets are for individuals who make choices; safety regulations with fines and revoking licenses are for corporations and things like driverless cars.

Fine the owner of the self-driving car enough and she will sell it and never buy from this company again. Fine enough owners and the company is broke.

Similarly, we do not punish the Coca-Colas of the world for pumping out fossil-fuel based plastic packaging by a ton, but countries do increasingly enforce consumer recycling (with penalties).

Not saying it’s good but it is what it is.

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

#75

Post by toast0 »

kart23 wrote: post #58
Rebelgecko wrote: post #42

When I've taken Waymo rides, the weirdest part of the experience was that it actually obeyed speed limits and stopped at stop signs. The latter actually freaked out other drivers. I can't wait until the selfishness of humans is no longer a factor when it comes to road safety.

here you see two waymos turning right, and the one behind actually turns right from the left lane before the first car proceeds. neither were using indicators either. honestly you’d have to be an incredibly selfish human to pull this off. https://youtu.be/kN0MLclnWa0?feature=shared

Makes sense if the 2nd waymo identified the 1st. If I drove around waymo cars enough, I would probably consider driving around them like this at turns like this where gaps in traffic were typically long enough for humans but not waymo.

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

#76

Post by coryrc »

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…

It's immaterial. Auto manufacturers' product designers and executives aren't being held responsible for rising pedestrian deaths because their oversized killer vehicles keep running over people when driven by humans. Self-driving is responsible for almost no deaths or injuries, most likely net-negative.

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

#77

Post by shkkmo »

exhilaration wrote: post #45
bluescrn wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

What about comma? https://comma.ai/ Seems like our old friend geohot built exactly what you want. Positive HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36927971

That is only a level 2 autonomous driving system, with capabilities on par with many other stock manufacturer driver assistance system. Having an open source alternative is coolsl, but it doesn't really bear on the argument I think is being made.

I think the argument is that we won't see the same availability beyond level 3, since level 4 is the first step where a human is not required behind the wheel. This means you probably need subscription to have a remote human who can step in and take control in edge cases, at least until we develop AGI. Even then, I suspect the economics of running a full AGI from each vehicles will make a subscription mandatory.

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

#78

Post by gnicholas »

crazygringo wrote: post #52

Maybe this is an unpopular opinion here, but "tickets" don't make any conceptual sense for driverless cars. The entire concept of tickets and fines are to act as a deterrent to individual drivers who might make unsafe choices -- that they'll actively choose whether to obey a speed limit or not. Driverless cars don't seem to be programmed to break laws in the first place. They're incapable of making a choice to break…

I agree that regular, run-of-the-mill tickets wouldn’t motivate driverless car companies. But I disagree that there shouldn’t be any penalty for a company whose fleet does not exceed some threshold of red-light-running, for example. If a vehicle unjustifiably runs a red light, there should be a penalty, regardless of how it’s being driven. The penalties could differ for driverless car companies, to make sure they’re big enough to meaningfully motivate these companies.

Otherwise it feels patently unfair to human drivers, who can’t say “well, my family hasn’t broken many traffic laws recently, so I shouldn’t have to pay a ticket for just running this one red light/almost hitting this one pedestrian.

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

#79

Post by wongarsu »

crazygringo wrote: post #52

Maybe this is an unpopular opinion here, but "tickets" don't make any conceptual sense for driverless cars. The entire concept of tickets and fines are to act as a deterrent to individual drivers who might make unsafe choices -- that they'll actively choose whether to obey a speed limit or not. Driverless cars don't seem to be programmed to break laws in the first place. They're incapable of making a choice to break…

Tickets also set dangerous incentives. Cities would be rewarded for intentionally creating traffic situations that will be misinterpreted by driverless cars, making the roads less save for everyone.

Of course this can already be an issue today, but driverless cars might tip it from being a necessary evil to just plain evil

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

#80

Post by BobaFloutist »

solardev wrote: post #28
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…

> 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…

>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?

People already mod their cars, and there are vast communities of teens and early-twenties following exhaustive video tutorials on how to illegally and unsafely make their car faster and louder. Cars aren't quite FOSS, but they're better documented than most FOSS is.

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