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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

#91

Post by shagie »

bluescrn wrote: post #63
woodruffw wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have strong opinions about self-driving cars in this context, but the pattern of this argument doesn't track: you can omit "self-driving" and the underlying premise is still the same (that companies have an incentive to lease rather than sell objects to capture service revenues). But the reality is that people do own cars, and no car manufacturer that I know is also trying to become a taxi operator (except ma…

The pattern is that hardware is sold but software is now rented, it must be a 'revenue stream', not a one-off sale. Cars were hardware. But now contain ever-increasing amounts of software. With self-driving cars, the software is the main feature.

Software that is a one off sale is rarely profitable to do as that comes with the additional cost of updates and patches.

The development cost of the updates and patches has to come from somewhere - either significantly marking up the initial purchase cost to fund the on going development (side bit: when a one time purchase server shuts down people are up in arms about that) or with some form of subscription model.

If a driverless car maker can be liable for the software that they released some time ago and didn't update, then the funding of that development effort has to come from somewhere.

If some of the compute or data updates is in the cloud, that comes with an ongoing cost. Compare with getting a DVD with a database of road updates once a year ( https://ford.navigation.com/product/Catalog/2023-Green-DVD-M... ) and the "this road is closed" ( https://www.wyoroad.info/pls/Browse/WRR.STATIC5?SelectedDist... ) or "there is heavy traffic, a different route is suggested" services. Those come with an ongoing cost somewhere.

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

#92

Post by nradov »

bluescrn wrote: post #31
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)

Individuals can buy self-driving cars from Mercedes-Benz today. They are only level 3 autonomous, but the manufacturer does assume legal liability for incidents that occur during autonomous operation (traffic tickets may be a separate issue). There is a hefty subscription fee for the Drive Pilot service.

https://www.mbusa.com/en/owners/manuals/drive-pilot

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

#93

Post by ozymandias12 »

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…

OTA updates would require not only 5y simulation testing (dine in 5 days w the right computing power) but would also not be applied all at the same time, in order to get flaws in time before full fleet deployment.

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

#94

Post by tuatoru »

woodruffw wrote: post #55
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)

I don't have strong opinions about self-driving cars in this context, but the pattern of this argument doesn't track: you can omit "self-driving" and the underlying premise is still the same (that companies have an incentive to lease rather than sell objects to capture service revenues). But the reality is that people do own cars, and no car manufacturer that I know is also trying to become a taxi operator (except ma…

From the point of view of a maker and seller of cars, the incentive for self driving is that it increases the size of the market. Rather than just selling one car per adult in a family, it could sell one per adult and one per child.

Car makers operating according to this incentive will try to discourage taxi-like functions in self-driving cars, perhaps by only allowing operation when specified people are recognized by the car (anti-theft feature!).

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

#95

Post by michpoch »

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…

> Let's say I own a self-driving car that's able to reliably park itself. I pay close attention the first few months to make sure that it's safe and reliable, and once it's proved itself I start trusting it. I've been as careful as can reasonably be expected, but 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.

But this is very easy. The self-driving is a component, same as brakes or lights. If your brakes stop working because of manufacturing issue and you crash into something it's the manufacturer's fault. Nothing new here.

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

#96

Post by Snow_Falls »

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?

Not the person you relied too, but it should primarily be the manufacturers fault for pushing a dangerous update without adequate testing. However, if say, the new behaviour got in the news and the owner didn't update to the latest, safe update it could be their fault.

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

#97

Post by eropple »

stavros wrote: post #49
eropple wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So, if cars are certified, which they are, I'm not liable.

Are they? Forget even fully self-driving cars right now--who's certifying your lane assist after every OTA update? Like, point at the guy with the clipboard at USDOT or the NHTSA. Because as far as I know, that's not happening, you're open-palm slamming updates into a system you chose to bought and use, under an operational model where you must be fully ready to take over with no warning, and undertaking that is your call.

To be totally clear: I want a regulatory regime for this stuff such that it is safe-as-possible and not predicated on a human's attention not wandering in the way that a human's attention is going to very understandably wander. Without one, consumers need to not buy it on pain of their own significant liability.

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

#99

Post by marcosdumay »

ndriscoll wrote: post #62
PopAlongKid wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Here is a (very) incomplete list Unlike the potential of a vehicle making driving mistakes, none of your examples is harmful , especially not to random third parties. The only thing on your list I have direct experience with is Windows--I've had the Pro license ever since Win 10 came out, now on three different machines, and I don't see any ads on my desktop or popping up in my file system. (of course, I don't log i…

I can't be bothered to check, but I assume my corporate laptop is using pro/enterprise Windows, and it has definitely shown ads on the lock screen (it's very laggy when I want to unlock my computer, so very noticable). I don't interact with Windows much beyond opening a terminal, so they may be elsewhere too. I vaguely recall it randomly popping up some Xbox thing at one point. Honestly I don't see why corporate secu…

> Honestly I don't see why corporate security groups don't throw a fit over what Microsoft has been doing the last few years.

I have never seen any corporate security group that does its own thinking instead of rubber-stamping whatever Microsoft tells them.

And the current Windows privacy terms grant MS the right t upload to their servers anything from the disk or memory of your computer. So they already maximized the untrustworthiness here. We can stop expecting that anybody reacts.

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

#100

Post by stavros »

eropple wrote: post #97
stavros wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, if cars are certified, which they are, I'm not liable.

Are they? Forget even fully self-driving cars right now--who's certifying your lane assist after every OTA update? Like, point at the guy with the clipboard at USDOT or the NHTSA. Because as far as I know, that's not happening, you're open-palm slamming updates into a system you chose to bought and use , under an operational model where you must be fully ready to take over with no warning, and undertaking that is you…

Mercedes does accept liability on their self-driving system, so there is a choice beyond "oops our system killed your wife, sorry, she should have been paying attention while our car pretended to be able to drive".
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