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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

#101

Post by marcosdumay »

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

WTF is that crossing mark? The place is completely unsafe for a pedestrian, why does the city wants people to cross there?

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

#102

Post by kart23 »

toast0 wrote: post #75
kart23 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

it’s pretty irresponsible and probably illegal to do that, it’s dangerous because now you’re impeding the first cars ability to see oncoming traffic or turn timely, as well as making it harder to see possible pedestrians crossing.

waymo can also take way tighter gaps that most humans would find dangerous, it’s really just not that consistent yet.

https://youtu.be/P6sw4EKegp4?t=1444&feature=shared

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

#103

Post by prepend »

I got a ticket from a DC traffic camera. Even though wasn’t me driving, I was forced to pay or be sent to collections.

The ticket was $100 and I could appeal it by paying $175 of which $100 would be refunded if my appeal was in my favor.

Their city ordinance said I was responsible because I owned the car.

I imagine it’s the same for driverless cars. The registered owner will get and pay the ticket. They don’t care who is driving.

An interesting question though is they driverless cars should probably have different speed limits as they can respond very differently from humans.

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

#104

Post by lolinder »

michpoch wrote: post #95
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 ti…

I agree that's how it should work, but the TX law that the article quotes changes that rule to make the owner of the vehicle at fault for self driving failures.

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

#105

Post by epistasis »

t0mas88 wrote: post #41
epistasis wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's the mostly overly American thing I've read this year... Make consumers file a class action against car manufacturers (good luck with a Tesla and mandatory arbitration), all to avoid doing the sensible thing: Make some rules for this market. The likes of Musk will moan and bitch about it, but regulation is a perfectly good solution for this.

Well if you read to the second paragraph, you will see I'm not attached to class action lawsuits, and alternatively suggest other legal arrangements.

My point is that operators must bear some of the responsibility for their operation of these vehicles.

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

#106

Post by ajross »

djbusby wrote: post #72
ajross wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

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

Yes? Because that's what "supervision" means? Again, I'm very much not following your logic.

The whole idea behind supervised autonomy[1] is that the device may not behave correctly. Period. If you aren't capable of supervising your car after an update you clearly weren't doing any supervision before the update.

[1] Or supervised anything! Would you argue against holding parents accountable for childproofing their homes just because their kids got an "update" and learned to walk? Again I really don't think you're thinking this through.

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

#108

Post by maxsilver »

coryrc wrote: post #73
eropple wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 con…

> Regulation won't fix a broken culture.

That's fine. Regulation's "job" isn't to "fix a broken culture", it exists to prevent repeat mistakes -- especially risky/damaging ones. The saying goes, "safety regulations are written in blood" -- that most of the regulations we have exist to prevent some kind of tragedy that has already happened at least once.

> Our regulatory state drives up the cost of housing in numerous ways ("look and feel", etc).

Most of those are not regulations, they're just rules. (i.e., 'neighborhood character / look and feel').

> Our regulatory state drives up the cost of housing (arc-fault breakers)

That's not a 'cost drive-up', that's basic safety. (AFCI breakers literally prevent home electrical fires, Home Depot sells these at full retail markup for like ~$50/each. (120v,15a). You might use, what 12 of these on the average home? $600 total? On a $300k new build, AFCI costs you 0.2% of your total budget. These are not why housing is expensive).

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

#109

Post by 05 »

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

There's more discussion of that video on selfDrivingCars subreddit (including comments from Kevin Chen who shot the video) [0].

The turn indicators use PWM'ed LEDs and can be invisible in daylight with fast enough shutter speed on the camera.

[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/18myjc6/dr...

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

#110

Post by 1letterunixname »

Traffic tickets will need to belong to the competent supervisor of an autonomous system violating stated restrictions, even if they lack a driver's license. (The need for a driver's license will decline for FSD L4-L5, especially if the human won't be operating the vehicle anymore.)

Also, under what circumstances/edge-cases should speed limits and traffic laws should be breakable by an autonomous system?

a. If you were someone bleeding out to death and need to get to a hospital, do you honestly want it to complete to complete stop like a Canadian Mormon nerd at every stop sign rather than be the most aggressive NYC cab driver-meets-ludicrous speed safe-ish enough so you don't die?

b. Evading someone believed intending on causing great bodily harm to reach a safe place like a police station?

c. Following a vehicle containing a kidnapping or human trafficking victim?

d. Commandeering by a LEO in active pursuit of a dangerous suspect?

e. Fleeing an incoming regional disaster threat?

It is probable to likely that, by over-regulation, untold numbers of preventable deaths, injuries, suffering, and property damage will be incurred by vehicles created by corporations to always follow laws blindly rather than spend additional money to handle edge-cases or allow exceptions.

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