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California to begin ticketing driverless cars that violate traffic laws

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191–200 of 371 posts

Re: California to begin ticketing driverless cars that violate traffic laws

#191

This will be just another minor cost of doing business unless they are treated like human drivers in at least two other ways. 1) If theses companies get enough points on their license, their license is revoked. Not just for that vehicle, but for all of their vehicles. (The number of points would need to be adjusted for number of miles driven.) 2) Senior executives could be held criminally liable for vehicular manslau…

A more pragmatic metric would be comparing deaths/mile for drivered cars against deaths/mile of driverless cars.

Re: California to begin ticketing driverless cars that violate traffic laws

#193
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a representative example. (When you're disputing my evidenced claim, it behooves you to bring your own facts, rather than just asserting.)

That is not an evidenced claim though. It's an anecdote.

Evidence is, generally speaking, anecdotal.

Re: California to begin ticketing driverless cars that violate traffic laws

#194
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> She gets her license back. That's wild. In 3 years, at age 83, if she wanted to... she could try and take the driving test again and become licensed. This is just not going to happen :P In the end, the court can only prohibit her from driving while she is on probation. Would it be great if this time she could be banned forever? Sure. But there's reasons why we don't just let judges make up arbitrary penalties and p…

> she could try and take the driving test again and become licensed. This is just not going to happen Why? More importantly, why is it on the table? > the court can only prohibit her from driving while she is on probation This seems incorrect. Lau was placed on probation for 2 years and had her license revoked for 3 [1]. > Would it be great if this time she could be banned forever? Sure. But there's reasons why we do…

So your hypothetical is that someone reads the headline "elderly woman kills family of four with car due to incapacity, receives no jail time" and goes "oh, no jail? No biggie" but if they read a headline "... and receives life in prison" they're going to rush out and take away grandma's keys because now they care?

Really?

Re: California to begin ticketing driverless cars that violate traffic laws

#195
post #58
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who does it benefit if an accident ruins a second life? What does a jail sentence deter? ("[no] gross negligence [...] wasn’t engaging in a race or sideshow, was not texting, and was not under influence") This person was 80 years old with no criminal record, needs to pay $67400 in restitution, do 200 hours of community service, isn't allowed to drive for 3 years but "never intends to drive again". Apologised to the f…

Your full-throated defense of Mary Lau is completely beside the point (and for what it's worth, it would be a fifth life, not a "second" -- she killed an entire family of four). GP claimed that human drivers who commit vehicular manslaughter get the book; they don't.

Sorry if my throat sounded full to you, just writing what I think fits the context. In this case, apparently an 80yo getting punished in various ways is what GP had as example of how criminals are getting off easy. I see this pattern constantly, where people can't be bothered to read an article with the background info (much less the court case summary itself) but join the march and sign the petitions to lock the person up for life or whatever the outcry is

It feels unfair to me, like it could have been me or the commenter in a parallel universe, and I don't expect either of us are evil and intending to do bad, so I bring up what the article actually says were the circumstances (no intent or recklessness proven beyond doubt) and consequences (at least, besides the guilt factor). Don't you feel this could happen to you tomorrow just as easily as to anyone else? Should you get a worse punishment than all of what this woman got (see above) for getting into an accident with a fatal outcome? (Assuming you drive a vehicle, of course)

Re: California to begin ticketing driverless cars that violate traffic laws

#196
post #46
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would I know I'm going to kill someone on the road today and stop doing that thing?

Don't drive intoxicated, tired, distracted, or physically impaired by age or other means.

Those are, by definition, things that prevent you from rationally estimating capabilities and risk.

Re: California to begin ticketing driverless cars that violate traffic laws

#197

Bike Lanes have turned out to be an interesting edge case. Waymos are currently dropping off and picking up passengers in a bike lane which is not legal (because it is dangerous) however many ride share drivers also do this. As somebody who is commonly a biker / pedestrian I am excited that AVs will likely make many things safer for that class of user. That being said, I do worry about how we encode these "social und…

In SF it's legal for taxies to do pickups/drop-offs in bike lanes I haven't seen any evidence Waymo does it anywhere illegal "just because rideshares do"

This is false. It is only legal in the rare event that a passenger requires curb-side access for accessibility/ADA reasons; any other use is still illegal. To quote SFMTA taxi training:

Only drop off in a separated bike lane if you have disabled or elderly customers who require direct access to the curb  You may only pick up in a separated bike lane if the dispatcher tells you that the customer is disabled and must be picked up at a location that is next to a separated bike lane.

Taxi drivers often intentionally misstate this regulation because it’s more annoying to follow the law and find a legal place to stop so they pretend they are allowed to use bike lanes for any reason.

Re: California to begin ticketing driverless cars that violate traffic laws

#198
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is, with software you don't need tickets. Either the software is written to try to follow the law or it isn't. If it's trying, then we establish thresholds. If the company is actively trying to break the law, it should be shut down. Tickets are a silly, roundabout way to go about it. They make sense for human drivers because they're all running different independent "brain software" and it's unrealistic for…

I feel like this trivializises all software development. It happens but 99% of development is done to follow the spec or law in this case. The failures or bugs are usually not intentional. You basically saying if 1 car in the fleet breaks the law shut them down? If thats a strawman im sorry but even in software algorithm have unintentional bugs and make mistakes. The same is true for human drivers but we dont revoke…

Re-read my root comment. I specifically outlined having thresholds for unintentional violations.

Re: California to begin ticketing driverless cars that violate traffic laws

#199
post #46
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would I know I'm going to kill someone on the road today and stop doing that thing?

Don't drive intoxicated, tired, distracted, or physically impaired by age or other means.

There's a test every 5 years after iirc 65yo where they check things like response time, if you have enough strength for handling the wheel completely unimpeded, and if you aren't suffering from dementia. At least that's what I've heard from my grandparents about the tests they had to do. If that doesn't cover the age risk, imo that test would be the thing to fix. Not sure how strict those are in the USA

Since the article doesn't speak of her well-being, I don't think we can judge here whether this woman should have taken herself out of society already (from what I hear, the USA isn't exactly public transport or walking friendly, assuming she can still walk distances in the first place, idk what old people are supposed to do there)

The other three factors you mentioned were not at play here according to the linked article. But I agree in general of course, and in those cases I don't disagree with extra punishment (and/or, the better preventor: increasing the odds of being caught)

Re: California to begin ticketing driverless cars that violate traffic laws

#200
post #7

I am, in general, hoping AV will reduce road deaths in the future. The last hurdle is regulatory. We can’t let AV manufacturers use “there’s no driver” as a way to escape responsibility, externalizing the harms AC cause onto society. The question is how to achieve fairness. If a human driver commits vehicular manslaughter, they get the book. What about AV? $10 million? Executives go to jail? What if $10 million fine…

Adjust the fines such that X is some acceptably large number.

The trickiest part will be figuring out how many dollars per mile driven is an acceptable cost of business..

I'd probably reserve the whole executives to jail thing to cases where you can prove negligence or something.

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