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California to begin ticketing driverless cars that violate traffic laws

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221–230 of 371 posts

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

#221
post #220
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…

Societies can already reduce road deaths to nearly zero, it's cheap, it's easy, and it's fun. It's just redirecting all of the cash we spend on vehicles/cars/highways/roadways/signs/etc into public infrastructure that is all encompassing. A hundred billion dollars a year [0] on construction (reading the definition I'm not 100% sure what is included in this due to how definitions can be hazy) has goes a long way, not…

Just because you like trains does not mean that it is actually a solution to everyone’s problem. For example, until proper law-enforcement starts happening on public transit, nobody in my family is allowed to take it in USA (they are allowed to do so in Singapore or Japan)

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

#222
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better than the current standard for AV, which is "what floor?"

Cruise was entirely shut down because of an incident that didnt even result in a death. Thats way worse than what people tend to get

An incident, by the way, triggered by a human driver hitting a pedestrian and knocking them into Cruise's path.

That driver was never found. It's not clear what efforts, if any, were made to find them. After all the Cruise is covered in cameras.

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

#223
post #178
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…

We subsidize driving by somewhat over a trillion dollars annually, mostly due to lax penalties for negligence which shift liability to drivers’ victims[1]. One way to tackle all of these problems would be requiring drivers to cover the full damages. Another simple and effective measure would be changing fines from absolute values to a percentage of income. Right now, parking in a bike lane usually doesn’t kill anyone…

Yeah, making fines relative to income would change behaviors for sure. A $20 ticket when you make $20 an hour hits different when you're making $200 or $2,000/hr. If it was a percentage of pay, then the ticket would actually sting.

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

#224
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…

Full liability. It's a machine with predictable performance.

The law applied to humans needs to account for their fallibilities. Not so with a machine.

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

#225
post #154
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm genuinely stunned that AV's do not have the ability to be "commandeered" by Police/Fire/EMS in a pinch, and I'm honestly surprised that regular citizens can't just hit a red button that signal "this is seriously an emergency." The passenger of a Waymo can, but not anyone outside it. There's a very prominent "call for help" button on the screen when you get inside.

A “call for help” button is customer service. The ability to say “this is the police, drop everything and attend to this car” button would be helpful.

I've never actually tried it, but I would expect customer service to be able to move the car out of the way or push it to someone who can remotely pilot it.

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

#226
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…

Now try applying this logic to elevators.

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

#227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, 11 deaths per billion miles driven (or about 47k per year) is currently seen as an OK cost. More than twice as much per mile as places like Sweden and Switzerland, and still substantially more than places like Canada, Australia or Germany (all three in the 6-8 deaths per billion miles range). So it's not like there isn't room to improve. The effort to do so just isn't seen as worth the cost at the societal…

Don't forget to add rail incidents to that metric. I live in Spain, this year we had 4 derailments for a total of 48 deaths and 195 injured. The USA has had 0 passengers killed or injured from train accidents this year. Portugal had 15 death after a tram derailment. In Amsterdam, the tram is more dangerous than the car. Also Germany is very high (for European standards) because of the Autobahn. They can save around 1…

What. in god's name are you saying?

> Don't forget to add rail incidents to that metric. I live in Spain, this year we had 4 derailments for a total of 48 deaths and 195 injured.

Yeah and how many in the 15 years prior? 112. Of which 80 were in a single (TGV) crash.

How many people die each year in Spanish roads? Thousands.

> The USA has had 0 passengers killed or injured from train accidents this year.

Can't have rail accidents if you don't have rail *taps side of head*

> Portugal had 15 death after a tram derailment.

Oh my god, after a 140-year old tourist attraction malfunctioned! Hardly representative of any transit system whatsoever.

> In Amsterdam, the tram is more dangerous than the car.

This is just not true, by any metric.

And also, why are cars comparatively less dangerous in Amsterdam than in most other places? Because it is not designed for cars first, there are low speed limits enforced by traffic calming (like speed humps and narrow cobbled streets) everywhere.

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

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

The message that incapacity, even to the point of killing four people, will be excused is quite clear.

The deterrence argument is used to throw the book at people committing minor crimes like shoplifting. Let's apply it to quadruple homicide, eh?

Mary Long Fau should have died in prison.

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

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, 11 deaths per billion miles driven (or about 47k per year) is currently seen as an OK cost. More than twice as much per mile as places like Sweden and Switzerland, and still substantially more than places like Canada, Australia or Germany (all three in the 6-8 deaths per billion miles range). So it's not like there isn't room to improve. The effort to do so just isn't seen as worth the cost at the societal…

Coming from a bio background, I’ve always been confused why auto fatality stats are normalized per miles driven. Epidemiological metrics like incidence or prevalence seem like they would work fine? Town A would be “safer” than town B if people’s commutes are 20% shorter, even if accidents occur w same frequency

Because it yields a simple corollary that to make travelling safer you can reduce the number of miles driven. Mostly by giving people viable alternatives to driving, be it long-distance rail or bike lanes to move around quicker and safer in the city.

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

#230
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We subsidize driving by somewhat over a trillion dollars annually, mostly due to lax penalties for negligence which shift liability to drivers’ victims[1]. One way to tackle all of these problems would be requiring drivers to cover the full damages. Another simple and effective measure would be changing fines from absolute values to a percentage of income. Right now, parking in a bike lane usually doesn’t kill anyone…

Yeah, making fines relative to income would change behaviors for sure. A $20 ticket when you make $20 an hour hits different when you're making $200 or $2,000/hr. If it was a percentage of pay, then the ticket would actually sting.

There are a lot of people that just don't pay the fines and ignore suspended licenses as money stops becoming a motivator on the other end as well.
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