California to begin ticketing driverless cars that violate traffic laws • Hacker News Board

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

#31

Post by fourspacetabs » Sat, May 02, 2026, 6:48 PM UTC

subhobroto wrote: post #5

UPDATE (can't respond to the two subcomments below due to post throttling, so I'm updating this comment instead) > the car is basically a taxi and the taxi service is to blame for any mistakes @skybrian - Agreed! but if you read the article, the CA DMV is ticketing the manufacturer , not the operator . None of my concerns hold if the operator was ticketed - infact, existing regulations are set up exactly that way, so…

Not sure I agree. The clear boundary here to me is who owns and is operating the vehicle. Waymo both owns and operates their vehicles, it’s a taxi service, you wouldn’t say a Waymo rider is operating a vehicle and therefore deserves the ticket. Right now, no one can independently own and operate an AV the way Waymo or Tesla does.

When that happens someday, then the ticket would go to the owner/operator of the vehicle - whoever bought the car. If you get a ticket due to something dumb your personally owned Waymo did, wouldn’t you pursue that case against Waymo separately, the same way you’d pursue Hyundai for selling you a car whose engine blew up after 50k miles?

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

#32

Post by Teever » Sat, May 02, 2026, 6:48 PM UTC

zdw wrote: post #2

Ideally the fees would be similar to the Norway model, where some tickets are tied to the income of the driver, in this case the pre-tax earnings of the company that created the driverless car.

Agreed. We need to look at reforming fines in general.

Fines should be scaled to income and the value of the vehicle and should exponentially increase for reoffense when in the same catagory of offense.

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

#33

Post by MostlyStable » Sat, May 02, 2026, 6:48 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #19

Ticketing is a weird thing to do with driverless cars. If the violations are intentional and easily fixable, then just pass laws/regulations requiring AV's to follow rules or else cease operations entirely. If the violations are unintentional but happen only rarely in weird edge-case situations, then just set low frequency thresholds for them to be allowed, the same way we allow tiny amounts of rodent hairs in peanut…

In all of your situations except for cases where no good legal option exists, ticketing is just the easier way to apply your suggested idea. It gives a direct incentive to the company to lower the rate as far as is possible. It doesn't allow some minimal amount without a fee, but that doesn't seem like that big of a deal.

The biggest reason for the difference between Autonomous vehicles and peanut butter is that with autonomous vehicles, we already have a compliance system in place....cops. It's not designed for autonomous vehicles, and you are correct that it's not the way you would design it for the ground up for autonomous vehicles, but it's far better to accept the imperfections than to build some new, separate compliance and monitoring system on top of the existing one. The benefits aren't large enough to justify it.

In the far future when the vast majority of vehicles are autonomous? Sure, probably worth scrapping to a new system (by then, my guess is that issues are rare enough to just not have a system at all and just use the legal system in the rare cases of large issues).

Until then, ticketing in the case of traffic violations seems fine and good enough to me.

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

#34

Post by tintor » Sat, May 02, 2026, 6:48 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #19

Ticketing is a weird thing to do with driverless cars. If the violations are intentional and easily fixable, then just pass laws/regulations requiring AV's to follow rules or else cease operations entirely. If the violations are unintentional but happen only rarely in weird edge-case situations, then just set low frequency thresholds for them to be allowed, the same way we allow tiny amounts of rodent hairs in peanut…

Ticketing AVs for individual violations like human drivers is the only fair way.

How would your proposal work for personal driverless cars, with/without custom modifications? ie. if my personal car commits violation on its way to pick me up

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

#35

Post by cyanmagenta » Sat, May 02, 2026, 6:49 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #19

Ticketing is a weird thing to do with driverless cars. If the violations are intentional and easily fixable, then just pass laws/regulations requiring AV's to follow rules or else cease operations entirely. If the violations are unintentional but happen only rarely in weird edge-case situations, then just set low frequency thresholds for them to be allowed, the same way we allow tiny amounts of rodent hairs in peanut…

You make some good points, but here are some counterpoints:

There is an existing infrastructure for ticketing by license plate, payment processing, collection, etc.

You’re describing changes to the law, which require a bunch of procedural hurdles. It’s much easier for the DMV to just promulgate new rules that tap into existing infrastructure, as they did here.

Also, how is the government supposed to assess whether these violations are intentional or not? Tickets are strict liability (you get the ticket if you do it regardless of intent, reasons, etc.) because it is easy to administer.

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

#36

Post by crazygringo » Sat, May 02, 2026, 6:51 PM UTC

wongarsu wrote: post #27

crazygringo wrote: post #19

Ticketing is a weird thing to do with driverless cars. If the violations are intentional and easily fixable, then just pass laws/regulations requiring AV's to follow rules or else cease operations entirely. If the violations are unintentional but happen only rarely in weird edge-case situations, then just set low frequency thresholds for them to be allowed, the same way we allow tiny amounts of rodent hairs in peanut…

No, I think ticketing is the right thing to do. You set a law. Any instance of breaking that law costs money, so the AV company has an incentive to reduce the number of violations. The won't be able to bring the number of violations down to 0 just like we can't bring the number of cockroaches in chocolate down to 0, but that nonzero amount is just a regulatory cost they can decrease by getting closer to the goal of 0…

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 minor violations to ban someone from driving. But with shared software across a fleet, you can just require the company to fix its driving software directly when possible. Ticketing is actually counterproductive, because it allows these companies to avoid many of these fixes if the tickets are infrequent enough.

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

#37

Post by MostlyStable » Sat, May 02, 2026, 6:53 PM UTC

infecto wrote: post #23

subhobroto wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a Waymo (and other driverless car) supporter, this seems like an obviously good thing, right? I’m a little surprised this wasn’t possible before given the amount of regulatory scrutiny (correctly) applied to these companies Not necessarily. I went into a bit more detail in my own comment but it might be useful to think that when regulations are written keeping in mind multibillion dollar automobile companies, wh…

I would hope any type of software modification would put more of the responsibility the owner.

I'm of the opinion that if one owns an autonomous vehicle, regardless of software modification or not (which should be allowed), then one is fully responsible for it's actions. If one doesn't trust the software provided by the manufacturer, don't buy/use it. Once one chooses to buy it and operate it, then it's that person.

Possible exceptions would be in the case that, after purchase, the manufacturer pushes a software update that meaningfully changes the behavior in such a way that it causes issues. In that case, both A) the manufacturer should be responsible and B) the owner should have the option to get some kind of compensation.

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

#38

Post by crazygringo » Sat, May 02, 2026, 6:53 PM UTC

delfinom wrote: post #26

crazygringo wrote: post #19

Ticketing is a weird thing to do with driverless cars. If the violations are intentional and easily fixable, then just pass laws/regulations requiring AV's to follow rules or else cease operations entirely. If the violations are unintentional but happen only rarely in weird edge-case situations, then just set low frequency thresholds for them to be allowed, the same way we allow tiny amounts of rodent hairs in peanut…

Ok, but why are AVs getting a break on the same tickets a human gets no "low frequency threshold" for them to be allowed. If a AV runs a red light or a stop sign, it should be the same penalty, period. If AV companies want to avoid the tickets, they can make their claimed superior drivers avoid violating the law.

No, you're missing the point.

If an AV is regularly running red lights or stop signs, it should be a much worse penalty. It shouldn't be permitted to operate at all.

It shouldn't just be given occasional tickets. Tickets are not the right enforcement mechanism.

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

#39

Post by skybrian » Sat, May 02, 2026, 6:55 PM UTC

subhobroto wrote: post #5

UPDATE (can't respond to the two subcomments below due to post throttling, so I'm updating this comment instead) > the car is basically a taxi and the taxi service is to blame for any mistakes @skybrian - Agreed! but if you read the article, the CA DMV is ticketing the manufacturer , not the operator . None of my concerns hold if the operator was ticketed - infact, existing regulations are set up exactly that way, so…

It seems pretty reasonable to me that when you're not driving, the car is basically a taxi and the taxi service is to blame for any mistakes. The car manufacturer isn't just making cars anymore. It's providing a service.

Perhaps they could sell the car to a different taxi service, though?

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

#40

Post by croes » Sat, May 02, 2026, 6:55 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #19

Ticketing is a weird thing to do with driverless cars. If the violations are intentional and easily fixable, then just pass laws/regulations requiring AV's to follow rules or else cease operations entirely. If the violations are unintentional but happen only rarely in weird edge-case situations, then just set low frequency thresholds for them to be allowed, the same way we allow tiny amounts of rodent hairs in peanut…

Traffic has rules, you violate them you get a ticket