10 ms·

So it's all fine when a lorry rear ends and pancakes a car because the driver fell asleep?

gambiting 10y ago
No, but if a driver falls asleep it's clearly their fault, if they survive the accident they will be charged with manslaughter. If a driverless truck rear ends a car because of a glitch or a mechanical fault where it didn't see the car in front for some reason, then I can only imagine the corporation recalling all of them at huge cost, and possibly paying millions of dollars in damages. I think the point is that when humans crash the responsibility is easy to establish, but we have no framework to work with once computers crash(and they will). And no, "they are still safer than humans" is not a valid defense when someone dies.
- karmacondon 10y ago
  The company making the vehicles will be responsible for any damages, and paying a massive insurance premium I'm sure. There will be legal consequences for gross negligence and anyone damaged will be made whole. I don't see how that's any different than the system we have now. And the emotional appeals cut both ways. How long before the parents of a child killed by a drunk or sleeping truck driver say "Why was he driving anyway? Why wasn't he replaced by a machine that wouldn't drink a six pack and nod off while at the wheel?"
  - moskie 10y ago
    > How long before the parents of a child say ... "Why wasn't he replaced by a machine?" The ultimate point being that the answer might be "decades." It might take that long for the prevailing opinion amongst the public and/or politicians to change that way. And it is affected by the actual accidents involving automated vehicles in the short term.
  - intended 10y ago
    That's partly an effect of being on HN. In non tech circles - the vast majority of the world - people are pretty famous for measuring risks by perception and not statistics. The idea of a robotic truck taking away jobs while also being a risk to life? America would take up mass transit before it buys into that system. Man I can see the headlines and political/ emotional arguments now. Godless SV tech priests rob Americans of the last few jobs they have. 1% and automation, no job left behind.! It's useful to remember that People refused seat belts until the argument was irrefutable. Hell doctors didn't wash hands regularly until it was drilled into their heads that they were infecting patients. And when it come to automated personal care - I bet that People will utterly, vociferously, oppose the loss of their agency in controlling their means of movement. People have romanticized the man and the horse, the man and the bike, the car - but it's because it's a matter of controlling that power. Selling that to the American public and the world at large is a multi generational effort.
    - Al-Khwarizmi 10y ago
      Maybe the American reaction will be like that, but my feeling is that if that happens, then China will take advantage of it by pushing automated driving while ignoring the emotional arguments (authoritarian governments have their advantages in this kind of things...) And then, the rest of the world will have to follow so as not to be left behind an industrial revolution...
    - sqeaky 10y ago
      America is not a single unified entity. All it takes is one trucking business to outcompete another for all the trucking companies to follow suit in the following decade. As for individuals, the government might gives tax breaks or ban the things. I think it is most that likely early adopters will use them and brag to everyone how much they save on fuel and airline tickets and how more (work, reading, video games, etc... ) they can do while travelling. Of course there will be holdouts, but they will be quickly outnumbered. Eventually so few manual drivers will be on the road that they are the exception and 99% of the accidents will be their fault. Then states will start banning driving manually.
      - 10y ago
  - gnaritas 10y ago
    > and paying a massive insurance premium I'm sure Nah, it'll be much cheaper than what they pay for humans since the bots will be in far fewer accidents and insurance companies actually care about statistics.
    - gambiting 10y ago
      I think you might be surprised - companies would be insured against a total recall due to software/hardware failure, which would far exceed the cost of any accident a computer could get into, so I guess the premiums might stay relatively high.
      - gnaritas 10y ago
        > Companies would be insured against a total recall due to software/hardware failure I don't think that's true at all. Recalls are a manufactures problem, the local trucking company is just going to have normal auto insurance just as with his human drivers.
        sqeaky 10y ago
        When a recall does happen how do the trucking companies keep on trucking? I mean surely this happens now, how do they solve this problem?
        gambiting 10y ago
        I guess airline companies are insured against loss of profit in case their airplanes get recalled and they have to do without. And probably the cost of renting airplanes from other companies so that they can keep on going.
        gnaritas 10y ago
        It doesn't happen. For that to happen every trucking manufacture would have have to recall every truck and that's simply never happened. Recalls are generally more along the lines of part Y has an issue, bring the truck in and we'll replace that part. The same will be true of automated trucking, parts will be recalled, and companies will have multiple different trucking manufactures to choose from so the notion that all the trucks will be recalled just isn't realistic.
CaptSpify 10y ago
Nobody is saying this is logical. The point is that people will use this as a hyped-up political foothold to point out why automated drivers are "unsafe" as well as "taking our jobs".
- visakanv 10y ago
  Fun fact: automated elevators were considered to be "unsafe" and "taking our jobs", too. Somehow we got past that one!
  - CaptSpify 10y ago
    Oh, I absolutely think we will get past this line of thinking. Automated driving is the future. I just don't think it will be a smooth transition.
  - Johnny555 10y ago
    And elevators sometimes kill people, yet few people are afraid of them. Admittedly, deaths are very rare, especially per-trip, 27 per year or 0.00000015% per trip -- self driving cars should be able to get into that level of safety, current automotive fatality rates are around 1 in 100M (or .000001%/mile) http://articles.latimes.com/2011/dec/15/news/la-heb-elevator-safety-death-201112115 http://articles.latimes.com/2011/dec/15/news/la-heb-elevator...
- radiorental 10y ago
  > political foothold Driver's union versus transportation industry. I have a hunch which way the politicians will sway.
dspillett 10y ago
No, but at least from the PoV of public perception the situation is easier to deal with in a way that allays fear. In your example that one drive is taken off the road. That drive is not a problem, and people assume that the remaining drivers are, for the most part, fine and unlikely to make the same mistake. In the automated truck example you can't take that one driver off the road because barring equipment failure they are all the same driver and just as likely to make the same mistake. If one human driver kills in such a manner, people will distrust that one human driver (or at worst that one trucking company, if bad training or other compliance issues are suspected), if one automated truck kills in such a manner people will distrust all automated trucks.
- snuxoll 10y ago
  Human beings don't have the ability to just attain knowledge and experience by a software updated, autonomous vehicles do. Yes, every autonomous truck on the road may be controlled by the same software exhibiting the same behaviors, but unlike a human they can all automatically be updated with new behaviors and share experiences with each other. This is precisely the goal of IBM's Watson if you will remember, an individual doctor only has their own experience - Watson can aggregate data from a virtually infinite number of data points and that knowledge and experience is shared across the network. Will accidents happen? Yes. But we can learn from them and the collective as a whole benefits, not one individual instance.
  - sqeaky 10y ago
    Likely it will be even better than you describe. Multiple competing companies all with their own software copying what the other teams are doing right. When one fails the others will continue on with lessons learned. Probably a lot like software development today except with a lower threshold for error, and hopefully the appropriate increase QA.
  - dspillett 10y ago
    I agree. As probably does everyone here. Now convince the herd that is the general public, who don't really understand the technology, don't have time for a long explanation, and tend to react with instincts and emotions that haven't had much by way of firmware upgrades for quite a few generations.

No, but if a driver falls asleep it's clearly their fault, if they survive the accident they will be charged with manslaughter. If a driverless truck rear ends a car because of a glitch or a mechanical fault where it didn't see the car in front for some reason, then I can only imagine the corporation recalling all of them at huge cost, and possibly paying millions of dollars in damages. I think the point is that when humans crash the responsibility is easy to establish, but we have no framework to work with once computers crash(and they will). And no, "they are still safer than humans" is not a valid defense when someone dies.

karmacondon 10y ago
The company making the vehicles will be responsible for any damages, and paying a massive insurance premium I'm sure. There will be legal consequences for gross negligence and anyone damaged will be made whole. I don't see how that's any different than the system we have now. And the emotional appeals cut both ways. How long before the parents of a child killed by a drunk or sleeping truck driver say "Why was he driving anyway? Why wasn't he replaced by a machine that wouldn't drink a six pack and nod off while at the wheel?"
- moskie 10y ago
  > How long before the parents of a child say ... "Why wasn't he replaced by a machine?" The ultimate point being that the answer might be "decades." It might take that long for the prevailing opinion amongst the public and/or politicians to change that way. And it is affected by the actual accidents involving automated vehicles in the short term.
- intended 10y ago
  That's partly an effect of being on HN. In non tech circles - the vast majority of the world - people are pretty famous for measuring risks by perception and not statistics. The idea of a robotic truck taking away jobs while also being a risk to life? America would take up mass transit before it buys into that system. Man I can see the headlines and political/ emotional arguments now. Godless SV tech priests rob Americans of the last few jobs they have. 1% and automation, no job left behind.! It's useful to remember that People refused seat belts until the argument was irrefutable. Hell doctors didn't wash hands regularly until it was drilled into their heads that they were infecting patients. And when it come to automated personal care - I bet that People will utterly, vociferously, oppose the loss of their agency in controlling their means of movement. People have romanticized the man and the horse, the man and the bike, the car - but it's because it's a matter of controlling that power. Selling that to the American public and the world at large is a multi generational effort.
  - Al-Khwarizmi 10y ago
    Maybe the American reaction will be like that, but my feeling is that if that happens, then China will take advantage of it by pushing automated driving while ignoring the emotional arguments (authoritarian governments have their advantages in this kind of things...) And then, the rest of the world will have to follow so as not to be left behind an industrial revolution...
  - sqeaky 10y ago
    America is not a single unified entity. All it takes is one trucking business to outcompete another for all the trucking companies to follow suit in the following decade. As for individuals, the government might gives tax breaks or ban the things. I think it is most that likely early adopters will use them and brag to everyone how much they save on fuel and airline tickets and how more (work, reading, video games, etc... ) they can do while travelling. Of course there will be holdouts, but they will be quickly outnumbered. Eventually so few manual drivers will be on the road that they are the exception and 99% of the accidents will be their fault. Then states will start banning driving manually.
    - 10y ago
- gnaritas 10y ago
  > and paying a massive insurance premium I'm sure Nah, it'll be much cheaper than what they pay for humans since the bots will be in far fewer accidents and insurance companies actually care about statistics.
  - gambiting 10y ago
    I think you might be surprised - companies would be insured against a total recall due to software/hardware failure, which would far exceed the cost of any accident a computer could get into, so I guess the premiums might stay relatively high.
    - gnaritas 10y ago
      > Companies would be insured against a total recall due to software/hardware failure I don't think that's true at all. Recalls are a manufactures problem, the local trucking company is just going to have normal auto insurance just as with his human drivers.
      - sqeaky 10y ago
        When a recall does happen how do the trucking companies keep on trucking? I mean surely this happens now, how do they solve this problem?
        gambiting 10y ago
        I guess airline companies are insured against loss of profit in case their airplanes get recalled and they have to do without. And probably the cost of renting airplanes from other companies so that they can keep on going.
        gnaritas 10y ago
        It doesn't happen. For that to happen every trucking manufacture would have have to recall every truck and that's simply never happened. Recalls are generally more along the lines of part Y has an issue, bring the truck in and we'll replace that part. The same will be true of automated trucking, parts will be recalled, and companies will have multiple different trucking manufactures to choose from so the notion that all the trucks will be recalled just isn't realistic.

CaptSpify 10y ago

Nobody is saying this is logical. The point is that people will use this as a hyped-up political foothold to point out why automated drivers are "unsafe" as well as "taking our jobs".

visakanv 10y ago
Fun fact: automated elevators were considered to be "unsafe" and "taking our jobs", too. Somehow we got past that one!
- CaptSpify 10y ago
  Oh, I absolutely think we will get past this line of thinking. Automated driving is the future. I just don't think it will be a smooth transition.
- Johnny555 10y ago
  And elevators sometimes kill people, yet few people are afraid of them. Admittedly, deaths are very rare, especially per-trip, 27 per year or 0.00000015% per trip -- self driving cars should be able to get into that level of safety, current automotive fatality rates are around 1 in 100M (or .000001%/mile) http://articles.latimes.com/2011/dec/15/news/la-heb-elevator-safety-death-201112115 http://articles.latimes.com/2011/dec/15/news/la-heb-elevator...
radiorental 10y ago
> political foothold Driver's union versus transportation industry. I have a hunch which way the politicians will sway.

dspillett 10y ago

No, but at least from the PoV of public perception the situation is easier to deal with in a way that allays fear. In your example that one drive is taken off the road. That drive is not a problem, and people assume that the remaining drivers are, for the most part, fine and unlikely to make the same mistake. In the automated truck example you can't take that one driver off the road because barring equipment failure they are all the same driver and just as likely to make the same mistake. If one human driver kills in such a manner, people will distrust that one human driver (or at worst that one trucking company, if bad training or other compliance issues are suspected), if one automated truck kills in such a manner people will distrust all automated trucks.

snuxoll 10y ago
Human beings don't have the ability to just attain knowledge and experience by a software updated, autonomous vehicles do. Yes, every autonomous truck on the road may be controlled by the same software exhibiting the same behaviors, but unlike a human they can all automatically be updated with new behaviors and share experiences with each other. This is precisely the goal of IBM's Watson if you will remember, an individual doctor only has their own experience - Watson can aggregate data from a virtually infinite number of data points and that knowledge and experience is shared across the network. Will accidents happen? Yes. But we can learn from them and the collective as a whole benefits, not one individual instance.
- sqeaky 10y ago
  Likely it will be even better than you describe. Multiple competing companies all with their own software copying what the other teams are doing right. When one fails the others will continue on with lessons learned. Probably a lot like software development today except with a lower threshold for error, and hopefully the appropriate increase QA.
- dspillett 10y ago
  I agree. As probably does everyone here. Now convince the herd that is the general public, who don't really understand the technology, don't have time for a long explanation, and tend to react with instincts and emotions that haven't had much by way of firmware upgrades for quite a few generations.