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Uber blames humans for self-driving traffic offenses as California orders a halt
- trome 10y agoWow, how tone deaf of Uber "both cars running red lights were not part of the pilot and weren’t carrying customers.", I nor any other citizen gives a crap about whether there is a customer in your car, what is at issue is the safety of those around your red light running vehicle. If Uber's cars t-bone another car or run over a pedestrian or biker, people inside their multi-ton vehicle will likely be fine, those outside it are the ones who will probably be injured or killed. Move fast and kill people is not acceptable in the self driving space, no matter what Uber or others say.
- xenity7 10y agoIt's difficult for me to understand how these types of things (specifically, the order by California to halt testing of self driving cars) can happen at a company as ostensibly as sophisticated as Uber. There are two possibilities: 1) Uber had no idea it was illegal to begin testing cars in San Francisco/California without a permit, or somehow otherwise messed up getting the permit. 2) Uber knew it was illegal and didn't care or was a positive, probably because any potential penalty is essentially negligible, and free publicity results from a kerfuffle with a state regulator, reinforcing Uber's image as risk taking and cutting edge. Option 1) beggars belief for a company of Uber's size. There are numerous legal issues around self driving cars and it would be very strange to devote millions to R&D without having at least SOME resources devoted to examining the legal and regulatory environment. The most basic question of all when testing a car... "do we need a permit for this?". It's difficult to imagine this falling through the cracks anywhere. This leaves only option 2) in my mind, strange as it may seem. Maybe I'm giving them too much credit...