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You bring up an interesting point. I'll let the actual car part be what it is (I should totally be able to change a simple mechanical part on my car). Instead,
by axoltl 10y ago
You bring up an interesting point. I'll let the actual car part be what it is (I should totally be able to change a simple mechanical part on my car). Instead, I'll ask the question if I should be able to swap out the LiDAR on my (partially) self-driving car. There are complicated calibration steps needed in order to ensure that the LiDAR is operating correctly and meets safety standards.
If you replace safety critical (and in Apple's case, security critical) functionality on your car and it causes bodily harm, who do you think is going to end up in the news with a negative headline? Furthermore, should a car manufacturer be able to implement measures to prevent this from happening?
- greggman 10y agoJust thinking out loud but the car one seems solvable by moving the responsibility for accidents. It starts with the manufacture and transfers to the modifer. Although like above the issue gets complicated quickly since modifying one thing might be unrelated to the accident. I guess if it can be proven it was because of the mod then responsibility should transfer to the modder.
- microcolonel 10y agoThis is the kinda hilarious thing about self-driving cars. Either the manufacturers are held responsible for nearly all accidents, in which case it is probably impossible to make money on them; or we accept that sometimes consumer electronics kill people in the street.
- rickycook 10y agothat's all well and good, but regardless of who is to blame, the headline will likely read that the fault is with the manufacturer because it's more likely to generate readers
- brianwawok 10y agoWe can't make laws to protect you from buzzfeed
- adrianN 10y agoAgain, Germany ingenuity does the impossible https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/germany-to-ban-fake-news-0wz2wcl55 https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/germany-to-ban-fake-news-...
- brianwawok 10y agoBanning fake news is different from banning something that could cause a news story that would appear in fake news.
- saurik 10y agoFWIW, I imagine what happens quickly in a true self-driving car world is that we stop bothering to own cars as the cost in terms of both time and capital of temporarily renting a car only at the moment we need it makes that no longer be a relevant concern, at which point this actually is no longer an issue as the cars would be owned and maintained by the service we get the car from.
- throwaway2048 10y agoDon't be so sure that most people are ready to hand over ownership of a major possession to yet another faceless company.
- Shivetya 10y agoThe safety issue is just FUD. ABS, if not your brake system, on current cars is a critical safety system and repair centers across the US (and likely similar in other countries) can make these repairs safely and within manufacturer requirements. We accept this because no repair facility is going to want to lose business by installing bad parts or doing a job improperly and the last point of contact; the repair shop; is on the hook legally. With regards to parts on the phone. Apple simply needs to be forced to make replacement parts available to non Apple repair facilities. They could have an authorization process or whatnot but it needs not to be burdensome. My only concern with this would be, wouldn't that be a great way for the intelligence services of the world to finally backdoor the Apple's iDevice security.
- mikeash 10y agoNot only shops, but it's legal to service your own brakes. Let me repeat that: any random person can go to the auto parts store, spend a few bucks on new brake pads, and install them at home, legally. A badly done brake job is quite likely to result in injury, if not death, of not only the occupants of the vehicle, but other people as well who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. And yet doing it yourself is legal and socially acceptable, and attempts to change that would (rightfully) be met with strident opposition. The worst that would likely happen with a miscalibrated LIDAR is that the car wouldn't be able to drive until it was calibrated. So yeah, the safety argument isn't just FUD, it's transparently ridiculous FUD.
- caf 10y agoYou don't need to go to self-driving cars with LIDAR to find safety-critical parts. There's plenty of steering, suspension, braking and restraint systems that are safety-critical already. This issue is already solved for cars. If you make major modifications to a car, or even small modifications to some parts, it's already not considered roadworthy unless you get a qualified engineer to sign it off. Note that the qualified engineer does not need to be associated with the original vendor.