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Great to see such progress made by Waymo and Co. But as the Murphy's law says, if something might break, it will eventually break. With possibly millions of sel

Great to see such progress made by Waymo and Co. But as the Murphy's law says, if something might break, it will eventually break. With possibly millions of self driving cars and trillions of unique situations, its inevitable that someone will get hurt. So my question is: what kind of progress is being made to draft a legal framework for situation in which I rode my bike in bike lane and for whatever reason self-driving vehicle struck me. Who do I go after in regards to my pilling up medical expenses? Do I sue driver? The car company? The company who delivered self-driving hardware? The software manufacturer? I get that self-driving cars comes with incredible advantages: less crashes (hopefully), no drink drivers, etc. But a legal framework for such automobiles should be in works as we speak. Edited: of course Murphy's law; thanks for pointing it out!

danielbln 9y ago
I think you meant Murphy's law. Moore's law is the one about transistor density doubling every x years.
whipoodle 9y ago
To me it just has to be better than human drivers, who are actually pretty awful. I think it's unfortunate that we all seem focused on having self-driving cars be basically perfect. If they were only twice as good as human drivers we should jump at the chance to reduce fatalities.
Zigurd 9y ago
Globally, the death toll on roads is about 1 million per year. If autonomous vehicles make a significant cut in that number, people will start to see human drivers as the more-difficult liability issue.
organsnyder 9y ago
In your hypothetical situation, you'd probably deal with the owner's insurance company, just like with a human driver. The insurer will have already priced the policy lower based on underwriters' analysis that AI is safer than human drivers. In the case where the AI made an egregious error, I'm sure the insurer would be interested in pursuing legal action. In my medium-sized metro area, I can recall at least a half-dozen deaths of cyclists this year caused by humans making similar errors. It doesn't take much for software to be better than that.

danielbln 9y ago

I think you meant Murphy's law. Moore's law is the one about transistor density doubling every x years.

whipoodle 9y ago

To me it just has to be better than human drivers, who are actually pretty awful. I think it's unfortunate that we all seem focused on having self-driving cars be basically perfect. If they were only twice as good as human drivers we should jump at the chance to reduce fatalities.

Zigurd 9y ago

Globally, the death toll on roads is about 1 million per year. If autonomous vehicles make a significant cut in that number, people will start to see human drivers as the more-difficult liability issue.

organsnyder 9y ago

In your hypothetical situation, you'd probably deal with the owner's insurance company, just like with a human driver. The insurer will have already priced the policy lower based on underwriters' analysis that AI is safer than human drivers. In the case where the AI made an egregious error, I'm sure the insurer would be interested in pursuing legal action. In my medium-sized metro area, I can recall at least a half-dozen deaths of cyclists this year caused by humans making similar errors. It doesn't take much for software to be better than that.