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Autonomous cars could actually lead to increases in road deaths (or at least, less pressure to improve road safety, and hence less potential reduction in deaths

Autonomous cars could actually lead to increases in road deaths (or at least, less pressure to improve road safety, and hence less potential reduction in deaths), because people would be far less invested in the accident. There would always be someone else to potentially blame: the manufacturer of the vehicle, the programmer of the software, the creators of the sensors, or even the owner of the vehicle not cleaning the sensors enough. Every party could make a compelling case for why someone else was the cause of the death. There would be more people with blood on their hands, but those people would feel less responsible and be even further removed from the actual incident.

seanmcdirmid 9y ago
Has that ever happened before in the American or other western legal system? It seems highly unlikely that no one would be assigned blame. Heck, we already have cars driven for us (taxis) and the blame for an accident is attributed to the driver, that wouldn’t change if the driver was a computer, the legal syste, wouldn’t simply shutdown.
- joosters 9y ago
  Well, it happened in the original article. The driver was not charged with killing someone. Even if blame is cast, in the autonomous future that blame would be upon a company, or multiple companies, whose legal departments will spend great effort diverting the blame onto other people or other companies. No one individual will be charged with killing someone, and no one person will have a death on their conscience.
  - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
    You are conveniently leaving out civil liability. Yes, the self driving car won’t be put in jail because it didn’t have a murderous intent or wasn’t criminally negligent (e.g. drunk). But damn, if it kills someone, at least the insurance company will have to pay up (as it most definitely did in this case); kill more than a few people with your self driving car and you can bet there will be a recall, well, lawsuits, massive hits to financial performance, and so on. Death has consequences. It really is the same with doctor malpractice, the doctor doesn’t go to jail because their patient died because they made a mistake. Transforming civil negligence into criminal negligence as you seem to be hinting at would be a horrible system.
    - joosters 9y ago
      But again, the civil liability will be on companies, who are even further removed from the direct, visceral experience of killing a person. Like you, I'm sure that there was an insurance company paying out some money for funeral costs in the original accident. To the insurers, it will be business as usual, they have been doing this for many years. My guess is, the pressure for advances in road safety over the years have mainly come from activists, people, individuals who have seen and felt the horror of road deaths. The pressure to improve cars is much less from companies facing rising insurance costs due to liability fines. Indeed, the scandals that we routinely hear about are from car manufacturers avoiding recalls because it is far cheaper to just pay out liability claims when they happen, knowing that they will often not face them. With the removal of drivers from road killings, there will be fewer people feeling the results of road casualties. I don't mean in any way to ignore the families of those killed on the road, of course their anguish and suffering will always be there and will be brutal. But the fact remains, there will be fewer people witnessing and feeling the effects of road deaths. And so it follows that there could well be less pressure to improve road safety.
      - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
        Civil liability will be on company bottom lines (or their insurers), yes you can't put a price on life but you can punish non-criminal negligence financially. The insurers make their money by raising premiums on those who are higher risk, so there is still a financial disincentive to not screw it up. Civil negligence can turn into criminal negligence when deception is involved (see VW). Self driving cars are the ultimate in road safety though, I mean, you cannot encode them to willfully disobey traffic laws (or doing so would be criminal negligence). Pretty sure they will initially be fleet vehicles anyways. The death rate will surely go down, no one with any credibility is predicting otherwise, but there will always people berating the few deaths that remain.
dragonwriter 9y ago
The legal system has already solved this problem because liability isn't exclusive. For a product that the operator and owner are required to maintain in safe condition, where there is contribution of a defect in some component, it's possible for the operator, owner, the whole sales chain, the manufacturer and the supplier of the defective component to all be fully liable, and for none of them to be able to avoid that liability because the others also could be held liable. Autonomous cars aren't special, even among cars, in this concern, and it's not a remotely new problem for the legal system.
- joosters 9y ago
  I'm not suggesting that the legal system would throw their hands up and exclaim "There's too many possible parties at fault! Let's not blame any of them!" Instead, as you say, many parties could be held liable. Notably absent will be any one individual, i.e. the human driver of a car. No-one will be left feeling remorse. The writer of the original article could not get the death out of their mind. That won't happen to the developer of faulty collision avoidance AI code.
Splines 9y ago
Sounds like something out of a futuristic movie with large class divides. Rich person sits in autonomous car that hits poor child, car stops and legalese starts being printed all over the car, rich person calmly gets out and into second car without even breaking their video conference. "What was that?" "oh, nothing"

seanmcdirmid 9y ago

Has that ever happened before in the American or other western legal system? It seems highly unlikely that no one would be assigned blame. Heck, we already have cars driven for us (taxis) and the blame for an accident is attributed to the driver, that wouldn’t change if the driver was a computer, the legal syste, wouldn’t simply shutdown.

joosters 9y ago
Well, it happened in the original article. The driver was not charged with killing someone. Even if blame is cast, in the autonomous future that blame would be upon a company, or multiple companies, whose legal departments will spend great effort diverting the blame onto other people or other companies. No one individual will be charged with killing someone, and no one person will have a death on their conscience.
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  You are conveniently leaving out civil liability. Yes, the self driving car won’t be put in jail because it didn’t have a murderous intent or wasn’t criminally negligent (e.g. drunk). But damn, if it kills someone, at least the insurance company will have to pay up (as it most definitely did in this case); kill more than a few people with your self driving car and you can bet there will be a recall, well, lawsuits, massive hits to financial performance, and so on. Death has consequences. It really is the same with doctor malpractice, the doctor doesn’t go to jail because their patient died because they made a mistake. Transforming civil negligence into criminal negligence as you seem to be hinting at would be a horrible system.
  - joosters 9y ago
    But again, the civil liability will be on companies, who are even further removed from the direct, visceral experience of killing a person. Like you, I'm sure that there was an insurance company paying out some money for funeral costs in the original accident. To the insurers, it will be business as usual, they have been doing this for many years. My guess is, the pressure for advances in road safety over the years have mainly come from activists, people, individuals who have seen and felt the horror of road deaths. The pressure to improve cars is much less from companies facing rising insurance costs due to liability fines. Indeed, the scandals that we routinely hear about are from car manufacturers avoiding recalls because it is far cheaper to just pay out liability claims when they happen, knowing that they will often not face them. With the removal of drivers from road killings, there will be fewer people feeling the results of road casualties. I don't mean in any way to ignore the families of those killed on the road, of course their anguish and suffering will always be there and will be brutal. But the fact remains, there will be fewer people witnessing and feeling the effects of road deaths. And so it follows that there could well be less pressure to improve road safety.
    - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
      Civil liability will be on company bottom lines (or their insurers), yes you can't put a price on life but you can punish non-criminal negligence financially. The insurers make their money by raising premiums on those who are higher risk, so there is still a financial disincentive to not screw it up. Civil negligence can turn into criminal negligence when deception is involved (see VW). Self driving cars are the ultimate in road safety though, I mean, you cannot encode them to willfully disobey traffic laws (or doing so would be criminal negligence). Pretty sure they will initially be fleet vehicles anyways. The death rate will surely go down, no one with any credibility is predicting otherwise, but there will always people berating the few deaths that remain.

dragonwriter 9y ago

The legal system has already solved this problem because liability isn't exclusive. For a product that the operator and owner are required to maintain in safe condition, where there is contribution of a defect in some component, it's possible for the operator, owner, the whole sales chain, the manufacturer and the supplier of the defective component to all be fully liable, and for none of them to be able to avoid that liability because the others also could be held liable. Autonomous cars aren't special, even among cars, in this concern, and it's not a remotely new problem for the legal system.

joosters 9y ago
I'm not suggesting that the legal system would throw their hands up and exclaim "There's too many possible parties at fault! Let's not blame any of them!" Instead, as you say, many parties could be held liable. Notably absent will be any one individual, i.e. the human driver of a car. No-one will be left feeling remorse. The writer of the original article could not get the death out of their mind. That won't happen to the developer of faulty collision avoidance AI code.

Splines 9y ago

Sounds like something out of a futuristic movie with large class divides. Rich person sits in autonomous car that hits poor child, car stops and legalese starts being printed all over the car, rich person calmly gets out and into second car without even breaking their video conference. "What was that?" "oh, nothing"