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California to allow testing of self-driving cars without a driver present

366 points by doppp 9y ago

davidkuhta 9y ago
Can anyone with some legal background comment on liability implications?
- kss238 9y ago
  IANAL but I would presume the same as when a human is driving a car.
- awestroke 9y ago
  IANAL, but it seems straightforward to me. The vehicle will have to be fully insured. While this is a strange concept in America, where each driver is insured for a specific vehicle, this is how insurance is done in many countries in Europe; an insured vehicle is insured no matter who drives it. So American insurance companies will just need to start insuring vehicles by themselves, and if something happens then the insurance company will pay up.
  - simion314 9y ago
    But is not only about the money, humans can lose their freedom from major accidents, what if you get a bad update or bad sensors and your car kills some people, some engineers or managers should have to pay if they did something wrong and not point to the insurance company. I do not want some manager to think something like "don't worry about that bug, it is very rare so insurance will cover us in case something bad happens, we need to push the update now"
    - dx034 9y ago
      > But is not only about the money, humans can lose their freedom from major accidents, what if you get a bad update or bad sensors and your car kills some people, some engineers or managers should have to pay if they did something wrong and not point to the insurance company. Software automation has already happened in other areas. If the bug was introduced on purpose or if there was insufficient oversight/negligence, people can go to jail. Not not any error automatically is a crime. If you kill someone with your car that doesn't mean that you'll be charged even if the accident was your fault.
      - simion314 9y ago
        I understand but is there something in place to handle this issue, you would need people that will analyze the car software, the updates, the practices and decide who is responsible, my question is there something in place or we need to wait for this laws to appear ?
        MBCook 9y ago
        Right. How many people will be horribly injured or die in ‘the incident’ that leads to the lawsuit that gets these companies to take this stuff seriously.
    - chrisseaton 9y ago
      > some engineers or managers should have to pay if they did something wrong and not point to the insurance company That's already how insurance works. You pay by paying for insurance premiums. Why do you think people shouldn't be allowed to use insurance to cover accidents in just this situation?
      - simion314 9y ago
        Say the manager knows about a bug in the AI but it consider that is more expensive to wait and properly fix it then push an update with the bug present. Should the decision of fixing or not a bug that can cause lives be influenced only by how much will insurance cost? I am not arguing that a person should pay with his freedom for a mistake, people do mistake, I am afraid that the bad behavior from software industry will apply to self driving cars, the move fast and brake things mentality,ship with known bugs etc.
        chrisseaton 9y ago
        > Should the decision of fixing or not a bug that can cause lives be influenced only by how much will insurance cost? But the price of the insurance takes into account the risk of a bug costing a life. They know if they make riskier decisions their insurance premiums will go up. Insurance doesn't magically remove costs. It just amortises them. Loss adjusters have been experts at this for centuries.
        simion314 9y ago
        >But the price of the insurance takes into account the risk of a bug costing a life. The possible problem is who sets this price for a life, it needs to be high enough but not absurd.
        chrisseaton 9y ago
        But this isn't a new problem at all. Loss adjusters have already been doing this for many industries where someone can be killed. Insurance for normal cars already does it even! Why are self-driving cars any different?
  - azag0 9y ago
    Ok, that's financial liability. What about criminal liability? What if the car breaks rules and kills someone. Will the programmers be responsible? The CEO? Can companies be criminally convicted in the US? Or will it be on par with other "machine accidents", where there is typically no criminal responsibility?
    - awestroke 9y ago
      I don't understand this obsession with finding someone to hold responsible for an accident before the accident happens. When an accident with self-driving cars actually happen, if someone is found to have committed a crime, that person will be charged.
      - gambiting 9y ago
        If you run a red light and kill someone, it's pretty clear who is responsible though. If a driverless car runs a red light because of a hardware defect, who is? No one? Or do you think there will be a committee trying to establish what exactly went wrong and where? With planes, when autopilot does something stupid, Boeing/Airbus will ground all planes of the same type until they can figure out what the issue is. I can't imagine we will ever hold cars to the same standard as we hold airplanes, that's just impossible.
        awestroke 9y ago
        Sometimes, nobody should be held responsible. It's called an accident.
        diggernet 9y ago
        And if nobody is held responsible, there is no risk for a company to put shoddy software on the street.
        ergothus 9y ago
        At which point they've crossed the line into a crime, so liability is a crime. These concepts are already in play in other industries that use software on devices that could harm or kill.
  - gambiting 9y ago
    >> this is how insurance is done in many countries in Europe. Not all though. For example in Poland you insure the vehicle and anyone with a valid driver licence is allowed to drive it and is fully covered. As a matter of fact it's enshrined in law that insurance companies have to provide cover no matter who drives the car, as long as there is insurance on the car.
    - walshemj 9y ago
      Strange normally insurance is tied to the person in the UK
      - gambiting 9y ago
        I know, it was really strange to me when I moved to UK - what do you mean, I can't just let someone else drive my car? I have to add them to my insurance? Why? I mean, I understand how it works now, but to me it still seems like an excuse to extract a lot more money from British drivers.
        deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
        jk563 9y ago
        I'm not sure about that. The flip side of that is that my standard insurance insures me on my car, but I'm also insured to drive someone else's car too without further premiums required.
        walshemj 9y ago
        So an experienced driver is subsidizing young drivers
        gambiting 9y ago
        Well.....that's not quite true - British insurance usually covers you for driving other cars, but only gives you 3rd party insurance....so I would never risk driving someone's car unless it was some really old beater not worth much.
- ghaff 9y ago
  The manufacturer is the one "driving" the vehicle so I would assume that they have all the liability. As an occupant, it's certainly in no way my responsibility if a vehicle I'm just sitting in hits a pedestrian or otherwise gets into an accident. It also looks as if there will still be a safety driver; they will just be remote vs. being in the car.
  - adventured 9y ago
    That prompts an unusual edge case for passenger liability. Idiots doing things to the vehicle as it's driving. Inevitably across a zillion miles, passengers will do everything that can be done to a vehicle. They're guaranteed to cause wrecks in the early years (even if it's extraordinarily rare), until or unless the manufacturer idiot-proofs everything in the style of the inside of a McDonald's. So does the manufacturer carry liability for the behavior of the people inside, or will that be pushed on to the passenger. I suspect it'll be a dual case scenario, the manufacturer will have to carry some passenger liability for such events, and the passenger will still be simultaneously pursued.
- walshemj 9y ago
  Might be interesting to compare this to other engineering doctrines if say a bridge collapses the supervising engineer personally can get in trouble. Do the senior engineers in these firms have professional liability insurance
  - ghaff 9y ago
    I don't know how common it is, but professional liability insurance for engineers definitely exists. I expect that it's more common for consultants and others operating their own businesses than it is for employees of large companies. But there are certainly areas like construction where someone with a professional engineer license has to sign off on drawings where it may be more of a thing.
    - simion314 9y ago
      That sounds fair, you would have a software lead that will be responsible for the software, then the management can't push him around to release fast, he would make sure to follow all the rules (we would need rules if those are not there yet, maybe NASA or airplanes industry has such rules).
- da_chicken 9y ago
  Damage liability remains with the vehicle owner, just like if you loan a vehicle to a friend. You don't insure your ability to drive safely; you insure the vehicle for damages to it and caused by it. Fault will likely be determined exactly how it is for a human driver.
- rhino369 9y ago
  Not my particular area of expertise, but you can probably go after everyone involved: Operators and owners--negligence for using car without a driver, strict liability for ultra-hazardous activity Manufacturers, distributors, suppliers, retailers, and anyone who makes products available--are liable under products liability for any manufacturing defect, design defect, or failure to warn of dangers. Potential criminal penalties for anyone involved (including engineers) if they put out cars knowing they aren't ready yet) or fake results, etc. One thing that keeps most car accidents from going into full scale massive litigation is that the drivers causing the accidents are usually not worth that much money. But if I'm a plaintiff lawyer and my client got killed by a Google car? I'm not asking for the 500k dollars the insurance coverage provides. I'm asking for big numbers because juries are going to make Google pay for each death.
simion314 9y ago
Is any Californian citizen here that is worried that the IT companies will move fast and break things? Are the laws in place to determine who is guilty and who will pay the damages in case of accidents? As a developer I am always worried when I have to put some big update live, I think I personally could not handle the responsibility of doing such an update for self driving cars.
- awestroke 9y ago
  The insurance companies will pay the damages.
  - retrogradeorbit 9y ago
    Will they also resurrect the dead?
    - briga 9y ago
      Give it about 30 years and maybe.
    - awestroke 9y ago
      Are you implying that the scenario where someone dies is strictly better if there was a human behind the wheel? Do you require a human to punish if an accident happens?
      - Tyrek 9y ago
        No, the implication is that there is that there are an enormous amount of edge cases that a human would appropriately respond to (i.e. no death) that the "A.I." cannot.
        Lewton 9y ago
        only really relevant if the robot cars end up killing more humans per mile driven than humans already do
edshiro 9y ago
Interesting development, happening earlier than what I had assumed! The TechCrunch article states that companies running fully driverless vehicles will need to enable the ability for secure remote access and control of vehicles, but I wonder whether: 1. Companies developing autonomous vehicles have focused much of their efforts on remote piloting 2. Latency won't be a killer, especially if a quick intervention is required 3. From a safety point of view, this regulation seems too earlier as some companies with lagging tech may attempt to offer driverless services without safety driver to generate PR, please investors, etc. - basically "fake it 'til you make it", but playing with people's lives this time.
- plopz 9y ago
  I think the Waymo cars in Arizona are already equipped to be remote controlled.
- dx034 9y ago
  > Latency won't be a killer, especially if a quick intervention is required Probably not controlling them but observing vehicles and steering in case they stop working. E.g. if a car stops on a busy motorway because of a software fault, a remote controller could drive it to the shoulder or next exit to avoid congestion.
- manmal 9y ago
  5G will have decent latency (3-5ms or stgh), this might suffice to steer in real-time.
  - wbl 9y ago
    Is that guaranteed for safety critical applications?
    - Hydraulix989 9y ago
      Perhaps but guaranteeing a signal is practically impossible.
    - 9y ago
awestroke 9y ago
This is great news. There are two use cases that particularly excite me: * For commuters, get a ride from your own vehicle to work, and then have it park cheaply outside of town (instead of paying for a parking spot close to work, which is common where I live). * Have a self-driving van with a bed, have it drive you to a skiing resort while you sleep. Go to sleep in the car Friday night, have it drive at safe speeds using smaller roads, wake up where you wanted to go. Go to bed Sunday evening, wake up back at home. Shower, dress, go to work.
- dx034 9y ago
  > For commuters, get a ride from your own vehicle to work, and then have it park cheaply outside of town (instead of paying for a parking spot close to work, which is common where I live). Not sure if I'm excited about that. This would double the traffic during rush hour. I'd sincerely hope they introduce a tax on vehicles driven without driver.
  - Hello71 9y ago
    this would in fact decrease the traffic for two reasons: 1. self-driving cars make more efficient use of the roadway 2. parking lots could (partially) be converted into roadway, or even better, actual business, so there will be less road to "outside of town".
    - ginko 9y ago
      Both leading to more cars on the road, i.e. more traffic
    - dx034 9y ago
      Converting on-street parking can help to increase capacity but I don't think you can convert a lot of parking lots into roads. And where real estate prices are high, they're often underground anyway. Making more efficient use of the roadway is great but they'll probably not more than double efficiency (as long as not all cars are self driving and the road is also used by pedestrians), so doubling the number of trips will still increase congestion.
itissid 9y ago
If self driving cars go mainstream, people's attitude and thinking of the car as only a transport vehicle may change. Even in congested traffic one may view it as a secondary home where they can work and eat breakfast in and not care about the time it takes.
- beobab 9y ago
  I really like this idea. I have had dreams of small self-drive RV's taking me to and from work whilst I read or play games for years.
- sgc 9y ago
  That will happen immediately for sure. Super tinted windows and a nice work setup in the vehicle will make society significantly more efficient. It will probably get sucked into corporate profit rather than improvement of lifestyle, but there is room for hope.
  - volkk 9y ago
    i just wonder how that will affect the people (i.e me) that get very nauseous in cars, especially when looking down/reading something. i dont know the science but its a lot worse when it's stop and go traffic. can self driving cars be programmed to drive and react much smoother to help us folk that are sensitive to this?
- matte_black 9y ago
  Personally I'm not convinced. I wish we could just skip the self driving car phase and go straight to personal self flying drones. Less edge cases to deal with, and since most people are not pilots the drone must be 100% automated, turning it into something more like a horse-drawn carriage from days of old. Since air traffic is more tightly controlled they do not have to compete much with piloted aircraft. No pedestrians to worry about, minimal possibilities for accidents. Flying away and parking somewhere away from your location is not just a feature – it's mandatory since our world has no accommodations for consumer aircraft parking. Since most landings can be done on the rooftops of tall buildings, it's conceivable that we may reduce the amount of time we spend walking on dangerous or dirty streets, and also opens the door for more creative skyward architecture and retail. And of course there's the magnificent views you'll get of a city even in a boring daily commute. I will probably not own a self driving car given current technology, but I can't wait to see the age of true flying transports for the masses.
golergka 9y ago
> The cars will also need to be hardened against cyber attacks How exactly, and who's going to test it?
- subway 9y ago
  The only folks willing to perform security testing on any product -- anyone who can benefit from exploiting it. /s
andys627 9y ago
This is cool tech, but more cars/miles travelled is bad, not good. We would be healthier, happier, less harmful to environment, richer, have more friends, be better connected to our communities, etc. if we built mobility around walking, biking, transit, AND cars... not ONLY cars.
meri_dian 9y ago
People are excited about self driving cars for their potential to reduce accidents by removing human error from the equation. It's not just human error that causes accidents though. Human emotion in general causes dangerous situations. When we drive now, we're restricted to driving and driving alone. We can listen to the radio but for the most part we are restricted. Because of this, we tend to want to get to our destination as quickly as possible. We drive fast to get the restrictive experience of driving over with. However if we were free to do other things, like get work done or sleep or watch TV while in our cars, I think we would generally be much more tolerant of travelling at a lower speed. While eventually our self driving systems may be capable of being very safe at very high speeds, I think reduced speeds tolerated by people could offer an extra layer of safety.
- danjc 9y ago
  Could have the unintended effect that people are ok with spending longer traveling in a car though. E.g. people commute 2 hours a day to get into London via train
  - Broken_Hippo 9y ago
    Thats not necessarily a bad thing if you make transportation efficient enough. Self driving pod that hooks up to public transport, giving me privacy the entire time? Sure. 2 hours is time for art, digital or pen and paper (I draw while on airplanes and such and have learned to compensate for bumps and things). I could knit. Watch things. Read. My spouse would sometimes make music. Some of these are good even if the commute is shorter, and would be an improvement for anyone commuting a good distance already due to traffic and whatnot. 4-5 hours? Split sleep schedule. (I have no children). It also means folks can better commute to work from small farming towns that lack jobs. I know that an hour commute each way (by car) is too much for me, but I've had to just to make decent money. This was living in the midwest, mind you, and it might be different other places. It wouldn't have been an issue if I wasn't actively driving. Yes, I do understand that some of the hope would be that people live closer, but that's the hope and push now and it breaks often enough.
yalogin 9y ago
Is google at a position to do tests in traffic without a driver present?
- datguacdoh 9y ago
  They are already doing this in Arizona: https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/7/16615290/waymo-self-driving-safety-driver-chandler-autonomous https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/7/16615290/waymo-self-drivi...
sosilkj 9y ago
What guarantee do I have that a car will take me where I want to go if I cannot drive it myself and I cannot inspect the software?
- tdb7893 9y ago
  What's the guarantee that a taxi driver will take you where you want to go? You can't inspect his software either. A taxi driver could feasibly just leave the taxi and take his keys with him but practically that doesn't happen. Also you would have a cell phone so could call their support or arrange another car
  - tree_of_item 9y ago
    The taxi driver is a human, humans have different, less spectacular failure modes. In a world with self-driving cars, it's plausible that there's a bug/hack that makes EVERY car on the road do something wrong or malicious like take you to the wrong destination/drive in to a crowd of people etc.
    - 111_1_111 9y ago
      It's also plausible that a taxi driver could do the exact same thing. What's your point?
  - puppetmaster400 9y ago
    ( it won't let me reply on the other thread - pardon, you asked for http://bfy.tw/Gqi6 http://bfy.tw/Gqi6 )
- twblalock 9y ago
  You could ask the same question about any car made in the past 5-10 years. They all run millions of lines of code, and none of it is open source. It turns out not to be a problem.
wehadfun 9y ago
Why not have a driver present? Just don't understand how that improves the test.
- lern_too_spel 9y ago
  If you don't need a driver in the car, you can test more vehicles with fewer people and ultimately deploy a mobility service cost-effectively.
  - MBCook 9y ago
    Exactly. Except when you get in a situation with 100 vehicles, 12 of which need help, and you have 10 drivers. Oops. Someone died.
    - lern_too_spel 9y ago
      If the situation is a matter of immediate life or death, having remote humans is no help at all to prevent death, so your scenario isn't likely.
- kamek 9y ago
  You can test vehicles that don't have (internal) controls for a human driver (e.g., no steering wheel, pedals).
- jasonmaydie 9y ago
  basically they can build a living room or office that drives around without it looking like a traditional car. I think the whole self driving thing is an inefficient way to move people tho
Parcissons 9y ago
A feast for the lawyers- if anyone out there is preparing to get these cars and theire producers lawsuited till the lights go out- i would like to invest some of my savings well distributed into such endavours. Knowing human nature, at least some of the artificial claims will come through. This is HOT COFFEE, driving down the roads, and every hit is a win. Seriously, automated cars are one of those confidence bubbles we usually burst out of with distance from the last great confidence bubble.
yohann305 9y ago
My prediction: A new kind of lifestyle will emerge. Nomads 2.0, i.e self-driving car travellers: People who are constantly traveling to new destinations while being able to work from the comfort of their car.
nvahalik 9y ago
So... What happens if a "self driving car" gets a speeding ticket? Who is liable? The owner of the car? The programmer? The manufacturer? What happens if it gets into a wreck? Same question. How do self-driving cars respond to police? Do they pull over? Call me skeptical but it really seems like there are far more issues with this than we realize...
- pattycake 9y ago
  They're still in development and testing
russellbeattie 9y ago
I wonder if it'd be easy to steal one of these cars? Drop a black-cloth Faraday-cage net over the top of the car as it is driving by... It'll lose sight and radio communication, so will naturally stop and be at your mercy! I'm not a car thief, so I'm not sure what I'd do after, but it was just a thought...
- betterworldb 9y ago
  Relevant XKCD? https://m.xkcd.com/1958/ https://m.xkcd.com/1958/
- tim333 9y ago
  Dropping a black-cloth Faraday-cage on a moving car is not what I would call easy.
- adrianmonk 9y ago
  What do you do after you've stopped it? Now you have a parked car, you don't have the ability to drive it away. (If you did, you would have skipped the faraday cage net.) So you need a tow truck to actually take the car into your control where you can do with it what you will (sell it, etc.). But if you had a tow truck, you could just steal any parked car, so how is the self-driving car worse off?
- kerbalspacepro 9y ago
  Being not sure what you'd do after is a pretty important part of your plan
bitL 9y ago
The main draw for me is saving time by not needing to drive. It is currently luxury to have own chauffeur so that one can focus on more interesting things than to keep attention on the road during daily commute. Mass transit allows this but it doesn't really allow you to fully focus on something else while you are traveling. And from engineering perspective, it's absolutely awesome to work on it, I wish everybody could experience the feeling when a self-driving car you programmed makes its first drive on its own (I have experienced it). Ethical risks are real though, both about who is responsible in case of fatality as well as what if the technology is going to be abused for military purposes (I already rejected to lead self-driving part of an off-road military vehicle in the past).
a-b 9y ago
Please make them special license plates.
tonyquart 9y ago
I have just read an article that talks about this matter especially when there's accident with self-driving cars involved, at https://www.lemberglaw.com/self-driving-autonomous-car-accident-injury-lawyers-attorneys/ https://www.lemberglaw.com/self-driving-autonomous-car-accid.... I think regulation will be the most important part that should be done before publicly release these cars.

366 points by doppp 9y ago

davidkuhta 9y ago

Can anyone with some legal background comment on liability implications?

kss238 9y ago
IANAL but I would presume the same as when a human is driving a car.
awestroke 9y ago
IANAL, but it seems straightforward to me. The vehicle will have to be fully insured. While this is a strange concept in America, where each driver is insured for a specific vehicle, this is how insurance is done in many countries in Europe; an insured vehicle is insured no matter who drives it. So American insurance companies will just need to start insuring vehicles by themselves, and if something happens then the insurance company will pay up.
- simion314 9y ago
  But is not only about the money, humans can lose their freedom from major accidents, what if you get a bad update or bad sensors and your car kills some people, some engineers or managers should have to pay if they did something wrong and not point to the insurance company. I do not want some manager to think something like "don't worry about that bug, it is very rare so insurance will cover us in case something bad happens, we need to push the update now"
  - dx034 9y ago
    > But is not only about the money, humans can lose their freedom from major accidents, what if you get a bad update or bad sensors and your car kills some people, some engineers or managers should have to pay if they did something wrong and not point to the insurance company. Software automation has already happened in other areas. If the bug was introduced on purpose or if there was insufficient oversight/negligence, people can go to jail. Not not any error automatically is a crime. If you kill someone with your car that doesn't mean that you'll be charged even if the accident was your fault.
    - simion314 9y ago
      I understand but is there something in place to handle this issue, you would need people that will analyze the car software, the updates, the practices and decide who is responsible, my question is there something in place or we need to wait for this laws to appear ?
      - MBCook 9y ago
        Right. How many people will be horribly injured or die in ‘the incident’ that leads to the lawsuit that gets these companies to take this stuff seriously.
  - chrisseaton 9y ago
    > some engineers or managers should have to pay if they did something wrong and not point to the insurance company That's already how insurance works. You pay by paying for insurance premiums. Why do you think people shouldn't be allowed to use insurance to cover accidents in just this situation?
    - simion314 9y ago
      Say the manager knows about a bug in the AI but it consider that is more expensive to wait and properly fix it then push an update with the bug present. Should the decision of fixing or not a bug that can cause lives be influenced only by how much will insurance cost? I am not arguing that a person should pay with his freedom for a mistake, people do mistake, I am afraid that the bad behavior from software industry will apply to self driving cars, the move fast and brake things mentality,ship with known bugs etc.
      - chrisseaton 9y ago
        > Should the decision of fixing or not a bug that can cause lives be influenced only by how much will insurance cost? But the price of the insurance takes into account the risk of a bug costing a life. They know if they make riskier decisions their insurance premiums will go up. Insurance doesn't magically remove costs. It just amortises them. Loss adjusters have been experts at this for centuries.
        simion314 9y ago
        >But the price of the insurance takes into account the risk of a bug costing a life. The possible problem is who sets this price for a life, it needs to be high enough but not absurd.
        chrisseaton 9y ago
        But this isn't a new problem at all. Loss adjusters have already been doing this for many industries where someone can be killed. Insurance for normal cars already does it even! Why are self-driving cars any different?
- azag0 9y ago
  Ok, that's financial liability. What about criminal liability? What if the car breaks rules and kills someone. Will the programmers be responsible? The CEO? Can companies be criminally convicted in the US? Or will it be on par with other "machine accidents", where there is typically no criminal responsibility?
  - awestroke 9y ago
    I don't understand this obsession with finding someone to hold responsible for an accident before the accident happens. When an accident with self-driving cars actually happen, if someone is found to have committed a crime, that person will be charged.
    - gambiting 9y ago
      If you run a red light and kill someone, it's pretty clear who is responsible though. If a driverless car runs a red light because of a hardware defect, who is? No one? Or do you think there will be a committee trying to establish what exactly went wrong and where? With planes, when autopilot does something stupid, Boeing/Airbus will ground all planes of the same type until they can figure out what the issue is. I can't imagine we will ever hold cars to the same standard as we hold airplanes, that's just impossible.
      - awestroke 9y ago
        Sometimes, nobody should be held responsible. It's called an accident.
        diggernet 9y ago
        And if nobody is held responsible, there is no risk for a company to put shoddy software on the street.
        ergothus 9y ago
        At which point they've crossed the line into a crime, so liability is a crime. These concepts are already in play in other industries that use software on devices that could harm or kill.
- gambiting 9y ago
  >> this is how insurance is done in many countries in Europe. Not all though. For example in Poland you insure the vehicle and anyone with a valid driver licence is allowed to drive it and is fully covered. As a matter of fact it's enshrined in law that insurance companies have to provide cover no matter who drives the car, as long as there is insurance on the car.
  - walshemj 9y ago
    Strange normally insurance is tied to the person in the UK
    - gambiting 9y ago
      I know, it was really strange to me when I moved to UK - what do you mean, I can't just let someone else drive my car? I have to add them to my insurance? Why? I mean, I understand how it works now, but to me it still seems like an excuse to extract a lot more money from British drivers.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - jk563 9y ago
        I'm not sure about that. The flip side of that is that my standard insurance insures me on my car, but I'm also insured to drive someone else's car too without further premiums required.
        walshemj 9y ago
        So an experienced driver is subsidizing young drivers
        gambiting 9y ago
        Well.....that's not quite true - British insurance usually covers you for driving other cars, but only gives you 3rd party insurance....so I would never risk driving someone's car unless it was some really old beater not worth much.
ghaff 9y ago
The manufacturer is the one "driving" the vehicle so I would assume that they have all the liability. As an occupant, it's certainly in no way my responsibility if a vehicle I'm just sitting in hits a pedestrian or otherwise gets into an accident. It also looks as if there will still be a safety driver; they will just be remote vs. being in the car.
- adventured 9y ago
  That prompts an unusual edge case for passenger liability. Idiots doing things to the vehicle as it's driving. Inevitably across a zillion miles, passengers will do everything that can be done to a vehicle. They're guaranteed to cause wrecks in the early years (even if it's extraordinarily rare), until or unless the manufacturer idiot-proofs everything in the style of the inside of a McDonald's. So does the manufacturer carry liability for the behavior of the people inside, or will that be pushed on to the passenger. I suspect it'll be a dual case scenario, the manufacturer will have to carry some passenger liability for such events, and the passenger will still be simultaneously pursued.
walshemj 9y ago
Might be interesting to compare this to other engineering doctrines if say a bridge collapses the supervising engineer personally can get in trouble. Do the senior engineers in these firms have professional liability insurance
- ghaff 9y ago
  I don't know how common it is, but professional liability insurance for engineers definitely exists. I expect that it's more common for consultants and others operating their own businesses than it is for employees of large companies. But there are certainly areas like construction where someone with a professional engineer license has to sign off on drawings where it may be more of a thing.
  - simion314 9y ago
    That sounds fair, you would have a software lead that will be responsible for the software, then the management can't push him around to release fast, he would make sure to follow all the rules (we would need rules if those are not there yet, maybe NASA or airplanes industry has such rules).
da_chicken 9y ago
Damage liability remains with the vehicle owner, just like if you loan a vehicle to a friend. You don't insure your ability to drive safely; you insure the vehicle for damages to it and caused by it. Fault will likely be determined exactly how it is for a human driver.
rhino369 9y ago
Not my particular area of expertise, but you can probably go after everyone involved: Operators and owners--negligence for using car without a driver, strict liability for ultra-hazardous activity Manufacturers, distributors, suppliers, retailers, and anyone who makes products available--are liable under products liability for any manufacturing defect, design defect, or failure to warn of dangers. Potential criminal penalties for anyone involved (including engineers) if they put out cars knowing they aren't ready yet) or fake results, etc. One thing that keeps most car accidents from going into full scale massive litigation is that the drivers causing the accidents are usually not worth that much money. But if I'm a plaintiff lawyer and my client got killed by a Google car? I'm not asking for the 500k dollars the insurance coverage provides. I'm asking for big numbers because juries are going to make Google pay for each death.

simion314 9y ago

Is any Californian citizen here that is worried that the IT companies will move fast and break things? Are the laws in place to determine who is guilty and who will pay the damages in case of accidents? As a developer I am always worried when I have to put some big update live, I think I personally could not handle the responsibility of doing such an update for self driving cars.

awestroke 9y ago
The insurance companies will pay the damages.
- retrogradeorbit 9y ago
  Will they also resurrect the dead?
  - briga 9y ago
    Give it about 30 years and maybe.
  - awestroke 9y ago
    Are you implying that the scenario where someone dies is strictly better if there was a human behind the wheel? Do you require a human to punish if an accident happens?
    - Tyrek 9y ago
      No, the implication is that there is that there are an enormous amount of edge cases that a human would appropriately respond to (i.e. no death) that the "A.I." cannot.
      - Lewton 9y ago
        only really relevant if the robot cars end up killing more humans per mile driven than humans already do

edshiro 9y ago

Interesting development, happening earlier than what I had assumed! The TechCrunch article states that companies running fully driverless vehicles will need to enable the ability for secure remote access and control of vehicles, but I wonder whether: 1. Companies developing autonomous vehicles have focused much of their efforts on remote piloting 2. Latency won't be a killer, especially if a quick intervention is required 3. From a safety point of view, this regulation seems too earlier as some companies with lagging tech may attempt to offer driverless services without safety driver to generate PR, please investors, etc. - basically "fake it 'til you make it", but playing with people's lives this time.

plopz 9y ago
I think the Waymo cars in Arizona are already equipped to be remote controlled.
dx034 9y ago
> Latency won't be a killer, especially if a quick intervention is required Probably not controlling them but observing vehicles and steering in case they stop working. E.g. if a car stops on a busy motorway because of a software fault, a remote controller could drive it to the shoulder or next exit to avoid congestion.
manmal 9y ago
5G will have decent latency (3-5ms or stgh), this might suffice to steer in real-time.
- wbl 9y ago
  Is that guaranteed for safety critical applications?
  - Hydraulix989 9y ago
    Perhaps but guaranteeing a signal is practically impossible.
  - 9y ago

awestroke 9y ago

This is great news. There are two use cases that particularly excite me: * For commuters, get a ride from your own vehicle to work, and then have it park cheaply outside of town (instead of paying for a parking spot close to work, which is common where I live). * Have a self-driving van with a bed, have it drive you to a skiing resort while you sleep. Go to sleep in the car Friday night, have it drive at safe speeds using smaller roads, wake up where you wanted to go. Go to bed Sunday evening, wake up back at home. Shower, dress, go to work.

dx034 9y ago
> For commuters, get a ride from your own vehicle to work, and then have it park cheaply outside of town (instead of paying for a parking spot close to work, which is common where I live). Not sure if I'm excited about that. This would double the traffic during rush hour. I'd sincerely hope they introduce a tax on vehicles driven without driver.
- Hello71 9y ago
  this would in fact decrease the traffic for two reasons: 1. self-driving cars make more efficient use of the roadway 2. parking lots could (partially) be converted into roadway, or even better, actual business, so there will be less road to "outside of town".
  - ginko 9y ago
    Both leading to more cars on the road, i.e. more traffic
  - dx034 9y ago
    Converting on-street parking can help to increase capacity but I don't think you can convert a lot of parking lots into roads. And where real estate prices are high, they're often underground anyway. Making more efficient use of the roadway is great but they'll probably not more than double efficiency (as long as not all cars are self driving and the road is also used by pedestrians), so doubling the number of trips will still increase congestion.

itissid 9y ago

If self driving cars go mainstream, people's attitude and thinking of the car as only a transport vehicle may change. Even in congested traffic one may view it as a secondary home where they can work and eat breakfast in and not care about the time it takes.

beobab 9y ago
I really like this idea. I have had dreams of small self-drive RV's taking me to and from work whilst I read or play games for years.
sgc 9y ago
That will happen immediately for sure. Super tinted windows and a nice work setup in the vehicle will make society significantly more efficient. It will probably get sucked into corporate profit rather than improvement of lifestyle, but there is room for hope.
- volkk 9y ago
  i just wonder how that will affect the people (i.e me) that get very nauseous in cars, especially when looking down/reading something. i dont know the science but its a lot worse when it's stop and go traffic. can self driving cars be programmed to drive and react much smoother to help us folk that are sensitive to this?
matte_black 9y ago
Personally I'm not convinced. I wish we could just skip the self driving car phase and go straight to personal self flying drones. Less edge cases to deal with, and since most people are not pilots the drone must be 100% automated, turning it into something more like a horse-drawn carriage from days of old. Since air traffic is more tightly controlled they do not have to compete much with piloted aircraft. No pedestrians to worry about, minimal possibilities for accidents. Flying away and parking somewhere away from your location is not just a feature – it's mandatory since our world has no accommodations for consumer aircraft parking. Since most landings can be done on the rooftops of tall buildings, it's conceivable that we may reduce the amount of time we spend walking on dangerous or dirty streets, and also opens the door for more creative skyward architecture and retail. And of course there's the magnificent views you'll get of a city even in a boring daily commute. I will probably not own a self driving car given current technology, but I can't wait to see the age of true flying transports for the masses.

golergka 9y ago

> The cars will also need to be hardened against cyber attacks How exactly, and who's going to test it?

subway 9y ago
The only folks willing to perform security testing on any product -- anyone who can benefit from exploiting it. /s

andys627 9y ago

This is cool tech, but more cars/miles travelled is bad, not good. We would be healthier, happier, less harmful to environment, richer, have more friends, be better connected to our communities, etc. if we built mobility around walking, biking, transit, AND cars... not ONLY cars.

meri_dian 9y ago

People are excited about self driving cars for their potential to reduce accidents by removing human error from the equation. It's not just human error that causes accidents though. Human emotion in general causes dangerous situations. When we drive now, we're restricted to driving and driving alone. We can listen to the radio but for the most part we are restricted. Because of this, we tend to want to get to our destination as quickly as possible. We drive fast to get the restrictive experience of driving over with. However if we were free to do other things, like get work done or sleep or watch TV while in our cars, I think we would generally be much more tolerant of travelling at a lower speed. While eventually our self driving systems may be capable of being very safe at very high speeds, I think reduced speeds tolerated by people could offer an extra layer of safety.

danjc 9y ago
Could have the unintended effect that people are ok with spending longer traveling in a car though. E.g. people commute 2 hours a day to get into London via train
- Broken_Hippo 9y ago
  Thats not necessarily a bad thing if you make transportation efficient enough. Self driving pod that hooks up to public transport, giving me privacy the entire time? Sure. 2 hours is time for art, digital or pen and paper (I draw while on airplanes and such and have learned to compensate for bumps and things). I could knit. Watch things. Read. My spouse would sometimes make music. Some of these are good even if the commute is shorter, and would be an improvement for anyone commuting a good distance already due to traffic and whatnot. 4-5 hours? Split sleep schedule. (I have no children). It also means folks can better commute to work from small farming towns that lack jobs. I know that an hour commute each way (by car) is too much for me, but I've had to just to make decent money. This was living in the midwest, mind you, and it might be different other places. It wouldn't have been an issue if I wasn't actively driving. Yes, I do understand that some of the hope would be that people live closer, but that's the hope and push now and it breaks often enough.

yalogin 9y ago

Is google at a position to do tests in traffic without a driver present?

datguacdoh 9y ago
They are already doing this in Arizona: https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/7/16615290/waymo-self-driving-safety-driver-chandler-autonomous https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/7/16615290/waymo-self-drivi...

sosilkj 9y ago

What guarantee do I have that a car will take me where I want to go if I cannot drive it myself and I cannot inspect the software?

tdb7893 9y ago
What's the guarantee that a taxi driver will take you where you want to go? You can't inspect his software either. A taxi driver could feasibly just leave the taxi and take his keys with him but practically that doesn't happen. Also you would have a cell phone so could call their support or arrange another car
- tree_of_item 9y ago
  The taxi driver is a human, humans have different, less spectacular failure modes. In a world with self-driving cars, it's plausible that there's a bug/hack that makes EVERY car on the road do something wrong or malicious like take you to the wrong destination/drive in to a crowd of people etc.
  - 111_1_111 9y ago
    It's also plausible that a taxi driver could do the exact same thing. What's your point?
- puppetmaster400 9y ago
  ( it won't let me reply on the other thread - pardon, you asked for http://bfy.tw/Gqi6 http://bfy.tw/Gqi6 )
twblalock 9y ago
You could ask the same question about any car made in the past 5-10 years. They all run millions of lines of code, and none of it is open source. It turns out not to be a problem.

wehadfun 9y ago

Why not have a driver present? Just don't understand how that improves the test.

lern_too_spel 9y ago
If you don't need a driver in the car, you can test more vehicles with fewer people and ultimately deploy a mobility service cost-effectively.
- MBCook 9y ago
  Exactly. Except when you get in a situation with 100 vehicles, 12 of which need help, and you have 10 drivers. Oops. Someone died.
  - lern_too_spel 9y ago
    If the situation is a matter of immediate life or death, having remote humans is no help at all to prevent death, so your scenario isn't likely.
kamek 9y ago
You can test vehicles that don't have (internal) controls for a human driver (e.g., no steering wheel, pedals).
jasonmaydie 9y ago
basically they can build a living room or office that drives around without it looking like a traditional car. I think the whole self driving thing is an inefficient way to move people tho

Parcissons 9y ago

A feast for the lawyers- if anyone out there is preparing to get these cars and theire producers lawsuited till the lights go out- i would like to invest some of my savings well distributed into such endavours. Knowing human nature, at least some of the artificial claims will come through. This is HOT COFFEE, driving down the roads, and every hit is a win. Seriously, automated cars are one of those confidence bubbles we usually burst out of with distance from the last great confidence bubble.

yohann305 9y ago

My prediction: A new kind of lifestyle will emerge. Nomads 2.0, i.e self-driving car travellers: People who are constantly traveling to new destinations while being able to work from the comfort of their car.

nvahalik 9y ago

So... What happens if a "self driving car" gets a speeding ticket? Who is liable? The owner of the car? The programmer? The manufacturer? What happens if it gets into a wreck? Same question. How do self-driving cars respond to police? Do they pull over? Call me skeptical but it really seems like there are far more issues with this than we realize...

pattycake 9y ago
They're still in development and testing

russellbeattie 9y ago

I wonder if it'd be easy to steal one of these cars? Drop a black-cloth Faraday-cage net over the top of the car as it is driving by... It'll lose sight and radio communication, so will naturally stop and be at your mercy! I'm not a car thief, so I'm not sure what I'd do after, but it was just a thought...

betterworldb 9y ago
Relevant XKCD? https://m.xkcd.com/1958/ https://m.xkcd.com/1958/
tim333 9y ago
Dropping a black-cloth Faraday-cage on a moving car is not what I would call easy.
adrianmonk 9y ago
What do you do after you've stopped it? Now you have a parked car, you don't have the ability to drive it away. (If you did, you would have skipped the faraday cage net.) So you need a tow truck to actually take the car into your control where you can do with it what you will (sell it, etc.). But if you had a tow truck, you could just steal any parked car, so how is the self-driving car worse off?
kerbalspacepro 9y ago
Being not sure what you'd do after is a pretty important part of your plan

bitL 9y ago

The main draw for me is saving time by not needing to drive. It is currently luxury to have own chauffeur so that one can focus on more interesting things than to keep attention on the road during daily commute. Mass transit allows this but it doesn't really allow you to fully focus on something else while you are traveling. And from engineering perspective, it's absolutely awesome to work on it, I wish everybody could experience the feeling when a self-driving car you programmed makes its first drive on its own (I have experienced it). Ethical risks are real though, both about who is responsible in case of fatality as well as what if the technology is going to be abused for military purposes (I already rejected to lead self-driving part of an off-road military vehicle in the past).

a-b 9y ago

Please make them special license plates.

tonyquart 9y ago

I have just read an article that talks about this matter especially when there's accident with self-driving cars involved, at https://www.lemberglaw.com/self-driving-autonomous-car-accident-injury-lawyers-attorneys/ https://www.lemberglaw.com/self-driving-autonomous-car-accid.... I think regulation will be the most important part that should be done before publicly release these cars.