9 ms·

Germany adopts first ethics standards for autonomous driving systems

123 points by blahedo 8y ago

Bucephalus355 8y ago
In the 1960’s and 1970’s there were many efforts to professionalize software development and bring it line with other engineering practices. This would include things like license boards, a code of ethics, etc. Obviously at first blush this sounds ridiculous, but like Wikipedia it seems to not work in theory but when it comes to the real world work just fine (as the other engineering disciplines have shown). This is actually where the term “software engineer” dates from, it was partly a marketing / professionalization attempt. One thing this would lead to (could be good or bad) is people being “stripped” of their license to practice software engineering. After the 1981 Hyatt Regency disaster in Kansas City, where over 200 people were killed, this is exactly what happened to the engineers involved in building the walkway. They forgot the software equivalent of a line-ending semicolon when they eliminated a single-support bolt for the catwalk accidentally during design review. It collapsed during a holiday party, killing those above and those below. Perhaps as we start seeing more “building computers”, sometimes called “architectural robotics” (a super fascinating subject if you have a chance to look it up, there are already prototypes out there), a software engineer causing a similar amount of destruction might not be so farfetched.
- organicmultiloc 8y ago
  We don't live in the world of the 1970s anymore, anything that might slow down or impede corporate profits can be rejected out of hand as feasible solution. It's just not even worth the time to talk about it. At least until we have a new constitutional amendment getting money out of politics.
  - 5DFractalTetris 8y ago
    Yeah, but the things which create corporate profits change over time. Like that pedestrian bridge collapse in Florida, it was like 50 ft from a pedestrian road crossing. I dunno why anyone would pay for that particular type of uselessness. Moving slowly saves you time.
- dokem 8y ago
  The Hyatt Regency disaster was not the equivalent of missing a semicolon, that makes it sound like an accident. Procedures were not followed. A load bearing component was modified without proper testing/analysis.
- slavik81 8y ago
  > They forgot the software equivalent of a line-ending semicolon when they eliminated a single-support bolt for the catwalk accidentally during design review. Absolutely not. Their original design supported only 60% of the minimum load specified by the Kansas City building code. However, that's not why they changed it. A supplier pointed out that the design was impractical to assemble, and suggested an alternative. The engineers in charge accepted that alternative without doing any calculations about its effect on the load-bearing capacity of the walkways. Had they done so, they would have seen that the new design could support a mere 30% of the minimum load required by the building code. Their engineering process was flawed from start to finish. If I had to make an analogy to software, it would be a company that regularly did development on the production box. Engineering is not about never making mistakes. Forgetting a semi-colon is common, and any software engineering process that depends on people never forgetting something that trivial is fatally flawed. When you make a mistake in vehicle control software, there should be many layers of failsafes to catch it, such as: the compiler, automated unit tests, automated acceptance tests, code review, manual feature testing (with a simulator), manual release testing (with a simulator), integration testing on a vehicle that has been immobilized, integration testing on a closed track, and production environment trials. Keep a few mistakes between yourself and disaster. One mistake is a very slim margin.
  - djsumdog 8y ago
    A better analogy would be promoting a service to production with the unit tests failing (or not having an automated CI process that ran the unit tests ... or not having unit tests). There are different degrees of software engineering. If you work for a company that makes pacemakers, there are very strict software testing requirements. The same goes for the developers of real time avionics systems for air craft, ECUs for cars and autonomous train systems in places like Singapore or London. If you're writing software that tracks inventory and ships out shoes, mistakes aren't life threatening and you might have faster processes to get things into production. If you reuse that software for shipping out medical equipment for people with diabetes or sleep apnea, you could run into life treating problems if the testing process is not updated to match the seriousness of the problem you're trying to solve.
- watwut 8y ago
  Majority of software engineering is not equivalent of bridge building nor high stakes engineering. Most of it is closer to low risk trades - woodworking, painting, design etc.
- TaylorAlexander 8y ago
  Small note, Wikipedia says 114 were killed and 216 were injured in the walkway collapse.
- carapace 8y ago
  > This is actually where the term “software engineer” dates from, it was partly a marketing / professionalization attempt. Nitpick: no. > [Dr.] Margaret Hamilton promoted the term "software engineering" during her work on the Apollo program. The term "engineering" was used to acknowledge that the work should be taken just as seriously as other contributions toward the advancement of technology. Hamilton details her use of the term: >> When I first came up with the term, no one had heard of it before, at least in our world. It was an ongoing joke for a long time. They liked to kid me about my radical ideas. It was a memorable day when one of the most respected hardware gurus explained to everyone in a meeting that he agreed with me that the process of building software should also be considered an engineering discipline, just like with hardware. Not because of his acceptance of the new "term" per se, but because we had earned his and the acceptance of the others in the room as being in an engineering field in its own right. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineer#Origin_of_the_term https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineer#Origin_of_th... Emphasis added.
jasonjei 8y ago
I wonder what the solution to a trolley problem would be for autonomous vehicles. Would a trolley problem situation exist if all cars are autonomous?
- jonathanyc 8y ago
  Yes, consider pedestrians.
- blahedo 8y ago
  Yes; but the "one" on the tracks is now the passenger in the car. Does the car divert from hitting a bunch of people on the road ahead if it means killing its passenger? With autonomous cars, suddenly a lot of hypotheticals get really real.
  - anonymfus 8y ago
    These ethics standards say yes, because no discrimination between people is allowed, only number of them matters.
    - thisacctforreal 8y ago
      At least incentives for carpooling won’t disappear.
    - king_phil 8y ago
      That's not correct. German Federal Constitutional Court already decided that you can't weigh the number of lifes. The decision was based on "can we shoot down a plane and kill 300 when the plane would crash into a stadium and kill 30.000". You can't shoot the plane down (legally).
      - zaarn 8y ago
        IIRC if there was a situation in form of "3 children on road" and "1 old lady on the sidewalk" and you only had a couple seconds to react, you would be fine hitting either, there is a concept of "Übergesetzlicher Notstand" (emergency beyond the law) which hits exactly these rather rare and morally ambiguous situations. The trolley problem as bystander is a different thing and generally not acting is the legally safer option though in both cases the likely sentence would be minor through various means. edit/additional note: while you can't shoot down the plane legally and no soldier will be obligated to follow such an order, they would likely also fall under the "Übergesetzlicher Notstand". It's not a legal basis but simply a defense.
plink 8y ago
Will Germany be applying the same enforcement to these standards that they applied to VW and emissions?
- InternetOfStuff 8y ago
  You can be confident that the same stringency as was shown during the emissions debacle will be applied to these standards /s As you're apparently aware, minister Dobrindt (who was in charge of both) took great pains to deflect trouble from the German automotive industry. I think history will show that by making their present more pleasant, he'll have made their future less stable. Now they get to milk the status quo for a while longer, instead of being forced to adapt to changing times. For this and other reasons, I despise the man.
- Sylos 8y ago
  Probably, yeah. Our car industry is a driving factor of our economy, so politics doesn't punish them as hard as they punish other parties.
  - josefx 8y ago
    After a quick google I get two results that disagree: * wikipedia claims ongoing investigations against 37 people involved * Politicians are working on the Musterfeststellungsklage, a class action equivalent for the German justice system. Explicitly so that buyers have better odds suing VW.
    - Sylos 8y ago
      Which in my perception is still not nearly as hard as other industries would have been punished for similar crimes. I did not claim that they don't get punished at all.
    - krautsourced 8y ago
      The proposal for the latter has already been hollowed out in such a way that the likelihood of any customer actually being able to sue a company is rather slim. Only a narrow band of customer representatives are even allowed to sue. And it's going to be exclusive, meaning the first one to sue locks out everyone else for good. So if your company fucks up? Get some stooge to sue and fail, before anyone else gets a chance.
phyller 8y ago
I like these, but I think that this one is too evasive: "In any driving situation, the party responsible, whether human or computer, must be clearly regulated and apparent." In reality, who is responsible for what is going to be the main problem that is faced on a day to day basis, and not attempting to define exactly how that works takes a lot of meaning out the standard. Other than that, it's largely stating what I would think most people would have assumed anyway. Which is a good thing and I'm glad they are doing it.
- 7952 8y ago
  Of course "responsibility" can mean a lot of things. It could mean that the driver is subject to strict liability and has to provide restitution even when they are not at fault. Or it could mean that the driver is only liable when they have acted negligently. The same can be applied to the maker of the car also. The answer really depends on how you see cars interacting with the rest of society. To what extent should we compromise the safety and rights of other people to try and enable fast and efficient car journeys? That is highly contentious even before you introduce self driving cars. These kind of guidelines don't answer that question.
- CM30 8y ago
  Maybe the cars could actually say specifically whose in control at the moment? Like a little sign that either says 'human' (when under human control) or 'AI' (when under computer control). Perhaps in the same place you'd put a taxi sign on that kind of vehicle. Maybe then with a built in logging system that says every time control changes, and deletes the record when irrelevant (like three changes back). Then just take the data whenever there's a car crash, and hey Bob's your uncle.
  - phyller 8y ago
    I think the more difficult problems are if the car crashes while under computer control, who is at fault. Also, when a car crashes under human control, why didn't the software take over to prevent that, are car companies liable for that?
sarabande 8y ago
This actually happened in August 2017 (http://www.bmvi.de/SharedDocs/EN/PressRelease/2017/128-dobrindt-federal-government-action-plan-automated-driving.html http://www.bmvi.de/SharedDocs/EN/PressRelease/2017/128-dobri...). I'm curious how this blog post by HERE (9 months later) differs from the earlier official statements.
- camillomiller 8y ago
  It’s a company blog from here maps, they just run out of topics I guess. By the way, Dobrindt is not even a Minister anymore. The new Federal Minister of Transport and Digital Infrastructure is Christian Schmidt.
  - ofrzeta 8y ago
    The Federal Minister of Transport and Digital Infrastructure actually is Andreas Scheuer. Christian Schmidt was only interim.
    - camillomiller 8y ago
      Gee, they go so faaaast :) Thanks for the correction!
- Jommi 8y ago
  Yeah, this should be renamed, or somehow shown to not be news.
gsich 8y ago
best part: "Drivers retain sole ownership over whether or not their vehicle data is forwarded or used by third parties." I like it how it shows that data your device generates is your data, and only yours. It's like stating the obvious.
- nickserv 8y ago
  Tesla does not agree with the on obvious then. Drivers don't have access to all their data ; Tesla releases data when convenient for them, like to show the driver was at fault.
- rsynnott 8y ago
  This is more or less in line with current European thinking on data protection.
- tomohawk 8y ago
  It doesn't say that there must be means for you to access your data, though. And, you'll likely have to sign a waiver granting the manufacturer access to your data or they won't sell you the car.
  - tgsovlerkhgsel 8y ago
    European courts may take a rather dim view on that. If consent is required to be given freely, they might determine that this sort of forced consent isn't valid. There are also limitations on what you can put in the fine print, and "fine print" is often defined rather broadly, to the point where putting it on another form requiring a separate signature may not save you.
- Toboe 8y ago
  Which might come from the principle of informational self-determination[0] (as defined by the German constitutional court). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informational_self-determination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informational_self-determinati...
azinman2 8y ago
“While vehicles may react autonomously in the event of emergency situations, humans shall regain control during more morally ambiguous events.” That’s not going to end well. As we saw in the AZ crash, when there’s a situation at hand, it’s hard to transition the attention properly quickly over to a human who has been not paying attention because while the car was handling everything just fine. It’s unrealistic to think that’s possible in anything less than at least 10 seconds.
- Jommi 8y ago
  Exactly, not to mention the definition of a morally ambiguous event is in itself already debatable and... morally ambiguous.
- qznc 8y ago
  This isn't a law, just some guidelines. I'm not worried that details such as the handover time will be resolved in some industry standard. More interesting is the implication that this requires the possibility for humans to regain control. So we should not build cars without control mechanisms (steering wheel, brake pedals, ...)?
  - Moru 8y ago
    It's enough with a big red break-button on the panel that makes the car come to a complete stop as fast as possible.
    - dotancohen 8y ago
      How does that work on ice or snow? With a bus behind you? Or on a curving downgrade? With a trailer? With your unbuckled luggage or dog in the back seat? When the driving is easy, the AI _can_ do it. We are by default discussing the unusual, difficult situations.
      - Moru 8y ago
        Forgot the /sarcasm tag... The car industry is sick from the latest-trend-virus. Touchscreens does not belong, neither wheel-less. But I'm sure someone will see the wheel as a risk if you crash into something and remove it. That the wheel could have avoided the collision completely is not important.
lumberjack 8y ago
In the US regulation is reactive, but you can sue for damages. In the EU regulation tries to be proactive, but it is much harder to sue for damages. So from the perspective of a startup trying to get in this market, this sort of environment might prove superior, because your business risk is much reduced. You know what sort of standards you must follow and as long as you follow those standards you do not have to worry about being blamed for negligent murder by the family of every accident victim.
- pitaj 8y ago
  Yes but complying with that regulation is a larger up front cost, which raises the barrier to entry.
amelius 8y ago
I want this rule: software updates, however small, shall not be installed without X hours of testing by a government institution.
- tobyhinloopen 8y ago
  That sounds extremely expensive, why would you want that?
  - s_kilk 8y ago
    To tackle testing fraud?
  - amelius 8y ago
    I foresee companies pushing quick and dirty updates, sweeping critical problems, or problems with their internal software development cycle under the carpet. I want transparency in how companies deal with problems and software updates. Expensive is a feature in this case. It ensures that stuff gets tested well before companies even consider having it double-tested by the govt.
    - tgsovlerkhgsel 8y ago
      That's a great way to make sure software doesn't get updated at all unless it's completely unavoidable.
tomohawk 8y ago
> Autonomous driving systems become an ethical imperative if the systems cause fewer accidents than human drivers. This makes a certain kind of sense if viewed totally in a vacuum, apart from any other considerations. But life is not all about the car. Is human choice unimportant? What about freedom to travel where I want and when I want? Is curtailment of those and other freedoms to be sacrificed based on statistics? Whose statistics? How will these statistics be gathered? Who will interpret them? Through what lens? This sounds like the kind of reasoning that made it illegal in many jurisdictions to let your kids play outside on their own.
- icebraining 8y ago
  I suggest you read the actual report, rather than the soundbytes. They put a lot of importance on the question of personal freedom: http://www.bmvi.de/SharedDocs/EN/publications/report-ethics-commission.pdf?__blob=publicationFile http://www.bmvi.de/SharedDocs/EN/publications/report-ethics-...
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
carapace 8y ago
I swore I was going to try to not post on HN today (it's Mother's Day), and this is a little off-topic, a little. I was watching car accident videos on youtube yesterday (I got sucked in and couldn't look away. I lost two hours.) Almost all of them were due to someone doing something obviously stupid or wrong: turning without checking for oncoming traffic; passing unsafely; over-correcting and then losing control; mis-judging clearance with stationary obstacles; tailgating; etc... It occurred to me, what if we program the robot cars (and can we please call them "auto-autos"!?) just so that they won't engage in dangerous behaviour? The basic idea is, if the way is not clear, slow down. What I mean is, it may just be Too Hard to make a robot drive a car like a car; but it should be already possible to make a safety vehicle that prevents human error.
instaheat 8y ago
This reminds me of I, Robot: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics

123 points by blahedo 8y ago

In the 1960’s and 1970’s there were many efforts to professionalize software development and bring it line with other engineering practices. This would include things like license boards, a code of ethics, etc. Obviously at first blush this sounds ridiculous, but like Wikipedia it seems to not work in theory but when it comes to the real world work just fine (as the other engineering disciplines have shown). This is actually where the term “software engineer” dates from, it was partly a marketing / professionalization attempt. One thing this would lead to (could be good or bad) is people being “stripped” of their license to practice software engineering. After the 1981 Hyatt Regency disaster in Kansas City, where over 200 people were killed, this is exactly what happened to the engineers involved in building the walkway. They forgot the software equivalent of a line-ending semicolon when they eliminated a single-support bolt for the catwalk accidentally during design review. It collapsed during a holiday party, killing those above and those below. Perhaps as we start seeing more “building computers”, sometimes called “architectural robotics” (a super fascinating subject if you have a chance to look it up, there are already prototypes out there), a software engineer causing a similar amount of destruction might not be so farfetched.

organicmultiloc 8y ago
We don't live in the world of the 1970s anymore, anything that might slow down or impede corporate profits can be rejected out of hand as feasible solution. It's just not even worth the time to talk about it. At least until we have a new constitutional amendment getting money out of politics.
- 5DFractalTetris 8y ago
  Yeah, but the things which create corporate profits change over time. Like that pedestrian bridge collapse in Florida, it was like 50 ft from a pedestrian road crossing. I dunno why anyone would pay for that particular type of uselessness. Moving slowly saves you time.
dokem 8y ago
The Hyatt Regency disaster was not the equivalent of missing a semicolon, that makes it sound like an accident. Procedures were not followed. A load bearing component was modified without proper testing/analysis.
slavik81 8y ago
> They forgot the software equivalent of a line-ending semicolon when they eliminated a single-support bolt for the catwalk accidentally during design review. Absolutely not. Their original design supported only 60% of the minimum load specified by the Kansas City building code. However, that's not why they changed it. A supplier pointed out that the design was impractical to assemble, and suggested an alternative. The engineers in charge accepted that alternative without doing any calculations about its effect on the load-bearing capacity of the walkways. Had they done so, they would have seen that the new design could support a mere 30% of the minimum load required by the building code. Their engineering process was flawed from start to finish. If I had to make an analogy to software, it would be a company that regularly did development on the production box. Engineering is not about never making mistakes. Forgetting a semi-colon is common, and any software engineering process that depends on people never forgetting something that trivial is fatally flawed. When you make a mistake in vehicle control software, there should be many layers of failsafes to catch it, such as: the compiler, automated unit tests, automated acceptance tests, code review, manual feature testing (with a simulator), manual release testing (with a simulator), integration testing on a vehicle that has been immobilized, integration testing on a closed track, and production environment trials. Keep a few mistakes between yourself and disaster. One mistake is a very slim margin.
- djsumdog 8y ago
  A better analogy would be promoting a service to production with the unit tests failing (or not having an automated CI process that ran the unit tests ... or not having unit tests). There are different degrees of software engineering. If you work for a company that makes pacemakers, there are very strict software testing requirements. The same goes for the developers of real time avionics systems for air craft, ECUs for cars and autonomous train systems in places like Singapore or London. If you're writing software that tracks inventory and ships out shoes, mistakes aren't life threatening and you might have faster processes to get things into production. If you reuse that software for shipping out medical equipment for people with diabetes or sleep apnea, you could run into life treating problems if the testing process is not updated to match the seriousness of the problem you're trying to solve.
watwut 8y ago
Majority of software engineering is not equivalent of bridge building nor high stakes engineering. Most of it is closer to low risk trades - woodworking, painting, design etc.
TaylorAlexander 8y ago
Small note, Wikipedia says 114 were killed and 216 were injured in the walkway collapse.
carapace 8y ago
> This is actually where the term “software engineer” dates from, it was partly a marketing / professionalization attempt. Nitpick: no. > [Dr.] Margaret Hamilton promoted the term "software engineering" during her work on the Apollo program. The term "engineering" was used to acknowledge that the work should be taken just as seriously as other contributions toward the advancement of technology. Hamilton details her use of the term: >> When I first came up with the term, no one had heard of it before, at least in our world. It was an ongoing joke for a long time. They liked to kid me about my radical ideas. It was a memorable day when one of the most respected hardware gurus explained to everyone in a meeting that he agreed with me that the process of building software should also be considered an engineering discipline, just like with hardware. Not because of his acceptance of the new "term" per se, but because we had earned his and the acceptance of the others in the room as being in an engineering field in its own right. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineer#Origin_of_the_term https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineer#Origin_of_th... Emphasis added.

jasonjei 8y ago

I wonder what the solution to a trolley problem would be for autonomous vehicles. Would a trolley problem situation exist if all cars are autonomous?

jonathanyc 8y ago
Yes, consider pedestrians.
blahedo 8y ago
Yes; but the "one" on the tracks is now the passenger in the car. Does the car divert from hitting a bunch of people on the road ahead if it means killing its passenger? With autonomous cars, suddenly a lot of hypotheticals get really real.
- anonymfus 8y ago
  These ethics standards say yes, because no discrimination between people is allowed, only number of them matters.
  - thisacctforreal 8y ago
    At least incentives for carpooling won’t disappear.
  - king_phil 8y ago
    That's not correct. German Federal Constitutional Court already decided that you can't weigh the number of lifes. The decision was based on "can we shoot down a plane and kill 300 when the plane would crash into a stadium and kill 30.000". You can't shoot the plane down (legally).
    - zaarn 8y ago
      IIRC if there was a situation in form of "3 children on road" and "1 old lady on the sidewalk" and you only had a couple seconds to react, you would be fine hitting either, there is a concept of "Übergesetzlicher Notstand" (emergency beyond the law) which hits exactly these rather rare and morally ambiguous situations. The trolley problem as bystander is a different thing and generally not acting is the legally safer option though in both cases the likely sentence would be minor through various means. edit/additional note: while you can't shoot down the plane legally and no soldier will be obligated to follow such an order, they would likely also fall under the "Übergesetzlicher Notstand". It's not a legal basis but simply a defense.

plink 8y ago

Will Germany be applying the same enforcement to these standards that they applied to VW and emissions?

InternetOfStuff 8y ago
You can be confident that the same stringency as was shown during the emissions debacle will be applied to these standards /s As you're apparently aware, minister Dobrindt (who was in charge of both) took great pains to deflect trouble from the German automotive industry. I think history will show that by making their present more pleasant, he'll have made their future less stable. Now they get to milk the status quo for a while longer, instead of being forced to adapt to changing times. For this and other reasons, I despise the man.
Sylos 8y ago
Probably, yeah. Our car industry is a driving factor of our economy, so politics doesn't punish them as hard as they punish other parties.
- josefx 8y ago
  After a quick google I get two results that disagree: * wikipedia claims ongoing investigations against 37 people involved * Politicians are working on the Musterfeststellungsklage, a class action equivalent for the German justice system. Explicitly so that buyers have better odds suing VW.
  - Sylos 8y ago
    Which in my perception is still not nearly as hard as other industries would have been punished for similar crimes. I did not claim that they don't get punished at all.
  - krautsourced 8y ago
    The proposal for the latter has already been hollowed out in such a way that the likelihood of any customer actually being able to sue a company is rather slim. Only a narrow band of customer representatives are even allowed to sue. And it's going to be exclusive, meaning the first one to sue locks out everyone else for good. So if your company fucks up? Get some stooge to sue and fail, before anyone else gets a chance.

phyller 8y ago

I like these, but I think that this one is too evasive: "In any driving situation, the party responsible, whether human or computer, must be clearly regulated and apparent." In reality, who is responsible for what is going to be the main problem that is faced on a day to day basis, and not attempting to define exactly how that works takes a lot of meaning out the standard. Other than that, it's largely stating what I would think most people would have assumed anyway. Which is a good thing and I'm glad they are doing it.

7952 8y ago
Of course "responsibility" can mean a lot of things. It could mean that the driver is subject to strict liability and has to provide restitution even when they are not at fault. Or it could mean that the driver is only liable when they have acted negligently. The same can be applied to the maker of the car also. The answer really depends on how you see cars interacting with the rest of society. To what extent should we compromise the safety and rights of other people to try and enable fast and efficient car journeys? That is highly contentious even before you introduce self driving cars. These kind of guidelines don't answer that question.
CM30 8y ago
Maybe the cars could actually say specifically whose in control at the moment? Like a little sign that either says 'human' (when under human control) or 'AI' (when under computer control). Perhaps in the same place you'd put a taxi sign on that kind of vehicle. Maybe then with a built in logging system that says every time control changes, and deletes the record when irrelevant (like three changes back). Then just take the data whenever there's a car crash, and hey Bob's your uncle.
- phyller 8y ago
  I think the more difficult problems are if the car crashes while under computer control, who is at fault. Also, when a car crashes under human control, why didn't the software take over to prevent that, are car companies liable for that?

sarabande 8y ago

This actually happened in August 2017 (http://www.bmvi.de/SharedDocs/EN/PressRelease/2017/128-dobrindt-federal-government-action-plan-automated-driving.html http://www.bmvi.de/SharedDocs/EN/PressRelease/2017/128-dobri...). I'm curious how this blog post by HERE (9 months later) differs from the earlier official statements.

camillomiller 8y ago
It’s a company blog from here maps, they just run out of topics I guess. By the way, Dobrindt is not even a Minister anymore. The new Federal Minister of Transport and Digital Infrastructure is Christian Schmidt.
- ofrzeta 8y ago
  The Federal Minister of Transport and Digital Infrastructure actually is Andreas Scheuer. Christian Schmidt was only interim.
  - camillomiller 8y ago
    Gee, they go so faaaast :) Thanks for the correction!
Jommi 8y ago
Yeah, this should be renamed, or somehow shown to not be news.

gsich 8y ago

best part: "Drivers retain sole ownership over whether or not their vehicle data is forwarded or used by third parties." I like it how it shows that data your device generates is your data, and only yours. It's like stating the obvious.

nickserv 8y ago
Tesla does not agree with the on obvious then. Drivers don't have access to all their data ; Tesla releases data when convenient for them, like to show the driver was at fault.
rsynnott 8y ago
This is more or less in line with current European thinking on data protection.
tomohawk 8y ago
It doesn't say that there must be means for you to access your data, though. And, you'll likely have to sign a waiver granting the manufacturer access to your data or they won't sell you the car.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 8y ago
  European courts may take a rather dim view on that. If consent is required to be given freely, they might determine that this sort of forced consent isn't valid. There are also limitations on what you can put in the fine print, and "fine print" is often defined rather broadly, to the point where putting it on another form requiring a separate signature may not save you.
Toboe 8y ago
Which might come from the principle of informational self-determination[0] (as defined by the German constitutional court). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informational_self-determination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informational_self-determinati...

azinman2 8y ago

“While vehicles may react autonomously in the event of emergency situations, humans shall regain control during more morally ambiguous events.” That’s not going to end well. As we saw in the AZ crash, when there’s a situation at hand, it’s hard to transition the attention properly quickly over to a human who has been not paying attention because while the car was handling everything just fine. It’s unrealistic to think that’s possible in anything less than at least 10 seconds.

Jommi 8y ago
Exactly, not to mention the definition of a morally ambiguous event is in itself already debatable and... morally ambiguous.
qznc 8y ago
This isn't a law, just some guidelines. I'm not worried that details such as the handover time will be resolved in some industry standard. More interesting is the implication that this requires the possibility for humans to regain control. So we should not build cars without control mechanisms (steering wheel, brake pedals, ...)?
- Moru 8y ago
  It's enough with a big red break-button on the panel that makes the car come to a complete stop as fast as possible.
  - dotancohen 8y ago
    How does that work on ice or snow? With a bus behind you? Or on a curving downgrade? With a trailer? With your unbuckled luggage or dog in the back seat? When the driving is easy, the AI _can_ do it. We are by default discussing the unusual, difficult situations.
    - Moru 8y ago
      Forgot the /sarcasm tag... The car industry is sick from the latest-trend-virus. Touchscreens does not belong, neither wheel-less. But I'm sure someone will see the wheel as a risk if you crash into something and remove it. That the wheel could have avoided the collision completely is not important.

lumberjack 8y ago

In the US regulation is reactive, but you can sue for damages. In the EU regulation tries to be proactive, but it is much harder to sue for damages. So from the perspective of a startup trying to get in this market, this sort of environment might prove superior, because your business risk is much reduced. You know what sort of standards you must follow and as long as you follow those standards you do not have to worry about being blamed for negligent murder by the family of every accident victim.

pitaj 8y ago
Yes but complying with that regulation is a larger up front cost, which raises the barrier to entry.

amelius 8y ago

I want this rule: software updates, however small, shall not be installed without X hours of testing by a government institution.

tobyhinloopen 8y ago
That sounds extremely expensive, why would you want that?
- s_kilk 8y ago
  To tackle testing fraud?
- amelius 8y ago
  I foresee companies pushing quick and dirty updates, sweeping critical problems, or problems with their internal software development cycle under the carpet. I want transparency in how companies deal with problems and software updates. Expensive is a feature in this case. It ensures that stuff gets tested well before companies even consider having it double-tested by the govt.
  - tgsovlerkhgsel 8y ago
    That's a great way to make sure software doesn't get updated at all unless it's completely unavoidable.

tomohawk 8y ago

> Autonomous driving systems become an ethical imperative if the systems cause fewer accidents than human drivers. This makes a certain kind of sense if viewed totally in a vacuum, apart from any other considerations. But life is not all about the car. Is human choice unimportant? What about freedom to travel where I want and when I want? Is curtailment of those and other freedoms to be sacrificed based on statistics? Whose statistics? How will these statistics be gathered? Who will interpret them? Through what lens? This sounds like the kind of reasoning that made it illegal in many jurisdictions to let your kids play outside on their own.

icebraining 8y ago
I suggest you read the actual report, rather than the soundbytes. They put a lot of importance on the question of personal freedom: http://www.bmvi.de/SharedDocs/EN/publications/report-ethics-commission.pdf?__blob=publicationFile http://www.bmvi.de/SharedDocs/EN/publications/report-ethics-...

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

carapace 8y ago

I swore I was going to try to not post on HN today (it's Mother's Day), and this is a little off-topic, a little. I was watching car accident videos on youtube yesterday (I got sucked in and couldn't look away. I lost two hours.) Almost all of them were due to someone doing something obviously stupid or wrong: turning without checking for oncoming traffic; passing unsafely; over-correcting and then losing control; mis-judging clearance with stationary obstacles; tailgating; etc... It occurred to me, what if we program the robot cars (and can we please call them "auto-autos"!?) just so that they won't engage in dangerous behaviour? The basic idea is, if the way is not clear, slow down. What I mean is, it may just be Too Hard to make a robot drive a car like a car; but it should be already possible to make a safety vehicle that prevents human error.

instaheat 8y ago

This reminds me of I, Robot: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics