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I wonder how much of this is part of a genuine attempt to bring a safe product to market, and how much is to pressure the German government (and soon thereafter

by avar 5y ago

I wonder how much of this is part of a genuine attempt to bring a safe product to market, and how much is to pressure the German government (and soon thereafter, the EU) into making this sort of promise mandatory for all car manufacturers, including those that are ahead of Mercedes in the self-driving space. I.e. to create a legislative moat in an area where they're behind. While I don't agree with Tesla's strategy of playing it fast & loose, I'm afraid that risk aversion will lead us to demand perfect instead of the good enough. A car manufacturer might not be willing to accept 100% liability, but their system might still be a lot safer than a drunk driver returning home from the bar. Realistically we're not going to be able to pick "well, don't drive drunk then!", it'll happen. By demanding that these system are that reliable before they're in common operation we'll have incurred a net loss in terms of safety. I don't know what the right solution is, probably some mixture of the two. Clearly you don't want manufacturers to be incentivized to ignore the risk associated with their systems, but you also don't want these systems not to be offered when they'd be a net gain in safety. The point at which they're a net gain is not the same point that they become financially viable to the manufacturer from a liability point of view.

jonfw 5y ago
I know we all hate subscription models, but for self driving it makes sense. If car manufacturers are expected to be liable for their self driving cars, then they should be charging money to their customers so they can insure them. Manufacturers who produce safer self driving vehicles will have to spend less to insure their fleet, and be more competitively priced. This at least gets the incentives right
- foepys 5y ago
  I don't want car manufacturers insuring vehicles. This would lead to inflated prices because manufacturers know that you cannot sell your vehicle at any time.
  - symlinkk 5y ago
    I don’t follow
- dahfizz 5y ago
  For an actually fully autonomous car without a steering wheel, maybe. But for a car that can engage autopilot when you choose, absolutely not. Even if the self driving software is a monthly fee, the car is something you should be able to own and control.
jameshart 5y ago
“Safer than a drunk driver” is a crazy low bar. At the .08 BAC legal limit odds of crashing a car are 200% higher than a sober driver. The risks obviously increase with higher alcohol levels. A .16 ‘double the legal limit’ drunk is 1500% more likely to crash. See https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/02/09/how-just-a-couple-drinks-make-your-odds-of-a-car-crash-skyrocket/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/02/09/how-j... So yeah, ‘safer than a drunk driver’ means basically ‘only about twice as likely to crash as an average sober human’.
- adrianN 5y ago
  There are gadgets that prevent the car from starting when your BAC is too high. Clearly we need the opposite for activating the autopilot.
  - andrewclunn 5y ago
    Alcohol based mouthwash becomes a requirement in the glove box. Whiskey manufacturers start doing sponsorships where the autopilot is named after them. "Had a long day? Jim Beam will get you home."
    - msrenee 5y ago
      Why aren't alcohol manufacturers investing in self-driving technology? That seems like it would be a net positive for them now that you mention it.
- lvh 5y ago
  Should we let drunk people get home in their fully autonomous Mercedes? It's an interesting problem! I think the answer right now is no, we're still requiring the driver to be able to take over, and our thought experiment presupposes they're inebriated. On the other hand, it's obviously better to have the computer take a shot (no pun intended) at getting home than letting the driver do it themselves, even today. At what point does that moral balance tip? It seems like we're not too far off from the answer being "obviously let the car drive, whatever the drunk person was going to do is probably riskier for both themselves and everyone else".
huhtenberg 5y ago
> risk aversion will lead us Not wanting to crash into random things when rolling at 120 km/h is not "risk aversion". It's just common sense.
- lvh 5y ago
  I think you're making OPs point for them. Real drivers also crash into things. Self-driving cars don't have to be perfect all of the time. Inebriated and distracted drivers already cause disproportionate problems: self-driving, even one that makes a mistake once in a blue moon, is preferable than some dude on their phone who hasn't noticed the traffic in front of them has slowed down. (And 120 km/h sounds like highway cruising: precisely the sort of place where self-driving cars have a relatively easy time and "better than humans" is not very far off from where we are today.)
  - paavoova 5y ago
    The dude on their phone is not comparable to the an AV carrying a family of 5 unpredictably veering into a concrete divider. One is negligent, the other has done nothing and could have done nothing, they only trusted the system. How do you reconcile it as merely a question of numbers then? So you trade 100 human-error accidents for 5 "blue moon" AV accidents, and this is good because it's statistically much safer. But that's also 5 accidents that wouldn't have happened to safe, diligent drivers.
- jjoonathan 5y ago
  Nice clip. The quote was: > risk aversion will lead us to demand perfect And no, perfection is not a reasonable bar.
  - throwawayp0rn 5y ago
    > And no, perfection is not a reasonable bar. It's the only bar. Considering the regular person overconfidence in their ability they will either want something that doesn't crash ever or if it crashes it has to bring about other advantages such as speed. Eg. Same rate of self driving crashes with an avg. speed of 100mph as human 40mph. Like putting your Mercedes in the hands of Lewis Hamilton. People won't have any problem doing that, because they understand that Hamilton is a much better driver than them. If it's close people won't relinquish control, at least when sober.
littlestymaar 5y ago
> While I don't agree with Tesla's strategy of playing it fast & loose, I'm afraid that risk aversion will lead us to demand perfect instead of the good enough. I'm actually afraid of the opposite: where self-driving becomes so associated with failures and danger in the mind of the public that the technology never take off. And it doesn't take that much effort to make the public afraid of something, just look how terrified of shark people are.
bko 5y ago
Tesla gets a lot of flak about driver security, but this is incredibly irresponsible. > Once you engage Drive Pilot, you are no longer legally liable for the car's operation until it disengages. You can look away, watch a movie, or zone out. If the car crashes while Drive Pilot is operating, that's Mercedes' problem, not yours. If the car crashes, it's your problem primarily because you're the one in the car that could be injured. Maybe they'll pay for repairs or your hospital bills or even a loaner, but its primarily your problem. We have to remember the limitations of these systems and accept that they're level 2 and require full attention
- freeflight 5y ago
  Tesla gets a lot of flak for advertising Autopilot in a misleading way. Advertising with functionality and liability that could exist at some point but simply doesn’t. What Mercedes does here is not just empty advertising, it’s offering actual lvl 3 autonomous driving complete with the car being liable in those situations. Which in practice means Mercedes can actually deliver what Tesla so far has only been advertising with; Taking your attention actually away from the street to watch a movie or check your emails. This is not a “problem”, it’s the literal definition of lvl 3 autonomous driving; Car takes liability in certain situations to such a degree that the driver is legally pretty much just a passenger.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - bko 5y ago
    > Which in practice means Mercedes can actually deliver what Tesla so far has only been advertising with Do you have experience with this tech or are you taking the word of an marketing campaign? Taking "liability" doesn't mean much if you get in a serious accident and have medical issues for the rest of your life. If you get in an unsafe cab does it give you a lot of assurance that technically the driver is responsible?
    - hnaccount_rng 5y ago
AniseAbyss 5y ago
Is Mercedes behind or are fanboys overestimating Tesla/Musk? German cars are designed for cities American cars are designed for LA.
linspace 5y ago
As road safety is a win for the whole of society and not only the driver it would make sense to incentivize safety at the government level. On the other hand there are already incentives in the form of insurance, which is mandatory at least in most (all?) places and should take into account vehicle safety. If autonomous vehicles are safer insurance premiums should go down for them, as it happens for example for vehicles with smaller power trains.
- giantg2 5y ago
  Maybe. It seems that some of that would be offset by the higher cost of the vehicle for the comprehensive part of the insurance. "as it happens for example for vehicles with smaller power trains." Is this still true? I know they did some HP based stuff in the 70s-80s, but thought they did away with that since then.
  - linspace 5y ago
    I'm not really sure about the power train, if it's still relevant. Vehicle value impacts the premium, since the policy may cover things like theft and vehicle damages. However the biggest risk is damages against persons. Truck insurance for example is very expensive not because the value of the truck but because an accident is more likely to involve deaths and permanent damages. It's not unusual accidents for several million €. That said there are lot of considerations for selling policies. The insurer may make a discount for a risky sports car if it thinks it will recover the cost cross selling you other products. Or for commercial pressure, accidents are a problem for the future. But yes, you are right, it's not a certainty.
mempko 5y ago
> I don't know what the right solution is, probably some mixture of the two. Clearly you don't want manufacturers to be incentivized to ignore the risk associated with their systems, but you also don't want these systems not to be offered when they'd be a net gain in safety. The right solution has always been public transportation. It's just, you won't hear that from car companies. The right solution to self driving cars is not to have any cars.
dangerface 5y ago
Its about control, if the car can drive itself and the manufacture is always held responsible then there is no incentive to selling cars. The incentive to charge for transport is still there Mercedes would become the next Uber and the World Economic Forum would get the dystopian future it has always dreamed of. You will own nothing and like it.
mrighele 5y ago
Even if it was the EU doing, it has nothing to do with demanding perfect instead of good. It's about blaming who/what is doing the actual driving when an accident happens. I think it's perfectly sensible. Put in another way, I don't expect my taxi driver to be perfect, in fact I probably drive more safely than most of them. But if they get into an accident it's their fault, not mine.
- judge2020 5y ago
  That's the OP's point, if you blame it simply because it's driving, you're incentivizing the systems to only work when it thinks it's 100% safe to drive. It's how you get "you can only engage on pre-defined major highways and only during daylight".
  - mrighele 5y ago
    If the automaker advertise a level of automation where I am not supposed to do anything while the car drives itself (which seems to be the case), of course I blame it in case of accident: what could I have done it to prevent it, except for not using the feature at all ? If instead we talk about driving assistance and I am supposed to keep an eye on the car, I am fine with being responsible for any accident.
- brk 5y ago
  But isn't the human always ultimately in control of the vehicle? Any time the car is set in motion, it is the result of a human request, they don't just randomly drive around for fun. Just because the human farms out some of the monotony of driving, does that absolve them from setting the vehicle in motion in the first place? For now I'm leaving aside things like "summon my car to me", or "tell the car to randomly drive around until it finds a parking spot" where no human would be present in the vehicle at all because I think those kinds of scenarios are still a very long long way off, where the vehicles can be expected to move with no supervision at all.
  - Noughmad 5y ago
    But the "vehicle in motion" is not the problem. Accidents are a problem. Exactly the same way as in a taxi - if the taxi driver causes an accident, is it your fault because you told him where to go?
mannykannot 5y ago
> I'm afraid that risk aversion will lead us to demand perfect instead of the good enough. Then Mercedes' move is exactly the sort of pragmatic, no-bullshit yardstick you want. 'Putting your money where your mouth is' is a widely-understood and respected way of showing you are not bullshitting. Current liability laws have not forced car manufacturers to make perfectly safe vehicles (which, would, of course, kill the industry), and there's no reason to assume they will do so for self-driving cars.
bodhi_mind 5y ago
Does this mean that the CEO or board members will be held liable for criminal manslaughter charges if their vehicle runs someone over?
- bratwurst3000 5y ago
  Thats a good question. What does it mean to take responsibillity? I cant imagine that someone of mercedes will be accused of manslaughter, but this is taking responsibillity Edit: if something happens you have 10 seconds to react . I don’t know if in that 10 seconds those responsibility counts.
SimonPStevens 5y ago
Accepting liability doesn't mean they require the system to be perfect. Accepting liability really just comes down to who's insurance company pays when it fails. If the manufacturer can demonstrate to the insurance company that their self driving system fails less frequently (or lower overall cost of claims payouts) than human drivers then the insurance company will happily charge a lower premium for cover. Even if it's not perfect. The closer the system can be demonstrated to be to perfect the lower the insurance premium is going to fall. There is certainly a regulatory moat being set up here as it will prevent new startups from entering the space unless they can find an insurance company willing to cover their risk profile, which in turn means demonstrating a suitably high level of safety to keep the premiums affordable. But I think in this matter I want a level of regulation that says if you're making something that's used on public roads, and risks injuring or killing people you'll accept liability when it goes wrong. It's not much different from the system of mandatory insurance for drivers in most countries. If you're going to drive on the roads, you must meet a minimum insurance level whereby you can accept liability for any failure that causes damage to other property or people.
tablespoon 5y ago
> A car manufacturer might not be willing to accept 100% liability, but their system might still be a lot safer than a drunk driver returning home from the bar. I don't care what they're willing to accept. It's a total cop-out to not "accept 100% liability" for a self-driving system they built, and instead avoiding responsibility by insisting on an inhuman-level of human monitoring. If they're not willing to build a reliable system (or buy enough insurance to pay out the claims when their system crashes), then they simply shouldn't be selling production self-driving cars, period. The "drunk driver returning home from the bar" problem has been solved. It's called a taxi. No need for defective self driving cars for that case.
- rhino369 5y ago
  I'm skeptical they could even avoid liability in the first place. Products liability is hard to avoid.
- darkwater 5y ago
  > The "drunk driver returning home from the bar" problem has been solved. It's called a taxi. No need for defective self driving cars for that case. It hasn't be solved at all, there are still too many deaths on road due to drunk/high drivers.
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    > It hasn't be solved at all, there are still too many deaths on road due to drunk/high drivers. More precisely: it's got a solution better than a current-generation, unsupervised self-driving car.
    - darkwater 5y ago
      Or you can just let someone else drive, or you can just not drink or get high if you have to drive a long way back home, or take public transportation. These all are also "solutions" that don't work all the time. So a vehicle that can safely drive itself is yet another solution that can be added to mitigate the issue.
raxxorrax 5y ago
You can measure the confidence of the manufacturers, which seem to opt for beta testing on the roads. But I agree that it is probably a move to attack competitors. Personally I wouldn't want to be near automatically driving vehicles for now. Maybe because I worked in computer vision and even with drastic advancement of the field, the possibilities are still quite primitive, even with "AI" support. Sure, I could get hurt by a drunk driver. But they are also not allowed on the roads for that matter. I think a solution is to restrict the zones which an autopilot is allowed to be active at first. Ultimately the driver must be responsible. He made the decision to activate the auto pilot. Manufacturers should be forced to be honest about the capabilities though.
sixQuarks 5y ago
You’re looking at the problem wrong. There are 1.35 million deaths per year attributed to car crashes. I don’t know about you, but I would rather companies play loose and fast rather than take forever to figure out the perfect solution. If it takes five years longer, that’s more than 7 million deaths. Even if self driving cars are responsible for 1000 deaths per year, which they won’t be, it would still be well worth playing fast and loose.
- hef19898 5y ago
  It took mankind a long way to learn that security (EDIT: I meant safety, it does apply to security as well so IMHO) and "fast and loose" don't go together. That's why traffic related death are as low as they have ever been.These lessons are codified in all the regulation around that stuff. That being said, the number you stated is world wide? If so, it's not the one to use. And just ignoring the overall trend, in death per km / mile driven, is just disengenious.
  - sixQuarks 5y ago
    Why not use worldwide stats? Self driving cars will take many years to propagate to all the worlds cars (which will eventually happen), but it still holds true, if it takes 5 extra years that is 7 million deaths Also, traffic related injuries and deaths have been rising in recent years due to distracted driving
    - hef19898 5y ago
      One, deaths are measured per driven mile, they are a relatibe stat not an absolute one. Two, driving conditions have to factor in to make it comparable, including traffic deaths in Africa and India (global) is kind of pointless Three, I'd like a source that per driven mile injuries and deaths are rising, all numbers I know of show the opposite trend (including pedestrians and cyclists).
hristov 5y ago
I do not see how this can be an attempt "to create a legislative moat in an area where they're behind". If they are behind in self driving they would not want to raise the stakes by creating this higher liability hurdle which another company can handle better. Any way you look at it if this were an attempt to get a competitive advantage through using the liability laws, then it must only mean that Mercedes are certain that they are ahead in the field of self driving not behind. I very much welcome this development and it is, in my opinion, necessary for level 3 autonomous driving. By definition, level 3 autonomous driving implies that the car must take responsibility. The Level 3 definition says that the driver may take his attention off the road and does not need to supervise the technology (if the conditions are right). Regarding drunk driving, if the machines start killing people, good luck explaining to the victims and the scared public that it may have been worse if they were drunk drivers. The fact is that new technology usually requires notably higher performance to replace the old, this will be the case with self driving, so we may as well embrace that and go forward.
KingOfCoders 5y ago
You want millions of cars on the level of drunk drivers?
- LanceH 5y ago
  There are probably millions of sober drivers on the level of drunk drivers.
KingOfCoders 5y ago
So Boeing should not be responsible for their software failures?
14 5y ago
Drunk driving has been solved and is on the horizon. Soon manufacturers will be required to include the technology in the cars somewhere around 2026 in North America and possibly sooner in Europe. There might be a combination of technology used such as at wheel breath test, sensors on the wheel that detect alcohol excretion in your skin, eye sensors that detect impairment and drowsiness, sensors that detect impaired driving based on how well you stay in your lane. Unsure what tech will be most common but change is on the horizon.
nemetroid 5y ago
Note that drunk driving is much less socially accepted in Europe than in the U.S. A post on this topic was actually at the top of /r/germany just a week ago: https://old.reddit.com/r/germany/comments/tejhxv/all_my_american_friends_drive_after_drinking_and/ https://old.reddit.com/r/germany/comments/tejhxv/all_my_amer... "All my American friends drive after drinking and I don't know what to do"
- avar 5y ago
  Several European countries "beat" the US (in a bad way) when it comes to alcohol-related traffic incidents: https://www.itf-oecd.org/alcohol-related-road-casualties-official-crash-statistics https://www.itf-oecd.org/alcohol-related-road-casualties-off... A friendly reminder from a fellow European that the entire continent isn't part of Germany :)
  - nemetroid 5y ago
    The US handily beats all those countries when it comes to per-inhabitant alcohol related traffic fatalities.
hammock 5y ago
>I wonder how much of this is part of a genuine attempt to bring a safe product to market, and how much is to pressure the German government (and soon thereafter, the EU) into making this sort of promise mandatory for all car manufacturers, including those that are ahead of Mercedes in the self-driving space. I.e. to create a legislative moat in an area where they're behind. Mercedes is just going to place the assumed liability with a reinsurance company anyway. It seems like a very efficient solution to ensure accountability SOMEWHERE without vast amounts of litigation every time there is an incident. It's honestly hard to see how self-driving vehicles will ever meaningfully make it to the consumer market without an agreement like this.
traceroute66 5y ago
> A car manufacturer might not be willing to accept 100% liability It won't be the car manufacturer, but their insurance underwriter who has the final say (unless the car manufacturer self-insures, which, let's face it, is a non-starter). I'm not sure if you've ever dealt with business insurance, let alone underwriters. Underwriters tend to be, by definition, fairly boring risk-averse types. If you catch them on a good day, they might be willing to make a few relatively small adjustments to their standard wording in order to relax the scope a bit. However this assumes you are lucky enough to be dealing with one underwriter. If you're having to pool at Lloyds, then the chances of you being able to get significant wording relaxation drops dramatically because everyone in the pool has to agree, not just one underwriter. You'll never find an underwriter willing to cover 100% liability for anything under the sun. That's just not how it works. Especially with new and little-understood risks such as self-driving.
lamontcg 5y ago
Unfortunately Tesla has been completely irresponsible, so I'm entirely in favor of the moat. And this addresses the "uncanny valley" of driverless cars, where the car does everything up until you're expected to leap into immediate action to prevent it from killing someone, even though for hours you may have been doing nothing. The technology really does need to be all-or-nothing. The in-between solution that Tesla is trying to exploit isn't reasonable given how human minds operate.
bdcravens 5y ago
> Realistically we're not going to be able to pick "well, don't drive drunk then!", it'll happen I don't think legislators will ever accept the safer criminal activity argument.
HWR_14 5y ago
> I wonder how much of this is part of a genuine attempt to bring a safe product to market, and how much is to pressure the German government (and soon thereafter, the EU) into making this sort of promise mandatory for all car manufacturers I'm fine with a company saying "We don't think we can do X safely, therefore we don't devote as much to research doing X, therefore we don't want to be penalized in the market because people who do X unsafely can obfuscate the risks and sell it to the market." And then attempt to create standards to do X safely. That seems reasonable to me.
adfgadfgaery 5y ago

by avar 5y ago

jonfw 5y ago

I know we all hate subscription models, but for self driving it makes sense. If car manufacturers are expected to be liable for their self driving cars, then they should be charging money to their customers so they can insure them. Manufacturers who produce safer self driving vehicles will have to spend less to insure their fleet, and be more competitively priced. This at least gets the incentives right

foepys 5y ago
I don't want car manufacturers insuring vehicles. This would lead to inflated prices because manufacturers know that you cannot sell your vehicle at any time.
- symlinkk 5y ago
  I don’t follow
dahfizz 5y ago
For an actually fully autonomous car without a steering wheel, maybe. But for a car that can engage autopilot when you choose, absolutely not. Even if the self driving software is a monthly fee, the car is something you should be able to own and control.

jameshart 5y ago

“Safer than a drunk driver” is a crazy low bar. At the .08 BAC legal limit odds of crashing a car are 200% higher than a sober driver. The risks obviously increase with higher alcohol levels. A .16 ‘double the legal limit’ drunk is 1500% more likely to crash. See https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/02/09/how-just-a-couple-drinks-make-your-odds-of-a-car-crash-skyrocket/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/02/09/how-j... So yeah, ‘safer than a drunk driver’ means basically ‘only about twice as likely to crash as an average sober human’.

adrianN 5y ago
There are gadgets that prevent the car from starting when your BAC is too high. Clearly we need the opposite for activating the autopilot.
- andrewclunn 5y ago
  Alcohol based mouthwash becomes a requirement in the glove box. Whiskey manufacturers start doing sponsorships where the autopilot is named after them. "Had a long day? Jim Beam will get you home."
  - msrenee 5y ago
    Why aren't alcohol manufacturers investing in self-driving technology? That seems like it would be a net positive for them now that you mention it.
lvh 5y ago
Should we let drunk people get home in their fully autonomous Mercedes? It's an interesting problem! I think the answer right now is no, we're still requiring the driver to be able to take over, and our thought experiment presupposes they're inebriated. On the other hand, it's obviously better to have the computer take a shot (no pun intended) at getting home than letting the driver do it themselves, even today. At what point does that moral balance tip? It seems like we're not too far off from the answer being "obviously let the car drive, whatever the drunk person was going to do is probably riskier for both themselves and everyone else".

huhtenberg 5y ago

> risk aversion will lead us Not wanting to crash into random things when rolling at 120 km/h is not "risk aversion". It's just common sense.

lvh 5y ago
I think you're making OPs point for them. Real drivers also crash into things. Self-driving cars don't have to be perfect all of the time. Inebriated and distracted drivers already cause disproportionate problems: self-driving, even one that makes a mistake once in a blue moon, is preferable than some dude on their phone who hasn't noticed the traffic in front of them has slowed down. (And 120 km/h sounds like highway cruising: precisely the sort of place where self-driving cars have a relatively easy time and "better than humans" is not very far off from where we are today.)
- paavoova 5y ago
  The dude on their phone is not comparable to the an AV carrying a family of 5 unpredictably veering into a concrete divider. One is negligent, the other has done nothing and could have done nothing, they only trusted the system. How do you reconcile it as merely a question of numbers then? So you trade 100 human-error accidents for 5 "blue moon" AV accidents, and this is good because it's statistically much safer. But that's also 5 accidents that wouldn't have happened to safe, diligent drivers.
jjoonathan 5y ago
Nice clip. The quote was: > risk aversion will lead us to demand perfect And no, perfection is not a reasonable bar.
- throwawayp0rn 5y ago
  > And no, perfection is not a reasonable bar. It's the only bar. Considering the regular person overconfidence in their ability they will either want something that doesn't crash ever or if it crashes it has to bring about other advantages such as speed. Eg. Same rate of self driving crashes with an avg. speed of 100mph as human 40mph. Like putting your Mercedes in the hands of Lewis Hamilton. People won't have any problem doing that, because they understand that Hamilton is a much better driver than them. If it's close people won't relinquish control, at least when sober.

littlestymaar 5y ago

> While I don't agree with Tesla's strategy of playing it fast & loose, I'm afraid that risk aversion will lead us to demand perfect instead of the good enough. I'm actually afraid of the opposite: where self-driving becomes so associated with failures and danger in the mind of the public that the technology never take off. And it doesn't take that much effort to make the public afraid of something, just look how terrified of shark people are.

bko 5y ago

Tesla gets a lot of flak about driver security, but this is incredibly irresponsible. > Once you engage Drive Pilot, you are no longer legally liable for the car's operation until it disengages. You can look away, watch a movie, or zone out. If the car crashes while Drive Pilot is operating, that's Mercedes' problem, not yours. If the car crashes, it's your problem primarily because you're the one in the car that could be injured. Maybe they'll pay for repairs or your hospital bills or even a loaner, but its primarily your problem. We have to remember the limitations of these systems and accept that they're level 2 and require full attention

freeflight 5y ago
Tesla gets a lot of flak for advertising Autopilot in a misleading way. Advertising with functionality and liability that could exist at some point but simply doesn’t. What Mercedes does here is not just empty advertising, it’s offering actual lvl 3 autonomous driving complete with the car being liable in those situations. Which in practice means Mercedes can actually deliver what Tesla so far has only been advertising with; Taking your attention actually away from the street to watch a movie or check your emails. This is not a “problem”, it’s the literal definition of lvl 3 autonomous driving; Car takes liability in certain situations to such a degree that the driver is legally pretty much just a passenger.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- bko 5y ago
  > Which in practice means Mercedes can actually deliver what Tesla so far has only been advertising with Do you have experience with this tech or are you taking the word of an marketing campaign? Taking "liability" doesn't mean much if you get in a serious accident and have medical issues for the rest of your life. If you get in an unsafe cab does it give you a lot of assurance that technically the driver is responsible?
  - hnaccount_rng 5y ago

AniseAbyss 5y ago

Is Mercedes behind or are fanboys overestimating Tesla/Musk? German cars are designed for cities American cars are designed for LA.

linspace 5y ago

As road safety is a win for the whole of society and not only the driver it would make sense to incentivize safety at the government level. On the other hand there are already incentives in the form of insurance, which is mandatory at least in most (all?) places and should take into account vehicle safety. If autonomous vehicles are safer insurance premiums should go down for them, as it happens for example for vehicles with smaller power trains.

giantg2 5y ago
Maybe. It seems that some of that would be offset by the higher cost of the vehicle for the comprehensive part of the insurance. "as it happens for example for vehicles with smaller power trains." Is this still true? I know they did some HP based stuff in the 70s-80s, but thought they did away with that since then.
- linspace 5y ago
  I'm not really sure about the power train, if it's still relevant. Vehicle value impacts the premium, since the policy may cover things like theft and vehicle damages. However the biggest risk is damages against persons. Truck insurance for example is very expensive not because the value of the truck but because an accident is more likely to involve deaths and permanent damages. It's not unusual accidents for several million €. That said there are lot of considerations for selling policies. The insurer may make a discount for a risky sports car if it thinks it will recover the cost cross selling you other products. Or for commercial pressure, accidents are a problem for the future. But yes, you are right, it's not a certainty.

mempko 5y ago

> I don't know what the right solution is, probably some mixture of the two. Clearly you don't want manufacturers to be incentivized to ignore the risk associated with their systems, but you also don't want these systems not to be offered when they'd be a net gain in safety. The right solution has always been public transportation. It's just, you won't hear that from car companies. The right solution to self driving cars is not to have any cars.

dangerface 5y ago

Its about control, if the car can drive itself and the manufacture is always held responsible then there is no incentive to selling cars. The incentive to charge for transport is still there Mercedes would become the next Uber and the World Economic Forum would get the dystopian future it has always dreamed of. You will own nothing and like it.

mrighele 5y ago

Even if it was the EU doing, it has nothing to do with demanding perfect instead of good. It's about blaming who/what is doing the actual driving when an accident happens. I think it's perfectly sensible. Put in another way, I don't expect my taxi driver to be perfect, in fact I probably drive more safely than most of them. But if they get into an accident it's their fault, not mine.

judge2020 5y ago
That's the OP's point, if you blame it simply because it's driving, you're incentivizing the systems to only work when it thinks it's 100% safe to drive. It's how you get "you can only engage on pre-defined major highways and only during daylight".
- mrighele 5y ago
  If the automaker advertise a level of automation where I am not supposed to do anything while the car drives itself (which seems to be the case), of course I blame it in case of accident: what could I have done it to prevent it, except for not using the feature at all ? If instead we talk about driving assistance and I am supposed to keep an eye on the car, I am fine with being responsible for any accident.
brk 5y ago
But isn't the human always ultimately in control of the vehicle? Any time the car is set in motion, it is the result of a human request, they don't just randomly drive around for fun. Just because the human farms out some of the monotony of driving, does that absolve them from setting the vehicle in motion in the first place? For now I'm leaving aside things like "summon my car to me", or "tell the car to randomly drive around until it finds a parking spot" where no human would be present in the vehicle at all because I think those kinds of scenarios are still a very long long way off, where the vehicles can be expected to move with no supervision at all.
- Noughmad 5y ago
  But the "vehicle in motion" is not the problem. Accidents are a problem. Exactly the same way as in a taxi - if the taxi driver causes an accident, is it your fault because you told him where to go?

mannykannot 5y ago

> I'm afraid that risk aversion will lead us to demand perfect instead of the good enough. Then Mercedes' move is exactly the sort of pragmatic, no-bullshit yardstick you want. 'Putting your money where your mouth is' is a widely-understood and respected way of showing you are not bullshitting. Current liability laws have not forced car manufacturers to make perfectly safe vehicles (which, would, of course, kill the industry), and there's no reason to assume they will do so for self-driving cars.

bodhi_mind 5y ago

Does this mean that the CEO or board members will be held liable for criminal manslaughter charges if their vehicle runs someone over?

bratwurst3000 5y ago
Thats a good question. What does it mean to take responsibillity? I cant imagine that someone of mercedes will be accused of manslaughter, but this is taking responsibillity Edit: if something happens you have 10 seconds to react . I don’t know if in that 10 seconds those responsibility counts.

SimonPStevens 5y ago

Accepting liability doesn't mean they require the system to be perfect. Accepting liability really just comes down to who's insurance company pays when it fails. If the manufacturer can demonstrate to the insurance company that their self driving system fails less frequently (or lower overall cost of claims payouts) than human drivers then the insurance company will happily charge a lower premium for cover. Even if it's not perfect. The closer the system can be demonstrated to be to perfect the lower the insurance premium is going to fall. There is certainly a regulatory moat being set up here as it will prevent new startups from entering the space unless they can find an insurance company willing to cover their risk profile, which in turn means demonstrating a suitably high level of safety to keep the premiums affordable. But I think in this matter I want a level of regulation that says if you're making something that's used on public roads, and risks injuring or killing people you'll accept liability when it goes wrong. It's not much different from the system of mandatory insurance for drivers in most countries. If you're going to drive on the roads, you must meet a minimum insurance level whereby you can accept liability for any failure that causes damage to other property or people.

tablespoon 5y ago

> A car manufacturer might not be willing to accept 100% liability, but their system might still be a lot safer than a drunk driver returning home from the bar. I don't care what they're willing to accept. It's a total cop-out to not "accept 100% liability" for a self-driving system they built, and instead avoiding responsibility by insisting on an inhuman-level of human monitoring. If they're not willing to build a reliable system (or buy enough insurance to pay out the claims when their system crashes), then they simply shouldn't be selling production self-driving cars, period. The "drunk driver returning home from the bar" problem has been solved. It's called a taxi. No need for defective self driving cars for that case.

rhino369 5y ago
I'm skeptical they could even avoid liability in the first place. Products liability is hard to avoid.
darkwater 5y ago
> The "drunk driver returning home from the bar" problem has been solved. It's called a taxi. No need for defective self driving cars for that case. It hasn't be solved at all, there are still too many deaths on road due to drunk/high drivers.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > It hasn't be solved at all, there are still too many deaths on road due to drunk/high drivers. More precisely: it's got a solution better than a current-generation, unsupervised self-driving car.
  - darkwater 5y ago
    Or you can just let someone else drive, or you can just not drink or get high if you have to drive a long way back home, or take public transportation. These all are also "solutions" that don't work all the time. So a vehicle that can safely drive itself is yet another solution that can be added to mitigate the issue.

raxxorrax 5y ago

You can measure the confidence of the manufacturers, which seem to opt for beta testing on the roads. But I agree that it is probably a move to attack competitors. Personally I wouldn't want to be near automatically driving vehicles for now. Maybe because I worked in computer vision and even with drastic advancement of the field, the possibilities are still quite primitive, even with "AI" support. Sure, I could get hurt by a drunk driver. But they are also not allowed on the roads for that matter. I think a solution is to restrict the zones which an autopilot is allowed to be active at first. Ultimately the driver must be responsible. He made the decision to activate the auto pilot. Manufacturers should be forced to be honest about the capabilities though.

sixQuarks 5y ago

You’re looking at the problem wrong. There are 1.35 million deaths per year attributed to car crashes. I don’t know about you, but I would rather companies play loose and fast rather than take forever to figure out the perfect solution. If it takes five years longer, that’s more than 7 million deaths. Even if self driving cars are responsible for 1000 deaths per year, which they won’t be, it would still be well worth playing fast and loose.

hef19898 5y ago
It took mankind a long way to learn that security (EDIT: I meant safety, it does apply to security as well so IMHO) and "fast and loose" don't go together. That's why traffic related death are as low as they have ever been.These lessons are codified in all the regulation around that stuff. That being said, the number you stated is world wide? If so, it's not the one to use. And just ignoring the overall trend, in death per km / mile driven, is just disengenious.
- sixQuarks 5y ago
  Why not use worldwide stats? Self driving cars will take many years to propagate to all the worlds cars (which will eventually happen), but it still holds true, if it takes 5 extra years that is 7 million deaths Also, traffic related injuries and deaths have been rising in recent years due to distracted driving
  - hef19898 5y ago
    One, deaths are measured per driven mile, they are a relatibe stat not an absolute one. Two, driving conditions have to factor in to make it comparable, including traffic deaths in Africa and India (global) is kind of pointless Three, I'd like a source that per driven mile injuries and deaths are rising, all numbers I know of show the opposite trend (including pedestrians and cyclists).

hristov 5y ago

I do not see how this can be an attempt "to create a legislative moat in an area where they're behind". If they are behind in self driving they would not want to raise the stakes by creating this higher liability hurdle which another company can handle better. Any way you look at it if this were an attempt to get a competitive advantage through using the liability laws, then it must only mean that Mercedes are certain that they are ahead in the field of self driving not behind. I very much welcome this development and it is, in my opinion, necessary for level 3 autonomous driving. By definition, level 3 autonomous driving implies that the car must take responsibility. The Level 3 definition says that the driver may take his attention off the road and does not need to supervise the technology (if the conditions are right). Regarding drunk driving, if the machines start killing people, good luck explaining to the victims and the scared public that it may have been worse if they were drunk drivers. The fact is that new technology usually requires notably higher performance to replace the old, this will be the case with self driving, so we may as well embrace that and go forward.

KingOfCoders 5y ago

You want millions of cars on the level of drunk drivers?

LanceH 5y ago
There are probably millions of sober drivers on the level of drunk drivers.

KingOfCoders 5y ago

So Boeing should not be responsible for their software failures?

14 5y ago

Drunk driving has been solved and is on the horizon. Soon manufacturers will be required to include the technology in the cars somewhere around 2026 in North America and possibly sooner in Europe. There might be a combination of technology used such as at wheel breath test, sensors on the wheel that detect alcohol excretion in your skin, eye sensors that detect impairment and drowsiness, sensors that detect impaired driving based on how well you stay in your lane. Unsure what tech will be most common but change is on the horizon.

nemetroid 5y ago

Note that drunk driving is much less socially accepted in Europe than in the U.S. A post on this topic was actually at the top of /r/germany just a week ago: https://old.reddit.com/r/germany/comments/tejhxv/all_my_american_friends_drive_after_drinking_and/ https://old.reddit.com/r/germany/comments/tejhxv/all_my_amer... "All my American friends drive after drinking and I don't know what to do"

avar 5y ago
Several European countries "beat" the US (in a bad way) when it comes to alcohol-related traffic incidents: https://www.itf-oecd.org/alcohol-related-road-casualties-official-crash-statistics https://www.itf-oecd.org/alcohol-related-road-casualties-off... A friendly reminder from a fellow European that the entire continent isn't part of Germany :)
- nemetroid 5y ago
  The US handily beats all those countries when it comes to per-inhabitant alcohol related traffic fatalities.

hammock 5y ago

>I wonder how much of this is part of a genuine attempt to bring a safe product to market, and how much is to pressure the German government (and soon thereafter, the EU) into making this sort of promise mandatory for all car manufacturers, including those that are ahead of Mercedes in the self-driving space. I.e. to create a legislative moat in an area where they're behind. Mercedes is just going to place the assumed liability with a reinsurance company anyway. It seems like a very efficient solution to ensure accountability SOMEWHERE without vast amounts of litigation every time there is an incident. It's honestly hard to see how self-driving vehicles will ever meaningfully make it to the consumer market without an agreement like this.

traceroute66 5y ago

> A car manufacturer might not be willing to accept 100% liability It won't be the car manufacturer, but their insurance underwriter who has the final say (unless the car manufacturer self-insures, which, let's face it, is a non-starter). I'm not sure if you've ever dealt with business insurance, let alone underwriters. Underwriters tend to be, by definition, fairly boring risk-averse types. If you catch them on a good day, they might be willing to make a few relatively small adjustments to their standard wording in order to relax the scope a bit. However this assumes you are lucky enough to be dealing with one underwriter. If you're having to pool at Lloyds, then the chances of you being able to get significant wording relaxation drops dramatically because everyone in the pool has to agree, not just one underwriter. You'll never find an underwriter willing to cover 100% liability for anything under the sun. That's just not how it works. Especially with new and little-understood risks such as self-driving.

lamontcg 5y ago

Unfortunately Tesla has been completely irresponsible, so I'm entirely in favor of the moat. And this addresses the "uncanny valley" of driverless cars, where the car does everything up until you're expected to leap into immediate action to prevent it from killing someone, even though for hours you may have been doing nothing. The technology really does need to be all-or-nothing. The in-between solution that Tesla is trying to exploit isn't reasonable given how human minds operate.

bdcravens 5y ago

> Realistically we're not going to be able to pick "well, don't drive drunk then!", it'll happen I don't think legislators will ever accept the safer criminal activity argument.

HWR_14 5y ago

> I wonder how much of this is part of a genuine attempt to bring a safe product to market, and how much is to pressure the German government (and soon thereafter, the EU) into making this sort of promise mandatory for all car manufacturers I'm fine with a company saying "We don't think we can do X safely, therefore we don't devote as much to research doing X, therefore we don't want to be penalized in the market because people who do X unsafely can obfuscate the risks and sell it to the market." And then attempt to create standards to do X safely. That seems reasonable to me.

adfgadfgaery 5y ago