5 ms·

That teenage driver goes through a training and certification process, and we have ways of stopping them from driving if they fuck up too badly. They also have

That teenage driver goes through a training and certification process, and we have ways of stopping them from driving if they fuck up too badly. They also have liability for their actions. Most of those are lacking or at least inconsistent, for AI driving.

aperson_hello 5y ago
That's a pretty generous interpretation of the oversight for the average teenage driver. Most controls are lacking for ALL drivers, human or not. The first footage that comes out of a felony traffic stop on an AI driver will be amusing!
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dfxm12 5y ago
That teenage driver goes through a training and certification process, and we have ways of stopping them from driving if they fuck up too badly. This is a complete aside, but not having a license doesn't really prevent you from getting in a car and driving it. I was just reminded of this when a buddy's parked car was struck by a drunk driver who was not legally licensed to drive because their license was revoked from having many prior DUI's. Luckily they didn't kill anyone. Hopefully it will be easier to enforce shutting down unsafe driverless cars. I've also known teens without licenses who had to drive their irresponsible buddies' cars home after the licensed driver drove somewhere and got drunk. It's not like there's a biometric scanner in each car that verifies the person behind the wheel is a licensed driver...
- root_axis 5y ago
  Kind of a moot point though. You can't really stop anyone from doing anything, the best we can do in a free society is create laws that deter undesirable behavior.
  - colinmhayes 5y ago
    Or maybe we can hurry up with driverless cars so that we can take the wheel out asap for people who have DUIs.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - root_axis 5y ago
      Driverless cars aren't anywhere near being able to prevent DUIs on a statistically meaningful scale. If lives are what you care about you'd be better off having the government subsidize uber rides.
  - dfxm12 5y ago
    In general, most of our cities (in the US) are very car-centric. Better than passing a law and hoping for the best while waiting to punish people, we can give people realistic alternatives to drunk driving to prevent it in the first place. Likely, these would have a second order effect of giving everyone realistic alternatives to driving too. If driving yourself isn't the norm, then drunk driving becomes more rare.
    - root_axis 5y ago
      > we can give people realistic alternatives to drunk driving to prevent it in the first place Such as?
      - dfxm12 5y ago
        Off the top of my head, public transportation, ride sharing, making streets more pedestrian friendly, denser zoning. I had a great bar that was less than a mile from where I used to live. I rarely went because there was no way to walk there. No sidewalks in the neighborhood, no traffic lights, no bus that stopped near it. It's a shame. It closed shortly after I moved away after away. In the paper they said they just didn't get a lot of people coming in.
lhorie 5y ago
Here in San Francisco you don't actually need to go through any training to receive a drivers license. You just need to pass a computer test (of mostly easily memorizable material) and a road test that consists mostly of turning left and right a few times. They don't even test highway driving, three point turns or parallel parking like they do in some other countries. Also, didn't the entire Uber fleet get grounded after the Tempe death, with a huge months-long NHTSA investigation?
Arnt 5y ago
Two human drivers passed me today in a street where passing me was unconditionally forbidden. In that street no car may pass any bicycle, ever, and there's giant signage. Are you suggesting that we have consistent, reliable ways to prevent those two from driving again?
- dont__panic 5y ago
  That is certainly the idea behind traffic policing, license points, etc. All you need is police who enforce the laws that already exist.
  - Arnt 5y ago
    If I were to send the police a 30-second film showing someone overtaking me illegally, it's near certain that nothing would happen. Unless someone were harmed. If, however, I were to send the certification authority a film of a driverless car doing the same, my guess is that the vendor would be required to investigate and solve that, even if the film were just a single incident and noone harmed. I base that guess on the authority's past behaviour. Speaking as someone who's often in harm's way, I find the possibility of getting rid of conscious rule violations very attractive, even if that doesn't affect the number or effect of software bugs at all.
xyzzy21 5y ago
In fact, liability has been limited in this case by California laws...
Johnny555 5y ago
I don't know where you live, but my "training and certification process" was mom driving with me for a few weeks, then I went to the driver testing office, drove around a closed course, proved I could stay on my side of the road, stop at a stop sign, and parallel park. Then I got my license without ever being tested at over 25mph. Even with the state of today's technology, I'd trust a driverless car more than I'd trust a new teen driver.
- jjav 5y ago
  > Even with the state of today's technology, I'd trust a driverless car more than I'd trust a new teen driver. No way. Yes, the driver education in the USA is appalling. It should be much more thorough and cover a lot more ground, particularly emergency manouvers and car control. Nonetheless, a human driver has self-preservation instincts which are very deeply hardwired into the brain. Software has nothing like it, if it has a bug it will crash and take out whatever and whoever is in the way since it doesn't have, can't have, any emotion or self-preservation.
standardUser 5y ago
"That teenage driver goes through a training and certification process" Did anyone else spit out their morning coffee at this hilarious one-liner?
- kadoban 5y ago
  Feel free to argue that licensing isn't strict enough. I'd agree. But AI driver certification is effectively nonexistent, judging by Telsa's bullshit behavior.
  - standardUser 5y ago
    It's not that it's not strict enough, it's that driver certification is so outrageously lenient that "existing" is about all it accomplishes. I would trust any AI on the road today over a "certified" 16-year old or 85-year-old.
AlotOfReading 5y ago
The vehicle manufacturer is licensed here, all safety operators involved are licensed, and the DMV will pull the operations permit or vehicle registrations if they fuck up too badly. This has already happened to pony.ai and Uber. More consistency would be better, but it's a California bureaucracy. You get what you get.

aperson_hello 5y ago

That's a pretty generous interpretation of the oversight for the average teenage driver. Most controls are lacking for ALL drivers, human or not. The first footage that comes out of a felony traffic stop on an AI driver will be amusing!

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

dfxm12 5y ago

That teenage driver goes through a training and certification process, and we have ways of stopping them from driving if they fuck up too badly. This is a complete aside, but not having a license doesn't really prevent you from getting in a car and driving it. I was just reminded of this when a buddy's parked car was struck by a drunk driver who was not legally licensed to drive because their license was revoked from having many prior DUI's. Luckily they didn't kill anyone. Hopefully it will be easier to enforce shutting down unsafe driverless cars. I've also known teens without licenses who had to drive their irresponsible buddies' cars home after the licensed driver drove somewhere and got drunk. It's not like there's a biometric scanner in each car that verifies the person behind the wheel is a licensed driver...

root_axis 5y ago
Kind of a moot point though. You can't really stop anyone from doing anything, the best we can do in a free society is create laws that deter undesirable behavior.
- colinmhayes 5y ago
  Or maybe we can hurry up with driverless cars so that we can take the wheel out asap for people who have DUIs.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - root_axis 5y ago
    Driverless cars aren't anywhere near being able to prevent DUIs on a statistically meaningful scale. If lives are what you care about you'd be better off having the government subsidize uber rides.
- dfxm12 5y ago
  In general, most of our cities (in the US) are very car-centric. Better than passing a law and hoping for the best while waiting to punish people, we can give people realistic alternatives to drunk driving to prevent it in the first place. Likely, these would have a second order effect of giving everyone realistic alternatives to driving too. If driving yourself isn't the norm, then drunk driving becomes more rare.
  - root_axis 5y ago
    > we can give people realistic alternatives to drunk driving to prevent it in the first place Such as?
    - dfxm12 5y ago
      Off the top of my head, public transportation, ride sharing, making streets more pedestrian friendly, denser zoning. I had a great bar that was less than a mile from where I used to live. I rarely went because there was no way to walk there. No sidewalks in the neighborhood, no traffic lights, no bus that stopped near it. It's a shame. It closed shortly after I moved away after away. In the paper they said they just didn't get a lot of people coming in.

lhorie 5y ago

Here in San Francisco you don't actually need to go through any training to receive a drivers license. You just need to pass a computer test (of mostly easily memorizable material) and a road test that consists mostly of turning left and right a few times. They don't even test highway driving, three point turns or parallel parking like they do in some other countries. Also, didn't the entire Uber fleet get grounded after the Tempe death, with a huge months-long NHTSA investigation?

Arnt 5y ago

Two human drivers passed me today in a street where passing me was unconditionally forbidden. In that street no car may pass any bicycle, ever, and there's giant signage. Are you suggesting that we have consistent, reliable ways to prevent those two from driving again?

dont__panic 5y ago
That is certainly the idea behind traffic policing, license points, etc. All you need is police who enforce the laws that already exist.
- Arnt 5y ago
  If I were to send the police a 30-second film showing someone overtaking me illegally, it's near certain that nothing would happen. Unless someone were harmed. If, however, I were to send the certification authority a film of a driverless car doing the same, my guess is that the vendor would be required to investigate and solve that, even if the film were just a single incident and noone harmed. I base that guess on the authority's past behaviour. Speaking as someone who's often in harm's way, I find the possibility of getting rid of conscious rule violations very attractive, even if that doesn't affect the number or effect of software bugs at all.

xyzzy21 5y ago

In fact, liability has been limited in this case by California laws...

Johnny555 5y ago

I don't know where you live, but my "training and certification process" was mom driving with me for a few weeks, then I went to the driver testing office, drove around a closed course, proved I could stay on my side of the road, stop at a stop sign, and parallel park. Then I got my license without ever being tested at over 25mph. Even with the state of today's technology, I'd trust a driverless car more than I'd trust a new teen driver.

jjav 5y ago
> Even with the state of today's technology, I'd trust a driverless car more than I'd trust a new teen driver. No way. Yes, the driver education in the USA is appalling. It should be much more thorough and cover a lot more ground, particularly emergency manouvers and car control. Nonetheless, a human driver has self-preservation instincts which are very deeply hardwired into the brain. Software has nothing like it, if it has a bug it will crash and take out whatever and whoever is in the way since it doesn't have, can't have, any emotion or self-preservation.

standardUser 5y ago

"That teenage driver goes through a training and certification process" Did anyone else spit out their morning coffee at this hilarious one-liner?

kadoban 5y ago
Feel free to argue that licensing isn't strict enough. I'd agree. But AI driver certification is effectively nonexistent, judging by Telsa's bullshit behavior.
- standardUser 5y ago
  It's not that it's not strict enough, it's that driver certification is so outrageously lenient that "existing" is about all it accomplishes. I would trust any AI on the road today over a "certified" 16-year old or 85-year-old.

AlotOfReading 5y ago

The vehicle manufacturer is licensed here, all safety operators involved are licensed, and the DMV will pull the operations permit or vehicle registrations if they fuck up too badly. This has already happened to pony.ai and Uber. More consistency would be better, but it's a California bureaucracy. You get what you get.