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> According to the Texas Transportation Code, the owner of a driverless car is “considered the operator” and can be cited for breaking traffic laws “regardless

> According to the Texas Transportation Code, the owner of a driverless car is “considered the operator” and can be cited for breaking traffic laws “regardless of whether the person is physically present in the vehicle.” This is all well and good when the owner is Waymo or Cruise and actually has direct control over the code that caused the vehicle to fail, but for consumer cars it brings up important questions of what "ownership" even means these days. Let's say I own a self-driving car that's able to reliably park itself. I pay close attention the first few months to make sure that it's safe and reliable, and once it's proved itself I start trusting it. I've been as careful as can reasonably be expected, but one day the manufacturer pushes a mandatory, automatic over-the-air update that contains a critical bug, and my car suddenly starts misbehaving and I get ticketed. This isn't an unlikely scenario—how many of us have "owned" a product that has suddenly changed its behavior in undesirable ways after we purchased it? It doesn't seem reasonable to me to hold an individual consumer liable for bugs in a machine that they are unable to fully control. Either manufacturers need to be required to provide important software freedoms to vehicle owners, or the manufacturers themselves need to be liable for infractions.

kevindamm 3y ago
This is why the judicial system exists.
- djbusby 3y ago
  Usually invoked after some harm has been caused. Perhaps there is something we can do before the, nearly obvious, harm occurs.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - erikaww 3y ago
    What is the utility for deciding is one party or another is liable first? Since self driving accidents are rare, we could just have shared liability and defer to courts. I’d imagine a lot of these accidents go to court now. National streamlined processes could be established as more motorists opt into self driving technology.
  - ajross 3y ago
    "Nearly obvious" seems to be doing a lot of work in that sentence. Maybe elaborate? There are now millions of cars on the road with some level of autonomy, you don't need to hand-wave about what you believe "will" happen. Just show the data.
    - djbusby 3y ago
      It was the items mentioned by @lolinder - software updates causing cars behavior to change, who really owns it, etc. That context was easier to see when this thread started. The "nearly obvious" was referring to things already mentioned, which I also think are obvious but many others don't.
- cmmeur01 3y ago
  Which as we all know is a super level playing field.
eropple 3y ago
> It doesn't seem reasonable to me to hold an individual consumer liable for bugs in a machine that they are unable to fully control. They chose to buy it. Manufacturers should also be potentially liable for some classes of problem, but consumers are the ones pressing the "run the self-driving car" button. The court system exists to apportion liability properly past that.
- stavros 3y ago
  If I buy a defective toaster and it burns down my house, am I liable for choosing to buy it?
  - eropple 3y ago
    If it isn't UL or ETL certified? You very well might be, depending on circumstances. Your insurer may treat all fire as covered peril, but it is not guaranteed.
    - stavros 3y ago
      So, if cars are certified, which they are, I'm not liable.
      - eropple 3y ago
        Are they? Forget even fully self-driving cars right now--who's certifying your lane assist after every OTA update? Like, point at the guy with the clipboard at USDOT or the NHTSA. Because as far as I know, that's not happening, you're open-palm slamming updates into a system you chose to bought and use, under an operational model where you must be fully ready to take over with no warning, and undertaking that is your call. To be totally clear: I want a regulatory regime for this stuff such that it is safe-as-possible and not predicated on a human's attention not wandering in the way that a human's attention is going to very understandably wander. Without one, consumers need to not buy it on pain of their own significant liability.
        3y ago
PopAlongKid 3y ago
>how many of us have "owned" a product that has suddenly changed its behavior in undesirable ways after we purchased it? I'd be interested in some examples, as I can't think of any offhand, despite your claim that this "isn't unlikely". Also, when it comes to vehicles misbehaving in traffic, I'd say "harmful" is a more apt term than "undesirable".
- j4yav 3y ago
  Really any cloud-connected device would fit this bill. Many have gone out of business and turned off their backends or changed the way they work in a way that is incompatible with the original purchasing intent of the user. Not to mention software products that evolve in ways the user doesn't like all the time. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-64249388 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-64249388 is an article with some more specific hardware examples if that's what you're looking for.
- lolinder 3y ago
  Here is a (very) incomplete list. Not all are ones that I've personally experienced, but they're all products that either I or someone in my direct acquaintance have owned/used. * Microsoft Windows starts showing ads in new and creative places, even though I shelled out $200 for the Pro version. * An Android update broke my preferred home screen. * Roomba vacuums go through regular periods of stupidity in between software updates. One day it's able to dodge obstacles, the next it's sucking up anything and everything. * Basically every SaaS product changes its UI on a semi-regular basis in ways that throw off existing workflows. EDIT: Oh, and a bonus one that's more on topic—Tesla recently rushed an update to their software and introduced a lot of bugs: https://www.autoevolution.com/news/tesla-s-holiday-update-screwed-up-people-s-cars-yet-tesla-refuses-to-acknowledge-226761.html https://www.autoevolution.com/news/tesla-s-holiday-update-sc...
  - PopAlongKid 3y ago
    >Here is a (very) incomplete list Unlike the potential of a vehicle making driving mistakes, none of your examples is harmful, especially not to random third parties. The only thing on your list I have direct experience with is Windows--I've had the Pro license ever since Win 10 came out, now on three different machines, and I don't see any ads on my desktop or popping up in my file system. (of course, I don't log in to any Microsoft account, maybe that explains it).
krisoft 3y ago
> one day the manufacturer pushes a mandatory, automatic over-the-air update that contains a critical bug, and my car suddenly starts misbehaving and I get ticketed Don’t buy it if the company who controls it does not put it in writing that they indemnify you properly.
ajross 3y ago
> one day the manufacturer pushes a mandatory, automatic over-the-air update that contains a critical bug This is a hidden two-fault scenario, which isn't always "bad engineering" but is usually a smell in that direction. You're (1) accepting that the operator/owner/whatever of the vehicle is technically responsible, (2) acknowledging that this supervision is likely to work in practice, then (3) imagining a hardware/systems failure in the car and simultaneously (4) supposing that the supervision you took for granted in (2) fails at the same time. Basically, you don't need point 3 to make your point about safety logically. You added it to change the villain from the driver to the manufacturer.
- lolinder 3y ago
  I'm explicitly not accepting points 1 or 2. I set up the scenario to show that no matter how careful the consumer is, their supervision will not work in practice (since the vehicle's behavior can change at any time and without warning) and therefore they cannot be held responsible for the behavior of the vehicle. Either the manufacturer should not be allowed to market it (because it cannot be operated safely) or the manufacturer should be considered the operator.
  - ajross 3y ago
    > I set up the scenario to show that no matter how careful the consumer is, their supervision will not work in practice (since the vehicle's behavior can change at any time and without warning) Sorry, can you explain that better? The whole point to the metaphor of "supervision" (e.g. of party A by party B) is that party A is not trusted to behave correctly in all circumstances. You seem to be saying that supervision can only work if B is never required to intervene at all (and by extension, won't, if A's behavior changes)? In which case there's no supervision happening, right? Again, it really seems like you're just playing tricks to make the manufacturer into an unsolvable villain. I mean, you get that's ridiculous right? We trust our cars not to fail already. And have, for a century. And sometimes they do fail, and when that happens we adjust regulatory strategies to minimize risk. Why is any of that different when there's a scary robot involved?
epistasis 3y ago
In this case the consumer should of course still be held responsible, and if they think it's wrong they can join in on the class action lawsuit against the manufacturer. Or, owners should enter into a pre-existing legal relationship with the manufacturer to get reimbursed for any manufacturer error that gets pushed out. Those who choose to operate driverless vehicles must have some skin in the game in order for this to be fair at all. Bringing your driverless vehicle into an area is the customer's choice, after all.
- tallowen 3y ago
  Going to repeated class action lawsuits every time there is a bad software update sounds like an inefficient use of the court system to me. I think most people will eventually want the manufacturer to be the defendant in court cases that result from crashes due to a manufacturer updating cars. I can only imagine NHTSA (US Auto Regulator) will evolve to make this the case.
- t0mas88 3y ago
  That's the mostly overly American thing I've read this year... Make consumers file a class action against car manufacturers (good luck with a Tesla and mandatory arbitration), all to avoid doing the sensible thing: Make some rules for this market. The likes of Musk will moan and bitch about it, but regulation is a perfectly good solution for this.
  - epistasis 3y ago
    Well if you read to the second paragraph, you will see I'm not attached to class action lawsuits, and alternatively suggest other legal arrangements. My point is that operators must bear some of the responsibility for their operation of these vehicles.
- kristopolous 3y ago
  So basically the eventual outcome here is known (industry regulation) but we must take every step to do it the hardest way possible? Intentionally start with a free-for-all then have deaths, a social movement, lawsuits, court cases, politicians talking about it, campaigns, legislative debates, etc to arrive at what we all know is the end game to begin with? I think there may be some optimization steps here.
solardev 3y ago
> Either manufacturers need to be required to provide important software freedoms to vehicle owners FOSS robot cars seem like a great way to bypass emissions controls, safety regulations, and plain common sense. It'd take what, half a day, for some teenager to modify the firmware to double the 0-60 and blow up the battery pack at the same time? I'd want the opposite: for self-driving firmware to be locked down and hardware signed to heck, with an independent auditing body code-reviewing every update. > or the manufacturers themselves need to be liable for infractions. Can't it be both? Split legal responsibility between each consumer and manufacturer. Doesn't have to be 50/50, but personal liability (even capped at a few grand) could make people pay attention and take over when the self-driving doesn't seem to be doing its job. We don't need more drivers on the roads who think their wondercars are infallible and blame everyone else for their accidents.
- lolinder 3y ago
  That's a reasonable argument. In that case, I argue that the manufacturer who wrote and signed the firmware should be liable as the operator of the vehicle.
  - solardev 3y ago
    Sorry, I edited my comment as you were replying. Do you think it would be possible (and desirable) to split liability, or should it remain solely the manufacturer's?
    - lolinder 3y ago
      Since we're talking about traffic tickets, which are (currently) routine and generally try to avoid the court system as much as possible, I'd say that we need laws that provide no ambiguity, and I'd rather those laws place the blame on the party with the most control.
      - kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
        This isn't just a matter of ticketing for minor violations with no consequences. These are unregulated robots that have and will continue to kill people.
bluescrn 3y ago
As individuals we are never going to own self-driving cars. If buying the hardware is even an option to begin with, there's going to be a hefty fee to subscribe to the required 'cloud based' self-driving service. (And there's certainly no way individuals/small businesses will be able to buy such a car and run a self-driving taxi service profitably when a megacorporation could have all the income from all the cars)
- exhilaration 3y ago
  What about comma? https://comma.ai/ https://comma.ai/ Seems like our old friend geohot built exactly what you want. Positive HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36927971 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36927971
  - bluescrn 3y ago
    If it became popular it'd be regulated out of existence
    - rpmisms 3y ago
      Diesel tuners are still very popular.
  - shkkmo 3y ago
    That is only a level 2 autonomous driving system, with capabilities on par with many other stock manufacturer driver assistance system. Having an open source alternative is coolsl, but it doesn't really bear on the argument I think is being made. I think the argument is that we won't see the same availability beyond level 3, since level 4 is the first step where a human is not required behind the wheel. This means you probably need subscription to have a remote human who can step in and take control in edge cases, at least until we develop AGI. Even then, I suspect the economics of running a full AGI from each vehicles will make a subscription mandatory.
- hahajk 3y ago
  I still believe the free market can work for self driving cars. If there's demand for offline self driving cars, someone will make them. Probably someone in Asia will make them affordable. But I believe regulatory capture and anti-competitive tariffs are likely to make affordable, buy-and-use cars impossible to sell in the US. Regulations will likely change annually, like they do for cars right now. The govt will be worried that China has control of our morning commute. I hate being cynical, but cars do seem like a lost cause.
Swizec 3y ago
We already have laws that make it so the driver is liable for infractions, crashes, etc. Even if you own the car, but someone else drives, driver gets the ticket. If this weren’t the case, rent-a-car agencies wouldn’t exist. The same rule should extend to self-driving cars. The manufacturer is driving, ergo they should be liable for everything the car does. Mercedes’s approach to self-driving feels the most promising here. Afaik they are so far the only manufacturer who has said “we’re driving, we’ll take the liability” – https://insideevs.com/news/575160/mercedes-accepts-legal-responsibility-drive-pilot/ https://insideevs.com/news/575160/mercedes-accepts-legal-res...
iwontberude 3y ago
But there are games like Rocket League who have never changed their controls or physics. They changed everything else except for those things so that people could predictably build and maintain skill. I think it’s not holding a car company to too high or a standard.
coryrc 3y ago
It's immaterial. Auto manufacturers' product designers and executives aren't being held responsible for rising pedestrian deaths because their oversized killer vehicles keep running over people when driven by humans. Self-driving is responsible for almost no deaths or injuries, most likely net-negative.
turquoisevar 3y ago
There are two components here that both already have an answer in the real world. 1) making owners of cars responsible for (most) traffic infractions 2) issues caused by third parties, with the first party bearing initial liability Number 1 is surprisingly common in overseas countries. Some of those countries have figured that your garden variety traffic fines clog up the courts, so they’ve lifted simple garden variety infractions out of criminal law and placed them in administrative law. In doing so, they’ve made the owner of the car (i.e., license plate holder) responsible for these types of traffic infractions, who then receive their fines by mail (which are technically settlement offers to avoid prosecution) with a generous appeal window, after which the fine is finalized (doesn’t end up on criminal record because it’s not criminal anymore). This frees up court resources, allows for ticketing without stops, and shifts responsibility to the car's owner, who then, if applicable, can settle it with whomever they borrow their car to. For more severe infractions, it’s still tied to the driver, with the car owner being the initial presumptive driver. Number 2 is a common situation in the US and overseas and is resolved by going after whoever is responsible (e.g., manufacturer) after the fact to be made whole again. It’s similar to going after the seller of the stolen goods after the original owner takes back their property from you in jurisdictions where property rights don’t transfer after stolen goods are sold.
- FpUser 3y ago
  >"so they’ve lifted simple garden variety infractions out of criminal law and placed them in administrative law." Many "garden variety infractions" are human errors. I do not think those were ever a subject to criminal prosecution disregarding whether the ability to clog the courts.
  - turquoisevar 3y ago
    In the US, they are still firmly part of the criminal system and recorded on your criminal record, to the point that if you don’t show up, a warrant will be issued for your arrest in some jurisdictions. Elsewhere, they also used to be part of the criminal system and handled similarly to how it’s dealt with in the US (minus the more severe tools the criminal justice system has on hand).
cyanydeez 3y ago
the answer obviously is you're getting a service contract and the company will claim you're responsible 99.9% of the time. the best of capitalism will definitely happen.
ozymandias12 3y ago
OTA updates would require not only 5y simulation testing (dine in 5 days w the right computing power) but would also not be applied all at the same time, in order to get flaws in time before full fleet deployment.
michpoch 3y ago
> Let's say I own a self-driving car that's able to reliably park itself. I pay close attention the first few months to make sure that it's safe and reliable, and once it's proved itself I start trusting it. I've been as careful as can reasonably be expected, but one day the manufacturer pushes a mandatory, automatic over-the-air update that contains a critical bug, and my car suddenly starts misbehaving and I get ticketed. But this is very easy. The self-driving is a component, same as brakes or lights. If your brakes stop working because of manufacturing issue and you crash into something it's the manufacturer's fault. Nothing new here.
- lolinder 3y ago
  I agree that's how it should work, but the TX law that the article quotes changes that rule to make the owner of the vehicle at fault for self driving failures.
albert_e 3y ago
Here is an recent example from a slightly different area: > Exam invalidated over... Facetime emojis??? > https://www.reddit.com/r/AWSCertifications/comments/18p8uub/exam_invalidated_over_facetime_emojis/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AWSCertifications/comments/18p8uub/...

kevindamm 3y ago

This is why the judicial system exists.

djbusby 3y ago
Usually invoked after some harm has been caused. Perhaps there is something we can do before the, nearly obvious, harm occurs.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- erikaww 3y ago
  What is the utility for deciding is one party or another is liable first? Since self driving accidents are rare, we could just have shared liability and defer to courts. I’d imagine a lot of these accidents go to court now. National streamlined processes could be established as more motorists opt into self driving technology.
- ajross 3y ago
  "Nearly obvious" seems to be doing a lot of work in that sentence. Maybe elaborate? There are now millions of cars on the road with some level of autonomy, you don't need to hand-wave about what you believe "will" happen. Just show the data.
  - djbusby 3y ago
    It was the items mentioned by @lolinder - software updates causing cars behavior to change, who really owns it, etc. That context was easier to see when this thread started. The "nearly obvious" was referring to things already mentioned, which I also think are obvious but many others don't.
cmmeur01 3y ago
Which as we all know is a super level playing field.

eropple 3y ago

> It doesn't seem reasonable to me to hold an individual consumer liable for bugs in a machine that they are unable to fully control. They chose to buy it. Manufacturers should also be potentially liable for some classes of problem, but consumers are the ones pressing the "run the self-driving car" button. The court system exists to apportion liability properly past that.

stavros 3y ago
If I buy a defective toaster and it burns down my house, am I liable for choosing to buy it?
- eropple 3y ago
  If it isn't UL or ETL certified? You very well might be, depending on circumstances. Your insurer may treat all fire as covered peril, but it is not guaranteed.
  - stavros 3y ago
    So, if cars are certified, which they are, I'm not liable.
    - eropple 3y ago
      Are they? Forget even fully self-driving cars right now--who's certifying your lane assist after every OTA update? Like, point at the guy with the clipboard at USDOT or the NHTSA. Because as far as I know, that's not happening, you're open-palm slamming updates into a system you chose to bought and use, under an operational model where you must be fully ready to take over with no warning, and undertaking that is your call. To be totally clear: I want a regulatory regime for this stuff such that it is safe-as-possible and not predicated on a human's attention not wandering in the way that a human's attention is going to very understandably wander. Without one, consumers need to not buy it on pain of their own significant liability.
      - 3y ago

PopAlongKid 3y ago

>how many of us have "owned" a product that has suddenly changed its behavior in undesirable ways after we purchased it? I'd be interested in some examples, as I can't think of any offhand, despite your claim that this "isn't unlikely". Also, when it comes to vehicles misbehaving in traffic, I'd say "harmful" is a more apt term than "undesirable".

j4yav 3y ago
Really any cloud-connected device would fit this bill. Many have gone out of business and turned off their backends or changed the way they work in a way that is incompatible with the original purchasing intent of the user. Not to mention software products that evolve in ways the user doesn't like all the time. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-64249388 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-64249388 is an article with some more specific hardware examples if that's what you're looking for.
lolinder 3y ago
Here is a (very) incomplete list. Not all are ones that I've personally experienced, but they're all products that either I or someone in my direct acquaintance have owned/used. * Microsoft Windows starts showing ads in new and creative places, even though I shelled out $200 for the Pro version. * An Android update broke my preferred home screen. * Roomba vacuums go through regular periods of stupidity in between software updates. One day it's able to dodge obstacles, the next it's sucking up anything and everything. * Basically every SaaS product changes its UI on a semi-regular basis in ways that throw off existing workflows. EDIT: Oh, and a bonus one that's more on topic—Tesla recently rushed an update to their software and introduced a lot of bugs: https://www.autoevolution.com/news/tesla-s-holiday-update-screwed-up-people-s-cars-yet-tesla-refuses-to-acknowledge-226761.html https://www.autoevolution.com/news/tesla-s-holiday-update-sc...
- PopAlongKid 3y ago
  >Here is a (very) incomplete list Unlike the potential of a vehicle making driving mistakes, none of your examples is harmful, especially not to random third parties. The only thing on your list I have direct experience with is Windows--I've had the Pro license ever since Win 10 came out, now on three different machines, and I don't see any ads on my desktop or popping up in my file system. (of course, I don't log in to any Microsoft account, maybe that explains it).

krisoft 3y ago

> one day the manufacturer pushes a mandatory, automatic over-the-air update that contains a critical bug, and my car suddenly starts misbehaving and I get ticketed Don’t buy it if the company who controls it does not put it in writing that they indemnify you properly.

ajross 3y ago

> one day the manufacturer pushes a mandatory, automatic over-the-air update that contains a critical bug This is a hidden two-fault scenario, which isn't always "bad engineering" but is usually a smell in that direction. You're (1) accepting that the operator/owner/whatever of the vehicle is technically responsible, (2) acknowledging that this supervision is likely to work in practice, then (3) imagining a hardware/systems failure in the car and simultaneously (4) supposing that the supervision you took for granted in (2) fails at the same time. Basically, you don't need point 3 to make your point about safety logically. You added it to change the villain from the driver to the manufacturer.

lolinder 3y ago
I'm explicitly not accepting points 1 or 2. I set up the scenario to show that no matter how careful the consumer is, their supervision will not work in practice (since the vehicle's behavior can change at any time and without warning) and therefore they cannot be held responsible for the behavior of the vehicle. Either the manufacturer should not be allowed to market it (because it cannot be operated safely) or the manufacturer should be considered the operator.
- ajross 3y ago
  > I set up the scenario to show that no matter how careful the consumer is, their supervision will not work in practice (since the vehicle's behavior can change at any time and without warning) Sorry, can you explain that better? The whole point to the metaphor of "supervision" (e.g. of party A by party B) is that party A is not trusted to behave correctly in all circumstances. You seem to be saying that supervision can only work if B is never required to intervene at all (and by extension, won't, if A's behavior changes)? In which case there's no supervision happening, right? Again, it really seems like you're just playing tricks to make the manufacturer into an unsolvable villain. I mean, you get that's ridiculous right? We trust our cars not to fail already. And have, for a century. And sometimes they do fail, and when that happens we adjust regulatory strategies to minimize risk. Why is any of that different when there's a scary robot involved?

epistasis 3y ago

In this case the consumer should of course still be held responsible, and if they think it's wrong they can join in on the class action lawsuit against the manufacturer. Or, owners should enter into a pre-existing legal relationship with the manufacturer to get reimbursed for any manufacturer error that gets pushed out. Those who choose to operate driverless vehicles must have some skin in the game in order for this to be fair at all. Bringing your driverless vehicle into an area is the customer's choice, after all.

tallowen 3y ago
Going to repeated class action lawsuits every time there is a bad software update sounds like an inefficient use of the court system to me. I think most people will eventually want the manufacturer to be the defendant in court cases that result from crashes due to a manufacturer updating cars. I can only imagine NHTSA (US Auto Regulator) will evolve to make this the case.
t0mas88 3y ago
That's the mostly overly American thing I've read this year... Make consumers file a class action against car manufacturers (good luck with a Tesla and mandatory arbitration), all to avoid doing the sensible thing: Make some rules for this market. The likes of Musk will moan and bitch about it, but regulation is a perfectly good solution for this.
- epistasis 3y ago
  Well if you read to the second paragraph, you will see I'm not attached to class action lawsuits, and alternatively suggest other legal arrangements. My point is that operators must bear some of the responsibility for their operation of these vehicles.
kristopolous 3y ago
So basically the eventual outcome here is known (industry regulation) but we must take every step to do it the hardest way possible? Intentionally start with a free-for-all then have deaths, a social movement, lawsuits, court cases, politicians talking about it, campaigns, legislative debates, etc to arrive at what we all know is the end game to begin with? I think there may be some optimization steps here.

solardev 3y ago

> Either manufacturers need to be required to provide important software freedoms to vehicle owners FOSS robot cars seem like a great way to bypass emissions controls, safety regulations, and plain common sense. It'd take what, half a day, for some teenager to modify the firmware to double the 0-60 and blow up the battery pack at the same time? I'd want the opposite: for self-driving firmware to be locked down and hardware signed to heck, with an independent auditing body code-reviewing every update. > or the manufacturers themselves need to be liable for infractions. Can't it be both? Split legal responsibility between each consumer and manufacturer. Doesn't have to be 50/50, but personal liability (even capped at a few grand) could make people pay attention and take over when the self-driving doesn't seem to be doing its job. We don't need more drivers on the roads who think their wondercars are infallible and blame everyone else for their accidents.

lolinder 3y ago
That's a reasonable argument. In that case, I argue that the manufacturer who wrote and signed the firmware should be liable as the operator of the vehicle.
- solardev 3y ago
  Sorry, I edited my comment as you were replying. Do you think it would be possible (and desirable) to split liability, or should it remain solely the manufacturer's?
  - lolinder 3y ago
    Since we're talking about traffic tickets, which are (currently) routine and generally try to avoid the court system as much as possible, I'd say that we need laws that provide no ambiguity, and I'd rather those laws place the blame on the party with the most control.
    - kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
      This isn't just a matter of ticketing for minor violations with no consequences. These are unregulated robots that have and will continue to kill people.

bluescrn 3y ago

As individuals we are never going to own self-driving cars. If buying the hardware is even an option to begin with, there's going to be a hefty fee to subscribe to the required 'cloud based' self-driving service. (And there's certainly no way individuals/small businesses will be able to buy such a car and run a self-driving taxi service profitably when a megacorporation could have all the income from all the cars)

exhilaration 3y ago
What about comma? https://comma.ai/ https://comma.ai/ Seems like our old friend geohot built exactly what you want. Positive HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36927971 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36927971
- bluescrn 3y ago
  If it became popular it'd be regulated out of existence
  - rpmisms 3y ago
    Diesel tuners are still very popular.
- shkkmo 3y ago
  That is only a level 2 autonomous driving system, with capabilities on par with many other stock manufacturer driver assistance system. Having an open source alternative is coolsl, but it doesn't really bear on the argument I think is being made. I think the argument is that we won't see the same availability beyond level 3, since level 4 is the first step where a human is not required behind the wheel. This means you probably need subscription to have a remote human who can step in and take control in edge cases, at least until we develop AGI. Even then, I suspect the economics of running a full AGI from each vehicles will make a subscription mandatory.
hahajk 3y ago
I still believe the free market can work for self driving cars. If there's demand for offline self driving cars, someone will make them. Probably someone in Asia will make them affordable. But I believe regulatory capture and anti-competitive tariffs are likely to make affordable, buy-and-use cars impossible to sell in the US. Regulations will likely change annually, like they do for cars right now. The govt will be worried that China has control of our morning commute. I hate being cynical, but cars do seem like a lost cause.

Swizec 3y ago

We already have laws that make it so the driver is liable for infractions, crashes, etc. Even if you own the car, but someone else drives, driver gets the ticket. If this weren’t the case, rent-a-car agencies wouldn’t exist. The same rule should extend to self-driving cars. The manufacturer is driving, ergo they should be liable for everything the car does. Mercedes’s approach to self-driving feels the most promising here. Afaik they are so far the only manufacturer who has said “we’re driving, we’ll take the liability” – https://insideevs.com/news/575160/mercedes-accepts-legal-responsibility-drive-pilot/ https://insideevs.com/news/575160/mercedes-accepts-legal-res...

iwontberude 3y ago

But there are games like Rocket League who have never changed their controls or physics. They changed everything else except for those things so that people could predictably build and maintain skill. I think it’s not holding a car company to too high or a standard.

coryrc 3y ago

It's immaterial. Auto manufacturers' product designers and executives aren't being held responsible for rising pedestrian deaths because their oversized killer vehicles keep running over people when driven by humans. Self-driving is responsible for almost no deaths or injuries, most likely net-negative.

turquoisevar 3y ago

There are two components here that both already have an answer in the real world. 1) making owners of cars responsible for (most) traffic infractions 2) issues caused by third parties, with the first party bearing initial liability Number 1 is surprisingly common in overseas countries. Some of those countries have figured that your garden variety traffic fines clog up the courts, so they’ve lifted simple garden variety infractions out of criminal law and placed them in administrative law. In doing so, they’ve made the owner of the car (i.e., license plate holder) responsible for these types of traffic infractions, who then receive their fines by mail (which are technically settlement offers to avoid prosecution) with a generous appeal window, after which the fine is finalized (doesn’t end up on criminal record because it’s not criminal anymore). This frees up court resources, allows for ticketing without stops, and shifts responsibility to the car's owner, who then, if applicable, can settle it with whomever they borrow their car to. For more severe infractions, it’s still tied to the driver, with the car owner being the initial presumptive driver. Number 2 is a common situation in the US and overseas and is resolved by going after whoever is responsible (e.g., manufacturer) after the fact to be made whole again. It’s similar to going after the seller of the stolen goods after the original owner takes back their property from you in jurisdictions where property rights don’t transfer after stolen goods are sold.

FpUser 3y ago
>"so they’ve lifted simple garden variety infractions out of criminal law and placed them in administrative law." Many "garden variety infractions" are human errors. I do not think those were ever a subject to criminal prosecution disregarding whether the ability to clog the courts.
- turquoisevar 3y ago
  In the US, they are still firmly part of the criminal system and recorded on your criminal record, to the point that if you don’t show up, a warrant will be issued for your arrest in some jurisdictions. Elsewhere, they also used to be part of the criminal system and handled similarly to how it’s dealt with in the US (minus the more severe tools the criminal justice system has on hand).

cyanydeez 3y ago

the answer obviously is you're getting a service contract and the company will claim you're responsible 99.9% of the time. the best of capitalism will definitely happen.

ozymandias12 3y ago

OTA updates would require not only 5y simulation testing (dine in 5 days w the right computing power) but would also not be applied all at the same time, in order to get flaws in time before full fleet deployment.

michpoch 3y ago

> Let's say I own a self-driving car that's able to reliably park itself. I pay close attention the first few months to make sure that it's safe and reliable, and once it's proved itself I start trusting it. I've been as careful as can reasonably be expected, but one day the manufacturer pushes a mandatory, automatic over-the-air update that contains a critical bug, and my car suddenly starts misbehaving and I get ticketed. But this is very easy. The self-driving is a component, same as brakes or lights. If your brakes stop working because of manufacturing issue and you crash into something it's the manufacturer's fault. Nothing new here.

lolinder 3y ago
I agree that's how it should work, but the TX law that the article quotes changes that rule to make the owner of the vehicle at fault for self driving failures.

albert_e 3y ago

Here is an recent example from a slightly different area: > Exam invalidated over... Facetime emojis??? > https://www.reddit.com/r/AWSCertifications/comments/18p8uub/exam_invalidated_over_facetime_emojis/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AWSCertifications/comments/18p8uub/...