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> 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. Man

> 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.
      - stavros 3y ago
        Mercedes does accept liability on their self-driving system, so there is a choice beyond "oops our system killed your wife, sorry, she should have been paying attention while our car pretended to be able to drive".
wegfawefgawefg 3y ago
By that argument nothing is my responsibility because I didnt choose to be born.
Libcat99 3y ago
They chose to buy a product with a set of known characteristics The manufacturer then changed those characteristics. If a manufacturer makes changes post purchase to a product resulting in harm, they should bear the majority of the liability, if not all of it. If I had a microwave that for years cooked a potato in 3 minutes safely, but then was modified by an update to catch fire under the same conditions, I shouldn't be the one on the hook for pushing that button.
lolinder 3y ago
So we should just plan on every self-driving vehicle ticket ending up in the court system so that we can properly apportion liability between the consumer (who pressed the button) and the manufacturer (who designed the car, wrote the code, advertised the vehicle, and then updated it many times after the consumer purchased it)?
maxsilver 3y ago
> They chose to buy it. No, absolutely not, never ever. This just highly incentivizes Manufacturers to dump trash garbage into the market (since you've just forced consumers to bear all liability for Manufacturer failures). You do this once, and you might as well kiss all of society away. Imagine a toy that kills children, and you tell parents, "well, you pressed the 'On' button, so it's your fault". Imagine a furnace that burns down your house, and you tell homeowners, "well, you pressed the 'heat' button, what did you expect?". No one would be willing to buy anything at all, because every manufacturer would be in a race to see the shittiest thing they could trick people into buying. Every product on every shelf would be snake oil. --- Manufacturers should always be fully liable for any and all problems, that can not be directly attributed to extreme gross negligence on the consumers part. "wel, consumers are the ones pressing the "run the self-driving car" button" -- absolutely not. Manufacturers sold car with a "self-driving" button, consumers hold zero fault for pressing the button Manufacturers promised would work, unless there's some kind of extreme gross negligence involved. (i.e., pressing the button, while the car is already dangling off a cliff-side, or pressing the button after gouging out every camera and sensor on the car, or whatever). "But then Manufacturers couldn't sell a self-driving car" -- cool, then the car isn't ready to be sold anyway. If a car company isn't ready to take on the liability for their self-driving product, then it isn't freaking ready for the road -- no exceptions.
- eropple 3y ago
  > Imagine a toy that kills children, and you tell parents, "well, you pressed the 'On' button, so it's your fault". Imagine a furnace that burns down your house, and you tell homeowners, "well, you pressed the 'heat' button, what did you expect?". No one would be willing to buy anything at all, because every manufacturer would be in a race to see the shittiest thing they could trick people into buying. Every product on every shelf would be snake oil. You're totally right! This is why we have in the past had a regulatory (and partial participatory) state that, prior to decades of attacks and gutting, prevented that stuff from being sold. Perhaps the self-driving car hypemen need their own equivalent of UL/ETL and need to convince insurers and the NHTSA that they have a sufficient story--and perhaps they shouldn't be allowed to sell cars that sport those features at all until they do!

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.
    - stavros 3y ago
      Mercedes does accept liability on their self-driving system, so there is a choice beyond "oops our system killed your wife, sorry, she should have been paying attention while our car pretended to be able to drive".

wegfawefgawefg 3y ago

By that argument nothing is my responsibility because I didnt choose to be born.

Libcat99 3y ago

They chose to buy a product with a set of known characteristics The manufacturer then changed those characteristics. If a manufacturer makes changes post purchase to a product resulting in harm, they should bear the majority of the liability, if not all of it. If I had a microwave that for years cooked a potato in 3 minutes safely, but then was modified by an update to catch fire under the same conditions, I shouldn't be the one on the hook for pushing that button.

lolinder 3y ago

So we should just plan on every self-driving vehicle ticket ending up in the court system so that we can properly apportion liability between the consumer (who pressed the button) and the manufacturer (who designed the car, wrote the code, advertised the vehicle, and then updated it many times after the consumer purchased it)?

maxsilver 3y ago

> They chose to buy it. No, absolutely not, never ever. This just highly incentivizes Manufacturers to dump trash garbage into the market (since you've just forced consumers to bear all liability for Manufacturer failures). You do this once, and you might as well kiss all of society away. Imagine a toy that kills children, and you tell parents, "well, you pressed the 'On' button, so it's your fault". Imagine a furnace that burns down your house, and you tell homeowners, "well, you pressed the 'heat' button, what did you expect?". No one would be willing to buy anything at all, because every manufacturer would be in a race to see the shittiest thing they could trick people into buying. Every product on every shelf would be snake oil. --- Manufacturers should always be fully liable for any and all problems, that can not be directly attributed to extreme gross negligence on the consumers part. "wel, consumers are the ones pressing the "run the self-driving car" button" -- absolutely not. Manufacturers sold car with a "self-driving" button, consumers hold zero fault for pressing the button Manufacturers promised would work, unless there's some kind of extreme gross negligence involved. (i.e., pressing the button, while the car is already dangling off a cliff-side, or pressing the button after gouging out every camera and sensor on the car, or whatever). "But then Manufacturers couldn't sell a self-driving car" -- cool, then the car isn't ready to be sold anyway. If a car company isn't ready to take on the liability for their self-driving product, then it isn't freaking ready for the road -- no exceptions.

eropple 3y ago
> Imagine a toy that kills children, and you tell parents, "well, you pressed the 'On' button, so it's your fault". Imagine a furnace that burns down your house, and you tell homeowners, "well, you pressed the 'heat' button, what did you expect?". No one would be willing to buy anything at all, because every manufacturer would be in a race to see the shittiest thing they could trick people into buying. Every product on every shelf would be snake oil. You're totally right! This is why we have in the past had a regulatory (and partial participatory) state that, prior to decades of attacks and gutting, prevented that stuff from being sold. Perhaps the self-driving car hypemen need their own equivalent of UL/ETL and need to convince insurers and the NHTSA that they have a sufficient story--and perhaps they shouldn't be allowed to sell cars that sport those features at all until they do!