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Driverless cars swerve traffic tickets in California even if they break the law
- rkagerer 3y agoQuestion: If I swerve into the wrong lane because my non-self-driving car malfunctions and the front wheels turn left when I turn the steering wheel right, would I be held responsible? I'm kind of surprised the onus isn't on the operator, with an avenue to sue the manufacturer in cases where liability should follow through.
- Rygian 3y agoThere's not many cars with steer-by-wire [0]. IF the steer-by-wire malfunctions, it's the same kind of issue as if the brakes were to malfunction, or the axle came undone and the wheels spun off the car. Whether that failure can be attributed to you or not (e.g. you neglected maintenance) would need expert witnesses to assess. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steer-by-wire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steer-by-wire
- ksjskskskkk 3y agoUS and most other places will put all blame on conductor, who can later start other procedures to move it to another party (manufacturer, bad repair, etc)
- AniseAbyss 3y agoThis is why cars should have flight recorders like planes and the software in cars must be independently verified.
- ghaff 3y agoPresumably it would only get to that point were there fatalities or serious injury involved. In general I’d expect the cop to issue a citation and shrug and say take it up with the judge and auto maker.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dkjaudyeqooe 3y agoYes, since you're on control of the vehicle, but you could then sue the manufacturer, but the onus is then on you to prove it. Generally it doesn't matter because insurance pays for it. If it was a criminal matter you might be able to get off by demonstrating the defect to the court though, since they generally are punishments for your behavior.
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoDepends on whether the investigation shows whether it was a mechanical failure, an accident, negligence on your part, or on purpose.
- KMag 3y agoMy brother was driving a rented 15-passenger van full of kids on a freeway when a tie rod broke loose. Even with the steering wheel turned fully the other way, he couldn't counter-act the errant wheel. The van veered into the median and rolled onto its side. Luckily, nobody was seriously hurt. My brother was not ticketed, though perhaps the rental company was cited for negligent maintenance.
- toss1 3y agoWhile 'should' & 'is' are two different things, what should happen is ticketing the manufacturer in casrs of either mechanical failure like this or bad self-driving. Plus, Finland-style, ticket fines should be scaled to income, with the schedule of fines continuing to increase to corporate levels of income. Edit: the scaled fines should get their attention, and using the traffic citation method instead of (in addition to) possibility of later lawsuits is to get their attention to fixes sooner. when the penalties are vague and years-to-decades in the future, they have little effect on current management (see Ford Pinto/Bobcat fuel tank fiasco that killed multiple people).
- Throw839 3y agoThere is always some person punishable. I bet it is not profitable to enforce such fines! Speeding tickets are hard to prove. Normal small person just pays fines with zero cost to police. Big corporation have lawyers, and will fight it, with all camera evidence from self driving car...
- ndsipa_pomu 3y ago> Speeding tickets are hard to prove. Are they? Speeding cameras are calibrated regularly, so a company would need to provide video evidence that definitively showed the vehicle travelling slower, which of course isn't possible if the vehicle was speeding.
- Throw839 3y agoIt is the process that makes it hard and expensive. Even bringing this to court costs money. Extracting money from normal people is nearly automated.
- ndsipa_pomu 3y agoOkay, but if a city has cast-iron proof of the vehicle speeding, then surely they would win back the costs?
- oceanplexian 3y agoTechnologically, it is because you have to establish a chain of trust all the way from the cop, to the radar device, back to the manufacturer, and establish all the way down that nothing was tampered with or miscalibrated. In the real world that never happens. The judge laughs at you, makes a joke about why you’re wasting your time, and orders you to pay the fine.
- apothegm 3y agoOne person’s “extracting money from normal people” is another’s “enforcing accountability for those who endanger others’ lives”. Don’t want to be fined? Don’t speed.
- dzogchen 3y ago> one of its driverless cars struck and dragged a pedestrian along the street in an accident in October last year Please don't call it an 'accident'... > “Accident” tends to imply that no one is at fault — and when it’s used in the context of a traffic crash, it also can give the impression that what occurred is not that serious. https://www.helpinginjuredpeople.com/legal-blog/its-a-collision-not-an-accident-safety-experts-argue https://www.helpinginjuredpeople.com/legal-blog/its-a-collis...
- timthorn 3y agoAccident implies that it was unintentional, not that no one was to blame. If I drop my mug in the kitchen that's an accident too.
- TaylorAlexander 3y agoI would prefer the term “malfunction” as it is more specific to self driving vehicles and avoids any unintentional association with human error.
- ndsipa_pomu 3y agoHowever, "accident" also implies that no-one is responsible for it and "it's just one of those things that happens" when the vast majority of road traffic collisions are due to drivers not paying attention or following road traffic rules. There's also a major problem with RTC reporting in general in that reporters often refer just to the vehicle, such as "car hit a wall", or "car plows through pedestrians" which depersonalises it and again makes it seem as though there's nothing we can do about these kinds of occurrences. There's reporting guidelines here: https://www.rc-rg.com/ https://www.rc-rg.com/
- timthorn 3y agoThe guidelines you link to are produced by the Active Travel Academy, a body with an explicit goal of reducing car use. The Orwellian tactic of first controlling the language has been well learned.
- jawns 3y agoThe cynic in me thinks that the PD is willing to be so lax for moving violations for self-driving cars because they're not actually concerned about the moving violation. LEOs view the initial offense as a lead that gives them probable cause to start fishing for more serious offenses once they initiate the stop. But they're not going to nail a self-driving car for DUI, drugs, weapons, etc. To a certain degree, all minor traffic stops are pretextual stops. They're an "in" to look for more serious offenses. One thing I am very curious about, though, is how the system of adding points to a license for certain traffic infractions translates to self-driving cars. Surely it would not make sense to add points on a car-by-car level, since every car in each fleet is presumably running the same software, but applying them to Cruise or Waymo in the aggregate doesn't make sense, either, unless there's some sort of formula for "points per mile driven across the fleet."
- Justsignedup 3y agoAlso likely because instead of some schmuck they now have to extract cash from a corporation. Which isn't profitable.
- latexr 3y ago> But they're not going to nail a self-driving car for DUI, drugs, weapons, etc. Not the DUI, sure, but there’s no reason why you wouldn’t be able to place drugs and guns in the trunk of the car and send it along its way to the buyer’s location. > applying them to Cruise or Waymo in the aggregate doesn't make sense Why not? As you said, they’re all presumably using the same software so it’s as if the same driver was in all of them. It would also be a way to put pressure on companies to grow slowly and get it right, which is a positive for society.
- idopmstuff 3y agoTo be fair, pretty much nobody in SF gets traffic tickets any more - they're down 97% in eight years: https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/traffic-citations-san-francisco-declined-97-18363007.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/traffic-citations-san...
- HackeNewsFan234 3y agoTrying to get creative here... If I am driving my car, climb out, and let it drive, then I'm still going to get in trouble. So, let's say the person who put the car in a situation where it broke the law is responsible but a more generic and severe level. Rather than speeding, it would be reckless endangerment which is what I'm guessing the charge could be for me climbing out of a moving car.