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Toyota To Let People Ride In Self-Driving Prius
fergus07 writes "Toyota is to show an autonomous Prius at Tokyo Motor Show. Dubbed the Toyota AVOS (Automatic Vehicle Operation System), the car will be available for members of the public to take 'back seat' rides at the show, demonstrating first hand how the Prius can avoid obstacles, be summoned from a parking garage and park itself."
First self-driving crash - who to blame, or sue?
The developers? The owner? Toyota?
Class action rush hour on Route 66?
I was reading an ebook called "Race Against The Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy" which is about the problem of technology eliminating jobs and the role of I.T. in the recession and jobless recovery and there is a section where the authors are talking about the rise of computing power and the advent of driverless vehicles and it struck me that we are probably in the last generation where truck driving is going to be a human job. With the problems in I.T. and the lack of jobs in my hometown (I can't move from here for reasons I won't go into) I was considering becoming one myself, but it is likely that it is another job that is going to exit stage left. I don't know what to feel about that, really. I am sure not many people on Slashdot care about that very much, but truckers are an American fixture and it seems like they pretty soon be another piece of roadkill on the technology highway.
The driver. It is the one that made the wrong choice. Its sentence will be served by forcing it to mine for bitcoins on behalf of the victim until the sentence has been carried out.
I hate to agree with you, but i think its true, no one will tolerate a self driving car crash, even if it is just one. Even trains front crash time to time , something we think should be impossible to happen. Being benevolent, lets assume one of those car crashes , another driver fault, not a clear one, but his fault, what are the makers going to do defend themselves with system logs?
If I could shout into my watch: "KITT I NEED YOU BUDDY!" and have the Prius come racing to pick me up (bonus if it does a bootleg turn and pops the door open), I'd buy it in a heartbeat.
Under current law, the person behind the wheel in the drivers seat is considered the operator, and liable for whatever the vehicle does. The owners liability (assuming they weren't driving) is dependent upon their insurance, and the fact that the vehicle is autonomous is irrelevant. The developers, assuming they had not signed an unprecedented and absolutely retarded employment contract, have no personal liability. Toyota could only be found liable if it was proven that a defect in the vehicle caused the crash.
Simple fact is, before autonomous cars will really become commercially viable, a lot of laws have to change, mainly around liability of the manufacturer since they're taking on more responsibility. Most likely though, the operator will retain the majority of the liability, and we're unlikely to see in our lifetimes a car where you can punch in a destination and take a nap. It'll be more like an advanced cruise control. The operator still has total ability to control, is required to keep hands on the wheel and attention on the road at all times, and is responsible for intervening in the case of an emergency.
Yet no one seems to care. 500 US troops die a year in the middle east and it's a huge deal. These are 35,000 deaths that can easily be avoided. And that's only in the United States Yeah there'll be a few deaths, but probably 99% of the 35,000 will be avoided. Everyone should be forced to own one of these considering how many pedestrians are run over. People have to get over their own greed to drive a car fast though.
More likely than not they would defend themselves with logs like a black box flight recorder. Self-driving automobiles are uniquely capable of handling the problem of determining the other party is at fault. They are loaded down with sensors including gps, proximity, video, and laser rangefinding. With appropriate data capture and logging, it should be very easy to demonstrate fault in many cases (assuming you can disprove tampering). It is a much greater issue when the automatic driver is at fault, but this could be largely mitigated if insurance companies jump on board. An automatic driver is potentially much safer than a person who can be distracted, tired, or drunk and it seems to be in the insurance company's best interest to support such things. It just has to be demonstrated that these cars are safer than human drivers.
If the biggest problem with this technology is who to sue, then I'm not worried about it.
That's the rational approach, but it's not how it'll be perceived.
Americans have their head in the sand about driving deaths for years.
James Bond: You'll kill 60,000 people uselessly.
Auric Goldfinger: Hah. American motorists kill that many every two years.
Right. I was surprised to learn that driving a car is half as deadly as being in the armed forces at a time when the US is involved in two wars. I had no idea.
There is a legal principle... I don't remember the latin, but a rough translation is 'the law is not stupid.' Legal decisions are made by judges, not bureaucrats or computers blindly following the rules. That's the essence of a common law system: the legal system is based on an understanding that reality is too complex to legislate completely, and judges have the authority to interpret how law is applied to reality as necessary. A literal interpretation is best if possible, but judges have leeway. Precedent then exists to ensure that the law, as actually applied, is consistent.
So, I suspect that if you try just sitting in the passenger seat and get into an accident, the judge will determine that:
1. You're still the operator.
2. You're an idiot.
And you'll probably get charged with dangerous driving too.
Sorry. Autonomous taxis aren't going to work until someone figures out a foolproof way of not making them into autonomous public toilets.