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Autonomous Vehicles and the Law
Hugh Pickens writes "Google's autonomous cars have demonstrated that self-driving vehicles are now largely workable and could greatly limit human error, but questions of legal liability, privacy and insurance regulation have yet to be addressed. Simple questions, like whether the police should have the right to pull over autonomous vehicles, have yet to be answered and legal scholars and government officials warn that society has only begun wrestling with laws required for autonomous vehicles. The big question remains legal liability for the designers and manufacturers as some point out that liability exemptions have been mandated for vaccines, which are believed to offer great value for the general health of the population, despite some risks. 'Why would you even put money into developing it?' says Gary E. Marchant, director of the Center for Law, Science and Innovation at the Arizona State University law school. 'I see this as a huge barrier to this technology unless there are some policy ways around it.' Congress could consider creating a comprehensive regulatory regime to govern the use of these technologies say researchers at the Rand Corporation adding that while federal preemption has important disadvantages, it might speed the development and utilization of these technologies (PDF) and should be considered, if accompanied by a comprehensive federal regulatory regime. 'This may minimize the number of inconsistent legal regimes that manufacturers face and simplify and speed the introduction of these technologies.'"
To err is human, to tear down a sidewalk at 55 miles per hour takes a computer.
Or alcohol.
Good news is, since the vehicle is computer based, to pull the vehicle over the police would most likely have to issue a computer command, which could be logged, including date, time and identity of the police officer who issue the other. If it is related to a warrant, it could even be linked to court data.
morcego
Or texting, eating, adjusting the stereo, putting on make-up, or all the other stuff we do instead of watching the road. I ride a motorcycle, and people ask me if I think it's dangerous. I reply that at least I'm alert, watching the road, and have both hands on the handlebars with nary a phone or other distraction in sight. Autonomous vehicles don't have to be perfect to win me over, just better than the average driver, which is a terribly low bar to cross.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
But they're magically exempt from liability so fuck you!
That are 100% human controlled in the USA. but the first death at the hands of autonomous vehicles will be all over CNN the first time it happens. There will be congressional investigations, Department of Transportation studies, and on and on - yet, ideally they theoretically take the worst part of driving out of the equation - the driver.
People moving is just the start for autonomous vehicles. The real revolution will be in moving goods with little micro-movers.
Run out of milk? no problem, just order some on your fridge and it's at the front door in minutes. Want a hot dinner? Log into your local restraunt and order one to go.
Taxi services will be cheap, affortable, and accessable. Noone need own a car anymore. No need for a garrage or driveway infront of your house. No need for traffic lights, aproaching cars will just 'book' a timeslot through the intersection, narrowly avoiding collisions with safety, speeding the journey to and fro and saving energy as you don't need to brake and accelerate anymore.
Autonomous mobility is going to be truly revolutionary in the way we live.
I can see why in the US there is such resistance to autonomous vehicles: Small towns and counties depend on driver error, be it speeding, red light cameras, or stuff like that for revenue. An autonomous system means that everyone will be going the speed limit, so no tickets (and no chance at finding marijuana and thus earning a civil forfeiture prize) will be given.
This is sad because the US is the perfect place for autonomous vehicles -- most cities are too sprawled out for even buses to be reliable, much less light rail. So, vehicles that drive themselves would be ideal because it would allow long distances to be covered with vehicles packed in as much as their computer and mechanical systems would allow, compared to current driving conditions which depend on the driver's ability/reactions (or lack of when compared to a computer.) Even for people who don't own a car, it wouldn't be hard to have a Car2Go/Zipcar like service.
Even more ironic, with computer controlled cars, it would lesson the need for more and more highway improvements. Cars can be sped up or slowed down to allow vehicles in and out, they can be moved into lanes depending on their destination, and if there is a vehicle problem, it can be moved to the side of the road and traffic routed around it without putting the highway out of commission for hours on end. This would save a municipal area far more money than they ever would earn by speeding tickets.
Suppose a vehicle hits a pedestrian or cyclist, and drags the corpse. A witnessing cop can either (1) pull the vehicle over, or (2) follow the vehicle at a polite distance while all identifying features of the victim are shed to the ground. I think pulling the vehicle over is the appropriate course of action here. If nothing else, to prevent the trauma to hundreds of witnesses.
If a vehicle is being operated recklessly, it should get pulled over. If there are outstanding tickets / warrants for its owner, it should be searched / impounded. I don't see why the presence of a driver should matter here.
How?
Is there a database of traffic laws? Who provides the data? Is the data correct?
Does the vehicle read road signs? Are the signs correct? Are they transiently obscured by a parked vehicle or a pedestrian?
Computers, even with perfect design and implementation, are still able to do the wrong thing. Garbage in, garbage out. (I can't fucking believe I have to write this on /. of all places.)
Kid-proof tablet..
This raises a good point... autonomous vehicles need to be programmed to safely pull off to the side of the road when an emergency vehicle has its lights flashing and siren on. It then has to wait there until it is safe to rejoin traffic. Do the current ones do that?
"Is there a database of traffic laws? Who provides the data? Is the data correct?"
Yes. Every state, online. For smaller locales, the autonomous folk wanting my money had better do a good job of acquiring it, just like the local humans must.
"Does the vehicle read road signs?"
An autonomous vehicle had *better* read road signs, and pretty damned well.
"Are the signs correct? Are they transiently obscured by a parked vehicle or a pedestrian?"
Same problems humans face, too bad.
"Computers, even with perfect design and implementation, are still able to do the wrong thing. Garbage in, garbage out."
Same for the humans, yet fines stand for them. I disagree with your premise. I believe that if a vehicle cannot do all the things a human is required to do, it cannot be an autonomous vehicle. It's just remote-controlled.
The district of Berlin, Germany, changed its local laws to allow automated vehicles. One model (made by local researchers) has been homologated so far.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
You have a point, but I imagine it will be some time before a "largely workable" system is permitted to operate a vehicle on public roads.
BMW in Germany already have test autonomous vehicles running on public roads amongst ordinary traffic.
But for general use I think it'll happen gradually.There are already publicly available systems that will apply the brakes for you if you are going to collide with the vehicle in front. And systems that will stop you from veering out of lane on a highways. There are even cars already out there that will perform parallel parking for you.
Aircraft autopilots didn't start doing landings from day one. They evolved from much simpler systems. Each step proving itself for a long time.
What is the best way to construct an eyeball from hydrogen atoms?
We don't know and it depends on the definition of "best", but it's almost certainly never happened before. Human eyes have glaring flaws -- blind spot, limited colour receptivity, unimpressive resolution compared to some known alternatives, relatively high light requirements, easily damaged, degrades over time, inconsistent with many humans having very poor vision even at their peak, easily damaged by the giant space explosion that is continuously running in the sky for ~half of the average day, slow to adjust to dimmer lighting conditions, limited range of motion and extremely limited independent range of motion. Some other animals correct those flaws but have other flaws all of their own. Evolution actually does a very poor job of finding globally optimal solutions, but it does a reasonable job at identifying local maxima / minima of sufficient signifiance, and hanging around in the area of same maxima / minima.
Our super computers and dedicated scientists can't even predict the weather terribly accurately; what makes you think any "expert" has the slightest clue how to predict and control social, technological, and economic development?
Unstated assumption: that the weather is consistently less complicated than these other things.
The laws should emerge from reality, not from a committee of bureaucrats.
I'm not quite sure what that means. No law (as in, legal law) has ever "emerged from reality" in any sense that I can understand the phrase.
It is likely that automation will produce vehicles that will perform better than human-driven cars, trucks, and buses. That would certainly result in fewer accidents, reduced congestion, and MUCH lower costs. In there lies the rub. Since the major cost component of commercial transportation is 'the driver', automation would put tens of millions of people out of work just in the United States. For example, with a fleet of smaller, electric vehicle, the entire bus system of a city could be replaced. Rides would cost on par with bus tickets, and service would be 'on demand' like taxi service without the tips. Many people would choose not to own a car if a 'chauffeur driven' vehicle were readily available 'for hire'. Commuting would be transformed, and rush hour traffic would become manageable, reducing construction for road expansion. Car sales would plummet, as would gasoline sales and body shop service. Cars and trucks could run coast to coast with only fuel stops; so could trains, reducing motel and restaurant revenues. These are just a few examples of the seachange.
Every taxi, limo, bus, and truck driver will band together to stop this. Auto manufacturers, construction firms, and oil companies, fearing a drop in revenues, will join them. Lobbyist will fill every waiting room in Congress to ram 'drivers' rights' legislation. Their effort will make the RIAA look like kids watching Sesame Street.
How, exactly, would the police pull over an autonomous vehicle if there was no way to remotely access it? Therefore, hedwards was correct: there will be a way to crack the security and force the car to pull over, thus rendering autonomous vehicles vulnerable to the highwaymen. Hmmm...sounds like it could be the plot to a cool sci-fi story...
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Please look up the meaning of "autonomous". It seems to me that you are misunderstanding the concept of the term. Nowhere in its definition does it require that something which is autonomous get any of its operating instructions remotely. In fact, "autonomous" implies exactly the opposite.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The question goes to the heart of the argument. If the average driver has a 1.5% chance of causing a collision, but an automated on 1% then clearly the automated vehicle is preferable (to over simplify somewhat). However if the 'designers' at GM are responsible for 20 million cars then they have no incentive to ever try and work, because merely by law of averages they're going to get screwed selling millions of cars a year.
A couple of months ago the brakes failed on my car and I narrowly avoided hitting two people. Now the thing is, my car had been at the shop to get the brakes checked and repaired about 3 weeks before that. Who is really at fault? In 3 weeks the auto shop can't really be liable for anything that happened to the brakes, but I had no indication there was a problem until I had a loud thunking sound, and no braking action (go go emergency brakes). Had I been a fraction of a second slower realizing what just happened, well, the law would have held me liable for hitting two people. Even though I would attempt to argue that I did due diligence on the brakes, and was braking from a safe distance (but when you're going 60 Km/h and your brakes fail it takes a moment to process what happened and what your solutions are,and what your fall back scenarios are going to be if the emergency brake doesn't work, and even then you're guessing just how quickly the emergency brake will stop you).
In your case, you're saying what we all know. All data is dirty, and no one thing is 100% tolerant of all possible input cases from the dirty data (in addition to all other failures that can happen on a device). Our legal systems don't really play nice with the real world statistical probabilities of random failures, or how you ascribe blame to something that isn't intentional. It would be most unfortunate if a data entry clerk from 20 years ago is held liable because they typed a speed limit into a database as 80kph rather than the intended 60.
I suppose in some ways it is similar to a national healthcare and medical malpractice problem. People die, all of us. Just as mechanical devices will eventually fail. If you individually mandate responsibility to service providers (drivers, mechanics, doctors) you end up with a much different system than if you collectivize the risk (think NHS in the UK). If the goal is a system that in general reduces accidents you need to move away from trying to assign blame on a case by case basis, and providers who consistently make mistakes can be dealt with internally- but you'll have to accept some sort of shared insurance system for the fact that accidents will happen. Whether that's manufacturers or operators who pay into it (or the government or points of sale or....) I don't know.
And what would be the point of pulling it over?
You are assuming that all a cop wants to do is issue a citation. Here are some more plausible possibilities, just off the top of my head:
1) There's an emergency up ahead, and police need to stop all the vehicles headed in that direction to prevent the emergency from escalating.
2) The vehicle is driverless, but not necessarily riderless -- i.e., the police need to rescue a kidnapping victim, or apprehend a wanted felon/terrorist (hey, it's the current buzzword), or search for narcotics, or...
3) You gave other reasons yourself (namely, inspecting it for malfunction/damage or impounding it). In those cases, a citation may not be necessary, but it might be necessary to remove it from the road because it presents a hazard to others.
4) What if it's not properly tagged?
Keep in mind, if the vehicle is autonomous, it probably won't be speeding, it probably won't run red lights or stop signs, it probably won't be driving recklessly (unless it has faulty sensors). Unlike with human-piloted automobiles, I think issuing citations for anything other than expired tags would be rather unlikely.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
The most important problem from my point of view is that the traffic laws don't always actually make sense. Near my house, there's a T junction about 20 meters from a red light. At the intersection, there's a stop line. They used to have a "do not block intersection" sign back at the T junction so that traffic could still turn down the side street. They've replaced it with a "stop here on red" sign. The intent seems to be to create two stop lines for the same red light. The actual law is largely ambiguous on this. It definitely doesn't address this particular situation, but it doesn't say that the town, _can't_ do it. Most people just completely ignore the sign. I just do what I always did before and I don't block the intersection when there's a red light. No-one seems to be able to tell if they're actually required to stop there and, if they do stop, if they have to stop like they'd stop at a red light, or it they have to stop like they'd stop at a stop sign, also, since the turn there is a right turn, and a right turn on red is allowed at a stop light in my state, is a right turn on red allowed there since it's not actually at the light?
So, the problem is the law. It's not logically and consistently written like computer code, it's always open to interpretation. There are many situations where you legitimately can't tell you've broken the law until you've gone before a judge and they've decided. And then, there are many situations while driving where you either have to technically break the law or stop traffic for hours. Consider a left turn at a light where there isn't a separate left turn signal. If the traffic coming in the other direction is continuous, they have the right of way and you can't turn left unless you move to the middle of the intersection, wait for the light to change, then turn. This is illegal. It's what everyone does in that situation and, 9 times out of 10, a police officer watching you do this won't even care. But, consider the situation from a legal point of view. If it's a turning lane, you can't legally change lanes at the intersection to go straight. You can't legally turn left until there's an opening in traffic, which could literally be hours in some places and times, but you can't legally just sit there either, because that's blocking traffic. Aside from that one, there's the fact that you're legally required to stay in a lane unless you're changing lanes, but I've been on a lot of multi-lane roads where the lanes haven't been marked, either because they were faded completely, or because they'd been removed for repainting (months before the repainting in some cases). Legally speaking, all the cars should be grouping into one lane in the dead center of the twenty meter wide stretch of road. That's insane. What everyone actually does is illegally estimate where the lanes should be and travel in them side by side. Then there's yellow and red lights. There are intersections where you cannot avoid running a red light. For starters, you don't know how long the green light and yellow light will last before the red. The guidelines for most states for the length of the lights don't even seem to take the speed limit and the width of the intersection into account and the guidelines often aren't followed anyway. Which means that there are many intersections where, even if the light changes to yellow _after_ you've crossed the stop line, you can't make it all the way across before the red light unless you're speeding. Also, where the intersection actually ends and you're no longer bound by the light is poorly defined both in law and in physical reality. Most people consider themselves clear when they can no longer see the light, but obviously that's at a different point depending on where the light is mounted. Stop lines are another issue. You have to stop at the stop line, but the stop line isn't always in the right place for you to actually see if there are cars coming. Often, you have to stop at the stop line, then move forward (sometimes quite a large distance), then stop again or do a ro
Oops, forgot to mention: this also places liability squarely in the hands of the operator of the vehicle. As the operator of an autonomous vehicle, you still have to pay enough attention to react in the event of a malfunction. Malfunction due to improper maintenance is on the owner/operator as well.
The US hasn't dismantled its rail system--it still has the biggest rail system in the world, bigger than the entire EU taken together (in terms of miles). However, the US railway system is mainly used for freight, while people mostly drive.
It's fast and comfortable, but it's also a boondoggle and heavily subsidized. It's also not particularly environmently friendly, since it displaces a lot of freight traffic to the roads and often has to operate far below capacity. And even with all those wonderful trains, say, Germans still own as many cars per capita as Americans.
The line of cars is just approximating a bus. The only advantage is that you have a "last mile" effect of delivering you right to your driveway.
Except that unlike a bus, it's not occupied by anyone who's not with me (e.g., if they're drunk, I probably am too and don't mind), I can leave my possessions in it, it travels on my schedule (it goes just as many places at 3 AM as at noon), and, of course, it takes me directly to my destination.
Imagine if a 16-hour drive could be done as an overnight trip - you get off work on Friday for a week's vacation, you go home and put the suitcases in the car, eat a bit of dinner, and hit the road. You can be well rested and 1000 miles away by lunchtime the next day. All of a sudden, New Orleans is a weekend trip from DC.