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California To Join Nevada With Rules For Autonomous Cars

Posted by timothy on from the looking-forward-to-autodrafting dept.

thecarchik writes "As of now, the only state where self-driving cars are legal on public roads is Nevada, thanks to its vast expanses of open space and lightly traveled byways. California, recognizing that autonomous cars are an inevitable progression of technology, is moving to establish its own rules for driverless vehicles. A bill proposed by California Senator Alex Padilla would set guidelines for the testing and operation of self-driving vehicles within the state. As California is home to Google, Stanford and Caltech, all of which have active autonomous vehicle programs, the state is positioned to be a leader in driverless car development. It stands to reason that self-driving cars will be allowed on California's roads, probably in the near future."

22 of 194 comments (clear)

  1. so it begins by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This is just too awesome. It looks like we're solving the parking, traffic, and driving death (drunk driving and otherwise) issues in my lifetime. The microchip is the gift that keeps on giving.

    1. Re:so it begins by TFAFalcon · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Those things aren't going to go away. Parking and traffic have to do with the number of cars, not just their driver's skill. And driving death will still happen until EVERY car is driven by an infallable AI. Which won't happen for at least a few generations after the AI is developed, since people are much to attached to driving cars.

    2. Re:so it begins by icebraining · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Parking is a much smaller problem if when you're planning to stay put at a certain location for a few hours, the car can simply drive itself to another parking location.

      Also, self-driving cars are a major boon to car sharing services; which should reduce car ownership; for the user, there's a big difference between having to go to a parked car somewhere and then leave it there again than just have it parked outside his home and then leave it anywhere.

      --
      Dilbert RSS feed
    3. Re:so it begins by CastrTroy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Computerized cars could be a lot smarter than humans and reduce traffic. Take a simple traffic light. If there's 5 cars at the traffic light, it takes about 10 seconds for the 5th car to start moving (people really are this slow). If computers were driving, all the cars could start to move in unison. Also, take highway driving. People slow down to look at something interesting on the side of the road. Traffic piles up behind them. With a computer driving, this wouldn't happen. Automated cars will be able to make traffic much less of a problem. If you cut out accidents and stupid drivers, the amount of traffic will go down significantly.

      --

      Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
    4. Re:so it begins by perryizgr8 · · Score: 3, Informative

      slippery ice covered roads already are quite covered by the computer in your existing car.

      --
      Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
    5. Re:so it begins by eln · · Score: 3, Informative

      An automated vehicle would be able to detect the moose and apply the brakes far faster than any human possibly could. There already are rudimentary collision-avoidance systems in some cars, and they'll only get better over time.

    6. Re:so it begins by an+unsound+mind · · Score: 3, Informative

      Computers are perfectly able to see what is going to be on the road, all you need is more sensors and better shape recognition.

      Better than humans, in fact. Humans can't see infrared so well, and it's going to be a heck of a lot more useful in the Canadian wilderness than normal sight. Your concerns are a design problem.

    7. Re:so it begins by similar_name · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You forget the cost problem. I can not afford a half million dollar car and people in canada have to drive rediculous distances all the time so our cars do not last very long.

      Half million dollars? That's like saying Intel's next chip won't catch on because they spend hundreds of millions of dollars developing it and who could pay that much for a computer.

      You said you drive a 95 neon and an 06 Dodge 3500. What do you mean your cars don't last long?

      The driving conditions you describe actually seem an ideal place for AI to start to become feasible. Replacing a truck driver with an AI would save over $30,000 each year (I don't know about Canada but U.S. truck drivers start around $30,000).

  2. As California is home to... by HockeyPuck · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...some of the worst drivers in the world.

    I've lived in Boston, New York and Chicago. And Northern California easily takes the cake for worst drivers. They hesitate when they should commit, they never use turn signals, roll through stop signs, drive until 7-8pm without their lights on (or just use their parking lights).

    So I would welcome driverless cars, because it can't get much worse than this.

    1. Re:As California is home to... by BasilBrush · · Score: 4, Informative

      Clearly you've never travelled. Try Italy or India for example.

    2. Re:As California is home to... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Yes, I agree. Rome may be a mad house but, I loved driving in Italy. There are far fewer rules (and often a lack of lanes) but I interpreted it as "We trust you -- just don't crash into anyone." It was a breath of fresh air to not have a million signs like in the U.S. that you simply tune out.

      There are some experiments in Germany where they are getting rid of all but a couple signs and simplifying the rules to just a couple rules (like yield to the right). They (last I heard) have found it to be far more effective as people don't tune out the few signs they see.

    3. Re:As California is home to... by niftydude · · Score: 3, Funny

      Once when I was driving on the 101 between San Jose and mountainview, I saw a guy playing a flute while steering with his knees.

      Still not sure if that was an instance of poor driving, or an awesome display of physical and mental prowess. But what I can say is that I haven't seen anything like that anywhere other than california.

      --
      You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
  3. New ways by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Here in Nevada we are are at the forefront of gambling....

  4. Liability mitigation is the crucial rule by ShooterNeo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What is REALLY needed is a law to mitigate liability risks for automated cars. Here's how a fair law might read :

    All operators of automated vehicles are required to buy additional insurance. If someone is harmed by an automated vehicle malfunction, a panel is empowered to compensate the individual with a FIXED amount of money depending on the severity of the injury and or death. This is how vaccine injuries are handled : if a vaccine harms someone, they get a certain amount of injury depending on the risk.

    Neutral, third party laboratories would be paid to examine the 'black boxes' from automated cars after a crash and present their findings to the panel.
    The panel would be required by law to make a decision within a certain amount of time (~180 days sounds about right)

    Advantages :
        1. Lawyers eat up a large chunk of the money when litigation is allowed. This way, most of the money goes to the victims.
        2. Everyone gets some compensation money instead of most getting nothing and a few hitting the jackpot
        3. Faster decisions instead of lawsuits that take 5-10 years.

    Disadvantages :
          1. Panel can be unfair or biased and little can be done
          2. The amounts of money seem low compared to jury awards for successful lawsuits. Lose a hand, it might be 100k not a million, etc.
          3. Legislators who are lawyers have to write the legislation for this.

    The reason to do this is the same reason we do vaccines, but it would save a LOT more lives. Automobiles kill far more people than the number who would die if we stopped most vaccinations. Automated cars will occasionally malfunction and kill someone. However, on the aggregate, the total deaths per passenger mile caused by automated vehicles will very likely be more than 10 times or more lower. Automated vehicles have short reaction delays, no need to take risks, ability to see in all directions they have sensors pointing at the same time, can predict a crash is about to occur and take mitigating actions (pre-firing the airbags, etc), activates the brakes quickly enough to avoid pileups, etc.

    The thing is, an automated car will have software bugs, and will occasionally make mistakes. Maybe a good model will be as good a driver as the average driver on their best day. EXCEPT, an automated car's systems cannot become distracted, board, drunk, or fall asleep. I suspect that this advantage over millions of miles will prove to be huge. Sure, the average human might be smarter, but we don't give our best effort during every minute of the many hours we drive.

    1. Re:Liability mitigation is the crucial rule by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Interesting

      There is arguably one major gap in the analogy with vaccines(unless your plan includes it but simply didn't state it):

      The vaccine injury system is designed to deal, as efficiently as messy compromise allows, with the fact that vaccines(as with other drugs and procedures) tend to have risks that show up at the population level that couldn't have been detected in clinical trials of any feasible size and/or are substantially lower than their benefits. The logic is that these cases have victims deserving of compensation; but arise without culpable negligence or malice.

      It doesn't, and isn't intended to, cover other risk/liability issues arising in medicine that incidentally involve vaccines. If, say, your doctor stored a vaccine improperly and administered a contaminated or spoiled dose, that wouldn't be a vaccine injury, that'd be malpractice that happened to involve a vaccine rather than some other drug. In such a case, the damages would be partially to compensate you and partially to punish them; because there are both damages and culpable negligence or malice at play.

      In the case of an autonomous car, the 'vaccine analogous' set of risks/compensations would only cover the set of risks inherent to the system's operation(corner cases where physics simply doesn't allow for a safe solution on the navigational system's part, system defects sufficiently rare and esoteric to have escaped reasonable diligence on the manufacturer's part, and so forth). It wouldn't usefully cover negligence on the part of either the manufacturer(in, say, corner-cutting on testing or design of safety critical systems) or the operator(operating a vehicle despite sensor or system faults, defeating safety-critical systems in order to achieve faster trips, etc.)

      When dealing with small, essentially unavoidable, risks there is a strong logic in favor of efficient compensation purely on the basis of injury(assuming that those risks carry benefits sufficient to justify their broad imposition...); but one must be careful not to immunize negligence and malice in a system designed to handle mere accident...

      I suspect that there will be fewer impaired computers than there will be impaired drivers; but I suspect that operators running cars with the sensor equivalent of shot breaks and dead turn signals will hardly be unknown, and corner cutting by some manufacturer or other is just a matter of time.

    2. Re:Liability mitigation is the crucial rule by Vanderhoth · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I live in Nova Scotia, Canada. I'd trust the car over a human anyday. I've seen to many accidents where someone made a slight miscalculation that shouldn't have been a big deal. Then they end up over compensating and taking out someone in an on coming lane instead of vearing off into a parking lot, just ending up on the side of the road or even just staying on course and having nothing come of a small skid, swerve or bump.

      The only issue I see with and autonomous car is there are times here where a person has to guess where the road is. I'd like to know how the car would track the road when it's more or less just a blanket of white.

    3. Re:Liability mitigation is the crucial rule by BasilBrush · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Meanwhile, back in the real world, the automated ABS systems in many cars will cut the brakes on fresh snow where locking the wheels would typically result in a shorter stopping distance.

      Unlocked brakes means you still have some ability to steer. Locked brakes have no steerability. Locking the wheels will often result in the car going sideways down the road with no ability to steer into the skid. If there'a one thing worse than not being able to stop, it's the car travelling sideways whilst not being able to stop.

    4. Re:Liability mitigation is the crucial rule by jmichaelg · · Score: 4, Interesting

      What you're proposing is a No Fault liability scheme. Circa 1989-1992, the insurance companies attempted to get a proposition passed that would have established No Fault insurance. Their pitch was very similar to your list of advantages plus they said that since their costs would decline, our rates would have as well.

        Despite the idea making a lot of sense, the personal injury lawyers succeeded in killing it as they viewed the proposal a direct threat to their livelihood which of course, it was. The proposition was aimed at cutting their take out of the transaction.

      Your post makes a lot of sense but unfortunately, I think the political climate in California has gotten more bizarre over the intervening 20 years and what makes logical sense doesn't mean too much in California.

  5. Rosy future, but there will be system failures by damm0 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I am wholeheartedly for the development of robot cars! I can hardly wait for the day when I can command my car to drive my drunken ass home, or tell it to go to the grocer and pick up my milk and cheese (which the grocer will load into my car for me) while I'm at work. Not to mention the possibilities for car sharing!

    However, there will be system failures. The cars will have to develop "reptile brain" like functions that can make the car pull over and stop in the case of byzantine failure of the controller. Think about car-worms and viruses that command cars to crash into each other, or remote car hijacking. It is going to be *very* interesting to watch all this develop. Consider the people who will drive recklessly in their "classic cars" expecting that most other cars are autonomous, which may make the road more dangerous for those who don't have one.

    That said, I'm looking forward to the robot-car only lanes on the freeway where we can have fuel-efficient car-trains and the social benefits of being able to hop out of your robot car in front of your destination and have the car valet itself.

  6. Several Points by DERoss · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Padilla's bill is SB 1298 at http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/postquery?bill_number=sb_1298&sess=CUR. It has not yet had its first committee hearing.

    I was a software test engineer for over 30 years. There is no such thing as a computer system that is completely error-free. While SOME drivers are impaired or simply have poor judgement, other drivers are alert, coordinated, and generally safe. On the other hand, all autonomous cars from the same manufacturer will have the same software errors.

    The current leader in developing autonomous cars is Google. I would not drive one of Google's cars unless I knew that Google was not tracking where I went and what route I took to get there. I am concerned that, even if the car does not transmit its location and route in real-time, a mechanic might still be able to download the car's history while servicing the car. That information should be available only to law-enforcement agencies and even then only when a judge issues a warrant after being convinced there is probable cause that the history is relevant to an actual crime.

    1. Re:Several Points by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There is no such thing as a computer system that is completely error-free.

      It doesn't have to be error free. It just needs to be better than humans. That is not a high bar.

      On the other hand, all autonomous cars from the same manufacturer will have the same software errors

      And when one of those errors causes an accident in ONE car, it will be fixed and patched in ALL the cars. So the number of bugs, and the number of accidents will decline quickly . Autonomous cars already have millions of miles of testing, and are probably already safer than the average human driver.

      Demanding absolute safety is foolish, and delaying the introduction of autonomous cars will cause many unnecessary deaths.

  7. Seems Nevada's driverless car rules by mysidia · · Score: 4, Informative

    Are actually rules... that autonomous cars can't be driverless

    2 passengers required; the human operator has to be able and ready to override the car; which means the human has to have a license, can't be drunk, etc. And the human operator (rather than the manufacturer) is responsible if there is an accident and the vehicle has fault because of improper decisions/failure.

    I guess the restrictions "sound good", but they eliminate some of the selling points for the concept of an autonomous vehicle. Probably without making it safer.

    You can't be relaxing, chatting on your cell phone, watching TV, or eating while the car drives you.

    Makes more sense to require that driverless cars be safe enough and have enough failsafes and instrumentation that a human operator will not ever be required to override; e.g. by ensuring that the safest reasonable response is always what the autonomous car will execute, and facilitated by multiple redundant highly robust systems.

    Such that the greatest remaining danger would be that the human erroneously overrides the computer and makes bad choices.