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How Do You Give a Ticket To a Driverless Car?
FatLittleMonkey writes "New Scientist asks Bryant Walker Smith, from the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, whether the law is able to keep up with recent advances in automated vehicles. Even states which have allowed self-driving cars require the vehicles to have a 'driver,' who is nominally in control and who must comply with the same restrictions as any driver such as not being drunk. What's the point of having a robot car if it can't drive you home from the pub while you go to sleep in the back?"
to ticket a driverless car. The car, by design and foregoing any human intervention, will obey the law exactly as it is programmed to. It will not speed, it will not swerve, it will not disobey traffic signs nor will it deviate from its programmed course unless directed to by human intervention.
Ergo, if the driverless car fails to function as specified, then the manufacturer is to receive a citation for the vehicle's failure, or otherwise the human who was in control at the time of the infraction will receive the ticket. The car itself is irrelevant.
I understand how I might legally be the driver but if I'm not actually holding the wheel and constantly adjusting the foot pressure on the brake or accelerator, it is impossible to react in time in case something goes horribly wrong with the automated driver (or with the car, for example, a blowout). Are the judges just bending to pressure from the car companies and tech companies who don't want to be responsible for their software glitches?
Have you ever played with sensors before? They aren't perfect and can give incorrect readings (depending on type they may not even be very accurate under the best of conditions.) Which means software must be written to take those conditions into account, and usually coordinate among different types of sensors. But that software is written by people, and may have bugs in it (in fact certainly will) plus may simply not cover all the real world situations perfectly.
In some cases where people would have a tough time driving, the cars may do awesomely, but in cases where people would have little trouble the cars may behave strangely as sensors give odd readings, etc.
My phone has an incredible processor in it and can handle millions of calculations per second, but it still locks up sometimes, occasionally responding seconds later to all the stored input. Isn't that pretty close to being distracted?
Don't get me wrong, I want a self driving car so badly it hurts sometimes, but I don't expect it to be perfect. And if that's what people expect they are in for a world of disappointment and pain. And my fear is that will mean people panic at the first accident and push back against allowing them at all.
A lot of laws are "Oh no this is new and we don't understand it so we'll make old laws apply to it!" stuff. In the case of cars it'll be a long time before things get changed. Eventually automatic vehicles will be prevalent enough that there will be a big enough push to change the laws to something sensible. It'll be quite awhile.
As an example see the FAA squaring off with the FCC over electronics on flights. There is no fucking way electronics cause issues with modern planes. If they did, it would be an open invitation for problems/sabotage. Plenty of people forget/ignore the "turn off your stuff" rule and yet there are no issues. Hence the FCC has told the FAA they need to get with the program and allow electronics at all times. However the FAA is dragging their feet on it.
Also with regards to drunk driving there will be major pushback by special interest groups like MADD. They don't want drunk driving laws to make our streets safer, they are a prohibition/temperance group that uses it to try and push against alcohol. So they'll try to find reasons to keep it illegal to be in a car drunk, even if the car is self operating.
If by "gets distracted" you mean "is an entitled narcissist" then I agree. Robots will take the deadliest thing out of the driving equation, ego.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
Perhaps, but a 9 YO that is paying attention is probably a better driver than most people out there.
On the other hand, with humans, each human learns how to correctly deal with situations. With computer drivers, they ALL learn from one mistake.