Slashdot Mirror
Who Is Liable When a Self-Driving Car Crashes?
innocent_white_lamb writes "Current laws make the driver of a car responsible for any mayhem caused by that vehicle. But what happens when there is no driver? This article argues that the dream of a self-driving car is futile since the law requires that the driver is responsible for the operation of the vehicle. Therefore, even if a car is self-driving, you as the driver must stay alert and pay attention. No texting, no reading, no snoozing. So what's the point of a self-driving car if you can't relax or do something else while 'driving?'"
A self driving car would be less likely to rubberneck, or cause other issues relating to a human driver. Cars could in theory go faster. etc.
I would think the point would be that machines, once properly programmed, can be the worlds safest drivers...statistically. You, as a human, will still be responsible for taking over when the machine doesn't know what to do. But, for the other 99.5% of the time, the self-driving car will make the best decisions and always be completely alert.
Self-Driving cars, I believe, have the ability to drastically reduce deaths caused by motor vehicle accidents...one of the highest causes of death in the USA.
I was already mid-groan when I realized it wasn't him...
There's an industry that manages risk.
Regulation (e.g., insurance) always develops spontaneously, because there is a market for reducing chaos.
If neither party is engaged in any such activity, then an age based system will be utilized.
Current law not appropriate for future technology! News at 11!
This is already a solved problem.
Laws will adapt.
Maybe.
Talk about a crazy-assed prognostication! This is a ridiculously stupid question (cue the "even by slashdicetimmy standards" responses).
you might as well ask what would happen if it turned out that the number of angels that can dance on a pin turned out to be finite.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Or, actually everybody since insurance is a shared risk among all insured.
This makes the insured driver look smart, by the way.
Change the wording of the law to something to the effect of "The person at the controls of the vehicle must pay sufficient attention to the vehicle's status".
Then, add a bunch of loud alarms to the car that the computer can sound when something goes wrong, or when red lines are crossed (speed over the limit, distance to car in front, certain amount of wheel slippage, etc).
Now, as long as you, the driver, aren't drinking alcohol or doing drugs, and at least one person in the vehicle is awake at all times, you can be alerted to a dangerous situation and put down your book / food when a problem comes up.
If the car has a software issue and crashes then the software developer is at fault. If the car has a hardware problem then the hardware developer is at fault. If the car has a mechanical failure then then mechanical engineer is at fault and so on. Either developer the components / modules correctly in the first place or not at all. If modules / components have lifespans then just lock the car from starting once those lifespans have been reached and if you don't want to be held holding the torch when shit hits the fan then don't get involved from the get go. To spite this modern system of pass the buck and never accept ownership of the problem, someone caused the issue by not doing there job right to begin with and they should have to rectify it.
Who is liable when a Horse has an accident? The rider, or the owner, or the trainer of the horse?
A car that drives itself is responsible for itself.
Who pays in the event of an accident is the driver. In this case, the car. Probably the manufacturer would be liable.
Manufacturers will probably get insurance for the car when driven autonomously. If self-driving cars are safer, this should be a lower insurance rate than you pay now. Additionally, self-driving cars will probably have sensor input that will prove/disprove fault.
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
If the law doesn't change, driving will be even more boring than it is right now with automatic transmission and cruise control, but otherwise I still want those self-driving cars.
But I'm sure a world convention is being drawn up in the back offices as we speak, to amend current highway codes at some point to suit these cars.
The insurance company would have to pay. If they can prove that
computer driven cars are safer than humans, it won't be long
before insurance companies mandate them and charge MORE
for human-in-the-loop drivers (aka iRobot).
Maybe it should be like govt caused problems, where the taxpayers pay for all problems.
But with nothing to do behind the wheel 99% of the time your not going to be alert. Your going to be super bored. So when your supposed to take over you won't be prepared to do so.
If your breaks fail despite you keeping safe distance and preforming proper maintenance you wouldn't be made accountable. Why would the on-board-computer be treated differently?
The manufacturer will have an EULA which absolves them from guilt.
It won't be the people who sold it, because they'll also have a contract term which says they are absolved from guilt.
So, it will come down to the owner, who will be entirely dependent on the quality of the product, as delivered by two entities who have already said "not us".
So, if you privately buy an autonomous car, and it crashes, you will likely be on the hook for it. If you merely hire them (as in a Taxi), then I'm sure the people who rent them will also absolve themselves from guilt in some strange way -- likely through arms length 3rd parties who do the actual operation.
This won't be so much "buyer beware" as "everyone else on the roadway beware", because you'll have a vehicle driving around that if it crashes, there's a long line of people who have already made sure their asses are covered.
The lawyers for the companies making and selling these will have covered their asses before it ends up in the hands of anybody else.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The person in charge of the vehicle will still be liable. Pretty sure that auto manufacturers will make people sign waivers until they pass out and note that the self driving car isn't, in fact, capable of safely driving itself and allowing it to do so is acceptance of risk. In the US we have warning labels on hair dryers informing people not to put them in water...
A vehicle malfunction that causes an auto accident won't be attributed to the driver. When Toyota's gas pedals were getting stuck and causing deaths, the lawyers were going after drivers. There's no difference with autonomous vehicles. If the technology is found to be at fault, it will be the part manufacturer and the auto maker who will be dragged into civil court.
The "driver" (operator) will be liable. Insurance will pick up the tab though. Since self-driving cars will be less likely to be at fault in a crash, everybody will eventually accept the (reduced) risk.
Just from memory:
Montreal Metro is driven by autopiloting with someone in the cab for door management.
Vancouver Skyline doesn't even have a driver anywhere, it's all automated.
Several airports (Orlando was the last one I went to), have automated trains/monorails to shuffle people between terminals.
Most flights you take are done almost entirely on autopilot.
So far, it seems that mass transit is increasingly automated. So why is non-mass transit any different?
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
I'm not sure legal concerns mean that the dream is futile, it just means we'll have to figure out the laws around it.
When my accounting software gets it wrong, they eat the bill.
If a self-driving car were to crash and it turns out that the fault was with the car (i.e. it wasn't slammed into by some teenage kid that doesn't understand stop signs) then the human that owns the car would obviously be shown that in the language of the car's liability statement, the human is at fault if the car was driving in rain, snow, or if the human hadn't observed all 25 points on the opening pre-drive AI diagnostic checks for the day. So in theory: The software. In practice: The human.
This is a good point. Laws have never been changed to accommodate new technology. Given that precedent, self driving cars will never happen because today's laws are set in stone.
Open your eyes to the more distant future where all new cars are self-driving and only antiques require drivers. Then we can lay blame of self-driving-car-on-self-driving-car accidents with the manufacturers.
We can't hold the programmers, sorry Software "Engineers" at risk, because the software comes with NO WARRANTY, OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, and CONTAINS KNOWN DEFECTS.
I think there is simply too much regulation. We should loosen the engineering restrictions to match the software engineering restrictions. This bridge is made under no warranty, or fitness for a particular purpose, and contains known defects. Your only remedy is the cost of the bridge, or the cost of the toll, whichever is less.
Lets also apply this to airplanes, elevators, etc.
Everyone can be an engineer under these new regulations. Enjoy the commute. Sorry the elevator module encountered a java exception and plunged into the basement. It didn't have to by type-safe, just safe enough.
It would be the exact same liability that it is now: the manufacturer is at fault for manufacturing defaults, software or otherwise.
This isn't an issue.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
And the liability will shift to the manufacturer of the autonomous vehicle more so than the person riding in it and owning it.
The change will happen slowly, organically, over time. A self driving car will behave statistically as a very safe driver. Ownership of a self driving car should bestow upon you lower insurance rates. If the current insurance companies balk at the idea, the private market will take over and "self driving only" insurance companies will gladly take their place. Eventually, as more and more share of vehicles are self driving the size of the insurance industry will shrink significantly.
I see no reason to change the liability burden away from the "Driver". It may seem counter intuitive, but you are gaining economic advantage by using your self driving car. For that advantage, you accept the risks, and insure yourself against them. That said, operating a self driving car will/should carry significantly less risk and liability then driving yourself around does now.
That does not mean that the car makers are off the hook. Just like today, if a vehicle mechanically malfunctions in a way that the car maker is found responsible, the insurance company may attempt to subrogate the claim to them.
Remember the toyota software bug? Toyota cars had a software bug that caused older drivers to accidentally hit the gas when they wanted to hit the brake! But it only affected older drivers, and driver height was also a factor. Anyhow, an expert witness reviewed the source code at testified at a civil trial that he couldn't find any bugs but he couldn't rule out that bugs existed. The jury found toyota liable. Cha-ching!
So even if you use something like haskall to prove your code correct or node to prevent blocking, the car manufacturer may still be responsible for drivers pressing the wrong pedal. It's software, there might be bugs, pay up.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Didn't we used to have vehicles that were capable of their own decisions once before? We should just treat it however they treated horse-related crashes.
I think the driver will have to be alert for about 5 years until the vast majority of car are driverless. People will want this, it will sell like iphones to anyone who can get credit.
Even if I have to stay awake an alert I'd still buy one for bumper to bumper traffic. How alert do you have to be at 7:30 a.m. just north of O'hare in Chicago (if you don't know it sucks then and there). I could read a book while the car was going 3 miles an hour and then stops, and then 5 miles and hour and then stops ( sorry kilometer people ).
Even at freeway speeds I can at least just relax and not have to worry about controlling acceleration, braking, lane changes, etc.
Who is liable if you have a crash in a taxi cab or a state-owned vehicle? The thing this article overlooked is that there is more than one business model for selling cars. Self-driving cars might flourish by allowing companies to provide a lower cost car service for those who either cannot or do not wish to drive themselves. Apps like Sidecar (http://www.side.cr/safety) and Lyft (http://www.lyft.me/safety) are already pointing in this direction and centrally controlled driverless car services could be a logical next step, especially if companies take on the liability for what happens during a ride -- just as they would in an airline, rideshare or taxi service.
Moreover, even if driverless cars don't become the norm, driver-assist cars may do so and could dramatically reduce accident rates. As a car and driving enthusiast, I am selfishly averse to all these changes, but the safety benefits are hard to argue against.
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool. -Richard Feynman
Just make the car white... and put a fruit symbol on it. Millions of people will buy it despite the fact it has no practical application.
It's Phillip K. Dick.
Cars already have Anti-lock braking system, but I haven't heard any driver worry about responsibility of bugs in the controller chip.
In many areas, this is not regulated by law but by legal precedent. Besides, laws can be changed and precedents evolve.
Besides, depending on the cause of the accident, this could easily fall under existing product liability laws, regulations, and precedents.
Same as now. In most states, the driver is required to have liability insurance. I expect it won't be any different just because the car is autonomous.
It'll just be cheaper to insure a self-driving car than it would be to insure a car that requires an error-prone human to operate. =)
Universal insurance provided by the government through taxes, like universal single-payer healthcare in the more civilized countries, could be a solution. Don't try to assign blame, just fix the damage.
...there has to be *somebody* who can be sued. It's the American Way.
Will an EULA absolve you from murder? The disconnect between the person that pulls the trigger or pushes the button and the predictability of the following actions become larger and lager.
Some sort of no-fault insurance that all driverless car owners would pay into that accepts responsibility for and pays out damages on accidents seems like the obvious solution here.
If the cars are genuinely significantly safer than it would be cheaper than current insurance. And if there is an accident, the damages are covered, and there's no penalty to the owner.
This doesn't seem like an intractable problem at all.
This isn't a black and white situation where either you are driving or the car is driving. There is plenty of in between.
People get road rage, emotional, or tired behind the wheel. Presumably, a self-driving car would follow all the rules of the road as human's do not. This can increase safety for everyone on the road and not just the individual in the self-driving car. So even if you're just letting the car do most of the driving while you rest your hands on the wheel and monitor some dials and stay alert, there's still a lot of value in that.
So I hope that answers the question of what's the point of self-driving cars if you can't relax. Self-driving cars aren't just about taking a nap in the car during your morning commute.
The driver is not the [only] one liable.
First, any person, even a pedestrian or passenger who causes an accident through their own acts can be held liable. Even if you swerve to avoid a dog or child who runs into the road and sideswipe the car next to you, the parent of the child or owner of the dog will be liable for the damages (unless, of course, you failed your duty to keep a proper lookout or otherwise acted negligently).
Second, the owner of the vehicle is also liable, for act of someone he authorizes to use the vehicle.
Third, if the car was in use on behalf of an employee/servant the employer/baster is responsible.
Fourth, the manufacturer is liable if a product defect is responsible.
Finally, none are liable if they (including their property (i.e. car) and their agents/employees/servants) were not the proximate cause of the accident.
I was researching the appropriate statues in the Combined Annotated Statues of the Law of the State of (wherever) at the time the vehicle ran down six members of the State Supreme Court. I refer you to Evidence Photo #17, in which the rest of the car was full of lawbooks. your honor, this case should be considered pre-appealed, as it has already been presented to the Supreme Court, and I should be released on personal recognizance... .
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Make it so the company who makes the car is "the driver" legally.
In other words, don't sell us your shitty cars if they crash.
If google's technology controls the self-driving car, then google is effectively driving the car, and therefore google is 100% responsible for what happens while the car is driving.
You will never buy a driverless car for exactly this reason (will be beyond our lifetimes). There will be drive-assist vehicles, with the driver always expected to be alert in case of emergencies.
Michigan just passed a law exempting manufacturers from civil liability when driving aids malfunction.
Speeding tickets are civil, so I am using that the next time my cruise control malfunctions.
It's because of this conundrum that autonomous vehicles will only be novelty features on standard automobiles. It will be an auto-pilot or cruise control wherein the driver is still expected to take control in the case of an emergency that could not be measured by the car's sensors or accounted for by the car's algorithms.
And that's not bad! It's just not as idyllic as some would prefer.
If you want to read, or nap or do anything other than pay attention to driving just use public transit. It's not always an option, but if you really just don't want to worry about driving it's the best choice. And it adds efficiency that even a self-driving car can't bring to commuting.
Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. -Martin Luther
All one has to do is compare it to a situation involving another driverless vehicle: a car that rolls down a hill. If one owns a car parked on a hill and, for whatever reason, the car rolls down the hill, one is liable for any damages that results as well as any fines or penalties.
If one believes the car rolled down the hill because of a defect in the car, then one can attempt to hold the manufacturer of the car liable for the damages, penalties, fines, etc..
If one can show that a third party did something to the car to cause it to roll down the hill, then one can attempt to hold the third party liable.
In any of the cases, the owner of the vehicle is primarily liable. In the second and third cases, the owner can attempt to recoup losses by holding a third party liable, but will still be liable for any damages caused regardless of resolution with the third party.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Whose insurance company, the car's owner, the car's driver/occupant (the person who put the car in self driving mode) or Google's (the self driving software developer)?
Insurance companies are not liable, they just pay the bill for the person or company who is liable.
I see two cases:
1. The car is designed to be semi-autonamois but monitored by a driver. In this case the driver is responsible for it juts like they would be if they failed to stop in time wile using cruise control.
2. The car is designed to be fully autonomous and run without a driver. In this case the car's owner is responsible for its actions, much like how an owner is responsible for the actions taken by their pets when unattended.
Let's say the software is very buggy and they hide that, withheld updates, and so on.
Most financial responsibility laws specify a very low (say $50,000) liability coverage requirement. That is about 100 times less than what you can get if you are killed in an airline crash.
If a self-driving car kills you and you can sue Google (or whoever), your heirs will get several million dollar dollars, instead of $50,000. In other words, until a self driving car has an error-rate 100 times lower than humans, they won't be made.
The insurance company is not liable, they merely pay the bill for the person or entity that is liable. Google, or whoever develops the software, will need insurance just as much as the driver since they may be found liable if there are software defects.
I'm guessing these sort of questions will bring in a lot of .gov regulation. Mandatory software upgrades, inability to modify settings etc. It may even get to the point that it's no longer cost effective to own a car. Just look at aviation. Ultralights, hang gliders and parachutes are relatively cheap. Step it up to anything big enough to require a certified airframe and engine, and the price goes haywire. The result? Most people don't buy airplanes, they rent seats on them for each trip. An airline has the resources to own and maintain big, expensive, heavily regulated transportation. Likewise, I predict fleets of automated vehicles that you can rent by the mile or day or whatever. Hence, the parent company is in charge of compliance and the manufacturer is responsible for problems with the software they provide. All the benefits of public transit combined with the convenience of personal transit.
I'm sure some people will buy their cars, just like some people buy small airplanes. But then all that expensive, time consuming compliance is up to you to maintain.
Or we'll go the way of so many other things and just require a liability waiver in order to buy a car :(
People already accept full liability for their car, despite texting, reading, snoozing, having sex, playing games or any of the other horrific distractions that far too many people engage in. So the easy answer is that people will continue to accept full liability for their vehicle, and may optionally take out additional insurance for accidents that occur while their car is in auto-drive. The incidence of accidents for auto-driven cars should be low enough that their normal insurance premium is much lower, thus additional insurance specifically for accidents that occur through automation failure plus human inattention should also be affordable.
In Russia everyone installs a camera in their car that films all the time just in case there is an insurance or legal dispute after an accident. I believe it has something to do with the payout for hitting a pedestrian being high enough for people to want to throw themselves in front of your vehicle, then drives just want to prove they were innocent. There is also a massive upside, you get loads of hilarious videos on youtube of Russians doing stupid things.
I can see a self driving car being like a plane. The pilot is still partly responsible and there is a black box that records anything should there be a crash and that is examined. Car will probably be required to record systems stats of times near an accident and videos of the driver and surroundings to prove they were alter at the time of the accident. Such technology could help make roads a lot safer too. Software bug or bad driving there'll be enough evidence to hold someone responsible. Just need to hope that the law makers impose and enforce a decent level of monitoring for self driving cars.
So:
* Montreal Metro -- autopilot with a trained person there to monitor, just as noted here. Also, on separate tracks with no route diversions to worry about, and no other traffic to contend with.
* Vancouver SkyTrain -- autopilot on separate tracks with no route diversions to worry about, and no other traffic to contend with
* Airport trains / monorails -- autopilot on separate tracks with no route diversions to worry about, and no other traffic to contend with
* Airline flights -- autopilot and sometimes autolanding, monitored by at least two highly-trained individuals. Route diversions and other traffic do exist, and modern aircraft will take diversions automatically as a last resort, but these systems are still manually configured by the pilots in different phases of flight, and usually the pilots take action long before they come into play.
So really, none of these examples are in the least bit relevant.
There's a straightforward solution. Lease autonomous vehicles on an operating lease, with insurance and maintenance included. I used to get a deal like that when I was a Ford employee, years ago. The manufacturer is partly in the insurance business; they cover little claims directly, and reinsure against big ones. Since they're reinsuring many cars, they get wholesale rates.
Now a single party is responsible regardless of whether the driver or the hardware is at fault. They can sort it out internally. Also, if maintenance is included, the manufacturer has control over maintenance quality, so they get to recheck the autonomous driving components on each scheduled service.
That's enough to handle the first stage of deployment. Once insurance companies see the automakers moving into their business area, they'll offer competitive rates.
I have written about this several times now. This is what is going to happen in the U.S. It is as predictable as sunrise:
A "self-driven" vehicle will be in an accident. Maybe it kills a passenger, or somebody else. This might even happen several times. The hardware/software will be blamed. There will be big lawsuits.
The "self-driven vehicle" craze will die down for a while. People will say "I don't want to go near one of those things."
Eventually -- and it may take quite a while -- the technology will improve beyond question and they will be adopted again.
It's happened with just about every major advancement in automation to date. Why should cars be any different?
IAAL.
Under current law in most states, the owner has financial responsibility if there is a crash. In fact, most car owners have no assets to collect on, so it is the owner's insurer that usually picks up the tab.
Regardless of manufacture attempts to disclaim liability, third parties (drivers and passengers of other vehicles, pedestrians) can sue the manufacturer if the crash was caused by an unreasonably defective vehicle. It is relatively rare because most cars are insured and the owners insurance covers the injury, while claims against the manufacturer are expensive and difficult to prove.
Further, anyone who thinks that there are not driverless cars on the road today is kidding themselves. I see many driverless cars on the road. We will be far better off when there is computer operating the car instead of an idiot texting behind the wheel.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
It's kind of a disturbing trend. You no longer own your movies, music, software or books. Few people own their home and now we won't own our cars either.
What good are rights when your choices are to either sign them all away to the HOA, landlord, and car company or to live in a mud hut, way off the grid and away from zoning, on 0.0000087 acres and work from home?
"Therefore, even if a car is self-driving, you as the driver must stay alert and pay attention. No texting, no reading, no snoozing. So what's the point of a self-driving car if you can't relax or do something else while 'driving?'"
The same rules apply today and the roads are still full of drivers doing anything but paying attention to the task at hand. Those same people will happily let a computer take on the last vestiges of their responsibility and zone out completely, then express shock and ignorance when something goes wrong.
Figuring out liability for human drivers is insanely complicated. You just don't notice it because drivers are generally removed from the issue; there is a whole industry (car insurance) whose existence depends on profiting from driver liability and thus deals with all of the complications for you. They even figure out things like risks of being hit by an uninsured driver and factor that into the cost. The only cases they don't handle are when 2 uninsured motorists get into an accident, and then the courts can get involved.
Insurance companies will figure out the risks of various types of autonomous car failures and to what extent their liability costs can be recouped from the manufacturers (due to negligence), from the passengers, from the other parties involved, etc. Then they will set their insurance rates for autonomous cars so that they can cover liabilities and still make a profit. If they underestimate their liabilities then they raise their rates or go out of business. The autonomous cars could even require proof of insurance to be installed or downloaded in order to operate, making them very difficult or impossible to operate without proof of coverage. That will pretty much eliminate the problem of uninsured drivers.
The only thing that would hold back autonomous cars is if the risks are estimated to be too high, making the insurance rates so expensive that it outweighs the convenience. Given how unsafe most human drivers are, I think the autonomous car manufacturers would have to do a really terrible job for that to become an issue.
The owner/operator of the car. That's who has to settle first. If it's defective hardware then the owner operator needs to file a claim against the manufacturer. The same goes for the software.
I'll buy a self-driving car when it comes with a full bar, and an in-dash ice machine.
Works very well in some areas. Basically nullifies this article.
Who is responsible?
Driver gets in the back seat with his honey (or kids) and the other kid gets bored & gets behind the wheel and "takes over."
Hey we have a lot of lawyers out of work.
Have you ever looked at the fine print of the licensing for Microsoft Windows?
It clearly spells out the software isn't suitable for health/medical devices, aircraft maintenance, and a whole raft of things.
But, there's tons of stuff which do those things using Windows.
But since you've agreed to the license terms (you're using it after all), the license terms say "we bear no responsibility". And since license terms have been upheld, you can safely bet than anybody making autonomous cars will have also covered their asses.
And, then of course, there's the fact that they bribe politicians into passing laws in their favor by using lobbyists -- whose job it is to ensure they carry little of the risk.
You'd likely have to demonstrate some pretty widespread malfeasance to actually hold them responsible for anything. But, since Obama was happy to give Monsanto retroactive immunity, I'm sure some other politician will also do this.
In other words, assume they're buggy as hell, dangerous, and simply don't buy one. Because that's what I'm gonna do.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Florida (and maybe some other states) have no-fault car insurance. They don't try to figure out who is at fault in an accident, everybody's insurance policy covers damage their own vehicles, regardless of who caused the accident.
This principle could be applied to robot cars as well.
the future can't come fast enough
I don't see why the model should change. The driver of the car would be liable for any accidents caused by their car. This will probably be covered by the driver's insurance. The insurance companies will only insure self driving cars that they consider safe. Insurance companies my even offer cheaper rates to cars with a better track record of self driving.
Maybe the cars could have AI personalities, like cautious, aggressive, or FastNFurious. You can set the AI based on whether or not you're in a hurry or how you feel that day.
But can you dodge bullets?
Modern passenger aircraft can take-off, fly the course entered by the pilots (with in-flight adjustments) and land the plane. This is all done by computers and in theory there is no need for pilots, but they are there for when things do go wrong. This is how we should be treating self-driving cars - they are systems that allow for better efficiency with less of the retarded crap that humans bring to any task they undertake, yet the ultimate responsibility will always remain with the driver. If you don't like that, stay home or take a bus :)
It'll be like aviation - the makers of the craft in question will pay lots of mney to lawyers to put the crash down to "pilot error".
Aside from which, let's see, law enforcement will want a 'kill switch' and every politician will want a 'Zil lane' button.
All your ghosts are just false positives.
The law requires the driver to pay attention... er, yeah, in an era where no self-driving car is approved. Clearly the law will need changing when the technology gets approved. But once self-driving cars are provably as good as the average driver, I don't see the problem. Owners of self-driving cars buy insurance, at a standard self-driving car rate, possibly modified by annual mileage or the crash frequency statistics of a particular model, and if there's an accident the insurance pays out just like for any other driver. If someone uses one without it being insured, they're liable, just like today. As long as the motor manufacturer isn't being culpably negligent (maybe rigging the testing, failing to provide patches to known dangerous bugs etc.) then they're not culpable.
To say that the entire principle of self driving cars is garbage simply because laws written in an age where such technology doesn't exist will need revision is pretty moronic though.
The parent would be responsible for the actions of their minor children under their supervision. If the parent is not the owner of the insurance policy of the vehicle, the policy owner, or the insurance company itself, may attempt to recover damages from the parent.
Obviously each case is different, and lawyers will have some work. Your hypothetical situation is similar to the "brake shift interlock" issue that went through the courts a few years ago. Parents argued that it was unsafe to be able to shift a vehicle out of park without depressing the brake after several children were injured and caused damage by doing so. I believe the interlock is now a mandated safety device.
I think people are over complicating this to death. It doesn't matter how magic the technology is. Insurance is black, cold, flat risk assessment. Nothing more. Everything else is details, and the lawyers will _continue_ to make plenty of money on that whether we ride horses, or have automated flying cars.
There are two distinct things: One is that you are officially the driver even if the car drives itself, and you are responsible. But the whole point of a self driving car is that it is safer driving in a self-driving car with your eyes closed than in a non-self driving car with open eyes. You are responsible, but nobody is going to say "you are responsible because you used a self driving car without watching". They will say "you are responsible because your self-driving car caused the crash". Which will happen less often than if you drove yourself.
Right now you have to (a) watch out what you are doing and (b) pray that you don't have an accident. With a self driving car you don't need to watch out what you or the car are doing; you still have to pray that you don't have an accident.
And the whole idea of taking control in unexpected situations is nonsense. In the very best case, you would have to (1) do something to take control away from the computer and (2) react to the problem. In situations where there is enough time for that, the computer can handle things just fine. And people may think they are good in unexpected situations, but they are not.
That describes criminal negligence. The owner of the vehicle is still liable for the financial costs of the wreck, but can file suit against the manufacturer to recoup losses.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
I don't think you would need to be THAT alert. The car could have a loud beep/alarm if it thought it was getting into trouble and needed human correction. Sure, it would be about 1 second slower for a human to react to it, but if the car cant figure out what to do in that time, i doubt any fully alert human could either.
And, of course, logs would be available. If the human didn't respond at all to an avoidable situation, then it was their fault. If the car crashed, and human interaction would'nt have prevented it, then it is the car's fault.
And, Microsoft would be in clear but the company that build the software would be liable for, possibly criminal, negligence for using an inappropriate operating system, regardless of the EULA of the car/software.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Today: I am "responsible", and I am made to buy insurance so that my responsibility actually means something. Insurance companies sell the risk that you will have a heart attack, be drunk, be stupid, pass out, text, eat etc.. Ultimately, if I have an aneurism while driving, I am "responsible" for the accident, although I would not be morally culpable.
Auto-driver: I am "responsible" and I am made to buy insurance for my self driving car. Insurance companies sell the risk that the car will malfunction. In reality, a much better deal. By the time these are on the road, the risk of error will be significantly lower than the risk of human error.
Here's a better question - how does it work with Drones that kill by algorithm
Your question conflates usability (convenience, etc.) with liability. A similar example is driving without a license. No one ever gets pulled over for it, so you technically don't "have" to have your license with you when you drive, and people frequently drive without them. However, if something else happens (a wreck, pulled over for speeding, etc.) then you are liable for the missing license and face punitive actions.
So with ideal automated cars, you won't "have" to pay attention, but you will be liable for any damaging results.
Additionally if automated cars ever reach the desired capabilities, the automakers will likely begin to be held liable for certain incidents, if it is deemed to be a result of faulty manufacture/programming (e.g. the car changes lanes on its own and collides with the car next to it). Whether they are held liable (and the degree to which they are) will likely depend on what sort of performance/capabilities they claim and whether or not they adhere to TBD standards and regulations.
Shouldn't the company who designed, built, and programmed the magical auto-driving vehicle be liable for it's dysfunction when it comes down to it?
The right solution is to institute no-fault insurance; if a vehicle is driving autonomously, there is "no-fault" for the owner. Everyone's insurance covers their damages, and only their damages. Anyone operating a vehicle manually could still be liable, until there are no more manual operations. Handles the transition fine, risk and damages are covered reasonably, and if you want to go after the vehicle manufacturer, we'll eventually sort out what the legal frameworks around that should look like. The "current state" of insurance/liability does not create an insurmountable barrier for autonomous vehicles, the laws will just have to change as the technology does.
While the actual numbers vary by car and conditions... The example in the chart shows roughly 33mpg at 50mph, and 20mpg at 80mph, but doesn't consider travel time.
You can decide if you value your time at more or less than 2.6 gallons per hour.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Otherwise, what's the point in buying a self-driving car? If I have to monitor it every second to make sure it's not crashing, why even bother? People bring up aviation, but it's not the same, the pilot is always involved to some extent, better trained than most drivers, and if there's a problem with the auto pilot there's usually plenty of time for the pilot to take over and make corrections. Not so on a crowded roadway.
Obviously they can't build the entire cost into the purchase price, so I'd think they'd give one year free coverage and then charge the customer beyond that. Of course, that would depend on all systems being functional, so maintenance becomes an issue. I expect at first these cars will only be leased so manufacturers can keep tight control of them.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Because as an American living in a multi-cultural society I do not want to share my resources with anyone who doesn't look like me, think like me, vote like me, or has a dissimilar amount of purchasing power. I prefer to associate only with those of my own socio-economic-ethnic background, because I'm sick and tired of having to pretend to get along with everyone else. I only do that for my own family, mind you. Everyone else is weird, stupid, and they all smell funny. And then you're asking me to subsidize the poor driving habits and behaviors of those who are inferior to me (or whom I believe are inferior, because obviously they -are- inferior to me)? And even worse, you're asking me to subsidize those who are superior to me (those damn bastards, they already have the world) and their fast hot sexy cars? Fuck them, and fuck diversity--I want my own damn monoculture because I'm tired of being uncomfortable around those who are different from me. So I want insurance and health care tailored to my particular socio-economic-ethnic background and damn all the rest to hell.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
Because the software and hardware (and maintenance costs) for a self-driving car is far (FAR) beyond the reach of even above-average wage earners, it will likely be rammed down our throats by insurance companies, and then funded by privacy-invading data collection, and . . . wait, you're not busy paying attention to the ROAD while you're driving? We'll show you ads. And we'll select a route that drives you past billboards, and shopping malls. Oh, you can opt-out of that if you want. For a "small" fee.
Expect lots of lobbyist-driven legislation to support this model.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
When a surgeon is first out of medical school, they will do dozens if not hundreds of surgeries under the direct supervision of an attending surgeon. If that med student starts to do something dangerous, the attending (who was there the whole time watching) will step in and help them out. Any time the master steps in the student learns something new, effectively making it better. This doesn't mean the attending will lose focus after a few minutes and start reading a paper or playing on his/her phone, it just means they aren't the one actively performing the surgery. If the student destroys someone's knee or kidney or bowel the attending is held responsible, but the student gets bad marks for causing the situation in the first place. It is an effective feedback system.
Brad
If the law says we can't we should just give up. Afterall laws never change.
...you own or are responsible for even though you aren't even there... Why it would be like if someone slipped on a sidewalk on your property and YOU and YOUR insurance had to cover their injury, or if you had a child who was caught doing something illegal and you were charged with a crime because of it.. Or even if you parked your car, and the brakes failed and it rolled out into traffic, and then they charged you for the damages....
You know like reality right now.
If self driving cars provide something you want (namely that they drive themselves) you'll buy one, your insurance company will come up with a number to insure it, they are very very good at that, and you'll pay it, and when something happens, they will collect the data from your car to prove it wasn't your fault and that some one else should pay for it, or they will pay for it, or they will do whatever they are obligated to do under the contract you have with them and local laws. If it was a problem with the manufacturer the insurance company will go after the manufacture in court to get that money back, if there are lots of issues because of a particular failure lots of insurance companies will do this, and they will call it a class action lawsuit.
Now can all the self driving car neighsayers please line up next to all of the horse and carriage folks well out of the way of those of us who would like to see a improved future?
This is the same as saying, "The law requires that every driver be responsible for feeding the horse, so gasoline powered cars will never be." The law will change.
The victim of course.
When the operation of the device becomes part of the device itself, it should be up to the manufacturer to warranty their product against defect.
The concept of car ownership itself should likely be threatened, there will be little value in possessing a personal vehicle if they could be summoned and dismissed on demand.
If you think about it its quite wasteful to have such a useable tool sit idly for most of its life, just for the privilege of having it when you happen to need it.
This meme of "self-driving cars will never work, because who gets sued?" keeps popping up, yet the idea of having liability insurance for personal possessions not under your direct control has been around for a long, long time. If someone visits your home and hurts himself while on your property, your homeowner's liability insurance covers you, even if you are not physically present. The insurance companies will learn to deal with self-driving vehicles, because there will be money to be made, and they will figure out a way to get into that market.
In any case, self-driving cars are absolutely inevitable for one major reason: our aging population. Senior citizens are going to demand the freedom of personal transportation, and anyone in the U.S. who tries to tell them "no" is going to be fighting the AARP, which has some of the most powerful lobbyists in Washington. Furthermore, consider citizens who are blind, or deaf, or epileptic. Why shouldn't they have the right to personal transportation? This will become a mandate for individual rights enforced by the federal government.
In any case, people who claim self-driving cars will never work keep ignoring the elephant in the room: 35,000 fatalities and 2.2 million injuries a year, and a cost of $250B due to car crashes - and that is just in the U.S. alone. We slaughter each other right and left, and just shrug our shoulders. I'd much rather trust a computerized driving system, even if it has rare failures, because statistically I'll still be much, much safer on the road.
Ultimately, this argument will all be moot. It reminds me very much about how some people railed against personal cell phones when they first began to appear. How did that work out? In thirty years, you'll have a whole generation of adults who have grown up without having spent 5 minutes of their lives behind the wheel. At that point self-driving cars win by default, because most people won't even know how to drive anymore. To them, knowing how to drive a car will be about as relevant as knowing how to saddle and ride a horse.
You're liable for things that happen in your home, but you don't have to stay home all day and be vigilant about every little thing that happens. That's what insurance is for.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
driverless cars.
Insurance companies will only insure driverless cars if the accident projections prove true. But wait, where's the data to start up? They will estimate using various statistical techniques in which their actuaries are well-versed to determine if it is possible to turn a profit based on the limited test data available. If they decide it is possible, they will then invest in their political lobbies to get some laws written that will provide large government subsidies for them to take on this extra "risk"- i.e. they will transfer the risk to tax-payers. As the subsidies dry up, they will accumulate data and adjust their models as more and more driverless cars hit the streets. Then they will figure out how to transfer financial responsibility back to the "driver" or manufacturer and, using the healthcare insurance model, will charge ever increasing premiums while delivering ever decreasing coverage.
It's the American way! It's what American "exceptionalism" is all about!
But with nothing to do behind the wheel 99% of the time your not going to be alert. Your going to be super bored. So when your supposed to take over you won't be prepared to do so.
And if you don't practice you'll lose your driving skills, unless you manually take control every so often or go to the track.
For the boredom component, things could be set up so that auto-drive only works for 5 minutes at a time, and afterwards you have to type something in to keep it going. This forces people to have some modicum of situational awareness.
Another option would be to only allow auto-drive on highways, and not regular streets. Airliner pilots are in manual control during take-off and landing, but during cruise they generally only monitor. Similarly the "boring" part of driving on the highway could be automated.
That's a distinction without a difference.
No. Insurance policies often have limits. If you have a $1M policy and you are found liable for a $5M judgement then your insurance pays $1M and you are personally responsible for $4M.
Most people already own and 'control' some automated systems, and we have a functioning legal framework for establshing liability. Some examples:
1. An automated sprinkler system. If your sprinkler system sprays outside of your property onto some passerby's extremely expensive suit, you as the owner of the system are liable. You are in control of the system, have set it up to spray beyond the bounds of your property, and have given the system instructions on when to start and stop spraying, usualy via a timer. You could argue that the system is deficient, or there is a manufacturing fault which prevents the system from operating as intended, i.e. spraying where you tell it to within commmonly acceptable limits. If the nozzle comes broken and it sprays 360 degress instead of 60 degrees, you can attempt to pass the liability for the incident on to the manufacturer, assuming you can convince people that you didn't know about the defect in advance, in which case you should have acted to mitigate it.
2. An automatic robot vacuum cleaner. I have one, and while it's not a common thing in households yet, the liability surrounding it is pretty clear. You can block of certain areas with a magnetic strip that it comes with (it's a neato). In summer it's really hot, and I like to leave my front door open to get a breeze going through the house, but the neato can just fit under the security gate. So I put the magnetic strip across the front door. If I forget to put it there, and one day it goes off to clean in the street outside and it cause an accident, I'm liable, not Neato (the company). It's functioning as intended. I accept this risk as part of owning the robot. If it decides to go AWOL and *cross* the magnetic strip, not performing as intended, and cause an accident in the street, then Neato (the company) is responsible, or at least I have a good case to make them responsible.
Now why wouldn't an autonomous vehicle fit into the same framework. If an autonomous vehicle causes an accident while not under autonomous control, it isi definitely the drivers responsoibility. If an accident happens while the vehicle is under autonomous control and functioning as intended, it's the passenger's responsibility, because they presumably gave the instructions to the car, however since the instructions to the vehicle would be very high level, as in 'take me to X destination' and the intended function of the vehicle is to get you to that destination safely, you would have to have issude an order like "take me to X latitude, Y longitude" which happens to be just the wrong side of a cliff. Even then, the vehicle *should* avoid situations like these. If the vehicle does not perfrom as intended, i.e. it collides with something, which it is not meant to do, then it is the manufacturer's fault, or rather, again you have a good chance of making it their responsibility assuming you can prove the car would act consistenly incorrectly in the same situation. As far as disclaiming liability is concerned, make the autonomous systems get the euivalent driver's licenses, i.e. to sell a driverless car, it must be certified as capable of driving autonomously, which could be made to mean: will always act to avoid a collision in all directions, will drive on a particular side of the road, will negotiate with nearby autonomous vehicles using a standard protocol, will obey traffic signals, etc...
The legalities are not that hard!
This article assumes that current law will not change to accommodate the new tech. You can't really judge a new, and more importantly disruptive technology by the current laws as they just weren't written with the new tech in mind. I think it's safe to assume insurers will have to rethink things in the near future well before driverless cars become commonplace.
no-fault insurance.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
The whole benefit of self driving cars is that it will probably not be a majority of cars for a long time. So the ideal of it being more efficient is negated by it having to still work with people driving vehicles. For example will a self driving car eliminate traffic jams or rapid lane changes? Or will it simple have to deal with those people cars doing that. The sheer number of vehicles on the road is increasing and no matter if they are all self driving or not. The problems of crowded roads and other factors still will exist. Sure, you might be able to now nap on the way home instead of cursing at the driver in front of you. But really what are we solving with these self driving vehicles?
If we don't want an even worse repeat of the 80s, when Germany and Japan were taking over the auto industry, our laws will have to be made friendly to autonomous cars. The countries with more inviting laws will be the ones who perform the most development in the early years of this technology. Then once the technology is "solved" and the entire world is open to autonomous cars, those countries who were early adopters will be the ones running the industry. They will already have the expertise that other countries don't have because there wasn't a local market for the cars yet.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
You will turn you car over to the "hive mind" to get lower tolls on the expressways. In addition you are likely to get higher speeds, lower gas cost and greater safety. The cowboys will still have non-automated lanes to try to drive faster, but that may be unlikely.
A self driving car is that much less likely to be stupid. It's not going to jump lanes in traffic because it's in a hurry, or because it has a self-delusion of being the next Mario Andretti. What it will do is adapt to changing driving conditions, such as rain, ice, etc. It's not going to succumb to highway hypnosis, even if the human "driver" falls asleep at the wheel. The decisions it makes will be all derived from logical algorithms. The challenge is to make those algorithms smart and adaptable enough. Sure there will be accidents caused by those algorithims, but most likely far far less than those caused by human error.
As you automate for decisions for one reason or another, of machine that coukld harm humans, then the questionof liabilility becomes an issue. Medical assistant machines, like cancer radiation machines, have been in the news. Sometimes their programming has been in error despite a lot of preventive development. You cant just write it all off with a disclaimer.
"Don't say 'murder,' don't say 'kill' It was destiny, it was God's will"
See more here
while [ 1 ]; do echo -n -e "\xe2\x95\xb$((($RANDOM&1)+1))"; done
The fail safe will be an ejector seat with a parachute and the car swerving into the ditch while slamming on the brakes.
Hope nothing happens while under a bridge
This technology is for the elite. This technology is for a post apocalyptic earth surface mission to possibly clean up the mess or at the very least scour through it. Don't be fooled. These megagoliaths don't care what we say.
You will NEVER see self-driving cars on ordinary roads alongside ordinary traffic and pedestrians. The technology to do such lives with flying cars, viable clean fusion power-stations, anti-grav, and multi-layer 'holographic' discs holding hundreds of Terabytes of data. So why are Google and the owners of Slashdot working so hard to push the public perception of such nonsense?
Well, look at Google. Massive investment in every military robot company that shows any signs of progress. Military robots. MILITARY ROBOTS.
Now the usual vile shills will try to jump in with distraction crap about 'Robocop' and 'Terminator'. But the military robots we are talking about are AUTONOMOUS ROBOTIC TANKS that will most certainly 'drive' on ordinary roads, but most certainly will NOT worry about any civilians they murder in road 'accidents'. The ONLY criteria of Google's self-driving tank is one of self-preservation at all costs.
A Google robotic tank clearly wants to stay on the high quality road surface for as much of its travel time as possible. It wants to avoid hitting obstacles, because each unintended collision raises the possibility of damage, fuel inefficiency, or increasing the travel time to its current destination. None of this is about 'road safety'. All of this are the pragmatic concerns about keeping your murder machine in optimal functioning condition.
Google designed the hardware and software systems used in every major intelligence data centre deployed by the NSA, GCHQ, or key allies. By doing so, Google reversed decades of disaster in governmental IT projects. Prior to Google, the hundreds of billions spent on 'state-of-the-art' computer facilities by the US government had produced nothing but near-useless white-elephants that were usually obsolete before they they were completed.
Now Google wants to do the same for the future of US warfare. Google's supremo's were horrified at the failure of Obama's plan to launch the largest series of air-strikes witnessed in Human history against the people of Syria. Google is convinced that when the US war machine has the ability to blitz any Human community on the planet with legions of Google designed robotic tanks, the heads of the USA will never again have to cancel their war plans because of external factors like public opinion, or the opinion of leaders of other powers.
Tony Blair single-handedly ended (to all intents and purposes) the Geneva Conventions, and the USA has been carrying out the very worst Crimes against Humanity in its rolling program of Aggressive Wars ever since. The UN, under Blair's influence, has given blanket immunity to ALL US backed military forces in every US battleground, including independent mercenary forces. Now Google, working with Blair, is lobbying for the 'rules' of war to raise the status of its robotic murder machines to a level HIGHER than the Human targets, so that it becomes 'legal' to murder any Human who threatens or MAY threaten the good functioning of a Google designed robotic tank.
In other words, Google's tanks will be permitted to exterminate any and all civilians who could interfere with the ability of the robotic tank to dominate and control its target area. There is precedent for this. The rules of war were changed to permit wholesale slaughter of civilians from the air when war from the air became possible near the beginning of the 20th Century. When a NATO pilot is 'downed', it is standard NATO policy to murder every civilian in the vicinity during a 'rescue', if it deemed likely that murdering the civilians raises to ANY degree the likelihood of a successful rescue.
Google knows its robot tanks must be CHEAP, reliable and effective. Cheap means mass produced (tens of thousands at least). Reliable means that the tank must have free reign to 'solve' any 'on the ground' problems (so the 'rules' of war must be changed in Blair's and Google's favour). 'Effective' is obviously yet to be proven. But you can't prove the effectiveness of robotic machines of mass murder unless you firstl
Google's team announced that they had passed the 300,000 autonomous mile mark on public roads. Accident-free.
While super impressive that may not be enough miles to be statistically significant for comparison's sake. I can't find all accidents but for fatal accidents the accident rate in the US is around 1.5 fatal accidents per 100 million miles driven. So far they are at 0.3% of 100 million miles so they really need to drive a lot more before we jump to serious conclusions about comparing safety rates.
I'm curious what the total accident rate per mile driven in the US is. Would be interesting to compare as more autonomous miles are driven.
If the promise of self-driving cars includes the idea that the self-driving car will rarely ever be in error and will at least be far less likely to be in error than a human driver, then it seems probable to me that a human being being alert enough and able to correct the self-driving car may make things worse by trying to intercede both legally and in terms of actual outcome.
Also, market forces might cause insurance companies to offer lower rates for cars that are self-driving, and eventually much lower rates, because they know they will almost never have to fork over the money and they want that market. At some point, courts and the general public will figure out that it was almost certainly the fault of a human-driven car and as such, liability may end up being nearly always on the human driven car, driving up insurance for cars built for or intended to be used by humans drivers.
Human drivers might end up being priced out by the rising costs of gas (self-driving cars are probably going to be more economical), liability, and so forth. Once a car can really be self-driving, we can have probably pretty damn cheap self-driving taxis and "minivans" which use algorithms to pickup multiple people in a small area who want to go to a similar place, further driving down the costs of transportation, gas, liability, etc.
It might also have an impact on health care costs, as accidents cost the state, insurance, and patients, lots of money in hospital care for accidents. Certainly avoiding the negative economic impact of losing valuable people (aren't we all valuable?) to car crashes will also probably fuel legislation that makes it ever harder/costlier/illegal for a human to drive a car on a public road.
After all, replacement children don't come cheap!
http://youtu.be/GYSfncB4peU?t=1m25s
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
Traditionally if a professional engineer signs off on something they're putting their personal reputation on the line.
I'd expect most hardware components in a car would be signed off by a PE. Software probably not so much since we really don't have a robust way of developing software yet.
I've seen some of the procedures for the space shuttle software. It's probably some of the most bug-free software on the planet, but the process required to change a line of code is onerous. There's no way you could put out a new car model every year while following those procedures.
Have the car give increasingly strident warnings if maintenance isn't done, finally shutting itself down. (Or at a bare minimum, have it broadcast a signal saying maintenance hasn't been done, and maybe it wouldn't be allowed on major roads or something.)
Did you know that before mankind had airplanes, we had no laws at all about flying safety?
Surprisingly enough, when we invented airplanes, suddenly new laws were created.
Amazing how that works.
When we get new technology, we get new laws.
Only a total idiot would think that the existing laws would not be modified to allow for new inventions.
There are clear reasons why we would do this.
The cops wants drones - so we will eventually have to create laws for vehicles that are not driven by people.
Taxi drivers will become a thing of the past as they are far WORSE drivers than the current crop of expensive driverless cars.
Busses will follow shortly.
I guarantee you that the laws will be changed to allow driver-less cars rather than having cars required to still have drivers.
Jeeze, what a stupid argument.
The companies will eat the legal responsibility in exchange for selling to specific markets - busses, taxies, cops, etc. Then they will end up being forced to take legal responsibility for the regular market.
In the part of the world where i grew up. Kangaroos jump in front of cars, wombats are quick to barrell accross the road and if you hit one of these it will send your car out of control and possibly kill you and total the car.
Also perhaps a flock of parrots eating grass on the side of the road... Or one really big nasty looking eagle that decides to fly in front of the car after feasting on a kangaroo corpse.
I hope the software and sensors/ AI on these self driging cars is very very good.
I can't see software making as good decisions as a human who is paying attention. When you have a fraction of a second to ascertain what has just jumped in front of the car and how best to avoid it OR to decide to hit it because swerving will put you into a pot hole which wasnt there a week earlier. What is the likelyhood of encountering an animal crossing the road? Well time of day, weather conditions, time of year. Will it be context sensitive?
Another edge case scenario: Will the software be as effective as making eye contact with the person standing right next to the road who 'looks' like they might step out in an instant. How does a sensor deal with that person or lots of people standing beside the road?
Last time i was faimiliar with this stuff was neural networks, shape recognition and programming sony ABIO dogs to play soccer as an undergraduate. I really hope the technology is better than this stuff.
I can only see self driving being safe in a subset of situations where the only other moving objects are other cars.
Insurance is only part of the equation and im sure the technology goes a long way to solving the problem of simple rear end shunts and stuff but who really cares about that in comparison to the 'real' real world.
A self-driving car is going to have a huge amount of telemetry. It will be able to tell you more about the accident than any participant or observer. It will likely have video of any event (cache), plus all of the IMU data. Not only will it be able to show you that the light was green when it proceeded through the intersection, it will be able to calculate the speed and angle of the car that hit you once the vehicle type is plugged into the vector equation.
And you're right - if the system is found to be faulty the insurance company will have their lawyers go after the manufacturer. And the manufacturer will probably lose, or will settle to cover up the issue. EULAs mean nothing against gross negligence, and a good lawyer and stable of expert witnesses can always find gross negligence if there has been actual wrongdoing.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Considering they are 'people' according to law. So they (the companies) are driving the car....
FYI, as for the guns don't kill, people do argument, gun companies are, afterall, people too. Just saying...
Because of the legalities, the automated cars will drive like grandmas.
Many of the kids today are MUCH more stupid. Go back just 50 to 70 years and kids as stupid as those today got eaten by wolves, killed by disease, or any number of natural Darwinian type deaths. Today we preserve the seeds of our own destruction by ensuring terminally stupid children survive until they can mate with ANOTHER surviving terminally stupid child and produce STUPID SQUARED kids. The movie Idiocracy
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/ was right on the money.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
If ALL cars were automated there should be no car to car accidents as they will all communicate with each other and at the first sign of trouble by one car all the others in the vicinity will know to slow down. But, in a hybrid world where the auto cars have to deal with humans we will have a lot of problems. 1. The auto car will be programmed to be nervous nellies. Since they cannot predict what the crazy humans do, they will stomp on the brakes at any sign of trouble. 1.1 I expect Humans to be very confused by the behaviour of the auto cars and cause accidents. Who gets blamed then? 2. I expect Humans to maliciously mess with the auto cars, brake check them, etc. 3. Unless a unified auto car communication and behaviour protocol is created I expect many of the auto cars from different manufacturers to exhibit behaviours that will look bizarre to a human. 4-way stop sign resolution for example.
Larry Lessig on a talk about creativity speaks about the early 20th century when farmers were claiming air rights to the space above their farms and how this could have killed the air travel industry. Laws were changed such that planes were permitted to fly about someones land without having to purchase a permit or pay a fee. The same will occur with regards to self navigating vehicles, overall I have no doubts these vehicles will be safer than the current human operated models so accidents will be less often.
The problem of liability is relatively easy to solve. Define a set of operational standards, then limit liability by statute as long as those standards are met. Update and refine the standards as we gain experience.
A few unfortunate people will be killed by programming errors and deficient standards, but far more lives will be saved by getting the deadly menace of human drivers off the road.
A front seat driver of course!
Greed is the root of all evil.
Honestly, this concept that for every bad thing that happens there must be exactly one source of "fault" who is financially responsible for the outcome is quite bizarre.
By being a part of society, you assume a lot of risk. Even more so if you are anywhere near a road.
It seems that a "no fault" state would be the best place to test out autonomous cars. By getting on the road, you accept that sometimes shit happens. Insure yourself against your own potential losses. Everyone else insures themselves against their own potential losses. Someday, a perfectly maintained auto-auto with no design flaws is going to have a blowout when the wind gusts just right. That auto-auto (auto^2 ?) will veer just enough to strike and kill a pedestrian/biker/pet/parked car/non-auto auto. Sucks to be them - shit happens. Likely, the world is still a far better place with auto-autos v. manual-autos.
Aside: we need an amendment to the constitution: "Shit has the right to happen." Maybe we could get over this responsibility-displacement issue endemic to America.
Pretty sure someone was making similar comments when the world was moving from horse carriages to automobiles a 100 years ago.. or when people were starting to use fire to cook meals in the caves , i can just imagine: "but if you get burned or die - who will be responsible? you can't punish the fire or fuel that spreads it... " :)
There will always be people afraid of progress, and they will always lose the battle...
today? no.
eventually? yes.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
And the driver is the organisation which produced the computer which drives the car.
This is like asking, "Who is responsible when your chauffeur crashes your car?"
There will be an entire insurance industry developed around sucking the most money they can from you for your driverless car while still making a buck.
Simple as that. Laws will require that if you want to go driverless - you will have to buy the insurance. Limits will be put in place by the government on how much liability can be assigned for driverless failure.
Keep waiting. For all the usual reasons.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
That's a valid perspective for civil liability. Now what about criminal liability? Do I go to jail for manslaughter if the computer miscalculates and accidentally drives over a pedestrian? That's the problem.
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
So basically my fear with self driving cars is that they'll be like a friend that seems to always seems to stop late and be on the bumper of the car in front of you, but never gets into an accident. You know the type where your grabbing the door or ceiling handle and cringing... And this is coming from someone that gets regular evil eyes when I get onto a crowed subway.
> what's the point of a self-driving car if you can't relax or do something else while 'driving?'"
It's early days yet, give it time.
There was no point in cars AT ALL when they first were introduced: they were slower than horses, you needed to bring a mechanic along with you 'cos they broke down every mile. Some cities you had to employ a guy to walk ahead of the car with flags to warn people. Utterly without practical use, they were.
They got better, laws adapted. You have to start somewhere though!
Perfectly Normal Industries
Well who is liable when drones kill innocent people?
Not the operator or the manufacturer.
Typ, that is already done in Europe - left lane for overpassing (for faster cars essentially), right line to be occupied if there is no need to use left lane. I have always wondered why American car users need to have three lanes each way none if which are prioritized.
So, no need for autonomous cars. Just some legislature changes.
Plain old sigh.
I talk about this on my blog, we need an insurance based licensing scheme for autonomous vehicles :
Self-Drive Engage
...why would you need to attend to it to be responsible? You could read a book and take responsibility for your robot. Surely the insurers would ask you if you intend to read books or pay attention.
Sorry, this article is a trolling piece of trash. He wonders why this is such a hot topic? Well, look at airplanes. Aircraft these days have autopilots that can do everything the pilot can. Even when the pilot is in "manual" the computer is the actual thing that flies the plane (fly by wire). Does this mean we don't need pilots? No, of course not. And the pilot is still pretty much liable for his plane, tho for aircraft its more moot for the pilot himself/herself.
Why on earth do people use cruise control, auto parking, and auto lane stuff? Because it makes driving easier. And the bit on traffic laws? Well, even as written they may be reinterpreted. I can imagine there being a case that was so egregious that the insurance company in question won't just settle, and then the jury will interpret the facts within the laws context. Remember the firestone tires on the Ford Explorer? Those crashes were originally thought to be the drivers fault. But they corrected that.
I'm sorry self driving cars will destroy your world Mr Booth, but guess what, you can't stop progress.
Sometimes driverless trains derail. Somebody's insurance company pays: either the manufacturers or the rail owners or the operators.
In the case of a car it probably makes sense to have the owner of the car buy the insurance, because this will be a lot lower than the insurance for non-driverless cars, because by the time they go mainstream, they won't crash as much as a person, because they don't get fatigued, drunk or thrill-seeky.
I've read many of the comments, and not one mentioned software failure, sensor failure, GPS failure, power failure, design failure, or hardware failure of any sort I can't envision. Or being hit by a non-automated car - which could make the system fail and drive the car into further danger. Is it possible techies cannot conceive of a computer system that does not work 100% of the time? (Makes me reflect back on all those posts I used to make contending that voting systems were inherently designed for cheating. No imagination. Machines *always work* in techies' view, it seems) A little too much programming - no experience in actual machines operating in the real world.
Computers *fail* in the real world. The more complex the system, the more certain the failure. An airplane can get away with automated flight, as there is room to maneuver and pilots are always standing close by. Cars have no safety margins for failure in traffic. None. This will not work, not unless people are willfully blind when the failures accumulate - possible.
What happens if someone spoofs a GPS signal? It's been done to drones, making them dive and kill themselves. What if a HERF gun blows out the brains of the car with EMP - or someone simply makes an EMP "bomb" and detonates it on an overpass?
Question again: who's responsible when the perfect machine fails and causes an accident?
Sing along with me in the key of Frere Jacque!
Paranoia, paranoia, LSD! LSD!
Someone's trying to get me, someone's trying to get me
Where's my gun? Where's my gun?
THIS is why we shouldn't mix ethanol with driver fuel. Stick with straight cheeseburgers, I say.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Exactly. If an insurance company is willing to stand behind the vehicle's operation, then any potential accident victims will be compensated.
Self-driving cars may even be a better bet for the insurance companies than selling policies for human-operated cars.
Skytrain may be on a separate track (mostly two, one for each direction.)
But you still need very careful traffic management to ensure that any train does not run into another one stopped at a station or anywhere else. I.e. a planned (station) or unplanned (random) stop.
These things go fast and hitting a stopped train would generate headlines. And if you where around Vancouver in the mid eighties when Skytrain was first built there where numerous naysayers predicting catastrophe if there was not an operator in each train to be able to "hit the brakes" if needed.
You're including yourself in that statement right, MickeyTheIdiot?
Back in 1860 nobody had even conceived of an automobile or the telephone.
They had plenty of laws for cutting telegraph lines, which did exist at the time.
When the telephone and automobile were each widely deployed, laws were created to address the social affects brought on by these advances in technology such as negligent vehicle operation and wiretapping.
The fact that the laws Had to evolve was a result of society recognizing the utility these inventions brought to bear.
The law is not a static thing, it is constantly evolving to match the needs and whims of society.
Insurance companies, on the other hand will require standardized testing at some point for policies to be granted. I suspect that the car makers have been developing such standards with the insurance companies, as such the law will have to catch up.
My prediction is:
Ultimately, autonomous cars will be subject to two standards:
1) if the on board computer/data logger indicates there was user intervention, and
2) if there was no user intervention.
No you don't. That is a wonderful goal to strive for, but we may come to learn that our AI just isn't gonna be good enough to have a totally driverless vehicle. That is a limitation of the system and it falls clearly into the deal-with-it category instead of the ban-it-cause-Im-scared-of-it category. You are making the mistake of thinking this is black and white like Troy up there is doing. That is flawed logic.
Which crime?
If your car's driving application happens to be running on Windows 8 Pro OEM when it blue-screens and flattens a pedestrian crossing full of nuns, then you've already agreed that the selected OS wasn't even fit-for-purpose (to the Grand Parent's point as well);
The manufacturer or installer, and Microsoft, exclude all implied warranties, including those of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. If your local law does not allow the exclusion of implied warranties, then any implied warranties, guarantees, or conditions last only during the term of the limited warranty and are limited as much as your local law allows. If your local law requires a longer limited warranty term, despite this agreement, then that longer term will apply, but you can recover only the remedies that are described in this agreement.
I.e. "Current laws make the driver of a car responsible for any mayhem caused by that vehicle." Microsoft wasn't driving your car - they've never even seen it before.
It needs to be the programmer (and the companies that profit from the software) that own the liability for the actions of that code. That will require a change to the law.
If the driver can not be clearly established, liability falls on the car's owner. DUH!!
The driver being liable does not imply that he has to stay alert or in control of the vehicle.
At best it implies that the driver has incentives to picki a safe vehicle, negotiate terms of insurance and pick manufacturers who offer guarantees.
Consider for instance the autopilot on airplanes or on elevators. Does the owner of the elevator have to stay and watch the elevator while keeping his hand on the stop button?
My guess is that in some cases the insurance company would pay and in some cases they would turn around and go after the car manufacturer.
Of course, most drivers don't have the expertise to evaluate the quality and safety of vehicles they wish to buy. This evaluation can be delegated to specialists (reputable middlemen and expert reviewers). Also if some autonomous cars have better track record, insurance companies could charge lower premiums on those and thus guide consumers towards safer vehicles.
These comments are mine; I do not speak for my employer.
My insurance company is.
Wrong. If the car is self driving the I'm not the driver. It's like if I take a cab or a bus.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
They call NTSB to come an investigate if it was a human error or not, if the self driving system was to blame, they force all car makers to fix it.
There wouldn't be any criminal liability. The casualty would be classified as an industrial accident. The new sub department of the NTSB that handles automated cars would investigate the incident. The results would serve to change the protocols and make the self driving car industry safer. _IF_ an NTSB investigation shows gross negligence on behalf of the car manufacturer, that would open up the possibility for criminal charges against executives at the company.
As a side note. Do you think you would get criminally charged _today_ if you "accidentally" veered onto a side walk and ran over a couple of children?
Easy, the idiot that thought a car could drive itself, namely the driver, or lack thereof. Cars are meant to be driven, stick shift, fun. Not for taking a nap while on the way to wherever. Or perhaps playing a little backseat boogie at 70 mph with a lover.
Is the airline pilot still responsible for the aircraft when it's put on autopilot? Who is liable when a firearm of theirs discharges?
Who else?
There wouldn't be any criminal liability.
I hadn't heard where there wouldn't be criminal liability if using an automated car. It makes sense if you aren't required to be alert and monitoring the car's performance while using it, but I can see it going the other way if you are.
Do you think you would get criminally charged _today_ if you "accidentally" veered onto a side walk and ran over a couple of children?
No, but if I was looking at my cell phone and hit a few kids in the street, I would. If I'm required to be alert while the automated car is driving, how would this be different? See the problem? I won't sign up to have to prove a computer glitch caused an accident or risk going to jail, but I'm more than happy to have a computer do the driving, far better than the average driver and better than most, if I don't face the risk of criminal liability if it does fail. Civil liability isn't a problem - insurance already covers that.
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
The interesting question is: What do cars think of the Trolley Problem?
It's not when software or hardware fails to do as intended that is the big problem when assigning blame. Nor when the car does something because it's been told to. It's the usually hidden and unused ethics which makes this difficult and interesting. Rules and duty versus utility and consequences.
It's most likely wrong to think that all self driving cars will act the same when faced with a necessary choice of who to kill and who to save. Unless governments require all such software to be written to very exact specifications about how to deal even with situations nobody has thought of, of course.
Should the cars' ethical system reflect their owners' views on the trolley problem?
Should cars be forced to use a specific ethical system contrary to what some owners would like?
Should cars learn by experience and adapt their ethics?
If you ride in your self driving car when it is, would you like it to kill you to save five others or the other way round?
Curious: CAN self driving cars see bicycles? If they can, do they know how to anticipate a bicycle's movements? How about recumbent trikes? Pedal powered vehicles of any time? Anything that isn't a car - how do they fit into the world of computing machines driving speeding tanks?
We are nowhere near ready for robot cars. Humans are general purpose computing machines that can perform pattern recognition tasks that no software can. If we are really concerned about human error to the extent we want to eliminate humans, then we should go back to formula and start building rail lines again. Making cars into trains is inefficient, not to mention impossible. A waste of time and resources in a world rapidly running out of both.
The car companies would have to offer insurances themselves together with IBM, Daimler-Benz and BMW and all involved, who started to develop the Navigation-Systems via Satelitte ... Traditional insurances would not take over this risky task as long as self-driving cars are not fully tested
in real life of all towns together. This question is funny, regarding the usual question: "Who is volunteer to join up !?" -
Ever see cars pile up on a patch of black ice? Who's at fault there? Adding a few robot cars won't make a difference.
Deer jumps in front of the car...tree falls across road....road is washed out over the hill...etc. The laws of physics still limit the reaction of the vehicle no matter who or what is driving.
There cannot be any predetermined guilty party just because the car is driverless.
Why do you have to pay attention? If there is an accident, the likeliness of it being your fault is going to be almost nil. It is almost cerainly going to be the fault of the human driver. I say this because I'm guessing by the time this stuff is production ready, the software is going to be some of the most tested and robust software ever released. Will there be bugs? Yes. Of course. But there will be some many safety precautions in place, that there would have to be many many bugs for the system to fail bad enough to crash. IMHO.
In the voice of James Earl Jones ...
In a world where Google cars could remove the death and danger of traffic in society, should we seriously consider the interests of lawyers who want to make us concerned about changes that could make the world a significantly safer place?
For fucks sake just work it out. Human driven traffic kills people. Google cars don't. Set up some insurance or something.
for this question to arise?
Sure it is great for MPG as there is less air resistance, but your front bumper paint will have to be touched up weekly!
Transportation that you don't have to drive yourself already exists, so why reinvent the wheel?
Imagine: You don't want to drive, or can't.
You could:
1. Ride the Bus.
But:
* there isn't a bus connecting the origin to the destination
* you think you are not a bigot, but it freaks you out to sit with the poor people and other races and cultures onboard
* you are drunk and afraid you might puke on the bus and get thrown in jail
* you are drunk and wearing a suit and might sit in the puke on the seat in the bus where some other drunk was sitting
2. Ride the train
But:
* See 'take the bus', above
* Because of excess demand for the trains, there are no seats and you'll have to stand up
* You'll be packed like sardines with people spreading the flu or something worse
3. Ride a taxi
But:
* You'll have to hail one outside, and it is raining or there is an event, and you won't get one soon
* You signed up for an internet cab service, but are too drunk to use the app on your smartphone
* It is too expensive
* It isn't green
* The driver might want to talk to you about inane crap
* The driver might be an immigrant who doesn't know his way around
* By chatting. the driver imagines he is your social or human equal, and this really pisses you off.
* The driver might be in the mob, and will take your drunk ass to get robbed somewhere and left on the sidewalk
* The barrier between you and the driver makes you feel like you are a criminal in the back of a police car
4. Ride a limo
* The driver might think he deserves fees and tips, or, if he works for you, a reasonable salary
* The driver can't find parking where you need to go, so he won't be ready to leave right when you are.
* You don't like paying someone to do nothing while waiting for you at your event
5. Ride an airplane
* The airplane can't go into the nooks and crannies where you need to go.
* Sometimes, airplanes crash, and you are deathly afraid of that.
* You are afraid of what you will become as you begin to enjoy the TSA's groping and BDSM behaviors
6. Ride a helicopter
* Even though the copter could go where you want it, the government won't let it take off and land without a permit
* Less reliable than commercial aircraft
* Pretty expensive
7. Ride a Horse/Donkey/Pig/Elephant/LLama/Giraffe
* Animal activists may do unmentionable things to you
8. Walk
* What? me, walk? Only losers walk.
* Your ass is too fat to walk.
* You are afraid of being run over at an intersection by someone who runs red light like you usually do.
* Someone may mug you on your way there
9, Ride a Bicycle
* What? Put forth effort? Pay attention?
* Seems less safe than driving a car
Yes, clearly, the only answer is SELF DRIVING CARS.
The majority of car accidents are caused by human error. The automated driving paradigm has to be expanded to think in terms of what the roads would be like if the majority of cars were automated, so that people don't get in the way. Trains of cars that pick you up on a side street and then join back up to the stream allows multiple 'brains' to monitor the flow, the interconnections, etc. The question, then, is "Why would you need liability established if everyone had universal medical care (not insurance)?" Property damage? Nonexistent unless all of the systems fail. The model of liability is based on the risks of letting people act like idiots in the first place. Make a new standard where the cars actually work, people are kept off the main flow grid or, like the factory of the future: the dog is there to keep the man away from the machines.
The whole point of making people drive themselves is to extract their time and value without paying them to be on the road. It's cheaper to stop them from driving and pay them to sit at home and watch TV (notably so with government employees). We have allowed the automobile to run our lives by default up until now. Isn't it time we just let go and make the automobile do it intentionally?
Humans drivers kill people, so let the machines take over the road.
It is cheaper to send robots to space than humans, so let the machines take over exploration.
Watching a screen is better than going to class, so let the machines take over the classroom.
Voting on paper uses too many trees, so let the machines take over the political system.
A human cashier costs too much, so let the machines take over the store.
Reality is often boring, so let the machines take over your vision and yourmind.
Maximizing profit is just math, so let the machines take over the corporations and financial systems.
Judges and Juries are too subjective, so let the machines take over the courtroom.
Humans have been poor stewards of this planet, so let the machines take over the environment.
The planet is overpopulated with humans, so let the machines exterminate some of them.
Human intelligence causes dangerous imbalances with the other biologicals, so let the machines solve it.
Alien Robots are arriving from Sirius. Welcome friends, yes, of course you can have some breeding pairs for your zoo.