Would You Need a License To Drive a Self-Driving Car?

agent elevator writes Not as strange a question as it seems, writes Mark Harris at IEEE Spectrum : "Self-driving cars promise a future where you can watch television, sip cocktails, or snooze all the way home. But what happens when something goes wrong? Today's drivers have not been taught how to cope with runaway acceleration, unexpected braking, or a car that wants to steer into a wall." The California DMV is considering something that would be similar to requirements for robocar test-driver training." Hallie Siegel points out this article arguing that we need to be careful about how many rules we make for self-driving cars before they become common. Governments and lawmakers across the world are debating how to best regulate autonomous cars, both for testing, and for operation. Robocar expert Brad Templeton argues that that there is a danger that regulations might be drafted long before the shape of the first commercial deployments of the technology take place.

Comments

Re:If "yes," then it's not self-driving

[zarthrag]

Simply this. To elaborate further. Self-driving cars should be the legal equivalent to sitting in the back of a taxi. Even from an insurance/liability standpoint, owning one means you're responsible/liable for fuel & maintenance - and that's about it. It should be down to the manufacturer to ensure safe, autonomous operation. (Otherwise, things such as self-valet and timed pick-ups won't happen)

Re:If "yes," then it's not self-driving

[OzPeter]

Therefore, you either keep the abstraction simplified and require the pilot to do a bit more work, or re-instate the flight engineer.

Last year I worked on a Stacker/Reclaimer (EG the big wheely bucket loaders that either scoop up huge piles of coal, or stack coal into piles), and has an operator out in a cabin doing the driving. The same system was being sold to two different customers. The first customer wanted an automatic mode that would guide the machine around the piles of coal and scoop/deliver in order to get an optimal materiel field while the operator sat back and basically watched.

The second customer basically said "I don't want no damn stinkin' automatic mode, because if I'm payin' for an operator to sit out there, he better be working"