NHTSA Gives Green Light To Self-Driving Cars

New submitter tyme writes: Reuters reports that the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) told Google that it would recognize the artificial intelligence in a self-driving car as the "driver" (rather than any of the occupants). The letter also says that NHTSA will write safety rules for self-driving cars in the next six months, paving the way for deployment of self-driving cars in large numbers.

Comments

Instance or class?

[iapetus]

So is each individual instance of an AI a driver? Each version of the software? Each combination of hardware and software?

If a single car is found to be doing something that would have its license revoked, does that car lose its license, or are all Google cars immediately banned from driving? Would a version tweak cause that license to be reinstated, or would Google be out of the self-driving-car business?

Re:Instance or class?

[tnk1]

I wouldn't be surprised if the "driver" was considered a "minor", and the person in the driver's seat was considered to be in an overseeing position with overall responsibility for ensuring that an accident did not occur. Obviously, that would require that the "adult" have the ability to take over safely and at least get the car pulled over to the shoulder or to evade a problem. More to the point, the "adult" would have to be paying attention to some degree.

I doubt that anyone is going to allow the driver to be completely off the hook for this, although they could simply set it up so that the owner was responsible if they were not keeping their car patched.

Re:Instance or class?

[wiggles]

Actually, I've seen answers to all of those questions.

> If I own a self driving car, is my insurance insuring the AI as the driver?

Yes. Google has stated they will assume liability. Other companies pursuing this say the same.

> Is the driving record of that AI individual to my car, or to AI's of that software version ?

This one is actually easier. The insurance industry will have much better figures on the probability of having a claim to pay for the AI drivers, since all those drivers will drive the 'same'. They will be able to say that cars of model X get into .00001 accidents per car per year (or whatever) resulting in $2000 payouts per accident on average (or whatever) and thus will be expected to pay .00001 x $2000 x $INDUSTRY_MARKUP for insurance. Of course it gets a lot more complicated when you have to weigh in modifiers such as the weight of the vehicle (heavier cars cause more damage), the paint job (red cars get more tickets), the environment the car is in (urban cars get hit more), and etc.

> Can I sue the AI, or am I suing the AI manufacturer. Is the AI the car, or separate from the car?

The manufacturer gets sued. The manufacturer would keep insurance and lawyers for these lawsuits.

> am I suing Google or Ford ?

You sue whoever sold you the car. One throat to choke.

Re:Instance or class?

[Coren22]

You'll sue the car, it will then have to get a job as a taxi to work off the judgement.

Longer commute, here I come

[Lodlaiden]

If I don't have to lose an hour each way on maintaining moderate concentration, moving out of the suburbs into the country suddenly becomes feasible. Sweet! NHTSA approval is a major milestone in this becoming a reality.

I won't ever trust an AI driver

[NEDHead]

Until they can flip a bird and show unambiguous road rage

The Great Race !

[swell]

'The Great Race' was a 1965 movie and also an American tradition. Competitors race from one side of the country to the other in various vehicles with various rules.

Self driving cars will surely do the same. They will be judged on safety and speed and technicalities like choosing the best route and handling obstacles. Car buyers will want this information and car makers will struggle to optimize their software to win the next race.

Re:Good ...

[gstoddart]

That's my major problem with this technology: there's an awful lot vague answers to specific questions.

A "self driving car" means you put little Timmy in it, send him to school, and monitor it on your cell phone to confirm he gets out in the right place and a teacher has collected him ... or it means you come out of a bar, fall into the backseat, and say "home, James" ... or it means grandpa who has lost his vision and his driver's license can get in and say "take me to my doctor's appointment".

No driver's license or legal responsibility for operating the vehicle at all. You are livestock being transported. You're not driving or operating, you simply told it your destination.

This bizarre model in which the car drives, except when it doesn't, and with no clear demarcation between is damned near impossible to make sense of.

If the car decides it's got no idea what to do, and it just says "you're in charge", and before you even know what's happening you're in an accident .. and the logs say "human was driving, his fault", you're screwed. Or, worse, someone builds in code which lies and just says "human was driving" 5 minute before any crash is triggered (so they can avoid liability).

There can't be a gray area between who is in charge and who isn't. And paying for liability insurance when the computer is in charge sounds moronic to me, why would you do that? Are you accepting liability on behalf of the computer or something?

Self-driving-ish cars? Autonom-ish cars? It just seems like everybody is pretending this is a solved issue, and I don't believe it is.

Re:Google is on crack

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe at first, but in the long term humans will not even know what it means to drive a vehicle. Ultimately it will come down to safety... once they get all this figured out it will just be too risky to have humans manually driving. Software can be buggy but humans are reckless. Software bugs can be fixed but we have not figured out an effective way to keep people from being reckless.