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Google Self-Driving Car Might Have Caused First Crash In Autonomous Mode (roboticstrends.com)
An anonymous reader writes: While driving in autonomous mode, a Google self-driving car was involved in an accident with a public bus in California on Valentine's Day, according to an accident report filed with the California DMV.The accident report, signed by Chris Urmson, says the Google self-driving car was trying to get around some sandbags on a street when its left front struck the bus' right side. The car was going 2 mph, while the bus was going 15 mph.Google said its car's safety driver thought the bus would yield. No injuries were reported. If it's determined the Google self-driving car was at fault, it would be the first time one of its cars caused an accident while in autonomous mode.
Ow my neck!!
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
No it didn't.
At 2MPH and 15MPH it's at best a shared fault, and more likely the bus to blame. i.e. you don't have the right to plow into cars you can avoid because they venture into your lane.
>> Google said its car's safety driver thought the bus would yield.
So Google is teaching their cars to drive like normal Californians: expect that the other guy will yield.
An unsafe lane change would make it the Google cars fault.
The fault is on the vehicle that was changing lanes. Unless they were both changing lanes, it's not a shared fault.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
in some jurisdictions, cars have to yield right of way to buses in general.
Buses certainly have right of weight.
Also, what's with the aggressive / obnoxious sneaking around cars in same lane tactic. Did someone program that or did the software learn it?
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
It's hard to conclude that from a fender-bender in a situation in which humans make the same type of error all the time... and also considering that both parties shared some responsibility.
Talk to me when the number of injuries or fatalities approaches even 1/10 that of human drivers. Until then, I want to see how this plays out.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
Unsafe is a term designed to have flexibility to be determined by a judge. In the same way that "it's never your fault if you're rear ended", it's common wisdom that's incorrect.
I'm a big believer in autonomous cars, but when I see
Google said its car's safety driver thought the bus would yield.
it makes me wonder how many crashes we would have had in autonomous mode, if there weren't an attentive driver who was fully aware he was sitting in an experimental vehicle.
Even if the first rounds of autonomous cars still require a driver for override (for legal reasons if nothing else), it seems like the number of autonomous crashes that likely would have happened is the number has to be driven way down to be comparable to, or less than, the ones with human drivers*; it's not really the amount of autonomous crashes overall that is important.
Also makes me wonder whether any of the manual mode crashes were initiated in autonomous mode and the manual override driver just couldn't recover the situation.
*whether average human drivers or above-average human drivers or even below-average human drivers are the standard is up for debate.
Neither school buses nor soccer moms ever yield in traffic.
1st rule of defensive driving- never expect another driver to do anything
I won't yield into traffic or turn into a street if another driver will need to slow or brake not to hit me
Never sit in a median to turn with front or back of car sticking out
I actually speed up a bit before turning to maximize distance between myself and driver behind and turn shallow. This is a bit hard to explain but you angle into the turn and actually do most of your slowing when you are already in the turn
Many others but I probably don't even think about them.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Actually, the bus was on the left.
Could somebody please come up with a fitting car analogy?
love is just extroverted narcissism
Google is now saying they were following the "spirit of the road" when the crash happened and that they've reviewed the incident, as well as thousands of variations on it, in a driving simulator and made refinements to its AV software.
Except neither vehicle was making a lane change. It was a single lane with enough width (normally) to accommodate two vehicles for the purposes of facilitating right turns. In this case, the lane was unexpectedly narrowed by sand bags, so two vehicles attempted to share the lane briefly when there was insufficient space. Fault in these cases is difficult to determine. Technically, since it is still considered a single lane, the bus should not have the right of way. Although, it's likely that the bus driver could not see the obstruction in front of the google car and didn't expect it to move into his path.
There is, however, an argument that a good human driver would have recognized the difference in danger and avoided the incident by just driving over the sand bags. The google vehicle only knew that "something" was in the way and is likely programmed to avoid all round shaped ground obstacles just in case they are a small child or animal.
Knowledge Brings Fear
You would also think that a good human driver would have seen that car going 2 mph trying to avoid the sandbags and not continued on obliviously at 15 mph.
No jury would find against the human and in favor of the robot.
I would find against the human, if the evidence showed that the human were in fact at fault. I have enough faith in the rationality of my fellow man to predict that most jurors would do the same.
And with a self-driving car there will be no lack of evidence regarding exactly what happened, since it keeps a full audit trail of everything that occurred before and during the accident. (Compare with a typical accident involving human drivers, which often devolves into a he-said-vs-he-said situation, with both sides offering only a partial and subjective subset of the truth)
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
According to the report, they were side-by-side in the same, double-wide lane, hence the shared responsibility. Here's a Street View picture of the turn in question. Apparently, the sequence was:
1) Red light.
2) Google car signals for a right turn.
3) Google car gets into right side of the double-wide lane and passes cars that are stopped for the red light.
4) Google car has to stop because there are sandbags blocking the storm drain.
5) Light turns green, cars start moving.
6) Google car waits for cars to pass to create an opening, then slowly moves back towards the center of the lane.
7) Bus decides not to yield to the Google car that's ahead of it in the lane, trying to pass it anyway.
8) Bus gets its nose a bit ahead of the Google car.
9) Google car doesn't turn the wheel back in time and scrapes the side of the bus.
More or less, the Google car technically had the right of way, because it was in the same lane as the bus but ahead of it, but the bus had every reason to think the Google car, which was stopped, would cede the right of way to it just the same as it had to several other cars, and thus had clearly decided to pass the Google car. Which is to say, the bus created the situation that caused the impact when it failed to yield to a car that had the right of way, but that doesn't give the Google car a free pass to cause an accident with a vehicle that's already begun passing it. Both had every reason to believe the other would behave differently, yet an accident still occurred, so it's likely a case of shared responsibility.
Of course, most humans would have the common sense to avoid iffy maneuvers around a bus, and the bus driver may have been expecting that as well.
So based on numerous descriptions I have read, the Google car was in a very wide lane and moved to the right side of the lane to make a right turn. It saw some sandbags blocking the very right side of the lane, so it tried to move back to the middle of the lane. A bus, coming up from behind in the same lane, did not yield to to the Google car and there was contact.
I think it is important to note that all of this happened in the same "lane".
While the Google car could have possibly avoided the accident, I am not sure it is to blame. It seems to me that the bus was attempting to pass a car ahead of it in the same lane.
The blame seems about 80% on the city for not properly marking the lanes, about 15% on the bus for not yielding to a car ahead of it in its own lane, and about 5% on the Google car for not stopping for the bus who was trying to barge its way through.
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
The accident was because the car saw sandbags on the right and in an overabundance of caution decided to move a whole lane over, into a bus.
Well that's as good as many human drivers who I have seen swerve from the lane they are in at seemingly nothing without a glance, and absolutely why you do not linger in someones blind spot.
An open question though is how it saw sandbags and not a BUS...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Google said its car's safety driver thought the bus would yield.
BWAHAHAHAHA!!! Has this guy ever driven in SF before? A bus YIELDING to another car? In your dreams. I drove through SF for years, and buses didn't give a crap who was around them. When they pulled off to pick-up/drop-off passengers, they would intentionally park at an angle to keep the lane blocked so they could more easily start back into the lane. Even if they didn't block the lane, if they wanted to get moving in that lane, they just go. They know that they are bigger than the cars, so they know the car will slow down or move out of the way. If a lane became more narrow than they liked due to parked cars on the side of the road, they would just take up two lanes. If you are next to it in the lane that they now want to occupy? You better move the fuck over. They would run red lights at will. Watch out if you are trying to cross at an intersection with a traffic light and a bus is coming through. Without a doubt, bus drivers in SF were the worst.
The law says a right-hand turn shall be made as close as practicable to the right-hand curb or edge of the roadway. So Google's self-driving cars have been making their right turns illegally until just recently.
I expected better from Google.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Trucks do the same thing at times, assuming that the other vehicle will give way. If a truck wants to merge into your lane then common sense says to move regardless of who has the right to be there. So how do you teach that to an AI?
it was testing software that allowed it to make reasonable assumptions about other traffic as any sane driver would.
It is exactly this assumption of action on the part of other drivers that AV are supposed to remove from the excuses for accidents, not create more accidents because a computer can't guess what a human is going to do. You're saying that Google is actually making their AV more accident prone.
I can't see how any 'sane' AV would guess that a bus next to it is going to stop before it runs into the side of the bus. No sane human would make such an assumption about any vehicle, much less a bus that is already going by. And I don't think any sane human would guess that someone who had pulled into the right side of a double-wide lane (and was presumably signalling the right turn) would suddenly swerve left back into the main part of the lane. The reason the lane is so wide is to permit easier right turns without blocking straight through traffic -- to assume that everyone who is turning right is going to come back left removes the purpose for the lane in the first place.
A car changing lanes does not have right of way.
Had you read what I wrote, you'd have seen that there was no lane change, hence the weird situation. I'm not attempting to defend anyone, just explain based on my reading.
Unless you intentionally jump in front of someone and then slam on the brakes, how could it ever be your fault if you're rear ended?
(1) Failure to maintain brake lights. If your brake lights don't go on, then you are not obviously stopping, and therefore you can easily cause an accident.
(2) When antilock braking systems were first introduced, the stopping distance for cars with them got drastically shorter, while the cars not equipped with them kept the old stopping distance. What was previously legally defined as a safe stopping distance was no longer a safe stopping distance for unequipped cars. It's beholden on the person with the shorter stopping distance to take into account the stopping distance of the following vehicle. So lane changing in front of a semi on the freeway and then slamming on your brakes: still not a good idea.
(3) Slow vehicle merges into fast moving traffic. This is a problem, both in terms of lane change merges left (yes, I know: most California drivers are woefully ignorant of traffic laws, because license requirements are so lax compared to other states), but, even more to the point, correct use of acceleration lanes and onramps to get to freeway speeds, rather than getting to freeway speeds only once you are on the freeway.
So: lots of ways to be the guilty party, even if you're the one getting rear ended because you were a dick.
Your description seems to inject blame, particularly with the bus. Maybe a better description would be
1) Red light.
2) Google car signals for a right turn.
3) Google car gets into right side of the double-wide lane and passes cars that are stopped for the red light.
4) Google car has to stop because there are sandbags blocking the storm drain.
5) Light turns green, cars start moving.
6) Google car attempts to slowly moves back towards the center of the lane.
7) Google car scrapes bus that is in center lane.
That is an objective description. It will be up to the authorities to determine who, if anybody was at fault. As for those who are positing that the bus should have stopped. According to the facts it was going 15mph, which means the unrestrained passengers were also traveling 15mph. An emergency stop or swerve would have surely done more harm to them than the sideswipe did, at least using basic physics would indicate it would.
You would also think that a good human driver would have seen that car going 2 mph trying to avoid the sandbags and not continued on obliviously at 15 mph.
You have obviously never met or interacted with a Bay Area Muni driver. If the driver were not stoned or drunk, they would likely have been *aiming* for the car.
Trucks do the same thing at times, assuming that the other vehicle will give way. If a truck wants to merge into your lane then common sense says to move regardless of who has the right to be there. So how do you teach that to an AI?
You think this is the first case where Google had to adjust the programming to cope with how people actually drive? Reality is that there's a ton of unwritten rules that don't formally violate any law or regulation but is all about managing expectations, like how we resolve yield deadlocks, lane changing/merging and positioning, passing various obstacles and so on. And yes, large vehicles like buses and trucks seem to follow their own rules sometimes, but Google's car doesn't care what's right or if it got snubbed somehow. If practice suggests it has to yield to the bus, it'll just do that no matter if there's any formal rule that says it should. In fact, didn't they among other things teach the car to break the speed limit by up to 10% to stay with the flow of traffic? I'd love to know what their legal department felt about that, even though it's undoubtedly the right thing to do.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Where do you draw the line?
Typically, it is drawn between the lanes...
That "objective description" omits a key detail: that the bus was behind the Google car at the time that the Google car began its maneuver. Given that rights of way are determined by facts such as which car was in front at which time, your omission would implicitly place the blame solely on the Google car, when, in fact, the actual facts suggest that the case is more nuanced.
Which isn't to say that my description is objective either, to be clear, nor am I suggesting that the bus should have stopped. I'm merely pointing out that your description has flaws as well.
I bet that's what settles it right there. Although it's courteous to do so, with very wide lanes "we assume are wider so we can use them as a storage lane for turning". That doesn't necessarily make it legal to do so. The google car could get ticketed for passing on the right. It could also get ticketed for improper use of parking lane.
Case in point. I was almost in a collision when I came to a stop at a red light at a 4 lane undevided. I had my right turn signal on and was going to turn right, but had to wait for the light to go green because I had one car in front of me. The light turned green, and we all pulled ahead, and I started to execute my right turn, but had to veer left out of my turn and stop suddenly becaue I saw movement in my passenger side mirror.
I narrowly avoided getting T-boned by a car that had come from several positions behind me, driving in the generously wide lane/shoulder, to make a right turn. He didn't see my signal and was assuming we were all going straight, and had reached my bind spot at just the moment I was starting my turn. It's a miracle he didn't hit me and managed to just squeak around me (at a fair speed) to make his right turn. He probably missed my signal because his attention was on the light having just turned green, negating his need to stop before turning, so he was accelerating to the intersection to turn, right as I turned in front of him.
I would expect him to receive a citation for either "passing on the right" or "improper use of shoulder" had we collided. Clearly this wasn't my fault. This isn't far from what happened with the Google car. Had it simply snugged up to the shoulder to turn, and the bus pulled up to his left then, it would be called "passing at an intersection" and the bus would receive the ticket. But in this case, the Google car was driving in a lane that didn't exist, or "passing on the right", and one way or another is probably going to be judged at-fault. This will naturally lead to Google making a change to their driving code to adjust for this possibility.
This raises an interesting question though - if we assume the car believed this was actually a three lane road at the intersection, with the "rightmost lane" being a turn-only lane, then it veering (however slowly) out of its lane and into the other lane where th bus was should be a violation for improper lane change, failure to maintain control, etc. It shoud also have its code tweaked to understand that this was NOT a 3rd lane to be driven in. If it did NOT believe there was an actual 3rd lane, it should not have been trying to drive in it, it's for parking, pulling over, etc, it's a shoulder, not a lane, and driving there without an emergency (or at least with your 4-ways on) is also a voilation.
What should it have done? I don't think it shoud have been trying to go around cars in the shoulder. That would be the first thing I'd fix in the car's coding. Second... how would it have been different if the car HAD snugged up to the right to make its turn, and the bus had then pulled along side to the left. Then we have a problem of the bus technically "passing" the google car, near an intersection, technically a violation unless the bus believed the googe car was exiting traffic and parking. (and most likely, the traffic following the bus doing the same) In that event, the car should stop and wait for all the people to finish their moving violations before it proceeds. It could just consider itself parked and wait to re-enter traffic, which would have the same effect.
It's an interesting situation though - but we all run into a handful of these every year we drive. It's difficult to code for such a wide variety of unlikely scenarios.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
In this case; having read the article (I know, I know...) it seems that the car programming is overly optimistic about predicting the behaviour of vehicles overtaking it. It seems possible that the programming includes implicit assumptions of the likely stopping distance and reaction times it should expect from other vehicles as well. In other words; it "thought" it had sufficient space and time to perform the manoeuvre because it "assumed" a bus would behave and react the way a car might.
I have two thoughts, each in defence of one of the vehicles in this collision:
1) Even the safety driver expected the bus to yield and from I can glean from the article, legally the bus should have yielded. So this was a mistake that even the majority of human drivers might have made in the same situation.
2) Others in this thread have posted criticisms of bus drivers in their city or in general. Much of the annoying behaviours they mention though are pretty understandable from the bus drivers POV. You can't just suddenly hit the brakes if a smaller vehicle or pedestrian darts in front of you. Not only do you have a hell of a lot of momentum (highly variable, depending on passenger load) you also have to make as gradual velocity changes as you can. Your passengers aren't buckled up, you might have a fair number of them standing, with any number of knapsacks, briefcases, skateboards etc etc that become flying hazards when you come stop too suddenly. You have to ease to the left a fair bit when making a right turn because you have a much larger turning radius than most other vehicles. You have to drive straddling lines sometimes because if you stayed tight to the right, you are going to crunch someone, hop the curb or both. On the other hand, if you do stick to the left as much as you can, lots of people are going to pull what Torontonians call a "cabby pass" where the cab illegally passes a bus or streetcar on the right so as to get out from behind it. If they don't use their rear end to block the traffic lane, quite often they'll never get back out because no one wants to stop at the buses back corner and let the bus back in. (I have a relative who is a TTC bus driver and he has passed along some training and daily work anecdotes)
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A car changing lanes does not have right of way.
Had you read what I wrote, you'd have seen that there was no lane change, hence the weird situation. I'm not attempting to defend anyone, just explain based on my reading.
If there is a "double wide lane" to accommodate right turns then there is essentially an implicit right turn lane despite the lack of paint on the road. The google car was attempting to maneuver around an obstacle by moving from the implicit right turn lane to the implicit traffic lane.
I've studied the CA DMV handbook a few times over the decades and I don't recall any such thing as a "double wide lane". However I do recall something about space reserved for parkings spots and bicycle lanes can turn into right turn lanes at corners.
It was a single lane with enough width (normally) to accommodate two vehicles for the purposes of facilitating right turns. In this case, the lane was unexpectedly narrowed by sand bags, so two vehicles attempted to share the lane briefly when there was insufficient space. Fault in these cases is difficult to determine. Technically, since it is still considered a single lane, the bus should not have the right of way.
Based on the street view it looks like it's primarily that wide to facilitate the ability to park, and drive, in the same lane. By the same note if a parked car pulls out in front of a bus is it still the bus's fault? The report mentions it is an articulated bus. That means it's even heavier and less maneuverable than a normal bus.
The article mentioned the car signaled the intention to turn right, however there was no mention whether it canceled the signal, or signaled left to indicate the desire to move into the center portion of the lane. This could be confusing / conflicting information for the bus driver. A stopped (or virtually stopped) car in the right side of the lane, near an intersection, with a right turn signal, is not expected to move left.
That means either the other car drove off the road, or you weren't far enough to the right. In California, what you did would be a violation of CVC 22100(a):
Also in Arizona:
The two are almost word for word identical. Your state probably has the same law. If I were the judge, you would both be charged, you for violating the above law, and the other driver for reckless driving or unsafe pass.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
That's pretty screwed up. In the U.S., she might get a ticket, but the cyclist would be found to be 100% at fault for the wreck. Speed limit on the roads in the U.S. are, by law, required to be set such that a vehicle moving at the limit would have adequate time to stop even if there's a vehicle stopped or other obstruction on the road, and that's probably true in Canada as well. If a vehicle approaching from behind fails to stop, regardless of the reason why the vehicle fails to stop, that vehicle should always be at fault unless the front vehicle shifted into the lane in front of another car and then immediately slammed on the brakes.
I find it particularly mind-boggling that the judge found that the motorcyclist's grossly excessive speed was not a significant factor. The motorcyclist was going 80 in a 55 zone. That's 145% of the posted speed limit. The motorcyclist would have gotten automatic jail time for that sort of gross recklessness in most of the U.S., had he survived. More to the point, had he been traveling the speed limit, he would have had almost twice as long to slow down, and likely would have been able to dodge the car entirely.
As for the Google situation, legally, it likely depends on how far back the bus driver was when the Google car started around. With that said, San Francisco bus drivers are (or so I'm told by friends who are crazy enough to actually drive there) notorious for not stopping for cars stopped in bus lanes. Google's car needs to make the assumption that Muni buses never yield the right of way even if they legally should. Anything less is just inviting an accident. :-)
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I think a 98% reduction in accident rates is pretty easily doable by first-generation autonomous cars. But you know there are some people who don't think in those terms. "Look," they'll say, "here's one that drove into a bus; we mustn't let these things on the road!"
So what is needed to keep this lifesaving technology from being derailed is a concerted effort to educate people that the perfect must not become the enemy of the extraordinarily good.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Thanks for the street view and concise list! But that double-wide does not look like two lanes, it is a lane and a shoulder for parking. Our city does this too, and people do use it like the Google car intended to but it is not marked for turning. Practically speaking you have to consider the shoulder area near the intersection as a no-mans-land.
According to the report, they were side-by-side in the same, double-wide lane, hence the shared responsibility. Here's a Street View picture of the turn in question [google.com]. Apparently, the sequence was:
1) Red light.
2) Google car signals for a right turn.
3) Google car gets into right side of the double-wide lane and passes cars that are stopped for the red light.
My take is, even though it intended to turn right, the Google car was in the wrong to drift to the right away from the dashed white line it was obviously following on its left side. It was interpreting the space to the right as driveable. For it to be a driveable lane there would have to be either a dashed line to the right that Google car would cross over, OR a right arrow painted on the road ahead indicating it was indeed a lane dedicated to right turns. These things were not there. Google should have stayed in the lane, not have interpreted the right side as a valid to drive at all --- unless it was pulling over to stop or parking. Google car was in the wrong for passing cars to the left of it. It was driving on the 'shoulder', not within its own white-marked lane or designated right turn lane.
4) Google car has to stop because there are sandbags blocking the storm drain.
5) Light turns green, cars start moving.
6) Google car waits for cars to pass to create an opening, then slowly moves back towards the center of the lane.
Google car is in the wrong again because it was stopped and is now moving slowly on the 'shoulder' and is NOT signalling left to indicate it wishes to re-enter the lane.
7) Bus decides not to yield to the Google car that's ahead of it in the lane, trying to pass it anyway.
Google car was probably in 2mph 'crawl mode' which is not human to do at all. Humans either wait or gas 'n go. From the bus driver's relative speed the Google car probably looked like it was stopped. The Google car may even still be signalling right at this point. The bus does not see the sandbags, all it sees is a car on the shoulder.
8) Bus gets its nose a bit ahead of the Google car.
9) Google car doesn't turn the wheel back in time and scrapes the side of the bus.
Google car completely at fault. It was on the 'shoulder' not in the lane. Vehicles ahead of you lose their right of way when they leave the lane. Google car (likely) NOT signaling left to indicate re-entering the lane (because it thought was in a separate and valid lane: wrong). But even if you are signaling left to indicate you wish to enter a lane, you do not gain right of way.
So unless it was exceeding the speed limit the bus is in the right, There is the other thing, that contact was made after the front of the bus passed, which alleviates any suspicion that the bus hit something directly in its path. Google in the wrong, and they need to review the criteria for drivable lanes. If the road has clearly visible lines to your left and there are none to your right, that's NOT a drivable lane over there. Stay in your lane-position, don't pass anyone and (of course) watch your right-rear for dipshits driving on the shoulder.
Something like this happened to me. I'm centered in a marked right turn lane at a solid-circular red light. Cars on the opposite side of the intersection had all turned left and passed in front of me and now no one is coming. It is now clear for me to ta
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
What you missed is that some roads -- typically Interstates -- require vehicles to maintain a certain speed (hence the "no farm vehicles" signs). I would say that 0 mph was an insufficient speed.
I come here for the love
It never had to take a driving test like you did.
It will come defended by one of he largest companies the world has ever seen.
It will put thousands of people out of a job.
It's not likely to see a woman in woman in a black fur coat.
I can't decide whether a child or an adult dies.
It can't see at 400hz like your eyes can.
[Yes, we have persistence of about 16-24 hz, like you though you did, but we can see a new object enter the scene at about 400hz. Try it with an Aduino if you don't believe me. You can plainly see the difference between 60-120hz in monitors.]
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
So... just plow into the stopped vehicles in front of you? In order to maintain speed?
Obviously you've never been in stop and go traffic on an interstate.
I obviously don't live in the same part of the world as you.
1) Although I agree it's the responsibility of the driver to make sure his brake lights work properly, you should never rely on brake lights of others to determine if someone is braking or not.
2) It's not the responsibility of the driver in front of you to brake slowly because your car sucks. It's you who have the responsibility to keep a safe distance considering your car.
3) Even if the car merging come to a dead stop in front of you (it frequently happens where I live because of sudden traffic jams), it's your responsibility to be in control of your car. If you rear end him, then chances are you were not.
Basically, where I live we think the driver is responsible for his car. I know, we're weird.
Although that is true, that offense is typically an infraction (at least in the U.S.). By contrast, exceeding the speed limit by 25 MPH (80 in a 55 zone) would normally be a misdemeanor. If both parties committed some sort of traffic violation leading to a wreck, you'd expect blame to fall upon the driver whose violation was more serious.
To add further justification for that opinion, in this case, there's no practical difference between stopping to help ducklings and stopping because of a sudden traffic backup, an animal in the road, or a wreck. If traffic been stopped for any of those reasons, the motorcyclist would still have died because his grossly excessive speed did not leave him adequate time to stop when he found traffic suddenly stopped around the corner. So IMO, the car driver should have been issued a citation for an infraction for illegally obstructing the highway, but she should not have had any culpability in the death of the motorcyclists. That culpability should fall squarely on either the motorcycle driver (if the road's speed limit was reasonable) or the government (if a review found it to be too fast based on the limited visibility around that corner).
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There is, however, an argument that a good human driver would have recognized the difference in danger and avoided the incident by just driving over the sand bags.
The safety driver thought the bus would yield. That suggests they wouldn't, and that the safety driver would have had the same crash if they had been driving. Unless they were being complacent and trusted the car knew what it was doing.
Google guy obviously hasn't been driving long if he thinks a bus is going to give way, ever.
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Responding as a Georgia Driver very well versed in Georgia Driving laws and have successfully self represented in court on several occasions. Thus, IANAL... but I don't need one on this.
First, a link to someone who is a Lawyer that represents in Georgia, USA
Point 1. The Driver of Car A (the lead car) involved in a rear-end collision will receive a Citation for faulty equippment, however will not be cited at fault for the accident. That will fall on the driver of Car B (the trailing vehicle).
Point 2. The case law is clear on this one. You must be able to perform an emergency stop and not collide with the vehicle in front in the event the vehicle in front of you performs an emergency stop of his own for ANY given reason. Whether this be he's avoiding an emergency stop in front of him, or avoiding a collision with a creature, it doesn't matter. It is the trailing driver's responsibility to maintain a safe buffer, whatever is safe for the conditions at the time, no ifs ands or buts.
Point 3. This is the only point your parent is wrong about. A driver that changes lanes and suddenly decelerates, thus creating an unsafe condition in which a collision occurs and he is rear-ended, that driver will be considered at fault for the accident and receive a citation on scene for "Improper Lane Change".
Again, I am not a lawyer, but I will play one legally and successfully in traffic court more often than not. My only argument with you is that I took exception to your blanket statement of "ALL jurisdictions" and gave you one concrete example of the exception that makes your statement patently false.
That negligence was factored into the law when they decided to make blocking traffic an infraction, not an offense that can result in jail time. If you want to treat the negligence as somehow more important than that, then you would have to make a claim that a reasonable person would expect blocking traffic to have that sort of outcome in this particular circumstance.
Vehicular manslaughter generally requires recklessness, which usually requires that the person be aware of the likelihood of stopping causing a fatal collision and exhibiting gross disregard for that risk. At least in my mind, no reasonable person would expect that stopping a car on a highway would cause a motorcyclist to hit the back of his or her car at 70 MPH, particularly if there's a second driving lane. Most people are aware of their surroundings, and travel at a speed that isn't grossly above the speed limit, and as such, most people assume that other drivers will do the same. A driver has to make not one, but several serious errors to end up in a 70 MPH fatal collision with a stopped vehicle.
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