Slashdot Mirror
Florida Senator: No Permit Needed For Driverless Cars In Florida (politifact.com)
In response to the California Department of Motor Vehicles ordering Uber's autonomous vehicles off the roads in San Francisco due to a lack of a permit, Florida state Sen. Jeff Brandes said he welcomes the company with open arms. Brandes tweeted: "Hey @Uber, unlike California we in Florida welcome driverless cars -- no permit required. #OpenForBusiness #FlaPol." PolitiFact reports: Several car companies are developing fully autonomous or self-driving cars operated by computers and testing them in some states. But it could be several years before they are broadly publicly available due to the cost, questions about liability and the technology and as state government officials grapple with oversight. While California's law requires a permit, that's not the case in Florida. "Florida has the least restrictive active state laws for the operation of autonomous vehicles," said John Terwilleger, an attorney at Gunster, Yoakley -- Stewart in West Palm Beach. Terwilleger represents a company that is involved in developing and using autonomous vehicles in Florida. In 2012, the Florida Legislature passed a law co-sponsored by Brandes that allowed a person with a valid driver's license to operate an autonomous vehicle. Before companies could test autonomous cars, they had to submit proof that they had $5 million in insurance. But in 2016, the Florida Legislature passed new rules that eliminated some of the previous requirements, including the $5 million in insurance. The new law also got rid of the requirement that a human operator be present in the vehicle, as long as an operator can be alerted in case of technology failure and stop the vehicle. Since there is no permit for autonomous vehicles, the state has no information regarding how many Floridians own one, said Beth Frady, spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles. Florida law treats an autonomous vehicle in the same manner as any other motor vehicle operating on our roads, said Chris Spencer, a spokesman for Brandes. "There are no requirements for additional permitting, licensing, or approval from any state or local government body to operate an autonomous vehicle on our roads," he said. That's still the case, even though Florida was the location of the first fatality involving a self-driving car. In May, Joshua Brown, was killed when his Tesla while on autopilot crashed into a tractor-trailer in Williston.
At first I was shaking my head at how reckless the idea of allowing completely uncertified automation systems on a 3-ton slab of metal hurtling down the road at highway speeds was. Then I remembered this is Florida we're talking about—it certainly can't be any worse than things already are...
If you've ever driven in or around Miami, you'd be aware that having a human in the driver's seat is not necessarily saying the same thing as having a driver in the driver's seat. A computer-driven car just formalizes what is already a common state of affairs.
The way people drive down there I'm not convinced permits / licenses are required for human drivers, either.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
... will Trump drop Florida into the Gulf for allowing Big Business to run roughshod over the population,... ?
By ignoring Climate Change Trump and his moronions will only need to let nature take its course – the Gulf will swallow Florida all by itself.
Uber could easily buy $5 million in insurance, of course, but there's little reason to do. If you destroy your house, you need insurance because you can't afford to replace the house amd everything in it out of your own pocket. If Uber causes a crash, they just pay the damages directly - no point in putting an insurance company in the middle.*
Generally, you should insure for costs you can't readily pay directly. For something you can afford, paying the insurance company's overhead and profit is stupid.** Uber has a billion dollars in their "shit happens" fund, so they can easily pay for any crash they cause. $5 million in insurance wouldn't change that at all.
Further, to save even more money, when you're unsure whether to buy insurance on something, such as a mobile phone, here's what you can do instead. Suppose the insurance costs $10. Put the $10 in an envelope marked "small insurance" or "shit happens". Do that every time you think about buying a protection plan - for tickets that offer cancellation insurance, whatever. After two years you might have $200 in your "small insurance" envelope. Right about then maybe your phone breaks. So you go get the money out of your envelope. You've bought insurance from yourself, and you don't pay the insurance company's profit (or the retailer's 50% commission on protection plans). Over time, your "shit happens" fund will grow and you'll find you no longer need to buy insurance on a $1,000 purchase, and aren't completely screwed when you're car breaks down.
* Which is what frustrates me about Obamacare. I can easily afford a $10 flu shot; I don't need insurance company overhead making it cost $25. I can pay $45 for a checkup, but insurance company paperwork makes it cost $65. I preferred ten years ago, when I could insure against major illness and injury for 75% less than I pay now.
** Even though Uber can easily self-insure for car accidents, an insurance company *might* provide some value by providing an objective, independent view of their safety protocols. The insurance company might say "to get insurance from us, you must make it safer by _______".
Finally someone who understands why ObamaCare fucked the US.
When I came to the US, I had the best health care and insurance options, better than Europe's which I was forced to pay into and cheaper too. There are obviously retards that spent their money on drugs and alcohol over insurance but even at minimum wage you were always able to afford insurance if you *chose* to do so. Sure you would have to not spend money on frivolities or perhaps you'd even have to *gasp* cancel your cable bill. And yes, there are always people that fall through the cracks, happened in Europe too.
Now my insurance premiums and copays have risen 3-fold in the last 4 years to the point even with a decent income I can no longer comfortably afford going to the doctor if I'm not sick because I have to absorb the $10k out of pocket costs for the rest of my family. All ObamaCare has done is make the numbers look good. 2M people (10% of the population) now have insurance... except they still can't afford to go to a doctor and at this point there are many in 2017 that will rather pay the fine than the new premiums.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
In Florida over half the drivers are senior citizens and their motto is "drive slow, sit low". The state flag of Florida should be a steering wheel with a hat and two sets of knuckles on it.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Because capitalism tends not to look at the long term.
... will Trump drop Florida into the Gulf for allowing Big Business to run roughshod over the population,... ?
By ignoring Climate Change Trump and his moronions will only need to let nature take its course – the Gulf will swallow Florida all by itself.
People who live in the economic engines, Tampa, Orlando, South Florida, Naples, Jacksonville, those whose livelihood, property and trade will get affected by rising tides, we all get a big collective fuck you from our remote state capitol. Local governments in South Florida are all over the issue working right now on countermeasures, beach preservation barriers, pumps, etc. All by themselves, pretty much we are all by ourselves because the fuckers in Tallahassee are pretty much non-existent. They exist there just to appease rural Florida and snow birds (most of them away from the coasts.)
I've always been skeptical of South Florida politics, having a unique streak of banana republic corruption here and there. But on the other hand, I've been quite impressed by how city mayors have mobilized.
Because we don't give a shit what Rick Scott and his circle up in Tallahassee or the far fringe right morons think, we see the effects of climate change. We see this shit is real, the rising tides, ocean water creeping through our walkways and sewers, etc.
This is the type of thing for which state and federal governments ought to exist, to assist local governments in tackling these kind of things. But shit, no, that's not how we roll.
Whether we can deal with it by technical means, it remains to be seen. But no one can say we did not try. And none of these Repuke motherfuckers in Tallahassee have a fucking right to claim participation if we do get to deal with sea level rise successfully. Because unless they sent the invisible man to help us, our governor is with his bald head shoved right up his ass on his state capital, denying a reality we see down here every damned day.
> whatever shell company will officially "own" the cars might not have 50 bucks. Putting legal distance between you and possible liabilities is the first rule of business
If a shell company didn't have reasonably sufficient capital, that would actually do the opposite - it *exposes* the executives to *personal* liability. To shield the executives (and major investors), you separate different lines of business different companies, each with appropriate funding for their operations, including potential liabilities.
I didn't learn this from a book. Well I did, but right now the government is giving me a painful reminder. They are making every effort to find an excuse to come after me personally for the liabilities of a company I used to work for. I did things correctly, more or less, with no shenanigans involving shell companies, so I don't think they'll win. They'll get the business assets and I'll have to personally pay off the original amount due, but I won't have to pay the late fees, interest, etc. Had I messed around with an underfunded shell company, that would give the government the excuse they want to hold me personally liable for the late fees and interest as well.
Really upsets me when people put politics and ideology over lives. Here are the really simple facts about self driving cars. 1. It's an amazing technology that could change the world and save a lot of lives. 2. That technology is not yet ready for release. It can't deal safely (yet) with a lot of common situations. 3. Until we get those problems fixed, anyone who puts a self driving car on the road without a human ready to intervene at a moment's notice is putting lives at risk.
None of those should be controversial. They're all simple facts. But hey, let's score some political points! Regulation bad! Having to register your car is evil! We're not like those stupid Californians!
And people are likely to die because of this. Because some politicians decided playing politics was more important than lives.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."