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Fully Driverless Waymo Taxis Are Due Out This Year, Alarming Critics (arstechnica.com)
Alphabet's Waymo is launching a driverless taxi service in Phoenix in the next three months -- and it's open to the public. But due to the limited regulations surrounding self-driving cars, many critics argue that more regulations are needed to ensure the safety of these vehicles before they roll out for public and commercial use. Ars Technica reports: If a company wants to sell a new airplane or medical device, it must undergo an extensive process to prove to federal regulators that it's safe. Currently, there's no comparable requirement for self-driving cars. Federal and state laws allow Waymo to introduce fully self-driving cars onto public streets in Arizona without any formal approval process. That's not an oversight. It represents a bipartisan consensus in Washington that strict regulation of self-driving cars would do more harm than good.
Mary "Missy" Cummings, an engineering professor at Duke, agrees. "I don't think there should be any driverless cars on the road," she tells Ars. "I think it's unconscionable that no one is stipulating that testing needs to be done before they're put on the road." But so far these advocates' demands have fallen on deaf ears. Partly that's because federal regulators don't want to slow the introduction of a technology that could save a lot of lives in the long run. Partly it's because they believe that liability concerns give companies a strong enough incentive to behave responsibly. And partly it's because no one is sure how to regulate self-driving cars effectively. When it comes to driverless cars, "there's no consensus on what it means to be safe or how we go about proving that," says Bryant Walker Smith, a legal scholar at the University of South Carolina.
Mary "Missy" Cummings, an engineering professor at Duke, agrees. "I don't think there should be any driverless cars on the road," she tells Ars. "I think it's unconscionable that no one is stipulating that testing needs to be done before they're put on the road." But so far these advocates' demands have fallen on deaf ears. Partly that's because federal regulators don't want to slow the introduction of a technology that could save a lot of lives in the long run. Partly it's because they believe that liability concerns give companies a strong enough incentive to behave responsibly. And partly it's because no one is sure how to regulate self-driving cars effectively. When it comes to driverless cars, "there's no consensus on what it means to be safe or how we go about proving that," says Bryant Walker Smith, a legal scholar at the University of South Carolina.
"Currently, there's no comparable requirement for self-driving cars."
Human drivers cause 6,5 million accidents per year, killing tens of thousands of people and injuring several millions.
This can only be better.
Fine for a family car with self-drive (or even Tesla's driver assistance) functionality, but we're specifically talking about self-driving taxis here. What is the humans in the taxi are using it because they are not able (legally and/or physically) to drive, and that's why they are taking the taxi in the first place? It's going to be kind of limiting for a taxi if it can only accept passengers that are able to drive it as well, especially on a Friday or Saturday night, are they also going to have to require the designated driver to scan their driver's license and to breathe into a breathalyzer before setting off?
I guess there would be slightly less chance of the floor getting covered in vomit though, so there is that.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
I used to work for a medical device manufacturer. While having to deal with a lot of regulations was certainly annoying (mostly because they are written by lawyers and you need to be a lawyer to really understand them), the great thing about them was that once you complied, you didn't have to worry nearly as much about liability. If there were no regulations (basically a form of self-regulation), then how exactly do you prove that you were not negligent? Maybe you think all the tests you did were enough. Maybe the lawyers you hired for advice thought so too. But you'll never know until it is tested in court. With regulations it is more-or-less black and white as to whether you have done enough to absolve yourself of responsibility for unforeseen events.
Another important point is that regulation creates a powerful barrier to entry in a market. The infrastructure required (in terms of processes and procedures) is immense, and large companies can gain economies of scale for these work. While the tech is enough of a barrier to entry right now, as time goes on this will change for driverless vehicles as well.
How much adversarial attacks have those cars been exposed to? Just because a car can safely drive down a standard road while supervised, doesn't mean it can't fail in catastrophic ways when exposed to non-standard situations. You don't want to have some jocksters paint stripes down a cliff and the cars blindly driving to their doom Wile E. Coyote style.
I wouldn't trust those cars one bit until they have been shown to be able to handle freak situations in a reasonable way.
It's easy to log millions of miles of road when you are the one choosing which roads to drive and when to drive.
Proper independent testing needs to test out when those cars will fail, not just that they will work well under expected conditions.
I wouldn't trust those cars one bit until they have been shown to be able to handle freak situations in a reasonable way.
That statement should apply to both self-driving and human cars: No human-driven cars should be allowed on the road until humans have been shown to handle freak situations in a reasonable way. Sadly, this is provably not the case.
They have, the difference is these won't have a backup driver to take over.
It seems to me, that Waymo have the best tech and take the safety aspect very seriously, so I don't see any cause for alarm myself.
If Uber were doing this, then there would be cause for alarm. Regulation is needed, as although Waymo take safety seriously, some of there competitors may not.
I agree completely. As over-the-top safety conscious as Waymo has been taking baby steps all the way to release- if Waymo think they're ready I'm inclined to believe them... but like you, I wouldn't believe some of their competitors.
If Waymo are being premature with this and any harm comes to anyone; you can bet they will get their socks sued off them.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
It is inevitable that they pass laws allowing machines to kill x number of people. It can be no other way. And that will be a major devaluing of human life.
The question is, will it be more or less devaluing than the currently allowed rate of 40K+ people a year killed by human-driven cars in the US?
Well, Waymo certainly has the best PR.
They also only have 9 million miles on the road, most of that effectively in a "sandbox". In the US, there's one fatality every 86 million miles. So the fact that Waymo hasn't killed anyone yet is hardly indicative of anything.
Leaving it to corporations to regulate themselves due to fears of liability has created one disaster after the next. And come on, let's not act like we can't all figure out how autonomous vehicles could be tested. Give a small fleet of them to the NHTSA and have the NHTSA spend a few weeks subjecting them to one unanticipated event after the next in an (easily reconfigurable) mock town, without a given "script" that the manufacturer could use as a cheat sheet.
Too onerous of a testing cost? At least give them a one day serial battery of scenario tests. I mean, come on. We're talking about peoples' lives here. It's bad enough that Level 2 systems don't have to do this. But Level 5? Ugh.
"Close the door! What, were you born in a barn?" -- Police chief, "Jesus Christ Supercop"
Sure, the FATALITY rate is roughly 1.25 per 100,000,000 miles in the US, but the ACCIDENT rate is around 600 per 100,000,000 miles.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
That's bull, because if a human driver kills a human, then that human has made a mistake. If an automated car kills a human, THEY ALL make the mistake.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
And then THEY ALL can be fixed, probably with an over-the-air update. No drunk driving PR campaign, no driver outreach or training, no expensive modification of signage or intersections, etc. This is an advantage. Only a hardware limitation would be similar to the current paradigm, and even then it would be no worse.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
... Their idea: "Just ride bikes. If you live too far out, move in closer." ...The snotty, "just ride bikes" suggestion sounds great, but in reality, it is pompous. There are many elderly people or people in wheelchairs that can't go and buy an Orbea Orca and magically be on their way.
In reality, I could ride my bike to the grocery store if just picking up a few items. I can't ride my bike to work, it would take too long (and I can't afford to move closer to work)... but there are a few other locations within a few dozen miles that I could probably use my bike for... but I won't.
Two reasons:
1) It's friggin' hot in the South 6 months out of the year... I'd arrive everywhere stinking awful. Not to mention, can you imagine all the dehydration deaths if many people did this?
2) It's not safe. I see more "white bicycle memorials" marking where cyclists are killed than I see actual bicycles on the road around here. People don't drive safely around cyclists here and there are no bike lanes. I know this would change as people got more experience around cyclists and such... but I wouldn't want to be cycling until it is the norm.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
No, this is not accurate.
The Waymo vehicles have been driving around Phoenix, without a driver, for most of this year. The vehicles have been limited to 'beta testers' who could hail a ride. This announcement is really just about the commercial launch of the service. At that point everyone will be able to hail one.
Also the notion that there is no 'backup driver' is false. The driver is just not in the car. If the car gets stuck it will simply stop, turn on the hazard lights, and wait for a remote operator to do something to help.