That's the regional guy, not the CEO who quit. Who had an engineering background.
The guy in your link is "CEO" of a subsidiary. He is one of the few people who can be believed when he says he didn't learn about it until the WVU study was published, because a regional subsidiary isn't involved in creating the vehicles. I'd expect him to know about North American advertising campaigns, tax avoidance schemes, and the regional supply chain. I would not expect him to have any access at all to the engineering side.
You don't read and can't recommend a book to balance out your statements of hatred towards successful authors. That is pretty pathetic. I didn't say you "answer to me," I said your opinion about books you haven't read has no value.
I predict this schmuck will be the first scapegoat. Not the first that VW points at, but the first guy that Congress can charge with perjury so they look like they're Doing Something.
I think I'm going to need the see the fine print on that promise... the words "$corporation will accept liability" are rarely written without conditions a truck could drive itself through.
My advice is to not waste time on that. You'd be better served researching your State's liability insurance requirements. You might discover that if it meets the requirements of insurance, they have to pay and the Court doesn't care about their excuse. That's what liability insurance is; you screwed up, hurt or killed the other person, and now your insurance pays them. Saying it was really your fault because of fine print, that isn't a scenario that gets them off the hook.
OTOH if it doesn't meet the requirements of liability insurance, then you still don't need to care and can just learn about your insurance, because then it would be something that your insurance company would take up with Volvo after paying your claim, and you'd never even learn the result or be impacted by it.
So you're saying that new car makers won't be able to start up, and your argument is that Tesla drivers can't afford to buy their own insurance? Or that companies like Tesla, which exists only because a rich guy dropped a giant wad of billion dollar bills on it, won't be able to exist because you'll need billions to start a car company? What the hell, man, I know Thursday is the new Friday but you posted at 10:18am and it is way too early to be that drunk.
That is pretty easy. You don't "go" anywhere, you make sure your arms and face are in a position to minimize injury when the airbag deploys, if the semi in fact doesn't stop in time. Duh.
And as a moral thought exercise, you don't address the issues raised in the train situation. That exercise is based on the fact that you can't stop the train; there is no neutral course of action. In your situation, you do have a neutral course of action that doesn't involve killing anybody, and so there is no actual moral exercise. It will never be morally acceptable to risk killing somebody in order to reduce a risk to yourself that is uncertain and outside your control. There is no way that you have time in that scenario to weigh the risks, so you can't reach the position of claiming that a balance of risk favors an action. Therefore, you can't justify actively harming any of these people; even if you are OK with harming an innocent party to reduce your own risk when the risk to you is greater than to them. So the only moral choice you have is the same as what the DMV says you're legally required to do; stay in your lane, and remain stopped until the danger has passed.
Like all the other situations people propose where one of the considered actions is to leave your lane and intentionally crash into something; the answer is "don't." A self-driving car is going to get this right 100% of the time. If you absolutely are going to be in an accident, and there is no way to avoid it; continue following the traffic rules. They were designed by traffic engineers with this in mind. Stay in your lane, and stop. Easy.
The part you're getting wrong is that it is never appropriate to swerve. If you had time to check that it is safe to do so, you'd have time to stop. If somebody steps into the crosswalk when you don't have time to stop, your duty is to brake as quickly as possible to reduce the speed before impact. DO NOT SWERVE. The self-driving car is going to get this right 100% of the time; it won't be programmed to panic and create a new accident because of a rash action. Those milliseconds will directly translate into quicker stopping time, or at least reduced impact speed.
Because of the way insurance works, that won't be a real issue. What they offer will either meet the requirements of auto liability insurance, in which case it won't matter what their analysis of the fault is, or it won't meet that requirement, and you'll have additional insurance that actually covers the accident.
Accident fault is based on traffic laws and which vehicle went where at which time. If they own up to a technical fault will be a separate issue for them to fight out with the insurance companies. It won't come up during the auto liability cases, which are heavily constrained by existing law and precedent. It will be the same as now; if your car has a manufacturer fault causing your wheel to fall off and hit another car, then the accident was your fault and your insurance will be covering it. If you want to blame the manufacturer, or your insurance wants to, that will be a separate case where having to pay the cost of the damage to the other vehicle is the harm you're suing them for. As it is now, "mechanical fault" officially accounts for over 10% of vehicle accidents. So this is not even close to new legal territory regarding the liability.
You erect the straw man "computers are infallible" to attempt to defeat the claim that computers react more quickly than humans. Fail.
Also, the thing you drove wasn't a commercially available self-driving car, it was a different thing, very primitive with a limited intended function that is different than a self-driving car. One could almost think you were comparing apples to oranges, but in this case it is more like comparing an apple to a cartoon orange sticker.
Oh your car chose to kill a kid on a bike instead of hit an old person crossing the road?
What? Why do you think that a car would be programmed to hit "obstacle B" when "obstacle A" appears in front of it?
Instead, wouldn't the car be programmed to avoid ALL obstacles and apply the brakes with maximum efficiency?
They're confused into thinking this way because their driving practices are so dangerous, they actually plan ahead to swerve around an obstacle instead of stopping before hitting it. These are exactly the idiots who will stop running over Jr and Grandma when they switch to a self-driving car that will follow the DMV mandate and stay in the same lane and stop before hitting anything.
I kinda think the traffic engineers are right about this one. If you had time to "choose" what to hit, you'd be driving a safe speed and could choose not to hit anything. Actually, self-driving cars excel at stopping quickly when grandma wanders into the road. That has already happened a bunch of times in road testing. They're not going to be distracted, which is the main danger.
Wags repeat this over and over, but in fairness, the vehicles had not yet been programmed for those conditions. It is the case that needs special work, and they didn't bother doing that part early on. So it tells us nothing about any of it to act like it is some sort of fact of nature that "self driving cars don't work in snow." That is a broad statement that may not even be true now. We don't know. They won't tell us that they're even seriously working on the problem unless they've already got it pretty polished. That is just how R&D works. The public can't see the progress as it happens. Everything on the road that is a "self-driving car" is a prototype. Many current ones may already have this fixed. I can tell you one thing, when they talk about timetables for wanting regulatory approval to actually sell them, they're taking into consideration that they will have to work in snow, and all other seasonally common weather conditions.
Volvo is offering to indemnifying individual owners against flaws in the self-driving system. Of course, you'd have to prove somehow that the self-driving system was responsible, and do it by going up against a massive corporation's legal department.
On the other hand, if your self-driving car has a crash, who do you think people are more likely to sue? You, or the corp with deep pockets? Lawyers will probably be lining up for contingency fees to go after the corp.
You betray your ignorance of insurance. That is how it already works; you don't sue an insurance company, you sue the driver, and the insurance company provides their lawyer, and then pays the claim. Story time. My friend was a passenger in his girlfriend's car, and they were in an accident. It was ruled "no fault" (translation: both drivers made mistakes) and so his gf's insurance company was liable for his injuries. But they denied the claim, even though it was a rather obvious situation. In order for them to even negotiate the payment, he had to file a lawsuit; then of course they settled the claim. But who did he have to sue, the insurance company? No, he had to sue his girlfriend, and the lawyer had to write the complaint up using phraseology that blamed her for not paying his injuries, instead of the insurance company!
So it will be exactly the same as now. You sue the driver, or if the driver was not a legal entity, then you sue the owner of the machine. If they have insurance, the insurance will provide the lawyers and pay the judgement. Their liability is limited by a bunch of things, including the fact that they're not even the ones being sued, and also that the courts tend to view the insurance liability requirements as limits to what is normally recoverable. And indeed, most states cap it at that level.
Any big lawsuits will be related to recall type of situations, not accident liability. If a self-driving car kills your next of kin, you're only going to be able to sue for $25,000-50,000, depending on the State.
Volvo isn't making the expansive claim the Google is. The gesture doesn't mean much, as you said. You're correct, your insurance will pay, and they may or may not then try to blame Volvo based on this. But the part you miss is that if they fail, or succeed, they won't be telling you about it. And it won't come back to you. It can't; they already paid your claim, and what happens with Volvo isn't a new fact about your accident.
Your guess about it not being cheap is silly, there is already public crash data on these cars. Insurers don't get squeamish about computers and AI, they just hire actuaries who use numbers to quantify risk. The risk will be low, and the insurance rates will appear low to customers used to normal auto insurance, but the insurance profit margin will skyrocket. Drivers and insurers will both be loving it.
You're right that Volvo is just re-stating a generic manufacturer's warranty, they're not actually promising to insure the vehicle the way that Google is. At least, based on the media statements they made about if the driver was "misusing" the vehicle. In the US, you're required to have liability insurance that covers that exact case, so I expect they'll actually walk back that part and provide real "liability insurance" and not just the thing they explained poorly using contradictory language. Presumably what they'll really offer is normal liability, with a limited comprehensive that has the disclaimer.
Honestly, until they get the issues of liability sorted out, the self driving car is a complete non-starter.. precisely because of crap like this.
You're claiming that if they don't "sort out" the imaginary "issues" that the whole product is a "non-starter." I would like to point out that if they don't come up with a new system, I'll just put the self-driving car on my existing insurance, and can have all the other benefits of the product. The rates will be low as soon as there is vehicle crash data available, which will happen before they even go on sale. That data is already being collected and analyzed by actuaries!
There aren't any real mysterious hurdles, you just deposit n dollars into a bank account, as per State or Federal self-insurance guidelines, and the government stamps the insurance cert as soon as the bank verifies the account. Even for individuals, self-insurance doesn't require a bunch of hurdles, it requires depositing real money into an account, having the State verify the amount, and then in some States you have to show them that the money is still there every year or two.
But they won't, because they'd have to manage it, and that's not their competency. They already have lots of insurance, just to have employees and work sites, and this is low risk so they'll just package it in with their existing insurance.
Aircraft already have significant manufacturer liability insurance that is paid when the vehicle is made, so there are already formulas to calculate the price based on accident rates and vehicle life.
Well, it was easy for Google to do it first, so your comment has no insight value.
As to the summary, no they won't just make a general "promise" for the courts to work out, they'll simply issue insurance and the courts won't see any difference except which party is providing the insurance. It will still work the same way; you sue the owner of the vehicle, and the insurance company provides their lawyer and pays any judgement or settlement.
If it is a dual-mode drivable car, then it will be up the two insurance companies to look at the vehicle "black box" and determine if the driver or the computer was in control, and that will determine which insurance company handles the claim.
There are lots of new things here, but how the court will handle liability will not require any new parts. It will just be normal auto and insurance cases.
And as I mentioned before it has already been established that ABS systems are vulnerable to tampering
You're just waving assertions in the air. Was there a slashdot story a couple months ago, yeah, and it actually talked about a non-OBD thing, some new remote exploit tool that the some automakers are putting in. Who knows what it does, or what computers it hooks into. I didn't, and wouldn't, make any claims about what some car functions a non-OBD access method provides. That also goes for your CarPlay and Android Auto crap.
Hybrids are a special case, and I'll grant that hybrid systems can often have the brakes affected by hacks. The reason is that they use regenerative braking. The main computer has to be able to switch between the real brakes and the regenerative engine braking. The NTSB has yet to wise up to the fact that the brake computer should still be in charge of the brakes 100% of the time, and should be raising a flag to the powertrain module to tell it when to engage the engine brake.
The biggest danger I can see from these dongles is that they might get hacked and start playing advertising, distracting drivers and killing people. And yeah, a malicious hacker could kill somebody while they're driving without altering the vehicle safety systems. I think people are mostly arguing against something totally different than what I actually said, because I didn't align my specific statements with the conclusions people are coming to, and they're wanting to work backwards to say I'm wrong about everything, because I'm not supporting (or contradicting, for that matter) their conclusions about the safety of plugging random dongles into their car. If it helps people resolve their cognitive dissonance I'll point out that plugging shit into your car is stupid. Hell, connecting your cell phone to the bluetooth car stereo is probably stupid if it is a stock stereo. If it is an aftermarket stereo it is most likely safe. But that said, unless you have a hybrid there is no way to turn off your brakes from your stereo.
Preemptively, the Chrysler brake hack was done using a manufacturer remote access tool, not an OBD tool.
Let's look at your argument about door locks. Let's consider the fact that the network is NOT on the internet to be one of the locks securing it. Are you suggesting we should just remove this lock because someone could physically modify the computers on your car?
No. I don't even know what that means. My point about locks was that just because the lock can be picked, doesn't mean that your refrigerator has coodies. Plugging shit into your OBD is probably going to cause some cracker to fuck up your car, but that doesn't mean your ABS system is going to stop working. (unless you have a hybrid) If they're going to kill you with it, it won't be by disabling your safety systems. It will more likely be by activating the engine at an inconvenient time. I'm not saying nobody can hack your shit, I'm saying on a normal internal combustion car nobody can mess with the traction control or airbags, aka "safety systems," from the OBD port, because the OBD port only connects to the main computer, and the main computer only has passive sensor connections to the brake and airbag systems.
The fact that people jump up and down disagreeing not only with my conclusions, but all the specific points, merely because they disagree with the conclusion, is telling about the quality of discourse around here these days.
If I plug a shop diagnostics computer in, I can control the engine from there. Lights, horn, etc. But there are a few things I can't do; actuate the brakes, change the key position to "on," activate the airbags. Everything but the safety systems. And if you have "keyless" starting, then that part is not safe; they might turn your car on from there. And drive it a few feet. But don't worry, the airbag will deploy if you don't get to the brake pedal in time.
I'd like to know what fantasy universe we're role playing if you think that people don't still grow up with drunk driving.
My advice is to go for a 5 mile walk along streets with traffic between the hours midnight and 2am on a Friday night/Saturday morning. I'd say to bicycle it, but I'm not trying to get you killed, just scare some sense into you.
Asserting I don't know things is an argument you lost as soon as you made it. You don't know what I do or don't know.
Presume I do know about proprietary codes. Could my statements still be true? Yes. Indeed. As a programmer who has works with these codes, I know it is complete hogwash to just wave your hands like that. Could a malicious person screw up your car through the OBD port? Yes. Can they screw with the safety systems? No. I'm sure there are ways they could cause you lots of problems, but your brakes and airbags will still be working.
You don't seem to realize that the brake and airbag computers are physically separate devices. It doesn't help your position to just presume that the proprietary codes can alter those systems. If you were more familiar with the technology, you'd understand that all the active diagnostics are in the Engine Control Module and Powertrain Control Module, which are probably the same physical device, and that device can't actuate the brake or airbag systems; all that plugs into it is the sensors to tell it when the ABS or traction control engages, and a flag that says the airbag state.
And no, traction control does NOT involve powering the wheels. If you're in gear, the engine has to change speed for a different amount of power to get delivered to the wheels. There is nothing in the wheel that has any sort of gearing that would allow for the traction computer to change the wheel power delivery separately from the engine, and the engine responds much more slowly than the traction system. And the traction computer is still running with the ECM unplugged. I could go to the top of a hill, unplug the ECM, and as long as the battery is connected I could roll down the hill and slam on the brakes, and the ABS would work perfectly. The same computer does the parking anti-roll.
The idea that the ECM could actually turn off the brake power is funny. For bonus points, find a repair manual for your vehicle, discover where in the engine the power brake boost is sourced, and then ask yourself if it makes sense that it could be disabled while the vehicle is in gear and moving. I'll give you a hint: http://auto.howstuffworks.com/... It uses engine vacuum. Power brakes have mechanical assist. If the engine is in gear and the vehicle is moving, there will be power brakes, even with the battery disconnected. If you have an electronic brake-assist computer, you can lose that if the battery is disconnected, but the ECM can't disconnect the battery. But even if it could take that extreme step, you'd still have power brakes anytime you're in gear and moving.
I did not say anything about firewalls, so I'll assume the whole passage accusing me of believing in magic ones was just a fantasy interlude, except to reiterate that the brakes and airbags are NOT controlled by the ECM computer that is the one that shuts down a couple minutes after you turn off the car.
get a clue.
The one thing we agree on.
You claim a bunch of specific facts that if true, would support your arguments. However, they're false. All the ECM gets from the brakes and airbags are sensor readings. There are no actuators connected between the safety systems and the engine computer.
I do apologize for the typo where I wrote ODB instead of OBD.
I dunno why you want to beat it into the ground that you have poor taste and dislike books popular with nerds. You haven't been able to articulate any sort of reason to even be communicating an opinion. You give a conclusion, but don't support it at all. Just pure negative assertion, with no attempt to add value. You really are just trying to be "hip" by hating literature! ROFLCOPTER
And I really, really doubt you read all of Rand's works. People who dislike an author, who are not professional editors, only read a small number of books by that author. Whining about the supposed low quality of an author's entire body of work would require reading not only good books, but books you think are awful. You'd be reading an incredible amount of crap. And there are so many more books than there is time that a reader could read them! I don't think you really considered what it says about your taste that you claim to be expert in the entire bodies of work of multiple authors who have no worthy books at all.
You must be the biggest Rand fan in the world if you actually sat through all of those. We The Living was a masterpiece, which is probably why nobody talks about it; it doesn't fit into American political conflicts. But she wrote some real stinkers too. There is no way that a non-fan read it all.
Now to throw down the gauntlet: name two authors that you do read, and the best example from each of their bodies of work. Show us what a more distinguished reader, who rejects pap like Kim Stanley Robinson, turns to.
To be fair, I clicked the link and it was indeed inactive, not interactive. I had presumed it was a typo, but I was wrong. Not sure what the news is, though.
It would be very difficult to do without detection. A common thing with these sorts of readings is to display them on a graph. If there are flat tops it isn't going to be believable. Another thing is that expected fuel economy is often calculated based on the engine data; if you're reporting low RPMs for the same distance traveled then it will be claiming you get some really high fuel economy that the vehicle isn't capable of. And if the GPS and car are reporting vastly different max speeds, the low RPMs is just another clue as to what you did to trick it. I haven't used this device, but on my OBD dashboard app it shows both speeds.
It might work in some cases of exceptionally stupid parents, but I think in most cases it would be detected after awhile. Spoofing the GPS inside the dongle is a harder task, of course.
And the lack of DRM has nothing to do with operating systems; they certainly run an OS on the ECM. It has to do with the access method requiring physical access.
The OBD-II port allows access to the life-safety systems of the car. It is a private unsecured network that performs no authentication.
These dongles allow arbitrary access to the car bus, limited only by their buggy software. They shouldn't even be manufactured.
You are wrong. On the internet. Shame, shame.
Arbitrary access to the car bus is provided by the port that you plug this device into. The device listens to that bus and takes actions outside of the car network. Arbitrary access to the car network existed already.
Also, the only part of the "life-safety" system you can access is the airbag status. The "life" and "safety" things in the car computers are the airbags and brakes. Those both have their own isolated subsystems. You cannot mess up the "life-safety" systems in the car through the ODB-II port, you can only read the status. The things you could change, if a device changed operating mode to the diagnostic mode, are just things that would make your car run like crap, or shut off. Yeah, if you plug this thing into your car, and the software gets cracked, trolls could disable your vehicle. Why should manufacturing stop? If your doorknob was built with a lock that some people could pick, bad people could steal from you. Does that mean that locks shouldn't be manufactured? No, it means you have to choose what product to use, and some people will make poor choices.
My car is old, a 2000, but even with the car off and the main computer without power, the traction computer is still on and functioning. The anti-lock brakes are on the same computer as the anti-roll parking mode, and the traction assist for ice and snow. I could totally fry the main computer that connects to the ODB-II port, and I'd still have traction control. And if the vehicle is in gear and moving, I'd still have power assist to the brakes even if the engine had stopped firing because of a computer problem.
Slashdot Mirror
That's the regional guy, not the CEO who quit. Who had an engineering background.
The guy in your link is "CEO" of a subsidiary. He is one of the few people who can be believed when he says he didn't learn about it until the WVU study was published, because a regional subsidiary isn't involved in creating the vehicles. I'd expect him to know about North American advertising campaigns, tax avoidance schemes, and the regional supply chain. I would not expect him to have any access at all to the engineering side.
You don't read and can't recommend a book to balance out your statements of hatred towards successful authors. That is pretty pathetic. I didn't say you "answer to me," I said your opinion about books you haven't read has no value.
Yeah, he was trained as an engineer, not an executive, so how would he know what they were up to?
I predict this schmuck will be the first scapegoat. Not the first that VW points at, but the first guy that Congress can charge with perjury so they look like they're Doing Something.
I think I'm going to need the see the fine print on that promise... the words "$corporation will accept liability" are rarely written without conditions a truck could drive itself through.
My advice is to not waste time on that. You'd be better served researching your State's liability insurance requirements. You might discover that if it meets the requirements of insurance, they have to pay and the Court doesn't care about their excuse. That's what liability insurance is; you screwed up, hurt or killed the other person, and now your insurance pays them. Saying it was really your fault because of fine print, that isn't a scenario that gets them off the hook.
OTOH if it doesn't meet the requirements of liability insurance, then you still don't need to care and can just learn about your insurance, because then it would be something that your insurance company would take up with Volvo after paying your claim, and you'd never even learn the result or be impacted by it.
So you're saying that new car makers won't be able to start up, and your argument is that Tesla drivers can't afford to buy their own insurance? Or that companies like Tesla, which exists only because a rich guy dropped a giant wad of billion dollar bills on it, won't be able to exist because you'll need billions to start a car company? What the hell, man, I know Thursday is the new Friday but you posted at 10:18am and it is way too early to be that drunk.
That is pretty easy. You don't "go" anywhere, you make sure your arms and face are in a position to minimize injury when the airbag deploys, if the semi in fact doesn't stop in time. Duh.
And as a moral thought exercise, you don't address the issues raised in the train situation. That exercise is based on the fact that you can't stop the train; there is no neutral course of action. In your situation, you do have a neutral course of action that doesn't involve killing anybody, and so there is no actual moral exercise. It will never be morally acceptable to risk killing somebody in order to reduce a risk to yourself that is uncertain and outside your control. There is no way that you have time in that scenario to weigh the risks, so you can't reach the position of claiming that a balance of risk favors an action. Therefore, you can't justify actively harming any of these people; even if you are OK with harming an innocent party to reduce your own risk when the risk to you is greater than to them. So the only moral choice you have is the same as what the DMV says you're legally required to do; stay in your lane, and remain stopped until the danger has passed.
Like all the other situations people propose where one of the considered actions is to leave your lane and intentionally crash into something; the answer is "don't." A self-driving car is going to get this right 100% of the time. If you absolutely are going to be in an accident, and there is no way to avoid it; continue following the traffic rules. They were designed by traffic engineers with this in mind. Stay in your lane, and stop. Easy.
The part you're getting wrong is that it is never appropriate to swerve. If you had time to check that it is safe to do so, you'd have time to stop. If somebody steps into the crosswalk when you don't have time to stop, your duty is to brake as quickly as possible to reduce the speed before impact. DO NOT SWERVE. The self-driving car is going to get this right 100% of the time; it won't be programmed to panic and create a new accident because of a rash action. Those milliseconds will directly translate into quicker stopping time, or at least reduced impact speed.
Because of the way insurance works, that won't be a real issue. What they offer will either meet the requirements of auto liability insurance, in which case it won't matter what their analysis of the fault is, or it won't meet that requirement, and you'll have additional insurance that actually covers the accident.
Accident fault is based on traffic laws and which vehicle went where at which time. If they own up to a technical fault will be a separate issue for them to fight out with the insurance companies. It won't come up during the auto liability cases, which are heavily constrained by existing law and precedent. It will be the same as now; if your car has a manufacturer fault causing your wheel to fall off and hit another car, then the accident was your fault and your insurance will be covering it. If you want to blame the manufacturer, or your insurance wants to, that will be a separate case where having to pay the cost of the damage to the other vehicle is the harm you're suing them for. As it is now, "mechanical fault" officially accounts for over 10% of vehicle accidents. So this is not even close to new legal territory regarding the liability.
You erect the straw man "computers are infallible" to attempt to defeat the claim that computers react more quickly than humans. Fail.
Also, the thing you drove wasn't a commercially available self-driving car, it was a different thing, very primitive with a limited intended function that is different than a self-driving car. One could almost think you were comparing apples to oranges, but in this case it is more like comparing an apple to a cartoon orange sticker.
What? Why do you think that a car would be programmed to hit "obstacle B" when "obstacle A" appears in front of it?
Instead, wouldn't the car be programmed to avoid ALL obstacles and apply the brakes with maximum efficiency?
They're confused into thinking this way because their driving practices are so dangerous, they actually plan ahead to swerve around an obstacle instead of stopping before hitting it. These are exactly the idiots who will stop running over Jr and Grandma when they switch to a self-driving car that will follow the DMV mandate and stay in the same lane and stop before hitting anything.
I kinda think the traffic engineers are right about this one. If you had time to "choose" what to hit, you'd be driving a safe speed and could choose not to hit anything. Actually, self-driving cars excel at stopping quickly when grandma wanders into the road. That has already happened a bunch of times in road testing. They're not going to be distracted, which is the main danger.
Wags repeat this over and over, but in fairness, the vehicles had not yet been programmed for those conditions. It is the case that needs special work, and they didn't bother doing that part early on. So it tells us nothing about any of it to act like it is some sort of fact of nature that "self driving cars don't work in snow." That is a broad statement that may not even be true now. We don't know. They won't tell us that they're even seriously working on the problem unless they've already got it pretty polished. That is just how R&D works. The public can't see the progress as it happens. Everything on the road that is a "self-driving car" is a prototype. Many current ones may already have this fixed. I can tell you one thing, when they talk about timetables for wanting regulatory approval to actually sell them, they're taking into consideration that they will have to work in snow, and all other seasonally common weather conditions.
Volvo is offering to indemnifying individual owners against flaws in the self-driving system. Of course, you'd have to prove somehow that the self-driving system was responsible, and do it by going up against a massive corporation's legal department.
On the other hand, if your self-driving car has a crash, who do you think people are more likely to sue? You, or the corp with deep pockets? Lawyers will probably be lining up for contingency fees to go after the corp.
You betray your ignorance of insurance. That is how it already works; you don't sue an insurance company, you sue the driver, and the insurance company provides their lawyer, and then pays the claim. Story time. My friend was a passenger in his girlfriend's car, and they were in an accident. It was ruled "no fault" (translation: both drivers made mistakes) and so his gf's insurance company was liable for his injuries. But they denied the claim, even though it was a rather obvious situation. In order for them to even negotiate the payment, he had to file a lawsuit; then of course they settled the claim. But who did he have to sue, the insurance company? No, he had to sue his girlfriend, and the lawyer had to write the complaint up using phraseology that blamed her for not paying his injuries, instead of the insurance company!
So it will be exactly the same as now. You sue the driver, or if the driver was not a legal entity, then you sue the owner of the machine. If they have insurance, the insurance will provide the lawyers and pay the judgement. Their liability is limited by a bunch of things, including the fact that they're not even the ones being sued, and also that the courts tend to view the insurance liability requirements as limits to what is normally recoverable. And indeed, most states cap it at that level.
Any big lawsuits will be related to recall type of situations, not accident liability. If a self-driving car kills your next of kin, you're only going to be able to sue for $25,000-50,000, depending on the State.
Volvo isn't making the expansive claim the Google is. The gesture doesn't mean much, as you said. You're correct, your insurance will pay, and they may or may not then try to blame Volvo based on this. But the part you miss is that if they fail, or succeed, they won't be telling you about it. And it won't come back to you. It can't; they already paid your claim, and what happens with Volvo isn't a new fact about your accident.
Your guess about it not being cheap is silly, there is already public crash data on these cars. Insurers don't get squeamish about computers and AI, they just hire actuaries who use numbers to quantify risk. The risk will be low, and the insurance rates will appear low to customers used to normal auto insurance, but the insurance profit margin will skyrocket. Drivers and insurers will both be loving it.
You're right that Volvo is just re-stating a generic manufacturer's warranty, they're not actually promising to insure the vehicle the way that Google is. At least, based on the media statements they made about if the driver was "misusing" the vehicle. In the US, you're required to have liability insurance that covers that exact case, so I expect they'll actually walk back that part and provide real "liability insurance" and not just the thing they explained poorly using contradictory language. Presumably what they'll really offer is normal liability, with a limited comprehensive that has the disclaimer.
Sit in the back seat. Or don't buy one.
Honestly, until they get the issues of liability sorted out, the self driving car is a complete non-starter .. precisely because of crap like this.
You're claiming that if they don't "sort out" the imaginary "issues" that the whole product is a "non-starter." I would like to point out that if they don't come up with a new system, I'll just put the self-driving car on my existing insurance, and can have all the other benefits of the product. The rates will be low as soon as there is vehicle crash data available, which will happen before they even go on sale. That data is already being collected and analyzed by actuaries!
There aren't any real mysterious hurdles, you just deposit n dollars into a bank account, as per State or Federal self-insurance guidelines, and the government stamps the insurance cert as soon as the bank verifies the account. Even for individuals, self-insurance doesn't require a bunch of hurdles, it requires depositing real money into an account, having the State verify the amount, and then in some States you have to show them that the money is still there every year or two.
But they won't, because they'd have to manage it, and that's not their competency. They already have lots of insurance, just to have employees and work sites, and this is low risk so they'll just package it in with their existing insurance.
Aircraft already have significant manufacturer liability insurance that is paid when the vehicle is made, so there are already formulas to calculate the price based on accident rates and vehicle life.
Well, it was easy for Google to do it first, so your comment has no insight value.
As to the summary, no they won't just make a general "promise" for the courts to work out, they'll simply issue insurance and the courts won't see any difference except which party is providing the insurance. It will still work the same way; you sue the owner of the vehicle, and the insurance company provides their lawyer and pays any judgement or settlement.
If it is a dual-mode drivable car, then it will be up the two insurance companies to look at the vehicle "black box" and determine if the driver or the computer was in control, and that will determine which insurance company handles the claim.
There are lots of new things here, but how the court will handle liability will not require any new parts. It will just be normal auto and insurance cases.
And as I mentioned before it has already been established that ABS systems are vulnerable to tampering
You're just waving assertions in the air. Was there a slashdot story a couple months ago, yeah, and it actually talked about a non-OBD thing, some new remote exploit tool that the some automakers are putting in. Who knows what it does, or what computers it hooks into. I didn't, and wouldn't, make any claims about what some car functions a non-OBD access method provides. That also goes for your CarPlay and Android Auto crap.
Hybrids are a special case, and I'll grant that hybrid systems can often have the brakes affected by hacks. The reason is that they use regenerative braking. The main computer has to be able to switch between the real brakes and the regenerative engine braking. The NTSB has yet to wise up to the fact that the brake computer should still be in charge of the brakes 100% of the time, and should be raising a flag to the powertrain module to tell it when to engage the engine brake.
The biggest danger I can see from these dongles is that they might get hacked and start playing advertising, distracting drivers and killing people. And yeah, a malicious hacker could kill somebody while they're driving without altering the vehicle safety systems. I think people are mostly arguing against something totally different than what I actually said, because I didn't align my specific statements with the conclusions people are coming to, and they're wanting to work backwards to say I'm wrong about everything, because I'm not supporting (or contradicting, for that matter) their conclusions about the safety of plugging random dongles into their car. If it helps people resolve their cognitive dissonance I'll point out that plugging shit into your car is stupid. Hell, connecting your cell phone to the bluetooth car stereo is probably stupid if it is a stock stereo. If it is an aftermarket stereo it is most likely safe. But that said, unless you have a hybrid there is no way to turn off your brakes from your stereo.
Preemptively, the Chrysler brake hack was done using a manufacturer remote access tool, not an OBD tool.
Let's look at your argument about door locks. Let's consider the fact that the network is NOT on the internet to be one of the locks securing it. Are you suggesting we should just remove this lock because someone could physically modify the computers on your car?
No. I don't even know what that means. My point about locks was that just because the lock can be picked, doesn't mean that your refrigerator has coodies. Plugging shit into your OBD is probably going to cause some cracker to fuck up your car, but that doesn't mean your ABS system is going to stop working. (unless you have a hybrid) If they're going to kill you with it, it won't be by disabling your safety systems. It will more likely be by activating the engine at an inconvenient time. I'm not saying nobody can hack your shit, I'm saying on a normal internal combustion car nobody can mess with the traction control or airbags, aka "safety systems," from the OBD port, because the OBD port only connects to the main computer, and the main computer only has passive sensor connections to the brake and airbag systems.
The fact that people jump up and down disagreeing not only with my conclusions, but all the specific points, merely because they disagree with the conclusion, is telling about the quality of discourse around here these days.
If I plug a shop diagnostics computer in, I can control the engine from there. Lights, horn, etc. But there are a few things I can't do; actuate the brakes, change the key position to "on," activate the airbags. Everything but the safety systems. And if you have "keyless" starting, then that part is not safe; they might turn your car on from there. And drive it a few feet. But don't worry, the airbag will deploy if you don't get to the brake pedal in time.
If you could activate the brakes from the OBD
I'd like to know what fantasy universe we're role playing if you think that people don't still grow up with drunk driving.
My advice is to go for a 5 mile walk along streets with traffic between the hours midnight and 2am on a Friday night/Saturday morning. I'd say to bicycle it, but I'm not trying to get you killed, just scare some sense into you.
Asserting I don't know things is an argument you lost as soon as you made it. You don't know what I do or don't know.
Presume I do know about proprietary codes. Could my statements still be true? Yes. Indeed. As a programmer who has works with these codes, I know it is complete hogwash to just wave your hands like that. Could a malicious person screw up your car through the OBD port? Yes. Can they screw with the safety systems? No. I'm sure there are ways they could cause you lots of problems, but your brakes and airbags will still be working.
You don't seem to realize that the brake and airbag computers are physically separate devices. It doesn't help your position to just presume that the proprietary codes can alter those systems. If you were more familiar with the technology, you'd understand that all the active diagnostics are in the Engine Control Module and Powertrain Control Module, which are probably the same physical device, and that device can't actuate the brake or airbag systems; all that plugs into it is the sensors to tell it when the ABS or traction control engages, and a flag that says the airbag state.
And no, traction control does NOT involve powering the wheels. If you're in gear, the engine has to change speed for a different amount of power to get delivered to the wheels. There is nothing in the wheel that has any sort of gearing that would allow for the traction computer to change the wheel power delivery separately from the engine, and the engine responds much more slowly than the traction system. And the traction computer is still running with the ECM unplugged. I could go to the top of a hill, unplug the ECM, and as long as the battery is connected I could roll down the hill and slam on the brakes, and the ABS would work perfectly. The same computer does the parking anti-roll.
The idea that the ECM could actually turn off the brake power is funny. For bonus points, find a repair manual for your vehicle, discover where in the engine the power brake boost is sourced, and then ask yourself if it makes sense that it could be disabled while the vehicle is in gear and moving. I'll give you a hint: http://auto.howstuffworks.com/...
It uses engine vacuum. Power brakes have mechanical assist. If the engine is in gear and the vehicle is moving, there will be power brakes, even with the battery disconnected. If you have an electronic brake-assist computer, you can lose that if the battery is disconnected, but the ECM can't disconnect the battery. But even if it could take that extreme step, you'd still have power brakes anytime you're in gear and moving.
I did not say anything about firewalls, so I'll assume the whole passage accusing me of believing in magic ones was just a fantasy interlude, except to reiterate that the brakes and airbags are NOT controlled by the ECM computer that is the one that shuts down a couple minutes after you turn off the car.
get a clue.
The one thing we agree on.
You claim a bunch of specific facts that if true, would support your arguments. However, they're false. All the ECM gets from the brakes and airbags are sensor readings. There are no actuators connected between the safety systems and the engine computer.
I do apologize for the typo where I wrote ODB instead of OBD.
I dunno why you want to beat it into the ground that you have poor taste and dislike books popular with nerds. You haven't been able to articulate any sort of reason to even be communicating an opinion. You give a conclusion, but don't support it at all. Just pure negative assertion, with no attempt to add value. You really are just trying to be "hip" by hating literature! ROFLCOPTER
And I really, really doubt you read all of Rand's works. People who dislike an author, who are not professional editors, only read a small number of books by that author. Whining about the supposed low quality of an author's entire body of work would require reading not only good books, but books you think are awful. You'd be reading an incredible amount of crap. And there are so many more books than there is time that a reader could read them! I don't think you really considered what it says about your taste that you claim to be expert in the entire bodies of work of multiple authors who have no worthy books at all.
You must be the biggest Rand fan in the world if you actually sat through all of those. We The Living was a masterpiece, which is probably why nobody talks about it; it doesn't fit into American political conflicts. But she wrote some real stinkers too. There is no way that a non-fan read it all.
Now to throw down the gauntlet: name two authors that you do read, and the best example from each of their bodies of work. Show us what a more distinguished reader, who rejects pap like Kim Stanley Robinson, turns to.
I think we done broke it.
Damn you, I wanted to have a look!
Don't worry, if you just press reload enough times, eventually it will work. Try clicking faster.
To be fair, I clicked the link and it was indeed inactive, not interactive. I had presumed it was a typo, but I was wrong. Not sure what the news is, though.
It would be very difficult to do without detection. A common thing with these sorts of readings is to display them on a graph. If there are flat tops it isn't going to be believable. Another thing is that expected fuel economy is often calculated based on the engine data; if you're reporting low RPMs for the same distance traveled then it will be claiming you get some really high fuel economy that the vehicle isn't capable of. And if the GPS and car are reporting vastly different max speeds, the low RPMs is just another clue as to what you did to trick it. I haven't used this device, but on my OBD dashboard app it shows both speeds.
It might work in some cases of exceptionally stupid parents, but I think in most cases it would be detected after awhile. Spoofing the GPS inside the dongle is a harder task, of course.
And the lack of DRM has nothing to do with operating systems; they certainly run an OS on the ECM. It has to do with the access method requiring physical access.
The OBD-II port allows access to the life-safety systems of the car. It is a private unsecured network that performs no authentication.
These dongles allow arbitrary access to the car bus, limited only by their buggy software. They shouldn't even be manufactured.
You are wrong. On the internet. Shame, shame.
Arbitrary access to the car bus is provided by the port that you plug this device into. The device listens to that bus and takes actions outside of the car network. Arbitrary access to the car network existed already.
Also, the only part of the "life-safety" system you can access is the airbag status. The "life" and "safety" things in the car computers are the airbags and brakes. Those both have their own isolated subsystems. You cannot mess up the "life-safety" systems in the car through the ODB-II port, you can only read the status. The things you could change, if a device changed operating mode to the diagnostic mode, are just things that would make your car run like crap, or shut off. Yeah, if you plug this thing into your car, and the software gets cracked, trolls could disable your vehicle. Why should manufacturing stop? If your doorknob was built with a lock that some people could pick, bad people could steal from you. Does that mean that locks shouldn't be manufactured? No, it means you have to choose what product to use, and some people will make poor choices.
My car is old, a 2000, but even with the car off and the main computer without power, the traction computer is still on and functioning. The anti-lock brakes are on the same computer as the anti-roll parking mode, and the traction assist for ice and snow. I could totally fry the main computer that connects to the ODB-II port, and I'd still have traction control. And if the vehicle is in gear and moving, I'd still have power assist to the brakes even if the engine had stopped firing because of a computer problem.