Hacker News Reader

Comment by gambiting | Hacker News Reader

No, but if a driver falls asleep it's clearly their fault, if they survive the accident they will be charged with manslaughter. If a driverless truck rear ends a car because of a glitch or a mechanical fault where it didn't see the car in front for some reason, then I can only imagine the corporation recalling all of them at huge cost, and possibly paying millions of dollars in damages. I think the point is that when humans crash the responsibility is easy to establish, but we have no framework to work with once computers crash(and they will). And no, "they are still safer than humans" is not a valid defense when someone dies.

View on HN

The company making the vehicles will be responsible for any damages, and paying a massive insurance premium I'm sure. There will be legal consequences for gross negligence and anyone damaged will be made whole. I don't see how that's any different than the system we have now.

And the emotional appeals cut both ways. How long before the parents of a child killed by a drunk or sleeping truck driver say "Why was he driving anyway? Why wasn't he replaced by a machine that wouldn't drink a six pack and nod off while at the wheel?"

That's partly an effect of being on HN.

In non tech circles - the vast majority of the world - people are pretty famous for measuring risks by perception and not statistics.

The idea of a robotic truck taking away jobs while also being a risk to life? America would take up mass transit before it buys into that system.

Man I can see the headlines and political/ emotional arguments now. Godless SV tech priests rob Americans of the last few jobs they have. 1% and automation, no job left behind.!

It's useful to remember that People refused seat belts until the argument was irrefutable. Hell doctors didn't wash hands regularly until it was drilled into their heads that they were infecting patients.

And when it come to automated personal care - I bet that People will utterly, vociferously, oppose the loss of their agency in controlling their means of movement.

People have romanticized the man and the horse, the man and the bike, the car - but it's because it's a matter of controlling that power.

Selling that to the American public and the world at large is a multi generational effort.

Maybe the American reaction will be like that, but my feeling is that if that happens, then China will take advantage of it by pushing automated driving while ignoring the emotional arguments (authoritarian governments have their advantages in this kind of things...)

And then, the rest of the world will have to follow so as not to be left behind an industrial revolution...

America is not a single unified entity. All it takes is one trucking business to outcompete another for all the trucking companies to follow suit in the following decade.

As for individuals, the government might gives tax breaks or ban the things. I think it is most that likely early adopters will use them and brag to everyone how much they save on fuel and airline tickets and how more (work, reading, video games, etc... ) they can do while travelling. Of course there will be holdouts, but they will be quickly outnumbered.

Eventually so few manual drivers will be on the road that they are the exception and 99% of the accidents will be their fault. Then states will start banning driving manually.

Think Monsanto, not Ford/GM.

And why would I want more places I can work, at least when I drive I am not expected to be working.

Your inability to dictate where and when you work will not dictate my ability choose where and when I will work.

Also Monsanto has nothing to do with anything here, unless you care to explain.

> How long before the parents of a child say ... "Why wasn't he replaced by a machine?"

The ultimate point being that the answer might be "decades." It might take that long for the prevailing opinion amongst the public and/or politicians to change that way. And it is affected by the actual accidents involving automated vehicles in the short term.

> and paying a massive insurance premium I'm sure

Nah, it'll be much cheaper than what they pay for humans since the bots will be in far fewer accidents and insurance companies actually care about statistics.

I think you might be surprised - companies would be insured against a total recall due to software/hardware failure, which would far exceed the cost of any accident a computer could get into, so I guess the premiums might stay relatively high.

> Companies would be insured against a total recall due to software/hardware failure

I don't think that's true at all. Recalls are a manufactures problem, the local trucking company is just going to have normal auto insurance just as with his human drivers.

When a recall does happen how do the trucking companies keep on trucking?

I mean surely this happens now, how do they solve this problem?

I guess airline companies are insured against loss of profit in case their airplanes get recalled and they have to do without. And probably the cost of renting airplanes from other companies so that they can keep on going.

It doesn't happen. For that to happen every trucking manufacture would have have to recall every truck and that's simply never happened. Recalls are generally more along the lines of part Y has an issue, bring the truck in and we'll replace that part.

The same will be true of automated trucking, parts will be recalled, and companies will have multiple different trucking manufactures to choose from so the notion that all the trucks will be recalled just isn't realistic.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com