Uber sets self-driving battle at permission, not existence
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
And it's really not just portrayed: Uber'll deserve any and all punishment thrown at them for this, up to and possibly including the shut down of the company and criminal charges for the people who did this. And Uber'll be setting the cause of self-driving cars back years, maybe even a decade.
This is all incredibly obvious too, and I don't think Uber folks are idiots. Maybe they're getting desperate, and they're willing to eat the risk of the company being destroyed because their business strategy for survival is sensitive to getting to production-ready self-driving cars a year earlier than they would have otherwise?
'Levandowski compared Uber’s technology to Tesla’s autopilot feature, saying: “It’s hard to understand why the DMV would seek to require self-driving Ubers to get permits when it accepts that Tesla’s autopilot technology does not need them."
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/16/uber-defi...
ETA: That is, from a business perspective. The fact that you might kill a couple people in the meantime is kind of a deal breaker from a moral point of view.
Let's assume that after the full transition, 0 people will die from automotive accidents. This isn't the case, but it's close enough. Naively, that would save roughly around 30k lives a year: in other words, every single day self-driving cars are delayed kills a bit under 100 people. The dynamics of the transition don't matter too much, assuming everything is simply shifted forward a year: you just move one year from the totally untransitioned state to the totally transitioned state.
That's huge. Anyone who does something that delays the transition one day is basically pretty much committing the Pulse night club shooting and the Sandy Hook shooting.
Now, another question: if a self-driving Uber slams into a group of children crossing the street, how much do you anticipate that to delay the transition to self-driving cars?
There's also a hidden assumption that getting inferior products on the road as quickly as possible is a necessary step in order to start iterating as quickly as possible. A day of clean room testing is worth some small fraction of a day of real world testing. I don't quite dispute that point, but just stating it explicitly.
Since when does Uber care? They never refilled their morality tank since the first time it was reported running empty.
Ironically, if the Tesla scenario is true, this pretty much looks like Good vs Evil battle, SV edition.
Simple: distract investors long enough to somehow make ride sharing profitable.
I also think Uber's move is advancing its own lead at the risk of slowing down the overall self-driving car transition. Their move, as you described, when go wrong, not only damage the company, but also general public's acceptance of self-driving technology. That damage could be more profound and harmful in the long run.
TechCrunch's suggestion that this is the thin edge of a wedge to get to do self-driving without regulation is preposterous. There is no future reality in which the Department of Transportation does not strictly regulate self-driving vehicles.
In the first day their cars were caught running red lights on film. Either the cars are faulty, or cars and the human drivers for 'just in case' are faulty.
Oh, yeah, they've been turning across bike lanes illegally too, the kind of turn that causes most bike accidents with cars in California. They were told about this problem before launch and LAUNCHED ANYWAY. That's another thing they've asked their human drivers to take over for (you know, the ones who ran the light).
Honestly, if someone's job is to sit in an Uber for 6 hours and watch for the car to make a driving mistake... that's a lot of fatigue. They're going to get comfortable and miss A LOT of stuff.
Uber needs a huge slap for this whole thing. They're being very reckless.
Given that Uber is perceived as a symbol of 'Silicon Valley greed' to some politicians/constituents, a few high profile accidents would present a witch hunt opportunity for someone.
Not sure how much practical damage politicians could do but at a $50B-ish valuation there's little room for fatal error. Even a 1-2 year delay in getting self-drivers on the road would cost Uber billions.
But beta testing their cars on real streets could lead to disaster. Even from a non-legal PR risk perspective, it's dicey.
If one of these things runs over a cute kid, the attempt to skirt the law will backfire. That said challenging the law isn't necessarily skirting the law, but that's how techcrunch is portraying it. I'm too lazy to read the docket of the case.
§ 227.36. Refusal, Suspension, Revocation of Manufacturer’s Testing Permit
The department may refuse an application for a Manufacturer’s Testing Permit, or for the renewal of a Manufacturer’s Testing Permit, and may suspend or revoke a Manufacturer’s Testing Permit:
(a) For a violation of Vehicle Code section 38750 or this Article.
(b) For any act or omission of the manufacturer or one of its agents, employees, contractors or designees which the department finds makes the conduct of autonomous vehicle testing on public roads by the manufacturer an unreasonable risk to the public.
It's pretty straightforward. This works just like regular bad driving enforcement. There are now two reports of Uber self-driving cars running red lights and complaints about bad turns through bike lanes, so DMV can reasonably deny a permit. Google doesn't seem to have those problems.
[1] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/d48f347b-8815-458e...
A friend of mine is a reckless driver, who think of himself as a rally pilot. He often drives at twice the speed limit, passes other cars when there’s a continuous line, etc. After a wedding dinner, (where he drunk more than enough) he announced he was driving home. I had to ask:
- Are you sure you should be doing this?
- Yeah, even with a glass or two (I counted a good half-dozen) I’m a better driver than 90% on the road anyway…
- I mean, that might get points off your license. [He had mentioned losing some during the dinner.]
- Nah, it’s OK: I don’t have a license anymore, so I have no points to lose. I’m smart like that, you see?
I agree with TechCrunch: Uber is smart like that too.
If it's an accident, it's much worse for Uber.
To the extent Uber is doing something clever, it probably has something to do with avoiding having to spend $150 for every entity or person that wants to buy a self-driving car and rent it out through Uber. It is certainly not that they have found a brilliant way to sidestep a legal battle with regulators.
Sadly, not at all – Uber will just sue in some court of some trade deal, and find a way to get around that. Just like so many companies have done before.
Self-driving cars will never have this fear holding them back from making mistakes. They don't care if they die. How can you feel safe around that? You could argue there is actually an incentive to let them crash once in awhile, because the valuable real world data will be phoned home and used to improve the product for the small price of a human life.
Once corruption sets in down the road, cars with autopilot capabilities will simplify kidnapping and assassination. Simply activate the backdoor remote piloting feature and crash your target's car (or the Uber car they're a passenger in) into a tree at 70 mph, or lock the doors and drive to a pickup location to complete the kidnapping.
Driving in a traditional car wouldn't protect the target, because a group with ubiquitous optional remote control over self-driving cars could also force surrounding cars to enter kamikaze mode and ram the target off the road.
Governments will demand some kind of backdoor like this at some point. It's not a question of if, but when. At that point, we'll have to trust that they'll never abuse it (lol) and that no third parties will ever be able to hack it remotely.
Even if you think the government is your friend, the first worm using a remote code execution exploit that hops from car to car via Bluetooth and activates its payload on a specific date will be able to kill tens of millions of people.
My hope in the transition period is that the presence of self-driving cars on roads will finally force the drivers to start obeying traffic laws - which should pretty much eliminate the MAD consideration altogether.
I would love to see some super smart twist on this, incompetence and hubris becomes boring to watch fast.
if this was just some guy on the street, or even most businesses the authorities would come down on them like a ton of bricks... but its a silicon valley posterchild so we don't.
its so difficult to see and not feel anger about it. if i don't do my due diligence or act intelligently i feel uncomfortable like i'm taking a stupid risk... why don't they?
It's so much easier to fix software for "right hooks" then it is to fix human drivers, who drive terribly in SF.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/19/uber-self...
According to google, 3,287 seem to die everyday on the road. I honestly don't see those numbers happening when humans are taken out of the equation.
I've asked this before, but will ask it again:
Why be apart of tech if you want to follow the rules?
And the very basic laws around self-driving cars don't slow innovation in any way I can see. Not everything is a dichotomy.