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Comment by w_t_payne | Hacker News Reader

To ensure that all automotive software incorporates lessons learned from such fatalities, it would be beneficial to develop a common data set of (mostly synthetic) data replicating accident and 'near miss' scenarios.

As we understand more about the risks associated with autonomous driving, we should expand and enrich this data-set, and to ensure public safety, testing against such a dataset should be part of NHTSA / Euro NCAP testing.

I.e. NHTSA and Euro NCAP should start getting into the business of software testing.

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Dr. Mary Cummings has been working on talking to NHTSA about implementing V and V for autopilots/AI in unmanned vehicles for a few years now. She's also been compiling a dataset exactly like what you are talking about.

I think the idea is to build a "Traincar of Reasonability" to test future autonomous vehicles with.

You might want to check out her research https://hal.pratt.duke.edu/research

Thank you for that link. I will pass it along to my former colleagues who I suspect will be very interested in her work.

No problem!

I'm sure Dr. Cummings would be more than happy to talk about issues facing validation and verification in the context of NHTSA/FAA.

Why would Uber agree to such regulations?

They were unwilling to legally obtain a self-driving license in California because they did not want to report "disengagements" (situations in which a human driver has to intervene).

Uber would just set their self-driving cars free and eat whatever fine/punishment comes with it.

> Why would Uber agree to such regulations?

This is a strange question to ask. The regulation is not there to benefit Uber, it is to benefit public good. Very few companies would follow regulation if it was a choice. The setup of such regulation would be for it to be criminal to not comply. And if Uber could not operate in California (or the USA) if they did not comply, it would in their interest to provide the requested information.

Uber has shown very often that they are willing to break the law. It seems within their modus-operandus to just ignore these rules.

Essentially, Uber engages in regulatory arbitrage but taking into account the cost-benefits of breaking the law. I.e. if it breaks the law but is profitable for them, they seem to do it.

Sure, so make the regulation expensive. For example, if a company is not in compliance then the executive team can be charged for any crime their self-driving toy committed under their guidance.

I don't believe this will be effective. Thinking back to the VW scandal, did any executive get punished for this? Same question for the Equifax breach and the insider trading issue.

My 'money' is on people with money figuring out loopholes, like plausible deniability.

Yes, it means that we need to write new regulations with real teeth, and vote out the politicians on all sides of the aisle that continue to punt on this issue.

One of my biggest complaints about the self-driving car space is that real lives are at stake; light-touch "voluntary" rules suitable for companies that publish solitaire clones aren't going to cut it here.

> Why would Uber agree to such regulations?

Uber doesn't get to pick and choose what regulations they wish to follow.

> Uber would just set their self-driving cars free and eat whatever fine/punishment comes with it.

That sounds quite negligent and a cause for heightened repercussions if anything happens.

The strange attitude you display is the _reason_ there are regulations.

Very cynical but - if your self-driving is way behind of your competitors- wouldnt it help to have your lousy car in a accident - so that your competitors get hit with over-regulation and you thus kill a market- on which you cant compete?

I‘m quite sure this would backfire A LOT in terms of brand damage. Uber in a sense made history today and now has actual blood on their hands. And if such a strategy should EVER leak (Dieselgate anyone?), people are going to prison.

GM killed 124 people with faulty ignition switches[1], yet the brand still survived. It's a cost calculation: will the brand damage outweigh the benefit to the company? Sadly, human lives don't factor into that equation.

[1] http://money.cnn.com/2015/12/10/news/companies/gm-recall-ign...

Sadly, that’s a common occurrence with big automakers.

I can’t say anything about GM‘s rep in the US, but here in Europe they are not doing so well. Chevrolet was killed in 2015, and Vauxhall/Opel are doing only ok-ish. Chevy had SO many recalls in the years before they killed it.

Opel got bought back to europe by PSA the owners of Citröen and Peugeot in 2017 so they have a chance to turn it around.

No, because what you risk is associating your brand with death, rather than AD.

Uber already has a terrible reputation with everyone in the tech industry for the sexism, bullying, law breaking, and IP theft. Do they really want to be the self-driving car company with a reputation for killing people?

It doesn't take a lot for people to think "Maybe I'll take a lyft" or "Maybe I'll ban uber from London because of their safety record"[0].

They aren't going to kill the market for this - the other players not only have big incentives to make sure they look safe, but you've got a really unique problem when your biggest competitor is a company that controls access to news and which adverts your customers will see.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/oct/01/sadiq-khan-...

It's a cynical approach, but they could be playing both angles. Take enough risks that maybe you do succeed and you can cut your costs enormously by actually having SDCs. But if you fail, you also protect yourself by taking the competition down with you.

Uber ultimately backed down and applied for a California permit: http://fortune.com/2017/03/08/uber-permit-self-driving-cars-...

The start tossing executives in jail.

It’s the only real solution to corporations misbehaving.

Cooperations will just start paying compensation for executive jail time - and replace executives at a accelerated rate.

The only working regulation is one that is a existential threat to the company. Which means- huge financial punnishments.

Something I'm surprised no one has considered seriously is revoking business licenses. That is a much more existential threat, literally.

Corporate death penalty. It's the only way to be sure.

Phoenixing :(

...from orbit.

Maybe they start paying compensation to the family, making sure that they're set even if you fail - firmly stepping into mafia territory.

Still, corporations, while being essentially a different kind of life, are not entirely separate entities - they are composed of people. Fear of jail might just be enough to get some high-level executives to exert proper influence on the direction of the corporation.

You can’t return a decade sitting in a miserable cell.

Oh, contrair- if you have a decade sitting unemployed in a room- and you get a chance, by taking all the responsibilities and liabilitys, to live your golden years in the sun- what would you have to loose?

I guess my hopeful answer would be they start getting treated like Enron and someone high up goes to prison until they start to comply.

Did anyone actually go to prison from Enron?

You mean, besides the CEO, Jeffrey Skilling?

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-enron-skilling/former-enr...

Enron's founder, Kenneth Lay, was also convicted and faced as much as life in prison. However, he died before sentencing: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/05/business/05cnd-lay.html

Yes, their CEO is still in prison: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Skilling .

It would be required by law. Violating the law would hold corporate officers criminally responsible.

Possibly there's enough business risk that if Uber doesn't, someone else will, and then they will have SDCs but Uber won't, and then Uber will go bankrupt just about instantly.

There may eventually be standard test suites that can be applied to any of the self-driving systems in simulation. This would give us a basis of comparison for safety, but also for speed and efficiency.

As well as some core set of tests that define minimum competence, these tests could include sensor failure, equipment failure (tire blowout, the gas pedal gets stuck, the brakes stop working) and unexpected environmental changes (ice on the road, a swerving bus).

Manufacturers could even let the public develop and run their own test cases.

How about not testing it on the unpaid public in incremental patches like this age of software "engineering" has decided it was a good idea to do?

You ultimately have to at some stage, since any test track is a biased test by its nature.

It is more an issue of how sophisticated these vehicles should be before they're let loose on public roads. At some stage they have to be allowed onto public roads or they'd literally never make it into production.

"Never making it into production" sounds like the perfect outcome for this technology.

Then make the officers of the company stake their lives on this, not the lives of innocent pedestrians.

If they're not willing to dogfood their own potential murder machines then why should the public trust them on the public roads?

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