Shouldn't the investigation be criminal? Shouldn't someone go to jail over this?
In Australia for example if you are using your phone and kill someone you absolutely will be seeing jail time.
It's usually, though exact standards vary, vehicular homicide if there is criminal negligence, which can include inattention while driving especially if it results in a citable (on its own, before considering the fatality) violation of a traffic mandate that causes then fatality.
My... My understanding was that you can totally have this be treated as criminal but that most families don't want to press charges? Because, well, all of it sucks.
With "no fault" investigations, the engineers work with the investigators to identify and fix the problems. The result is a lot better than the adversarial system.
If that driver hadn’t been in a self driving car, they’d clearly be going to jail for looking at their phone while driving.
Everyone cooperated with the investigation. The mechanics were not criminally charged. The procedures were changed so it wouldn't happen again.
Under your proposal, the shop would have had every incentive to alter records, deny, obfuscate, and in general impede finding the truth as much as possible. Do you think that would have been better?
I know of no cases where mechanics, engineers, air traffic controllers, regulators or pilots were criminally charged in a fatal accident. The result is we have incredibly safe air travel. I don't know about you, but I'm happy about that result.
This is a great case to read up on. The testimony from experts in this case was top notch.
I believe the criminal charges in the case were related to the degree of deception Toyota engaged in with regards to unintended acceleration in their vehicles.
edit: Someone did a case study: https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~koopman/pubs/koopman14_toyota_ua_...
You mean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009%E2%80%9311_Toyota_vehicle... ?
> The most common problem was drivers hitting the accelerator pedal when they thought they were hitting the brake, which the NHTSA called "pedal misapplication.” Of the 58 cases reported, 18 were dismissed out of hand. Of the remaining 40, 39 of them were found to have no cause; the remainder being an instance of “pedal entrapment.”
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudden_unintended_acceleration...
[2]http://www.safetyresearch.net/blog/articles/toyota-unintende...
But the NHTSA's 10-month investigation beginning in 2010 when Toyota had already informed them of the sticky pedals came to the conclusion that zero of the reported cases of unintended acceleration involved sticky pedals.
That's a case for lying to the government, and we see a judgment against Toyota for lying to the government. How is it a case for unintended acceleration?
They certainly should be treated like a criminal. They used a deadly weapon to kill someone because they didn’t respect their responsibility.
Software engineering might be a better profession to work in if it was regulated the same way other engineering fields are.
Even then, it seems like many states require "gross" negligence, like speeding or intoxication to charge with a crime. Someone who simply "didn't see the pedestrian" but was otherwise following the law will likely not be charged with a crime. They'll get sued, of course.
That just doesn't seem to apply here, absent evidence that we don't have (e.g. Uber knew the LIDAR was being ignored, something like that). This was just a software bug. You don't throw people in jail because they wrote buggy software.
That depends upon the application.
Too many programmers think "Meh. Bugs are no big deal." because their code doesn't interact with the real world.
The problem is that the useful code that doesn't interact with the world has basically all been written, code is now starting to interact with he world by default.
Hang on, programmers, this ride is about to get bumpy.
(I thought of the first computer-aided fatality, but the sources don't seem to mention any prosecution w/r/t Therac-25)
But fine: let's say it was the LIDAR system was at fault. Do they go to jail, then? How about the bureaucrats who approved the test?
All this doesn't matter. I'm simply saying that ALL the facts in evidence point to this being a reasonable mistake, and reasonable mistakes don't qualify for negligence prosecution. If you want to argue to the contrary you need evidence, which doens't seem to exist. Therefore the upthread question "shouldn't someone go to jail?" is answered with a firm "no".
Therefore, every moment you spend not actively giving me money and property and power, and persuading others to do so, is a moment in which you are actively causing harm and suffering to billions of people who would have had happiness sooner if not for your delay.
You monster.
However, conducting self-driving car development in an unsafe manner is a good way of making people oppose self-driving cars, which leads to development of self-driving technology taking longer.
"People behave rationally" is the greatest error assumed by utilitarianism, do not underestimate the reptile brain and its response to fear.
Look on the road some time. You see a lot of cars with dented bodywork, running one headlight, often poorly maintained, and depending on the make and model very cheaply made. Many of the cars may be ten years old, or older. They are often sold used, with limited warranty or dealer service.
And you really want to add self-driving to this? You think a 8 year old kia whose operator hasn't updated it because he can't afford the dealer service fees is going to be safer?
I've seen this suggested a few times, and it makes me wonder if this is caused by religious beliefs or general pessimism.
The reason is that the only way it is an unrealistic idea is if we assume that human intelligence can not possibly be matched by a machine and/or if we assume that the progress towards genera AI will be so slow that we for the intents and purposes of the debate will take very long to match it.
The only thing that will stop us from eventually matching human intelligence with machines is if there is some super-natural soul necessary to match it. Even then, for that to stop us, said soul would need to be a necessary condition to make self-driving cars safer than human, which sounds even more implausible to me, given the many advantages self-driving cars can obtain:
Additional views of the road. Benefiting from accumulated knowledge from billions of hours of driving. Potentially wireless information exchange with the other automated cars in the vicinity (can't see through the fog very well? well, maybe the 10 cars around you can fill in blanks).
I think it's a totally unrealistic idea that self-driving cars won't get to a safety level where human drivers will be outlawed on public roads.
That, uh, is what "utilitarian" means.
My understanding is that Uber knows these cars aren't ready and that's why they have a human at the controls.
I would have thought the driver would be instructed to maintain awareness of the road as though he were operating the vehicle and that looking away from the road in a manner that suggests he was using his phone would immediately relieve Uber of any responsibility.
Perhaps the collision still would have happened, but at least the driver would have the defence of "I was paying attention and meeting all the job-role requirements as safety-operator of the vehicle."
These things and liability should have been decided before the cars were allowed on the road. But when Congress deregulated them at the federal level everyone hailed it as a good thing and completely ignored all the potential negatives of that.
Now, even if Uber is found guilty, it may get away with it, because there may be no law clearly attributing guilt to a self-driving car maker in case of accidents like these.
The root cause, in my opinion, is allowing cars on the road that inevitably lull their nominal driver into inattentiveness.
There might be ways to keep a safety driver engaged so that the chance of attention failure is significantly lower than inevitable, but it doesn't seem like Uber had been looking for them very hard.
(Someone went to jail for VW and there was no death directly as a result of the emissions cheating.)
This observation does in no way absolve the polluters, but the big picture would be incomplete without this perspective. We all have some blood from statistical deaths in our hands, some people more than others, and again some of them more than others because they broke some rules we introduced to make the deaths not run or of bounds.
That was an instance of deliberate fraud.
Presumably the developer in this scenario is not responsible for guaranteeing to and/or misleading a customer that his code adequately renders a deadly weapon safe, more likely that responsibility falls on the managers whose project it was to implement such a digital "safety" and instructed the developer to write the code in the first place.
Assuming the developer did not write the code with the intent of bringing about a person's death, which might involve fooling his superiors as to the efficacy of his work, I'd wager he can't be guilty of a crime. Outside of that, I believe vicarious liability applies.
Perhaps he was a one-man department of this hypothetical gun manufacturer, implementing, deploying, and marketing his product himself and of his own initiative; I don't think there's any doubt he'd be liable in this case, the extent of which is dependent on his intention.
Perhaps our developer was self-employed as a contractor, and warranted to his client (the hypothetical gun manufacturer) that the code was safe; assuming the manufacturer used it as warranted, and it failed, I'd assume the developer would be mostly liable for the result.
What about heavy machinery, like construction plant? Or power tools? Or common kitchen utensils? Would they satisfy the analogy?
Imagine if it was just a person at the wheel. Would a person have gone to jail for hitting that person, in the video?
Do you ever drive at night? Then you should intuitively know if it was really that dark, the headlights were off, or fog was present, or something else that would indicate a speed much lower than the posted limit was sensible (vs this car, which was speeding st the time).
Adding this is not a mature response to downvotes. I was indifferent to your original comment. I downvoted because of this addendum.
My guess for why the cops are not really going after uber is because the women was reportedly homeless so she does not have any family to fight for her case.
[0]: http://www.alllaw.com/articles/nolo/auto-accident/pedestrian...
Although, you might be able to argue for involuntary manslaughter but I'm no expert.