Uber exec in March: “we shouldn’t be hitting things every 15,000 miles”

No, it's more like one year or less[1]

> I would bet a lot of people hit "something" that often

That's quite a claim... just from personal experience, I'd wager this is a very wrong assumption. Majority of people go most of their lives, if not their entire lives without hitting "something". More serious incidents are even more rare.

[1] https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/bar8.htm

I'm wary of this line of reasoning. No programmer outside of a terrorist organization will ever intentionally design a machine poorly. If a civil engineer -- specifically a Professional Engineer in the U.S. -- signs off on an unsafe bridge, and that bridge later collapses and kills someone, you can bet your arse they're getting sued and possibly charged with a crime. Unfortunately, we have no real equivalent to this in software engineering/programming -- the concept of a Professional Engineer doesn't exist, and so no one can be held accountable for faulty designs.

Yes, this would bring software development to a grinding halt. I for one don't necessarily consider that a bad thing. It doesn't have to be for every project too -- after all, you don't need a PE to sign off before you build a shed in your backyard. Likewise, a web browser or video game probably ain't gonna need that level of accountability. But for a self-driving car? If someone isn't willing to be held accountable for the software failing, I personally feel the system shouldn't be allowed on the road.

I don't know how it would work, I guess they'd have to pay for more insurance.

But it seems that the way it is now, everyone has to pay for their ability to move fast and break things.

Just throwing ideas around, my economics knowledge is rudimentary at best.

proponents of the banking bailout used this same rationale, that allowing big banks to fail would lead to economic collapse, but that was only the rationale, not the reason for that course of action. bernanke, paulson & geithner were instead worried about blowback to their careers and economic futures, because it would be their friends in high places taking the hit.

if some large banks had failed, most certainly other economic actors would have swooped in to pick up the pieces and resume business. these were lucrative, real assets after all. the danger was not in economic collapse, but in how long the rebound would take, and more pointedly, the effect on bernanke and friends' careers.

we retard progress and innovation if we don't hold institutions accountable and allow them to fail. bankruptcy is the mechanism we use to allow instutions (and people) to bounce back quickly from failure, so they can use their learnings to try another tactic.

People, when working as employees, seem to really protest the idea of being held responsible for anything at all. This has lead to laws that state that employees are almost never responsible for their actions during work time (NOT legal advice, but generally speaking: if you aren't actively sabotaging your employer and it isn't a crime, your employer is responsible. Even if you are extremely negligent)

(Large) corporations tend to be a lot easier to extract money from, and a lot more likely to play fair (ie. actually pay what they're convicted to pay) compared to humans. So even if an employee commits a crime during work hours, the employer takes "civil responsibility" (that's the part of the law where the principle "money (amount to be determined) can take the place of ANY legal conviction"). And criminal responsibility ? Frankly, usually, nobody cares, and employers are generally happy to just fire whoever it was on the spot.

And yes, this is generally true everywhere in the justice system. If the court can trust that you will do whatever it deems necessary, you will get a lot more flexibility out of them. That doesn't mean you can just do anything (American courts especially have historically shown that there are circumstances where they will bankrupt a company if the facts are bad enough, to the point that it's a bit of joke)

Given the above, of course it wouldn't be reasonable to extract heavy punishments against corporations when employees drive a truck through a kindergarten because they fell asleep at the wheel.

This was a woman that was watching Hulu on her cell phone behind the wheel of a car who, we can be pretty sure, was very clearly told to be at any point ready to take over the driving. And, I mean, we've all seen the video of her during that accident ... WTF. I am wondering why you would demand the company be punished ?

This is then further made problematic because actual punishments on companies tend to cause large job losses, large tax base losses, and may cause other companies to leave, further exacerbating the problem. So there's political reasons as well to not go too far.