It handled every situation as well as or better than a human would, including trash bags in the road, a truck driving the wrong way down a one way street, and numerous unpredictable pedestrians.
It was that day that I was convinced that we would have driverless tech by 2020, and the only thing that would stop it would be laws and regulations.
Even Alphabet may not want to front up the entirety of the capital that would be required to scale up Waymo around the world.
They also currently only have two passenger vehicle models that can be outfitted, so they are currently also limited by how quickly those manufacturers can produce those vehicles for them. How quickly can they add a model? Probably takes at least 6 months.
If I were the car manufacturer, I wouldn't mess with Waymo, I'd do everything I could to have them locked in to me and me alone. That would not be achieved by doing anything other than bending over backwards to get this tech working and deployed
But to answer your question, we’d need a whole different legal framework about liability for driverless cars instead of technological restrictions.
Like for example, the law ~says~ would say “one person must be designated as legally liable for the vehicle” and that’s it. Drive your driverless car on any road you want. If it hits someone, the designated person is liable.
This protects the consumer from being responsible for damages they have no control over, provides meaningful competitive incentives for driverless car manufacturers to improve safety, and doesn’t hamstring the industry’s development.
I guess jedberg's idea is that there needs to be a place for the buck to start, as it were, wherever it might end up. Currently that is the driver. However, I don't see why it couldn't start with the manufacturer. They could always try to shift blame to the owner if they were misusing it somehow or interfering with its correct operation.
The dog has a degree of autonomy or self-agency, and can make decisions that put its owner at legal risk. Someone else brought it into the world, but you, ultimately, made the purchase.
You made it yours, the problem’s on you.
Dog owners have physical and (some) psychological control over their dogs. Not true of SDCs.
Dogs are not programmed, they're bred.
Even very dangerous dogs can be kept in a way that renders them unable to harm anyone. Not true of a car that must drive around in public.
No breeder guarantees a dog's behavior for its lifetime. SDC manufacturers will guarantee the car's ability to drive.
Continuing the counter argument: who is liable if the phone you bought with faulty battery explodes causing life and property damage?
The owner/user isn't in charge of any of its actions, and can therefore not be help responsible for them.
this is moving the goalposts. the parent never said it would be ubiquitous, he said "we would have the tech". Waymo is currently offering driverless rides to the public, therefore we have the tech. no, it's not ubiquitous, and there's a lot of caveats, but it exists. driverless cars are a thing.
I think what you're saying is true as far as it goes. Also, if you allow cars that can only drive in a limited list of places, we've had driverless cars for 30 years. So do with that what you will.
For me, I would say that when anyone can order a self-driving car to go from any point on a road in California to any other point on a road, we're clearly there. One city seems far too small.