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Comment by gwbas1c | Hacker News Reader

When I read about all these incidents, it seems that there is no financial disincentive for resolving improper behavior like this.

Cruise should have some pretty hefty fines for doing things like blocking roads for 15 minutes.

For example, they probably should have been fine a couple million dollars for blocking Ocean Boulevard.

Personally, I think Cruise and other autonomous vehicles are not ready to operate driverless. I still think we are in the point where every cruise vehicle should be tailed by a car with a human driver; or that the customer should be a licensed driver in the driver's seat, and able to take over in emergencies.

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When, say, a car (with or without a driver) runs out of gas on a bridge during rush hour, causing a million dollars' worth of negative economic impact and slowing down emergency vehicles, their insurance should be fined heavily and their rate should go up. If we're going to price externalities, let's do it across the board.

Humans don't have an incentive to increase road use with the tradeoff of breaking down proportionally more often. A startup like Cruise is objectively incentivized to accept that tradeoff.

Where do we price up externalities! We surely need to in manufacturing, construction and such, but I don't see us doing it in any meaningful way now, so I am a bit surprised by your statement!

This would essentially mean the rich are the only who can drive.

A car accident goes form 50k to millions with ideas like this.

Why do you believe that would be the case? People sometimes cause a million dollars' worth of damages in a car crash, and insurance covers it, and somehow regular folks can still drive under this system.

It was multiple Cruise vehicles that blocked Ocean Boulevard, not just a single stuck car.

IE: First violation is a couple hundred bucks, 2nd is a couple thousand, compounding from there.

> For example, they probably should have been fine a couple million dollars for blocking Ocean Boulevard.

Is this based on fines that cars would normally get or the economic damage you think it caused?

It's based on how much money Cruise has.

It was multiple cars that broke down as opposed to an isolated incident.

> For example, they probably should have been fine a couple million dollars for blocking Ocean Boulevard.

OK. Can we also start hitting human drivers with these kinds of fines?

Joe Public has smaller pockets than a VC-funded company whose real purpose seems to be to erode safety standards and bring "move fast, break things" into safety-critical industries. I mean, the real purpose of Uber and Doordash is not food delivery and taxicabs, it's erosion of labour rights in the form of California Prop 22.

But Joe has insurance.

What car insurance covers fines? Where do I sign up?!

It's not that legal entities didn't have liability insurance. But here's the rub: your insurance will not hesitate to take recourse against you in case of gross negligence. But you never hear in the news about that happen to companies when they mess up beyond acceptable limits, at most their rates go up. One would love to see bent sheriffs and cops turned out of house and home after yet another case of police misconduct when the insurance seizes every very last penny of theirs to recover damages, yet that never seems to happen.

Sometimes I wish we would...

But it's important to differentiate with a single car that breaks down in the middle of the road versus a whole fleet of cars. Ocean Boulevard is a very wide road, so a single car breaking down in the middle of it won't stop traffic.

There are many terrible human drivers who do similar things.

Should we fine them the same way?

Morally, maybe so. Politically, the US is a capitalist society and there's no chance of this happening.

That's exactly how things work in the US: Fines are used to disincentive behavior.

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