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Comment by monkaiju | Hacker News Reader

If they cant interact with emergency vehicles well, which they cannot, then they shouldnt be on the road. This is only one of the growing number of obvious reasons why...

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Would you also propose driving license suspensions for drivers that fail to move out of the way for emergency vehicles or illegally double-parked a vehicle and blocked passage of an emergency vehicle?

Maybe not on first offense, but after a demonstrated repeated pattern of interfering with emergency vehicles, sure, why not?

Perhaps because in the absence of the kind of alternative route to getting to work that autonomous cars offer, no one in (the US at least) is going to levy an economic death sentence for something that serious?

I'm so tired of this tail-wagging-the-dog excuse. It's so hard to operate in (parts of) our society without a car that we can't meaningfully hold drivers responsible for their bad behavior, or keep people who show a repeated disregard for their responsibility in operating dangerous machinery off the road?

A) yes B) its a false dichotomy to apply the standards to humans, which perceive, learn, and think, as we do to a software product

software does all of the above

Why is it a false dichotomy to hold software products to the same standard humans are held to? That seems less like a dichotomy of any kind and more like a consistent policy.

Humans can also be punished and sent to jail.

We generally do not send people to jail for failure to yield to an emergency vehicle. We do ticket and fine them, which you can also do to automated vehicles.

I’m not the commenter above but, something must be done about serial lawbreaking drivers. I see maybe 100 cars per day run stop signs, red lights, speeding excessively, and other dangerous driving actions with no consequences.

There needs to be some enforcement and yes I would suggest suspension if it is found that the behavior is habitual for a driver.

How many of these are police officers (in non-emergency situations)

One of the scenarios in the article was the responder trying to wave the car back while the car was very insistent that it really needed to run over these fire hoses right now.

A motorist wouldn't just be suspended, they would go to jail and have their car impounded. Actually, maybe it should be tow operators and not first responders with surprise driver privileges. We'll have 100% compliance real quick if those are the guys watching out.

If the law states they should do so then, yes ?

Yeah, this is a "lose your license" situation.

It's not a "lose your license" situation for a human driver and is also not anywhere near intractable for the AVs.

Here's the video from the article: https://vimeo.com/822783539. If a human driver was doing these things, the only reason it's not a "lose your license" situation is because the driver would have been removed from the vehicle by the officers and the vehicle moved aside by the officers. It's likely the driver still faces punitive measures. This is only loosely permitted because there isn't an individual in the car to blame.

The proposed solution is "We'll let you move the car." This is a reasonable "lose your business license" situation. It's pretty easy to sympathize with those who are "vandalizing robotaxis with blunt tools".

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