Waymo got pulled over. What happens next in Phoenix?
azcentral.com
azcentral.com
If my parked car gets a ticket, they put it on the windshield. It's not some stupid response like "unable to issue citation to car with no one in it." Since the window was open, they could also tape it on the dash or put it on the driver's seat.
There is no reason why Waymo should not get a citation and be forced to appear in court to explain themselves, just like everyone else. That is why the courts exist. But lazy cops seem to prevent this from happening.
Think about the case of stuck accelerators: the driver of the car could be blamed for hitting something, but they say in court that they did not have their foot on the gas. This gets checked out and pushed onto the manufacturer of the car. This is old hat and has a lot of legal precedent. This is why we have recalls for this kind of issue.
While the legal precedent may be a current grey area that doesn't mean it's impossible to give a citation to a driverless car. That is the beginning of getting the grey area into court where a judge can rule on things. Not giving a citation does nothing for anyone other than let Waymo get away from responsibility.
Not only that, but if Waymo got a citation because of the openness of our court system everyone could see how it turns out and what arguments the company is making.
This situation would have been a moving violation. It sounds like the law has not caught up with the concept that a company might hold a driver's license and be issued moving violations.
NODRIVER
NOHUMAN
https://www.wired.com/story/null-license-plate-landed-one-ha...
Dashcam footage of what the car actually did would be pretty helpful in understanding what actually happened.
An autonomous vehicle drove into oncoming traffic. That's not 'failing safe'.
Humans get confused by construction signage all the time. I'm curious if this was a mistake that would be understandable if a human made it, or if it was an obviously incorrect choice. "Can make the same mistake a human would" isn't ideal, but it's better than "Makes mistakes a human wouldn't."
When humans break traffic laws, it's often because they decide to break the law or do not take appropriate care to ensure that the law is followed. As a result, the process focuses on personal responsibility and accountability for the driver's actions. That framework doesn't map onto self-driving vehicles; we probably shouldn't be trying to force it to fit. Treating a self-driving vehicle that violates traffic laws as a defective product is a better way to frame the issue.
I'd compare it to a situation where a car runs a red light: it could be because the driver wasn't paying attention, or it could have been because the brakes failed and couldn't stop. The breaks could have failed because they weren't properly maintained or because of a flaw in the design. Who is responsible and what appropriate accountability looks like depends on the details. If the driver wasn't paying attention, they should get a citation for violating traffic laws. The operator/owner (the registered owner) should get a citation if the breaks aren't reasonably maintained. If there is a design flaw, a regulatory agency should address the issue with the manufacturer to ensure that the problem is corrected. If the manufacturer was reckless with its design or manufacturing practices, it and/or its employees should be held accountable for those choices.
In fact, literally today, I drove into the oncoming lane of traffic due to construction work. There wasn't signage or anything to do it, I just saw the car in front of me doing it and did it too. No idea if they did it for any sensible reason or not
For me, it is insane how many people need to die before anyone hold Tesla accountable for its autopilot [1].
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Tesla_Autopilot_crashe...
This isn't a novel issue: the courts and legal system regularly deal with defective products, including vehicles, that cause injury or death. If a defective product causes damage, the injured party is typically compensated financially for their loss. They even have frameworks for determining https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life in monetary terms.
I get to the spot where everyone veers right--and see a double yellow. On my *right*. We were going straight, the road zigged (45 mph road, at the time they were only widening it from two lanes to 4 when the property was developed. While the road was "straight" it zigged back and forth because of the patchwork development), the rain was so hard we couldn't see the lane markings.
I think in their current state, AI cars are a bit of a menace, but presumably they will improve over time, and I think it's evident we've reached a local maximum for humans, possibly even a decline as everyone is in ever more of a hurry, maybe let me just bend the rules a little this one time, it'll be okay.
The ethical issues when a driverless car kills someone cannot be solved in a reasonable way.
The question is which city/country will be the first to implement roads for driverless cars only ?
This is the present in Honolulu, as of last year: a fleet of self driving cars, operating on a closed road where only driverless cars are allowed, transports over 3000 people per day. The service is called "Skyline".
Fine for getting around different areas of the cities, but it's not going to drive you wherever you want to go though.
Given that human-driven cars, trucks, cyclists are already on the roads and will be for quite a while to come, and pedestrians already cross it, you would have to build a whole new road network, with crossing points for human-driven vehicles/pedestrian traffic. Which is simply infeasible, both in terms of money, but also simply space, especially in built-up areas where the space is already fully utilised.
Which begs the question: How are self driving cars ever going to be mainstream?
That's why you keep roads regulated, clean and orderly.
Humans don't always get it right. And things sometimes take out the temporary markings even if it was done correctly.
I've had to evade one of those big barrel cones rolling across the freeway. I suspect it fell off a truck rather than blew from road work, but there's no way to know. And would an AI car know that a barrel in front of it is a windblown hazard rather than an actual indication of a closed lane?
And I've clobbered one of the ordinary cones when a guy was confused by the construction zone and went straight from the left turn lane and I had to evade. Didn't see where it went and didn't think of trying to put it back. Again, is the AI going to be able to realize that smacking the cone was the right thing to do? (The cone was blocking off road in preparation for what was ahead, I didn't actually go into roadwork.)
Humans are far better than AIs at balancing things when faced with something having gone wrong.
AI--we put in a driverless bus on a short loop. It was in an accident within hours--any human driver would have understood to get out of the way of the truck or at least lay on the horn if that wasn't possible. The bus just sat there and let itself be hit by the backing truck. If everything is as it should be they probably already are better drivers than humans. It's just they aren't as good when confronted with things that are wrong.
Car stops, windows open, it gets connected to someone who is either a bot or really sounds like one ("I appreciate" after each sentence is just so creepy).