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Comment by Schiendelman | Hacker News Reader

We don't usually fine people or send them to prison for mistakes, especially when driving cars. Insurance companies figure this out between each other.

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Depends how serious the consequences are. A normal scrape which doesn't damage either car much or cause any real injury? That's something for insurance companies to figure out. A major accident that kills or seriously injures someone (especially due to drunk or distracted driving)? Someone's probably getting a hefty fine and points on their license at minimal, more likely prison.

If a self-driving car gets into an accident that kills a pedestrian or other driver, someone's going to have to take responsibility for that.

> due to drunk or distracted driving)? Someone's probably getting a hefty fine and points on their license at minimal, more likely prison.

In the US, killing someone with your car while being drunk and driving twice the speed limit gets you 10 days in jail: "10 Days for Bobby Cann’s Killer, a Repeat Drunk Driver, Is an Insult" (https://chi.streetsblog.org/2017/01/27/10-day-sentence-for-b...)

Is this sarcasm?

Bad drivers absolutely get fines and jail time for speeding, DUIs, etc.

Speeding and DUIs aren't mistakes, they're choices. There's a huge difference between the errors self-driving cars make and the equivalent errors humans make: the self-driving cars simply don't make those mistakes. In the category of things that self-driving cars do, insurance overwhelming handles those mistakes in both human and self-driving cases.

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