The Mercedes Robo-Car That Made Me Want to Stop Driving

And as I said, our laws are enforced to a rather strict degree.

Likely depends on who signed what, to what extent a manufacturer can deny responsibility, etc. Many people will hire cars rather than own them so it's likely that the taxi service will bear responsibility unless the passenger has meddled.

This might not help. But automatic uploading to a public shaming site and/or to an automated police analytics engine should be enough.

Depends if it's recording general indiscretions or driving indiscretions. Once all/most driving is automated, I don't think we'll have many driving indiscretions, and you could potentially put them back on the manufacturer in some cases rather than the occupant.

Especially so when the majority of people do not own the car in which they're travelling but are hiring it for the journey like they do a taxi or plane.

Philosophically speaking, no one will be saved. We are all basically dying. Of course it would be nice to reduce traffic deaths, but we should carefully consider in what way our actions will affect society.

We should not assume this will only affect how people behave in traffic, as well. Other offences will likely also be included.

True, but it's a dangerous precedent. The fact is that a lot of law in areas such as traffic, waste management etc is basically meant to be fluid and a deterrent; if everybody that littered where it was illegal, drank from open containers where it was illegal, fly-tipped or sped was instantly caught, then we'd just have tonnes of people in prison for relatively minor offences.

I think there's a desirable degree of pragmatism to be favoured in lieu of unbounded technological utopianism on this point.

They are illegal in Germany.

> Legal Limits results in many deaths a year that would not occur if the Limits were more strict.

Source on this please. Let's take speed limits as an example. Looking at [1], the data for the US doesn't seem to be conclusive to me - some times speed limit decreases didn't have a significant effect, sometimes increases lead to more crashes, sometimes to less crashes. So I don't know about you, but I wouldn't use such a blanket statement. Also, Europe often has higher speed limits, but significantly less fatalities than the US[2], both by miles driven and by number of cars. That may or may not be causal, but the world is not as simple as it's the law so it must be good.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limit#Effectiveness

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...

Edit: I've been looking for regulations on following distance, but I can't actually find any. There's lots of rules that are given to driving learners but I can't find anything legally binding, whether for the US nor for European country. Obviously keeping a safe distance is necessary for reducing accidents, but lacking any data I can't really say what distance is safe. In Switzerland we learn the 'two second rule', in the US it seems to be three seconds - which seems excessively much to me - at that distance you'd have driver after driver using the gap in front of you since half the distance would seem close enough to the two-second-rule to them - thus creating way more critical situations where you have to be careful.

How come it's because of speed when every time someone die in a car he's either drunk, on drugs or felt asleep while driving?

Not to mention people die less because today's cars are also millions times more safe, not because we put speed camera on the side or because people drive slow.

I agree with everything you wrote. My post was meant to be a reaction to GP's post that implied tailgating to be equal with driving in a way that minifies cars cutting in front of you. I maintain that there is a sweet spot that is both safe as long as you're alert as well as keeps the traffic around you in sort of a steady state where everyone can just keep following. If you let the gap become larger, others will start cutting in - if you then have to use the breaks you basically rely on the guy behind you doing the right thing as well, thus increasing the risk of accidents.

Which is exactly the point I'm pushing: Who will pay for other's incompetence (or for lack of a better word failure)? Will we simply sweep someone's life under the rug? With regards to the idea that a company will be 'responsible,' just think of Shell and the oil in the gulf. I only want to be held accountable for my own actions, and not be a statistic a corporation sweeps under the rug. The issue is the accountability, and its ability to be exploited, not the actual legal value.

Who created the car if the hardware came from manufacturer, internal displays and sensors from a bunch of outside suppliers, and software to manage it all from Google?