Self-Driving Cars

Perhaps. But in the meantime, who gets sued when your autobot hits a 1st year medical student, and the damages are calculated to be an entire doctor's career worth of earnings? You? GM?

Yeah.

Actually there is a lot of stuff written about this subject already. The discussion here just pokes around at a lot of low hanging fruit.

Exactly how things work out might not be defined by what technology is actually capable of. Having no manual override whatsoever might well be something that may never happen. There are some recent articles about the logic in googles cars getting confused by fixed gear bikes in some situations.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...e-googles-self-driving-cars

Obviously this bug will get fixed, but at what point will it be assumed that self driving cars are capable of handling everything.

Some links where some interesting questions are raised.

http://www.wired.com/2012/01/ff_autonomouscars/
http://www.popularmechanics.com/...elf-driving-cars-16016418
http://www.iii.org/...update/self-driving-cars-and-insurance
http://slashdot.org/...-to-take-control-of-self-driving-cars
http://www.latimes.com/...ving-accidents-20150512-story.html
http://www.technologyreview.com/...rs-make-ethical-decisions
http://gizmodo.com/...ng-to-kill-jobs-and-not-jus-1705921308
http://www.sciencedaily.com/...ases/2015/06/150615124719.htm
http://www.cnet.com/...-advocates-tangle-with-messy-morality

Is that the principle we used when those Toyota, Nissan and Honda airbags were injuring and killing people? Of course not!

That's one way to look at the process. Another way to look at it is that there is a new opportunity to make some very productive use of the entire commute. You may have to travel an extra hour or so to get to Atlanta from Durham North Carolina, but you gain back five hours of useful time in the process. You could be programming or working on a presentation or report for work. Or you might be catching up on some much needed sleep. And you get a bit better gas mileage to boot.

The advantage of not having to drive becomes even more pronounced if some substantial portion of that 400 miles takes you through rush hour traffic during which you cannot drive as fast as the speed limit. Maybe having self driving cars might mean fewer traffic jams.

What you are calling a bad idea that a money maker should not be involved in has historically been a huge market in which automakers around the world participate and derive enormous financial gains. There is in fact a huge demand for personal transportation systems that are convenient while being horribly expensive and inefficient, and which might even lead vast numbers of us to early graves.

The public transportation system in my area is substandard. I cannot rely on it to get me around downtown or to the next major city and back in less than 2-3 hours. I cannot rely at. all to get me anywhere after about 11:00 pm or before 7 am. By contrast, a car, self driving or not gets me to my destination on my schedule (or that of my clients), runs as late or as early as I choose, and goes everywhere I want to go.

Until the need for that convenience goes away, there is a market for inefficient, timely transportation that goes from point A to point B on a personal schedule.

Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

This section of California law is for vehicles that are incapable of going faster than 25 mph. If the car can go faster, then licensing as a regular car is required.

In a follow up article, Google says that they were not ticketed. It also appears that the law would allow golf carts on that stretch of road because the speed limit was no more than 35 mph. Surely the policeman could not have ticketed a golf cart in that situation.

ABE:

Looks like one thing that their goofy license accomplishes is that they cannot actually be ticketed for going 25 in a 35mph zone.

Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

A human in this situation might assess the risk and decide to pass or not to pass. If the human elected to pass, then any negligence involved in his decision might be figured into the liability involved if a spill happens and some disaster results. It is possible that the resulting calamity exceeds all insurance coverage.

If an onboard computer makes the same call, how would the liability be distributed? Would any liability be imputed to the driver?

Missed this a couple of years ago.

Some jurisdictions have a contributory negligence theory of law where the plaintiff's negligence either offsets or in some cases completely negates liability for the plaintiff's own negligence.

So you tried to pass but did so on the right where it was not legal, or you did follow some procedure in the handbook, or perhaps there was some indication that the load was loose that you ignored. Or perhaps if you were a little further back when you started your pass, you might have seen the developing hazard.

Any of those things might be considered contributory negligence.

The solution for this seems rather obvious. Put several folks in the car and allow them to switch off as needed. This problem is not of a nature that makes solving the problem impossible; just a little more expensive. If needed, you can enforce the limitation in software by preventing the machine from learning lessons when the supervisor is not at his best.

I think unfortunate rather than mistaken fits better here. I don't see a viable alternative.

I agree. But if that were the only limitation, then wow, what a fantastic change that could be for all of us! All of that driving time spent in productive activities while still retaining the point to point convenience of operating your own vehicle.

Even if that were true, it is not an insurmountable obstacle. But we do allow folks to do complex tasks in shifts for periods of time extending months and years. There probably is a burnout point, but is there any reason to believe it is something we cannot handle with some feasible, but maybe costly, rotation? I would not think so.

I don't believe it would be as effective in saving lives. With minor, but meaningful exceptions, computers are already better drivers than are humans. So the issue of having humans have to step in just is not going to go away.

I don't think there is much danger of safety getting overlooked here. (Where here means the process of getting the first approvals for automated cars) I am glad that we agree that the problems are not insurmountable. In this case, though I think that the problems with alertness during the learning process border on being trivial to solve.

All of the levels below level 5, require humans to take over and humans make errors. Every level of automation invites or encourages some level of driver inattention, but only the higher levels provide enough assistance to deal with inattention. I am not against lower levels of automation being placed in cars, but I don't see them as a huge leap from a safety standpoint.

Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.