Bike Lanes have turned out to be an interesting edge case.
Waymos are currently dropping off and picking up passengers in a bike lane which is not legal (because it is dangerous) however many ride share drivers also do this. As somebody who is commonly a biker / pedestrian I am excited that AVs will likely make many things safer for that class of user. That being said, I do worry about how we encode these "social understandings" of laws.
- A waymo I rode in on a highway was happy to go slightly above the speed limit
- It seems at stop signs waymo prefers to be slightly aggressive to make it through rather than follow the letter of the law.
It seems silly that we have to teach robots to break certain laws sometimes but parking in bike lanes / yielding to pedestrians are laws that human drivers break all the time and I hope the mechanisms mentioned in the article prevent us from teaching robots to program anti-social but common behavior.
Laws should be loser for autonomous vehicles with good safety records.
No one is protected by preventing waymos from making rolling stops, and driving like a human Uber driver.
I am, in general, hoping AV will reduce road deaths in the future.
The last hurdle is regulatory. We can’t let AV manufacturers use “there’s no driver” as a way to escape responsibility, externalizing the harms AC cause onto society.
The question is how to achieve fairness. If a human driver commits vehicular manslaughter, they get the book. What about AV? $10 million? Executives go to jail? What if $10 million fine per X AV miles driven is an OK cost of doing business?
In the US, 11 deaths per billion miles driven (or about 47k per year) is currently seen as an OK cost.
More than twice as much per mile as places like Sweden and Switzerland, and still substantially more than places like Canada, Australia or Germany (all three in the 6-8 deaths per billion miles range). So it's not like there isn't room to improve. The effort to do so just isn't seen as worth the cost at the societal or government level
Turning that into a monetary cost would change the ethics slightly, but it wouldn't be a monumental shift
The issue here is that a lot of the concerns about AV's are orthogonal to the standard metrics of concern.
I'm a strong transit alternatives advocate, but even I recognize that a firetruck or ambulance being blocked by an AV has the potential to cause an outsized amount of death and destruction, because deaths aren't always linear and a fire that is able to get out of control can do catastrophic damage compared to a single out of control vehicle.
I'm genuinely stunned that AV's do not have the ability to be "commandeered" by Police/Fire/EMS in a pinch, and I'm honestly surprised that regular citizens can't just hit a red button that signal "this is seriously an emergency." These are fairly simple steps to mitigate the tail risk of AV's but the platforms aren't going to prioritize that if there are no incentives.
We already accept that it’s fine for human drivers to block emergency services and we generally refuse to build, say, bus and bike lines that can be used by emergency services.
So the uproar over AV’s blocking emergency vehicles seems incredibly manufactured or inconsistent, much like the hoopla over AI and water.
e.g. You can take anyone complaining about this and you’ll find they didn’t care about emergency vehicles or water until just now regarding one thing. I’d like to see some consistency.
> I'm genuinely stunned that AV's do not have the ability to be "commandeered" by Police/Fire/EMS in a pinch, and I'm honestly surprised that regular citizens can't just hit a red button that signal "this is seriously an emergency."
The passenger of a Waymo can, but not anyone outside it. There's a very prominent "call for help" button on the screen when you get inside.
Don't forget to add rail incidents to that metric. I live in Spain, this year we had 4 derailments for a total of 48 deaths and 195 injured. The USA has had 0 passengers killed or injured from train accidents this year. Portugal had 15 death after a tram derailment. In Amsterdam, the tram is more dangerous than the car.
Also Germany is very high (for European standards) because of the Autobahn. They can save around 140 lives a year by having a limit on the Autobahn but the car lobby in Germany is very strong. Those 140 lives are seen as an OK cost just to go vroom on the Autobahn.
You are right that this happens frequently in the United States compared to Europe, but you are overstating the degree to which this culturally and legally acceptable. People who are doing this are not typically broadcasting it to others, and I can assure you that when they do, for the most part people will tend to "bat an eye" at the very least.
Note that motor vehicle insurance in most of Europe is more tightly regulated and generally more affordable than in the United States. Also, I suspect the car-dependent individuals in urban areas with robust public transportation in Belgium are generally vastly higher income than the typical uninsured compulsory driver in the United States. Happy to be corrected though
> there are a large group of people dependent on their driver's license
Are there "no licence cars" un Belgium and the US ? Basically a moped motor and a seat inside a box. 45kmh and no highway, but a bit more confortable and fast than a ebike for rural environment.
Not really, the cross section of people who lose their license/insurance and those that could use something like an ebike reliably for their commute is practically zilch. The US is really big and a lot of people have rural 30+ minute commutes where it snows ~6 months out of the year.
> But if you ask someone if they'd drive without insurance, or without driver's license they look at you like you've asked them to do the impossible.
> Whereas in the US no-one bats an eye when that happens. Half the time the cops just issue a ticket, and don't even tow the car.
A lot of the people driving without insurance or licenses in the US are illegal immigrants, which means enforcement of driving illegally is caught up in the same cultural-war fight over immigration law enforcement that has dominated American news since Trump got re-elected. "And now people who obey the law need to take out extra insurance for under/uninsured motorists" is specifically an anti-illegal-immigrant talking point.
> Losing one's license means destitution for many Americans.
That'd be the same for a Swede who lives in the middle of nowhere too. Although I'm sure both groups, if they'd loose their license, would continue driving anyways.
...But what percentage of Swedes is that? vs the vast majority of working-class Americans.
Remember, outside of its few biggest and wealthiest cities, the US just does not have decent, reliable public transport, and most places don't have any.
I think it's not too surprising that the law treats people with diminished capacity differently. It's not a bug, it's a feature, even though it may feel upsetting. There's no winning solution in a case like that.
Well, if the law treats them differently when it comes to punishment, then maybe it should treat them differently when it comes to being able to drive in the first place?
The refutation of your point is in the article itself. The standard, by law, punishment involves jail time or home confinement. The judge explained how those punishments were not appropriate because of the exceptional circumstances.
This is the assertion. You can recognize it because the obvious reply is that it is not at all a representative example, but one that you just handpicked. You're question-begging.
Twin Cities, 2010-2014: 95 pedestrians killed in 3,069 crashes. 28 drivers were charged and convicted of a crime, most often a misdemeanor ranging from speeding to careless driving. ~70% of pedestrian-killing drivers faced no criminal charge[0].
Bay Area, 2007-2011 (CIR investigation): sixty percent of drivers that were at fault, or suspected of being at fault, faced no criminal charges. Over 40 percent of drivers charged did not lose their driver's licenses, even temporarily[1].
Philadelphia, 2017–2018: just 16 percent of the drivers were charged with a felony in fatal crashes[2].
Los Angeles, 2010–2019: 2,109 people were killed in traffic collisions on L.A. streets... and nearly half were pedestrians. Booked on vehicular manslaughter: 158 people. The vast majority of drivers who kill someone with their car are not arrested[3].
I can literally do this all day. The original statement was correct, the case representative.
Who does it benefit if an accident ruins a second life?
What does a jail sentence deter? ("[no] gross negligence [...] wasn’t engaging in a race or sideshow, was not texting, and was not under influence")
This person was 80 years old with no criminal record, needs to pay $67400 in restitution, do 200 hours of community service, isn't allowed to drive for 3 years but "never intends to drive again". Apologised to the family of the victims. She's taking responsibility and I can't imagine forced labor at that age is fun. What more can you ask for here? The family member isn't coming back if she gets what's not unlikely to be a life sentence
Edit:
> She told a witness at the scene that she was trying to park her car when she accidentally moved her foot to the gas pedal.
This seems to happen a lot. Don't know about statistics but this happened to someone I know at 50yo (thankfully only damaged their own car minorly), and you hear it on the news with some regularity. Maybe the gas needs to be in a fundamentally different spot from the brake? We can jail the people to whom it happens, sure, but I can understand a judge using their head instead of their heart. The real solution must come either from the automotive industry or legislation
Your full-throated defense of Mary Lau is completely beside the point (and for what it's worth, it would be a fifth life, not a "second" -- she killed an entire family of four). GP claimed that human drivers who commit vehicular manslaughter get the book; they don't.
So, like, a six year prison sentence? Maybe more for multiple counts here? At least revocation of driving privileges forever (she's not getting any younger)? None of that happened.
> Who does it benefit if an accident ruins a second life?
The next person they'd mow down. (Also, retribution. It's a real human need and attempts at philosophising it away degrade trust in our justice system.)
> isn't allowed to drive for 3 years
This is the wild part. No! You don't drive again!
> What more can you ask for here?
For her to have recognised her own limitations before they took lives. Failing at that, her family–or literally anyone who cared about her, and didn't want to see her spend her last years in jail–having taken initiative.
> This is the wild part. No! You don't drive again!
She's not going to drive again.
> For her to have recognised her own limitations before they took lives.
This is something that humans suck at.
> Failing at that, her family–or literally anyone who cared about her, and didn't want to see her spend her last years in jail–having taken initiative.
You shouldn't punish her for other people failing to take action.
Not usually with fatal consequences. These were preventable deaths. Not only that, the driver was being incredibly reckless, apparently driving 70 mph in a residential area.
> You shouldn't punish her for other people failing to take action
You're punishing her for being criminally reckless. You're creating an incentive structure that should reduce the frequency of future criminality.
In 3 years, at age 83, if she wanted to, could try and take the driving test again and become licensed. This is just not going to happen :P In the end, the court can only prohibit her from driving while she is on probation.
Would it be great if this time she could be banned forever? Sure. But there's reasons why we don't just let judges make up arbitrary penalties and permanent restrictions on their own.
> Not usually with fatal consequences. These were preventable deaths. Not only that,
Humans don't misestimate their remaining ability with fatal consequences?
> the driver was being incredibly reckless, apparently driving 70 mph in a residential area.
Yes, by confusing gas and brake. She clearly has significantly reduced capacity.
> You're creating an incentive structure that should reduce the frequency of future criminality.
I do not think that the behavior of 80 year old people will be meaningfully changed by the degree of punishment applied here. This is a person that has lost a significant degree of capacity; unfortunately, humans losing capacity tend not to realize it or correctly estimate how much they have lost.
Odd point to raise in a thread about a family killed while waiting at a bus stop in broad daylight. Do you think reflective clothing would have changed the outcome of the event significantly?
> Deterrence doesn't affect crimes born from impulse
And yet I've seen way more people call an Uber instead of drive home drunk not because they thought they'd kill someone, but because they didn't want a DUI.
Sounds like the insight is that people have varying degrees of forethought. Crime isn't mono-causal and therefore solutions shouldn't be expected to be monolithic.
> If a human driver commits vehicular manslaughter, they get the book. What about AV?
They get their licenses pulled statewide [1]. Cruise's single negligent manslaughter event carried more consequence than dozens of human cases combined.
> What if $10 million fine per X AV miles driven is an OK cost of doing business?
It’s the same cost/benefit we accept under current rules. Why have cars that can go 3x the speed limit? Why not require breathalyzers in cars before starting them? Why not fine logistics companies if one of their drivers breaks the law? And so on… Because it’s worth it
Your questions are pertinent but what’s the benefit "worth" you’re referring to? The two first proposals would risk a politician popularity and the last one would be lobbied to he’ll buy the logistic companies. IMHO inconvenience isn’t worth driving among drunk coursier at 200kmh.
We can look to other forms of automation to get a sense of what to do. For example, planes largely fly themselves and a loss of life due to manufacturing errors from the manufacturer would deem them liable for those deaths. Seems like the solution here is large penalties and generally broad disincentives for incurring harm.
Yup. Even if "safer per mile", more cars and more miles driven will probably outweigh the benefits. And still be hazardous to cyclists and pedestrians, still make us design stupid cities (built for cars, not people), etc.
Like how electric cars were for saving the car companies, not the planet, autonomous will be the same.
The CEO gets charged with manslaughter? I work in healthtech and the responsible individual is certainly personally liable for any harm that results from reckless behavior, it should be the same here.
Same as if someone were driving, if a person just jumps in front of your car while you're driving under the limit/sober/etc, you aren't at fault, so the AV should also not be at fault if it couldn't reasonably avoid the harm. You balance these things, benefit to society vs harm to society, and you come to an acceptable tradeoff.
> The CEO gets charged with manslaughter? I work in healthtech and the responsible individual is certainly personally liable for any harm that results from reckless behavior, it should be the same here.
This is in like China, yes? Certainly not in the US of A, hence Luigi and all that…
Could you provide examples of healthcare executives held personally liable for harm resulting from reckless decision-making? I have never heard of such a thing happening in healthcare so framing CEO responsibility as a solution to the problem sounds like a stretch to me.
Some examples: Elizabeth Holmes got canned for lying to investors, not harming patients. Purdue Pharma plead guilty to misleading regulators and giving doctors kickbacks, not causing some hundreds of thousands of opioid deaths, but no Sackler family members were personally tried.
I work in the UK, where regulations are different, and there have been a few cases. Maybe not as many as there should be, but in theory this is something that exists in law.
Then it’s an okay cost of doing business. $10 million is a lot of money and consequences for these companies are not purely legal they are also social consequences.
Are they trying to drive safety or revenue? The second order effect people forget about is tickets are a source of revenue for cities and police depts. Surely driverless car companies will absorb a few tickets and fix the issue quickly.
So I do wonder what happens in the future when roads and cars are all automated and city funding from this channel dries up.
Fix the issue quickly, or optimize to the point where revenue gained from breaking the law exceeds the fine. Last I read they were holding steady on "passengers want us to pull into bikelanes to drop-off" in California.
Ticketing is a weird thing to do with driverless cars.
If the violations are intentional and easily fixable, then just pass laws/regulations requiring AV's to follow rules or else cease operations entirely.
If the violations are unintentional but happen only rarely in weird edge-case situations, then just set low frequency thresholds for them to be allowed, the same way we allow tiny amounts of rodent hairs in peanut butter. If AV companies exceed the threshold, then they get fined at first and eventually lose their permit -- but these aren't tickets for individual violations, but rather a yearly fine for going above the yearly threshold.
If the violations are intentional but not easily fixable -- e.g. they're stopping where not allowed because there's no legal place to stop within 15 blocks -- then the laws/regulations are bad, and tickets are essentially an unfair tax. That's the case in my city where moving trucks are essentially illegal, because it's illegal to double-park them, but there's usually no legal parking available within any reasonable distance that movers could carry furniture. So you just know that the cost of moving includes a "tax" of a parking ticket, unfair as it is.
Finally, if the violations are unintentional but happen all the time, the AV company should lose its permit because its software sucks.
I don't see how ticketing AVs for individual violations makes any sense.
EDIT: for those who think I'm letting AV companies get off too easily, it's precisely the opposite. I'm saying that if AV companies are violating traffic rules all the time and can't fix it, they should be banned. Ticketing is not the answer, because ticketing isn't holding these vehicles to a high enough standard. It's letting the companies get off the hook by merely paying occasional tickets instead of improving their software.
In all of your situations except for cases where no good legal option exists, ticketing is just the easier way to apply your suggested idea. It gives a direct incentive to the company to lower the rate as far as is possible. It doesn't allow some minimal amount without a fee, but that doesn't seem like that big of a deal.
The biggest reason for the difference between Autonomous vehicles and peanut butter is that with autonomous vehicles, we already have a compliance system in place....cops. It's not designed for autonomous vehicles, and you are correct that it's not the way you would design it for the ground up for autonomous vehicles, but it's far better to accept the imperfections than to build some new, separate compliance and monitoring system on top of the existing one. The benefits aren't large enough to justify it.
In the far future when the vast majority of vehicles are autonomous? Sure, probably worth scrapping to a new system (by then, my guess is that issues are rare enough to just not have a system at all and just use the legal system in the rare cases of large issues).
Until then, ticketing in the case of traffic violations seems fine and good enough to me.
> What happens after autonomous vehicle get enough violations?
They put R&D resources toward not getting as many tickets and eventually fix their software to not get tickets? Self driving cars might profit $100/day. Getting tickets completely eats that and ticketing mega corps will be very popular politically so you better believe it will happen
You make some good points, but here are some counterpoints:
There is an existing infrastructure for ticketing by license plate, payment processing, collection, etc.
You’re describing changes to the law, which require a bunch of procedural hurdles. It’s much easier for the DMV to just promulgate new rules that tap into existing infrastructure, as they did here.
Also, how is the government supposed to assess whether these violations are intentional or not? Tickets are strict liability (you get the ticket if you do it regardless of intent, reasons, etc.) because it is easy to administer.
Of course I'm describing changes to the law. AV's inherently require tons of changes to the law. They already have. Permits for AV companies operate under new law. That is not an obstacle.
No, I think ticketing is the right thing to do. You set a law. Any instance of breaking that law costs money, so the AV company has an incentive to reduce the number of violations. The won't be able to bring the number of violations down to 0 just like we can't bring the number of cockroaches in chocolate down to 0, but that nonzero amount is just a regulatory cost they can decrease by getting closer to the goal of 0 violations.
Obviously, we should also have the option to pull vehicles that are brazenly ignoring the law and just eating the cost of the tickets. Just like we do with drivers who do that. But that should be the second line of defense if regular monetary fines (tickets) fail
The point is, with software you don't need tickets. Either the software is written to try to follow the law or it isn't. If it's trying, then we establish thresholds. If the company is actively trying to break the law, it should be shut down.
Tickets are a silly, roundabout way to go about it. They make sense for human drivers because they're all running different independent "brain software" and it's unrealistic for minor violations to ban someone from driving. But with shared software across a fleet, you can just require the company to fix its driving software directly when possible. Ticketing is actually counterproductive, because it allows these companies to avoid many of these fixes if the tickets are infrequent enough.
I feel like this trivializises all software development. It happens but 99% of development is done to follow the spec or law in this case. The failures or bugs are usually not intentional. You basically saying if 1 car in the fleet breaks the law shut them down? If thats a strawman im sorry but even in software algorithm have unintentional bugs and make mistakes. The same is true for human drivers but we dont revoke their licenses when they break the law we have a proportional penalty for break. If driverless cars are speeding its a slap on the wrist. If they are driving the wrong way down the freeway the penalty would be revoking licenses
> Either the software is written to try to follow the law or it isn't
Then the real world intervenes. Nobody plans to block an intersection. But a lack of planning and shits given will put one into that position even without intention.
> it allows these companies to avoid many of these fixes if the tickets are infrequent enough
Sounds fine? Like, as long as AVs and human drivers share the roads, modulating enforcement with infraction frequency seems fine.
> major benefit of AV's is that they're supposed to be better than human drivers, not breaking traffic laws just as often
If they're infrequently breaking minor traffic laws they may still be doing so (a) less frequently than humans or (b) with less consequence than when humans do it.
I say this as someone who tends to drive the speed limit: our traffic laws were not written for perfect parsing.
>If the violations are intentional and easily fixable, then just pass laws/regulations requiring AV's to follow the law or else cease operations entirely.
I have to stop reading the rest of the comment right there.
If the violations are intentional and easily fixable is an incredibly loaded presumption to start any type of conversation, dialogue, or debate. To the point, asking the question 'how do we qualify intention? How are we measuring difficulty of fix? Costs of payroll, computer, deployment, and potential regression testing? What about the very nature of the context that led up to it? Did an external 3rd party cutoff a robotaxi and require that the robotaxi veer into the oncoming traffic lane, bc sensors indicated it was the best decision to avoid a collision, prioritizing safety and human life over traffic law?
What happens when following traffic law statistically leads to a greater risk of loss of life over violating the law?
I must insist we move the dialogue upstream to reality as-is, and there is plenty to discuss there.
I will in good faith issue a starting point: how should we measure the robotaxi driver license wrt suspension? Do we issue a point system that is averaged across the fleet, e.g. violations/car before suspending all operations until licensure evaluation? Personally I think that is a fair starting point amd am completely open minded to alternative views.
Ticketing AVs for individual violations like human drivers is the only fair way.
How would your proposal work for personal driverless cars, with/without custom modifications? ie. if my personal car commits violation on its way to pick me up
If you purchase an AV car then similarly it's up to the state to regulate the manufacturer. How could you possibly be personally responsible for the fact that it ran a red light?
And nobody should ever be allowed to personally modify an AV's software. Such a vehicle should never be allowed on the road.
They should be ticketed and stopped from operating after certain threshold. And tickets should have some reasonable multiplier as they are much more capable paying say at absolute minimum 1000x. Only high enough tickets are efficient against corporations. As their shareholders sadly can not get those tickets.
Ticketing in California generally results in revenue going directly to the enforcing locality, not the state. It's an important difference, and why you tend to get things like speed traps for passing motorists
What's gonna really be funny is the first time a state legislates that an AV company has to keep a bug in their software to maintain a municipal income flow.
As a Waymo (and other driverless car) supporter, this seems like an obviously good thing, right? I’m a little surprised this wasn’t possible before given the amount of regulatory scrutiny (correctly) applied to these companies.
> As a Waymo (and other driverless car) supporter, this seems like an obviously good thing, right? I’m a little surprised this wasn’t possible before given the amount of regulatory scrutiny (correctly) applied to these companies
Not necessarily. I went into a bit more detail in my own comment but it might be useful to think that when regulations are written keeping in mind multibillion dollar automobile companies, what the effect of those regulations on a person maintaining their own vehicles might be.
Consider that your Waymo got ticketed, but you had flashed it with a "no customer telemetry" firmware. Once Waymo gets the ticket, they flag your car as having "unauthorized" software and now the ball's in your court that the reason why your Waymo got ticketed has nothing to do with the telemetry feature that tells Waymo what radio stations you were listening to.
Also, when regulations are written keeping in mind multibillion dollar automobile companies, the ticket isn't going to cost $500.
I'm of the opinion that if one owns an autonomous vehicle, regardless of software modification or not (which should be allowed), then one is fully responsible for it's actions. If one doesn't trust the software provided by the manufacturer, don't buy/use it. Once one chooses to buy it and operate it, then it's that person.
Possible exceptions would be in the case that, after purchase, the manufacturer pushes a software update that meaningfully changes the behavior in such a way that it causes issues. In that case, both A) the manufacturer should be responsible and B) the owner should have the option to get some kind of compensation.
UPDATE (can't respond to the two subcomments below due to post throttling, so I'm updating this comment instead)
> the car is basically a taxi and the taxi service is to blame for any mistakes
@skybrian - Agreed! but if you read the article, the CA DMV is ticketing the manufacturer, not the operator.
None of my concerns hold if the operator was ticketed - infact, existing regulations are set up exactly that way, so no new regulation was even necessary. Something's not adding up.
> Right now, no one can independently own and operate an AV the way Waymo or Tesla does
@ourspacetabs - Sure but the regulation seems to be specifically addressed at the manufacturer, not the operator.
I would have no concern if the regulation was addressed to the operator. The article atleast doesn't imply that's the case.
---
> The state's Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) has announced new regulations on autonomous vehicles (AVs), including a process for police to issue a "notice of AV noncompliance" directly to the car's manufacturer.
> Under the new rules, police can cite AV companies when their vehicles commit moving violations. The rules will also require the companies to respond to calls from police and other emergency officials within 30 seconds, and will issue penalties if their vehicles enter active emergency zones.
These are new frontiers in automotive regulation. Typically, if a car failed because of a manufacturer issue, the driver would be ticketed. For example: if Hyundai sold vehicles where the engine would explode around 50k miles and that caused an accident, the driver of the vehicle would be ticketed for it.
Now if we take the human out of it, it is Hyundai that would be ticketed for it. Insurance companies are certainly going to take notice and adjust their risk models accordingly.
I imagine there will be a lot of fingerpointing by the manufacturer towards customers.
In the worst case, this is the end of customers servicing their own autonomous vehicles.
If we imagine that most vehicles in the next 15 years will be autonomous, this would mean customers would have to handle regulation aimed at multibillion dollar companies, if they were to service their own autonomous vehicles, or give up on servicing their own autonomous vehicles entirely and just rent them instead.
Not sure I agree. The clear boundary here to me is who owns and is operating the vehicle. Waymo both owns and operates their vehicles, it’s a taxi service, you wouldn’t say a Waymo rider is operating a vehicle and therefore deserves the ticket. Right now, no one can independently own and operate an AV the way Waymo or Tesla does.
When that happens someday, then the ticket would go to the owner/operator of the vehicle - whoever bought the car. If you get a ticket due to something dumb your personally owned Waymo did, wouldn’t you pursue that case against Waymo separately, the same way you’d pursue Hyundai for selling you a car whose engine blew up after 50k miles?
It seems pretty reasonable to me that when you're not driving, the car is basically a taxi and the taxi service is to blame for any mistakes. The car manufacturer isn't just making cars anymore. It's providing a service.
Perhaps they could sell the car to a different taxi service, though?
I don’t disagree with needing some sort of consequence for bad driverless actions. But I distrust the motivation. Maybe California is just looking for more revenue sources after rampantly mismanaging their state and letting corruption and fraud continue.
maybe Tesla can put that weird robot that connects the charging connector to the car to use by building a robot that can give the police a hand to place the ticket into
Ideally the fees would be similar to the Norway model, where some tickets are tied to the income of the driver, in this case the pre-tax earnings of the company that created the driverless car.
That can make sense (opinions differ) for individuals, but it's not like the company is advertising with "we get you there at 1.2x legal speed". They're not competing on that; they're not choosing to do this on purpose like an individual might choose to speed (for example because of economic incentives if their hourly price is high)
If they were, then it makes sense to fine them to some multiple of the benefit they got from this advertising tactic, but as it is, I don't see why it should be different from anyone else's ticket. The company isn't likely to enjoy a flood of this administrative work, besides the cost of the actual fines, so they'll work to minimise them anyway
Assuming you divide it down to the earnings per car, that makes perfect sense. Of course right now they aren't making any profit at all, and by the time it is relevant it is likely that the cars will commit substantially no violations at all.
Isn't Norway only for drunk driving? Finland has it for massive speed excesses, but it is based on net taxable income taking out business expenses for taxi drivers, and Waymo is still negative.
If they become profitable you'd want to normalize by number of miles, unless you just want an incentive system to get more people on the road (extra drivers) and increase chance of humans suffering road injuries to boost employment in an internal service sector.
But even then coming out with a more efficient fleet than a competitor for higher margin would be penalized. You'd rather disincentivize skimping on safety for margin and not disincentivize better maintenance and fuel economy.
Waymos are currently dropping off and picking up passengers in a bike lane which is not legal (because it is dangerous) however many ride share drivers also do this. As somebody who is commonly a biker / pedestrian I am excited that AVs will likely make many things safer for that class of user. That being said, I do worry about how we encode these "social understandings" of laws. - A waymo I rode in on a highway was happy to go slightly above the speed limit - It seems at stop signs waymo prefers to be slightly aggressive to make it through rather than follow the letter of the law.
It seems silly that we have to teach robots to break certain laws sometimes but parking in bike lanes / yielding to pedestrians are laws that human drivers break all the time and I hope the mechanisms mentioned in the article prevent us from teaching robots to program anti-social but common behavior.
https://futurism.com/future-society/waymo-bike-lanes-traffic
The last hurdle is regulatory. We can’t let AV manufacturers use “there’s no driver” as a way to escape responsibility, externalizing the harms AC cause onto society.
The question is how to achieve fairness. If a human driver commits vehicular manslaughter, they get the book. What about AV? $10 million? Executives go to jail? What if $10 million fine per X AV miles driven is an OK cost of doing business?
More than twice as much per mile as places like Sweden and Switzerland, and still substantially more than places like Canada, Australia or Germany (all three in the 6-8 deaths per billion miles range). So it's not like there isn't room to improve. The effort to do so just isn't seen as worth the cost at the societal or government level
Turning that into a monetary cost would change the ethics slightly, but it wouldn't be a monumental shift
I'm a strong transit alternatives advocate, but even I recognize that a firetruck or ambulance being blocked by an AV has the potential to cause an outsized amount of death and destruction, because deaths aren't always linear and a fire that is able to get out of control can do catastrophic damage compared to a single out of control vehicle.
I'm genuinely stunned that AV's do not have the ability to be "commandeered" by Police/Fire/EMS in a pinch, and I'm honestly surprised that regular citizens can't just hit a red button that signal "this is seriously an emergency." These are fairly simple steps to mitigate the tail risk of AV's but the platforms aren't going to prioritize that if there are no incentives.
So the uproar over AV’s blocking emergency vehicles seems incredibly manufactured or inconsistent, much like the hoopla over AI and water.
e.g. You can take anyone complaining about this and you’ll find they didn’t care about emergency vehicles or water until just now regarding one thing. I’d like to see some consistency.
The passenger of a Waymo can, but not anyone outside it. There's a very prominent "call for help" button on the screen when you get inside.
Also Germany is very high (for European standards) because of the Autobahn. They can save around 140 lives a year by having a limit on the Autobahn but the car lobby in Germany is very strong. Those 140 lives are seen as an OK cost just to go vroom on the Autobahn.
Losing one's license means destitution for many Americans. That places practical limits on enforcement compared with less car-oriented countries.
But if you ask someone if they'd drive without insurance, or without driver's license they look at you like you've asked them to do the impossible.
Whereas in the US no-one bats an eye when that happens. Half the time the cops just issue a ticket, and don't even tow the car.
And now people who obey the law need to take out extra insurance for under/uninsured motorists.
To wit: Europe's 1.8% (and Belgium's 0.7%) uninsured-driver rates are a fraction of America's 15% [1][2].
[1] https://www.mibi.ie/ireland-may-have-highest-level-of-uninsu...
[2] https://www.iii.org/fact-statistic/facts-statistics-uninsure...
Note that motor vehicle insurance in most of Europe is more tightly regulated and generally more affordable than in the United States. Also, I suspect the car-dependent individuals in urban areas with robust public transportation in Belgium are generally vastly higher income than the typical uninsured compulsory driver in the United States. Happy to be corrected though
Are there "no licence cars" un Belgium and the US ? Basically a moped motor and a seat inside a box. 45kmh and no highway, but a bit more confortable and fast than a ebike for rural environment.
> Whereas in the US no-one bats an eye when that happens. Half the time the cops just issue a ticket, and don't even tow the car.
A lot of the people driving without insurance or licenses in the US are illegal immigrants, which means enforcement of driving illegally is caught up in the same cultural-war fight over immigration law enforcement that has dominated American news since Trump got re-elected. "And now people who obey the law need to take out extra insurance for under/uninsured motorists" is specifically an anti-illegal-immigrant talking point.
That'd be the same for a Swede who lives in the middle of nowhere too. Although I'm sure both groups, if they'd loose their license, would continue driving anyways.
Remember, outside of its few biggest and wealthiest cities, the US just does not have decent, reliable public transport, and most places don't have any.
Hah. Do they, though? https://sfstandard.com/2026/03/20/mary-lau-sentenced-probati...
The standard for human drivers is through the floor.
The linked article doesn't describe the standard. It describes a single, exceptional example.
This is the assertion. You can recognize it because the obvious reply is that it is not at all a representative example, but one that you just handpicked. You're question-begging.
Twin Cities, 2010-2014: 95 pedestrians killed in 3,069 crashes. 28 drivers were charged and convicted of a crime, most often a misdemeanor ranging from speeding to careless driving. ~70% of pedestrian-killing drivers faced no criminal charge[0].
Bay Area, 2007-2011 (CIR investigation): sixty percent of drivers that were at fault, or suspected of being at fault, faced no criminal charges. Over 40 percent of drivers charged did not lose their driver's licenses, even temporarily[1].
Philadelphia, 2017–2018: just 16 percent of the drivers were charged with a felony in fatal crashes[2].
Los Angeles, 2010–2019: 2,109 people were killed in traffic collisions on L.A. streets... and nearly half were pedestrians. Booked on vehicular manslaughter: 158 people. The vast majority of drivers who kill someone with their car are not arrested[3].
I can literally do this all day. The original statement was correct, the case representative.
[0]: https://www.startribune.com/in-crashes-that-kill-pedestrians...
[1]: https://walksf.org/2013/05/02/investigative-report-exposes-h...
[2]: https://whyy.org/articles/philadelphia-drivers-rarely-prosec...
[3]: https://laist.com/news/transportation/takeaways-pedestrian-d...
What does a jail sentence deter? ("[no] gross negligence [...] wasn’t engaging in a race or sideshow, was not texting, and was not under influence")
This person was 80 years old with no criminal record, needs to pay $67400 in restitution, do 200 hours of community service, isn't allowed to drive for 3 years but "never intends to drive again". Apologised to the family of the victims. She's taking responsibility and I can't imagine forced labor at that age is fun. What more can you ask for here? The family member isn't coming back if she gets what's not unlikely to be a life sentence
Edit:
> She told a witness at the scene that she was trying to park her car when she accidentally moved her foot to the gas pedal.
This seems to happen a lot. Don't know about statistics but this happened to someone I know at 50yo (thankfully only damaged their own car minorly), and you hear it on the news with some regularity. Maybe the gas needs to be in a fundamentally different spot from the brake? We can jail the people to whom it happens, sure, but I can understand a judge using their head instead of their heart. The real solution must come either from the automotive industry or legislation
Laws are also meant to deter bad behavior, people who aren't able to drive safely should know there will be consequences
When there's significant extenuating circumstances or "the book" wouldn't serve the purposes of justice, they don't.
Citing a random source for CA vehicular manslaughter law, it looks like you can get up to six years: https://www.kannlawoffice.com/california-penal-code-section-...
So, like, a six year prison sentence? Maybe more for multiple counts here? At least revocation of driving privileges forever (she's not getting any younger)? None of that happened.
The next person they'd mow down. (Also, retribution. It's a real human need and attempts at philosophising it away degrade trust in our justice system.)
> isn't allowed to drive for 3 years
This is the wild part. No! You don't drive again!
> What more can you ask for here?
For her to have recognised her own limitations before they took lives. Failing at that, her family–or literally anyone who cared about her, and didn't want to see her spend her last years in jail–having taken initiative.
She's not going to drive again.
> For her to have recognised her own limitations before they took lives.
This is something that humans suck at.
> Failing at that, her family–or literally anyone who cared about her, and didn't want to see her spend her last years in jail–having taken initiative.
You shouldn't punish her for other people failing to take action.
She gets her license back. That's wild.
> This is something that humans suck at
Not usually with fatal consequences. These were preventable deaths. Not only that, the driver was being incredibly reckless, apparently driving 70 mph in a residential area.
> You shouldn't punish her for other people failing to take action
You're punishing her for being criminally reckless. You're creating an incentive structure that should reduce the frequency of future criminality.
In 3 years, at age 83, if she wanted to, could try and take the driving test again and become licensed. This is just not going to happen :P In the end, the court can only prohibit her from driving while she is on probation.
Would it be great if this time she could be banned forever? Sure. But there's reasons why we don't just let judges make up arbitrary penalties and permanent restrictions on their own.
> Not usually with fatal consequences. These were preventable deaths. Not only that,
Humans don't misestimate their remaining ability with fatal consequences?
> the driver was being incredibly reckless, apparently driving 70 mph in a residential area.
Yes, by confusing gas and brake. She clearly has significantly reduced capacity.
> You're creating an incentive structure that should reduce the frequency of future criminality.
I do not think that the behavior of 80 year old people will be meaningfully changed by the degree of punishment applied here. This is a person that has lost a significant degree of capacity; unfortunately, humans losing capacity tend not to realize it or correctly estimate how much they have lost.
Other irresponsible drivers.
And yet I've seen way more people call an Uber instead of drive home drunk not because they thought they'd kill someone, but because they didn't want a DUI.
I don’t see anyone in this thread arguing for this. Just backing up the notion that vehicular manslaughter is almost tolerated by the justice system.
As well as incapacitation and retribution.
If only! "10 Days In Jail For Drunken Driver Who Killed Cyclist Bobby Cann" https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20170126/old-town/ryne-san-h...
> San Hamel was a partner in a business called AllYouCanDrink.com at the time.
…
> Cann, an experienced cyclist who once biked from New Hampshire to Chicago, was heading home from his job at Groupon the night he was killed.
It looks like allyoucandrink.com now redirects to Groupon, in a decent bit of irony.
They get their licenses pulled statewide [1]. Cruise's single negligent manslaughter event carried more consequence than dozens of human cases combined.
[1] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/news-and-media/dmv-statement-o...
It’s the same cost/benefit we accept under current rules. Why have cars that can go 3x the speed limit? Why not require breathalyzers in cars before starting them? Why not fine logistics companies if one of their drivers breaks the law? And so on… Because it’s worth it
FYI Cars will soon detect if you are impaired.
I wish this were true. Often they get off with a light punishment, or no punishment at all.
Like how electric cars were for saving the car companies, not the planet, autonomous will be the same.
Same as if someone were driving, if a person just jumps in front of your car while you're driving under the limit/sober/etc, you aren't at fault, so the AV should also not be at fault if it couldn't reasonably avoid the harm. You balance these things, benefit to society vs harm to society, and you come to an acceptable tradeoff.
This is in like China, yes? Certainly not in the US of A, hence Luigi and all that…
Some examples: Elizabeth Holmes got canned for lying to investors, not harming patients. Purdue Pharma plead guilty to misleading regulators and giving doctors kickbacks, not causing some hundreds of thousands of opioid deaths, but no Sackler family members were personally tried.
So I do wonder what happens in the future when roads and cars are all automated and city funding from this channel dries up.
If the violations are intentional and easily fixable, then just pass laws/regulations requiring AV's to follow rules or else cease operations entirely.
If the violations are unintentional but happen only rarely in weird edge-case situations, then just set low frequency thresholds for them to be allowed, the same way we allow tiny amounts of rodent hairs in peanut butter. If AV companies exceed the threshold, then they get fined at first and eventually lose their permit -- but these aren't tickets for individual violations, but rather a yearly fine for going above the yearly threshold.
If the violations are intentional but not easily fixable -- e.g. they're stopping where not allowed because there's no legal place to stop within 15 blocks -- then the laws/regulations are bad, and tickets are essentially an unfair tax. That's the case in my city where moving trucks are essentially illegal, because it's illegal to double-park them, but there's usually no legal parking available within any reasonable distance that movers could carry furniture. So you just know that the cost of moving includes a "tax" of a parking ticket, unfair as it is.
Finally, if the violations are unintentional but happen all the time, the AV company should lose its permit because its software sucks.
I don't see how ticketing AVs for individual violations makes any sense.
EDIT: for those who think I'm letting AV companies get off too easily, it's precisely the opposite. I'm saying that if AV companies are violating traffic rules all the time and can't fix it, they should be banned. Ticketing is not the answer, because ticketing isn't holding these vehicles to a high enough standard. It's letting the companies get off the hook by merely paying occasional tickets instead of improving their software.
The biggest reason for the difference between Autonomous vehicles and peanut butter is that with autonomous vehicles, we already have a compliance system in place....cops. It's not designed for autonomous vehicles, and you are correct that it's not the way you would design it for the ground up for autonomous vehicles, but it's far better to accept the imperfections than to build some new, separate compliance and monitoring system on top of the existing one. The benefits aren't large enough to justify it.
In the far future when the vast majority of vehicles are autonomous? Sure, probably worth scrapping to a new system (by then, my guess is that issues are rare enough to just not have a system at all and just use the legal system in the rare cases of large issues).
Until then, ticketing in the case of traffic violations seems fine and good enough to me.
After enough violations humans get their license taken away. What happens after autonomous vehicle get enough violations?
They put R&D resources toward not getting as many tickets and eventually fix their software to not get tickets? Self driving cars might profit $100/day. Getting tickets completely eats that and ticketing mega corps will be very popular politically so you better believe it will happen
There is an existing infrastructure for ticketing by license plate, payment processing, collection, etc.
You’re describing changes to the law, which require a bunch of procedural hurdles. It’s much easier for the DMV to just promulgate new rules that tap into existing infrastructure, as they did here.
Also, how is the government supposed to assess whether these violations are intentional or not? Tickets are strict liability (you get the ticket if you do it regardless of intent, reasons, etc.) because it is easy to administer.
Obviously, we should also have the option to pull vehicles that are brazenly ignoring the law and just eating the cost of the tickets. Just like we do with drivers who do that. But that should be the second line of defense if regular monetary fines (tickets) fail
Tickets are a silly, roundabout way to go about it. They make sense for human drivers because they're all running different independent "brain software" and it's unrealistic for minor violations to ban someone from driving. But with shared software across a fleet, you can just require the company to fix its driving software directly when possible. Ticketing is actually counterproductive, because it allows these companies to avoid many of these fixes if the tickets are infrequent enough.
Then the real world intervenes. Nobody plans to block an intersection. But a lack of planning and shits given will put one into that position even without intention.
> it allows these companies to avoid many of these fixes if the tickets are infrequent enough
Sounds fine? Like, as long as AVs and human drivers share the roads, modulating enforcement with infraction frequency seems fine.
A major benefit of AV's is that they're supposed to be better than human drivers, not breaking traffic laws just as often.
If they're infrequently breaking minor traffic laws they may still be doing so (a) less frequently than humans or (b) with less consequence than when humans do it.
I say this as someone who tends to drive the speed limit: our traffic laws were not written for perfect parsing.
I have to stop reading the rest of the comment right there.
If the violations are intentional and easily fixable is an incredibly loaded presumption to start any type of conversation, dialogue, or debate. To the point, asking the question 'how do we qualify intention? How are we measuring difficulty of fix? Costs of payroll, computer, deployment, and potential regression testing? What about the very nature of the context that led up to it? Did an external 3rd party cutoff a robotaxi and require that the robotaxi veer into the oncoming traffic lane, bc sensors indicated it was the best decision to avoid a collision, prioritizing safety and human life over traffic law?
What happens when following traffic law statistically leads to a greater risk of loss of life over violating the law?
I must insist we move the dialogue upstream to reality as-is, and there is plenty to discuss there.
I will in good faith issue a starting point: how should we measure the robotaxi driver license wrt suspension? Do we issue a point system that is averaged across the fleet, e.g. violations/car before suspending all operations until licensure evaluation? Personally I think that is a fair starting point amd am completely open minded to alternative views.
How would your proposal work for personal driverless cars, with/without custom modifications? ie. if my personal car commits violation on its way to pick me up
If you purchase an AV car then similarly it's up to the state to regulate the manufacturer. How could you possibly be personally responsible for the fact that it ran a red light?
And nobody should ever be allowed to personally modify an AV's software. Such a vehicle should never be allowed on the road.
Why pass a thousand new laws when the existing laws have an enforcement mechanism?
If a AV runs a red light or a stop sign, it should be the same penalty, period.
If AV companies want to avoid the tickets, they can make their claimed superior drivers avoid violating the law.
If an AV is regularly running red lights or stop signs, it should be a much worse penalty. It shouldn't be permitted to operate at all.
It shouldn't just be given occasional tickets. Tickets are not the right enforcement mechanism.
Archive link in case of random paywalling like I got: https://archive.ph/xHMDO
Not necessarily. I went into a bit more detail in my own comment but it might be useful to think that when regulations are written keeping in mind multibillion dollar automobile companies, what the effect of those regulations on a person maintaining their own vehicles might be.
Consider that your Waymo got ticketed, but you had flashed it with a "no customer telemetry" firmware. Once Waymo gets the ticket, they flag your car as having "unauthorized" software and now the ball's in your court that the reason why your Waymo got ticketed has nothing to do with the telemetry feature that tells Waymo what radio stations you were listening to.
Also, when regulations are written keeping in mind multibillion dollar automobile companies, the ticket isn't going to cost $500.
Possible exceptions would be in the case that, after purchase, the manufacturer pushes a software update that meaningfully changes the behavior in such a way that it causes issues. In that case, both A) the manufacturer should be responsible and B) the owner should have the option to get some kind of compensation.
> the car is basically a taxi and the taxi service is to blame for any mistakes
@skybrian - Agreed! but if you read the article, the CA DMV is ticketing the manufacturer, not the operator.
None of my concerns hold if the operator was ticketed - infact, existing regulations are set up exactly that way, so no new regulation was even necessary. Something's not adding up.
> Right now, no one can independently own and operate an AV the way Waymo or Tesla does
@ourspacetabs - Sure but the regulation seems to be specifically addressed at the manufacturer, not the operator.
I would have no concern if the regulation was addressed to the operator. The article atleast doesn't imply that's the case.
---
> The state's Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) has announced new regulations on autonomous vehicles (AVs), including a process for police to issue a "notice of AV noncompliance" directly to the car's manufacturer.
> Under the new rules, police can cite AV companies when their vehicles commit moving violations. The rules will also require the companies to respond to calls from police and other emergency officials within 30 seconds, and will issue penalties if their vehicles enter active emergency zones.
These are new frontiers in automotive regulation. Typically, if a car failed because of a manufacturer issue, the driver would be ticketed. For example: if Hyundai sold vehicles where the engine would explode around 50k miles and that caused an accident, the driver of the vehicle would be ticketed for it.
Now if we take the human out of it, it is Hyundai that would be ticketed for it. Insurance companies are certainly going to take notice and adjust their risk models accordingly.
I imagine there will be a lot of fingerpointing by the manufacturer towards customers.
In the worst case, this is the end of customers servicing their own autonomous vehicles.
If we imagine that most vehicles in the next 15 years will be autonomous, this would mean customers would have to handle regulation aimed at multibillion dollar companies, if they were to service their own autonomous vehicles, or give up on servicing their own autonomous vehicles entirely and just rent them instead.
When that happens someday, then the ticket would go to the owner/operator of the vehicle - whoever bought the car. If you get a ticket due to something dumb your personally owned Waymo did, wouldn’t you pursue that case against Waymo separately, the same way you’d pursue Hyundai for selling you a car whose engine blew up after 50k miles?
Perhaps they could sell the car to a different taxi service, though?
If they were, then it makes sense to fine them to some multiple of the benefit they got from this advertising tactic, but as it is, I don't see why it should be different from anyone else's ticket. The company isn't likely to enjoy a flood of this administrative work, besides the cost of the actual fines, so they'll work to minimise them anyway
Noone sane would be willing to assume basically unlimited liability for someone else's software.
Maybe that's good thing - some work for humans after the robots take over, albeit as human legal shields ;)
If they become profitable you'd want to normalize by number of miles, unless you just want an incentive system to get more people on the road (extra drivers) and increase chance of humans suffering road injuries to boost employment in an internal service sector.
But even then coming out with a more efficient fleet than a competitor for higher margin would be penalized. You'd rather disincentivize skimping on safety for margin and not disincentivize better maintenance and fuel economy.
Fines should be scaled to income and the value of the vehicle and should exponentially increase for reoffense when in the same catagory of offense.