Major legal changes needed for driverless car era

If no one is accountable everyone is accountable and pay for it

 

i don't think there should be any autonomous driving until it is all autonomous driving

 

Quote from article:

That right there. That's the meat of this article. Giving full autonomy a place on a scale of integers (the SAE 1-5 we've all seen) has always been a bad move.

It needs to be (a scale of whatever numbers for assistance) OR full auto. Or denote it as levels 1-4 + level 100. Something to create logical space between lots of driver assistance and complete autonomy.

A question I haven't seen raised yet: What about the case where the autonomous car rejects the trip instructions requested by the user. Let's say I got in such a car yesterday morning and said "Take me to Cape Cod."

The fully autonomous car really ought to have replied, "Nope, the weather on all possible routes is below acceptable minimums to support such a journey, please try again later." Has anyone even started working on the systems necessary to handle this decision-making? If the automaker is going to assume liability for operating the vehicle (which I feel they should) they'll also have some say in calling off certain trips due to conditions. That won't go over well, but it absolutely needs to be handled for full autonomy to succeed.

 

Called the 'march of the nines':

• 9% assistance - Prius TPSS, BMW i3-REx
• 99% assistance - early AutoPilot
• 99.9% assistance - current AutoPilot
• 99.99% assistance - current AutoPilot and Full Self Driving beta
• . . .

The Italian philosopher Voltaire is most commonly credited with the quote, although it likely predates him: “Don't let perfect be the enemy of good” (or something close to that). There are other versions. (Source: https://www.riversidecorporatewellness.com/single-post/don-t-let-perfect-be-the-enemy-of-good)

Bob Wilson

 

understood. i'm just not sure if it is a good idea to have a hybrid of machine and human drivers on the road.

 

What I recommend is Full Self Driving and AutoPilot changes how the car behaves. Imagine you are driving a car with a 'loose' front end linkage that tends to steer pretty good, 99.9% of the time interspersed with 0.1% "Oh SH*T" moments.

You have to be alert and ready to keep the car from doing something stupid.

Bob Wilson

 

therein lies the rub. this is america, we're not very alert

 

I have mixed feelings about self-driving cars.

When I think of the number of drivers nowadays who don't obey stop signs, use turn signals, run red lights, speed, drive recklessly, drive distracted or impaired - I can't help but wonder when we will reach the tipping point where even with all the potential risk, people would find self-driving cars are actually safer for society.

 

Eventually automated cars will be good enough. I think that approximately when things like driver controls, forward-facing seats and see-thru windshields are all optional the insurance industry will ruthlessly re-price risk. And when operating and insuring those cars truly costs less? That will be the actual tipping point.

 

The insurance aspect and its pricing for self-driving cars is a wonderful discussion point- and the question of would it actually be cheaper is another excellent question.

 

it might be cheaper after humans are banned from the controls of all vehicles. By then, your guess it as good as anyones. Till then .....

 

That, ironically, is what will make it much simpler for cars to operate autonomously. If we can convince the powers that be to use one algorithm for all car makes and models, then the behavior of the cars will become extremely predictable. Imagine what it would be like if simple rules like "car on the right has the right of way" was obeyed by all cars all the time?

Of course, there will be a contingent that insists that they are more skillful than any program, and they will insist that they get an exemption so that they can drive it.

 

I don't work in that industry but I guess I have a hard time imagining it pricing risk in an irrational manner. If they're paying out bigger claims on human-controlled cars than for cars under automatic control, why would they charge more for the automatics?

If anything, I'm expecting that the savings on the premiums between human-driver coverage and algorithm-driver coverage to be the basis of the subscription cost for automatic control.

So the net cost to the driver might not change much.

But in my mind it opens the question of whether the insurance industry will make a play to be the supplier, gatekeeper or clearinghouse of automatic driving algorithms just to keep their revenue flow stable.