General > General Technical Chat

Self driving liability

<< < (3/9) > >>

eugene:

--- Quote from: MrMobodies on April 21, 2022, 03:02:24 am ---I came across an article today about new rules being drafted that accidents caused by self driving cars to fall with the insurance company. I don't know how the insurance company will apply this, whether they'll up the charges for everybody or just those with self driving cars if they become involved in too many accidents.

Shouldn't it be the manufacturer responsibility in a situation for any accident caused by decisions it makes without notifying the driver to resume driving?

--- End quote ---

It sounds like you're assuming that accidents will increase with automated driving whereas  the automotive industry predicts fewer accidents. Or, the accidents that do happen will be less severe and less costly.

In any case, I think that the typical reaction of distrust comes from a lack of understanding. The fact is, there might be a time far in the future where we get into a car, tell the car where we want to go, and then wait to arrive. But, that's not the near future. The visions of Elon Musk aside, autodriving will come incrementally and has already begun on a large scale. Many new cars today will brake autonomously if an imminent collision is detected. Adaptive cruise control is common place and appreciated (and trusted!) by lots of drivers. Alarms squeal if the car drifts out of lane or gets too close to another car while moving. It's just a small step to have the steering respond automatically to prevent an accident. It's just one more small step to setting your cruise control on the highway and letting the car not only maintain a safe speed automatically, but also maintain a safe distance from the car in front (already common place) and steer automatically to stay in lane. I trust adaptive cruise control, and I think it wouldn't be hard for me to trust a system that follows the road automatically.

That's still a long ways from the car with a digital chauffeur, but add GPS....

Anyway, the goal is not just to make things more convenient for the lazy, but to make traveling safer for everyone. Personally, I think I would feel safer traveling 70mph down the highway if I knew that all of the cars around me were controlled by sophisticated automated equipment and not by a human that's tired or irritated or distracted.

Bud:

--- Quote from: dunkemhigh on April 21, 2022, 07:47:39 pm ---Further, even if the TV goes blank and flashed EMERGENCY in big red letters, the driver is going to take a long time to get his act together and die horribly.

--- End quote ---

Worse yet, the driver may think that this screen is part of the movie and do nothing.

PlainName:

--- Quote from: Bud on April 21, 2022, 08:02:09 pm ---
--- Quote from: dunkemhigh on April 21, 2022, 07:47:39 pm ---Further, even if the TV goes blank and flashed EMERGENCY in big red letters, the driver is going to take a long time to get his act together and die horribly.

--- End quote ---

Worse yet, the driver may think that this screen is part of the movie and do nothing.

--- End quote ---

BTDT. Well, not quite but similar.

In a previous life I was a projectionist, and often I would amble into the auditorium to monitor proceedings. One time I'm a watching a scene in a film and the screen goes completely white - can't recall what the film was about but the possibility of an explosion in the story wasn't far fetched. Took me a few very long seconds to realise the film had broken before rushing off to fix it. In fact, I might have been the last to figure it out  :palm:

james_s:

--- Quote from: rstofer on April 21, 2022, 03:15:08 am ---The day will never come that I turn over driving my car to an AI.

OTOH, I rather like battery EVs.  Turn on "Sport" mode and they get downright frisky.

--- End quote ---

Yes for me the whole point in owning a car, especially a relatively high performance car is that I get to drive it myself. I drove a Tesla Y for a bit and it was a blast. Fastest car I've ever driven.

james_s:

--- Quote from: dunkemhigh on April 21, 2022, 07:47:39 pm ---The implication there is that the driver must watch TV in order to be notified to take control! What if he just wants to watch the scenery? If he can be notified without the TV for that, the same applies for whatever else he is doing.

Further, even if the TV goes blank and flashed EMERGENCY in big red letters, the driver is going to take a long time to get his act together and die horribly. The 'TV turns off when appropriate' thing appears to be to notify the driver that he's approaching his off junction rather than for something going wrong. Loud sirens, flashing lights, juddering brakes... all can be used to distract the phone user.

--- End quote ---

I think it's totally obvious and expected that this will happen. It is well proven that if you take away the necessity to focus, the brain very quickly finds something else to be absorbed in. It is completely unreasonable to have a machine driving a car and expect a human driver to be able to take over at any time. There is no way that a human is going to stay engaged for more than a few minutes of the machine driving before they zone out and mentally disconnect. The accident will be over before they realize what happened.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page

There was an error while thanking
Thanking...
Go to full version
Powered by SMFPacks Advanced Attachments Uploader Mod