[mcafeeryan92]

This is a really difficult situation, in that lowering regulatory overhead would mean getting automated solutions to the public faster, and even if they weren't optimally safe they'd likely be vastly better than human drivers and the sooner we could reap that benefit the better. However, there is a substantial long-term risk to the viability of self-driving cars if any high-profile accidents do happen, because outside of Silicon Valley people generally trust themselves more than technology. So on the other hand it might be better to continue the dangerous status quo for longer, until regulatory framework can assure safety, so as to make the rollout of autonomous cars actually result in adoption of autonomous cars.

[freehunter]

I've recently been disappointed by the "Uber's car ran a red light!" stories I've been seeing. I know a lot of people hate Uber for various reasons and there's every reason to stay cautious about making sure self-driving cars are predictable and have the right sensors on-board, but imagine if we saw a headline on CNN every time a human-driven car ran a red light.

There's no excuse for a self-driving car to run a red light, but human drivers do it millions of times every day and in most cases when we see it we just shake our heads and say "what is that fool thinking?!" But a self-driving car does it once and it's headline news for months.

[eli]

That's a perfectly reasonable argument that Uber could have made. Instead they lied about what happened. Lying to the public (and regulators?) about how safe your vehicles are is, in my opinion, worse than running the light in the first place.

[freehunter]

Right, but if a cop pulled over a random hypothetical person after they ran a red light, how would we all expect that conversation to happen?

"Do you know why I pulled you over?"

"No" lie #1

"Did you know you ran that red light back there?"

"No, it was yellow when I went through" lie #2

"Here's the ticket"

person shows up to court to fight the ticket by claiming their innocence, lie #3

Again, no excusing Uber's behavior, just pointing to a double standard. We fully expect human drivers to run red lights, and we fully expect them to lie about it. There's no excuse for Uber's response and no excuse for their software running a red light, but there's similarly no excuse for humans doing it. Yet humans do it all the time and no one really cares.

Like if we're going to report headline news every time a Tesla catches on fire, we should have breaking news stop-the-presses coverage every time a gasoline or diesel powered car catches on fire, too. But we don't because it's much more frequent, to the point where we almost expect it.

[frgtpsswrdlame]

Uber's lies affect society. This hypothetical drivers lie only affects his wallet.

[MegaButts]

Red lights aren't there to issue tickets. They're there to direct traffic flow and ensure safety of vehicles/pedestrians going in another direction. The person is endangering others just the same as Uber. I'm sure just about everybody has run a red light, but lying about it afterwards is the problem - that's when you say "the law doesn't apply to me" and you become reckless. Uber just does it at a much larger scale.

[frgtpsswrdlame]

>Uber just does it at a much larger scale.

I disagree. This is a corporation speaking with one voice to attempt to continue to run cars which have just demonstrated an inability to detect a crucial traffic signal. Think of it this way, in one example I run a red light and lie about it. In the other I make arguments in the public sphere to allow the legally blind to drive because it will benefit me financially. That's not scale, that's fundamentally different.

[freehunter]

I would say every red light runner affects society. The main reason people support self-driving cars is because of how common traffic deaths are. Because of how bad humans are at driving. It's a lot easier to do a software update on a poorly-behaving self-driving car than it is to re-educate poorly-behaving human drivers.

The real question is not "do self-driving cars commit traffic violations?" but rather "do self-driving cars commit traffic violations at a lower rate than humans?". That's what matters. Not that they're perfect, but that they're better in a measurable way.

[frgtpsswrdlame]

>I would say every red light runner affects society.

But we're not talking about the act of running a red light, we're talking about the act of lying about it.

>It's a lot easier to do a software update on a poorly-behaving self-driving car than it is to re-educate poorly-behaving human drivers.

What makes you think this?

>"do self-driving cars commit traffic violations at a lower rate than humans?".

Indeed. So the companies behind self-driving cars should prove it.

[marcell]

Usually when a human runs a red light, they are aware that it's red. Typically the light is just turning red, and they think they can still make it.

For Uber, their car was probably not aware that the light was red, which is more dangerous.

[benologist]

For ~100 years nobody has been able to make a light red enough for people to consistently stop and wait to proceed.

Uber and all the other companies will permanently solve that problem the one time they figure out how to reliably identify a red light.

[pyre]

People often run red lights because they aren't paying attention too. It still doesn't make headlines on CNN.

[saynay]

A person running a red light is driving just one car at a time. A self-driving car's software is (potentially) driving many cars.

I do not think "a self-driving car runs a red light" is analogous to "a person runs a red light". A closer analogy is to "a distinct class of people who run red lights".

I do agree that the media response is overblown, however I do not think it is without some merit.

[benologist]

"A person" discounts the millions of other persons individually doing it around the world - orders of magnitude more than driverless cars could possibly achieve this decade. Their combined effort, while not just running red lights, kills an estimated 1.25 million people a year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...

[woofyman]

Humans who run red lights don't have PR firms proclaiming they're disrupting driving and changing the world. That stance sets you up for bad press when your technology fails.

[chipgap98]

I think people fear the loss of control that a self driving car poses. If I run a red light and get into an accident I have only myself to blame. If my car does that on its own its completely out of my control and that is pretty terrifying, especially to less tech savvy people. Unfortunately that is how a lot of people look at the issue.

[euyyn]

Yeah, while not true on aggregate, on any specific instance a human driver can make the conscious decision to pay extra attention and drive more safely.

Plus, even if Uber's car recognized the traffic light as green, the fact that the cars before it on the other lanes stopped should be a clear enough signal to not just speed through.

[meredydd]

What fuelled the headlines is that the car ran a light while engaging in legally dubious "cowboy" testing with real passengers.

The human analogy is "<politician> ran a red light while drunk". The point is that they made errors of judgement that then caused this unsafe situation, rather than it being a random accident. (Especially in this case, in which high-handed defiance of both principles and the law is an established narrative.)

[Animats]

It may indicate a repeatable bug. With self-driving cars, you have different problems than with humans. Tesla has three times hit a stopped vehicle projecting into the left edge of a traffic lane. (Those are just the ones for which there's dashcam video.) That's a design failure.

Humans fail in different ways, such as inattention.

[chc]

I thought what had people upset was that Uber wasn't honest about what happened, not just that the car ran a red.

[Buttons840]

If a person causes a death in an accident we think "that ONE person made a bad decission, but most people would make a better decision".

If a self driving car does the same people will think "ALL cars will make the same bad decission in the same situation". And there is some truth to that.

[lg]

if the contents of that fool's head were soon to be snapshotted and uploaded into the minds of hundreds of millions of drivers, it'd be headline news for months too.

[Dirlewanger]

Even the most dug-in libertarian can't really argue against these kinds of regulations; automobiles affect everyone within their vicinity. Ideally, all automobile manufacturers should be politely told to shut the fuck up and deal with it, but the realist in me thinks Chao's pockets will be lined with their money quite soon.

[liberte82]

You'd be surprised. The problem with regulations is that they have done their job so well that a subset of people now believe they are not necessary and that the market will "take care of itself". See also: vaccines.

[unityByFreedom]

People can change their tune. Greenspan was chairman of the Fed for 20 years arguing for free market the whole time. It was his life's philosophy. Then he testified to Congress after the housing meltdown '08 and said he was wrong. The banks can't be trusted to regulate themselves via the market, and regulation is necessary.

We will face a recession again. Trump will repeal Dodd Frank, banks will start making riskier loans and obscuring them in hidden investment products, and one day someone big enough will pull out, causing the whole house of cards to collapse. And, Republicans and Democrats will do another TARP because the alternative is World Depression II. That is, unless Trump seizes enough power to prevent TARP II.

[liberte82]

People can change their tune, but that's not what is happening in today's political climate. It's been less than ten years since the last financial crisis, and no one has forgotten that it was loose regulations that caused it. What we have happening today is something much more sinister - crises and bailouts are becoming part of the system itself. Socialized bailouts, privatized profits.

[unityByFreedom]

Yeah. I suspect it's not new. We've gone back and forth between being red and blue, through recessions and wars. We need to remain vigilant, and also remember that history does have a way of repeating itself. Let's just hope this isn't a big bang type event, and more of a wake up call for everyone.

[slang800]

> Even the most dug-in libertarian can't really argue against these kinds of regulations

Oh, I beg to differ. From a hard-core libertarian perspective, the state has no right to exist, let alone impose arbitrary regulations on business owners. People should be free to trade at will and guarantees on safety should be handled through a contract between the people who are trading. To impose regulations on trade would be an act of aggression.

During vehicle operation, everyone using the road would need to agree on an acceptable level of risk, probably managed by the road owner, not a state. Even if the owner of a particular road refuses to do business with you, you would still be able to buy whatever vehicles you like and operate them on your own property.

[djrogers]

> From a hard-core libertarian perspective, the state has no right to exist

That's a completely bogus argument- you're conflating anarchism with libertarianism in order to make libertarians look bad.

[stale2002]

That's not anarchism. Self driving cars are already safer than humans.

If something is already safer than humans, then it should be deployed in mass, NOW. Screw the laws. Or get rid of them.

A million people die every year due to cars. The market can fix this if government gets out of the way.

[slang800]

The argument I gave was distinctly anarcho-capitalist. But, of course, there are plenty of statist arguments for reducing regulation.

[chc]

"The state has no right to exist" is basically the definition of anarchism.

[slang800]

There's certainly a division between libertarian minarchists and libertarian anarchists, but I'm talking about the most "hard-core" application of the NAP.

[nickbauman]

Historically, to the degree that the state recedes from markets is to the same degree that markets get more volatile, smaller and less profitable.

[slang800]

That might be true, though I haven't seen any evidence to suggest that. But my point wasn't that regulation is inefficient - it's that libertarians can be quite a bit more extreme than the OP thinks.

[pharrington]

>>That might be true, though I haven't seen any evidence to suggest that.

Libertarian paradises aren't always theoretical. See early bitcoin, and the commonly cited Somalia. On the opposite end, known authoritarian-tightass state China currently has the most efficient capitalist economy the planet has yet seen.

[nickbauman]

Bitcoin as an economy is essentially a hoax.

[stale2002]

Wrong. Self driving cars are already safer than humans. We need to put them on the road, in mass, NOW.

Every year we wait is another million people dead, due to terrible human drivers.

[unityByFreedom]

That's a great idea if the tech were ready.

Introduced prematurely, it could set the tech back due to public outcry. A few more autopilot deaths in the US in this political climate could really hurt the industry. Chao is looking for an excuse to pull permits.

[stale2002]

Maybe in big government California there would be outcry.

But not in Arizona, or any other red state.

Get the federal government out of regulating it, and let the states decide.

Then, when red states save thousands of lives, the blue states will follow.

[unityByFreedom]

> Then, when red states save thousands of lives, the blue states will follow.

Haha or vice versa! Depends who proceeds in the right way.

I don't believe there's definitively an answer as to whether Tesla (arguably red and anti-regulation, moving forward without much caution) or Google (blue, more cautious) will find more success. I personally think Google will, but even better than that, it's great that we have such a system that permits that level of competition.

[elmar]

"Chao said she was "very concerned" about the potential impact of automated vehicles on employment. There are 3.5 million U.S. truck drivers alone and millions of others employed in driving-related occupations."

that is really the hardest point, when you are trying to reduce unemployment like Trump is.

[pharrington]

Exactly. AI-driven cars almost certainly are/will be safer than human-driven cars. We don't need them right now. Don't cut corners on safety.

[user5994461]

> This is a really difficult situation, in that lowering regulatory overhead would mean getting automated solutions to the public faster,

Never lower regulations when life are on the line.

There is a reason planes and cars don't crash every day, and it's because of these annoying regulations that force tests and QA. You'll never see a summer intern just come in and commits anything he wants and breaks everything. This shit doesn't happen in this line of business.

Regulations is good. You don't want devs being involved in your car with zero regulations to back them.