[scrumper]

The concept of a safety driver in SDC testing needs refining.

The guy here was clearly distracted. He only looks up at the road a fraction of a second before the crash.

My bet is that he'll be prosecuted as if he were a distracted driver: he's responsible for the safe operation of the vehicle (otherwise, why's he there in the first place?). He'll go to prison, probably, and rules will change very quickly as a result.

Driving a car is an active process, it's fatiguing but not inherently boring (excepting really long, straight, empty roads through unchanging scenery). Sitting in a SDC while it drives itself however is boring: there's a well-researched and well-understood attention deficit problem which nobody seems to be discussing here.

It's the same thing that makes TSA security screening such a tough thing to get right, or sentry duty: you can't expect humans to sit for hours passively monitoring for unpredictable and rare events that they then have to react decisively to. Brains don't work like that. These safety drivers need short shifts with frequent breaks, they need a partner, and they need an active background task that keeps their eyes up and forward and their brain engaged (giving a commentary, for example).