[supermatt]

They should simply be held to the same standard as any other road user. Whoever is ultimately responsible for these cars should also be responsible for the traffic offenses. Prosecute them. Revoke their drivers license. Impound the vehicles.

Im not against driverless cars, but I am against unbalanced treatment of road users, legal persons and natural alike.

[mlyle]

> Revoke their drivers license. Impound the vehicles.

> Im not against driverless cars, but I am against unbalanced treatment of road users, legal persons and natural alike.

OK, well, ... surely we need to have some kind of not-exactly-equal treatment. If I commit 4 traffic offenses in a year, I'll get a suspended license. If Google commits 4 traffic offenses in a year across, say, 5,000 cars and 50,000 vehicle hours, they probably should not have operations suspended.

[WrtCdEvrydy]

Why not? It's the same code across all the cars... it's as if you had a clone factory making clones of driver you.

[mlyle]

I kind of hope you're joking, but just in case you're not I'll explain.

Because if I make a mistake every 3000 hours of driving, that's a mistake every 5-10 years. I am allowed to continue driving by the law.

If Waymo makes a mistake every 6000 hours of driving, and drives 50,000 hours per year, that's 8 per year. Said system would be twice as safe as me but would pretty much immediately get suspended if it's treated as "one driver."

[minwcnt5]

Under this logic, twins would share the same drivers license. :)

[supermatt]

Why? Full-time professional drivers are subject to the same rules as casual drivers. They should program them not to perform traffic offenses.

[mlyle]

Because perfection probably isn't attainable. Exceeding human performance by a large margin should be good enough. There is no reason to compare a fleet driving 500,000 hours (or much more) in a year to one person driving 300 hours in a year.

A single professional driver cannot drive hundreds of thousands of hours in a year.