[theamk]

Note the same thing will work with regular cars, too: if someone places a cone on my car, I surely won't drive until I remove it.

The only difference is that human driver can get out of the car, examinine a situation, and remove the cone. So I guess this makes self-driving cars an equivalent of human disabled/handicapped drivers?

[willcipriano]

I probably won't get out to remove a random cone. Great way to get car jacked.

[alasarmas]

I believe that you are saying the important thing here is that the driver of the vehicle lacks the ability to remove the cone from the vehicle. However, this is not accurate. The driver of an autonomous vehicle is not an algorithm, nor a computer. It is a corporate entity such as Cruise, Waymo, or Omni Consumer Products :-)

This corporate entity does have the ability to remove a cone from the vehicle. It just lacks a convenient agent to remove the cone, because that would require an additional expenditure that breaks the business model of profitably selling taxi rides without human taxi drivers.

It is not a crime to break a business model. Never has been, and with any luck, never will be.

[theamk]

No, the driver is the one pressing accelerator and brakes, and this is the computer in the car and algorithms in it.

Saying "driver is a corporate entity" makes as little sense as saying "driver of this regular bus is AC Transit".

It's like: imagine someone hates AC Transit, so they started approaching the busses and putting huge, obscuring stickers on the windshield. Would AC transit suffer from that? Sure. And so would the passengers and other vehicles on the road.

[alasarmas]

So I decided to dig into this a little further…

I looked up some relevant regulations for California. So the following arguments are probably only relevant in the state of California. I would be surprised if they are not subject to change in the near future. Also, I am not a lawyer, so not only is the following not legal advice, it might also be totally incorrect. But it’s interesting to think about.

I found there are at least three relevant sections of the California Vehicle Code, namely Section 227, Section 228, and Section 38750.

Section 38750(a)(4) states:

    An “operator” of an autonomous vehicle is the person who is seated in the driver’s seat, or, if there is no person in the driver’s seat, causes the autonomous technology to engage.

How is this operator relevant? Well, the presence of a remote operator is mandatory for both testing (Section 227) and deployment (Section 228) of autonomous vehicles on public streets in the state of California. Section 228.06(c)(3) states that a manufacturer applying to deploy autonomous vehicles must provide:

    A copy of a law enforcement interaction plan that meets all of the requirements specified in Section 227.38(e) of Article 3.7.

Section 227.38(e)(1)(A) states that the law enforcement interaction plan shall include:

    How to communicate with a remote operator of the vehicle who is available at all times that the vehicle is in operation, including providing a contact telephone number for the manufacturer;

Further, Section 227.02(n) does define the remote operator as a natural person.

So, there is a remote operator available at all times, in both testing and deployment of autonomous vehicles. This remote operator can operate the vehicle remotely, and presumably one remote operator can be responsible for many autonomous vehicles, because otherwise the business plan breaks.

I would be interested to see if in the future there is a mandated ratio of vehicles per remote operator. My guess is the ratio will approach one.

[theamk]

I don't see why it would be anywhere close to 1? Thinking of my typical car trips, most of the time was spent on freeways, or on almost empty roads, or in a traffic jam - all the situations which self-driving cars can handle already. The unusual cases are few and far in between.