[mschuster91]

We can hold humans accountable though. An AI driving tool, we cannot, not without serious reforms in the entire issue of "corporate veils" - when a human gets behind the wheel despite being knowingly unwell to drive, we lock the human up. With a corporate made driving tool, the insurance pays some money in damages and that's it, no human gets any kind of consequence (at least if there was no intent involved like with Volkswagen's emissions scandal).

And we can (and do) make our cities safer to reduce road fatalities and injuries... Germany for example, even though it has Autobahns with unlimited speed, has about ~2800 fatalities per year on a population of about 84 million people. The Netherlands have ~700 road fatalities a year on 18 million people. The US in contrast has ~40.000 fatalities on a population of 340 million - about 4 times the fatality rate of Germany and the Netherlands.

And yes, I am comparing based on populations because the availability of decent public transport is key in reducing vehicular accidents.

[jstimpfle]

That sounds really weird. Why are you keen to hold a human accountable? In my book it's an improvement that autonomous driving is significantly lowering the fatality rate (and we can expect it to decrease further), while simultaneously lowering the direct accountability of single humans. I wouldn't wish anyone the misfortune of being involved in a fatality. The less involvement the better.

[mschuster91]

> Why are you keen to hold a human accountable?

Because there are companies like Tesla that keep putting up cars with inadequate technology (cameras instead of LIDAR/radar) or testing on the road and people die as a result of this penny pinching, but no one at Tesla got punished in any way or form for this decision.

On top of that we got the way over the top marketing claims, which routinely leads to one scenario: Tesla drivers engaging the autopilot and playing games on their phones, followed by the autopilot either unable to detect a dangerous situation or disengage once the crash becomes inevitable so it doesn't get counted as an Autopilot incident [1].

At this point, it is willful negligence but we don't have a way to hold Tesla accountable. That is why I want to see high-ranking executives, up to and including its CEO, be held on trial for manslaughter at least.

And hell even here in Europe, Tesla's garbage on wheels causes issues. Both in Germany [2] and Sweden [3] we have had drivers fall asleep for minutes while Autopilot was engaged. This kind of crap was promised to not happen, but apparently someone at Tesla fucked that up. I'm amazed that Autopilot has held up and prevented either driver from actually crashing into something, but the failure of engaging safety mode and come to a safe stop if the driver becomes inattentive for whatever reason is inacceptable, period.

And it's not just Tesla that fails to deal with the damages their shit technology causes. Remember Waymo's honking incidents that went on for weeks [4]? At a minimum, this shit should have led to a) immediate cessation of operation, b) damages being paid to the neighbors who got hit by this noise and c) to a fully transparent audit which uncovers why that happened and what steps were made to prevent a reoccurence.

I'm sick and tired of multi-billion dollar megacorporations using the general populace as a free testbed for their crap instead of doing the proper thing that everyone else does - test on closed-off roads and dedicated test tracks.

[1] https://electrek.co/2025/03/17/tesla-fans-exposes-shadiness-...

[2] https://news.sky.com/story/police-in-germany-chase-tesla-for...

[3] https://www.carscoops.com/2024/04/sleeping-tesla-driver-crui...

[4] https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/11/24218134/waymo-parking-lo...

[jstimpfle]

I mean does this technology decrease the number of fatalities or does it not? What are we discussing?

[mschuster91]

My point is, no matter if it is effective or not, I don't want multi-billion dollar companies to use society as a free-to-kill testing ground for their garbage on wheels.

As said: when a human kills or maims someone with a car, that human gets consequences to feel. When a corporation does the same, they have to pay pittances and that's it. This cannot stand any longer.

[jstimpfle]

Are you accusing those companies of practicing free-to-kill when the numbers, based on everything we have on the table, say the opposite, i.e. the technologies are saving lives?

Would you simultaneously prefer being able to accuse someone who is involved in a car fatality of being a murderer for being basically stupid and careless (like almost everyone is once in a while) and unlucky at the same time, when different technology (autonomous driving) likely would have prevented the accident in the first place?

That's about the kind of claim you would expect from someone openly claiming connections with Antifa.

Intentions (especially those projected by some onto others) don't matter much -- it's the result, the numbers (here, fatalities) that make all the difference.

[mschuster91]

> Are you accusing those companies of practicing free-to-kill when the numbers, based on everything we have on the table, say the opposite, i.e. the technologies are saving lives?

You did notice that I singled out Tesla and Waymo here, correct? BMW for example does stuff the right way - they opened a dedicated test track in 2023 [1] instead of developing on the open road, Volkswagen does their testing with a human safety driver behind the wheel [2], and Mercedes had their Level 3 system actually certified and audited, a worldwide first by the way [3].

I don't have anything against autonomous vehicles, in fact I believe they are a vital solution to providing individual mobility in rural areas that can't ever be economically served by public transport.

All I want is that companies don't outsource costs to society at large. Mercedes, BMW and Volkswagen do this, Waymo and Tesla don't. They just do whatever they want, zero considerations and zero effort, while our industry does things by the book and has more expenses as a result.

> That's about the kind of claim you would expect from someone openly claiming connections with Antifa.

That's a low blow, you know it, and you also know it's against HN rules.

[1] https://www.press.bmwgroup.com/deutschland/article/detail/T0...

[2] https://www.spiegel.de/auto/aktuell/hamburg-volkswagen-teste...

[3] https://www.tuv.com/presse/de/meldungen/automatisches-spurha...

[GardenLetter27]

> We can hold humans accountable though.

We could, but we don't anyway.

Look at the pathetic sentences for driving on drugs or without insurance, etc.

Automation is safer and better.