[JumpCrisscross]

Between anti-Musk sentiment, competition in self driving and the proven track record of Lidar, I think we’ll start seeing jurisdictions from Europe to New York and California banning camera-only self-driving beyond Level 3.

[general1465]

Nah, you don't need to ban anything. Just force the rule, that if company sells self driving, they are also taking full liability for any damages of this system.

[kelipso]

Why is it preferable to wait for people to die and then sue the company instead of banning it in the first place?

[bluGill]

People die in car crashes all the time. Self driving can kill a lot of people and still be vastly better than humans.

[VerifiedReports]

But who gets the ticket when a self-driving car is at fault?

[JumpCrisscross]

> who gets the ticket when a self-driving car is at fault?

Whoever was in control. This isn’t some weird legal quagmire anymore, these cars are on the road.

[VerifiedReports]

Apparently it IS still a legal conundrum: https://www.motortrend.com/news/who-gets-a-ticket-when-a-way...

And will continue to be until every municipality implements laws about it.

[imtringued]

The point of self driving is that the car is in control. Are you going to send the car to car prison?

[tim333]

They don't have to die first. The company can avoid the expense by planning how not to kill people.

If you charged car makers $20m per pedestrian killed by their cars regardless of fault you'd probably see much safer designs.

[throwaway2037]

By this logic, then we should also create a rule for regular, non-self-driving that says, if you have a car accident that kills someone, all your wealth is taken away and given to the victim's family. If we had a rule like this, then "you'd probably see much safer driving". Are you willing to drive under those circumstances? I am sure you will say yes, but it does not make your suggestion any less ridiculous.

[stirfish]

> They don't have to die first. The company can avoid the expense by planning how not to kill people.

This is an extremely optimistic view on how companies work

[tim333]

I can think of one example where something similar works. The requirements from insurance companies on airline pilots are considerable tougher than the government ones because they are on the hook for ~$200m if they crash.

A big reason car companies don't worry much about killing pedestrians at the moment is it costs them ~$0.

[bruce511]

You clearly haven't lived in my city :).

About half our road fatalities are pedestrians. About 80% of those are intoxicated with alcohol. When you're driving at 40mph, at night, and some drunk guy chooses to cross the road, no amount of safety features or liabilities can save him.

Sure, cars can be safer for light collisions with pedestrians where the car is going slowly. Especially in the US where half the cars have a very high hood. But where I live the problem is not safer cars, it's drunk pedestrians.

[JBlue42]

This doc from 1999 has an answer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiB8GVMNJkE

[cyanydeez]

Usually its capitalism, because in America, they can just buy carveouts after the fact.

[plagiarist]

We cannot even properly ban asbestos, expecting people to die first is just having a realistic perspective on how the US government works WRT regulations.

[JumpCrisscross]

> if company sells self driving, they are also taking full liability for any damages of this system

This is basically what we have (for reasonable definitions of full).

[ojosilva]

That's a legal non-starter for all car companies. They would be made liable for every car incident where self-driving vehicles were spotted in close vicinity, independently of the suit being legit. A complete nightmare and totally unrelated to the tech. Makes would spend more time and tech clearing their asses in court than building safe cars.

[sroussey]

Mercedes explicitly accepts liability when Drive Pilot L3 is active and used as intended.

[NewJazz]

That's... Not how it would work.