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callc
loeg
> If a human driver commits vehicular manslaughter, they get the book.
Hah. Do they, though? https://sfstandard.com/2026/03/20/mary-lau-sentenced-probati...
The standard for human drivers is through the floor.
Aurornis
The reason that’s a news story is because the outcome is unusual.
When things are normal and happening all the time, they’re not reported as abnormal outcomes.
The world is a big place. Being able to think of a counter-example does not negate a general point.
jcranmer
No, it's actually fairly common in crashes between motor vehicles and pedestrians (or cyclists) to place most or all of the blame on the pedestrian.
When the Uber self-driving car struck and killed the pedestrian, not only did the internet peanut gallery largely blame the pedestrian for the first 24 hours or so after the death, but the local police force did as well for a couple of days. I rather suspect that without the national spotlight of being the first pedestrian killed by a self-driving car, the local police force would have been happy to absolve Uber and the driver of any liability.
adrr
Is it? Laura Bush ran a stop sign and killed her friend. No charges. Caitlyn Jenner hit a car and pushed it into on coming traffic killed someone. No charges. I can keep going and going.
asveikau
No, the reason that's a news story is because many people were upset about the accident, which killed an entire family of 4 while they took the kids to the zoo on their wedding anniversary. Even by the standards of auto wrecks it was heart wrenching. A lot of people felt the driver was negligent and deserved prison.
keerthiko
there are many[0] many[1] data points like this. even if individual ones seem like outliers, when there's this many outliers, it's like there's at least two distinct lines depicting consequences, one material and one not.
those who probably have exhausted all the various escape hatches built into the "vehicular manslaughter & mutilation forgiveness program" worldwide by the automobile industry, may get a year or so in prison — usually extreme repeat offenders, high profile deaths, homicide cases, or drivers who were already criminals just having the charge thrown in.
most people who "slipped up" are just fined and forgotten, at the cost of global pedestrian safety.
[0]: https://www.scmp.com/news/china-insider/article/1856923/do-s...
[1]: https://gothamist.com/news/95-of-nyc-drivers-avoid-criminal-...
iknowstuff
You are wrong. The easiest way to murder someone in America and get a slap on the wrist is to run them over in your car.
aidenn0
This was just in my local news 2 days ago; it doesn't seem that strange for California:
https://www.santamariasun.com/news-2/fatal-dui-case-closes-w...
Last year I was on the jury for someone who drove drunk, caused an accident, and fled the scene. They had multiple prior DUIs but still had their license.
[edit]
Some details from the story for those who don't want to click through:
An unlicensed driver drank, did some cocaine, drove on one of the more dangerous stretches of road in the area, crossed the centerline and killed someone. Probation.
ndsipa_pomu
> The reason that’s a news story is because the outcome is unusual.
Yes and no.
Here in the UK, I read/post a bit on https://road.cc about road cycling and the perils of traffic and poor road designs. There's a surprising amount of clearly illegal driving that is rarely punished severely and it's notable that due to juries being motornormative, the prosecution will often not attempt to push for "dangerous driving" and will instead go or "careless driving" as it's notoriously difficult to get a jury to give a guilty verdict for "dangerous". I suspect a lot of jurors are thinking "I sometimes don't pay attention when driving, so that could have been me".
There's also a lot of media bias (I'm looking at you, BBC) with reporting of RTCs (Road Traffic Collisions - they should not be referred to as "accidents" as that is loaded language), especially when one of the participants is a cyclist. A lot of stories are framed as "car and cyclist in collision", rather than "driver and cyclist in collision" or even "car driven into cyclist" (that last one may be contentious, though I propose that it is usually factual). The issue is the use of the "passive" framing so that it doesn't give the impressions that a driver is likely to be at fault (percentage wise, driver inattention is the most likely cause of RTCs). See https://www.rc-rg.com/home for more details on reporting guidelines.
Also, most RTCs don't even merit a news report as they are so commonplace.
Aachen
Who does it benefit if an accident ruins a second life?
What does a jail sentence deter? ("[no] gross negligence [...] wasn’t engaging in a race or sideshow, was not texting, and was not under influence")
This person was 80 years old with no criminal record, needs to pay $67400 in restitution, do 200 hours of community service, isn't allowed to drive for 3 years but "never intends to drive again". Apologised to the family of the victims. She's taking responsibility and I can't imagine forced labor at that age is fun. What more can you ask for here? The family member isn't coming back if she gets what's not unlikely to be a life sentence
Edit:
> She told a witness at the scene that she was trying to park her car when she accidentally moved her foot to the gas pedal.
This seems to happen a lot. Don't know about statistics but this happened to someone I know at 50yo (thankfully only damaged their own car minorly), and you hear it on the news with some regularity. Maybe the gas needs to be in a fundamentally different spot from the brake? We can jail the people to whom it happens, sure, but I can understand a judge using their head instead of their heart. The real solution must come either from the automotive industry or legislation
JumpCrisscross
> Who does it benefit if an accident ruins a second life?
The next person they'd mow down. (Also, retribution. It's a real human need and attempts at philosophising it away degrade trust in our justice system.)
> isn't allowed to drive for 3 years
This is the wild part. No! You don't drive again!
> What more can you ask for here?
For her to have recognised her own limitations before they took lives. Failing at that, her family–or literally anyone who cared about her, and didn't want to see her spend her last years in jail–having taken initiative.
loeg
Your full-throated defense of Mary Lau is completely beside the point (and for what it's worth, it would be a fifth life, not a "second" -- she killed an entire family of four). GP claimed that human drivers who commit vehicular manslaughter get the book; they don't.
qwe----3
They intentionally moved assets to their family members to avoid liability, right?
Laws are also meant to deter bad behavior, people who aren't able to drive safely should know there will be consequences
xnx
> What does a jail sentence deter?
Other irresponsible drivers.
dekhn
How do you get from "trying to park car" to 70 miles an hour? That does not seem consistent with the geometry of the accident.
hiddencost
People will change their behavior. The function of prison sentences is deterrence.
tintor
Apologised for taking lives of married couple and two babies?
mindslight
In a sense you're right, but the problem is that post-facto consequences are all we are left with when there is no political will to pre-regulate. If one started talking about requiring retesting to keep your license starting at age 60 or even 70, the pitchforks would come out. But that is the type of thing it would have taken to avoid "ruining" the first four lives here.
(and the same pattern plays out on a much larger scale in the world of big business)
e40
Freakonomics did a pod about this, titled “how to get away with murder”.
nkzednan
see https://sf.streetsblog.org/2026/03/06/motorist-careens-onto-... and see what the police said to the driver…
Groxx
Better than the current standard for AV, which is "what floor?"
HDThoreaun
Cruise was entirely shut down because of an incident that didnt even result in a death. Thats way worse than what people tend to get
Hnrobert42
> The standard for human drivers is through the floor.
The linked article doesn't describe the standard. It describes a single, exceptional example.
loeg
It's a representative example. (When you're disputing my evidenced claim, it behooves you to bring your own facts, rather than just asserting.)
wongarsu
In the US, 11 deaths per billion miles driven (or about 47k per year) is currently seen as an OK cost.
More than twice as much per mile as places like Sweden and Switzerland, and still substantially more than places like Canada, Australia or Germany (all three in the 6-8 deaths per billion miles range). So it's not like there isn't room to improve. The effort to do so just isn't seen as worth the cost at the societal or government level
Turning that into a monetary cost would change the ethics slightly, but it wouldn't be a monumental shift
scoofy
The issue here is that a lot of the concerns about AV's are orthogonal to the standard metrics of concern.
I'm a strong transit alternatives advocate, but even I recognize that a firetruck or ambulance being blocked by an AV has the potential to cause an outsized amount of death and destruction, because deaths aren't always linear and a fire that is able to get out of control can do catastrophic damage compared to a single out of control vehicle.
I'm genuinely stunned that AV's do not have the ability to be "commandeered" by Police/Fire/EMS in a pinch, and I'm honestly surprised that regular citizens can't just hit a red button that signal "this is seriously an emergency." These are fairly simple steps to mitigate the tail risk of AV's but the platforms aren't going to prioritize that if there are no incentives.
hombre_fatal
We already accept that it’s fine for human drivers to block emergency services and we generally refuse to build, say, bus and bike lines that can be used by emergency services.
So the uproar over AV’s blocking emergency vehicles seems incredibly manufactured or inconsistent, much like the hoopla over AI and water.
e.g. You can take anyone complaining about this and you’ll find they didn’t care about emergency vehicles or water until just now regarding one thing. I’d like to see some consistency.
Natsu
> I'm genuinely stunned that AV's do not have the ability to be "commandeered" by Police/Fire/EMS in a pinch, and I'm honestly surprised that regular citizens can't just hit a red button that signal "this is seriously an emergency."
The passenger of a Waymo can, but not anyone outside it. There's a very prominent "call for help" button on the screen when you get inside.
retired
Don't forget to add rail incidents to that metric. I live in Spain, this year we had 4 derailments for a total of 48 deaths and 195 injured. The USA has had 0 passengers killed or injured from train accidents this year. Portugal had 15 death after a tram derailment. In Amsterdam, the tram is more dangerous than the car.
Also Germany is very high (for European standards) because of the Autobahn. They can save around 140 lives a year by having a limit on the Autobahn but the car lobby in Germany is very strong. Those 140 lives are seen as an OK cost just to go vroom on the Autobahn.
Levitz
>I live in Spain, this year we had 4 derailments for a total of 48 deaths and 195 injured.
Which, to be clear, is a considerable outlier. Highest since 2013 and about double the deaths and 4x the injured of a "normal" year.
Not to mention that trains are far safer than automobiles too.
>The USA has had 0 passengers killed or injured from train accidents this year.
Is this a fantastic, magical year or something? The normal number seems to be around 800 a year? https://www.kochandbrim.com/study-train-accident-deaths/
lancebeet
Hm, it's only something like 10% of German traffic fatalities that occur on the autobahn. And according to wikipedia, Germany doesn't rank high in terms of traffic fatalities, even by European standards. France has a similar number of highway deaths. I'm personally not a fan of the autobahn and especially not the unrestricted speed. It seems obvious that it should cause lots of fatalities, but the evidence for it just doesn't seem to be there.
ruszki
There is a reason for that “per billion miles range”.
andrepd
What. in god's name are you saying?
> Don't forget to add rail incidents to that metric. I live in Spain, this year we had 4 derailments for a total of 48 deaths and 195 injured.
Yeah and how many in the 15 years prior? 112. Of which 80 were in a single (TGV) crash.
How many people die each year in Spanish roads? Thousands.
> The USA has had 0 passengers killed or injured from train accidents this year.
Can't have rail accidents if you don't have rail *taps side of head*
> Portugal had 15 death after a tram derailment.
Oh my god, after a 140-year old tourist attraction malfunctioned! Hardly representative of any transit system whatsoever.
> In Amsterdam, the tram is more dangerous than the car.
This is just not true, by any metric.
And also, why are cars comparatively less dangerous in Amsterdam than in most other places? Because it is not designed for cars first, there are low speed limits enforced by traffic calming (like speed humps and narrow cobbled streets) everywhere.
biophysboy
Coming from a bio background, I’ve always been confused why auto fatality stats are normalized per miles driven. Epidemiological metrics like incidence or prevalence seem like they would work fine? Town A would be “safer” than town B if people’s commutes are 20% shorter, even if accidents occur w same frequency
Aloisius
Pretty sure I've seen exposure-adjusted incidence rates used in clinical trials.
Miles is simply a proxy for exposure.
Given risk here does vary by exposure time and trip length varies so much, it seems reasonable to use - at least in combination with crude rates.
_vertigo
What are some other better ways to normalize?
andrepd
Because it yields a simple corollary that to make travelling safer you can reduce the number of miles driven. Mostly by giving people viable alternatives to driving, be it long-distance rail or bike lanes to move around quicker and safer in the city.
JumpCrisscross
> it's not like there isn't room to improve
Losing one's license means destitution for many Americans. That places practical limits on enforcement compared with less car-oriented countries.
OptionOfT
I'm from Belgium, and even with public transportation, there are a large group of people dependent on their driver's license.
But if you ask someone if they'd drive without insurance, or without driver's license they look at you like you've asked them to do the impossible.
Whereas in the US no-one bats an eye when that happens. Half the time the cops just issue a ticket, and don't even tow the car.
And now people who obey the law need to take out extra insurance for under/uninsured motorists.
embedding-shape
> Losing one's license means destitution for many Americans.
That'd be the same for a Swede who lives in the middle of nowhere too. Although I'm sure both groups, if they'd loose their license, would continue driving anyways.
HDThoreaun
Tons of options other than removing the ability to drive. More stringent enforcement, higher fines.
Aurornis
> So it's not like there isn't room to improve. The effort to do so just isn't seen as worth the cost at the societal or government level
That effort being what, exactly?
Road fatalities per mile driven don’t translate cleanly from country to country because the type of roads and even types of deaths (single vehicle, multi vehicle) are different.
We could set the speed limit at 25mph everywhere and force all vehicles to not exceed that limit and that would make the number go down, but the cost would be extreme for everyone.
So what, exactly, are the solutions you are proposing?
testing22321
> That effort being what, exactly?
Off the top of my head you could do any of these or a combination.
- much stricter training and testing to get a license
- vehicles where the safety of others is considered
- ban stupid dangerous cars (my wife doesn’t stand as tall as an F350, let alone a kid
- harsher penalties for drunk driving (see Germany)
- harsher penalties for all kinds of dangerous driving
None of these are hard to implement, the US just lacks the will.
themafia
> 11 deaths per billion miles driven
You should calculate how many are "single vehicle accidents" and how many are "multiple vehicle accidents." In the US the majority are single vehicle.
> seen as an OK cost.
You cannot build a system that stops every stupid person from doing something stupid without introducing absolute tyranny.
cindyllm
[dead]
hluska
Doesn’t that 11 per billion statistic include commercial drivers as well? And doesn’t the United States have by far the largest percentage of commercial miles driven of any developed nation?
There’s a far cheaper solution available. Log books.
xnx
> If a human driver commits vehicular manslaughter, they get the book.
If only! "10 Days In Jail For Drunken Driver Who Killed Cyclist Bobby Cann" https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20170126/old-town/ryne-san-h...
borski
I almost feel bad for noticing this, but:
> San Hamel was a partner in a business called AllYouCanDrink.com at the time.
…
> Cann, an experienced cyclist who once biked from New Hampshire to Chicago, was heading home from his job at Groupon the night he was killed.
It looks like allyoucandrink.com now redirects to Groupon, in a decent bit of irony.
acdha
We subsidize driving by somewhat over a trillion dollars annually, mostly due to lax penalties for negligence which shift liability to drivers’ victims[1]. One way to tackle all of these problems would be requiring drivers to cover the full damages.
Another simple and effective measure would be changing fines from absolute values to a percentage of income. Right now, parking in a bike lane usually doesn’t kill anyone so drivers are only thinking there’s a small chance of a small fine, but if it was a chance of, say, 0.1% of annual income Waymo technology would magically be capable of not doing that. Add a right of private action and enforcement would be high enough to really speed things along, too, and that’d improve safety and travel times for all road users.
1. https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/01/18/why-car-i...
fragmede
Yeah, making fines relative to income would change behaviors for sure. A $20 ticket when you make $20 an hour hits different when you're making $200 or $2,000/hr. If it was a percentage of pay, then the ticket would actually sting.
chung8123
There are a lot of people that just don't pay the fines and ignore suspended licenses as money stops becoming a motivator on the other end as well.
JumpCrisscross
> If a human driver commits vehicular manslaughter, they get the book. What about AV?
They get their licenses pulled statewide [1]. Cruise's single negligent manslaughter event carried more consequence than dozens of human cases combined.
[1] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/news-and-media/dmv-statement-o...
AnthonyMouse
> We can’t let AV manufacturers use “there’s no driver” as a way to escape responsibility, externalizing the harms AC cause onto society.
There is essentially nothing to be gained from doing this because it will not in either case be manufacturer; it will be an insurance company.
If the liability is paid by the vehicle owner's insurance then things work as they do now. You buy a car, insure it, if there is a liability there is an insurance claim and then the victim has someone to pay them for their injuries. Meanwhile the manufacturers still have a financial incentive to make safer cars because buyers want neither accident prone vehicles as the one they use nor high insurance rates. The insurance rates in particular are in direct competition with the car payment for the customer's available income.
Whereas if you try to put the liability on the manufacturer, several stupider things happen.
First, they're just going to buy insurance anyway, but now the insurance cost has to be front-loaded into the purchase price, which increases costs because now you're paying car loan interest on money to cover insurance five and ten years from now, when you otherwise wouldn't have needed to pay the premiums until the time comes.
Second, what happens to cars from manufacturers who no longer exist? They can't continue paying for insurance if they're bankrupt, so you need it to be someone else. Worse, if a company produces a vehicle which is unsafe, that will tend to cause them to go bankrupt. But then people still have them, and would continue to operate them if they're allowed to point victims at the bankrupt manufacturer, whereas the incentive you want is for the premiums on those cars to go up for the vehicle owners so that they stop operating them.
mmmore
> If a human driver commits vehicular manslaughter, they get the book.
I wish this were true. Often they get off with a light punishment, or no punishment at all.
melenaboija
> What if $10 million fine per X AV miles driven is an OK cost of doing business?
It’s the same cost/benefit we accept under current rules. Why have cars that can go 3x the speed limit? Why not require breathalyzers in cars before starting them? Why not fine logistics companies if one of their drivers breaks the law? And so on… Because it’s worth it
fma
>Why not require breathalyzers in cars before starting them?
FYI Cars will soon detect if you are impaired.
thinkling
What tech will be used for this?
I hope it’s better than other sensor tech in cars that think they need to warn you that you’re about to hit something at the front when the car is in reverse, that can't distinguish a bike rack statically attached to the car from the environment, and so on.
aziaziazi
Your questions are pertinent but what’s the benefit "worth" you’re referring to? The two first proposals would risk a politician popularity and the last one would be lobbied to he’ll buy the logistic companies. IMHO inconvenience isn’t worth driving among drunk coursier at 200kmh.
willbeddow
Seems good. I'm a big Waymo user (344 rides) and love it, but I think they violate both traffic laws and common-sense courtesies of traffic in ways not captured by safety / crash statistics. Tickets probably are a great signal for ways the model needs to be improved.
For example, every time a Waymo picks me up from my apartment, it blocks a full lane of traffic on an extremely busy street, rather than pulling into a much quieter side street that an Uber driver will always use. I suspect (but have no idea), a lot of these low-level annoyances might be invisible to someone only looking at aggregated crash statistics, ride times, etc.
In many ways, I suspect the AI future might be better in many of the ways we can measure, but worse in those which aren't legible to statistics.
altmanaltman
Don't they have 360 video of everything? Maybe they're low priority issues for now but surely those issues cannot be "invisible" because they "aren't legible to statistics."
fragmede
There's no external public visibility into it, so other than wilbeddow writing on HN, how would anyone else know about this issue? I have the opposite problem, where the Waymo takes the legal option on an unbusy street, making the route a lot longer, rather than making an illegal U-turn that a human driver would do, when there's zero traffic or pedestrians it could remotely possibly run into.
Which is also not captured in the statistics.
disillusioned
I've actually thought of a much more dystopian idea: that Waymos could be technically used as roving traffic cameras, and report on the human drivers around them. They absolutely have strong enough telemetry systems to be able to determine things like excessive speeding, dangerous lane changes, red light running, etc., and their imaging systems could probably pick up a license plate with little additional modification... it's obviously not great from the perspective of general optics and morale, but it would surprise me if no one had floated basically WayNarc as a business model...
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AppleAtCha
I do not live in California and am not up to speed on this issue, but as a casual observer I am shocked that they were allowed on the road without being ticketed for violations like any other vehicle operator.
socalgal2
Any other vehicle operator is also rarely ticketed in California.
apublicfrog
Completely agree. How is it possible they issued these permits (years ago it seems) without having this infrastructure in place?
kjkjadksj
Scooter companies are allowed to violate ada putting the scooters all over the sidewalk where there isn’t 3ft of space to pass them.
crazygringo
Ticketing is a weird thing to do with driverless cars.
If the violations are intentional and easily fixable, then just pass laws/regulations requiring AV's to follow rules or else cease operations entirely.
If the violations are unintentional but happen only rarely in weird edge-case situations, then just set low frequency thresholds for them to be allowed, the same way we allow tiny amounts of rodent hairs in peanut butter. If AV companies exceed the threshold, then they get fined at first and eventually lose their permit -- but these aren't tickets for individual violations, but rather a yearly fine for going above the yearly threshold.
If the violations are intentional but not easily fixable -- e.g. they're stopping where not allowed because there's no legal place to stop within 15 blocks -- then the laws/regulations are bad, and tickets are essentially an unfair tax. That's the case in my city where moving trucks are essentially illegal, because it's illegal to double-park them, but there's usually no legal parking available within any reasonable distance that movers could carry furniture. So you just know that the cost of moving includes a "tax" of a parking ticket, unfair as it is.
Finally, if the violations are unintentional but happen all the time, the AV company should lose its permit because its software sucks.
I don't see how ticketing AVs for individual violations makes any sense.
EDIT: for those who think I'm letting AV companies get off too easily, it's precisely the opposite. I'm saying that if AV companies are violating traffic rules all the time and can't fix it, they should be banned. Ticketing is not the answer, because ticketing isn't holding these vehicles to a high enough standard. It's letting the companies get off the hook by merely paying occasional tickets instead of improving their software.
MostlyStable
In all of your situations except for cases where no good legal option exists, ticketing is just the easier way to apply your suggested idea. It gives a direct incentive to the company to lower the rate as far as is possible. It doesn't allow some minimal amount without a fee, but that doesn't seem like that big of a deal.
The biggest reason for the difference between Autonomous vehicles and peanut butter is that with autonomous vehicles, we already have a compliance system in place....cops. It's not designed for autonomous vehicles, and you are correct that it's not the way you would design it for the ground up for autonomous vehicles, but it's far better to accept the imperfections than to build some new, separate compliance and monitoring system on top of the existing one. The benefits aren't large enough to justify it.
In the far future when the vast majority of vehicles are autonomous? Sure, probably worth scrapping to a new system (by then, my guess is that issues are rare enough to just not have a system at all and just use the legal system in the rare cases of large issues).
Until then, ticketing in the case of traffic violations seems fine and good enough to me.
tempest_
At some point though those tickets need to actually hurt and no be just a cost of doing business.
After enough violations humans get their license taken away. What happens after autonomous vehicle get enough violations?
tln
Yes that is in the law.
Fleet reductions, new limitations on operating areas/conditions, fines, permit suspension or revocation
HDThoreaun
> What happens after autonomous vehicle get enough violations?
They put R&D resources toward not getting as many tickets and eventually fix their software to not get tickets? Self driving cars might profit $100/day. Getting tickets completely eats that and ticketing mega corps will be very popular politically so you better believe it will happen
bushbaba
i'd argue Waymo is "1 Driver", and after they get a cumulative 4 points in 1 year, then Waymo would no longer be allowed to drive in the state of California
cyanmagenta
You make some good points, but here are some counterpoints:
There is an existing infrastructure for ticketing by license plate, payment processing, collection, etc.
You’re describing changes to the law, which require a bunch of procedural hurdles. It’s much easier for the DMV to just promulgate new rules that tap into existing infrastructure, as they did here.
Also, how is the government supposed to assess whether these violations are intentional or not? Tickets are strict liability (you get the ticket if you do it regardless of intent, reasons, etc.) because it is easy to administer.
crazygringo
Of course I'm describing changes to the law. AV's inherently require tons of changes to the law. They already have. Permits for AV companies operate under new law. That is not an obstacle.
wongarsu
No, I think ticketing is the right thing to do. You set a law. Any instance of breaking that law costs money, so the AV company has an incentive to reduce the number of violations. The won't be able to bring the number of violations down to 0 just like we can't bring the number of cockroaches in chocolate down to 0, but that nonzero amount is just a regulatory cost they can decrease by getting closer to the goal of 0 violations.
Obviously, we should also have the option to pull vehicles that are brazenly ignoring the law and just eating the cost of the tickets. Just like we do with drivers who do that. But that should be the second line of defense if regular monetary fines (tickets) fail
crazygringo
The point is, with software you don't need tickets. Either the software is written to try to follow the law or it isn't. If it's trying, then we establish thresholds. If the company is actively trying to break the law, it should be shut down.
Tickets are a silly, roundabout way to go about it. They make sense for human drivers because they're all running different independent "brain software" and it's unrealistic for minor violations to ban someone from driving. But with shared software across a fleet, you can just require the company to fix its driving software directly when possible. Ticketing is actually counterproductive, because it allows these companies to avoid many of these fixes if the tickets are infrequent enough.
JumpCrisscross
> Either the software is written to try to follow the law or it isn't
Then the real world intervenes. Nobody plans to block an intersection. But a lack of planning and shits given will put one into that position even without intention.
> it allows these companies to avoid many of these fixes if the tickets are infrequent enough
Sounds fine? Like, as long as AVs and human drivers share the roads, modulating enforcement with infraction frequency seems fine.
xphos
I feel like this trivializises all software development. It happens but 99% of development is done to follow the spec or law in this case. The failures or bugs are usually not intentional. You basically saying if 1 car in the fleet breaks the law shut them down? If thats a strawman im sorry but even in software algorithm have unintentional bugs and make mistakes. The same is true for human drivers but we dont revoke their licenses when they break the law we have a proportional penalty for break. If driverless cars are speeding its a slap on the wrist. If they are driving the wrong way down the freeway the penalty would be revoking licenses
OtherShrezzing
Seems to me like ticketing is a really simple proxy for everything you’ve just described.
Why pass a thousand new laws when the existing laws have an enforcement mechanism?
tintor
Ticketing AVs for individual violations like human drivers is the only fair way.
How would your proposal work for personal driverless cars, with/without custom modifications? ie. if my personal car commits violation on its way to pick me up
crazygringo
I'm talking about AV fleets.
If you purchase an AV car then similarly it's up to the state to regulate the manufacturer. How could you possibly be personally responsible for the fact that it ran a red light?
And nobody should ever be allowed to personally modify an AV's software. Such a vehicle should never be allowed on the road.
luotuoshangdui
Yes, I thought AV by design should not voilate traffic laws.
delfinom
Ok, but why are AVs getting a break on the same tickets a human gets no "low frequency threshold" for them to be allowed.
If a AV runs a red light or a stop sign, it should be the same penalty, period.
If AV companies want to avoid the tickets, they can make their claimed superior drivers avoid violating the law.
crazygringo
No, you're missing the point.
If an AV is regularly running red lights or stop signs, it should be a much worse penalty. It shouldn't be permitted to operate at all.
It shouldn't just be given occasional tickets. Tickets are not the right enforcement mechanism.
Ekaros
They should be ticketed and stopped from operating after certain threshold. And tickets should have some reasonable multiplier as they are much more capable paying say at absolute minimum 1000x. Only high enough tickets are efficient against corporations. As their shareholders sadly can not get those tickets.
squibonpig
They want to make money from the tickets
jeffrallen
That's fine, the stupid companies are privatizing profit by abusing the public commons... Let them pay.
chrismcb
"begin" you mean they haven't been doing that already? That seems wrong
cowlby
Are they trying to drive safety or revenue? The second order effect people forget about is tickets are a source of revenue for cities and police depts. Surely driverless car companies will absorb a few tickets and fix the issue quickly.
So I do wonder what happens in the future when roads and cars are all automated and city funding from this channel dries up.
WhyIsItAlwaysHN
Tolls, revenue taxes, ever stricter rules that cause tickets despite technology getting better.
cucumber3732842
>ever stricter rules that cause tickets despite technology getting better.
That sort of stuff might work on a bunch of peasants since you can screw them individually for small enough amounts it doesn't meet the threshold for political pushback but it won't fly against a few megacorps who do self driving fleets.
joeframbach
Police departments have already moved on from traffic enforcement to civil forfeiture. Like, a decade ago.
al_borland
I imagine the city funding issue could be solved with some sort of tax to operate within the city, where a couple cents from each mile driven would be paid to the city. Alternatively, a higher cost for registration at the state level.
What I worry more about is a future where private car ownership seems impractical when there is a large fleet of autonomous Ubers out there to handle the day-to-days, which start out cheap. Once society reaches a point of dependence, will there be enough competition to keep the price down, or will we see consumers of the services get squeezed as companies ratchet up prices to increase margins.
socalgal2
Given the lack of enforcement it must not be true that it’s a source of revenue for the city. I see ticketable violations multiple times a day and zero enforcement
kajman
Fix the issue quickly, or optimize to the point where revenue gained from breaking the law exceeds the fine. Last I read they were holding steady on "passengers want us to pull into bikelanes to drop-off" in California.
pokstad
Probably higher city/state taxes. A police officer making over $200k a year with a pension isn’t making most of their salary from traffic tickets.
bilbo0s
At the same time, there are not many cops making USD200K per annum in my municipality. And it's in flyover country, where everyone is clamoring for lower taxes. So I think it'd be a bit naive to think politicians wanting to score easy points with voters in cities, and even states, won't take the opportunity to extract a bit of revenue out of Big Tech.
Not saying it's right. Just saying that's how local politics work.
undefined
tallowen
Bike Lanes have turned out to be an interesting edge case.
Waymos are currently dropping off and picking up passengers in a bike lane which is not legal (because it is dangerous) however many ride share drivers also do this. As somebody who is commonly a biker / pedestrian I am excited that AVs will likely make many things safer for that class of user. That being said, I do worry about how we encode these "social understandings" of laws. - A waymo I rode in on a highway was happy to go slightly above the speed limit - It seems at stop signs waymo prefers to be slightly aggressive to make it through rather than follow the letter of the law.
It seems silly that we have to teach robots to break certain laws sometimes but parking in bike lanes / yielding to pedestrians are laws that human drivers break all the time and I hope the mechanisms mentioned in the article prevent us from teaching robots to program anti-social but common behavior.
https://futurism.com/future-society/waymo-bike-lanes-traffic
ssl-3
It's all pretty nuanced. I don't know where to draw a line.
For instance: Busy intersections with 4-way stop signs are an interesting example of how laws don't quite fit.
It's obviously important to get the order right since nobody wants to be in a car crash today. But the law (often -- we've got 50 states worth of driving laws and they aren't all the same) says something very specific and simplistic about the order: First-come, first-served; if order is unclear, yield to the right. Always wait for the intersection to be completely clear before proceeding.
That sounds nice and neat and it looks good on paper. It was surely at least a very easy system to describe and then write down.
But reality is very different: 4 way stops are an elaborate dance of drivers executing moves simultaneously and without conflict. For instance: Two opposite, straight-going cars can proceed concurrently works fine. All 4 directions can turn right, concurrently. Opposing left turns at the same time? Sure! While others are also turning right? Why not.
When there's room for a move and it creates no conflict, then that move works fine.
We all were taught how these intersections are supposed to work, but then reality ultimately shows us how they do work. And the dance works. It's efficient. Nobody gets ticketed for safely dancing that dance. (And broadly-speaking, a timid law-abiding driver who doesn't know the dance will be let through...eventually.)
The main problem with the dance is that it's difficult to adequately describe and write down and thus codify in law.
But maybe we should try, anyway.
qazxcvbnmlp
The nuance for four-way stops is pretty simple. First come, first serve queue. Except you are allowed to jump out of order if you jumping out of order doesn't slow the people ahead of you down.
testing22321
You’ve done a great job of explaining exactly how 4 way stops are terrible , and why they should be eliminated.
Only two countries make heavy use of them, so it seems less effort to get rid of them and the AI driverless world will be better without them
ssl-3
What I've described is the reality that I, along with self-driving Waymos in California, exist within.
There isn't a generation alive that didn't grow up with this reality in these places.
---
Now, if you want me to agree that there are much better methods than stop signs to control traffic at intersections, then sure: I can agree with that. Absolutely.
But I'll agree only on one condition: That you cease immediately with all attempts to make perfect be the enemy of good.
tim333
As a cyclist and driver I figure you have to use some common sense. I probably break some regulations all the time like stopping where you are not supposed to briefly but being safe and not inconveniencing others is the main thing.
al_borland
I read an article a while back that they made Waymo more aggressive, in the ways you mention, because they were quite annoying to other drivers when following the letter of the law. There is something to be said for following the flow of traffic.
I would imagine they would be able to revert back to more strict rule following once autonomous vehicles reach some level of critical mass and human drivers are needing to adapt to the AV traffic, rather than AVs needing to adapt to human traffic.
testing22321
I wonder what happens legally if a biker plows into the Waymo, Casey Neistat style.
tim333
I don't think you are legally allowed to deliberately crash into things even if they are annoying.
The law in that video - ticketing cyclists for not being in the bike lane - surprised me. There's nothing like that in the UK.
testing22321
It will be an “accident”
BoorishBears
In SF it's legal for taxies to do pickups/drop-offs in bike lanes
I haven't seen any evidence Waymo does it anywhere illegal "just because rideshares do"
scottbez1
This is false. It is only legal in the rare event that a passenger requires curb-side access for accessibility/ADA reasons; any other use is still illegal. To quote SFMTA taxi training:
Only drop off in a separated bike lane if you have disabled or elderly customers who require direct access to the curb You may only pick up in a separated bike lane if the dispatcher tells you that the customer is disabled and must be picked up at a location that is next to a separated bike lane.
Taxi drivers often intentionally misstate this regulation because it’s more annoying to follow the law and find a legal place to stop so they pretend they are allowed to use bike lanes for any reason.
dlcarrier
Taxi training isn't a regulation. The California Vehicle Code is, and specifically section 22500 (https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...) states which areas parking and standing is prohibited, without needing to expressly post signs or paint curbs to indicate a no parking zone, and it does not prohibit parking or standing in bike lanes.
BoorishBears
Woah you're being pretty misleading!
That's for a separated bike lane, and Waymo doesn't even seem capable of doing it: that'd typically involve driving over/between the plastic bollards separating the lane...
Waymo doesn't seem to be willing to drive on the wrong side of bollards and I've never seen a taxi do it either.
-
For non-separated bike lanes it's still a last resort, but it's allowed for all passengers not just the disabled.
> Bicycle Safety
> Passenger Loading: Non-Separated Bike Lanes
> May enter a non-separated bike lane with caution to drop off all customers (disabled and non-disabled) Using bike lanes as an absolutely last resort [emphasis theirs, not mine]
Waymo doesn't seem to do it when there are other options close nearby either, given the gaps in allowed pick up/drop off locations they offer by bike lanes
-
It would seem you're intentionally misstating the situation to villainize the driverless vehicles that otherwise l generally respect riders more than anyone else on the road...
Actually weirdly enough, you had to read what I wrote to post this right?
This is the same training doc you used? https://www.sfmta.com/sites/default/files/reports-and-docume...
Sperated bike lanes are illustrated and come after what I quoted :/
dlcarrier
Yea, California civic code is pretty liberal with curbside parking parking, allowing it anywhere it isn't expressly prohibited, with signs declaring it so.
I live in Northern California, inland of San Francisco, and the city closest to me has a bunch of streets with bike lanes that are just painted onto the shoulder and otherwise are legally just a shoulder. Most of those streets also prohibit parking, but some don't, so parking is in the bike lane.
It gets really crazy in the denser parts of Southern California, where parking is sometimes not prohibited even when there isn't a shoulder, so parked cars full-on block a driving lane.
nallana
They haven’t been all this time? Damn — what a time to be a robot
morkalork
I guess it's like patenents (when it's the same thing but comouter) or piracy (but it's model training at a FAANG), where tech just gets a free pass.
ctoth
What's gonna really be funny is the first time a state legislates that an AV company has to keep a bug in their software to maintain a municipal income flow.
drivebyhooting
The cars are programmed to intentionally, violate the rules. That’s the only way to drive effectively. Just two examples: gap finding and turning left on a busy intersection.
HeavyStorm
_begins_? Like, before, they wouldn't get tickets?
undefined
dlcarrier
Moving violations are issued to the driver, in person, so there hasn't really been a mechanism for issuing them to an operator.
hoppyhoppy2
Yes, and there's an example towards the end of the article.
fourspacetabs
As a Waymo (and other driverless car) supporter, this seems like an obviously good thing, right? I’m a little surprised this wasn’t possible before given the amount of regulatory scrutiny (correctly) applied to these companies.
Archive link in case of random paywalling like I got: https://archive.ph/xHMDO
subhobroto
> As a Waymo (and other driverless car) supporter, this seems like an obviously good thing, right? I’m a little surprised this wasn’t possible before given the amount of regulatory scrutiny (correctly) applied to these companies
Not necessarily. I went into a bit more detail in my own comment but it might be useful to think that when regulations are written keeping in mind multibillion dollar automobile companies, what the effect of those regulations on a person maintaining their own vehicles might be.
Consider that your Waymo got ticketed, but you had flashed it with a "no customer telemetry" firmware. Once Waymo gets the ticket, they flag your car as having "unauthorized" software and now the ball's in your court that the reason why your Waymo got ticketed has nothing to do with the telemetry feature that tells Waymo what radio stations you were listening to.
Also, when regulations are written keeping in mind multibillion dollar automobile companies, the ticket isn't going to cost $500.
infecto
I would hope any type of software modification would put more of the responsibility the owner.
MostlyStable
I'm of the opinion that if one owns an autonomous vehicle, regardless of software modification or not (which should be allowed), then one is fully responsible for it's actions. If one doesn't trust the software provided by the manufacturer, don't buy/use it. Once one chooses to buy it and operate it, then it's that person.
Possible exceptions would be in the case that, after purchase, the manufacturer pushes a software update that meaningfully changes the behavior in such a way that it causes issues. In that case, both A) the manufacturer should be responsible and B) the owner should have the option to get some kind of compensation.
loeg
Yes.
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I am, in general, hoping AV will reduce road deaths in the future.
The last hurdle is regulatory. We can’t let AV manufacturers use “there’s no driver” as a way to escape responsibility, externalizing the harms AC cause onto society.
The question is how to achieve fairness. If a human driver commits vehicular manslaughter, they get the book. What about AV? $10 million? Executives go to jail? What if $10 million fine per X AV miles driven is an OK cost of doing business?