Comment by dmix | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dmix | Hacker News Reader

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It's not 100% clear from the article that the permit applied to Uber. And the incident in question of a car running a red light was apparently being driven by a human.

> "This vehicle was not part of the pilot and was not carrying customers. The driver involved has been suspended while we continue to investigate."

If their self-driving tech is still driver-assisted, then shouldn't Tesla cars also be ordered to stop driving? Or did Tesla also require a permit?

From the DMV legislation:

> (a) “Autonomous mode” means an autonomous vehicle, as defined by this article, that is operated or driven without active physical control by a natural person sitting in the vehicle’s driver’s seat. An autonomous vehicle is operating or driving in autonomous mode when it is operated or driven with the autonomous technology engaged.

To me that sounds like it would cover what Tesla and Uber is doing if the driver is entirely hands-off. But this part is less clear:

> (b)(d) “Autonomous vehicle” means any vehicle equipped with technology that has the capability of operating or driving the vehicle without the active physical control or monitoring of a natural person, whether or not the technology is engaged, excluding vehicles equipped with one or more systems that enhance safety or provide driver assistance but are not capable of driving or operating the vehicle without the active physical control or monitoring of a natural person

https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/211897ae-c58a-4f28...

> And who is losing here exactly?

Uh, pedestrians in crosswalks, apparently. I'd also add:

1) drivers who were lied to about their potential take home pay 2) customers who will have to eat 50% fare hikes once Uber gains monopoly power in order for them to ever become profitable. 3) employees who work under a CEO who lauds the company as "Boober" in honor of all the fringe benefits he gets for running it. 4) investors who will lose value once the company finally implodes.

Isn't it a fun fact that throughout history, (barring the morally exceptional[0]) each human only ever chose to do things that were in their best interest. However, since humans existed, we have continually seen a consistent improvement[1] in the average human's life.

[0] Funny thing about the morally exceptional: I can't think of any which continue to improve our current day-to-day lives.

[1] Improvement is subjective. But objectively (compared to centuries past), our housing situation has gotten better (more roofs, less exposure to the cold/heat), the average human doesn't worry about getting sick from bad water or getting bitten by a snake while in their bed, the average human dies less to disease and overall dies at a later age, and the average human is able to spend more time on hobbies rather than necessities.

Regardimg [0]: The entire open source industy. Voluntary fire brigades. And so on.

I'm surprised you ignore all those so easily.

As you said yourself: "open source industry"

Voluntary fire brigades, et al:

My bad on the miscommunication, I was talking about "throughout history": As a result what I meant was: I can't think of any [morally exceptional people] which [past their own lifetimes] continue to improve our current day-to-day lives.

You are correct though that morally exceptional people do have a (slight) positive impact to my day-to-day. I just haven't seen a case where their contributions transcended time. Similar to the contributions of say: Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Bell, person who first repeatedly sparked fire, etc.

The contributions of religious figures transcend time. But you could argue either way about their contributions being beneficial to our day-to-day. Again it would be debatable if it was in the best interest of these religious figures to spread their personal ideology. Either of these debates would be inherently biased towards your take on religion.

> The entire open source industy.

The open source industry is far from unbridled altruism.

> Voluntary fire brigades.

It's entirely rational to join a VFD out of self interest.

And yet what you do in VFD is very often against your own self interest - you sacrifice a lot of time, and sometimes risk your health and life, and all you get for yourself is bragging rights.

> all you get for yourself is bragging rights.

Not at all! You get the knowledge that the men and women standing beside you at an emergency will be there when it's your house/barn/grain silo that goes up.

I was talking about the autonomous vehicle permit in this particular case. I removed that part of my comment because people are mistaking what I said apparently.

Nobody, until someone gets hurt.

It's a valid political position to believe that people don't need government regulation (laws) to behave themselves, not make mistakes, and not take risks that might lead to mistakes. It's the libertarian/anarchist viewpoint, as mentioned. But that's not how the government in San Francisco, California, or the US works.

Those of us who don't hold to the libertarian or anarchist positions believe that it's a good thing for laws to prohibit risky decisions that are probably going to be totally fine, if the not-fine case is particularly bad. For instance, that's why there are food inspection departments; even if you don't believe anyone is deliberately trying to poison people, there are a set of risky behaviors (not refrigerating things promptly, not washing things, etc.) that stand a small chance of getting people sick, and we believe it's worth stopping those, even if it slows down production, and even if we can't completely eliminate people getting sick.

> It's the libertarian/anarchist viewpoint

That's about as coherent a statement as 'it's the progressive/communist viewpoint'

There is a huge gap between Zero Government anarchism and the belief that government authority should be limited so it does not grow to oppress.

Sorry, that phrasing was unclear; my intention was that this one viewpoint is shared by libertarianism and anarchism, which, yes, are two quite different philosophies as a whole. (Although you may well disagree with that rephrasing.) I was referencing the post above that said "libertarian / anarchist subculture", which I'm guessing was meant similarly.

Just to play devils advocate here. Assuming Uber gets a permit to test autonomous vehicles in public, how much risk has been mitigated as a result vs not having a permit and allowing them to continue testing?

Reading the legislation, the only requirement for the permit are:

- have insurance with up to $5 million

- the driver has a drivers license and has "Instruction on the automated driving system technology", as well as defensive driving training

Those both sound like reasonable, common-sense things to have. I'd also want a company testing their vehicle to have insurance and know how to drive their car. But at the same time if this permit didn't exist, how much less safe would the world be? Really?

They're not stress testing the software, they're not analyzing the code, they aren't testing the competency of the people who built the software, etc, etc. They aren't doing any of that for a good reason. So ultimately this is mostly just theatre or an exercise in letting Uber know who the boss is.

Because I highly doubt Uber doesn't have the insurance or experienced drivers. Nor do I think there will be any significant amount of tech companies wrecking havoc on California because they didn't think to buy auto insurance before starting an automobile software company, save a permit.

CA DMV also requires companies testing autonomous vehicles to report all their crashes and disconnects. Here are all those reports.[1][2] 20 companies have signed up. This is basic data collection to help decide when a system is safe for deployment.

Uber apparently tried to evade this minimal level of scrutiny. Looks like it didn't work.

[1] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/auton... [2] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/disen...

I can think of a number of ways to collect this data without requiring a special permit. The police are in coordination with California, so incidences involving semi autonomous vehicles can be collected using existing systems. I'm also sure there are means to shutdown Uber's autonomous testing via court order.

Additionally insurance and drivers licenses are already regulated.

I'm still not convinced of the necessity. The hammer is always looking for a new nail.

The bar for expanding bureaucracy and adding highly specific oversight is so low and so commonplace that you're labeled a techno-libertarian for questioning the basic economic cost (realistic benefits vs tradeoffs) of doing so.

You may feel more comfortable knowing someone is watching over these specific companies testing process. That doesn't automatically mean the world has been made safer as a result of their time spent writing complex legislation, building regulatory systems, enforcing it, slowing down development of technology, battling cases in court, pushing companies to other states/countries, etc.

Unfortunately questioning the realistic utility of such regulation is no longer the default and is dismissed as the foolishness of some silicon valley tech people disconnected from real life...

The data collection required for autonomous vehicles includes even very minor accidents. The idea is to collect data on what failed and why before somebody gets killed. Unlike regular accident data, all reports are public. This lets us see that Google's repeat problem is being rear-ended when their cars stop while entering an intersection because they detected cross-traffic. It also tells us that Cruise Automation hit a parked car on 4th St in SF for no good reason.

Anybody testing autonomous vehicles has this data. They just have to send it in.

So do you think the public wouldn't be able to inform themselves on which service or vehicle is safer before purchasing these cars without this data? Or that Google, Uber, Tesla, etc wouldn't already be taking these numbers very seriously and doing everything to minimize them? Or that the public wouldn't truly know the real safety of these vehicle as a whole vs human drivers.... without this mandatory test vehicle permit?

> Or that Google, Uber, Tesla, etc wouldn't already be taking these numbers very seriously and doing everything to minimize them?

Given that we know existing car manufacturers have faked or covered up safety data in the past, you're putting a lot of faith in the goodness of tech companies.

The organization who detected that VW was faking the data wasn't actually the government (California Air Resources Board in this case). It was detected by a privately funded organization... funded in part by technology billionaires:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Council_on_Clean...

...I'm the one questioning the utility in of California's system of control. My faith in either actor's earnest participation is therefore not of much use.

I do know customers value safety and honesty of companies they buy/use cars from, and so do the investors who back these companies. Which are the people who keep these companies in business. That pressure exists independently of these permits. Which is why one must realistically question the utility of special government oversight.

I'm definitely a fan of the thesis that government should be more competent, although I don't think that's where you were going with that. :) I'd love to see government regulations that demand that you should stress-test the software, hire someone competent to analyze the code, get licensed engineers to be involved in design and development-process review, etc.

The difference between your devil's-advocate worldview and my worldview is I think not in our perception of facts - we both agree that the government isn't super competent right now - but in our optimism. You (or your viewpoint) isn't optimistic that government regulation will ever get good, and would rather just stop trying, but is pretty confident that individual humans and companies are unlikely to be abusive, or to cause much damage if they are. I'm resigned to expecting that someone, somewhere, will try to get away with the bare minimum required, and in the absence of regulation will just be too stupid to realize they're risking people's lives until people die. But I do have higher expectations of government regulation, and believe that it can be good or at least we can work towards it being good.

(Also, government regulation doesn't have to involve the government doing things. Several industries have so-called "self-regulatory organizations", which mostly exist because of the implicit threat that the government could start regulating more heavily. That is, the SROs only exist because of government letting industry know who the boss is, so there's a distinct positive effect of that posture! The SROs aren't perfect, but to first order everyone is better off: the government isn't interfering with things they don't understand, yet actual, competent oversight with meaningful enforcement powers exists. Self-driving cars are too small an industry at present to meaningfully self-regulate, but it certainly sounds like they won't be very shortly.)

Knowing how to drive and having insurance both sound like reasonable things for people to do, but we still mandate driver licensing and insurance.

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