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Comment by pythonaut_16 | Hacker News Reader

I don't see how Volvo is responsible for Uber's recklessness. Volvo didn't make them test on public roads with unsafe technology.

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Critical thought would agree. Unfortunately for Volvo, the vehicle was a Volvo and without proper context (e.g. only looking at an image) it'd be easy to miss that Uber's self-driving technology was being used - not Volvo's.

The question isn't if Volvo is in any way culpable (they almost certainly aren't) but if there's a risk that Volvo might appear in any way culpable to the general public. The very last thing Volvo wants is the headline "Self-driving Volvo kills pedestrian".

Especially because a Volvo plowed into a pedestrian almost a year ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbW2UgmjJUA

IIRC it was discovered this happened because the owner hadn't purchased the "Pedestrian Avoidance Package".

And shortly before that, a Volvo plowed into a parked truck (in a demo):

https://youtu.be/aNi17YLnZpg

This was "was the result of an earlier flat battery that temporarily disabled the system due to low voltage" [0]

The pattern here is not only due to the collision systems themselves, but to the system around the collision avoidance system.

[0] https://jalopnik.com/5648126/volvo-pedestrian-avoidance-cras...

To be clear, I was specifically responding to the parent who somehow acted like Volvo was somehow complicit in this crash and thus wrong to distance itself.

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