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Comment by phyller | Hacker News Reader

I like these, but I think that this one is too evasive: "In any driving situation, the party responsible, whether human or computer, must be clearly regulated and apparent." In reality, who is responsible for what is going to be the main problem that is faced on a day to day basis, and not attempting to define exactly how that works takes a lot of meaning out the standard. Other than that, it's largely stating what I would think most people would have assumed anyway. Which is a good thing and I'm glad they are doing it.

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Of course "responsibility" can mean a lot of things. It could mean that the driver is subject to strict liability and has to provide restitution even when they are not at fault. Or it could mean that the driver is only liable when they have acted negligently. The same can be applied to the maker of the car also.

The answer really depends on how you see cars interacting with the rest of society. To what extent should we compromise the safety and rights of other people to try and enable fast and efficient car journeys? That is highly contentious even before you introduce self driving cars. These kind of guidelines don't answer that question.

Maybe the cars could actually say specifically whose in control at the moment? Like a little sign that either says 'human' (when under human control) or 'AI' (when under computer control). Perhaps in the same place you'd put a taxi sign on that kind of vehicle.

Maybe then with a built in logging system that says every time control changes, and deletes the record when irrelevant (like three changes back). Then just take the data whenever there's a car crash, and hey Bob's your uncle.

I think the more difficult problems are if the car crashes while under computer control, who is at fault. Also, when a car crashes under human control, why didn't the software take over to prevent that, are car companies liable for that?

Well then it'd require an investigation after the fact. If the computer has been modified, it's the driver or garage's fault. If it hasn't been modified, then it's the company's fault.

So in most cases, the likes of Tesla or Uber or whoever pay the other party's insurance. If it can be proven that a certain programmer or team screwed up, then they're personally held liable and sent to prison if necessary.

That'd certain encourage decent standards here. Do your job poorly and have it tied to your actions, and you go down for 20 years.

That sounds like a really bad idea. Pay the insurance, fine. That's a good idea actually. Instead of paying your insurance company, you pay the company that built the software for insurance. Then the software/insurance company pays for any damages caused by the car. The best software could offer the cheapest insurance.

But put developers in prison for 20 years because the car crashed, that's untenable. You wouldn't have decent standards, you just wouldn't have anything at all. What kind of developer would put themselves in that position? Everyone makes mistakes. All complicated software has bugs. You would only have software made by fools, and marketed by fools, that was much more dangerous.

If someone makes software that reduces accidents from 10% of drivers per year to 0.1%, they still cause 100,000 accidents a year in the USA, maybe a few thousand fatalities. Give them the electric chair right?

If you are going to punish them for the mistakes, will you reward them commensurately for success? For every life they save, can you give them a life?

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