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Comment by bilbo0s | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, if there is no way to mechanically control the car, then that's kind of a problem. In that case, I'd have to be given some pretty ironclad indemnification before I'd get in one.

If the car runs down a pedestrian in a crosswalk while said pedestrian has the right of way, on whom, exactly, does the civil liability fall? The manufacturer, or me, the occupant. Even more importantly, on whom does the criminal liability fall?

If the answers to those questions are not spelled out, explicitly, in the regulations congress puts out, then I agree, it would be hard for me to get into one of those things.

Especially if they said you were at fault because you told the car, "Take me home", or something. I can hear it now, "Your honor, the occupant was obviously exercising control over the vehicle!"

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As you probably already know. A drone pilot used the "return home" feature of his drone and the pilot is liable for damages it caused when it collided with a helicopter in an area with a temporary flight restriction.

A friend of mine used the "return home" feature of his drone and instead of returning home, it drifted off over the fence of the nearby BAE Systems establishment. He couldn't do anything except go home.

Later in the pub he told someone who worked at BAE, and was fairly high up, and the guy said, "yes, I heard about that, you need to contact them."

He did, and he got the full "men in black" treatment with several interviews/interrogations to determine exactly who he was and what his intentions were, and threatened with jail time. Eventually they believed his story and he even got his drone back, although the camera was obviously missing.

Apparently it had landed next to something "extremely sensitive", which may or may not have been the cause of it drifting off in the first place.

It's not equivalent, though. A car without a steering wheel will be legally required to be L4 - to allow the user to take their mind off the route, or even sleep. A drone has makes no such promise - the feature is known to be "dumb" and you therefore must judge if it's safe to use it.

Isn't the question whether or not you believe that a vehicle that claims to be L4 truly is L4?

If the manufacturer claims your vehicle is L4 (and even goes to the extent of not adding a steering wheel), then for liability purposes it ought to be L4.

It may fail in practice, but the claim is all that should matter in court.

Yet, I'm sure somebody somewhere is going to be thrown into the lions for protecting some rich company. So I'm certainly not going to be one of the first to buy one.

Do standard tests/certifications exist that grant certain L1/2/3/4/5 levels? (something like e.g. Euro X or WLTP)

I don't think so (never heard of) but I might be wrong.

I can imagine that they would be very complex to create.

How is it different than you pressing the breaks and it not stopping, or any other mechanical malfunction? Surely there's plenty of caselaw about it.

Then you'll be fighting an uphill battle against multibillion dollar interests that will go to the ends of the earth to shirk liability.

> Even more importantly, on whom does the criminal liability fall?

Observing how these things are usually handled I would say the liability would fall on no one. Unless the driver is intoxicated car crashes, even those resulting in deaths, are treated as unavoidable accidents with charges rarely being filed.

When a cab maims a pedestrian in NYC the typical response is the NYPD releasing a list of pedestrian safety tips.

You wouldn't be alone, I doubt automakers would sell a single solitary L4-capable vehicle without locking it down legally first. My guess is that they'll have to assume liability but with exceptions for if the user modifies the device in any way or otherwise breaks the user agreement. If accidents happen they'd have to have some procedure where they treat it like a plane crash and pore over every detail and issue recommendations/updates to some regulatory body.

The downside to this is that these vehicles would likely make even the most cautious myopic octogenarian look like speed racer.

If it's L4 and no steering wheel so the occupant can't override control, it's 100% the manufacturer's fault.

However, if the manufacturers are smart, they'll make the self-driving hardware record video footage they can use to defend themselves in court. You wouldn't want people to be able to jump in front of a moving car to try to get a payday after they get hit. This already happens and is why many people have dash cams. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibjWz9ehrJ8 for some good example.

Many cars on the road today have no mechanical linkage between the steering wheel and the tires. This is nothing new.

That's not how a electronically assisted steering rack works. There is a manual connection with a little bit of slop and that slop provides some difference between steering wheel position and input shaft (to the steering rack or gear) position which triggers the power assist. It's basically the same as an old school power steering gear.

Very very, very, very few cars are steer-by-wire. In fact, the Infiniti Q50 is the only one.

And it doesn't have the best track record[1]

[1] https://www.wired.com/2014/06/infiniti-q50-steer-by-wire/

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