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Comment by VengefulCynic | Hacker News Reader

I would really love this if it creates a minimally-invasive legal framework to enable innovation and curb nonsense like pedestrians jumping in front of cars and trying to sue the manufacturer when they get hit (hopefully while providing a mechanism where manufacturers can indemnify their vehicles without too much liability danger in such cases).

On the other hand, I have to say that I don't exactly have the greatest level of faith in the California Assembly based on past performance. Here's hoping they buck the trend and establish a framework to encourage rather than inhibit innovation.

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Have cameras on the car. Have them record into a 120 second buffer. When the car detects a crash write the buffer to disk with a timestamp.

Ugh, as a driver I'd prefer not to have all my actions recorded regardless of whether it's beneficial to me. This reeks of invasion of my privacy and possibly opens me up to prosecution if the camera were subpoenaed in a criminal proceeding for something unrelated to the car's function. Same reason I don't leave a GPS trail everywhere by choice.

I don't think your going to be outed by a 120 second buffer. Especially if it isn't written to disk until theres a crash. (Heck, two minutes is probably a shorter time than it takes to open the hood and spray the RAM with liquid nitrogen.)

Unless of course your being accused of a crime that was either caught on film two minutes ago or it involved a car crash.

EDIT: Or was caught on film two minutes prior and involved a car cash.

In the UK we have automatic number plate recognition and a nationwide network of CCTV. Some places can recognise a stolen car and dispatch police within 60 seconds. (Notably the City of Westminster and Heathrow airport.)

> I'd prefer not to have all my actions recorded

Fair enough, but it's too late for some countries.

I mean no offence (I fully recognize that the UK is a sovereign state with rules that largely satisfy it's own culture and people), but I feel that if we universalize this idea ("Fair enough, but it's too late for some countries.") the result will be nothing more than a race to the bottom.

It's highly likely that any autonomous car will have something very similar but with sensor data instead of video.

If I were making said cars, I would not sell them without that feature. Otherwise, if something ever happened to the car I would have no decent record of what my software was trying to do in the incident. You would have no way of fixing serious issues, or absolving yourself of fault.

This is the reasoning behind airline black boxes.

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