Amazon's self-driving taxi Zoox under investigation by US after rear-end crashes
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While sudden braking definitely contributes to it and is dangerous, this is mostly the fault of the drivers crashing into the self-driving vehicles even if they stopped without a good reason. And those vehicles are rather obvious, i.e. the driver following could have known that tailgating them at an unsafe distance is an even worse idea than with human drivers.
To your second point, nothing on those vehicles says "warning, no human in control" so I'm not sure how obvious it really is.
You absolutely can; it's what you're supposed to do if a toddler runs out in front of the car, for example. Barring malfunctioning brake lights, if you rear end a suddenly stopping vehicle, you were at fault for following at an unsafe distance.
Most legislation about this (example: https://codes.findlaw.com/ca/vehicle-code/veh-sect-22109/) says stuff like "when there is opportunity to give the signal". Screech brakes, then signal.
But it's pretty hard to enforce just for the reasons you mentioned. "I saw something on the road" is a fairly bullet proof defence which nobody can counter.
Kid in the street is a reason to stop suddenly
Investigating is fine. You can’t patch every driver in America when you find an edge case; this is a good use of public resources.
What we should guard against is overreacting in response to these incidents. America by and large seems to be responding to this reasonably.
Consider a kind of automobile crash for which driver of vehicle A is generally considered not-at-fault. For the sake of this discussion, let's say, a driver who gets rear-ended is generally considered not-at-fault (though I'm not sure that's the case -- just a simple example).
However, if you have an interest in the safety of occupants of vehicle A, who's at-fault isn't your top priority.
And there's never any occasion on which you do the math to say how you'd prefer your loved ones be possibly crippled or killed based on who would be considered at-fault.
OK, now suppose that you're an autonomous driving product developer. The decisions of driving behavior are different, and maybe your top priorities are to avoid bad PR and big payouts. So you'd have big incentive to take the at-fault PR and payout priorities into account when you're developing your autonomous driving sytem.
For example, your vehicle moving forward to strike something is probably very bad, for PR and payouts. But stopping abruptly, likely causing a vehicle behind to strike you, doesn't get as much of your attention, and/or doesn't weigh as strongly in your balancing.
Especially if the vehicle behind you is much smaller, like a motorcycle, so maybe your occupants don't even get whiplash, and the crushed motorcyclist would be considered at-fault (and generally motorcyclists don't get much public sympathy).
(The first examples I heard for autonomous driving were things like "There's an oncoming vehicle or obstruction, so do you choose to crash into it, probably killing/crippling the occupant of the vehicle you're driving, or to swerve into that pedestrian on the sidewalk, probably killing them. The PR calculus is different there, since consumers might secretly favor a system that prioritizes the safety of the buyer while increasing threats to others, without saying it out loud (see SUVs). But at the end of the day, the answer of how the autonmous vehicle drives, and who loses in driver decisions, might come down to the developer's very typical corporate priorities.)
You know what the car does if there's a motorcycle in front of it? It brakes. You know what it does if there's a weird bus coming across lanes towards it? It brakes. Driving normally is a hard enough problem. Nobody's designing these things to handle movie car chases.
The trolley problem was never an argument against mass transit.
> if the vehicle behind you is much smaller, like a motorcycle, so maybe your occupants don't even get whiplash, and the crushed motorcyclist would be considered at-fault
You’re describing tailgating. This isn’t even a trolley problem.
Jamming on the brakes for no reason is bad driving. Jamming on the brakes because something is in front of you is…that’s why we have brakes.
Secretly? I am happy to go on record: I would not get into a car that would ever consider anyone's life more important than mine. I would not let anyone in my family do so either.
Consumers in general.
Of course HN will even have people openly say things approaching:
"In my value calculus, it is only rational to swerve the vehicle to plow through a sidewalk full of photogenic preschoolers on a field trip, to maximize my chance of survival, and increase the likelihood of my genetic material propagating and out-competing that of others. Nature has always selected for behavior such as this, and it is only right. It repels me that others do not think this way, or are too weak to admit it, because they are inferior in intellect and strength of will! Hence why I and my spawn shall be the rightful leaders over them!"
Vigorous gestures and armbands are optional.
My gut feel is that most people either don't think like that, or -- to the extent they do think a little like that -- they're selective about where and how they voice it.