Hacker News Reader

Comment by Brian_K_White | Hacker News Reader

This kinda sounds like employing the police to do your job.

Police/Fire etc should absolutely have this ability, but that is a seperate issue.

If your ordinary car breaks down in the middle of a busy road, then yeah the police or fire department will indeed help you push it out of the way (if bystanders aren’t already). You wouldn’t say that’s the responsibility of Toyota.

It's not about the car or the manufactirer, it's about the operator.

The closest analogy would be when the driver of an ordinary car becomes incapacitated.

In that case, the police or someone acting on the polices behalf can and will move the vehicle and then the owner pays for that later. But there IS an operator who is responsible for the vehicle unless some misfortune happens.

A self driving car sseems more like letting other people deal with any problems you caused by letting that car loose on the road.

Basically the same as parking a regular car somewhere it's not supposed to be and leaving it.

"Oh if this car I left in front of the firehouse is in the way, just call this number and I'll tell you some instructions how to unlock the car and drive it somewhere else for me."

The police should be able to levy some sort of fine/fee for this imo.

I understand this is a slippery slope argument on my part, but why is this any different from the emergency services pushing a non-autonomous vehicle out of the way to clear traffic?

What if it’s a privately owned bus, or a taxi? Would those companies foot the bill for their disabled vehicle?

It depends on whether you see it as a piece of machinery that's broken, or a non-human driver that's choosing to violate the rules of the road. As the article mentions, it sounds like California has chosen the second and plans to begin issuing citations.

A human owns and operates and is the benificiary of a company that chooses to put un-chaperoned machinery on the road.

"machinery that's broken" doesn't make it ok. Where did the broken machinery come from? It's not a natural event like the weather. It came from someone who placed it there without a supervising agent to be responsible for it.

It's essentially a special form of littering.

> "machinery that's broken" doesn't make it ok. Where did the broken machinery come from? It's not a natural event like the weather. It came from someone who placed it there without a supervising agent to be responsible for it.

Sometimes making an individual responsible just isn't the right call. If you have a car that you know is a bit of a clunker, and it breaks down in the middle of the road, should you be cited? I'm not saying California's decision was bad, but I could imagine a reasonable government pursuing a different strategy too.

Yes. Of course. Most states have some form of inspections and minimum standards for safety, and a liability insurance requirement, and driver licence for that matter, just for this reason, to put limits around bad judgement and distinguish bad luck from bad practice.

This is not the same as knowingly driving a car that is more likely to break down. This is not meeting part of your responsibilities because emergency services will take care of it.

It's abandoning a vehicle the same as with a normal car where you didn't abandon it through no fault of your own, but because you intentionally dumped it somewhere.

Waymo didn't intentionally break a car in exactly the same way a drunk driver didn't intentionally crash a car.

Well, they should? Or if they prefer, their insurance will pay on their behalf.

If a private company leaves operational vehicles in the middle of streets and requires city services to move them to unblock public roads... sure, let's charge them. Is that something that is happening? Is that more likely to start happening we make this change? This slope is beyond slippery.

They soon (for some Definition of "soon" ) will be able to do this, according to this article:

"Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday signed a bill that allows law enforcement to cite driverless car companies for traffic violations."

https://sfstandard.com/2024/09/28/waymo-halts-kamala-harris-...

If police/fire get this ability commonly then will they start asking for it with regular cars as well?

they already do this regularly. just instead of driving it off the road they ram it with their vehicles off the road. edit: or if there's time they will tow it.

Moving a car if the driver is incapacitated or not present?

If the driver is incapacitated, they will move the vehicle themselves

block access to a fire hydrant they may break the windows put the car in neutral and move it out of the way

Or this.. https://abcnews.go.com/US/park-fire-hydrants-california-fire...

Traditionally, this is called “towing”.

Police clear debris off the road after an accident. By that logic they’re taking sanitation worker jobs.

view it as a subsidy of the technology, which i think we should be doing

Reply on news.ycombinator.com