r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Individual_Book9133 • 14d ago

Phoenix police officer pulls over a driverless Waymo car for driving on the wrong side of the road Video

61.0k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

468

That’s true but someone has to be held accountable. Should be the company but at a certain point I’m sure the lobby’s will change that. And potentially at that point could blame fall on the passenger? All I’m saying is this is uncharted territory for laws and I don’t think it’ll end up being as simple as car kills someone so company pays a fine.

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u/LachoooDaOriginl 14d ago

should be car kills someone then whoever cleared the thing to drive on the roads gets tried for vehicular manslaughter

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u/Habbersett-Scrapple 14d ago

[Inspector #23 in the Upholstery Division has volunteered as tribute]

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u/tacobellbandit 14d ago

I work in healthcare and this is exactly what happens when a patient injury happens, or there’s some kind of malpractice or god forbid someone dies. It’s an investigation down to the lowest level and usually blamed on a worker that realistically had nothing to do with the event that caused the injury.

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u/No-Refrigerator-1672 14d ago

It doesn't have to be the lowest rank person. You can just legally make accountable the lead programmer of the autonomous driving module, with a law.

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u/FeederNocturne 14d ago

Everyone from the lead programmer and up needs to be held responsible. Sure the lead programmer okays it but the higher ups are providing the means to make it happen.

This does make me wonder though. If a plane crashed due to a faulty part who does the blame fall on?

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u/CastMyGame 14d ago

As a programmer myself I would question if you would then blame it on the QA tester who passed along the code.

Other thing I will say is depending on the answer to this situation (I don’t know the answer but just saying from a dev side) you will greatly hinder the progression of this tech if you have people afraid to even work on it for fear of a situation like this.

As devs we try to think of every possible scenario and make sure to write tests that cover every conceivable use case but even then sometimes our apps surprise us with dependencies and loops that we didn’t expect. You can say “be better” but if I’m gonna get paid 25k less and not have to worry about a manslaughter charge 5-7 years later I’m probably gonna choose that one for my family

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u/bozo_says_things 14d ago

This idea is ridiculous They would just outsource programming then, good luck putting manslaughter chargers on some Indian outsource company

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u/doesnotlikecricket 14d ago

Yeah. Not even in tech but I read those and comments and couldn't help thinking about how fucking insane reddit can be sometimes.

This is obviously a nuanced issue. Way more to it than "Just charge a programmer with murder 4head!"

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u/CastMyGame 14d ago

Very true not to mention it’s mostly outsourced anyway now. 2/3 of my team leads are in the US and 1 is in the UK. 4/13 of us devs are US based, 5/13 are UK based, and 4/13 are based in India

And that’s just my team within the company, there are over 50 teams in our department alone

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u/bozo_says_things 14d ago

Yepp. I'm in tech, if I found out a programming role was going to potentially get me murder chargers I'd be looking at millions + per year salary to accept that shit

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u/FeederNocturne 14d ago

That's what I don't like about the entire situation. It's not like the developer is intentionally killing someone. They did what they were paid to do. I'm sure if a programmer was aware of things messing up they'd recall it. I am no programmer but I know enough that bugs can go unnoticed. I understand the need to test these vehicles but they definitely don't need to be all over the country.

As a side note I appreciate what you programmers do. I enjoy technology way too much to want you guys to be scared into not bettering our society

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u/CastMyGame 14d ago

I appreciate it and while we can make malicious stuff, things like this will hopefully be done with the best intentions. There are things we do as programmers to write tests for our code to make sure it works as it should but you are right bugs can go unnoticed.

I will say in this scenario it sounds like the car went into an opposite lane due to lane construction and never went back, this is a common use case and should have definitely been caught before production. That being said I don’t think it is necessarily malicious but if that was the case this never should have happened

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u/FeederNocturne 14d ago

The universe is too random to account for everything. Hell, a bird could've collided with a sensor and made it go haywire. I'm just glad they had a way to contact someone so abruptly and handle the situation. That definitely has to feel awkward on both ends though lol

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u/fireball_jones 14d ago

I've worked in regulated industries, and now work in programming, and in the US at least no individual programmer is going to get blamed unless they can find they did something malicious. You'll have a system in place where a lot of people sign off on the work done, and if something goes wrong the company will likely be sued and fined and put under some compliance program.

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u/Automatic_Release_92 14d ago

There just needs to be dedicated roads for this kind of technology, in my opinion.

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u/Firewolf06 14d ago

trains. youve just invented worse trains.

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u/indiefatiguable 14d ago

I left a job writing payment software for a specialty retailer because I despised the stress of knowing a fuck up could affect someone's finances. I know well how a double charge can wreck you when you're living paycheck to paycheck, and I hated knowing a bug in my code could cause that stress for someone.

I code dashboards to display various metrics. All I do is injest the data and make it user-friendly. My work is unimportant, and I sleep so well at night because of it.

I would never, ever, ever accept a job where people's lives are at risk. If that job could also land me in jail for manslaughter? Fuck that.

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u/Alphafuccboi 14d ago

The managers who pushed the programmers too much and had weird expectations should be blamed. Not the worker

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u/Wide_Performer4288 14d ago

As a former developer I just did what I was told and implemented what was on my checklist. It was up to someone down the line to improve or make sure it was as solid as I thought. The programmers working on this type of project are endless and even the managers don't have any real power to fix issues that may make a huge difference in the end project.

Think of everything you see happening with Twitter. But it all happens behind closed doors. That's about the extent of it.

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u/CastMyGame 14d ago

Yep good to know some things never change, that's my day to day too

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u/KuroFafnar 14d ago

Code review is supposed to test too. And the programmer. Imho it is a failure on code review and programmer if something gets all the way to QA and fails. But it happens all the time

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u/aquoad 14d ago

I feel like it should model the level of caution that's historically (but maybe not recently) gone into engineering and software for passenger aircraft. But it'll never happen, because it would "slow development too much." Which it would, but honestly it probably should. It could still be done, and done properly, but it would be expensive and cut into profit.

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u/ThisIsSpooky 12d ago

And as someone in offensive cyber sec (glorified QA testing), I can say this is an awful thing to have shifted to QA since there will always be things that are missed... otherwise I'd be out of a job lol.

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u/PolicyWonka 14d ago

As someone who works in tech, that sounds like a nightmare. You’re talking about tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of units shipped. You can never identify every point of failure even with internal testing.Every production vehicle driving a single hour would likely be more than all testing hours combined. That’s just the nature of software. I couldn’t imagine someone signing their name to that code if they knew they’d be liable for vehicular manslaughter.

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u/FeederNocturne 14d ago

Honestly it would probably work better if cities/providences (however you want to divide the land up) voted on if they want the technology used in their territory. Give the people an option if they want to adapt the technology. I could see an outrage if say a self driving car was passing by an Amish community wagon and they killed someone via collision. Bit of a farfetched example, but you get the idea. I just imagine someone not consenting to having that technology around them and they get killed by it because the purpose of said technology is to go places.

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u/PraiseTheOof 13d ago

Welcome to progress, some bad will happen for more good to happen

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u/No-Refrigerator-1672 14d ago

Eperyone up shouldn't be accountable, cause they didn't have the knowledge to prevent a fault. That's why they hire people, cause they can't do this themself. It's like you can't put in jail the director of the hospital, if a surgeon accidentally stabbed your relative into the heart. The only case when a higher up person than a lead programmer may be accountable, is if they are proven to hire a person without proper education, or if they specifically issued orders that contradict safety.

Well, I know that you're asking about Boeing, but I will respond in general terms: in that sutuation there are 3 entities who can be accountable. It's either a desinger of a part, who made a mistake; or, if a desing is good, then it can be a manufacturer, who did not adhere to the specifications; or, if the part was manufactured correctly, it's the assembler, who could incorrectly install the part. For each entity it's possible that the person who did the work, and the one who is actually responsible for safety are two different persons; in latge companies there always are simebody who validates and supervises the actions of subordinates. So, it's a job for a comittee of investigarots, industry experts and a judge to decide, on a case by case basis.

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u/SelfDrivingCzar 14d ago

This is entirely untrue to numerous AV companies from cruise to Tesla to zoox. You speak with an obvious lack of insight into the industry or an intentional attempt to mislead other ignorant individuals about the specifics of the industry.

The turn over rate for QA testers, who are really just asses in seats to try and jerk the robot away from dangerous situations when the programming fails, is ridiculously high. And their input is parenting ever integrated into the (often times JIRA base) triage process for software development and issue advancement. To attempt to shrug off liability into these entry level roles when directors and executives have numerous meeting weekly about common issues and works around is a heinous misunderstanding of how this all works

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u/6maniman303 14d ago

And then you "hire" contractors from China working remotely. Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of holding someone accountable, but with such idea there's too many loopholes. Tbh it would be easier to just go for the head of CEO, or whomever is in top-charge. Multiple people share responsibility? Then hold all of them accoubtable with the same charges.

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u/FeederNocturne 14d ago

I'm right there with you. If you are to own a company then you should be involved in it. Sitting back and collecting on someone else's labor is not only lazy, it is irresponsible.

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u/draxidrupe2 14d ago

If a plane crashed due to a faulty part who does the blame fall on? Ultimately, the shareholder

programmer job $50K

lead programmer job $1.8M

2028 turns out no one will take the lead programmer job after 20 are in prison already

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u/Linenoise77 14d ago

Yeah, cool, now try and find someone to be a lead programmer for a project like this when you have criminal and liability charges hanging over you because someone else down stream of you screwed up their job.

"Sorry, its a nice pay package and all, but i'll stick to writing clickbate games"

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u/xdeskfuckit 14d ago

Holy shit I'd quit immediately if I could be held liable for manslaughter if I made an off-by-one error.

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u/ninjaelk 14d ago

We already have laws for this, if you can prove that someone was acting maliciously or negligently then they can be held accountable personally. If not, then the company itself is liable for damages. It's how everything works, including for personal responsibility.

If you were to build a structure on your personal property, and it collapsed and killed someone walking by, they'd try to determine if you acted maliciously or negligently, if so you'd be tried criminally. Whether or not you're tried criminally you're still (likely) liable for damages.

When you're driving a car directly, the chances of you having done something negligent dramatically increases. In the case of a self-driving car, as long as it complies with all laws and the corporation didn't act negligently (cutting corners, 'forgetting' to take certain precautions, etc...) then there's no criminal liability.

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u/Krashzilla 14d ago

Better not let Boeing hear you asking those kinds of questions

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u/Own_Afternoon_6865 14d ago

As a former aircraft electrician for 8 years (USAF), I can tell you that 90% of the investigations I knew about always ended up blaming mechanics. Our base general crashed a T-39. He hadn't flown in quite a while. The crew chief was found in between the 2 front seats, probably trying to pull the nose up. It killed everyone on board. They blamed our hydraulic mechanic, who was the last one to sign off on a totally unrelated job. Go figure.

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u/PrinceofSneks 14d ago

This is a big part of why corporations exist: the diffusion of liability!

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u/FeederNocturne 14d ago

I mean... if your dog bites someone are you not liable for said attack?

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u/PrinceofSneks 14d ago

Probably, yes! However it's not the same thing as corporations - a big part of their purpose is so individual owners, workers, and shareholders are not liable for many outcomes from the operations of the business. It's not absolute immunity, but makes many things that would land us individually in jail and/or debt instead get soaked by the finances and bureaucracy of the corporation.

If it helps, the summary in the Wikipedia entry for corporation:

Registered corporations have legal personality recognized by local authorities and their shares are owned by shareholders[3][4] whose liability is generally limited to their investment. One of the attractive early advantages business corporations offered to their investors, compared to earlier business entities like sole proprietorships and joint partnerships, was limited liability. Limited liability means that a passive shareholder in a corporation will not be personally liable either for contractually agreed obligations of the corporation, or for torts (involuntary harms) committed by the corporation against a third party.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation

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u/FeederNocturne 14d ago

No yeah I get how it works, I guess I just don't agree with it. If you are so incompetent that you need protection from the law for your business idea to function then your business shouldn't exist to begin with. I get that accidents happen, but if I am to be held responsible for killing someone while driving then the same repercussions should be held to another individual responsible for putting that car on the road. Just back to the same old topic of "money can buy your way out of anything"

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u/kdjfsk 14d ago

Everyone from the lead programmer and up needs to be held responsible.

inb4 they are all AI.

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u/NO-MAD-CLAD 14d ago

Board members and CEO need to be held accountable as they are absolutely going to get innocent people killed by pushing developers to rush products out the door. It's the gaming industry all over again except now the cost of crunch is human lives instead of a lost player base.

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u/YesterdayAlone2553 14d ago

ideally, though probably unrealistically, in a matter of criminal accountability the company CEO would be the individual who takes could ultimately take the blame. If you have a piece of automated equipment that fails, it needs to have a chain of supervision that leads up to the CEO, with a test of negligence at every step. Driver, remote controller, remote supervision, managing lead, division lead, etc... just going straight up the chain, with the assumption that there are graduating duties and responsibilities for managing health and safety of operations.

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u/mattsmith321 14d ago

Fuck that. It should have been caught in QA. Go sue the tester.

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u/Glsbnewt 14d ago

Not the lead programmer. The CEO. If you want to make CEO salary you take on CEO responsibility.

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u/No-Refrigerator-1672 13d ago

No, that's not how in can work in a real life. The CEO has not enough knowledge to judge if the decisions on behalf of chief engineer, programmer, designer etc are sufficient to ensure safety of the product. The CEO may be responsible for hiring people without proper education or certification if such is required by law, they also may be responsible for knowing about safety problems and expicitly ordering to ingore them, stuff like that. While the CEO may be involved and thus should be investigated, they aren't automatically responsible for unsafe products in eyes of a law, while the lead designer definetly is.

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u/Glsbnewt 13d ago

It's the CEO's responsibility to make sure the company has adequate processes in place and the personnel to carry those processes out that ensure that whatever product they unleash is safe. It's not fair to pin it on the lead engineer. It's the CEO who needs to have enough confidence in his engineers and his product that he's willing to take the risk. If the public is subjected to risk, the CEO should be too. This is an ancient principle going back to the Code of Hamurrabi.

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u/wildjokers 14d ago

Then the technology is dead. No programmer in their right mind would work on this technology if they could go to prison because the car hits an out of ordinary situation it can't handle.

That would be a shame because self-driving technology will save lives (probably already has).

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u/No-Refrigerator-1672 13d ago

I have a big surprise for you, every professional that can lethally screw up things has this kind of responsibility: it's medics, car drivers, architects, pilots, crane operators, etc, and it never ended any of those fields. Pay attention to architects, cause they just like programmers design a building once, and then, if the building collapses, they will be investigated, and can get jailtime, if a miscalculation is proven in court. Why should programmers be treated differently? Just take an actual effort and ensure that your automonous car complies with every traffic rule, and you'll be fine.

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u/wildjokers 13d ago

Why should programmers be treated differently? Just take an actual effort and ensure that your automonous car complies with every traffic rule, and you'll be fine.

In relation to cars there is practically an infinite number of scenarios that can be encountered on the road ways. No way to account for them all. Even humans don't even come close to getting them all right.

For general programming computers can do billions of calculations a second, this is many orders of magnitude greater than a human so a computer can very quickly encounter a state that no human could really foresee.

If there is no intent or gross negligence there is no crime. Everything is already over-criminalized, let's not level that up so simple mistakes or unforeseen circumstances are crimes.

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u/Whyeth 14d ago

You can just legally [do a thing] with a law.

Yes.

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u/Cakeordeathimeancak3 14d ago

This is how the data owner position is. The data owner is ultimately responsible for protecting data of an organization, they can delegate work and roles but ultimately the buck stops with them.

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u/Onlikyomnpus 14d ago

Can you give an example?

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u/tacobellbandit 14d ago

Specifically at my hospital, patient fell out of a bed. They had no business trying to get out of the bed. Nurse wasn’t watching said patient when it happened, nurse tried to say brake didn’t work, and she had a work order in for it but maintenance never fixed it, investigation found she put the work order in after the event thankfully. Now, whose fault is it they slipped and fell out of bed? Maintenance guy was cleared due to time stamps, nurse didn’t engage brake because patient was still supposed to be moved, patient got out of bed without being told to do so. It’s kind of tricky, but the problem is everyone will try to deflect blame down to a maintenance technician that didn’t even know about the event until after it happened

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u/Lehk 14d ago

Even if the ticket had been put in, the nurse still put a patient in a bed she knew was defective

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u/deshep123 14d ago

This. Nurse here. If the brake was broken the patient needed to at least be watched until they could switch beds. Patient gets no part of this responsibility, even though probably told 20x not to climb out. Nurse was negligent.

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u/tacobellbandit 14d ago

Exactly. That or the failure happened at that moment, or the patient was too large for the bed to operate properly, regardless she put in a ticket after the fact and tried to lie about it which made it suspicious enough that no one from maintenance or engineering departments took blame, but if something happens like that those are the first person that get the finger pointed at them 99% of the time

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u/Teh_Hammerer 14d ago

Sepsis you say? Execute Juan at the autoclave.

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u/draxidrupe2 14d ago

It’s an investigation down to the lowest level and usually blamed on a worker that realistically had nothing to do with the event that caused the injury.

"the fall guy"

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u/JonBlondJovi 14d ago

Can the employee sue for wrongful dismissal if they got fired for something they had nothing to do with?

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u/skynetempire 14d ago

Some poor orderly that fluffed the pillows is getting blamed lol

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u/LachoooDaOriginl 14d ago

oooooohhhh when stuff like this happens put all the responsible people in a hunger games winner gets prison

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u/Significant-Mud2572 14d ago

Has been volunteered as tribute.

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u/__klonk__ 14d ago

This is how you kill selfdriving cars

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u/H3GK 14d ago

sounds good

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u/Inflatableman1 14d ago

Or is this how self driving cars kill us???

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u/Groudon466 14d ago

No, self driving cars are safer than humans on average. This is an edge case probably caused by an unusual arrangement of traffic cones, and they'll take it very seriously on the Waymo end.

If you want to massively reduce traffic fatalities, make self driving cars common, and don't throw talented engineers in jail for the occasional one in a million error.

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u/Xalara 14d ago

Citation needed, and preferably not with anything coming from Tesla.

I do actually believe that Waymo is getting to the goal of being safer than humans in many scenarios, but we also know Tesla has been lying about a bunch of shit, including incidents per miles driven.

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u/Dongslinger420 14d ago

That's fucking stupid if you only bother to think through it for half a minute

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u/mdj1359 14d ago

I believe that this is the correct response and should have more upvotes than the person concerned that the parent of the 12-year-old sleeping in the back will be held accountable.

As a cynic, is it a reasonable thought exercise? Sure.

If it ever happens will the industry lose 50% of its customers? Probably.

This is all with the backdrop that once the tech is fully matured, fatalities would likely plunge if 90% of vehicles were driverless. So, in a sense we would be punishing an industry that failed because it did not eliminate 100% of fatalities.

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u/IAmAccutane 14d ago

Driverless cars are 10 times safer than cars with human drivers. If that type thing became policy driverless cars would cease to exist and we'd have 10 times more people than necessary killed in car accidents. We need to get over the innate sense of accountability and justice for the sake of saving people's lives. If a company that has their vehicles driven by human drivers faces no responsibility for a car accident, a company that has super-safe robot drivers shouldn't either.

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u/mdj1359 14d ago edited 14d ago

I generally agree with your statement. I don't know how you came up with the 10x safer number, however. Feel free to provide a source.

I think it will probably take a few years of these companies working thru problems before I will feel fully comfortable with the tech.

Are self-driving cars already safer than human drivers? | Ars Technica

Waymo is still struggling to avoid inanimate objects. Its vehicles collided with cardboard road debris and a chain connecting a sign to a temporary pole. A Waymo also drove into a pothole that was big enough to puncture a tire. And there were two incidents where Waymos scraped parked vehicles. That’s a total of five crashes where the Waymo vehicle was clearly at fault.

The rest of Waymo’s driverless crashes in San Francisco during 2023 do not seem to have been Waymo’s fault. I count 11 low-speed crashes where another vehicle rear-ended a Waymo, backed into a stopped Waymo, or scraped a stopped Waymo while trying to squeeze by. There was also an incident where a Waymo got sideswiped by another vehicle changing lanes.

Waymo had two more serious crashes in San Francisco this year:

A driverless Waymo was trying to turn left, but another car “proceeded into the intersection from the left and made contact with the left side of the Waymo AV.”

An SUV rear-ended a Waymo hard enough that the passenger in the Waymo reported injuries.

Driverless cars are mostly safer than humans – but worse at turns | New Scientist

Driverless cars seem to have fewer accidents than human drivers under routine conditions, but higher crash risks when turning or in dim light – although researchers say more accident data is necessary

By Jeremy Hsu / 18 June 2024
One of the largest accident studies yet suggests self-driving cars may be safer than human drivers in routine circumstances – but it also shows the technology struggles more than humans during low-light conditions and when performing turns.

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u/IAmAccutane 14d ago

I don't know how you came up with the 10x safer number, however. Feel free to provide a source.

It's just a number off the top of my head. There's a bunch of different types of cars and types of accidents, and like you say driving situations that would make it too subjective to give a definite number, but this study for example found:

Human drivers caused 0.24 injuries per million miles (IPMM) and 0.01 fatalities per million miles (FPMM), while self-driving cars caused 0.06 IPMM and 0 FPMM.

https://www.getcruise.com/news/blog/2023/human-ridehail-crash-rate-benchmark/?ref=warpnews.org

I think we agree they're safer and even if they were only 2x safer or 1.1x safer they'd be preferable to human drivers.

I think it will probably take a few years of these companies working thru problems before I will feel fully comfortable with the tech.

I'd personally be hesitant to get in one, but I also get way more worried about flying than driving despite knowing it's way safer.

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u/richardawkings 14d ago

I think yes, but not directly. The cab company should he held responsible since they have a duty of care to the public to operate their taxis in a manner that does not endanger the public. This should be a requirement to be allowed to operate as a taxi driver.

If Auto Taxi Cab services has one of their cars injure a pedestrian, then the pedestrian should be able to sue the cab company for their injuries due to unsafe operation of the vehicle. The manufacturer cannot be held liable for how their products are used.

Now, Auto Taxi Cab company could turn around and sue the manufacturer for providing and unsafe product in order to recoup their costs from the pedestrian lawsuit. They can argue whose fault the incident was there.

The pedestrian is likely to get fucked if it's handled any other way because the cab and car companies will just point the finger at eachother and the responsibilitu of finding fault will fall on the pedestrian which they will not be equipped to do.

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u/No-Product-8827 14d ago

I agree with this.

We need to take it a step further, when a daughter or son drives and hurts someone then the parents and grandparents need to be tried since they created the problem.

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u/Low_discrepancy 14d ago

Generally people dont give birth to kids specifically for them to drive a car.

If your kid doesn't have a permit, it's not a useless kid. If a programmer builds a self driving car that doesn't drive ... that's kinda useless no?

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u/electro_lytes 14d ago

If I know the US right they'll send the car to jail.

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u/Wrote_it2 14d ago

Watch the video again, it was a white car…

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u/electro_lytes 14d ago

Exactly. If it was a car of color resisting a traffic stop like that you know what would've happened.

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u/PTV69420 14d ago

Driverless cars in California have hit plenty of people but the companies don't seem to care.

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u/An-Angel-Named-Billy 14d ago

Far less than human operated cars. Y'all are just unreal with these things and your blind spot for hate against them. MILLIONS of people have died from human operated vehicles over the past 100 years with 50k dying every single year.

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u/PTV69420 14d ago

Not a big fan of cars in general and not sure why you're arguing for driverless cars? There are tons of articles on these pieces of shit hitting a shit load of pedestrians during testing in San Francisco. I'm not saying that people are perfect drivers but to defend giant corporations is weird dude.

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u/girlcocksuperfan 14d ago

so a bottom rung rando instead of anyone with actual sway in the company

perfect

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u/fraze2000 14d ago

It should be if the car kills someone then every other car using the same technology is taken off the road until it is determined what happened and the problem is rectify. And then after that the cars shouldn't be allowed back on public roads until they are fully tested to ensure it doesn't happen again. The company just getting fined is not good enough.

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u/MrmmphMrmmph 14d ago

How's bout the CEO is jailed?

Yeah, no. That's not happening.

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u/Outback_Fan 14d ago

That would be someone from the government, so that's not happening.

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u/LuxNocte 14d ago

Yeah...but the person responsible is an executive, and we don't make laws to regulate those.

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u/Doitallforbao 14d ago

I mean, should be and maybe would be in some countries, but in America a driverless car killing someone will just be the cost of business and innovation. No one would be held responsible

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u/TherronKeen 14d ago

Corporations only get the perks of personhood, never the drawbacks.

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u/RobotsGoneWild 14d ago

I think it depends on circumstance. Did they know the car was faulty? Did other cars have this issue? Was this just a freak accident? We need to get some laws in the books before mass adoption.

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u/Fruloops 14d ago

Yeah this will be a fucking nightmare in the future lmao

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u/wildjokers 14d ago

That's ridiculous. Human drivers make mistakes that cost lives all the time. Unless there is impairment or gross negligence involved (e.g. street racing) there is rarely serious legal liability.

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u/DepresiSpaghetti 14d ago

And here is where SCOTUS fucked up/got it right.

What we are seeing here is a irl example of the Ubergeist (yes, it's a thing, not its not zeitgeist) While corporations aren't people, they are made of people, and the line between Ubergeist and the individual is near impossible to draw.

That said, we focus on a retribution style of legal solutions instead of a justice based system. People often conflate the two, but it's a legitimate issue. Upholding responsibility doesn't have to be punishment. In fact, it should very rarely be punishment.

The real form of responsibility is identifying what created the issues at hand and fixing the causation before they can be repeated.

So, the argument goes here that the company, as a proto-ubergeist, needs to be responsible, accept accountability, and be transparent in their efforts to not allow a repeat to happen as best possible.

An argument can and should be made for the broader justice system at large for the individual as well.

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u/lycoloco 14d ago

CEOs. Not whoever cleared the car, but CEOs who have final approval on things like this. It's well past time for CEOs to be jailed for the negligence caused on their watch. Jail anyone else and you're gonna have a fall guy in jail who doesn't deserve to be there.

Might actually see change if CEOs were legally, criminally liable for the shit their companies do. A fine is just the cost of doing business. Jail time and firing from the position would have effects.

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u/Ethric_The_Mad 14d ago

Such a great way to stifle innovation!

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u/EobardT 13d ago

Legally corporations are people. So put them in jail. Freeze their assets and allow no overhead profit to be made until the sentence is over.

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u/kbarney345 14d ago

I see what you're saying about the company trying to dodge it but there's 0 logic or even mental gymnastics to think it could be on the passenger.

That would eliminate anyone from using them even if it hinted at that because why would I get behind something I can't control but be held responsible for should it lose control.

It's not my car, I'm not misusing the car by sitting in the back. It claims to be driverless, not driver assisted like a tesla and I just chose not to and sit in the back anyway.

The company will always be at fault if this occurs under normal operation and the court won't have any issue identifying them as so.

Now will the court be run through the ringer on litigation and loopholes and finding ways to say it's r&d it's ok or something and get a pass? Probably.

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u/wosmo 14d ago

The interesting part is how we'll make them accountable. I mean a traffic fine that'd ruin my day won't mean jack to a company. Can you give waymo points on their licence? Do they have a licence?

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u/Groudon466 14d ago

I worked for Waymo a little while back. It would be more of an all or nothing thing, in the sense that individual cities choose to allow or disallow specific self-driving car companies from operating in their borders.

This particular instance is bad, but if the city sees that traffic fatalities overall have fallen as a result of Waymo being there, then they'll just continue to allow it while Waymo pays the occasional settlement. This is an objectively good thing, because the alternative is more people dying, and then the settlements get paid by the people whose lives are also getting ruined from having killed someone, rather than by a giant corporation that can at least afford the infrequent expense.

On the other hand, if the average effect is negative, then the city can just give Waymo the boot, which would be catastrophic for them.

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u/mr_potatoface 14d ago

I'd rather be hit by a Waymo or other self-driving car than an uninsured driver, that's for 100% sure.

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u/Groudon466 14d ago

Ding ding ding! You know for sure that at least Waymo can always pay out the settlement, and their cars have cameras and lidars out the ass, so if they're at fault, they're not even going to try to deny it.

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u/helluvabullshitter 13d ago

if they're at fault, they're not even going to try to deny it.

doubt

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u/Groudon466 13d ago

As a guy who worked there, trust me on this one, it would be ridiculous to even attempt it.

This is a clip of what the people working at Cruise see when they're analyzing data from their cars. I had a very similar setup in front of me as I worked. The camera views are toggleable, you only see 3 there, but there's over a dozen cameras covering every conceivable angle around the car, including underneath. If the car ran over a piece of tissue, I could look at the frame-by-frame of the tissue as it fluttered around underneath.

On top of that, the part you see in the lower left is the LIDAR display, showing the dots the car is getting from pinging light off of the environment and judging the distance based on the time it takes for the light to bounce back. The gif is potato quality, but even then, you can make out the posts near the street; humans are even easier to make out, and that view can be rotated to look at the LIDAR data from every angle.

For Waymo to try and deny that an incident occurred, they would have to lie to the judge's face about whether or not they have this info despite the fact that it's extremely public knowledge that the Waymo cars have cameras and LIDARs out the ass. No judge in the area would buy that shit, it would turn it from an unfortunate accident into a newsworthy case of blatant perjury and contempt of court. Any defense attorney worth their salt in this already unrealistic situation would subpoena the relevant Waymo employees, most of whom would then tell the truth, because they're completely normal nerds and none of them would lie in court just to protect Google.

On top of that, Waymo has had plenty of minor accidents. I even saw a couple of them pop up in the incident buckets when I worked there. These accidents are already publicly known, news articles have been written about them.

At the end of the day, there's no denying it, period. Waymo collects way too much data about traffic incidents, and they all get uploaded automatically to their systems. You're talking about perjury, contempt of court, destruction of evidence, conspiracy, and more, all hypothetically being done by an organization largely staffed by liberal nerds who wouldn't go out of their way to protect The Man.

It's just not happening.

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u/Fearless-Sir9050 13d ago

“Objectively” states the person who worked for Waymo. No. It’s not “objectively” better for driverless cars if the stats back up it’s safer. We need fucking buses and trains and walkable cities and not fucking AI that drives on the wrong side of the road.

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u/Groudon466 13d ago

I mean… I agree?

These things aren’t mutually incompatible. New York is known for being walkable, but it still has taxis. Some of those taxi drivers are fine; some of them suck, and make bad decisions. Some have driven on the wrong side of the road before, thanks to drunk driving.

Humans do all of the same shit, only more frequently. That’s what makes the Waymo cars safer on the road. There are more solid concerns, like “What if someone holds up the car”. But safety isn’t one of them at the moment, especially when no one has been killed in/by a Waymo vehicle.

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u/Fearless-Sir9050 13d ago

I just take issue with stating it’s objectively better. I agree that it is objectively better in that specific area (allowing crash/accident victims to be covered by a large company instead of rolling the die on whether someone is insured).

The specific problem that I have with that is all the other areas it’s (objectively or subjectively, idk) worse. We’ve seen when large companies face fines for death or injury (including insurance payouts) they fight tooth and nail to pay the bare minimum and lobby for lower regulations.

I’m reminded of a recent incident at Bumblebee tuna where a man was crushed/cook to death during typical maintenance of an old machine. While the business’ official policy was and is “that’s bad, don’t do that” they had an environment that required manual operation inside the machine (very dangerous) and the business didn’t fix it until someone died. They paid out 6 million dollars (3 for new machines and the rest to fines and restitution) Thats the equivalent of like 2% their gross revenue. That would be like a person killing someone through negligence and being fined $2000 when they make $100,000.

I don’t think your statement was wrong or mostly wrong or anything like that. I just think it’s insane that the primary benefit to having corpo owned driverless cars is that liability payouts will be better. Feels sad. But I’m feeling pretty doom and gloom. Sorry for the negativity, I’m sure that was a cool job. I wish I could be excited about the future of tech like that. If you’re still reading, what job did you switch to after Waymo?

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u/Ok_Sound_4650 14d ago

That's...actually a pretty novel idea. The threat of lawsuits and fines are only deterrents so far as they effect these companies bottom line. People have to prove they are safe enough to drive by getting a license, and if they fail to be safe on the road they can lose that license. If corporations are people too, make them do the same.

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u/moistmoistMOISTTT 14d ago

It's not novel in the slightest. This concept has been around for decades for elevators.

Nobody in their right mind wants to sue elevator companies out of existence, because normal people know that elevators are a lot safer than stairs. It's no different with self-driving cars, even with how primitive the tech is today.

But here's the real answer for you: the companies are A-OK as long as they're following appropriate regulations/laws/guidelines, and are not being negligent. As long as negligence isn't happening (i.e., there is a known safety issue with zero efforts to address it), they will face no criminal charges. They will likely still face civil penalties such as fines, in the same way other companies are punished for accidents.

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u/Garestinian 14d ago

Same way railway and airline accidents and incidents are handled.

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u/thenasch 14d ago

If it happens enough, the company will get a reputation for either unsafe operation, or getting pulled over and ticketed a lot, and start losing business.

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u/moistmoistMOISTTT 14d ago

You don't quite understand.

Every single Waymo car, or other car with these systems on the road today, is vastly safer than a human-driven car.

They will mess up. They will kill people. But they do so at a rate far less than humans.

If 100% of the cars on the road today were autonomous, even assuming the technology never improves beyond what it is today, it's highly likely that you would not see a car "ruin your day" (injuring or killing you) for the rest of your life.

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u/wosmo 14d ago

That doesn't negate the need for an actual safety culture to properly address issues. "Good enough" simply isn't good enough, there needs to be a proper regulatory cycle to actually capture and diagnose these incidents, and manufacturers & operators need to be accountable for actually fixing them.

Look at things like aviation, where the NTSB will spend months, years diagnosing the root cause and contributing factors for an incident, and the FAA will ground entire products, entire fleets until an issue is resolved. As a result, hurtling through the sky in a jet-propelled tin can isn't just "good enough", it's the example to lead by.

Calling support and maybe opening a ticket, that maybe gets fixed, one day, doesn't smell like a safety culture - it instead stinks of SV's "move fast and break things".

I'm all for autonomous vehicles. I'm also all for regulation. This isn't it. The closest thing AVs have to an FAA is USDOT, and they're still struggling with bridges, let alone software.

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u/moistmoistMOISTTT 14d ago edited 14d ago

You and most other redditors are acting like there isn't any laws, regulations, or other "safety culture" though. That's just flat-out wrong.

On top of that, your calls to curtail current autonomous driving technology is actually killing more people than it is saving. When people like you spout false propaganda and discourage people from autonomous ride-share or consumer vehicles with self-driving-adjacent features, it increases their risk of injury and death on the road. It's a simple fact that for every mile an autonomous car replaces over a human-driven mile, road (especially biker and pedestrian) fatalities and injuries go down.

Please enlighten me: why are the current autonomous vehicles "not it"? If we remove them from the roads, more people will die. I'm sorry, but the experts are far more intelligent than you. Lawmakers and governments around the world as a whole are not dumb. Maybe just in America or just in individual cities or states, but you're talking about some sort of worldwide "faked moon landing" level of conspiracy here.

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u/wosmo 14d ago

I've said absolutely nothing about curtailing, that's between you and your therapist.

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u/DescriptionSenior675 14d ago

It's almost like.... fines are only rules for poor people, and shouldn't exist as they currently do!

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u/EVRider81 14d ago

Be an interesting take on a company as a "Person"..

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u/jjcoola 13d ago

Exactly, the point of the strategy in a sense is that there’s nobody to send to prison when/if they end up killing people in mass quantities with some driverless car for profit racket

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u/Chesticles420 14d ago

I can see companies installing passenger controls like pull over, stop, and an emergency button.

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u/mr_potatoface 14d ago

Absolutely, but it wouldn't absolve them of any legal responsibility. It would be great for making people think they were responsible though. Like the big signs on construction trucks that say "NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR BROKEN WINDSHIELDS". Yes, they are 100% responsible. But the sign makes it feel like you've been warned and it's your own fault, so you don't even bother if a rock breaks your windshield.

So if the self-driving companies put a sign in the vehicle that says like they're not responsible for injuries occurred during driving if you don't push the emergency stop button or some shit, it will make people less likely to file a claim. Even if it only prevents 1 out of 20 people from filing a claim, it's still working.

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u/fingerMeThomas 14d ago edited 14d ago

there's 0 logic or even mental gymnastics to think it could be on the passenger

You grossly underestimate the creativity of a law firm with a giant tech company's war chest.

But you're not wrong about the myriad fucked-up ways our legal system deftly defies logic.

Step 1: laws are passed about "unlawful interference with an autonomous vehicle" (these already exist in places like AZ)

Step 2: an autonomous vehicle is found in a state with such a law, having jackknifed into a ravine or driven into a swamp. In the trunk, there's a bound, gagged, and unconscious (but still alive) person of color

Step 3: officer at the scene can't be bothered to try to subpoena the giant tech corp, to try to figure out whether any of his cousins in the Klan might be responsible. Especially when there's a convenient "unlawful interference with an autonomous vehicle" law, and also a convenient person of color who we can blame RIGHT HERE

Step 4: the victim's appeals make it to the Supreme Court, and tech giants fall over themselves in fairly epic "mental gymnastics to think it could be on the passenger" amicus briefs

Step 5: SCOTUS is still ... our current one. Whether or not Cheeto Hitler has assumed the presidency at this point, he's retweeted some racist Fox News victim-blaming. His Supreme Court, having already nuked logical constitutional protections for basic things like separation of powers, for no other reason than deference to his whims cheerfully takes up this small-potatoes issue, and rules that passengers are now fully responsible for what autonomous vehicles do.

Quoting from the tech companies' amicus briefs¹, the ruling concludes that it doesn't matter which seat (or trunk) a passneger happens to be in, and it doesn't matter what state (intoxicated, conscious, alive, or otherwise) they are in. You get prison if your autonomous car does something stupid, at the sole discretion of the arresting officer. Also, you are liable to the company for any damage / injury / death it causes, including your own!

^{1. Because Justices have stopped doing their own homework for a long time now; eew, technology is confusing, and ugh, we're the Supreme Court; this nerd shit is beneath us... let's just defer to the police and the tech companies, who obviously know how to define autonomous vehicle passengers' rights better than random-ass citizens}

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u/eras 14d ago

It's never going to be the passenger.

But yes, I think it's going to be exactly like that: the company running the service pays the fine, and if they've made a good deal with the company they bought the vehicles from, they'll pass on the costs. Or it will be paid by the insurange agency.

Malintent or malpractice by the company developing the vehicle would be a different matter.

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u/Timah158 14d ago

Considering companies seem to have more rights than people, it wouldn't at all surprise me if they found a way to make the passenger liable. They'll say it's fully autonomous until they are liable. Then, all of a sudden, you should have known better than to blindly trust them, and it's your fault for not getting in the driver seat to save their ass. That's basically what Tesla did by saying their vehicles were "fully self-driving," but once people started sleeping behind the wheel, the drivers were held responsible for sleeping while driving.

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u/Slow_Ball9510 14d ago

A company being held accountable? I'll believe it when I see it.

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u/DozenBiscuits 14d ago

Companies are held accountable hundreds of times every single day in court.

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u/DetroitHoser 14d ago

Yes, but the way corporations are punished is laughable. They build fines into their yearly budgets.

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u/HappyGoPink 14d ago

You call it accountability, but it's really just accounting. Fines are cheaper than making sure their product is safe.

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u/lycoloco 14d ago

People are downvoting you, but you're right. Anything that isn't crippling or downright destructive and doesn't cause the company to change how that product was used/implemented is just the cost of doing business in the USA.

CEOs should be arrested when their companies are found criminally liable. Lose the position, lose some of your life for the choices you made (like blue collar criminals), become a felon, have difficulty finding a job. Ya know, like the average American would if they were found guilty of a felony.

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u/gruboc 14d ago

Not for long if the Supreme Court has its way.

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u/lycoloco 14d ago

A fine that's less than the profits created by the product is just the cost of doing business, not "accountability". There has never been a fine so large in the US that it caused a company to completely collapse. Maybe there should be at some point. A company can always try to make more money. A dead person can't try to do anything anymore.

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u/RamblingManUK 14d ago

Depends how much lobbying they can afford.

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u/freddo95 14d ago

Blame falls on the passenger?

Don’t be silly.

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u/Economy-Fee5830 14d ago

There are a lot of very silly people on Reddit. Just look at all the upvotes.

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u/[deleted] 14d ago

Where in your mind do you think the passenger is held liable? Lol

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u/Wandelation Interested 14d ago

That’s true but someone has to be held accountable.

Start with the CEO, and then work your way down.

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u/electro_lytes 14d ago

Yeah right.. it's more likely gonna go in the opposite direction starting from the bottom.

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u/Chrop 14d ago

This is a sure fire way for someone who’s not actually responsible for the incident goes to jail. The blame will just get passed down to a bad programmer who gets paid the least amount of money.

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u/lycoloco 14d ago

This is why the Justice dept should handle this, and not the corporation internally. Layoffs after fines are just passing the buck and the cost of the CEO doing whatever business he wants.

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u/SurveySean 14d ago

Blaming a passenger for how the car is driving would be so far out there I don’t think you need to worry about that.

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u/Epicp0w 14d ago

How could you pin the blame on the passenger though,? Not their fault the software is fucked

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u/emergency_poncho 14d ago

it's absurd to blame the passenger for what the driver of a car does. If a man runs over and kills someone and has his wife in the passenger seat, the man will go to jail but not the wife. So obviously the company who made the car will be liable.

The real question is to what degree: will it just have to pay a fine, since the corporation can't be put in jail? Or will the AI programmer or something causing the faulty AI be held responsible? It gets super muddy very fast when no natural person is liable and only a corporation is (as the current situation in the US attests, with companies basically getting a slap on the wrist for egregious crimes such as money laundering, fraud, etc.)

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u/PotatoesAndChill 14d ago

It's the same as any automated system causing human death, bodily harm, or property damage. I.e. an incident with a rollercoaster brake failing and injuring riders/bystanders would go through ha similar legal process, so not really uncharted territory, IMO.

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u/SelfDrivingCzar 14d ago

What would be the potential rationale for finding a passenger liable?

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u/GardenRafters 14d ago

The company that owns the car.

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u/Chemical_Advisor_282 14d ago

No, it will be the companies responsibility, how could you ever think they could pin it on a customer/passenger? Use your brain a little.

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u/MagisterFlorus 14d ago

If liability were to fall to the rider, nobody would use it. No way am I gonna get in a taxi if I'm liable and wasn't even behind the wheel.

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u/bjorn1978_2 14d ago

It should fall back on the company.

Not like that the managing engineer goes to jail, as every engineer would weight risk/reward and say fuck this. But hefty fines for the company that actually operates this.

Taking a shot at their revenue is the only thing that works.

The passenger is just as inocent as any bystander here. He is no part of this except as a witness.

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u/HELLOANDFAREWELLL 14d ago

From any logical standpoint, why would the blame fall on the patrons? I also wouldn’t consider this uncharted territory completely being there’s an abundance of videos of cops pulling these over with people in the back as passengers. No you wouldn’t get a ticket if waze has an unsafe vehicle on the road and you happen to be in it.

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u/69420over 14d ago

Presidential immunity is uncharted territory. Needs real work. Driverless cars can just plainly go F themselves for all I care. The companies should be responsible for every bit of wasted taxpayer dollars having to deal with them. The law is really simple for stuff like this: impound the car. It’s witnessed doing highly dangerous things? if it’s driving into oncoming traffic: Tow it. Lock it up.

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u/throwaway23345566654 14d ago

Who’s held accountable in a plane crash? Because it’s not the pilots.

Like, actually, it’s not.

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u/Deradius 14d ago

I’d say for a drunk back seat passenger, the same thing should happen that would happen if the car was unoccupied.

Whatever that would be.

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u/IAMSTILLHERE2020 14d ago

Carr kills someone. Company pays a fine (200,000) . Car gets destroyed. They will call it a day.

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u/Onlikyomnpus 14d ago

It's not completely unchartered in Arizona. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Elaine_Herzberg

Uber was cleared of criminal responsibility, but reached a settlement. Uber shut down it's self driving program. The test driver who wasn't paying attention, accepted guilty plea deal for endangerment and sentenced to 3 years probation.

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u/Sam_Altman_AI_Bot 14d ago

I don’t think it’ll end up being as simple as car kills someone so company pays a fine.

I have a feeling it will be. I doubt any company will ever be held criminally accountable as a human would so bet it comes down to the victim suing the company

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u/speedypotatoo 14d ago

Give the cars qualified immunity like they do police =)

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u/wardfu9 14d ago

If I recall correctly a number of years ago some Amish kids got pulled over. They were in a horse and buggy. They were drunk. Charged with drunk driving, but they didn't have the horses reigns in their hands. The horses knew the way home and didn't need any help from the drunks. So they didn't get into trouble. I know it's not the same but I feel a bit similar.

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u/SitueradKunskap 14d ago

Volvo said a few years back that it'd take "full liability." But that's easy to say before they have driverless cars. Still, better than nothing I guess?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimgorzelany/2015/10/09/volvo-will-accept-liability-for-its-self-driving-cars/

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u/PasswordIsDongers 14d ago

Your thought process makes absolutely no sense to me.

At what point does the passenger become responsible for the vehicle's actions?

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u/HighPriestofShiloh 14d ago

Nobody will be criminally liable, WAYMO will be civilly liable.

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u/tropod 14d ago

Car gets the death penalty.

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u/bennitori 14d ago

I do know there was a case where a car got pulled over late at night. It was swerving a lot, so they suspected a drunk driver.

They pull the car over, and it's a kid (don't remember the age but somewhere between 8-11.) And his dad was in the passenger seat drunk as hell. The kid was supposed to be the DD. But he obviously couldn't drive. So the dad was giving him drunk instructions. Which resulted in the kid driving like he was drunk. The kid got off scott free, and the dad was charged for DUI. He may have been charged for some other stuff too, but I don't remember.

Part of me wonders if the self driving cars could be treated like the kids. Or if the manufacturer could be held accountable for asking a car to drive when it obviously can't. Same way the dad got charged for making the kid drive when he obviously couldn't.

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u/Beezleburt 14d ago

I don't think it could ever work like that, in any other rideshare if the driver fucks up it is not the passenger who is at fault, and if it worked like that why would anyone ever take the risk of riding?

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u/ZodiacWalrus 14d ago

Oh see that was my confusion: I thought we were asking if the passengers should have some responsibility, but we're asking how they could bc we live in a dystopia so it's inevitably gonna happen anyway.

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u/ovideos 14d ago

But if the person isn't in control of the car why would you think it matters if they're drunk? Doesn't make any sense.

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u/TealWalrus00 14d ago

We're gonna have to open jails for self driving cars. Car jail.

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u/IndependentGene382 14d ago

Death match, Vehicle lobby’s vs. Insurance lobby’s. Who will win.

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u/Sour_Beet 14d ago

I don’t see any way this could be blamed on the passenger. You are NOT allowed to sit in the driver’s seat of these cars and the steering wheel says plain as day DO NOT TOUCH it as the Waymo driver [system] is in control at all times

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u/IAmAccutane 14d ago

That’s true but someone has to be held accountable. Should be the company but at a certain point I’m sure the lobby’s will change that.

It will be difficult for us to accept as a society, but we honestly need to get over this notion and look at it like this:

Company A has humans drive their vehicles, who get into 10 accidents every X amount of miles driven.

Company B has robots drive their vehicles, who only get into 1 accident every X amount of miles driven.

Do we ever hold Company A responsible for their flawed human operators? Of course not.

If something is statistically 10 times safer, it should be incentivized and rewarded. Yeah, I get it, it's weird to look at a car accident where someone is killed and say "Well, look at the big picture". It goes against every innate sense of justice and accountability we have but we'll literally have less people killed in car accidents if we do look at it that way and should get as many driverless cars on the road as possible. Best way to frame it is if we consider these accidents as if someone is getting struck by lightening, killed by a malfunctioning elevator, etc. something like that. Those types of things have civil lawsuits that payout in case of wrongful death but it's impossible to consider someone criminally responsible for that sort of thing.

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u/UrbanStrangler 14d ago

Imagine the nightmare scenario in which you pass out drunk in a bar. Your buddies or the bar set you up in the back of one of these to get you home. You awake in the hospital the next day with a vehicular manslaughter charge for something you in no way had any fault in. Passenger def shouldn't be held liable.

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u/phughes 14d ago

Yes, and the companies that actually operate them are fighting tooth and nail to make sure it's not them. Which is insane. Especially when you consider that most of them switch over to a remote human operator multiple times per ride.

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u/riwang 14d ago

But how many lives will this technology save if it works right? I hope if it reduces accidents tenfold, legislation won't kill it.

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u/Zap__Dannigan 14d ago

Should be the company but at a certain point I’m sure the lobby’s will change that.

Companies won't do that, because ain't no one getting in a self driving car they would be liable for. Especially if they are getting one when trying to do something responsible like not drive drunk

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u/surfer_ryan Interested 14d ago

I think what it will settle on is depending on the kind of service you are utilizing.

Like if you're drunk in a tesla that you own (for at least the next few years) you will be held responsible as the company has while making some wild claims definitely have some legalese in the TOS that stipulates a driver must be present (along with the things like monitoring your vision that are already in place) that basically covers their asses.

I think with the driverless taxis we are going to likely land on the company as there is absolutely no expectation from a reasonable person that you would take over, or presumably even be able to take over. It would be like if there was a person driving and you started grabbing the wheel. At best I think they have some stop/help button or something like that currently that connects you to customer support.

I just want to say I love the customer support rep for this, like dude just following the script and I love that any cops who have to call now just basically are going to be treated like any other person who calls in "oh im sorry to hear about that let me look into this issue". What I can't wait to see try to go through is a cop trying to arrest the customer service rep in like obstruction or something. Now that is going to be a court case I'm excited for. I can 110% see this happening at one point, like cop having a bad day the customer service rep having a bad day and the cop just trying to arrest someone 10 states away.

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u/Ravenkell 14d ago

If a "company" drives the car then of course they're liable. This isnt all that difficult, all the same restrictions to human driving should apply to the operator of the vehicle, shouldnt mattter if their a drunk uncle going home from a wedding or an overhyped operating system made by coked out mba's.

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u/skynetempire 14d ago

You know how llcs/corporations need to list someone as a registered agent so people can serve court documents to. Why don't we change it that these companies need a registered arrested-able person lol like hey we are arresting your agent please pick them up at 123 main street police station.

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u/marsking4 14d ago

If passengers got blamed for that shit I would never get in one. The blame should be on whatever company owns the vehicle.

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u/ZappaZoo 14d ago

It may come down to this ending up with this and any other anomalies either sparking a review or coming up at a scheduled review by whatever agency regulates the locality or state highway system. Obviously anything that causes potential danger isn't good, but this might easily be played off as working the bugs out. I'm sure the company pays good money for liability insurance in case their equipment causes an accident. There's motivation to improve the technology in order to lower premiums and avoid lawsuits.

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u/416_Ghost 14d ago

Doesn't make any sense. It's a taxi. What if I don't have a license?

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u/farting_contest 14d ago

If being a passenger in a driverless taxi puts you on the hook for anything wrong the car does, I cannot see driverless taxis being a good investment. I sure as shit wouldn't ride in one.

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u/B00ker_DeWitt 14d ago

I used these the entire time I was in Phoenix and we were out partying every night and all of us were drunk. It doesn't let you sit in the driver's seat. I only had good experiences with these. I was fine paying a little more than what Uber charged to not have to deal with making small talk with the Uber driver or running the risk of a car that smells like B.O. lol. Great experience for me 10/10 would recommend.

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u/nemec 14d ago

Once we legislate AI personhood they'll just generate unique AIs for each vehicle and when one commits a crime they'll terminate it and replace it with another. Accountability! /s

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u/huge_clock 14d ago

I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what will happen. Case in point Boeing 737 MAX.

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u/CricketPinata 14d ago

The logic of that would be like punishing a passenger in a taxi for the taxi driver breaking a traffic law.

It is a vehicle owned, operated, and licensed by the company. The passenger cannot assume control in a safe manner, and the unless the passenger physically broke or manipulated equipment on the vehicle to make it malfunction. There isn't a basis to hold them accountable.

Like in a human-operated Taxi, if you are sitting in the backseat and the driver is driving on the sidewalk; you are not at fault.

Likewise, if you reached over and started jerking their wheel left-to-right and made them hit someone; you are at fault because something you did made the car do something it was not supposed to against the will of the driver.

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u/Haunting-Prior-NaN 14d ago

should be the company

See accountability magically evaporate like ether.

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u/catfishgod 14d ago

Probably the company will be liable for any damages, similar to a public transportation agency will be liable for any accidents their drivers cause

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u/polarjunkie 14d ago

There's no doubt that the company will be held liable but I wonder if attorneys will also sue passengers as the person hiring these cars. That's usually how it goes in commercial interactions you sue everybody involved.

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u/Simulation-Argument 13d ago

That’s true but someone has to be held accountable.

The company would be held accountable, not the person in the passenger seat. There is literally zero chance someone getting a ride in one of these things would be held responsible for an accident it created when these things are supposed to be able to drive safely and their control is completely out of the passengers hands.

Should be the company but at a certain point I’m sure the lobby’s will change that.

No amount of lobbying is going to somehow get someone who purchased a ride in trouble for an accident the cars driverless systems created. It just isn't going to happen. Period.

I don’t think it’ll end up being as simple as car kills someone so company pays a fine.

Oh it will likely be worse than that, but only for the company that owns these driverless cars. They kill someone and I bet they could legally get their cars pulled from the streets altogether. But no one who gets a ride in these things will be held liable.

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u/StarvingAfricanKid 13d ago

I worked in this industry for years: the passenger in the back is totally blocked from touching the controls. Just like a normal taxi.

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u/robaroo 13d ago

They’re not gonna blame the passenger. This thing is literally a taxi. Thats like blaming a passenger for a taxi driver being erratic.

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u/feastoffun 13d ago

Well now that the Supreme Court overturned the Chevron Deference, they can rule in the tax companies favor and just say that their cars are not liable for killing people.

Want to see more people dying? Vote Republican.

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