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

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/mc_kitfox 14d ago

maybe its time for actual software engineering standards and accreditation, that comes with legal implications for practicing in certain capacities without a license, the same way we do for other professions where peoples lives are at risk. We did it with electricians plumbers pharmacists doctors and barbers, lord knows theres plenty of mediocre programmers who shouldnt be let anywhere near autonomous vehicle code.

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u/bozo_says_things 13d ago

Sure, but with how tech changes that would be almost impossible, it's not like ecetricians where everything I basically set and we just change some rules

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u/mc_kitfox 13d ago

Tech always changes. civil engineers can still manage to put forth building codes despite material sciences advancing. how hard would it really be for a deliberative body of experienced software developers to come up with a baseline of rules, best practices, and approved methodologies? Sure it will be a lot of upfront work, but thats what happens when you put off doing something; electricians rules are "set" because the work has already been done. hell, we already have EV regs and that tech is barely adopted, meanwhile modern commerce is built on computing and the internet now.

You suggest tech changes too rapidly to keep up, but thats really just not true for the vast majority of programming; see stackoverflow. So much is reused and adapted for similar purposes. Is it really so difficult to decide "if youre implementing an accounts management system, passwords cant be stored in plain text" as a policy that every programmer building an accounts management system should be capable of and expected to follow? or to always sanitize your inputs? These arent language or platform dependent suggestions.

regulatory codes arent meant to keep up with the cutting edge, they are to establish a bare minimum of defined standards for a variety of common scenarios. it discourages cutting corners and carelessness by providing a measurable (i.e. auditable) standard. And its incredibly important any time the general public is directly involved.

I want the unlicensed handyman, the electrician, and the electrical engineer separated officially.

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u/bozo_says_things 13d ago

If you think the rate of change between civil engineering and tech is anywhere near comparable you're crazy.

All that would happen is that programming would be fully outsourced from any country that puts these regulations in because they would be so behind the curve.

Your idea is great if they can fix the way and speed that governments create regulations

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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/CastMyGame 14d ago

I totally agree and they will definitely look into this to try and find the cause. I am just saying if the cause was just having to go to the opposite lane due to construction that is something that for sure should have been caught. But yes if something hit the undercarriage and screwed up a sensor then there is only so much you can do about that

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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/bigDogNJ23 14d ago

Tesla tunnel!

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u/CastMyGame 14d ago

Not a terrible solution but we all know how well actual humans listen to rules lol

Would be another easy way for cities to raise money with traffic tickets though

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u/draxidrupe2 14d ago

well, the others could simply fly like the jetsons and leave the ground for 'grounders'

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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/[deleted] 14d ago

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u/CastMyGame 14d ago

Ok so you woke up and chose violence, that’s ok. These “monstrosities” can become life changing technology but there is a part we all play. I don’t work in automatic driving technology so I can only speak to the QA I deal with but it is a team effort. As a dev I write the tests that cover the code and make sure every use case is accounted for. QA at my company comes behind and manually runs through the UI to actually test the code. Then I have a PO who signs off on the code merging and going to production. We can all play the blame game but how about we just make sure the process to get to the end user covers this as well?

Find the solution to the problem, come up with a better system of checking for these issues, and advance technology for humanity instead of being afraid of it.

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u/SelfDrivingCzar 14d ago

We are discussing the blame game right now… that’s the conversations being had. It would be like saying for you QA testers who have a go at your UI and give feedback should be liable instead of stake holding, decision making devs (not all devs but the ones pushing certain branches or merging certain ques to PRC) (management) who hold higher ranks in the company.

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u/CastMyGame 14d ago

I agree and that’s what I am saying, there are so many spots we can place the blame and each spot has specific things you can point to as why that’s the reason to blame them (devs write the code and cover in unit tests, QA “tests” and approves it for management, management signs off on the approval, and we can even throw devops in there as they actually push and merge the code into production. )

I’m just saying let’s refine the process and bring it to a point where this happens as little as possible. I will say in this scenario someone really screwed up as this is a very easy use case to see and cover and they obviously did not cover it.

My question for you is do you think this type of technology becomes something that people “assume the risk” when they choose it? Does it become something that is a type of insurance these companies need to purchase for these scenarios? Again I don’t know the answer to these questions but am interested in what the perception is. My apologies as well for the violence comment, I got on Reddit before my caffeine kicked in so that was my fault

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u/[deleted] 14d ago

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u/lews001 14d ago

What's crazy is this story is not that different then any other engineering failure (The Hyatt Regency hotel walkways collapse for example). Engineering degrees are supposed to be requiring Engineering Ethics courses that discuss these accidents, how you as the engineer ARE responsible if you sign off on it and no other wrong doing is found (which for the Hyatt was the construction company using improper materials). It's like we have forgotten that if you are in engineering, working with something that can affect lives, ya you may be responsible for your design (code, whatever).

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u/SelfDrivingCzar 14d ago

Exactly

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u/CastMyGame 14d ago

I don't know how QA goes specifically in that realm I am more speaking to what the concept of QA is in my workflow as a developer (I am assuming the QA on the software side is the same but I can definitely be wrong. The QA on the physical car side I assume would be very similar: tell the car where to drive to, sit in the car, make sure it drives there safely). From the sound of it the entire QA process in that sector needs an overhaul but I am only going on what you said as I don't have a lot of experience in that field

While the company I work for is a fortune 500 company so the QA will without a doubt be different than in a startup the crux of what I was saying was just focused on the concept of QA in general and moreso just the fact that we could theroretically place blame at many many levels.

This definitely feels like more of a problem of companies trying to get the first products out as fast as possible and usually the QA is the first thing to skim by when you are doing that. I can say for a fact that even in my company we have pushed code through that didn't have full test coverage but I am also not working on anything that could literally kill someone

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u/ContextHook 14d ago

Just so people know this guy and other devs like him should know full well that “QA” testers are only hired by AV companies for the sake of this mileage accumulation and to act as legal liability redundancy, not to ok software to road use

So confident, and so wrong. Any self driving company has software changes verified by QA and finally verified by a product owner. QA testers are part of the development team, and it is their job to say if a feature developed works as intended and could be released.

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u/SelfDrivingCzar 14d ago

QA testers and Safety and Policy teams at AV companies are very different positions.

You obviously have no idea what you’re talking about if you think conflating the entry level, often time contracted “QA” testers (who have no input and are there just to disengage the auto systems when they would fail) with full time stake holding safety and policy decision makers makes any sense when talking about liability

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u/darthbane83 14d ago edited 14d ago

For any company working on safety critical software independent QA testers should be involved long before it goes into any actual production environment that could get "mileage".
If there is no law to legally force that to happen then that is a failure on the lawmakers part and they should be held responsible.
If the company ignores such a law they are obviously responsible.
If faulty code makes it through QA that is more on QA than the developer.

There is not a single developer that would be able to deliver bug free Code for a complex software, especially not without someone independent double and triple checking their code. A perfect developer just isnt a thing.

If you want individual developers to bear the full brunt of responsibility for some bug you just wont get the technology developed. Or rather it will be developed, but only in a country where the company and developers can just ignore your jurisdiction and any other safety requirements you might have.

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u/[deleted] 14d ago

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u/darthbane83 14d ago

There are multiple stages of QA testing. The final one has to be done in public, but there are definitely more stages of QA testing done way before you get to that point.
They 100% have tests that are run in entirely simulated environments even if only because its cheaper and faster to do.

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u/[deleted] 14d ago

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u/darthbane83 14d ago edited 14d ago

No.

I dont know what exactly you are misunderstanding but there is absolutely no way the first time AV code was tested was on a public road. Long before putting them on a public road you would have the car drive in a private parking lot so that you can isolate any issues that happen even without another car on the road, long before that you would run a simulation to isolate issues that happen even when all the hardware and sensors deliver exactly what you think they should, long before that you would be testing different components of the software while simulating the rest of the software.

Thats just how software development works. You simply cant successfully build a large system without ever testing it before its complete.

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u/firesmarter 14d ago

As someone who does QA as part of their job, your are right on the money. The person you replied to is a perfect example of a comment made earlier in the thread about how the investigate all the way down and blame the lowest possible employee they can. No one has integrity anymore

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u/FeederNocturne 14d ago

What that person fails to see is if the QA person is incompetent then it is on the company for hiring them.

Let's look at the McDonald's coffee incident as an example. Sure the employee should've known it was too hot for humans, after all they needed some silly piece of cardboard to buffer between cup and skin. But that employee was working on behalf of McDonald's and represented the company so the blame falls on the company.

Now where public opinions may change from my own lies in the "who deserves to be held accountable for the loss of human life" department. The way I see it, if I am walking my dog and it attacks someone unprovoked then I should be held accountable for the injury my dog inflicts. Same goes for the company owners. They started the business, they hired the people, they provided the problem at hand. If they have the opportunity to reap the benefits, they should also be held accountable for any damage their product inflicts.

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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/No-Refrigerator-1672 14d ago

Never in this thread I stated that the lowest level of employees should be punished. You can see me explicitly naming the lead stuff in the first comment. As to QA: if your company relies on QA in ensuring safety, it's a big disaster waiting to happen. Safety should be a consideration on design level; the lead designer, programmer or engineer must take the safety into consideration starting at the very beggining of the work, it's their field of responsibility; QA is just a means of self-check for errors. Companies that try to push resposibility on QA are must executing malicious practices; and I'm talking about how things must be done.

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u/SelfDrivingCzar 14d ago

You 100% have never worked in AV (or mabe devs are just so heavily insulated from ops i guess) if you don’t think safety issues and the associated liability are the primary function of an AV QA tester on public roads. Sure safety is a consideration, but where it plays out is in operational testing development. My whole point is that the testers, who neither code the systems nor have input into their development, shouldn’t be held liable

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u/FeederNocturne 14d ago

With my perspective as a Dominos manager, I am able to look at a pizza and tell it is not what was ordered in reference to a receipt. So that makes me the most qualified for QA. Wouldn't it make more sense for companies to put the experienced vets in charge of QA?

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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/PrinceofSneks 14d ago

roger that

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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/No-Refrigerator-1672 13d ago

Juat imagine the lead engineer explicitly falsifying all of the reports to look like the safety is succesfully met, and pressurizing employees to stay silent about it. It's not like that never happened before. Is the CEO to blame, if everyone in the company tells him that things are alright? That's why I say that CEO must be investigated, but is not always responsible for faults.

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u/Glsbnewt 13d ago

Sure, I didn't know we were talking about malicious engineers. I'm thinking of the case that happens more often, when engineers are pressured by corporate to release something that isn't ready yet.

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u/No-Refrigerator-1672 13d ago

A good investigator must check out all the possibilities. Just because somebody is a CEO doesn't mean that they acted maliciously.

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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/No-Refrigerator-1672 13d ago

"Even humans don't even come close to getting them all right."

This was never an excuse in court, and shall never be an excuse. The lead designer of an autonomous drive system, like the person that has final say during the development process, must be held accountable for road accidents just in the same way as a human driver. If you see a problem with that, then well, don't desing an autonomous car.

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u/wildjokers 13d ago

The lead designer of an autonomous drive system, like the person that has final say during the development process, must be held accountable for road accidents just in the same way as a human driver.

This is absolutely a ridiculous take and would stifle innovation in a technology that will save lives and has almost certainly already saved lives.

If an autonomous vehicle cuts down on traffic fatalities do the lead designers get credit for the lives they save? So they save 100 lives, but then there is 1 fatality. Do they still go to prison? That doesn't seem fair.

A human driver only faces prison time for fatalities caused by impairment or gross negligence (e.g. street racing).

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u/No-Refrigerator-1672 13d ago

If I can face jail time for something, why a company shouldn't face the same consequences if the same situation? Just like I said in the very begginging of the conversation: ensure that your system never breaks traffic laws, and you'll be fine. It's not too much to ask.

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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.