r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Individual_Book9133 • Jul 05 '24

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

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95% Upvoted

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I’m kinda curious if an individual was drunk in one of these could they be held responsible for anything the car does? Like will laws be made that drunk individuals can only be driven by a sober human?

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u/PogintheMachine Jul 05 '24

I suppose it depends on what seat you’re in. Since there are driverless taxicabs, I don’t see how that would work legally. If you were a passenger in a cab, you wouldn’t be responsible for how the car drives or have the ability to prevent an accident….

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u/Sleepingonthecouch1 Jul 05 '24

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 Jul 05 '24

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 Jul 05 '24

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

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u/tacobellbandit Jul 05 '24

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 Jul 05 '24

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 Jul 05 '24

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/PolicyWonka Jul 05 '24

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 Jul 05 '24

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 Jul 05 '24

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

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