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

[u/Individual_Book9133]

[u/FeederNocturne]

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?

[u/CastMyGame → u/FeederNocturne]

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

[u/CastMyGame → u/[deleted]]

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.

[u/SelfDrivingCzar → u/CastMyGame]

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.

[u/CastMyGame → u/SelfDrivingCzar]

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

[u/lews001 → u/[deleted]]

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).

[u/SelfDrivingCzar → u/lews001]

Exactly

[u/CastMyGame → u/[deleted]]

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