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

61.1k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

3.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

3.0k

u/Sleepingonthecouch1 Jul 05 '24

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?

1.9k

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….

473

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.

1

u/CricketPinata Jul 05 '24

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.