Lawmakers Want To Move Fast On Self-Driving Car Legislation (axios.com) 108
An anonymous reader shares a report: Members of Congress said Tuesday that they hope to move forward with a package of self-driving car legislation by the end of July. "We've got to keep moving, because again, this technology is moving away from us, you might say," said Republican Bob Latta, who is helping to lead the effort. That would move the bills out of the relevant committee -- but not out of the House entirely.
Re:They're going to fast-track this (Score:5, Insightful)
You do know that they aren't suspending laws about vehicular homicide and general liability with this, right? They're making a regulatory framework that allows you to have an autonomous vehicle that works properly, that doesn't stop at the state border and tell you it can't drive into Illinois* because Illinois doesn't have laws that allow it to drive you around.
If you never want to see a car that can drive itself, the best thing Congress could do to further your goals is to do nothing. Then we would end up with a patchwork of laws when every single state passes (or doesn't) varying laws making compliance impossible.
The action in Congress doesn't all of a sudden make autonomous cars work right, and it doesn't even define what "working right" is - it just allows the manufacturers to have a chance to succeed in the first place.
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They're making a regulatory framework that allows you to have an autonomous vehicle that works properly, that doesn't stop at the state border and tell you it can't drive into Illinois* because Illinois doesn't have laws that allow it to drive you around.
Ultimately, you are correct.
That said, I'm not convinced we're at that point, yet, where we really need one unified law so people can autopilot their Teslas across the country. I'd rather wait and see what the states come up with and then try to unify from there.
I'm not sure there's a huge hurry here.
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There is a huge hurry, because a lot of the software engineering for how cars operate in different conditions depend on the laws that limit how cars can drive in individual states.
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And they can't use a test track to figure this out?
I have nothing against autonomous cars. But I'd rather my epitaph not be delivered by some software engineer: "Oops! I guess we have a bug." Sure, my next of kin may be able to collect big money from these companies. But I'd still rather not be dead.
And, frankly, I'd rather let my local government decide the testing criteria going on because that's where I live, walk, and drive.
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But I'd rather my epitaph not be delivered by some software engineer: "Oops! I guess we have a bug."
As opposed to, "Oops! I guess that text could have waited." Self-driving cars don't have to be 100% safe; they just have to out-perform the alternative.
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I wish I could remember where I first read it though.
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They're making a regulatory framework that allows you to have an autonomous vehicle that works properly, that doesn't stop at the state border and tell you it can't drive into Illinois* because Illinois doesn't have laws that allow it to drive you around.
Ultimately, you are correct.
That said, I'm not convinced we're at that point, yet, where we really need one unified law so people can autopilot their Teslas across the country. I'd rather wait and see what the states come up with and then try to unify from there.
I'm not sure there's a huge hurry here.
I am. There have been semi autonomous cars in full production for several years now. Many manufacturers were caught off guard and are far behind on the technology but it is here to stay. There are currently 43 car companies working on it.
Personally, I'd like to see lawmakers looking at legislation requiring autonomous driving features on all new vehicles in order to improve or pathetic road safety records here in the states.
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I'm not sure there's a huge hurry here.
How many lives a day would self-driving cars have to save before there's a "hurry"? Even if self-driving cars can only decrease fatal accidents by 10% compared to meaty drivers, that equates to actual lives lost/saved. Of course if self-driving cars increase the number of fatal accidents then we've gone and killed people, but I don't think that will be the case.
stuck at 55 on the tri state tollway the horror! (Score:2)
stuck at 55 on the tri state tollway the horror!
If the cars can only do the speed limit they are useless
Re: stuck at 55 on the tri state tollway the horro (Score:2)
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Well, so far...it makes driving a bit more fun..and I get to my destination quicker.
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they want to spend their lives in these things
To be honest, a self driving Winnebago is not a bad idea.
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You raise a good point. What will happen when people realize they don't need to pay for land if they are in a vehicle that constantly drives itself around?
Sounds like something that would make for a good book or movie.
Re: stuck at 55 on the tri state tollway the horr (Score:2)
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Ok why don't you try to drive that road at non peak times at 55 and see how it goes.
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If all reaction times are reduced to nanoseconds with far more useful input than your two eyeballs and zero distractions, speed limits can be increased.
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You do know that they aren't suspending laws about vehicular homicide and general liability with this, right?
This.
They're talking about laws permitting it, not laws that absolve the driver of their responsibility. As the recent Tesla crash report demonstrated, even when the car was in autonomous mode, the driver was still responsible for what it did.
No-one will be changing the highway code over autonomous cars because the highway code was built to comply with the laws of physics and autonomous cars will not violate those.
So to burst some bubbles...
- Autonomous cars will not automagically arrive next year
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What about when it IS Tesla's fault?
Will someone at Tesla go to jail for manslaughter, just like a driver would?
If I drive recklessly or carelessly, and kill someone, I'm going to jail for vehicular manslaughter.
If Tesla (or other company) has a bug in their software that kills someone, who goes to jail?
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If Tesla (or other company) has a bug in their software that kills someone, who goes to jail?
Over the years, we've had plenty of deadly accidents due to design mistakes in bridges, airplanes, cars, heavy equipment, tools, etc, etc... who went to jail for those ?
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...according to the regulation...
And there is the problem right there. Regulations give cover to bad design.
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When my code fails, people don't die
When my code fails, the only cost is my UNPAID overtime to fix it.
So, actually you need to fuck off and die in a car fire you sniveling piece of shit.
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Of course, the first version of Tesla's autopilot reduced actual fatalities by 50% compared to the history of human drivers, and the current version may well be ten times safer than human drivers. At what point do we accept the occasional machine-caused fatality as preferable to the greater number of fatalities caused by human error?
I am more concerned about malicious hacking than accidents, as malicious hacking could target specific individuals or large numbers of individuals. For that, I would like to s
Thousands already die on the roads (Score:2)
The test for self driving cars should be: does it save a lot of lives overall? Unfortunately our infantilised unthinking proles, led by fear as a route to click bait tabloids will make rational thought on this issue HARD. 'Brave New World's' model of the infantilised as having no political power has its attractions...
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So you don't mind if your self driving car rockets straight into a brick wall with your family in it...?
No more than I would if grandpa had a seizure and did the same thing. Who am I gonna sue then?
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Which situation is preventable? Autonomous car driving into brick wall or grandpa having a seizure driving into a brick wall.
Standing over the grave of your loved ones because an unpredictable medical event happened to a human driver vs. standing over the grave of your loved ones because some CEO decided to be cheap as hell and not spend the money necessary to ensure bugs were worked out and the autonomous solution was secure before going to market.
Multiply the latter impact by 1,000 when a DDoS attack happens against an autonomous WAN.
Yeah, I'd say one of those is a hell of a lot more preventable than the other, and "good enough
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Which is which? [news4jax.com]
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Are we SERIOUS about ethics here? (Score:2)
At the heart of any decent moral system is something about loving everyone others as much as yourself - something which Trump unambiguously fails to endorse, of course - but which we should all aspire to. Of course I would MIND if the programming of a self driving car caused the deaths of close family in preference to far more deaths of others. But if I am seeking to live a morally valid life - as opposed to a self indulgent selfish self absorbed life - then I should be willing to see such a disaster as the
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I'm just not comfortable giving private industry an active hand in whether I live or die
They already do every time you step in a plane, cross a bridge, get in a CT scanner, board a train, use medication, and many other things.
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There's ALWAYS a trade off (Score:2)
This is trivially demonstrated by the fact that cars are not speed capped at 10mph to ensure that all crashes are injury free, and that motor bikes are still legal. The trick is to determine what is reasonable - and enforce it. Yes, of course private industry will go for cheapest implementation, however given the record of the public sector in failing to achieve rapid innovation, there is no alternative. And if self driving cars do save TENS of THOUSANDS of lives and injuries every year, a few glitches are
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The test for self driving cars should be: does it save a lot of lives overall?
No matter the cost? Nice. You are part of the problem.
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and people will die.
Human driven cars kill about 3300 per day worldwide, and about 90 per day in America.
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In this Radiant Future where every car is 'autonomous', all it will take is one bored (or radicalized) 16 yo with a bunch of sploits on a laptop to turn 10000 of these cars into deathtraps.
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Yes, just like bored 16 year olds routinely bring down planes... oh, wait...
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and people will die.
Human driven cars kill about 3300 per day worldwide, and about 90 per day in America.
And if shitty autonomous solutions rushed to market that prioritize revenue over security "only" kills half that many, we should welcome that as some kind of twisted improvement?
Gonna be hard to accept the death of a loved one at the hands of IoT-grade code driven by Greed. It's time we strive for better than that, and not allow Greed to continue to dismantle quality or safety.
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Gonna be hard to accept the death of a loved one at the hands of IoT-grade code driven by Greed.
Yeah, so much better to be killed by someone playing on their iPhone while driving, or by someone speeding on icy roads because they wanted to be home a minute earlier.
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Gonna be hard to accept the death of a loved one at the hands of IoT-grade code driven by Greed.
Yeah, so much better to be killed by someone playing on their iPhone while driving, or by someone speeding on icy roads because they wanted to be home a minute earlier.
Death is death; it's hard to accept, but at least in the examples you've provided, there is a very good chance justice will be served.
When autonomous networks get hacked by some anonymous person on the other side of the planet, there is no justice, which often brings decent closure to those who have suffered and lost.
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OK, you are probably the only one I know who doesn't look at a car models safety record before buying a car.
Wrong. I have loved ones to protect, as do many others on the road.
Apart from Tesla shitty autonomous solutions aren't rushed to market.
The fact that you had to make an exception in your statement tends to prove my point.
The fact that lawmakers are now in a hurry tends to validate the speed at which Greed wants to get shit moving (quite literally).
The fact that the infamous "cloud" will be practically inescapable in future designs (if for no other reason than cloud is still fashionably cool) tends to showcase the potential for vulnerabilities.
Above all, Greed always drive
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It does not work that way, I hope.
The federal legislators do not need to concern themselves with technical details of safety. They merely provide a legal framework for a designated body to set regulations. The regulations are set by technical experts, not politicians, and can be updated very quickly. They cover the design and maintenance of self-driving vehicles.
State legislation will need more work, because road-rules are set directly by legislation, and will need to be reconsidered. State laws also cover
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Actually, that's a good point...and I"d guess if there are Federal rules, they are few and far between.
Even the national speed limits, is by state law, not federal.....just that the Feds blackmailed the states by withholding funds to make them do this...just like they blackmailed the states to all raise the drinking age to 21.
It's sad that the states send money to the Feds, which then t
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Kentucky is one of those states - at the Cincinnati airport, there are signs posted at TSA stating that a Kentucky driver license will no longer be valid ID for passing TSA checkpoints in 2018.
That should get interesting in about 6 months...
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The federal legislators do not need to concern themselves with technical details of safety.
What federal legislators are concerned about is that they make this a federal lobby issue before the next federal election cycle.
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This is how a New Jersey Senator (for instance, Frank Pallone) gets campaign donations from businesses in California and Detroit. Anyone running against him... not so much.
Re: They're going to fast-track this (Score:2)
"Lawmakers want to move fast . . ." (Score:4, Funny)
Those words . . . they are terrifying.
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That's just because there's a steaming pile of feces on their desktops that they don't like the smell of, don't understand the application and don't care that they are actually making laws that effect the way new technology gets to be developed and implemented (and they're too scared to ask their 12 year old daughter what it means).
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(A) holds a legislative influence over company or persons (B) that reside in district or region (C)
(A) is elected by the people of district or region (D)
(A) faces opposition in (D) but not in (C)
Isn't this the ideal recipe for assured corruption? (B) must solicit (A) but anybody that opposes (A) must solicit (B)
What is happening right now *is* the argument against broad federal powers.
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Maybe I'm crediting them too much with an understanding of economics, but the fact of the matter is you don't want the technology to move faster than the legal framework allowing said technology.
When tech is new, it's risky and expensive. Adopting new technology is a strategic shift, and that means businesses do it at different paces. Early adopters, late adopters, slower roll-outs, faster roll-outs. You get in early, you get ahead of the competition; you get in later, you get more-mature technology at
Translation (Score:2)
I, for one (Score:2)
Welcome this whole thing. Way too many distracted, ego-driven, or just plain stupid drivers on the road. Driving a sporty vehicle on a challenging road can be a lot of fun, but that decribes about 0% of my driving, and besides, it's damn dangerous for any other vehicles or critters on the same road. Let's face it, do your race driver imitation in a video game, and leave real world transportation to a very conservative computer program.
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How do you know the risk any better with imperfect human drivers?
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You must drive around different humans than I do, because they surprise me now and then.
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Impressive! You can tell how good a driver I am without even knowing anything about me. But I can predict the future; I knew you would say something snarky and condescending.
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A very conservative collection of programs (one could only hope) that will operate on a mesh network of millions of devices.. a fat target for terrorists and bored teenagers. Considering that half these companies pushing autonomous cars still can't secure their existing infrastructure (eg google, apple) made from much simpler devices..
Late already... (Score:2)
Moving fast? Classic hail mary play for procrastinators...
Well, at least` (Score:2)
in the US we don't have to worry about the Kangaroo Problem. [theregister.co.uk].
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Since apparently the system is based on the assumption that the animal is going to stay on the ground, that doesn't sound that hard to believe.
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I have no idea. Does it?
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Volvo is marketing this is a warning system for large animals:
http://support.volvocars.com/i... [volvocars.com]
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criminal liability??? they need to work that out (Score:2)
criminal liability??? they need to work that out as ford will not give a dam they want to cover up an fault with there hardware / software or even say you went to jiffy lube vs the dealer for an oil change so it's your fault. And do think for ford is going to shell out 20K-200K+ for your legal costs? or do you want to have your fate be up to the public defender?
Right to repair needs to be in there so you are no (Score:2)
Right to repair needs to be in there so you are not stuck paying dealer prices and free software updates for at least 5-10 years even if hdd / cpu upgrades are needed.
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Reasoning?
I'm not sure I want every person who thinks they know how to fix a car to be messing with cameras, sensors, and the main computer. Especially if there's going to then be some argument over who is liable for an accident when they don't put the computer back together correctly but insist they did according to the spec sheet.
If the computer is able to perform self driving, why would upgrades be free unless it's a safety/bug in which case I agree it should be addressed just like any other critical saf
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upgrades need to be free so they can't lock into on star + map updates at $20-$30 /mo or say well to keep useing the car you need to buy an $250 1TB HDD + install costs at the dealer as DB + map data does not fit on to the stock 500 GB hdd.
You start with cameras, sensors and then move to non dealer tires and non dealer oil change at each 3000 miles.
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Well, for one thing, dealerships tend to juice the hell out of people in their service departments. Even at the 'premium' brand.
I had one dealership quote me $800+ dollars to fix something I did in my driveway in 5 minutes with the OEM $70 part. I don't know why they are charging $14,600 an hour for labor and diagnostic time, but clearly they were. This is an example of why I don't want to be locked into "stealership" service.
Sure, if it's something major, or some kind of code update that requires specif
The Same Folks Who Fast-Tracked Trumpcare. (Score:2)
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In the end it will be insurance that decides the fate of automated vehicles at particular stages of development. Some background https://www.businessinsider.co... [businessinsider.com.au]. With manufacturers possibly accepting full liability for their automated vehicles in an accident, expect to be attacked by a team of corporate lawyers (who will according to the laws of corrupt capitalism, make deals with your insurance company, to shift liability from them back to you, when the automotive manufacturers basically scams the system
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Congress also doesn't read the legislation, so you can understand why they didn't consider the problem.
Could use state non-involvement legislation (Score:2)
E.G.
Duh...make a buck (Score:2)
Like Mama always said... (Score:1)
If it's anything like their drone regulations, you'll be lucky if you can still drive a normal car without a special extra permit by the time they're done.