This reminds me of that Chinese law about being personally responsible for all medical debts of a person you run over—incentivizing killing the person, rather than injuring them.
That’s been revised…right?
You will be liable either way. If you don’t do anything, you broke the terms of not being attentive enough.
Even with autopilot I feel it’s unlikely that driver would not be liable. We didn’t have a case yet but once this happens and goes higher to courts it’ll immediatly establish a liability precedence.
Some interesting headlines:
- a fatal crash where the driver claims his Tesla was on autopilot when it fatally struck a motorcyclist. (ongoing)
- ‘Autopilot’ hit-run driver sentenced to nine months (australia, claims that autopilot was on but it’s unclear)
So I’m pretty sure that autopilot drivers would be found liable very fast if this developed further.
I am not a lawyer.
I think an argument can be made that a moving vehicle is no different than a lethal weapon, and the autopilot, nothing more than a safety mechanism on said weapon. Which is to say the person in the driver’s seat is responsible for the safe operation of that device at all times, in all but the most compromised of circumstances (e.g. unconscious, heart attack, taken hostage, etc.).
Ruling otherwise would open up a transportation hellscape where violent acts are simply passed off to insurance and manufacturer as a bill. No doubt those parties would rush to close that window, but it would be open for a time.
Cynically, a corrupt government in bed with big monied interests would never allow the common man to have this much power to commit violence. Especially at their expense, fiscal or otherwise.
So just or unjust, I think we can expect the gavel to swing in favor of pushing all liability to the driver.
Making that argument completely closes the door for fully autonomous cars though, which is sort of the Holy grail of vehicle automation.
Fully autonomous doesn’t really exist yet, aside from some pilot projects, but give it a decade or two and it will be there. Truly being a passenger in your own vehicle is a huge selling point, you’d be able to do something else while moving, like reading, working or sleeping.
These systems can probably be better drivers than humans, because humans suck at multitasking and staying focused. But they will never be 100% perfect, because the world is sometimes wildly unpredictable and unavoidable accidents are a thing. There will be some interesting questions about liability though.
They’re most likely liable. “FSD” is not full self driving, it’s still a test product, and I guarantee the conditions for using it include paying attention and keeping your hands on the wheel. The legal team at tesla definitely made sure they weren’t on the hook.
Now where there might be a case for liability is Elon and his stupid Twitter posts and false claims about FSD. Many people have been mislead and it’s probably contributed to a few of the autopilot crashes.
It was possible to let Musk dealt with his own mess before, but after the last demands for false advertisement they changed the wording from “fully automated” to “assisted driving”, and now even the manuals says;
"dude, this is some fucky woocky shit, and is gonna kill u and everyone involved if u let us in charge. So… Pls be always over the edge of ur seat ready to jump! We warned u (even if we did everything to be as misleading as possible), u can’t pass us the bill, nor sue us now.
K, bye."
So yeah, they ain’t liable anymore.
The funny part will be once the car doesn’t have a driver and is full autonomous. If the car kills someone, who’s to blame?
The company that rented it to you, because fully self-driving cars won’t be for private ownership, they’ll just replace rideshare drivers.
The person for getting in the way, obviously
Replace car with dog or animal
It’s not the same. When you have a dog you use a leash and, if needed, you can restrain the mouth.
In this case you are not in control. And you can’t be. You are just a passenger. And you should have the same responsibility as a passenger in a train: none.
I didn’t know about your parameters. I would think your example pushes it home, no car should ever be fully autonomous and should have a “leash” that a human could “restrain” the car with if necessary. Is no good?
I don’t know if I’ll see it but in the future cars will be fully autonomous. And once every car can be autonomous human drivers will be banned.
Did our prophet tell you this? What about alien drivers?
Only what I think it will be the “normal” progression.
Oh ok, what other prophecies can you foretell wise One?
Whichever was at fault is my non-lawyer opinion.
What kind of penalty you apply to a self driving car guilty for causing an accident is a good question though.
I guess it would be the car maker’s responsibility if you are only a passenger in the car.
Immagino having a car that doesn’t pretend to drive herself but it’s enjoyable to drive, a car that doesn’t pretend to be a fucking movie because it’s just a car, a car without two thousands different policies to accept in wich you will never know what’s written but a car that you will be able to drive even though you decided to wear a red shirt on a Thursday morning which in you distorted future society is a political insult to some shithead CEO, a car that you own not a subscription based loan ,a car that keeps very slowly polluting the environment instead of polluting it with heavy chemicals dig up from childrens while still managing to pollute in CO2 exactly the same as the next 20 years of the slow polluting one not to mention where the current comes from, a car that will run forever if you treat it well and with minor fixes with relative minor environment impact and doesn’t need periodic battery replacement which btw is like building a new vehicle … This are not only a critical thoughts about green washing but are meant to make you reflect on the different meanings of ownership in different time periods
And yes I will always think that all environmentalists that absolutely needs a car should drive a 1990s car, fix it, save it from the dump fields and drive it till it crashes into a wall …
Imagine not being forced to need a car at all.
Imagine being able to just sit down, watch memes, read something, watch a movie, maybe take a nap, or even take advantage of the journey and get ahead some tasks on ur way to our jobs.
Imagine being able to eat dinner on ur way home if our daily commute is kinda long, woldn’t that be a dream?
Brothers, sisters, lets get some trains in our lives.
Totally agree…
The dream would be to see them arriving on time , maybe clean ( not from Graffiti I’m a huge fan I mean from trash… )z I don’t know about other places in the world but we definitely need more especially during peak hours and the Infostructure should be in the state hands not in the monopoly of a single private low paying dickhead … (We regularly have a strike almost every Friday since my parents were born)…Where r u from my friend? Even ours in the 3rd world ain’t that bad, actually they r really reliable (and clean), our usual demands its more lines
Italy we probably have the worst local train system… The long distance ones are actually better … Maybe are my standards you know people keep wanting more…
I would expect that that 90’s car would eventually be able to be converted to hydrogen combustion. That would save on pumping up petrol (if the hydrogen is not generated with petrol) and it would not cost yet another car to be created.
Strange to assume that swerving will definitely kill one of them. What if you swerve off the road, or slam on the brakes? The reason the trolley problem works is that it’s on rails and you’re not operating it.
That’s because it’s a Tesla car, silly. It only allows for minimalization of victims down to a minimum of one. I’ve heard that newer models have a perdiction module, that will deploy a rear mounted gun and shot down any survivors in case of narrowly avoided car crash. The seat still does devour the driver if that happens though, for some legacy backwards compatibility reasons. As for the disembodied Voice that recites all your sins and threatens you to reveal them to the public should you NOT take the wheel and kill those people yourself, it’s apparently in spanish as well now. Such an age of wonders.
It’s a meme
The premise of memes can be critiqued, just like anything else.
How fast am I driving down this two lane void with no guard rails
Yet, you’re guilty in any situation since you bought a stupid “self-driving” car
Wouldn’t autopilot kill n-1 of them?
It’s simple: somebody WILL die no matter what you do, this can include you (and nobody deserves it)
Pedal. To the. Metal.
Own Elon and cut back on carbon emissions? It’s a no brainer
Turn to the right and brake. Why are they dancing in a narrow two-lane road anyway?
lol tesla bad
