The world’s biggest maker of sensors for self-driving cars has poured cold water on the chance of rapid growth for fully autonomous vehicles, saying society and regulators are not ready to accept deaths caused by machines that drive themselves.
“Close to one million people lose their lives every year to car accidents. If a technology company builds a vehicle that kills one person every year, that’s one-millionth of the difference, but it will have trouble to survive,” said Li in an interview."
I suspect the biggest obstacle to fully autonomous vehicles is the backlash against the unemployment they will cause. Safety will be used as an excuse to bolster that narrative. My guess is that by the 2030s, it will be clear to most people that they are far safer. They already are now, and they will be far more advanced then.
Top sensor maker Hesai warns world not ready for driverless cars
It’s also the nature of the accidents. There are human-causes of accidents that we understand because we are human. We can punish irresponsible drivers more harshly than those who just had a freak accident.
Automated systems on the other hand will fail in completely unexpected non-human ways. We will look at the circumstances of a collision and say something like “it was completely clear [to a human] that the pedestrian was crossing the road, how could the car not see them?” and this will fuel a contempt of the automated car for being incompetent in ways which should disqualify it from driving, as an incompetent human would be, even if the car has a fraction of the accident rate.
We can drive defensively by predicting the mistakes or bad behaviours of other (human) drivers. But when there are drivers on the road that are completely unpredictable and make mistakes in unexpected ways, it makes all of us less safe, and less able to drive safely.
Tesla doesn’t use LIDAR, and their lane assist (FSD) is a clear, proven threat to the public.
“Close to one million people lose their lives every year to car accidents. If a technology company builds a vehicle that kills one person every year, that’s one-millionth of the difference, but it will have trouble to survive,”
You mean, like, a train? A tram? A bicycle, even?
It is a question of legality more than the harm itself. When a driver kills someone, someone is responsible. When an AI kills someone, I’ll be damned if the car company will accept liability.
Won’t there be insurance for this?
If companies like FedEx can bear the cost of liabilities for huge numbers of human drivers, doesn’t that suggest the burden will be far less for robo-vehicle car companies?
Maybe, but who pays those premiums? The driver? If it’s the auto manufacturer paying insurance premiums in perpetuity on cars that they don’t own, that will incentivise them to not actually sell those cars, but to lease them instead. The change in liability with a mass adoption of self-driving cars necessarily changes the structure of overall ownership of transport.
In the span of a century we will have went from publicly owned transportation to a system of transportation owned by corporations. This is the deeper question that has to be faced by self-driving car technology in the face of much cheaper, more environmentally friendly, safe, achievable public transport options. Automakers have shaped the conversation around transport funding for so long that these questions sound almost conspiratorial, but I urge you to consider the wider ramifications of the technology. It might seem cool to sit in a car that is driving itself, alone and unbothered, but I cannot shake the sense that it is borne of an individualism that chiefly benefits moneyed interests.
The car companies would have a sort of malpractice insurance similar to surgeons. Or they would just pay for it directly if they are that certain of their product. It doesn’t really have to be that complicated.
As for accepting liability, that’s what the courts are for… Just don’t buy cars with forced arbitration agreements.
Is that what they’ll do.
It sure is a lot of work to not have trains, isn’t it?
Because Japan, Korea and Europe don’t have cars.
Excellently put.
It frustrates me to no end that this kind of longer view is rarely taken.
As my grandfather would say “who’s ox is getting gored?”. Some beneficiaries drive such change, some stand by and wait for their opportunity to collect their share.
Too much of this seems pushed by monied interests just using sophistry to make this sound like it’s better for everyone.
China is trying to pass an L3 law. If the human in the car is not driving then they are not libel for the accident. The company’s software was driving.The company has the liability.
Similar to the Texas law in USA.
Companies can guarantee a million dollar payout to any accident where the car is at fault, and black boxes to get the evidence they need. If they’re confident in the tech for such an amount, it will give confidence for the public. If they’re not willing to put up such a bounty, the tech is just not good enough yet.
I guess the public is an unfortunate loss they’re willing to accept.
The alternative is government to legislate slowly adding more tech to normal cars to turn them into nanny vehicles watching and correcting every move you make.
Every breath you take.
Your car is watching.
