The safety driver was texting. Virtually everyone knows if you're a driver you're not supposed to text and drive. Safety drivers are held to an even higher level of road safety knowledge, so they should understand that they're beta testing a literally lethal weapon, and take reasonable precautions, like staying focused on the road.

> You don't throw people in jail because they wrote buggy software.

That depends upon the application.

Too many programmers think "Meh. Bugs are no big deal." because their code doesn't interact with the real world.

The problem is that the useful code that doesn't interact with the world has basically all been written, code is now starting to interact with he world by default.

Hang on, programmers, this ride is about to get bumpy.

Do you have an example from anywhere ever of a programmer being prosecuted for a bug?

Behold, The Great Worm of yore! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Tappan_Morris#Criminal_...

(I thought of the first computer-aided fatality, but the sources don't seem to mention any prosecution w/r/t Therac-25)

No, the Morris worm was criminal even if it didn't kill systems. The fact that it was accidentally killing systems surely changed the prosecutorial decisionmaking, but it wasn't relevant to the case itself. Morris was prosecuted for penetrating and abusing systems he didn't own, not for a bug in software that would have been non-criminal if it worked properly.

Which is it? You're saying we don't have enough details AND that it's just buggy software.

Upthread it was pointed out that the LIDAR manufacturer believes their system was operating correctly. Assuming that, it becomes a software bug more or less by definition.

But fine: let's say it was the LIDAR system was at fault. Do they go to jail, then? How about the bureaucrats who approved the test?

All this doesn't matter. I'm simply saying that ALL the facts in evidence point to this being a reasonable mistake, and reasonable mistakes don't qualify for negligence prosecution. If you want to argue to the contrary you need evidence, which doens't seem to exist. Therefore the upthread question "shouldn't someone go to jail?" is answered with a firm "no".

How could you possibly know if the mistake was reasonable?

Because you're demanding jail time, and the burden of proof goes the other way. I don't need to know whether the mistake was reasonable, you need to prove it wasn't if you want to argue someone should go to jail.