Wielding Rocks and Knives, Arizonans Attack Self-Driving Cars

Re:Wielding Rocks and Knives, Arizonans Attack Self-Driving ... by Jedi72 on Monday December 31, 2018 @11:18PM (#18798905)

I'm all for driverless cars, but if you put an algorithm in charge then the creators of that algorithm need to be legally responsible for the outcome. I'm talking engineers going to prison when one of these cars does inevitibly hit someone. Every driver is liable for their actions on the road, for some reason SV thinks being "statistically better than humans" means they aren't responsible for however small a % of crashes they are responsible for. It's like saying I only crashed once in my 50 years of driving so on average I'm not responsible for killing that kid last Tuesday.

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Re:Wielding Rocks and Knives, Arizonans Attack Self-Driving ... by b_tterc_p on Tuesday January 01, 2019 @01:16AM (#18799209)

In what universe would it make more sense to make the engineer liable rather than the larger corporate entity? Also, that’s not how human driving works. If you hit someone while following the rule of the road and not doing anything especially negligent, you won’t face criminal charges. You use the word “inevitably” but it doesn’t make sense at all with your world view.

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Re:Wielding Rocks and Knives, Arizonans Attack Self-Driving ... by Jedi72 on Tuesday January 01, 2019 @01:46AM (#18799277)

If, in the view of a court of law, it was not the algorithms fault due to negligence or whatever then I agree they are not responsible. I only ask the same rules be applied to the machine as a human. As for who ultimately pays, fine, substitute CEO or whatever. As long as someone actually does time, and it's not just a fine, because you can't put a company in prison. If we were talking about civil engineers designing a bridge that causes a death, I'm sure that chief engineers face at least some personal liability regardless of whatever shield the company offers.

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Re:Wielding Rocks and Knives, Arizonans Attack Self-Driving ... by valar_m on Tuesday January 01, 2019 @02:32AM (#18799361)

Fortunately, the law is actually quite sane in this area, so there won't be any engineers going to prison for vehicular manslaughter:

Manslaughter is the unlawful killing of a human being without malice. It is of three kinds:

(c) Vehicular—

(1) Except as provided in subdivision (a) of Section 191.5, driving a vehicle in the commission of an unlawful act, not amounting to a felony, and with gross negligence; or driving a vehicle in the commission of a lawful act which might produce death, in an unlawful manner, and with gross negligence.

(2) Driving a vehicle in the commission of an unlawful act, not amounting to a felony, but without gross negligence; or driving a vehicle in the commission of a lawful act which might produce death, in an unlawful manner, but without gross negligence.

(3) Driving a vehicle in connection with a violation of paragraph (3) of subdivision (a) of Section 550, where the vehicular collision or vehicular accident was knowingly caused for financial gain and proximately resulted in the death of any person. This paragraph does not prevent prosecution of a defendant for the crime of murder. [0]

[0] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio....

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Re:Wielding Rocks and Knives, Arizonans Attack Self-Driving ... by solidsnack9000 on Tuesday January 01, 2019 @10:37AM (#18800534)

People are responsible for their own actions and that doesn't change here. It's not different from any other component failure in automobiles or aerospace. When an autopilot fails, they don't go out and find the people who contributed code to it and charge them all with hundreds of murders. They might jail someone if they made a willfully negligent decision with regards to testing or approvals but that person is just as likely to be in business or product as to be an engineer.

Silicon Valley doesn't think anything different from that and doesn't expect to be treated any differently. Jailing engineers would be the different, weird thing.

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Re:Wielding Rocks and Knives, Arizonans Attack Self-Driving ... by crunchyfrog on Tuesday January 01, 2019 @08:26AM (#18800084)

If such a system existed, we would basically have no technology. Engineers, like all humans, are fallible. Those mistakes can cost lives. If an engineer made an error in designing a part for a piloted car that caused the car to fail and kill people, should he go to jail too? Mistakes like this happen all the time. Ever had your car recalled?

Engineers can and should go to jail for negligence but that is an entirely different standard than criminalizing mistakes.

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Re:Wielding Rocks and Knives, Arizonans Attack Self-Driving ... by codinger on Tuesday January 01, 2019 @02:54AM (#18799400)

The inverse is true as well. If the tech progresses where it's statistically safer then the engineer has saved more lives. Depends on how you frame it. Idk how it should be sorted out legally.

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