Waymo might be expanding its autonomous taxi services to northern cities like Minneapolis and Detroit, but back in Santa Monica, the company’s strained relationship with local residents has reached a breaking point.
According to the Santa Monica Daily Press, the city council has issued a formal demand that Waymo end overnight operations at two charging facilities there. City counselors unanimously approved the measure, which doesn’t mention Waymo by name, but instead orders two lots the company uses to charge and dispatch vehicles to cease nighttime operations.
Current full self driving cars terrify me. Someone gets in a car, runs a red, shatters a grandma, flattens her dog, they can be held accountable. An officer comes and apprehends them. No big deal.
A software bug compels a waymo to do the same and the company apologizes, pays a fine, and continues its activity. Possibly before the end of the day. Executives are too immune to prosecution for e-taxis to be a reasonable proposition to me.
It’s odd that the thing that terrifies you is that nobody is able to be punished. Grandma and her dog are dead in both scenarios. We want whatever will cause that scenario to happen the least.
I’d rather 1 grandma is run over without a clearly responsible party than 10 grandmothers be killed while 10 drivers are sent to prison.
A person who’s not paying attention or drunk is always going to exist no matter how many grandmas are flattened. The software bug can be fixed and sensors can be improved.
Self-driving cars are the worst they will ever be and they will only get better. Human drivers are not going to improve.
Until it’s no longer more profitable to make their cars safer, companies will make their cars safer, I agree. That’s the summation of my reasoning. As companies attempt to relieve themselves of their need for humans, the math becomes murkier. “Because they’ve become safer over time, they’ll continue to do so indefinitely” doesn’t work for me.
The punishment (or the threat of punishment) is supposed to be part of the motivation to not drive into pedestrians.
If the decision makers behind the fully automatic vehicles don’t fear that punishment, the concern is that they’ll make choices that are motivated more by profits and efficiencies and less by safe driving and preventing harms.
And given the abuses of profit seeking executives we have seen in the past, it is a valid concern.
Punishment as a deterrent? Lol what human race are you thinking of.
Ah yes, people slow down near cops for the love of the game, not because they’re afraid of a ticket or jail time.
Fear of punishment.
So it’s just the fear of vengeance that stops you from robbing, raping, and murdering?
Of course not. Most people are motivated to doing the right thing simply because it is the right thing to do.
But some people seem to need the threat of personal consequences to keep them from being selfish assholes. And it often appears that those are the same type of people who manage to get themselves into decision making positions in the business world.
The problem isn’t that nobody is able to be punished, its that the punishment isn’t anywhere near severe enough to incentivize fixing the issues that caused grandma to get hit.
When negligence is a small fine and a finger wag of “make sure this doesn’t happen again”, they aren’t going to do more than lip service claiming they will fix the issue, maybe fire someone at the bottom of the ladder to prove their sincerity.
@Gullible@sh.itjust.works There isn’t a problem that could not be solved by legislation here. The police is already able to give tickets to self-driving cars in some states. You can certainly argue that the megacorps aren’t inclined to care when the amount of money involved is tiny but then again that problem exists in most places just as much when it comes to fining rich people. You could always up the amounts if the politicians are willing to do that.
The more consequential thing that can already be done currently is grounding the entire fleet if there’s a good reason for that so it’s not like officials are completely helpless.