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I am, in general, hoping AV will reduce road deaths in the future. The last hurdle is regulatory. We can’t let AV manufacturers use “there’s no driver” as a wa

by callc 5mo ago

I am, in general, hoping AV will reduce road deaths in the future. The last hurdle is regulatory. We can’t let AV manufacturers use “there’s no driver” as a way to escape responsibility, externalizing the harms AC cause onto society. The question is how to achieve fairness. If a human driver commits vehicular manslaughter, they get the book. What about AV? $10 million? Executives go to jail? What if $10 million fine per X AV miles driven is an OK cost of doing business?

loeg 5mo ago
> If a human driver commits vehicular manslaughter, they get the book. Hah. Do they, though? https://sfstandard.com/2026/03/20/mary-lau-sentenced-probation-west-portal-crash/ https://sfstandard.com/2026/03/20/mary-lau-sentenced-probati... The standard for human drivers is through the floor.
- Hnrobert42 5mo ago
  > The standard for human drivers is through the floor. The linked article doesn't describe the standard. It describes a single, exceptional example.
  - loeg 5mo ago
    It's a representative example. (When you're disputing my evidenced claim, it behooves you to bring your own facts, rather than just asserting.)
    - mlyle 5mo ago
      I think it's not too surprising that the law treats people with diminished capacity differently. It's not a bug, it's a feature, even though it may feel upsetting. There's no winning solution in a case like that.
      - loeg 4mo ago
        I disagree that it is a feature.
        mlyle 4mo ago
        You'd prefer to throw people with dementia and children in jail? Most of us agree that those outcomes are messed up, and the ability to form intent and/or understand the consequences of one's actions is important information to be considered in formulating whether to punish. Someone got old and hadn't figured out they were unsafe to drive. It's not the same thing as me choosing to drive 100MPH in a city, operate a vehicle drunk, or keeping going after receiving clear evidence that I'm unsafe behind the wheel.
      - ctoth 5mo ago
        Well, if the law treats them differently when it comes to punishment, then maybe it should treat them differently when it comes to being able to drive in the first place?
        mlyle 5mo ago
        Yup. And we do have some degree of safeguards here-- admittedly, less in California than many other states. They are: physician required reporting of disqualifying conditions, ability for other people to report concerns about capability to drive, and the requirement to show up and undergo vision testing and not flag other concerns in the process. There's a tradeoff between reducing the very low rate of unsafe driving by the elderly and the burden added to the very old. People over 65+ are still possibly safer, overall, than teenagers.
    - pessimizer 5mo ago
      > It's a representative example. This is the assertion. You can recognize it because the obvious reply is that it is not at all a representative example, but one that you just handpicked. You're question-begging.
      - ctoth 5mo ago
        Here' I'll do the needful: Twin Cities, 2010-2014: 95 pedestrians killed in 3,069 crashes. 28 drivers were charged and convicted of a crime, most often a misdemeanor ranging from speeding to careless driving. ~70% of pedestrian-killing drivers faced no criminal charge[0]. Bay Area, 2007-2011 (CIR investigation): sixty percent of drivers that were at fault, or suspected of being at fault, faced no criminal charges. Over 40 percent of drivers charged did not lose their driver's licenses, even temporarily[1]. Philadelphia, 2017–2018: just 16 percent of the drivers were charged with a felony in fatal crashes[2]. Los Angeles, 2010–2019: 2,109 people were killed in traffic collisions on L.A. streets... and nearly half were pedestrians. Booked on vehicular manslaughter: 158 people. The vast majority of drivers who kill someone with their car are not arrested[3]. I can literally do this all day. The original statement was correct, the case representative. [0]: https://www.startribune.com/in-crashes-that-kill-pedestrians-the-majority-of-drivers-don-t-face-charges/380345481 https://www.startribune.com/in-crashes-that-kill-pedestrians... [1]: https://walksf.org/2013/05/02/investigative-report-exposes-how-rarely-drivers-who-kill-or-injure-pedestrians-are-charged/ https://walksf.org/2013/05/02/investigative-report-exposes-h... [2]: https://whyy.org/articles/philadelphia-drivers-rarely-prosecuted-for-crashes-that-kill-pedestrians-and-cyclists/ https://whyy.org/articles/philadelphia-drivers-rarely-prosec... [3]: https://laist.com/news/transportation/takeaways-pedestrian-deaths-traffic-violence https://laist.com/news/transportation/takeaways-pedestrian-d...
        cucumber3732842 5mo ago
        You're likely falling for a red herring. Criminality is basically just a checkbox for this stuff. Most of the time people wouldn't be going to jail for these sorts of crimes, it'd just be big fines and penalties. There's almost always administrative/civil infractions of the same or similar name that has the same or greater punishment but are far more efficient for the state to prosecute because the accused has fewer rights. It makes for good appeal to emotion headlines to say these people aren't getting charged with crimes, but that's only half the story. They're likely lawyering up and pleading to a civil infraction that has approx the same penalties. And this is true not just for this issue but for many subject areas of administrative law. Taxes, SEC, environmental, etc, etc, all operate mostly like this. It's easy for a writer to pander to certain demographics and get people whipped into a frenzy by writing an easy article about prosecuting rates using public data. Actually contacting these agencies and figuring out what they actually did is hard and in the modern media economy doesn't offer much upside for the work.
    - Hnrobert42 5mo ago
      The refutation of your point is in the article itself. The standard, by law, punishment involves jail time or home confinement. The judge explained how those punishments were not appropriate because of the exceptional circumstances.
      - lojban 5mo ago
        I'm not sure how that would change things. It is still a representative example. See also: http://archive.today/2026.03.23-031145/https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/19/us/san-francisco-pedestrian-deaths-toddler.html http://archive.today/2026.03.23-031145/https://www.nytimes.c... > And there is precedent for the light manslaughter sentencing of an older driver. In 2003, George Weller, 86, killed 10 pedestrians at the Santa Monica Farmers Market after confusing the gas and brake pedals. He received five years of probation. The judge in that case said that Mr. Weller’s age and declining health had contributed to the decision.
        Hnrobert42 5mo ago
        You mean a representative example of an exception? Your example also points out how the judge justified their deviation from the standard.
    - vanviegen 5mo ago
      That is not an evidenced claim though. It's an anecdote.
      - zuminator 5mo ago
        Evidence is, generally speaking, anecdotal.
    - Tagbert 5mo ago
      No “representative” would mean that was a typical outcome and that is not the case. That is what would be called an “exceptional” outcome.
- Aachen 5mo ago
  Who does it benefit if an accident ruins a second life? What does a jail sentence deter? ("[no] gross negligence [...] wasn’t engaging in a race or sideshow, was not texting, and was not under influence") This person was 80 years old with no criminal record, needs to pay $67400 in restitution, do 200 hours of community service, isn't allowed to drive for 3 years but "never intends to drive again". Apologised to the family of the victims. She's taking responsibility and I can't imagine forced labor at that age is fun. What more can you ask for here? The family member isn't coming back if she gets what's not unlikely to be a life sentence Edit: > She told a witness at the scene that she was trying to park her car when she accidentally moved her foot to the gas pedal. This seems to happen a lot. Don't know about statistics but this happened to someone I know at 50yo (thankfully only damaged their own car minorly), and you hear it on the news with some regularity. Maybe the gas needs to be in a fundamentally different spot from the brake? We can jail the people to whom it happens, sure, but I can understand a judge using their head instead of their heart. The real solution must come either from the automotive industry or legislation
  - qwe----3 5mo ago
    They intentionally moved assets to their family members to avoid liability, right? Laws are also meant to deter bad behavior, people who aren't able to drive safely should know there will be consequences
  - xnx 5mo ago
    > What does a jail sentence deter? Other irresponsible drivers.
    - Aachen 5mo ago
      How would I know I'm going to kill someone on the road today and stop doing that thing?
      - xnx 5mo ago
        Don't drive intoxicated, tired, distracted, or physically impaired by age or other means.
- Groxx 5mo ago
  Better than the current standard for AV, which is "what floor?"
  - loeg 5mo ago
    Is it? https://www.vice.com/en/article/california-dmv-suspends-cruises-self-driving-car-license-after-pedestrian-injury/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/california-dmv-suspends-crui...
  - HDThoreaun 5mo ago
    Cruise was entirely shut down because of an incident that didnt even result in a death. Thats way worse than what people tend to get
    - scarmig 5mo ago
      IIRC Cruise got into the most trouble not because of the accident itself, but because it tried to hide evidence from and deceive regulators.
      - fragmede 5mo ago
        "it"; Kyle Vogt, their CEO at the time, is the person that decided to do it.
      - oceanplexian 5mo ago
        They have to operate in California though, so I don't blame them. This is a state that made me a criminal for putting the wrong air filter on my car (Clearly my bad for putting on the 49 State legal version that makes the tailpipe emissions cleaner).
      - HALtheWise 5mo ago
        In the context of this thread, it's worth pointing out that "trying to deceive regulators" is quite normal behavior for individual human drivers involved in car incidents, and iirc the Cruise collision itself also involved a human driver performing a hit-and-run who didn't afaict ever get prosecuted or come forward to police.
- Aurornis 5mo ago
  The reason that’s a news story is because the outcome is unusual. When things are normal and happening all the time, they’re not reported as abnormal outcomes. The world is a big place. Being able to think of a counter-example does not negate a general point.
  - asveikau 5mo ago
    No, the reason that's a news story is because many people were upset about the accident, which killed an entire family of 4 while they took the kids to the zoo on their wedding anniversary. Even by the standards of auto wrecks it was heart wrenching. A lot of people felt the driver was negligent and deserved prison.
  - keerthiko 5mo ago
    there are many[0] many[1] data points like this. even if individual ones seem like outliers, when there's this many outliers, it's like there's at least two distinct lines depicting consequences, one material and one not. those who probably have exhausted all the various escape hatches built into the "vehicular manslaughter & mutilation forgiveness program" worldwide by the automobile industry, may get a year or so in prison — usually extreme repeat offenders, high profile deaths, homicide cases, or drivers who were already criminals just having the charge thrown in. most people who "slipped up" are just fined and forgotten, at the cost of global pedestrian safety. [0]: https://www.scmp.com/news/china-insider/article/1856923/do-some-chinese-drivers-prefer-kill-just-injure-pedestrians-us https://www.scmp.com/news/china-insider/article/1856923/do-s... [1]: https://gothamist.com/news/95-of-nyc-drivers-avoid-criminal-charges-after-fatal-crashes https://gothamist.com/news/95-of-nyc-drivers-avoid-criminal-...
  - iknowstuff 5mo ago
    You are wrong. The easiest way to murder someone in America and get a slap on the wrist is to run them over in your car.
    - mindslight 5mo ago
      If you don't have a lot of money for your legal defense, then make sure to have a bicycle in your trunk which you can place next to the victim afterwards.
- nkzednan 5mo ago
  see https://sf.streetsblog.org/2026/03/06/motorist-careens-onto-north-beach-sidewalk-killing-pedestrian https://sf.streetsblog.org/2026/03/06/motorist-careens-onto-... and see what the police said to the driver…
- e40 5mo ago
  Freakonomics did a pod about this, titled “how to get away with murder”.
mmmore 5mo ago
> If a human driver commits vehicular manslaughter, they get the book. I wish this were true. Often they get off with a light punishment, or no punishment at all.
xnx 5mo ago
> If a human driver commits vehicular manslaughter, they get the book. If only! "10 Days In Jail For Drunken Driver Who Killed Cyclist Bobby Cann" https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20170126/old-town/ryne-san-hamel-bobby-cann-cyclist-killed-10-days-drunken-driver-bicyclist-clybourn/ https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20170126/old-town/ryne-san-h...
- borski 5mo ago
  I almost feel bad for noticing this, but: > San Hamel was a partner in a business called AllYouCanDrink.com at the time. … > Cann, an experienced cyclist who once biked from New Hampshire to Chicago, was heading home from his job at Groupon the night he was killed. It looks like allyoucandrink.com now redirects to Groupon, in a decent bit of irony.
stavros 5mo ago
The CEO gets charged with manslaughter? I work in healthtech and the responsible individual is certainly personally liable for any harm that results from reckless behavior, it should be the same here. Same as if someone were driving, if a person just jumps in front of your car while you're driving under the limit/sober/etc, you aren't at fault, so the AV should also not be at fault if it couldn't reasonably avoid the harm. You balance these things, benefit to society vs harm to society, and you come to an acceptable tradeoff.
- mwt 5mo ago
  Could you provide examples of healthcare executives held personally liable for harm resulting from reckless decision-making? I have never heard of such a thing happening in healthcare so framing CEO responsibility as a solution to the problem sounds like a stretch to me. Some examples: Elizabeth Holmes got canned for lying to investors, not harming patients. Purdue Pharma plead guilty to misleading regulators and giving doctors kickbacks, not causing some hundreds of thousands of opioid deaths, but no Sackler family members were personally tried.
  - stavros 5mo ago
    I work in the UK, where regulations are different, and there have been a few cases. Maybe not as many as there should be, but in theory this is something that exists in law.
- bdangubic 5mo ago
  > The CEO gets charged with manslaughter? I work in healthtech and the responsible individual is certainly personally liable for any harm that results from reckless behavior, it should be the same here. This is in like China, yes? Certainly not in the US of A, hence Luigi and all that…
- MetaWhirledPeas 5mo ago
  > The CEO gets charged with manslaughter? Well then forget autonomous vehicles altogether and allow the human joyride to continue, because no CEO is stupid enough to risk that.
wongarsu 5mo ago
In the US, 11 deaths per billion miles driven (or about 47k per year) is currently seen as an OK cost. More than twice as much per mile as places like Sweden and Switzerland, and still substantially more than places like Canada, Australia or Germany (all three in the 6-8 deaths per billion miles range). So it's not like there isn't room to improve. The effort to do so just isn't seen as worth the cost at the societal or government level Turning that into a monetary cost would change the ethics slightly, but it wouldn't be a monumental shift
- JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
  > it's not like there isn't room to improve Losing one's license means destitution for many Americans. That places practical limits on enforcement compared with less car-oriented countries.
  - HDThoreaun 5mo ago
    Tons of options other than removing the ability to drive. More stringent enforcement, higher fines.
  - embedding-shape 5mo ago
    > Losing one's license means destitution for many Americans. That'd be the same for a Swede who lives in the middle of nowhere too. Although I'm sure both groups, if they'd loose their license, would continue driving anyways.
    - pixel_popping 5mo ago
      Clearly, a bit weird to assume that no license would automatically mean that the driver stops driving, that's not true at all.
    - danaris 5mo ago
      ...But what percentage of Swedes is that? vs the vast majority of working-class Americans. Remember, outside of its few biggest and wealthiest cities, the US just does not have decent, reliable public transport, and most places don't have any.
JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
> If a human driver commits vehicular manslaughter, they get the book. What about AV? They get their licenses pulled statewide [1]. Cruise's single negligent manslaughter event carried more consequence than dozens of human cases combined. [1] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/news-and-media/dmv-statement-on-cruise-llc-suspension/ https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/news-and-media/dmv-statement-o...
dyauspitr 5mo ago
Then it’s an okay cost of doing business. $10 million is a lot of money and consequences for these companies are not purely legal they are also social consequences.
cyanydeez 5mo ago
Want to reduce road deaths? Invest in public transportation.
- tim333 5mo ago
  We've had public transportation for a couple of centuries and no where has it really led to a road death free utopia. I like public transport but no harm trying something new.
- matsemann 5mo ago
  Yup. Even if "safer per mile", more cars and more miles driven will probably outweigh the benefits. And still be hazardous to cyclists and pedestrians, still make us design stupid cities (built for cars, not people), etc. Like how electric cars were for saving the car companies, not the planet, autonomous will be the same.
- MetaWhirledPeas 5mo ago
  I had to look up a name for this. "Utopian Fallacy." You don't have to get rid of genuine progress just because your utopian vision has something better. The USA is on the path to autonomous vehicles. They are not on the path to public transportation excellence.
melenaboija 5mo ago
> What if $10 million fine per X AV miles driven is an OK cost of doing business? It’s the same cost/benefit we accept under current rules. Why have cars that can go 3x the speed limit? Why not require breathalyzers in cars before starting them? Why not fine logistics companies if one of their drivers breaks the law? And so on… Because it’s worth it
- fma 5mo ago
  >Why not require breathalyzers in cars before starting them? FYI Cars will soon detect if you are impaired.
  - thinkling 5mo ago
    What tech will be used for this? I hope it’s better than other sensor tech in cars that think they need to warn you that you’re about to hit something at the front when the car is in reverse, that can't distinguish a bike rack statically attached to the car from the environment, and so on.
- aziaziazi 5mo ago
  Your questions are pertinent but what’s the benefit "worth" you’re referring to? The two first proposals would risk a politician popularity and the last one would be lobbied to he’ll buy the logistic companies. IMHO inconvenience isn’t worth driving among drunk coursier at 200kmh.
chaos_emergent 5mo ago
We can look to other forms of automation to get a sense of what to do. For example, planes largely fly themselves and a loss of life due to manufacturing errors from the manufacturer would deem them liable for those deaths. Seems like the solution here is large penalties and generally broad disincentives for incurring harm.
bluecheese452 5mo ago
Holding executives responsible for actual violence is considered promoting violence on this site and is not allowed. Cue the handwringing and moralizing from the usual suspects.
themafia 5mo ago
> hoping AV will reduce road deaths in the future. It won't. The majority of fatalities are caused by drugs and alcohol. > The last hurdle is regulatory. Indeed. Compare the USAs DUI laws with any other first world country.
BrenBarn 5mo ago
I think jail time for executives should be table stakes. Another thing would be fines well in excess of $10 million. The fines should be defined as percentages of gross revenue, or maybe even (to target VC-funded operations that operate at a loss) percentages of gross expenses. The penalties should be such that a few crashes can put the company entirely out of business.
junofan 5mo ago
> The last hurdle is regulatory How’d you arrive at this conclusion? Why would fleet providers accept regrettable losses? Wouldn’t the last hurdle be technical? > The question is how to achieve fairness What does that have to do with automotive safety?
acdha 5mo ago
We subsidize driving by somewhat over a trillion dollars annually, mostly due to lax penalties for negligence which shift liability to drivers’ victims[1]. One way to tackle all of these problems would be requiring drivers to cover the full damages. Another simple and effective measure would be changing fines from absolute values to a percentage of income. Right now, parking in a bike lane usually doesn’t kill anyone so drivers are only thinking there’s a small chance of a small fine, but if it was a chance of, say, 0.1% of annual income Waymo technology would magically be capable of not doing that. Add a right of private action and enforcement would be high enough to really speed things along, too, and that’d improve safety and travel times for all road users. 1. https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/01/18/why-car-insurance-in-america-is-actually-too-cheap https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/01/18/why-car-i...
- fragmede 5mo ago
  Yeah, making fines relative to income would change behaviors for sure. A $20 ticket when you make $20 an hour hits different when you're making $200 or $2,000/hr. If it was a percentage of pay, then the ticket would actually sting.
  - chung8123 5mo ago
    There are a lot of people that just don't pay the fines and ignore suspended licenses as money stops becoming a motivator on the other end as well.
amarant 5mo ago
Adjust the fines such that X is some acceptably large number. The trickiest part will be figuring out how many dollars per mile driven is an acceptable cost of business.. I'd probably reserve the whole executives to jail thing to cases where you can prove negligence or something.
BurningFrog 5mo ago
The legal entity driving the AV should of course be responsible in the same way as human drivers are. My understanding is that that is already the legal situation?
andrepd 5mo ago
Many things already reduce road deaths and they are infinitely easier to do that driverless cars, namely: viable alternatives to driving! Trains, streetcars, bike lanes, whatever.
mekael 5mo ago
Societies can already reduce road deaths to nearly zero, it's cheap, it's easy, and it's fun. It's just redirecting all of the cash we spend on vehicles/cars/highways/roadways/signs/etc into public infrastructure that is all encompassing. A hundred billion dollars a year [0] on construction (reading the definition I'm not 100% sure what is included in this due to how definitions can be hazy) has goes a long way, not to mention the amount we spend on gasoline, car maintenance, etc etc. The reason I say it's fun, is because I love being on a train. First time I was able to ride one, which due to living in the good old USA wasn't until I was 23, I yelled "I'm on a train" . The Germans traveling with me weren't as into it. [0] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TLHWYCONS# https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TLHWYCONS#
- dmitrygr 5mo ago
  Just because you like trains does not mean that it is actually a solution to everyone’s problem. For example, until proper law-enforcement starts happening on public transit, nobody in my family is allowed to take it in USA (they are allowed to do so in Singapore or Japan)
  - mekael 5mo ago
    We can take the LEO's that would have patrolled highways/city streets and have them patrol on public transport, same job just slightly different environment. Can I ask why you feel that public transit is unsafe in the US?
    - dmitrygr 5mo ago
      Because each of these perps were not on their first, second, third, fourth, fifth, or sixth violent offense and were freely out to kill: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Debrina_Kawam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Debrina_Kawam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Iryna_Zarutska https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Iryna_Zarutska https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/nypd-men-pushed-subway-tracks-upper-east-side/ https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/nypd-men-pushed-subway-... Many more such cases occur and aren’t widely reported. I’ve personally witnessed a stabbing on a bus My chances of being stabbed inside my car are much lower
femto 5mo ago
Full liability. It's a machine with predictable performance. The law applied to humans needs to account for their fallibilities. Not so with a machine.
EnPissant 5mo ago
Now try applying this logic to elevators.
XorNot 5mo ago
People are killed by industrial equipment fairly regularly. I'd say we actually have a perfectly functional legal framework for all of this, and the real issue is a lot of new people are about to find out it also applies to them as well. Whether it was working well in the first place is the real question.
MetaWhirledPeas 5mo ago
> What about AV? $10 million? Executives go to jail? What if $10 million fine per X AV miles driven is an OK cost of doing business? If AVs will save lives, we need to be sure we aren't punitive to the point of making them disappear.
pizzly 5mo ago
If we consider fairness/retribution/justice then we won't get this future of less road deaths. 1. There will always be a probability of death from a vehicle. This can never go to 0%. 2. If the probability of a AV causing death is many magnitudes lower than human driving then that is the future we must choose. If 1 and 2 holds and we hold AV manufactures accountable in the sense that Executives go to jail or are personal liable financially for deaths/injuries then AV will never get released or become mainstream even if this results in less total deaths. The sense of fairness/justice/retribution may make us feel better but result in more overall deaths. Logically this means that there must be a standard. Something like x deaths per y cars manufactured. If above the threshold you get big fines as a company. As technology gets better you can lower the threshold. Anything apart from causing deaths either purposefully or negligently would have be ignored. Can we as a species accept this? That is another question.
AnthonyMouse 5mo ago
> We can’t let AV manufacturers use “there’s no driver” as a way to escape responsibility, externalizing the harms AC cause onto society. There is essentially nothing to be gained from doing this because it will not in either case be manufacturer; it will be an insurance company. If the liability is paid by the vehicle owner's insurance then things work as they do now. You buy a car, insure it, if there is a liability there is an insurance claim and then the victim has someone to pay them for their injuries. Meanwhile the manufacturers still have a financial incentive to make safer cars because buyers want neither accident prone vehicles as the one they use nor high insurance rates. The insurance rates in particular are in direct competition with the car payment for the customer's available income. Whereas if you try to put the liability on the manufacturer, several stupider things happen. First, they're just going to buy insurance anyway, but now the insurance cost has to be front-loaded into the purchase price, which increases costs because now you're paying car loan interest on money to cover insurance five and ten years from now, when you otherwise wouldn't have needed to pay the premiums until the time comes. Second, what happens to cars from manufacturers who no longer exist? They can't continue paying for insurance if they're bankrupt, so you need it to be someone else. Worse, if a company produces a vehicle which is unsafe, that will tend to cause them to go bankrupt. But then people still have them, and would continue to operate them if they're allowed to point victims at the bankrupt manufacturer, whereas the incentive you want is for the premiums on those cars to go up for the vehicle owners so that they stop operating them.
sandworm101 5mo ago
Simple. Blame the owner of the vehicle. They relied on automation and it failed. They go to jail for negligent homicide (whatever flavor is appropriate). That will tank sales of any AV tech that cannot maintain standards.
throwaway277432 5mo ago
What happens if you build a bridge and it breaks? These people want to play god with our lives but at the same time move fast and break things. Look at software quality anywhere, it's a mess and only about to get much worse. We should not let them. Jail time for anyone involved in any of the decision making process, applied at scale with the number of vehicles and deaths. Why should the standards be any different? They want to change the status quo with tech only so they can get paid and extort us with yet more subscriptions. AVs will never substantially reduce road deaths. They will optimize to just being slightly better than human, but fail in new and more unexpected ways. There is not enough incentive for them to make it safer.
tim333 5mo ago
I also hope AV will reduce road deaths in the future but I don't think what will make the difference is regulatory. Rather the tech will advance from doesn't work to works in Waymos but is expensive to works in most cars and has become cheap.
m463 5mo ago
> cost of doing business? I hate this part, I don't think it is good for society. I think UPS gets lots and lots of parking tickets, and pays them as COB. Maybe they should have "fix it" tickets, like they get for a burned-out headlight. Except they need a bug to be opened and fixed.

by callc 5mo ago

loeg 5mo ago

> If a human driver commits vehicular manslaughter, they get the book. Hah. Do they, though? https://sfstandard.com/2026/03/20/mary-lau-sentenced-probation-west-portal-crash/ https://sfstandard.com/2026/03/20/mary-lau-sentenced-probati... The standard for human drivers is through the floor.

Hnrobert42 5mo ago
> The standard for human drivers is through the floor. The linked article doesn't describe the standard. It describes a single, exceptional example.
- loeg 5mo ago
  It's a representative example. (When you're disputing my evidenced claim, it behooves you to bring your own facts, rather than just asserting.)
  - mlyle 5mo ago
    I think it's not too surprising that the law treats people with diminished capacity differently. It's not a bug, it's a feature, even though it may feel upsetting. There's no winning solution in a case like that.
    - loeg 4mo ago
      I disagree that it is a feature.
      - mlyle 4mo ago
        You'd prefer to throw people with dementia and children in jail? Most of us agree that those outcomes are messed up, and the ability to form intent and/or understand the consequences of one's actions is important information to be considered in formulating whether to punish. Someone got old and hadn't figured out they were unsafe to drive. It's not the same thing as me choosing to drive 100MPH in a city, operate a vehicle drunk, or keeping going after receiving clear evidence that I'm unsafe behind the wheel.
    - ctoth 5mo ago
      Well, if the law treats them differently when it comes to punishment, then maybe it should treat them differently when it comes to being able to drive in the first place?
      - mlyle 5mo ago
        Yup. And we do have some degree of safeguards here-- admittedly, less in California than many other states. They are: physician required reporting of disqualifying conditions, ability for other people to report concerns about capability to drive, and the requirement to show up and undergo vision testing and not flag other concerns in the process. There's a tradeoff between reducing the very low rate of unsafe driving by the elderly and the burden added to the very old. People over 65+ are still possibly safer, overall, than teenagers.
  - pessimizer 5mo ago
    > It's a representative example. This is the assertion. You can recognize it because the obvious reply is that it is not at all a representative example, but one that you just handpicked. You're question-begging.
    - ctoth 5mo ago
      Here' I'll do the needful: Twin Cities, 2010-2014: 95 pedestrians killed in 3,069 crashes. 28 drivers were charged and convicted of a crime, most often a misdemeanor ranging from speeding to careless driving. ~70% of pedestrian-killing drivers faced no criminal charge[0]. Bay Area, 2007-2011 (CIR investigation): sixty percent of drivers that were at fault, or suspected of being at fault, faced no criminal charges. Over 40 percent of drivers charged did not lose their driver's licenses, even temporarily[1]. Philadelphia, 2017–2018: just 16 percent of the drivers were charged with a felony in fatal crashes[2]. Los Angeles, 2010–2019: 2,109 people were killed in traffic collisions on L.A. streets... and nearly half were pedestrians. Booked on vehicular manslaughter: 158 people. The vast majority of drivers who kill someone with their car are not arrested[3]. I can literally do this all day. The original statement was correct, the case representative. [0]: https://www.startribune.com/in-crashes-that-kill-pedestrians-the-majority-of-drivers-don-t-face-charges/380345481 https://www.startribune.com/in-crashes-that-kill-pedestrians... [1]: https://walksf.org/2013/05/02/investigative-report-exposes-how-rarely-drivers-who-kill-or-injure-pedestrians-are-charged/ https://walksf.org/2013/05/02/investigative-report-exposes-h... [2]: https://whyy.org/articles/philadelphia-drivers-rarely-prosecuted-for-crashes-that-kill-pedestrians-and-cyclists/ https://whyy.org/articles/philadelphia-drivers-rarely-prosec... [3]: https://laist.com/news/transportation/takeaways-pedestrian-deaths-traffic-violence https://laist.com/news/transportation/takeaways-pedestrian-d...
      - cucumber3732842 5mo ago
        You're likely falling for a red herring. Criminality is basically just a checkbox for this stuff. Most of the time people wouldn't be going to jail for these sorts of crimes, it'd just be big fines and penalties. There's almost always administrative/civil infractions of the same or similar name that has the same or greater punishment but are far more efficient for the state to prosecute because the accused has fewer rights. It makes for good appeal to emotion headlines to say these people aren't getting charged with crimes, but that's only half the story. They're likely lawyering up and pleading to a civil infraction that has approx the same penalties. And this is true not just for this issue but for many subject areas of administrative law. Taxes, SEC, environmental, etc, etc, all operate mostly like this. It's easy for a writer to pander to certain demographics and get people whipped into a frenzy by writing an easy article about prosecuting rates using public data. Actually contacting these agencies and figuring out what they actually did is hard and in the modern media economy doesn't offer much upside for the work.
  - Hnrobert42 5mo ago
    The refutation of your point is in the article itself. The standard, by law, punishment involves jail time or home confinement. The judge explained how those punishments were not appropriate because of the exceptional circumstances.
    - lojban 5mo ago
      I'm not sure how that would change things. It is still a representative example. See also: http://archive.today/2026.03.23-031145/https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/19/us/san-francisco-pedestrian-deaths-toddler.html http://archive.today/2026.03.23-031145/https://www.nytimes.c... > And there is precedent for the light manslaughter sentencing of an older driver. In 2003, George Weller, 86, killed 10 pedestrians at the Santa Monica Farmers Market after confusing the gas and brake pedals. He received five years of probation. The judge in that case said that Mr. Weller’s age and declining health had contributed to the decision.
      - Hnrobert42 5mo ago
        You mean a representative example of an exception? Your example also points out how the judge justified their deviation from the standard.
  - vanviegen 5mo ago
    That is not an evidenced claim though. It's an anecdote.
    - zuminator 5mo ago
      Evidence is, generally speaking, anecdotal.
  - Tagbert 5mo ago
    No “representative” would mean that was a typical outcome and that is not the case. That is what would be called an “exceptional” outcome.
Aachen 5mo ago
Who does it benefit if an accident ruins a second life? What does a jail sentence deter? ("[no] gross negligence [...] wasn’t engaging in a race or sideshow, was not texting, and was not under influence") This person was 80 years old with no criminal record, needs to pay $67400 in restitution, do 200 hours of community service, isn't allowed to drive for 3 years but "never intends to drive again". Apologised to the family of the victims. She's taking responsibility and I can't imagine forced labor at that age is fun. What more can you ask for here? The family member isn't coming back if she gets what's not unlikely to be a life sentence Edit: > She told a witness at the scene that she was trying to park her car when she accidentally moved her foot to the gas pedal. This seems to happen a lot. Don't know about statistics but this happened to someone I know at 50yo (thankfully only damaged their own car minorly), and you hear it on the news with some regularity. Maybe the gas needs to be in a fundamentally different spot from the brake? We can jail the people to whom it happens, sure, but I can understand a judge using their head instead of their heart. The real solution must come either from the automotive industry or legislation
- qwe----3 5mo ago
  They intentionally moved assets to their family members to avoid liability, right? Laws are also meant to deter bad behavior, people who aren't able to drive safely should know there will be consequences
- xnx 5mo ago
  > What does a jail sentence deter? Other irresponsible drivers.
  - Aachen 5mo ago
    How would I know I'm going to kill someone on the road today and stop doing that thing?
    - xnx 5mo ago
      Don't drive intoxicated, tired, distracted, or physically impaired by age or other means.
Groxx 5mo ago
Better than the current standard for AV, which is "what floor?"
- loeg 5mo ago
  Is it? https://www.vice.com/en/article/california-dmv-suspends-cruises-self-driving-car-license-after-pedestrian-injury/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/california-dmv-suspends-crui...
- HDThoreaun 5mo ago
  Cruise was entirely shut down because of an incident that didnt even result in a death. Thats way worse than what people tend to get
  - scarmig 5mo ago
    IIRC Cruise got into the most trouble not because of the accident itself, but because it tried to hide evidence from and deceive regulators.
    - fragmede 5mo ago
      "it"; Kyle Vogt, their CEO at the time, is the person that decided to do it.
    - oceanplexian 5mo ago
      They have to operate in California though, so I don't blame them. This is a state that made me a criminal for putting the wrong air filter on my car (Clearly my bad for putting on the 49 State legal version that makes the tailpipe emissions cleaner).
    - HALtheWise 5mo ago
      In the context of this thread, it's worth pointing out that "trying to deceive regulators" is quite normal behavior for individual human drivers involved in car incidents, and iirc the Cruise collision itself also involved a human driver performing a hit-and-run who didn't afaict ever get prosecuted or come forward to police.
Aurornis 5mo ago
The reason that’s a news story is because the outcome is unusual. When things are normal and happening all the time, they’re not reported as abnormal outcomes. The world is a big place. Being able to think of a counter-example does not negate a general point.
- asveikau 5mo ago
  No, the reason that's a news story is because many people were upset about the accident, which killed an entire family of 4 while they took the kids to the zoo on their wedding anniversary. Even by the standards of auto wrecks it was heart wrenching. A lot of people felt the driver was negligent and deserved prison.
- keerthiko 5mo ago
  there are many[0] many[1] data points like this. even if individual ones seem like outliers, when there's this many outliers, it's like there's at least two distinct lines depicting consequences, one material and one not. those who probably have exhausted all the various escape hatches built into the "vehicular manslaughter & mutilation forgiveness program" worldwide by the automobile industry, may get a year or so in prison — usually extreme repeat offenders, high profile deaths, homicide cases, or drivers who were already criminals just having the charge thrown in. most people who "slipped up" are just fined and forgotten, at the cost of global pedestrian safety. [0]: https://www.scmp.com/news/china-insider/article/1856923/do-some-chinese-drivers-prefer-kill-just-injure-pedestrians-us https://www.scmp.com/news/china-insider/article/1856923/do-s... [1]: https://gothamist.com/news/95-of-nyc-drivers-avoid-criminal-charges-after-fatal-crashes https://gothamist.com/news/95-of-nyc-drivers-avoid-criminal-...
- iknowstuff 5mo ago
  You are wrong. The easiest way to murder someone in America and get a slap on the wrist is to run them over in your car.
  - mindslight 5mo ago
    If you don't have a lot of money for your legal defense, then make sure to have a bicycle in your trunk which you can place next to the victim afterwards.
nkzednan 5mo ago
see https://sf.streetsblog.org/2026/03/06/motorist-careens-onto-north-beach-sidewalk-killing-pedestrian https://sf.streetsblog.org/2026/03/06/motorist-careens-onto-... and see what the police said to the driver…
e40 5mo ago
Freakonomics did a pod about this, titled “how to get away with murder”.

mmmore 5mo ago

> If a human driver commits vehicular manslaughter, they get the book. I wish this were true. Often they get off with a light punishment, or no punishment at all.

xnx 5mo ago

> If a human driver commits vehicular manslaughter, they get the book. If only! "10 Days In Jail For Drunken Driver Who Killed Cyclist Bobby Cann" https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20170126/old-town/ryne-san-hamel-bobby-cann-cyclist-killed-10-days-drunken-driver-bicyclist-clybourn/ https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20170126/old-town/ryne-san-h...

borski 5mo ago
I almost feel bad for noticing this, but: > San Hamel was a partner in a business called AllYouCanDrink.com at the time. … > Cann, an experienced cyclist who once biked from New Hampshire to Chicago, was heading home from his job at Groupon the night he was killed. It looks like allyoucandrink.com now redirects to Groupon, in a decent bit of irony.

stavros 5mo ago

The CEO gets charged with manslaughter? I work in healthtech and the responsible individual is certainly personally liable for any harm that results from reckless behavior, it should be the same here. Same as if someone were driving, if a person just jumps in front of your car while you're driving under the limit/sober/etc, you aren't at fault, so the AV should also not be at fault if it couldn't reasonably avoid the harm. You balance these things, benefit to society vs harm to society, and you come to an acceptable tradeoff.

mwt 5mo ago
Could you provide examples of healthcare executives held personally liable for harm resulting from reckless decision-making? I have never heard of such a thing happening in healthcare so framing CEO responsibility as a solution to the problem sounds like a stretch to me. Some examples: Elizabeth Holmes got canned for lying to investors, not harming patients. Purdue Pharma plead guilty to misleading regulators and giving doctors kickbacks, not causing some hundreds of thousands of opioid deaths, but no Sackler family members were personally tried.
- stavros 5mo ago
  I work in the UK, where regulations are different, and there have been a few cases. Maybe not as many as there should be, but in theory this is something that exists in law.
bdangubic 5mo ago
> The CEO gets charged with manslaughter? I work in healthtech and the responsible individual is certainly personally liable for any harm that results from reckless behavior, it should be the same here. This is in like China, yes? Certainly not in the US of A, hence Luigi and all that…
MetaWhirledPeas 5mo ago
> The CEO gets charged with manslaughter? Well then forget autonomous vehicles altogether and allow the human joyride to continue, because no CEO is stupid enough to risk that.

wongarsu 5mo ago

In the US, 11 deaths per billion miles driven (or about 47k per year) is currently seen as an OK cost. More than twice as much per mile as places like Sweden and Switzerland, and still substantially more than places like Canada, Australia or Germany (all three in the 6-8 deaths per billion miles range). So it's not like there isn't room to improve. The effort to do so just isn't seen as worth the cost at the societal or government level Turning that into a monetary cost would change the ethics slightly, but it wouldn't be a monumental shift

JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
> it's not like there isn't room to improve Losing one's license means destitution for many Americans. That places practical limits on enforcement compared with less car-oriented countries.
- HDThoreaun 5mo ago
  Tons of options other than removing the ability to drive. More stringent enforcement, higher fines.
- embedding-shape 5mo ago
  > Losing one's license means destitution for many Americans. That'd be the same for a Swede who lives in the middle of nowhere too. Although I'm sure both groups, if they'd loose their license, would continue driving anyways.
  - pixel_popping 5mo ago
    Clearly, a bit weird to assume that no license would automatically mean that the driver stops driving, that's not true at all.
  - danaris 5mo ago
    ...But what percentage of Swedes is that? vs the vast majority of working-class Americans. Remember, outside of its few biggest and wealthiest cities, the US just does not have decent, reliable public transport, and most places don't have any.

JumpCrisscross 5mo ago

> If a human driver commits vehicular manslaughter, they get the book. What about AV? They get their licenses pulled statewide [1]. Cruise's single negligent manslaughter event carried more consequence than dozens of human cases combined. [1] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/news-and-media/dmv-statement-on-cruise-llc-suspension/ https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/news-and-media/dmv-statement-o...

dyauspitr 5mo ago

Then it’s an okay cost of doing business. $10 million is a lot of money and consequences for these companies are not purely legal they are also social consequences.

cyanydeez 5mo ago

Want to reduce road deaths? Invest in public transportation.

tim333 5mo ago
We've had public transportation for a couple of centuries and no where has it really led to a road death free utopia. I like public transport but no harm trying something new.
matsemann 5mo ago
Yup. Even if "safer per mile", more cars and more miles driven will probably outweigh the benefits. And still be hazardous to cyclists and pedestrians, still make us design stupid cities (built for cars, not people), etc. Like how electric cars were for saving the car companies, not the planet, autonomous will be the same.
MetaWhirledPeas 5mo ago
I had to look up a name for this. "Utopian Fallacy." You don't have to get rid of genuine progress just because your utopian vision has something better. The USA is on the path to autonomous vehicles. They are not on the path to public transportation excellence.

melenaboija 5mo ago

> What if $10 million fine per X AV miles driven is an OK cost of doing business? It’s the same cost/benefit we accept under current rules. Why have cars that can go 3x the speed limit? Why not require breathalyzers in cars before starting them? Why not fine logistics companies if one of their drivers breaks the law? And so on… Because it’s worth it

fma 5mo ago
>Why not require breathalyzers in cars before starting them? FYI Cars will soon detect if you are impaired.
- thinkling 5mo ago
  What tech will be used for this? I hope it’s better than other sensor tech in cars that think they need to warn you that you’re about to hit something at the front when the car is in reverse, that can't distinguish a bike rack statically attached to the car from the environment, and so on.
aziaziazi 5mo ago
Your questions are pertinent but what’s the benefit "worth" you’re referring to? The two first proposals would risk a politician popularity and the last one would be lobbied to he’ll buy the logistic companies. IMHO inconvenience isn’t worth driving among drunk coursier at 200kmh.

chaos_emergent 5mo ago

We can look to other forms of automation to get a sense of what to do. For example, planes largely fly themselves and a loss of life due to manufacturing errors from the manufacturer would deem them liable for those deaths. Seems like the solution here is large penalties and generally broad disincentives for incurring harm.

bluecheese452 5mo ago

Holding executives responsible for actual violence is considered promoting violence on this site and is not allowed. Cue the handwringing and moralizing from the usual suspects.

themafia 5mo ago

> hoping AV will reduce road deaths in the future. It won't. The majority of fatalities are caused by drugs and alcohol. > The last hurdle is regulatory. Indeed. Compare the USAs DUI laws with any other first world country.

BrenBarn 5mo ago

I think jail time for executives should be table stakes. Another thing would be fines well in excess of $10 million. The fines should be defined as percentages of gross revenue, or maybe even (to target VC-funded operations that operate at a loss) percentages of gross expenses. The penalties should be such that a few crashes can put the company entirely out of business.

junofan 5mo ago

> The last hurdle is regulatory How’d you arrive at this conclusion? Why would fleet providers accept regrettable losses? Wouldn’t the last hurdle be technical? > The question is how to achieve fairness What does that have to do with automotive safety?

acdha 5mo ago

We subsidize driving by somewhat over a trillion dollars annually, mostly due to lax penalties for negligence which shift liability to drivers’ victims[1]. One way to tackle all of these problems would be requiring drivers to cover the full damages. Another simple and effective measure would be changing fines from absolute values to a percentage of income. Right now, parking in a bike lane usually doesn’t kill anyone so drivers are only thinking there’s a small chance of a small fine, but if it was a chance of, say, 0.1% of annual income Waymo technology would magically be capable of not doing that. Add a right of private action and enforcement would be high enough to really speed things along, too, and that’d improve safety and travel times for all road users. 1. https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/01/18/why-car-insurance-in-america-is-actually-too-cheap https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/01/18/why-car-i...

fragmede 5mo ago
Yeah, making fines relative to income would change behaviors for sure. A $20 ticket when you make $20 an hour hits different when you're making $200 or $2,000/hr. If it was a percentage of pay, then the ticket would actually sting.
- chung8123 5mo ago
  There are a lot of people that just don't pay the fines and ignore suspended licenses as money stops becoming a motivator on the other end as well.

amarant 5mo ago

Adjust the fines such that X is some acceptably large number. The trickiest part will be figuring out how many dollars per mile driven is an acceptable cost of business.. I'd probably reserve the whole executives to jail thing to cases where you can prove negligence or something.

BurningFrog 5mo ago

The legal entity driving the AV should of course be responsible in the same way as human drivers are. My understanding is that that is already the legal situation?

andrepd 5mo ago

Many things already reduce road deaths and they are infinitely easier to do that driverless cars, namely: viable alternatives to driving! Trains, streetcars, bike lanes, whatever.

mekael 5mo ago

Societies can already reduce road deaths to nearly zero, it's cheap, it's easy, and it's fun. It's just redirecting all of the cash we spend on vehicles/cars/highways/roadways/signs/etc into public infrastructure that is all encompassing. A hundred billion dollars a year [0] on construction (reading the definition I'm not 100% sure what is included in this due to how definitions can be hazy) has goes a long way, not to mention the amount we spend on gasoline, car maintenance, etc etc. The reason I say it's fun, is because I love being on a train. First time I was able to ride one, which due to living in the good old USA wasn't until I was 23, I yelled "I'm on a train" . The Germans traveling with me weren't as into it. [0] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TLHWYCONS# https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TLHWYCONS#

dmitrygr 5mo ago
Just because you like trains does not mean that it is actually a solution to everyone’s problem. For example, until proper law-enforcement starts happening on public transit, nobody in my family is allowed to take it in USA (they are allowed to do so in Singapore or Japan)
- mekael 5mo ago
  We can take the LEO's that would have patrolled highways/city streets and have them patrol on public transport, same job just slightly different environment. Can I ask why you feel that public transit is unsafe in the US?
  - dmitrygr 5mo ago
    Because each of these perps were not on their first, second, third, fourth, fifth, or sixth violent offense and were freely out to kill: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Debrina_Kawam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Debrina_Kawam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Iryna_Zarutska https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Iryna_Zarutska https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/nypd-men-pushed-subway-tracks-upper-east-side/ https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/nypd-men-pushed-subway-... Many more such cases occur and aren’t widely reported. I’ve personally witnessed a stabbing on a bus My chances of being stabbed inside my car are much lower

femto 5mo ago

Full liability. It's a machine with predictable performance. The law applied to humans needs to account for their fallibilities. Not so with a machine.

EnPissant 5mo ago

Now try applying this logic to elevators.

XorNot 5mo ago

People are killed by industrial equipment fairly regularly. I'd say we actually have a perfectly functional legal framework for all of this, and the real issue is a lot of new people are about to find out it also applies to them as well. Whether it was working well in the first place is the real question.

MetaWhirledPeas 5mo ago

> What about AV? $10 million? Executives go to jail? What if $10 million fine per X AV miles driven is an OK cost of doing business? If AVs will save lives, we need to be sure we aren't punitive to the point of making them disappear.

pizzly 5mo ago

If we consider fairness/retribution/justice then we won't get this future of less road deaths. 1. There will always be a probability of death from a vehicle. This can never go to 0%. 2. If the probability of a AV causing death is many magnitudes lower than human driving then that is the future we must choose. If 1 and 2 holds and we hold AV manufactures accountable in the sense that Executives go to jail or are personal liable financially for deaths/injuries then AV will never get released or become mainstream even if this results in less total deaths. The sense of fairness/justice/retribution may make us feel better but result in more overall deaths. Logically this means that there must be a standard. Something like x deaths per y cars manufactured. If above the threshold you get big fines as a company. As technology gets better you can lower the threshold. Anything apart from causing deaths either purposefully or negligently would have be ignored. Can we as a species accept this? That is another question.

AnthonyMouse 5mo ago

> We can’t let AV manufacturers use “there’s no driver” as a way to escape responsibility, externalizing the harms AC cause onto society. There is essentially nothing to be gained from doing this because it will not in either case be manufacturer; it will be an insurance company. If the liability is paid by the vehicle owner's insurance then things work as they do now. You buy a car, insure it, if there is a liability there is an insurance claim and then the victim has someone to pay them for their injuries. Meanwhile the manufacturers still have a financial incentive to make safer cars because buyers want neither accident prone vehicles as the one they use nor high insurance rates. The insurance rates in particular are in direct competition with the car payment for the customer's available income. Whereas if you try to put the liability on the manufacturer, several stupider things happen. First, they're just going to buy insurance anyway, but now the insurance cost has to be front-loaded into the purchase price, which increases costs because now you're paying car loan interest on money to cover insurance five and ten years from now, when you otherwise wouldn't have needed to pay the premiums until the time comes. Second, what happens to cars from manufacturers who no longer exist? They can't continue paying for insurance if they're bankrupt, so you need it to be someone else. Worse, if a company produces a vehicle which is unsafe, that will tend to cause them to go bankrupt. But then people still have them, and would continue to operate them if they're allowed to point victims at the bankrupt manufacturer, whereas the incentive you want is for the premiums on those cars to go up for the vehicle owners so that they stop operating them.

sandworm101 5mo ago

Simple. Blame the owner of the vehicle. They relied on automation and it failed. They go to jail for negligent homicide (whatever flavor is appropriate). That will tank sales of any AV tech that cannot maintain standards.

throwaway277432 5mo ago

What happens if you build a bridge and it breaks? These people want to play god with our lives but at the same time move fast and break things. Look at software quality anywhere, it's a mess and only about to get much worse. We should not let them. Jail time for anyone involved in any of the decision making process, applied at scale with the number of vehicles and deaths. Why should the standards be any different? They want to change the status quo with tech only so they can get paid and extort us with yet more subscriptions. AVs will never substantially reduce road deaths. They will optimize to just being slightly better than human, but fail in new and more unexpected ways. There is not enough incentive for them to make it safer.

tim333 5mo ago

I also hope AV will reduce road deaths in the future but I don't think what will make the difference is regulatory. Rather the tech will advance from doesn't work to works in Waymos but is expensive to works in most cars and has become cheap.

m463 5mo ago

> cost of doing business? I hate this part, I don't think it is good for society. I think UPS gets lots and lots of parking tickets, and pays them as COB. Maybe they should have "fix it" tickets, like they get for a burned-out headlight. Except they need a bug to be opened and fixed.