Licensing driverless cars?

View

In recent years, driverless cars have been licensed in a number of US States (mainly western ones from which Ireland has a large number of tech firms). These cars seem to have a good safety record to date.

To the best of my knowledge, no EU member state has licensed these cars yet.

Given this, and Ireland's high tech links, should Ireland take the lead and be the first EU member state to license these cars for use on some (or all) of our roads?

If so, what measures - if any - should we put in place to encourage the use of such vehicles?

micosoft

I suspect the greater issue is the insurance and legal implications should an automatically driven car have an accident. These are pretty significant hurdles and the first time someone is killed due to a bug will be an interesting legal event. So the starting point would be to implement legislation to deal with automatic cars.

I'm not sure what the selling point is in Ireland given the lack of indigenous motor industry (despite the deeply cynical SIMI car dealers calling themselves an industry :rolleyes:) though you could argue it could be sold as a cure to for rural drink driving. Perhaps google could run a automated pub taxi service - if the system can recognise the directions of a half cut culchie who needs to go down a unnamed boreen it will be perfect!

fleet

micosoft wrote: »

I suspect the greater issue is the insurance and legal implications should an automatically driven car have an accident. These are pretty significant hurdles and the first time someone is killed due to a bug will be an interesting legal event.

I don't really foresee an issue here.

Insure the car. Have the car assessed for insurance not the current driver+car assessment. If the car screws up then it's deemed liable. By "screw up" I mean hits anything, basically the same as we have now.

They should be far safer than humans driving, so it's not like we'll be dealing with the same accident rate we have now. They should prove themselves within months.

Frankly I see a time in the next 15-20 years where humans are banned from driving on public roads.

micosoft

fleet wrote: »

I don't really foresee an issue here.

Insure the car. Have the car assessed for insurance not the current driver+car assessment. If the car screws up then it's deemed liable. By "screw up" I mean hits anything, basically the same as we have now.

They should be far safer than humans driving, so it's not like we'll be dealing with the same accident rate we have now. They should prove themselves within months.

Frankly I see a time in the next 15-20 years where humans are banned from driving on public roads.

On a macro scale I've no doubt that driverless cars are safer then human operated vehicles.

However with the current system the human screws up and therein lies the issue. Human frailty is accepted by the legal system. Thats why many incidents are classified as accidents. But computers don't make mistakes and don't have free will (as of yet!) - the programmer may program in the mistake and that may cause an accident. Therein lies the problem.
Car's are not recognised as legal entities. So in all likelihood you will sue the manufacturer. Therefore it may be that the manufacturer pays the insurance since they are the interested party. Liability ends with them if they programmed the car....


Other interesting (and morbid) issues arise. Say your driverless car sees a young child run out on front of your car at the last minute. It's only option is to steer into a wall probably killing the occupants. Which choice should it make? If there are five occupants in the car it may make sense to plough into the child (needs of the many etc). Who makes these design decisions?

TBH the question of driverless cars is really one for the legal forum! Unlike infrastructure required for electric cars, the issue with driverless appears entirely legal at the moment.

View

micosoft wrote: »

I suspect the greater issue is the insurance and legal implications should an automatically driven car have an accident. These are pretty significant hurdles and the first time someone is killed due to a bug will be an interesting legal event. So the starting point would be to implement legislation to deal with automatic cars.

Well since this has already been dealt with by some US states it is hardly insurmountable. It certainly shouldn't be too hard for our legislators to see what they did and copy or adopt it as appropriate.

micosoft wrote: »

I'm not sure what the selling point is in Ireland

Well the short term point would be to show case our high tech industries and hopefully to persuade some companies to use Ireland as their first European testing ground.

Driving your car around a pot-holed windy twisty bog road in Leitrim is a different challenge to driving around a US grid shaped city in sunny California!

micosoft wrote: »

given the lack of indigenous motor industry (despite the deeply cynical SIMI car dealers calling themselves an industry :rolleyes:) though you could argue it could be sold as a cure to for rural drink driving. Perhaps google could run a automated pub taxi service - if the system can recognise the directions of a half cut culchie who needs to go down a unnamed boreen it will be perfect!

The implications of driverless cars are bigger than they appear at first glance. Consider parking. Currently you'll park close to where you work or shop. The US transport agency reckons roughly 30% of all journey time involves parking related activity as we look for free spaces etc. With driverless cars, the car doesn't need to park itself anywhere close to you (unless you are there for a very short time or it's a high congestion area). Likewise, the economics of home deliveries are altered etc.

There will be a lot of interesting field trials in this area in the years to come. The question is do we want to be a potential field trial site or not?

thebman

AFAIK most places that allow driverless cars still have human controls and the human is expected to take over to avoid any collision/incident.

This gets around the whole, the car is to blame argument. The human still has final say on input.

We could allow this in Ireland but I imagine we would if there was any appetite from the likes of Google to actually do this research here.

Anyway, do we have any laws that would prohibit a driverless car?

fleet

micosoft wrote: »

But computers don't make mistakes and don't have free will (as of yet!) - the programmer may program in the mistake and that may cause an accident. Therein lies the problem.

There is "programming" inherent in road system from day one, we just don't recognise it. Drivers less is simply another design feature.

Is this any different to designers of a car choosing to use smaller cheaper tires on a car thereby increasing stopping distance and (increasing the risk of or) causing an accident?
What about body design? We use a wedge shaped car at the moment to improve aerodynamics. It also happens to smash up pedestrians fairly well. We could use a giant foam bumper.
Speed limits too, undoubtedly we could cut accident rates is we enforced a 20km/ph limit universally.

What I'm saying is even now there is "acceptable" loss of human life in the system for economic reasons. They're cheaper to build, goods are cheaper to move etc. than if we truly build safer vehicles.

micosoft wrote: »

Say your driverless car sees a young child run out on front of your car at the last minute. It's only option is to steer into a wall probably killing the occupants. Which choice should it make?

We already have vehicle designers making those decisions. Cars protect their occupants. Pedestrians come second. There is some consideration to improving pedestrian survival, laws on it too (no Merc badge projecting from the bonnet etc) but really they are lower on the list of design choices, somewhere south of wind resistance.


If we simply insure the car then the insurance industry will have to pay out in the event of any accident. All cars will have a risk, some more than others due to ALL design factors, including the automatic driver feature. The programming of a particular model and it's reliability will come to be know with time.