Accident Would Shut Down Google's Driverless Car Experiment

Makaveli@BETA said:

I think your missing the point.

All of these cars will have sensors that will pickup on this stuff outside the car.

where as a human can be easily distracted with a phone etc, a hot girl on the corner etc.

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Its all about corporate liability being huge compared to the negligence of a random schmuck.

It has sensors, great, and if these sensors malfunction and provide skewed data, or heck perhaps are simply dirty? My GPS sure as hell isn't flawless, it tells me to go down roads that don't exist anymore all the time. And we know autopilots for aircraft that don't even have to worry about anything being on the runway can make mistakes, which is why pilots are paid so much. And sometimes the mistakes aren't software, but something goes wrong with the hardware, and a computer may make a completely unreasonable conclusion on the course of action.

Now, yes, a human can go "full retard" under those circumstances too and be held liable for negligence, but who is going to go after some $32K a year single-mom teacher? Not worht a lawyers time, but Toyota has already proven that if there is even a HINT that blame can be placed on a major manufacturer you will have a team of the best lawyers on the planet working around the clock to collect their millions of dollars.

For example, a wheel sensor recently when bad on my front left wheel of my corvette. Chevy's "Active handing" tried to kick in, thinking that I was spinning out, and went absolutely apeshit. Luckily, I could just turn it off and go home, but point is that a google car WILL kill someone eventually, and when it does, its likely to be the end of self-driving cars for a long time.

Whats more likely is "assisted" driving, where you can tell your car to take over but still have a driver sitting there that can intervene and is responsible for the actions of the car.

Lol. Yeah, because being run over by a human driver makes things a lot better than a computer driver.

Yes, accidents can and will occur even when google finally puts this to market. Either way I'm sure that accident rates with automated driving systems will be statistically insignificant compared to human errors.

BloodDonor said:

I'd be more worried about a drone killing me with a missile strike, than falling on my head

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hahaha, that's what I was thinking when I read the quote. I mean falling on my head is not my main concern with drones

If you get into an accident in the automated car, killing 1+ pedestrians, who is liable ?