The cynic in me thinks that the PD is willing to be so lax for moving violations for self-driving cars because they're not actually concerned about the moving violation.
LEOs view the initial offense as a lead that gives them probable cause to start fishing for more serious offenses once they initiate the stop. But they're not going to nail a self-driving car for DUI, drugs, weapons, etc.
To a certain degree, all minor traffic stops are pretextual stops. They're an "in" to look for more serious offenses.
One thing I am very curious about, though, is how the system of adding points to a license for certain traffic infractions translates to self-driving cars. Surely it would not make sense to add points on a car-by-car level, since every car in each fleet is presumably running the same software, but applying them to Cruise or Waymo in the aggregate doesn't make sense, either, unless there's some sort of formula for "points per mile driven across the fleet."
> But they're not going to nail a self-driving car for DUI, drugs, weapons, etc.
Not the DUI, sure, but there’s no reason why you wouldn’t be able to place drugs and guns in the trunk of the car and send it along its way to the buyer’s location.
> applying them to Cruise or Waymo in the aggregate doesn't make sense
Why not? As you said, they’re all presumably using the same software so it’s as if the same driver was in all of them. It would also be a way to put pressure on companies to grow slowly and get it right, which is a positive for society.
> there’s no reason why you wouldn’t be able to place drugs and guns in the trunk of the car and send it along its way to the buyer’s location
Right, but then the LEO needs to establish probable cause to search the vehicle. They can't just pop the trunk because they feel like it.
One of the ways they normally establish probable cause to search is by alleging that the driver appears impaired, or by getting the driver's consent, neither of which they can do with a self-driving car. Even the classic "I smell weed" allegation might not pass muster anymore, given California's legalization of marijuana use and the fact that it does not impair the operation of the vehicle, as it might if a human driver is high.
Just require someone to be in passenger seat and legally mandate them as driver. I think this would satisfy law enforcement as they could still do their shady stuff and do the usual of using a pretext they've lied about. The unavoidable roadblock is the state never goes backwards in ways they oppress the populace so as long as they can have someone assigned for persecution they'll be happy.
> there’s no reason why you wouldn’t be able to place drugs and guns in the trunk of the car
Most common drugs that people get busted with in their car (weed and alcohol) aren’t illegal on their own in most states, they are illegal in relation to the person driving the car. More specifically, could the driver even theoretically access those while driving later, without having to step out of the car? If yes, that’s illegal already, even if the person is fully sober.
For example, if I drive in California with a few joints in my trunk or a case of beer - totally legal. But if i am in the exact same situation, except the joints and the case of beer are in the cabin (even if it is in the backseat and is in fully-sealed original packaging that was provably never opened) - I am in trouble.
But the more serious barrier to this, as others have pointed out already, is that they cannot just pop your trunk to do anything shady with no probable cause. You can easily make up a probable cause that the driver looked impaired, even if that wasn’t the case, and then you can “inspect” the trunk and do whatever shady business you want. But a self-driving vehicle pretty much nullifies the possibility of that, because it eliminates sobriety of the person in the car from the equation.
Ah but you can't rely on which car gets to where. So the best you can hope for is a to B. Which means both ends are recorded. And likely waymo will look for baggage only trips and report them. Those are trivial to detect with pressure sensors.
> And likely waymo will look for baggage only trips and report them.
It’s just as likely, perhaps even more so, that they’ll eventually embrace and advertise baggage-only trips. Because money. You can use services today (similar to food delivery) to have a random person send a random package, it’s perfectly plausible that’ll eventually use the same automated systems.
sure. you can start the ride from the waymo app without being inside the car, same as Uber package delivery. might need to buckle the seat belt for it.
Sure, but how does a recipient take possession? Only the app owner can unlock doors; Waymo arrives with locked doors, so who can open them from the outside?
Who opens the windows? Do I misunderstand your scenario?
1) User summons Waymo with the app to Point A.
2) User unlocks vehicle with the app at Point A.
3) User opens the hatch and tosses in some cargo.
4) User taps "Start Ride" in the app, and vehicle leaves Point A with no passengers on board.
5) Vehicle arrives at Destination Point B with no passengers.
Who's opening the windows? That's not possible. Not even the app can open windows. They require a human inside the vehicle. App cannot open doors. Requires a human operating handles. I am not sure, but it does not seem like the app can even unlock doors after the initial pickup encounter. There is no unlock option during dropoffs.
The hatch can be opened with a button from outside, and it's motorized. The vehicle can close its own hatch if need be. The vehicle is NOT capable of closing its own doors. The vehicle may be capable of opening its hatch, but this is not an app feature.
It depends on the department and the officer's mission. If they are having a ton of problems with human trafficking they will start using pre-textual stops to search for that. If you are assigned specifically to traffic they will focus on reckless driving, distracted driving, drunk driving, or whatever is the huge problem that week.
With regards to traffic infractions for self driving cars, I imagine that it would be an overall license for specific manufacturers or companies. If Waymo is causing problems then they could lose their license to operate in that jurisdiction. For personal vehicles like Teslas they would lose their personal license or just be plain banned from operating.
Unless there is a acute public safety concern, I don't see why traffic citations for driverless cars couldn't be handled the same way red light camera violations are in many states: no traffic stop, just mail a citation/fine to the registered owner. No points on the driver.
> one of its driverless cars struck and dragged a pedestrian along the street in an accident in October last year
Please don't call it an 'accident'...
> “Accident” tends to imply that no one is at fault — and when it’s used in the context of a traffic crash, it also can give the impression that what occurred is not that serious.
They're accidents because the alternative is that they're purposeful and we have an entirely separate criminal framework for that.
The "expert" cited is a psychologist, not a linguist, and in particular a psychologist who apparently lost his father in such an accident. This is about choosing more emotional language in the hope that somehow this magically fixes a societal problem, which it won't.
When we re-frame this so that we're emphasising blaming the driver, we go back to the era when nothing was improved because well - it's just the driver's fault, so if they're alive we use retributive justice and if not the problem has solved itself. That simply does not work. We need to identify how we can break the chain because these are accidents, there is no intelligent actor purposefully causing them so such interventions can be effective.
Example: Use of road design to slow traffic => Cars and trucks move more slowly, pedestrians are less likely to be struck by traffic and less likely to die if hit. That would do nothing if this was purposeful, if there was intent, but there isn't and so European nations which use narrower roads to slow traffic see significant reductions in deaths and injuries.
This is an odd point to try to argue in the context of driverless cars. Of course the behaviour is fully intentional in the sense that the car will act the same way again when presented with similar circumstances. All flaws in driverless cars are systematic and repeating flaws, not random human driver behaviour.
This is an odd point to try to argue in the context of machines. Of course the behaviour isn't fully intentional, it's a car, it has no mens rea. If I get in an accident because my car has a predictable manufacturing flaw where if I shift into third, then first, then fourth, then first again, then fifth, all the wheels fall off, does the fact that the exact same thing would happen again when repeated in similar circumstances mean my crash was an intentional decision by the car rather than an accident?
You do raise an interesting point about how these behaviours are repeatable and predictable rather than random oopsies, though. I think it's more defensible to use that to emphasise that every accident a driverless car has, unless caused by a human, is a manufacturing flaw. It may not be inaccurate to say that the Waymo car had an accident where it dragged a person along underneath it, but it is much more accurate to say that Waymo cars had a manufacturing flaw where they would drag people underneath them, and an accident was caused by this flaw.
But even here, this wasn't the intent this is just what happened. Nobody was like "You know what we ought to do? Make sure we cause more injuries to a person who was knocked down" they just designed this software without considering this scenario and so there's a significant improvement to make here.
Lots of causes of human accidents are systemic and repeatable, but that doesn't make them intentional. Take trips and falls for example, it's possible for a human to just get super unlucky and trip over for essentially no reason, but in most cases there are repeatable causes, we can fix those causes and reduce how often trips and falls occur, but the trips and falls were accidents, it's not helpful to pretend that's the wrong word.
However, "accident" also implies that no-one is responsible for it and "it's just one of those things that happens" when the vast majority of road traffic collisions are due to drivers not paying attention or following road traffic rules.
There's also a major problem with RTC reporting in general in that reporters often refer just to the vehicle, such as "car hit a wall", or "car plows through pedestrians" which depersonalises it and again makes it seem as though there's nothing we can do about these kinds of occurrences.
The fact that you are comparing a fumble of a mug and rear-ending someone suggests to me that you have internalised that implication that RTCs "just happen".
There's certain behaviour that leads to rear-ending someone - typically lack of awareness/attentiveness rather than it being a momentary loss of control. It's predictable that e.g. someone using a phone whilst driving will be far more likely to cause a RTC whereas the coffee mug dropping isn't really associated with any particular behaviour.
What I mean is that mug dropping is not really something that we can do anything about, but ensuring that drivers obey traffic laws and are attentive is definitely something that can be influenced (e.g. by police or by public messaging).
I strongly believe that dropped coffee mugs are also positively correlated with lack of awareness/attentiveness. It seems weird to contemplate that they would be uncorrelated or negatively correlated. (I would expect that phone usage also positively correlates as a major category/source of distraction.)
Same is true of rear-end collisions/accidents/unscheduled bumper modifications.
Quite possibly. Maybe the difference then is that holding a coffee mug isn't an activity in itself, but typically combined with other activities whereas driving shouldn't be combined with other activities. It's possible that a sustained "don't use the internet whilst drinking from a mug" campaign could reduce the droppings(!), but it seems like a different class of problem than driving whilst distracted.
Probably something that’s left over from childhood. When a baby breaks something it’s almost always an accident. Eventually babies grow up and become adults, and coffee cups turn into multi-ton automobiles.
pretty much all your arguments about the rear ending apply to the mug as well (I think we all know someone who drops/damages objects more often than most, and you can usually link said instances to a lapse of attention). The only difference is the severity of the outcome and thus the importance of avoiding behaviours which increase the risk of it occuring.
But if most people were late because they rear-ended someone they wouldn’t say, “I was in a car accident and I was responsible for it.” They just say, “I was in a car accident.” Which is exactly the point the commenter is trying to make.
"I was late because I had to clean up after I dropped my coffee mug and I was responsible for it" is also a sentence that's unlikely to have ever been uttered, even though everyone assumes the unsaid second half of it.
This kind of highlights the motornormativity bias.
People are likely to say "I was late as I'd dropped my mug" and probably less likely to say "I was late as I drove into a car in front of me" rather than the more common "I was late as I was in a car accident". Note that the use of the verb (dropped/drove) carries the implication of being active in the situation whereas saying something like "my car hit the vehicle in front" or "I was in a car accident" is reducing the role of the person.
"I was late because I dropped my mug in the kitchen while wearing blue jeans." Nobody says the end of that because it's irrelevant to the explanation for lateness.
I was late because I was delayed by something not able to be planned around. That's what I'm conveying by way of my explanation. The person that I'm late to meet (likely) isn't a traffic cop, a DMV employee, my insurance adjuster, a purveyor of replacement coffee mugs, nor an analyst for NHTSA, so they don't care in the least whose fault it was.
I'm not hiding details relevant to the listener in either the coffee or the car mishap.
> "I was late because I dropped my mug in the kitchen while wearing blue jeans." Nobody says the end of that because it's irrelevant to the explanation for lateness.
That's kind of a straw man argument though.
If you instead compare "I was in a car accident" with "I was in a mug dropping accident", you can see how bizarre it can be to use the passive version with a non-car incident. However, comparing "I drove into another car" with "I dropped a mug" and you can see that the active voice works better. (Possibly "I accidentally dropped a mug" could be used, but that's adding irrelevant information as it would be unusual for someone to purposefully drop a mug).
The problem is that our society has over-embraced the car and has absorbed the NACC's use of language to de-personalise road traffic collisions on the car side of things.
I am roughly equally delayed whether I'm the leading or trailing car in a rear-end collision. It is the fact that contact occurred (and the subsequent checking on other occupants and exchange of information) which has delayed me, not whether I was an active cause or passive victim of the occurrence. The person who was waiting on me was inconvenienced by my lateness and I'm explaining the proximate cause of my lateness. Whether I was at fault or not is, in the vast, vast majority of cases, not relevant or of interest to them.
Yes, but you could apply that reasoning to a coffee mug incident too. It would still be unusual to say "I was involved in a coffee mug containment breach" rather than "I dropped my coffee mug" or "The cat pushed my coffee mug off the table".
It's a sign of motornormativity that we use different language for road traffic collisions as they have become so commonplace that they rarely even make the news. Everyone knows what a "car crash" is, but a "coffee mug crash" is not in common usage.
Yes, except one thing (the car crash) tends to have higher consequences than the coffee mug that the person dropped. And saying, "I was in a car accident" is very passive and ascribing the blame to someone else or the world at large. "I hit another car while driving." is the more accurate way of describing the situation.
People like to take credit for their accomplishments and hide their blunders.
The guidelines you link to are produced by the Active Travel Academy, a body with an explicit goal of reducing car use. The Orwellian tactic of first controlling the language has been well learned.
It's also notable just how much the media industries are influenced by car manufacturers due to their high advertising spend (e.g. "stop publishing articles about active travel or we'll stop our advertising").
Reducing car use is an entirely logical goal as getting people to walk for short journeys can drastically improve the health of a nation as well as improving the air quality and drastically reducing congestion - it literally helps everyone (except for those involved with selling/fixing cars).
One man's neutral is another's bias. I don't think you get to claim that your preferred choice of words intended to guide the thinking about something is fundamentally more neutral than any other: it just reflects your point of view better (whether this point of view is more accurate or useful is a seperate question entirely). Put another way: arguing about the terms and the implications of using one kind of language or another over an issue is effectively equivilent to just arguing about the actual issue, just abstracted, usually in a not very useful way.
There's most definitely words which carry connotations with them. However, I cannot think of any particular connotation that comes with "collision" and thus I believe it to be entirely neutral. Can you think of any bias that comes with using "collision"?
What specific part of the guidelines do you think are biased or misleading? The main thrust of the guidelines is to improve accurate reporting. Also, they aim to have consistent reporting so that the type of language used for different road users should be the same. I don't really see how asking for consistency is the same as being biased.
I don't really hold the opinion of an ambulance chaser lawyer high.
Perhaps there should be a change for driverless cars but I never thought accident implies no fault, I don't believe courts think of it as no fault either. Accident to me implies that the event was not intended regardless of fault. Thats why usually you will see things like no-fault accident or at-fault accident.
Question: If I swerve into the wrong lane because my non-self-driving car malfunctions and the front wheels turn left when I turn the steering wheel right, would I be held responsible?
I'm kind of surprised the onus isn't on the operator, with an avenue to sue the manufacturer in cases where liability should follow through.
There's not many cars with steer-by-wire [0]. IF the steer-by-wire malfunctions, it's the same kind of issue as if the brakes were to malfunction, or the axle came undone and the wheels spun off the car. Whether that failure can be attributed to you or not (e.g. you neglected maintenance) would need expert witnesses to assess.
US and most other places will put all blame on conductor, who can later start other procedures to move it to another party (manufacturer, bad repair, etc)
Presumably it would only get to that point were there fatalities or serious injury involved. In general I’d expect the cop to issue a citation and shrug and say take it up with the judge and auto maker.
My brother was driving a rented 15-passenger van full of kids on a freeway when a tie rod broke loose. Even with the steering wheel turned fully the other way, he couldn't counter-act the errant wheel. The van veered into the median and rolled onto its side. Luckily, nobody was seriously hurt.
My brother was not ticketed, though perhaps the rental company was cited for negligent maintenance.
Yes, since you're on control of the vehicle, but you could then sue the manufacturer, but the onus is then on you to prove it. Generally it doesn't matter because insurance pays for it.
If it was a criminal matter you might be able to get off by demonstrating the defect to the court though, since they generally are punishments for your behavior.
While 'should' & 'is' are two different things, what should happen is ticketing the manufacturer in casrs of either mechanical failure like this or bad self-driving. Plus, Finland-style, ticket fines should be scaled to income, with the schedule of fines continuing to increase to corporate levels of income.
Edit: the scaled fines should get their attention, and using the traffic citation method instead of (in addition to) possibility of later lawsuits is to get their attention to fixes sooner. when the penalties are vague and years-to-decades in the future, they have little effect on current management (see Ford Pinto/Bobcat fuel tank fiasco that killed multiple people).
Speeding tickets are hard to prove. Normal small person just pays fines with zero cost to police. Big corporation have lawyers, and will fight it, with all camera evidence from self driving car...
Speeding is REALLY easy to prove. Most traffic cops have equipment that will accurately tell them your speed to the nearest tenth of a mph. Laser speed sensors are a dime a dozen now. The hard part is that in the USA you have to serve speeders and can't just mail them the ticket and revoke their license/registration if they don't pay it like they do in the UK.
Are they? Speeding cameras are calibrated regularly, so a company would need to provide video evidence that definitively showed the vehicle travelling slower, which of course isn't possible if the vehicle was speeding.
Americans are very restrained in their use of speed cameras because the offenses are so easy prove. But I think we are unique. Australia and Canada have no problem using speeding cameras more pervasively.
Technologically, it is because you have to establish a chain of trust all the way from the cop, to the radar device, back to the manufacturer, and establish all the way down that nothing was tampered with or miscalibrated.
In the real world that never happens. The judge laughs at you, makes a joke about why you’re wasting your time, and orders you to pay the fine.
I would argue the opposite. Those who don't speed are disrupting flow of speeding traffic and causing a dangerous traffic impediment. And if everyone stops speeding families suffer fewer necessities healthcare etc as the extra time on road eats into time available to work to provide life saving necessities .
Trying to get creative here...
If I am driving my car, climb out, and let it drive, then I'm still going to get in trouble.
So, let's say the person who put the car in a situation where it broke the law is responsible but a more generic and severe level. Rather than speeding, it would be reckless endangerment which is what I'm guessing the charge could be for me climbing out of a moving car.
LEOs view the initial offense as a lead that gives them probable cause to start fishing for more serious offenses once they initiate the stop. But they're not going to nail a self-driving car for DUI, drugs, weapons, etc.
To a certain degree, all minor traffic stops are pretextual stops. They're an "in" to look for more serious offenses.
One thing I am very curious about, though, is how the system of adding points to a license for certain traffic infractions translates to self-driving cars. Surely it would not make sense to add points on a car-by-car level, since every car in each fleet is presumably running the same software, but applying them to Cruise or Waymo in the aggregate doesn't make sense, either, unless there's some sort of formula for "points per mile driven across the fleet."