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Did you see the story about how Google's Waymo robot cars in San Francisco have been intentionally programmed to break the law by driving through occupied crosswalks.
Apparently these monstrosities were taking too long to get where they were going so company decided to unleash them from following motor vehicle laws.
And it seems nothing can be done about it. Presumably SFPD could write a ticket, but without personal liability, traffic citations are no deterrent.
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So, what happens when one of these things runs over a kid in a crosswalk?
Who goes to prison?
Is it the programmer who wrote the code to break the law?
Is it the manager that told the programmer to make the damn things faster even it it means breaking the law?
Is it the CEO who demanded they make robot cars profitable, and didn't insist on staying within the law to do so?
If no one goes to prison, killing kids just becomes a cost/benefit equation.
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Let's toss out another hypothetical.
Somehow a citation is issued to a Waymo robot car that breaks the law by driving through an occupied crosswalk.
Who pays ticket?
Who gets the points on their license?
Who has to go to traffic school?
The cost of the ticket is nothing to the trillion dollar company, and if no one suffers any personal consequence, there is no effective deterrence at all.
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Hat tip to @susankayequinn for flagging this story last night:
Rich Felker
@mastodonmigration @susankayequinn Court orders CEO to make them stop, impounds every vehicle caught doing it, jails CEO for contempt when he doesn't.
Adrianna Tan
@mastodonmigration SFPD doesn’t do they for human drivers who do this, which is sadly 100% of the time they are also in the crosswalk
Miss Gayle
@dalias @mastodonmigration @susankayequinn
Cities could pass ordinances prohibiting programming any vehicle to break the law, including speed limits, and impound all unmanned vehicles that do so - by whatever means (damages the vehicle? Too bad.) Someone would have to personally come pay the fines to get it out of impound, and that someone would have to sign a contract of *personal* liability for the vehicle's actions to get it released.
Problem solved.
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