C8 wrote:vox_mundi wrote:So how does this differ from exploding airbags or gas tanks. Or airplanes falling out of the sky.
The car companies and airlines seem to have weathered those catastrophes fairly profitably. They're all still in business.
Its the scale of the accidents that matter- those airbags and gas tanks were rather few in number- a software issue could cause thousands of accidents- you are smart enough to know this is a very real possibility
Yesterday 105 people were killed in human caused auto accidents in the U.S.; the day before that, another 105 people were killed in human caused auto accidents;
last month over 3100 were killed in auto accidents: last year over 38,000 died.
Globally, there were 1,300,000 road traffic deaths last year. Equal to the death of every man, woman & child in Dallas or San Diego - in one year.Where is the outrage? Why aren't these murderous vehicles being taken off the streets?
Death by self-driving cars = 1
C8 wrote:vox_mundi wrote: That's what commercial insurance (and class action lawsuits) are all about. That's why Swiss Re and Munich Re are there as a backstop.
I am not sure even re-insurers want to touch this
Too Late. It's already a done deal. They've figured out their risk exposure and will charge accordingly. It's their business model; it's how they make money.
SwissRe: The autonomous car 2015: Risks and opportunities for the re/insurance industryMunichRe: Autonomous Vehicles: Considerations for Personal and Commercial Lines InsurersSwissRe: The autonomous car: the way ahead for the re/insurance industrySwissRe: How the autonomous car will upend auto insuranceC8 wrote:vox_mundi wrote:Based on current implementation, the systems are driving way better than humans. They still have 5-10 years of technical improvement (2-4 generations of computer hardware and software upgrades) before even 20% of vehicles on the streets are self-driving.
But those humans are sued individually- a software company will get hammered with all the lawsuits- and juries like to give really big nasty punitive penalties out to corporate America
Common Question of Law ...
When can lawsuits be consolidated? Cases that are similar enough in fact or in the legal issues presented can often be grouped together and heard at the same time. That's what's happening with more than 80 lawsuits alleging economic injury from GM's ignition-switch recall. Cases which share a common question of law are often consolidated in the interests of justice and efficiency. A question of law is one that can be decided simply based on interpreting the law and court opinions, and does not ask the court to play fact-finder in a case.
In the GM lawsuit consolidation mentioned above, various GM car owners have filed similar cases, claiming that the company owes them for economic losses linked to a recall. These suits all present the common question: Is GM liable for economic damages as a result of failing to fix an ignition switch defect? With most of the facts not disputed, these consolidated cases have a common question of law that a single court is now set to decide.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/rule_42 Lawsuits against VW to be consolidated in CaliforniaToyota asks panel to consolidate lawsuits in Calif
C8 wrote:vox_mundi wrote:... Based on your criteria the Wright Brothers would have never gotten off the ground because their risky business model might fail eventually.
Way off base. Airplanes don't start to collectively fall from the sky as a group due to software issues b/c the Wright Bros. didn't use software.
I am speaking of a systems failure- the kind that brought Delta Airlines to its knees.
I'm not sure you understand how self driving software works.
Delta's OS was a bloated 30 year old legacy centralized system with thousands of dumb terminal attached. Any loss of communication with the central system and your looking at the blue screen of death.
A self-driving car operates on a
locked down version of AI instructions. These AI instructions are static - they do not change between software updates. (
... the vehicle acts like a standalone PC. If your neighbors PC crashes, it doesn't mean that yours automatically does. Does it?)
All data from the vehicle is streamed to the central system to train the AI for the next update. Once the system is trained, the new AI instructions are tested. Then the AI instruction set is locked down and uploaded like each new Version of Windows.
The AI references a 3-D street map from the cloud, however, a significant (city-scale) local map can be stored in onboard memory. This means that the vehicle will not crash simply because of an internet interruption. It also has routines for alert and hand-off to the human driver.
C8 wrote:... The reality is that air travel is much safer with software than street travel. Planes are kept apart by air traffic controllers- if a mechanical or software malfunction occurs there is a large cushion of sky that gives a trained pilot time for a recovery. Planes are safe b/c they are in such a remote, forgiving environment.
Are you sure?
Applying Artificial Intelligence Techniques' to Air Traffic Control AutomationSingapore’s $300-Million Air-Traffic Automation System UnveiledDARPA advances artificial intelligence program for air traffic control (2008)Airliner accidents and incidents caused by pilot error - The following 200 pages are in this category, out of 252 total. This list may not reflect recent changesC8 wrote:...On the road it is a different story- hundreds of vehicles are streaming at high speeds only feet (or inches?) apart from each other. A one second error can lead to a horrible chain reaction which will lead to a massive class action lawsuit. Computers have never been asked to manage such a dangerous, random, unpredictable environment before.
And landing on the moon and back was a walk in the park?
C8 wrote:... On the road drivers face flash showers, tire treads ripping off trucks, fog, cars changing lanes too quickly (we aren't going to outlaw self-driving).
See
Self-driving car lane envisioned for commute between Vancouver and Seattle article above.
There are plans to ban all cars in the city centers of Oslo, Madrid, Brussels, Paris, Dublin, and Milan. Even New York City has placed "pedestrian plazas" smack dab in the middle of the tourist hell squeeze that is Times Square.
C8 wrote:... This isn't just a baby step from computer assisted airplane travel- it is a giant leap- the biggest challenge software has ever faced in its history by far.
So? Since when have we stopped doing
Giant Leaps?
There is a thing called technological progress.
Many Canadians see self-driving cars as a licence to behave badly: survey The image of drivers texting, dozing or sipping a martini while they sit at the wheel and let their autonomous vehicles do all the work prevails among a significant number of Canadians.
That’s a troubling finding from a survey of Canadians about self-driving vehicles by the Traffic Injury Research Foundation, a non-profit road safety organization. The survey of more than 2,600 Canadians found that 9 per cent of those surveyed said they would drink and drive; 10 per cent would sleep or nap; and 17 per cent would do something unrelated to driving.
“These results are disturbing and illustrated that at least some drivers mistakenly believe that these vehicle technologies do not require driver input or attention at all times,” the foundation said in a report on the results, which will be released Thursday.
Another 35 per cent of those surveyed said that if they were late, they would disengage self-driving technology in order to drive faster and 13 per cent would take over so they could run red lights.
The survey results indicate that autonomous vehicles, sporting cutting-edge technology and designed to make the roads safer, may have the opposite effect.
“This has considerable potential to increase crashes due to driver error and underscores that drivers may negatively modify their behaviour and decrease their safety because they do not understand the limitations of these technologies or how to use them correctly,” said the foundation, which is based in Nepean, Ont.
Will You Need Auto Insurance for a Self-Driving Car?Some automakers are designing driverless cars with no steering wheels, eliminating any human control. They say they’d take full responsibility if their technology fails and causes a crash.
Other automakers are engineering cars that would require humans to take control from the autopilot under certain conditions.
In either case, some consumers are slamming the brakes on the conversation, asking if the car is driving itself all the time or most of the time then why should I have to get insurance or have as much coverage as I do now?
... “Insurance companies see this as a big business opportunity for them to get more and more data, and perhaps use that data for other lines of insurance to tell them about how responsible we are in keeping up our homes,” said Consumer Watchdog President Jamie Court.