THE US GOVERNMENT is examining whether Waymo’s recall of software involved with a series of school bus passing incidents last fall actually fixed the safety issue.
The formal investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will determine whether the company’s supposed software fix succeeded in preventing its robotaxis from improperly passing stopped school buses with red lights on and their stop arms extended—indicators that the buses were picking up and dropping off students. It is illegal to pass these stopped school buses in all 50 states.
According to a filing, Waymo issued a fix for the software issue in mid-November and a voluntary recall a month later. But the government says that the majority of school bus issues occurred after that date.
Why are still so few laws that would penalize the company for misbehaving self driving cars? It’s no longer a new problem.
The existing laws are sufficient. The problem is lack of enforcement.
We need major penalties or people will die.
Don’t need to penalize the company. Just penalize whoever is in the car just like you would an ordinary driver, and make the penalty for passing a stopped school bus be 6 months in jail. No one will take a Waymo if they hear about people randomly going to jail over it.
You want to penalize passengers with no control over the vehicle rather than the company operating them?
Yes the whole point is that they can’t utilize the company as a shield from liability for what the car does.
They make the choice to get into the car, they accept the responsibility for what the car does.
If you knowingly get into a car with a drunk driver, you’re responsible for what happens. It’s called contributory negligence.
Indeed don’t penalize the company; penalize the CEO. That six-month jail time can go directly to someone who will care about it and has the power to do something about it.
“Software issue.” no, it was a failure to follow the law. They likely didn’t design the system to respect this law.
Well you see officer, I was speeding because of a software glitch.
The exuberance of youth is a common glitch in early releases.
