Cruise CEO says SF ‘should be rolling out the red carpet’ for robotaxis, threatens to maybe leave town::In his first major public interview since the DMV cut their San Francisco fleet in half, Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt said “we cannot expect perfection” from the self-driving cars, and vaguely threatened to leave town if regulators curtail them any further.
In theory sure. But when a human screws up in a way that leads to harming other, they are punished. Are these companies going to take that on? Will the CEO be stepping up for the vehicular homicide charge? Is the company going to pay out money to the grieving families?
They want all the upside, but none of the liability. Which makes things pretty messy.
Yeah, legislation and requirements for a self driving car to be allowed on the road will have to be updated. But an automated car can’t drink and drive, or make the intentional decision to run someone over because they hate them. I don’t see how vehicular homicide would apply.
If somebody reprograms a car to murder someone, they are at fault. In all other cases - accidents - the insurance would have to shift from the driver to the car creator.
I just went and looked up various laws around this. It seems negligence is often the key to how it’s handled. Then it can fall into a few buckets from vehicular manslaughter, to vehicular homicide, to 2nd degree murder with a deadly weapon.
The murder charges for doing it on purpose.
The vehicular manslaughter charge can be for simple negligence, which can be failing to obey traffic laws, like running a stop sign.
If these cars misinterpret posted traffic laws or don’t see them at all… IANAL, but it seems like that could be considered negligence by the company, or even by the city for letting them on the road.