Ticketing is a weird thing to do with driverless cars.
If the violations are intentional and easily fixable, then just pass laws/regulations requiring AV's to follow rules or else cease operations entirely.
If the violations are unintentional but happen only rarely in weird edge-case situations, then just set low frequency thresholds for them to be allowed, the same way we allow tiny amounts of rodent hairs in peanut butter. If AV companies exceed the threshold, then they get fined at first and eventually lose their permit -- but these aren't tickets for individual violations, but rather a yearly fine for going above the yearly threshold.
If the violations are intentional but not easily fixable -- e.g. they're stopping where not allowed because there's no legal place to stop within 15 blocks -- then the laws/regulations are bad, and tickets are essentially an unfair tax. That's the case in my city where moving trucks are essentially illegal, because it's illegal to double-park them, but there's usually no legal parking available within any reasonable distance that movers could carry furniture. So you just know that the cost of moving includes a "tax" of a parking ticket, unfair as it is.
Finally, if the violations are unintentional but happen all the time, the AV company should lose its permit because its software sucks.
I don't see how ticketing AVs for individual violations makes any sense.
EDIT: for those who think I'm letting AV companies get off too easily, it's precisely the opposite. I'm saying that if AV companies are violating traffic rules all the time and can't fix it, they should be banned. Ticketing is not the answer, because ticketing isn't holding these vehicles to a high enough standard. It's letting the companies get off the hook by merely paying occasional tickets instead of improving their software.
In all of your situations except for cases where no good legal option exists, ticketing is just the easier way to apply your suggested idea. It gives a direct incentive to the company to lower the rate as far as is possible. It doesn't allow some minimal amount without a fee, but that doesn't seem like that big of a deal.
The biggest reason for the difference between Autonomous vehicles and peanut butter is that with autonomous vehicles, we already have a compliance system in place....cops. It's not designed for autonomous vehicles, and you are correct that it's not the way you would design it for the ground up for autonomous vehicles, but it's far better to accept the imperfections than to build some new, separate compliance and monitoring system on top of the existing one. The benefits aren't large enough to justify it.
In the far future when the vast majority of vehicles are autonomous? Sure, probably worth scrapping to a new system (by then, my guess is that issues are rare enough to just not have a system at all and just use the legal system in the rare cases of large issues).
Until then, ticketing in the case of traffic violations seems fine and good enough to me.
> What happens after autonomous vehicle get enough violations?
They put R&D resources toward not getting as many tickets and eventually fix their software to not get tickets? Self driving cars might profit $100/day. Getting tickets completely eats that and ticketing mega corps will be very popular politically so you better believe it will happen
> They put R&D resources toward not getting as many tickets and eventually fix their software to not get tickets?
Why would you assume they would do that?
What if the autonomous vehicle only blows a red and kills someone every once and a while and the lawyers to tie the family up in court are cheaper than the software dev and ai training to fix it?
Are you willing to wait until the number of dead people exceeds the cost of the fix?
Its an extreme example I know but to just assume they would fix it also assumes they are caught and ticketed 100% of the time.
There are tons of examples of corporate America weighting the pros and cons of things like this.
Every time an AV is liable for a death the company will face a high 8 digit legal settlement. Wont even go to trial. Again, the AV companies will avoid this because their goal is to make money and paying 8 digit legal settlements does not make them money. You are right that if this only happens once a year and they have a million cars it wont be a high priority, but if thats the case AVs are much safer than the current driving environment. If AVs caused death at anything close to current rates the companies would lose tons of money.
> assumes they are caught and ticketed 100% of the time.
No it doesnt. It assumes they are caught often enough for it to be worth it for them to fix. When politicians start telling traffic enforcement to focus on AVs Im betting that will happen. AVs will be known as incredibly conservative drivers because the companies really dont want tickets and there will be memes about how waymo drives like grandma.
i'd argue Waymo is "1 Driver", and after they get a cumulative 4 points in 1 year, then Waymo would no longer be allowed to drive in the state of California
You make some good points, but here are some counterpoints:
There is an existing infrastructure for ticketing by license plate, payment processing, collection, etc.
You’re describing changes to the law, which require a bunch of procedural hurdles. It’s much easier for the DMV to just promulgate new rules that tap into existing infrastructure, as they did here.
Also, how is the government supposed to assess whether these violations are intentional or not? Tickets are strict liability (you get the ticket if you do it regardless of intent, reasons, etc.) because it is easy to administer.
Of course I'm describing changes to the law. AV's inherently require tons of changes to the law. They already have. Permits for AV companies operate under new law. That is not an obstacle.
No, I think ticketing is the right thing to do. You set a law. Any instance of breaking that law costs money, so the AV company has an incentive to reduce the number of violations. The won't be able to bring the number of violations down to 0 just like we can't bring the number of cockroaches in chocolate down to 0, but that nonzero amount is just a regulatory cost they can decrease by getting closer to the goal of 0 violations.
Obviously, we should also have the option to pull vehicles that are brazenly ignoring the law and just eating the cost of the tickets. Just like we do with drivers who do that. But that should be the second line of defense if regular monetary fines (tickets) fail
The point is, with software you don't need tickets. Either the software is written to try to follow the law or it isn't. If it's trying, then we establish thresholds. If the company is actively trying to break the law, it should be shut down.
Tickets are a silly, roundabout way to go about it. They make sense for human drivers because they're all running different independent "brain software" and it's unrealistic for minor violations to ban someone from driving. But with shared software across a fleet, you can just require the company to fix its driving software directly when possible. Ticketing is actually counterproductive, because it allows these companies to avoid many of these fixes if the tickets are infrequent enough.
> Either the software is written to try to follow the law or it isn't
Then the real world intervenes. Nobody plans to block an intersection. But a lack of planning and shits given will put one into that position even without intention.
> it allows these companies to avoid many of these fixes if the tickets are infrequent enough
Sounds fine? Like, as long as AVs and human drivers share the roads, modulating enforcement with infraction frequency seems fine.
> major benefit of AV's is that they're supposed to be better than human drivers, not breaking traffic laws just as often
If they're infrequently breaking minor traffic laws they may still be doing so (a) less frequently than humans or (b) with less consequence than when humans do it.
I say this as someone who tends to drive the speed limit: our traffic laws were not written for perfect parsing.
I feel like this trivializises all software development. It happens but 99% of development is done to follow the spec or law in this case. The failures or bugs are usually not intentional. You basically saying if 1 car in the fleet breaks the law shut them down? If thats a strawman im sorry but even in software algorithm have unintentional bugs and make mistakes. The same is true for human drivers but we dont revoke their licenses when they break the law we have a proportional penalty for break. If driverless cars are speeding its a slap on the wrist. If they are driving the wrong way down the freeway the penalty would be revoking licenses
I feel like your unintentional thresholds are just what ticketing is but in more complex way. Also your points about being easier on AV companies tickets are very aggressive against repeat offenders. It works mechanically the same as setting threshold x# of tickets.
Ticketing gets weird because it varries by state I cannot speak to Califorina because I don't live there but in the northeast many states have points and if you get 10 points you lose your license. Not every ticket gives points i.e parking tickets. But speeding X miles over is 4 points. Drunk driving is 10 points generally speaking. Their are others like drag racing on public roads etc. But Those systems would be very harsh on a self-driving vechicals which all have the same "driver". You might need to be more permissive on the number of points because the "driver" is clocking 1000x-10000x what an ordinary driver does but tickets solves all the practical problems your bring up. The only grounds to debate feel like the number of points or threshold which besides stating I don't feel like you stake a position on where the threshold is (doing sound seems really hard without data on how often violations can be). Intentionality is also ignored because it doesn't matter in driving since you could always say you didn't know X law i.e unintentional but its not an excuse because you are opt in to using public roads you have to know the laws.
I am not trying to be dismissive but I am really unsure what other system and thresholds you are describing while you are being compared to an extremely concrete and effective systems (effective at punishing drivers :) from actually dangerous behavior). Usually the only hard part is observing offense but I think that makes ticketing acceptable because generally speaking the penalty for getting a ticket is very harsh on low income earners (increases compliance)
They should be ticketed and stopped from operating after certain threshold. And tickets should have some reasonable multiplier as they are much more capable paying say at absolute minimum 1000x. Only high enough tickets are efficient against corporations. As their shareholders sadly can not get those tickets.
Let's go down that route. So a corporation pays 1000x of a normal ticket penalty, let's say it operates a humble fleet of 1000 cars.
Do we really want to require this service to be a million times better? This would surely kill more people than the alternative.
I think ticketing is just broken in this context. People don't want tickets, so they take care not to break rules. The same person may do such thing, if they are in a hurry, if they are tired, yadaa yadaa, their economics and, possibly their freedom, are at risk.
None of this applies to a corporation. An AV running a red light is not, ever, "I was tired and nobody is driving at this hour officer", it's systematic. Behavior can be recorded 1 to 1 and optimized, why would we want to depend on specific scenarios in which police seems something happening?
Ticketing in California generally results in revenue going directly to the enforcing locality, not the state. It's an important difference, and why you tend to get things like speed traps for passing motorists
Ticketing AVs for individual violations like human drivers is the only fair way.
How would your proposal work for personal driverless cars, with/without custom modifications? ie. if my personal car commits violation on its way to pick me up
If you purchase an AV car then similarly it's up to the state to regulate the manufacturer. How could you possibly be personally responsible for the fact that it ran a red light?
And nobody should ever be allowed to personally modify an AV's software. Such a vehicle should never be allowed on the road.
>If the violations are intentional and easily fixable, then just pass laws/regulations requiring AV's to follow the law or else cease operations entirely.
I have to stop reading the rest of the comment right there.
If the violations are intentional and easily fixable is an incredibly loaded presumption to start any type of conversation, dialogue, or debate. To the point, asking the question 'how do we qualify intention? How are we measuring difficulty of fix? Costs of payroll, computer, deployment, and potential regression testing? What about the very nature of the context that led up to it? Did an external 3rd party cutoff a robotaxi and require that the robotaxi veer into the oncoming traffic lane, bc sensors indicated it was the best decision to avoid a collision, prioritizing safety and human life over traffic law?
What happens when following traffic law statistically leads to a greater risk of loss of life over violating the law?
I must insist we move the dialogue upstream to reality as-is, and there is plenty to discuss there.
I will in good faith issue a starting point: how should we measure the robotaxi driver license wrt suspension? Do we issue a point system that is averaged across the fleet, e.g. violations/car before suspending all operations until licensure evaluation? Personally I think that is a fair starting point amd am completely open minded to alternative views.
If the violations are intentional and easily fixable, then just pass laws/regulations requiring AV's to follow rules or else cease operations entirely.
If the violations are unintentional but happen only rarely in weird edge-case situations, then just set low frequency thresholds for them to be allowed, the same way we allow tiny amounts of rodent hairs in peanut butter. If AV companies exceed the threshold, then they get fined at first and eventually lose their permit -- but these aren't tickets for individual violations, but rather a yearly fine for going above the yearly threshold.
If the violations are intentional but not easily fixable -- e.g. they're stopping where not allowed because there's no legal place to stop within 15 blocks -- then the laws/regulations are bad, and tickets are essentially an unfair tax. That's the case in my city where moving trucks are essentially illegal, because it's illegal to double-park them, but there's usually no legal parking available within any reasonable distance that movers could carry furniture. So you just know that the cost of moving includes a "tax" of a parking ticket, unfair as it is.
Finally, if the violations are unintentional but happen all the time, the AV company should lose its permit because its software sucks.
I don't see how ticketing AVs for individual violations makes any sense.
EDIT: for those who think I'm letting AV companies get off too easily, it's precisely the opposite. I'm saying that if AV companies are violating traffic rules all the time and can't fix it, they should be banned. Ticketing is not the answer, because ticketing isn't holding these vehicles to a high enough standard. It's letting the companies get off the hook by merely paying occasional tickets instead of improving their software.