The artificial intelligence component of Google’s Level 4 autonomous cars can be considered the driver, whether or not the cars are occupied by humans, the U.S. National Highway Transportation Safety Administration said in a letter released Tuesday. Level 4 full self-driving automation vehicles perform all safety-critical driving functions and monitor roadway conditions for an entire trip. Google’s L4 vehicle design will do away with the steering wheel and the brake and gas pedals.
This ruling hits on a key reason full automation will remain a dream, liability. Currently, things like adaptive cruise control and accident avoidance skirt the line, because the driver is still required to be behind the wheel. Hence the driver is liable for an accident. Remove driver involvement though, and the car manufacturer (Google in this case) is 100% liable because they become the driver. That makes perfect sence.
While accidents might be lower this way, Google would still be liable for every computer glitch, bad weather accident, person walking into moving traffic, and fraudster jumping on the hood of a parked car at a light, and screaming they where hit.
The ideal that google can eliminate human error is totally wrong. Maybe they think human's do not create and program this technology. But when it goes wrong and it will. It would not be just one of those cars affected like one bad driver. It could very well be many thousands. The other question still remains is how well can a non human controlled car react with many human drivers? But the other elephant in the room is liability and how insurance companies will embrace totally self driving cars? Right now, I am sure Google with all its cash is self insured on this testing mostly. I have yet to read much about how insurance feels about insuring a robot car.
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Feds Put AI in the Driver’s Seat
Posted by: Richard Adhikari February 11, 2016 10:19 AMThe artificial intelligence component of Google’s Level 4 autonomous cars can be considered the driver, whether or not the cars are occupied by humans, the U.S. National Highway Transportation Safety Administration said in a letter released Tuesday. Level 4 full self-driving automation vehicles perform all safety-critical driving functions and monitor roadway conditions for an entire trip. Google’s L4 vehicle design will do away with the steering wheel and the brake and gas pedals.
While accidents might be lower this way, Google would still be liable for every computer glitch, bad weather accident, person walking into moving traffic, and fraudster jumping on the hood of a parked car at a light, and screaming they where hit.