U.S. to decide soon on GM’s request to deploy cars without steering wheels::U.S. regulators will soon decide on a petition filed by General Motors’ Cruise self-driving technology unit seeking permission to deploy up to 2,500 self-driving vehicles annually without human controls, a top auto safety official said on Wednesday.
That’s very interesting, actually. Because manufacturers of self-driving cars say they’re only drive-assisted, not autonomous. To dodge liability for their cars causing accidents. If the car is without a steering wheel and therefore fully autonomous, and the car runs somebody over, is the car gonna go to jail?
Yeah don’t know how well that works in practice. Either I’m engaged and driving or I’m not. Letting the car drive while I continue to pay attention and somehow anticipate with superior reaction time that the car is going to make a mistake seems like more stress than it is worth. My current car has lane keep assist, which is helpful, but if I’m going to give full control of the car to the computer, then I don’t think I can/want to be on standby. Seems like more stress than it is worth.
The cars they’re talking about here are fully autonomous, not driver assisted. It’s a completely different stack from their commercial vehicles that are driver assisted, and they’re not for sale yet.
If you run somebody over, unless you did it deliberately or with criminal negligence, you aren’t going to jail.