SELF-DRIVING CARS: THE TICKET NO LONGER GOES TO THE OWNER
A car driving itself runs on a red light and the fine goes to the company that built it. Wow! That’s the new rule in China. From level 3 of autonomous driving upwards, meaning when the software is at the wheel, the penalty no longer hits the owner or the driver. And think about it, because moving a traffic fine sounds like paperwork. And instead, there is a faster lever there to change how cars are designed.
Let me explain it. You remember, in my early videos on this, the question was left hanging there. When a car makes the mistake on its own, who answers for it? And the answer was a ping-pong. The manufacturer says you were supposed to supervise. You say the car was driving. And in between, there is a moving vehicle, dangerous, potentially, that made a decision neither of them made. Level 3 is exactly the most controversial step, because it drives, you can take your hands off, but you’re still sitting there.
And as long as the owner or the driver pays, because somebody else is carrying the risk, the moment the responsibility goes back to whoever wrote the software or the owner of the company that built the machine. And it can be costly for producers. But to establish who got it wrong, you have to read the car’s data. The manufacturer can push the feature as far as he wants. What it saw, what it decided, whether it asked the driver to take the wheel back. And how many seconds before. And that data is written in the software on board. So the evidence that decides whether the manufacturer pays is born inside the manufacturer’s own product.
All right, this is China, but what changes for us? Well, that in the end, the cars worldwide from China are the same. So whoever designs a level 3, knowing the fines land on their face, is unlikely to keep two different behaviors alive for two different markets. And what gets decided in Beijing, we find it in the parking space downstairs. And at this point, let’s hope so.
And I think this is how we’ll find it. A more cautious car that disengages earlier. That throws the wheel back in your hands every time the situation isn’t perfectly clear. And that grants you level 3 in far fewer places than the brochure promised. Less spectacular, but fewer fines, fewer incidents.
But there is a but. Because it can be done on one condition. That the black box can also be opened by someone who isn’t the company that filled it. Otherwise, the rule stays beautiful on paper and the evidence keeps being written by the defendant. And that’s not fair.
What do you think?
#ArtificialDecisions #MCC #SelfDrivingCars #AutonomousDriving #TrafficFines