Comment on Robotaxis can break traffic laws without fines under new California rules
dan1101@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Alternate headline: Money talks, allows immunity to traffic laws.
Comment on Robotaxis can break traffic laws without fines under new California rules
dan1101@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Alternate headline: Money talks, allows immunity to traffic laws.
atrielienz@lemmy.world 2 days ago
If this were true they wouldn’t have enacted any legislation at all (which was the status quo before this). The next step should be to use the data gained from ticketing these robot taxis to determine the rate of infraction and hold the the company accountable when that legislation is ready. I. E. Corp has broken the law X number of times and each infraction equals a penalty, x number of penalties means revoking of license to operate robot taxi service in state etc.
We all know that fining corps isn’t something that actually works because they just consider it part of their operating cost, so the goal should be to prevent them from operating altogether big their product can’t adhere to traffic laws.
Also, I think perhaps it might be worth it to license these vehicles differently. A commercial license of some kind because individuals can’t be held accountable (because either the people operating them or observing them aren’t in the same country, or because there isn’t a vehicle operator at all).
kent_eh@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
That’s just laziness. There are individuals who can be held accountable.
Starting with the executives who signed off on these things being put on the road in the first place.
atrielienz@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Forgive me, that wasn’t the complete thought I assumed it was.
What I mean is that Liability in business is often spread across the company as an entity because there are usually a lot of people involved in the decision tree that leads to things like this.
You’d be holding more than one person liable if you were holding people liable at all. And generally if one person can be pointed to as at fault they are “the fall guy”, taking the brunt of whatever consequences so that the company doesn’t have to. Rarely do you get both options.
I didn’t mean to imply that the people who are involved couldn’t be held accountable.
kent_eh@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
Sounds good to me.
Having some corporate abstraction shield the people who make irresponsible or dangerous choices may be beneficial to thoae decision makers, but it is very much not good for society.
jacksilver@lemmy.world 2 days ago
They’re currently breaking the law and not being held accountable. The threat of eventually being held accountable is a step in the right direction, but the only reason they’re able to do this right now is due to money.
The fact that they weren’t being ticketed before means that we don’t even really know how bad these cars are, and yet they’ve been allowed to stay on roads with pedestrians and other cars.
atrielienz@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Not exactly. They were braking the law and not being held accountable. Now they’re being held accountable but how they are being held to account is problematic and toothless. That’s not the same thing and it’s exactly what my comment was trying to highlight. There are ways that the law can progress to be more effective.
jacksilver@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Needing to report incidents isn’t being held accountable. They’re not facing any consequences for breaking the law.
FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 2 days ago
The problem comes to who’s at fault?
Is it the passenger riding? The car itself? The company that programmed it? The owner?
Personally, I agree, robotaxis should be yeeted out of existence if they can’t abide traffic laws- but a lot of them are being operated privately too.
They should’ve not been permitted at all until these questions were answered, and corporations should not have been allowed to comment.
justOnePersistentKbinPlease@fedia.io 2 days ago
Companies should get fined a minimum of 1% of gross profits per infraction
jacksilver@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I mean, it’s obviously the company. The issue is the government doesn’t want to actually legislate and determine how you address issues where there is prison time and or licenses get revoked.
Its also not a problem, it’s an abdication of responsibility. Either the government needs to take a stance or the cars shouldn’t be on the road. Seems like instead the government is willing to risk our safety rather than take any firm stance.
atrielienz@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I don’t disagree. As the operator of the vehicle you as a regular person at held at fault. A commercially licensed driver is held at fault and in some cases the company is held at fault depending on the infraction and their policy.
When a machine doesn’t operate within the confines of the law, the fact is the company who owns and operates the machine is liable. So that’s who should be held at fault.
myplacedk@lemmy.world 1 day ago
You could say the same thing about human, but that still works.
1: Make the fines big enough to matter, but without making then prohibitively big for small companies.
2: Too many fines result in revoking permission. This doesn’t have to be on company level, the company could group the cars by model or something.
The numbers can be discussed, but this is the framework the legal system is used to, and I don’t see what it wouldn’t work, other than lobbyism.
atrielienz@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Here’s the thing. It demonstrably doesn’t work because we don’t do any of the things you listed. That’s why parking tickets only work on poor people and rich people view them as just the fee to park where ever they want.
Which is exactly what I was alluding to but you seem to want to take it as if I have no earthly idea how to make it better when the point wasn’t about fining them. The point is there’s a better way and it starts with gathering data to use to basically revoke their license to operate their business and their taxis in the state. Because that’s a better outcome altogether than a stupid fine. The money from the fine might enrich the state but it won’t bring back someone’s kid.