Ah yes, we must force these obstinate engineers to the right path! Only after getting everyone to see the light will they understand and thank us for boundless productivity!! /s
Perhaps these “obstinate” engineers have good reason in their decision. And it should be their decision!
To be so confident in what is “the right way (TM)” and try to force it onto others is... revealing.
You would be absolutely shocked how many software projects are still run, to this day, without source control at all. Or automated (or manual) testing. And how many hand crafted artisanal servers are running on AWS, never to be recovered if their EC2 instance is killed for some reason.
Sure, but that’s a small and shrinking market. Not a source of economic security or growth for its employees, nor for most of its companies (though some have defended niches).
I've seen growing companies running multiple million ARR through systems like that. It's way more common than you'd think if you're a professional software developer.
I seriously don't see how version control and LLMs are comparable. A deterministic way to track code changes over time, versus an essentially non-deterministic statistical code generator that might get you what you want, and might do it in a reasonable time frame, and that might not land you in a minefield of short-term-good/long-term-bad design points.
> an essentially non-deterministic statistical code generator that might get you what you want, and might do it in a reasonable time frame, and that might not land you in a minefield of short-term-good/long-term-bad design points.
Sounds like a human? The ‘statistical’ part is arguable, I suppose.
There is an absolute embarrassment of modern tooling in other categories I have no problem whatsoever embracing. I'm not a holdout for being stuck in my ways. Maybe I value things other than expediency at massive cost. Maybe I speak just as well to computers as I do to humans.
I'm sure I will have no problem whatsoever remaining in the employ of a firm that trusts me to make products and tooling that still push the envelope of what's possible without having to resort to the sheer brute force of trillion parameter-scale models.
There is no massive cost. For 80% of the brute work that needs to be done day in and day out LLMs provide code as good as a senior engineer provided you have sufficient competency in steering the model, but done at breakneck pace.
I ran the statistics myself and my company is spending 40% less time doing feature development since AI agents began to be used en masse and pushing 50% more tickets without any noticeable increase in regressions.
After 18 months the hard evidence is in place. And much like replacing bare-metal servers for many use cases where evidence shows that the burden of k8s or the substitution of shell scripts for Terraform, it's time to move on.
I don't really see a place for no AI usage in line-of-business software apps anymore.
Faster feature development, more strategic thinking in how to keep the dev pipeline full, doing braindead mechanical improvements that pay off tech debt that would have otherwise not have management sign-off to justify, writing GUI-based tools for support teams that previously had to scour reams of shell scripts, spending more time on refining specifications and estimations, writing throwaway concepts of different design ideas in order to have better architetuce discussions based on real code instead of pseudocode, clearing out the backlog of bugs that used to be terribly annoying to reproduce and that now I can just throw brute compute for resolving.
Sounds awful. Just filling the time with worthless stuff. You are basically a liability. Wouldn’t like to have you in my team. Less is more (nowadays more than ever)
I am, in general, hoping AV will reduce road deaths in the future.
The last hurdle is regulatory. We can’t let AV manufacturers use “there’s no driver” as a way to escape responsibility, externalizing the harms AC cause onto society.
The question is how to achieve fairness. If a human driver commits vehicular manslaughter, they get the book. What about AV? $10 million? Executives go to jail? What if $10 million fine per X AV miles driven is an OK cost of doing business?
No, it's actually fairly common in crashes between motor vehicles and pedestrians (or cyclists) to place most or all of the blame on the pedestrian.
When the Uber self-driving car struck and killed the pedestrian, not only did the internet peanut gallery largely blame the pedestrian for the first 24 hours or so after the death, but the local police force did as well for a couple of days. I rather suspect that without the national spotlight of being the first pedestrian killed by a self-driving car, the local police force would have been happy to absolve Uber and the driver of any liability.
It should obviously be possible for a pedestrian to be at fault in a collision. If someone without the right of way steps in front of a moving car, there is often nothing the vehicle could physically do to prevent the collision at that point. That's what right of way is for -- you have rules that, if everybody follows them, nobody gets hit, and then if someone gets hit because someone wasn't following the rules, the fault is with the person not following the rules.
The dominant cause of pedestrian fatalities is not "pedestrian steps right in front of a moving car," but things like "driver didn't see pedestrian in middle of crosswalk" (usually because, e.g., looking instead for vehicle traffic to make a right turn on red). Sure, it's possible for a pedestrian to be at fault, but even if they step out from behind an occluded object, if a driver is fast enough to kill them, then the driver is almost certainly already at fault because they were driving faster than conditions warranted.
> Sure, it's possible for a pedestrian to be at fault, but even if they step out from behind an occluded object, if a driver is fast enough to kill them, then the driver is almost certainly already at fault because they were driving faster than conditions warranted.
That's not true: 30km/h is enough to kill, and that's a very sedate speed.
Whether we like it or not, pedestrians and cyclists have to also follow the rules.
If you want change the rules, well that's a different argument to the one you appearing to make which is that certain entities should not be bound by any rules.
The laws are the rules I refer to that I say do not mention you or your idea of reasonable speed at all. Going through town at 30 km/h was considered reckless. Killing someone in a cross walk it doesn't matter if they are an adult capable of liability.
The dominant cause of pedestrian deaths is the same as drivers: alcohol. But unlike drivers, pedestrian are allowed to walk around drunk. So we dont even talk about it. We pretend it doesnt happen. It does. It happens all the time. The drunk pedestrian being hit by a car is the norm.
>>2008, nearly 40 per cent of pedestrians killed on Canadian roads were impaired, with two-thirds of them having a blood alcohol concentration more than double the legal limit. In fact, of all the fatally injured pedestrians with alcohol in their systems, fewer than one in five was at or below the legal driving limit of 0.08 blood alcohol concentration (BAC), according to the Canadian Council of Motor Transport Administrators* (CCMTA).
And just try discussing drunk biking and you will be run out of town by a spandex army shouting about thier "right" to use the roads while drunk or high.
I saw this happen. Went drinking with a friend in my early 20s. Him a well seasoned alcoholic, us both hammered waiting for a crosswalk signal. The signal never came. Traffic had a break. He finished a statement he was making, and that internal loop closure was enough to tell his mind that the traffic had stopped, and crossing was safe. It was not safe. A lifted truck came flying through the town square at around 50pmh in a 30mph zone. The lights were green obviously, but my friend had already stepped out right as the truck was crossing through. I screamed and tried to grab him back but could not safely grab him. He got nailed full speed, went flying about 20 feet up in the air before smacking the ground. He did live, was permanently disfigured (jaw surgeries and stuff) I'm glad I was there to make a emergency services call immediately, but at the same time, I will never ever forget that image in my mind. This was the worst time I saw someone hit with a car. The second worse was an attempted murder, and the third time was just some absent minded autistic woman bumping an old lady over in a cross walk. She was unharmed. I don't like people, alcohol, or cars anymore.
Just the other day, a middle aged cyclist decided to hug my bumper as I went downhill at about 35 mph. I rolled down the window and shouted "back off please". He looked surprised, but backed off.
A bicycle's brakes are far less effective than a car's. I don't know how a man got to middle age not knowing this. A lot of cyclists ride like they have an invisible shield protecting them.
But are pedestrians considerate and make a contract with the driver eye to eye to signal “hey, I see you, i see you see me, thanks for stopping, I will be crossing”.
Or they are looking at their phones standing on the wheelchair ramp or chatting with someone, kinda going in, maybe, maybe not, and when it looks like they’ll be crossing the street parallel to yours and you start going they change their minds and cross diagonally in front of you?
Because I’m all for pedestrian safety and prioritization. But SF has gone so “safe” that it’s back to unsafe. Runners will join an intersection from behind a tree in front of a car that had stopped and was starting to go without even looking up. People join a crossing looking down or away from the flow of traffic, it’s insane to me.
I find that kids cross streets much better than adults here. A kid will stop, look, check if they were seen and then proceed.
Let’s say person A drive their car through a green light (or any right of way) while person B pass at red with their truck and kills person A. Should we blame A to missed they eye contact with B?
This is a false equivalence. Im not talking about blaming a victim. I don’t know who the victim is when someone stopped, looked started driving and out of nowhere a runner with noise cancelling headphones ran in front of them anyway.
I’m talking about you want to be safe? Don’t just run into the street without looking. It’s the best optimization for the state of affairs in the streets. People are not perfect, pillars are very big now, blind spots are bigger, cellphones, whatever you want.
I like to assume there aren’t that many deranged murderers around for it to matter. The state of affairs all my life has been that drivers are as careful as they have to around crosswalks.
This seems like it needs a regional distinction. I regularly do this since cars do reliably stop/slow down (in Prague, and not right in front of cars).
> The dominant cause of pedestrian fatalities is not "pedestrian steps right in front of a moving car," but things like "driver didn't see pedestrian in middle of crosswalk" (usually because, e.g., looking instead for vehicle traffic to make a right turn on red).
And the driver is at fault in the cases where the driver is at fault. 18% of pedestrian fatalities are cases where the driver was drunk. Meanwhile 30% of pedestrian fatalities are cases where the pedestrian was drunk.
Your example is actually a pretty rare cause of pedestrian fatalities because even if someone doesn't see a pedestrian, cars turning right on red are almost always traveling at low speed.
> if a driver is fast enough to kill them, then the driver is almost certainly already at fault because they were driving faster than conditions warranted.
There is a double digit percent chance of a fatality if a vehicle hits a pedestrian at 25 MPH. The vast majority of roads allow speeds of 25 MPH or more. That doesn't mean you can stop if someone without the right of way who you had no reason to expect to step out directly in front of a car suddenly does.
The case in question appears to have been one in which the pedestrian was crossing a four-lane road outside of a crosswalk at night. That seems like as reasonable a case as any to attribute some fault to the pedestrian.
Meanwhile:
> Sure, it's possible for a pedestrian to be at fault, but even if they step out from behind an occluded object, if a driver is fast enough to kill them, then the driver is almost certainly already at fault because they were driving faster than conditions warranted.
"A pedestrian can be at fault in a fatality but the driver would still be at fault anyway" is apparently not a straw man.
No one said that it's not possible for a pedestrian to be at fault in a collision; they said the opposite. Therefore it's a strawman.
> "A pedestrian can be at fault in a fatality but the driver would still be at fault anyway"
That's not what they actually said ... work on your reading comprehension, ability to reason, and intellectual honesty--faking up quotations is not legit. a) A pedestrian could be at fault in other scenarios, like running into the middle of the street in dark clothing at night. In California, if a pedestrian is in a crosswalk then the driver is legally at fault. b) Morally, both parties could be at fault.
> No one said that it's not possible for a pedestrian to be at fault in a collision; they said the opposite.
The intention of the comment you accused of replying to a straw man was meant to point out that a pedestrian could be at fault instead of the driver.
That reply is pretty clearly arguing that even if the pedestrian was at fault, the driver would still have to be at fault anyway. Summarizing an argument after quoting it isn't misquoting it.
> A pedestrian could be at fault in other scenarios, like running into the middle of the street in dark clothing at night.
There is nothing to distinguish this from the original argument where the driver could still be be accused of "driving faster than conditions warranted" because visibility is lower at night.
> In California, if a pedestrian is in a crosswalk then the driver is legally at fault
And strict liability rules like that often lead to ridiculous outcomes, e.g. if someone jumps out of the back of a truck into an intersection and you then hit them, technically they were a pedestrian in a crosswalk. Or there is a pedestrian standing next to a crosswalk but they're stationary and talking on their phone without seeming to want to enter the crosswalk, so you start to proceed and then they step in front of your car.
The exact kind of scenario I was thinking of is something like a driver barrelling down a road in a school zone at 35 mph and hitting a kid who ran out into the street to pick up a ball. Since you so love putting words into my mouth, I assume you clearly believe that the pedestrian is at fault here instead of the driver [1].
In the real world, pedestrians don't play frogger with highways all that frequently. When you talk about pedestrians suddenly jumping onto the road, that is usually because they are in an area where pedestrian and vehicular interaction is likely--school zones, residential areas, parking lots, etc. In those scenarios... yeah, speeding is the fault here, not the pedestrian. I thought this was an obvious consideration that I didn't need to spell it out so clearly. But it turns out that the tendency to try to shift the blame from the driver to pedestrians in every scenario is just too ingrained into people, I guess...
[1] This isn't exactly a strawman--someone here was trying to argue that the driver isn't at fault in this scenario just this past week: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47877232
Is it? Laura Bush ran a stop sign and killed her friend. No charges. Caitlyn Jenner hit a car and pushed it into on coming traffic killed someone. No charges. I can keep going and going.
No, the reason that's a news story is because many people were upset about the accident, which killed an entire family of 4 while they took the kids to the zoo on their wedding anniversary. Even by the standards of auto wrecks it was heart wrenching. A lot of people felt the driver was negligent and deserved prison.
there are many[0] many[1] data points like this. even if individual ones seem like outliers, when there's this many outliers, it's like there's at least two distinct lines depicting consequences, one material and one not.
those who probably have exhausted all the various escape hatches built into the "vehicular manslaughter & mutilation forgiveness program" worldwide by the automobile industry, may get a year or so in prison — usually extreme repeat offenders, high profile deaths, homicide cases, or drivers who were already criminals just having the charge thrown in.
most people who "slipped up" are just fined and forgotten, at the cost of global pedestrian safety.
If you don't have a lot of money for your legal defense, then make sure to have a bicycle in your trunk which you can place next to the victim afterwards.
Last year I was on the jury for someone who drove drunk, caused an accident, and fled the scene. They had multiple prior DUIs but still had their license.
[edit]
Some details from the story for those who don't want to click through:
An unlicensed driver drank, did some cocaine, drove on one of the more dangerous stretches of road in the area, crossed the centerline and killed someone. Probation.
> The reason that’s a news story is because the outcome is unusual.
Yes and no.
Here in the UK, I read/post a bit on https://road.cc about road cycling and the perils of traffic and poor road designs. There's a surprising amount of clearly illegal driving that is rarely punished severely and it's notable that due to juries being motornormative, the prosecution will often not attempt to push for "dangerous driving" and will instead go or "careless driving" as it's notoriously difficult to get a jury to give a guilty verdict for "dangerous". I suspect a lot of jurors are thinking "I sometimes don't pay attention when driving, so that could have been me".
There's also a lot of media bias (I'm looking at you, BBC) with reporting of RTCs (Road Traffic Collisions - they should not be referred to as "accidents" as that is loaded language), especially when one of the participants is a cyclist. A lot of stories are framed as "car and cyclist in collision", rather than "driver and cyclist in collision" or even "car driven into cyclist" (that last one may be contentious, though I propose that it is usually factual). The issue is the use of the "passive" framing so that it doesn't give the impressions that a driver is likely to be at fault (percentage wise, driver inattention is the most likely cause of RTCs). See https://www.rc-rg.com/home for more details on reporting guidelines.
Also, most RTCs don't even merit a news report as they are so commonplace.
Who does it benefit if an accident ruins a second life?
What does a jail sentence deter? ("[no] gross negligence [...] wasn’t engaging in a race or sideshow, was not texting, and was not under influence")
This person was 80 years old with no criminal record, needs to pay $67400 in restitution, do 200 hours of community service, isn't allowed to drive for 3 years but "never intends to drive again". Apologised to the family of the victims. She's taking responsibility and I can't imagine forced labor at that age is fun. What more can you ask for here? The family member isn't coming back if she gets what's not unlikely to be a life sentence
Edit:
> She told a witness at the scene that she was trying to park her car when she accidentally moved her foot to the gas pedal.
This seems to happen a lot. Don't know about statistics but this happened to someone I know at 50yo (thankfully only damaged their own car minorly), and you hear it on the news with some regularity. Maybe the gas needs to be in a fundamentally different spot from the brake? We can jail the people to whom it happens, sure, but I can understand a judge using their head instead of their heart. The real solution must come either from the automotive industry or legislation
> Who does it benefit if an accident ruins a second life?
The next person they'd mow down. (Also, retribution. It's a real human need and attempts at philosophising it away degrade trust in our justice system.)
> isn't allowed to drive for 3 years
This is the wild part. No! You don't drive again!
> What more can you ask for here?
For her to have recognised her own limitations before they took lives. Failing at that, her family–or literally anyone who cared about her, and didn't want to see her spend her last years in jail–having taken initiative.
Huh? We're talking about someone who's not going to drive for 3 years at 80 years old. Who else are you foreseeing they'll "mow down" if you don't jail them for life
> For her to have recognised her own limitations
Surely I don't need to look up the statistics of people under 30 killing others by accident. We're humans, not infallible. The judge didn't think they took any undue risk here
But sure, enact your vengeance on the person that fate picked out. Comment sections are always full of it anyway so I'm sure the voting booth will be too and this is just going to spread
There needs to be something. I am not saying JumpCrisscross is right, but... I was a paramedic, and the sheer number of geriatric drivers who in zero way shape or form should be anywhere near the wheel of a vehicle is ... staggering. My go-to anecdote?
Called out for an eval with law enforcement, thankfully non injury (however, there -are- about half a dozen vehicles who are going to be filing insurance claims).
Grandma is on her way to the doctor, and is in husband's old Caddy. Problem, she couldn't figure out what to do at "the worst roundabout she'd ever seen" and kept circling it, causing other cars to swerve off the road into drainage ditches, over curbs etc.
Know why it was the worst roundabout she'd ever seen? Because it wasn't a roundabout. It was a T junction and there were those concrete lane separators. According to witnesses she'd been circling it for several minutes, occasionally putting the car into reverse to navigate it.
"Ma'am, where are you headed?" "My doctor, for an appointment". "Where's your doctor's office?" "[insert town name 40 miles away from us]" "And where do you live?" "[insert same town name]" She's nowhere near that town, there's no understood way she got from there to here other than mass confusion.
So LE call her adult kids, while we're assessing her, and figuring out a plan. They've also discovered in the meantime that her license was medically revoked five years prior by said doctor.
Kids: "Oh that? That doctor has no idea what he's talking about, she's perfectly competent, he just doesn't like her. She tells us she's fine to drive and we've been telling her we agree with her" and "What do you mean you're going to have her car towed? We can be there in two hours. Can't she just stay there with the paramedics til we get there?"
Cops: Your mom is about to be hit with at least six or seven insurance claims that are going to argue that the doctor, and the DOL, were right, and that your mom actually isn't medically suited to be driving.
I still guarantee she probably didn't face any legal consequences beyond insurance, though. Certainly we were never called as witnesses. And her family probably still thinks it was a fluke and that her doctor was just an asshole when he had her license revoked.
Banning someone from driving is basically a nonpunishment as driving on a suspended license is barely enforced. Most people with suspended licenses keep driving.
> This is the wild part. No! You don't drive again!
She's not going to drive again.
> For her to have recognised her own limitations before they took lives.
This is something that humans suck at.
> Failing at that, her family–or literally anyone who cared about her, and didn't want to see her spend her last years in jail–having taken initiative.
You shouldn't punish her for other people failing to take action.
Not usually with fatal consequences. These were preventable deaths. Not only that, the driver was being incredibly reckless, apparently driving 70 mph in a residential area.
> You shouldn't punish her for other people failing to take action
You're punishing her for being criminally reckless. You're creating an incentive structure that should reduce the frequency of future criminality.
In 3 years, at age 83, if she wanted to... she could try and take the driving test again and become licensed. This is just not going to happen :P In the end, the court can only prohibit her from driving while she is on probation.
Would it be great if this time she could be banned forever? Sure. But there's reasons why we don't just let judges make up arbitrary penalties and permanent restrictions on their own.
> Not usually with fatal consequences. These were preventable deaths. Not only that,
Humans don't misestimate their remaining ability with fatal consequences?
> the driver was being incredibly reckless, apparently driving 70 mph in a residential area.
Yes, by confusing gas and brake. She clearly has significantly reduced capacity.
> You're creating an incentive structure that should reduce the frequency of future criminality.
I do not think that the behavior of 80 year old people will be meaningfully changed by the degree of punishment applied here. This is a person that has lost a significant degree of capacity; unfortunately, humans losing capacity tend not to realize it or correctly estimate how much they have lost.
> she could try and take the driving test again and become licensed. This is just not going to happen
Why? More importantly, why is it on the table?
> the court can only prohibit her from driving while she is on probation
This seems incorrect. Lau was placed on probation for 2 years and had her license revoked for 3 [1].
> Would it be great if this time she could be banned forever? Sure. But there's reasons why we don't just let judges make up arbitrary penalties and permanent restrictions on their own
Straw man. Harsh and arbitrary are mostly orthogonal.
If you kill someone from behind the wheel, and you are at fault, the default punishment should be long-term license revocation and jail time. In almost no case do I see a reason for removing the requirement to spend time in prison altogether.
> Humans don't misestimate their remaining ability with fatal consequences?
Humans get taken off the roads and otherwise criminally incapacitated.
> do not think that the behavior of 80 year old people will be meaningfully changed by the degree of punishment applied here. This is a person that has lost a significant degree of capacity
I do. If the headline were she got years in jail, I'd bet at least a few families would weigh the cost of confronting a relative against the risk that they have to see them behind bars.
> I'd bet at least a few families would weigh the cost of confronting a relative against the risk that they have to see them behind bars.
See my comment just above, where I reply to someone who replied to you. "Confronting a relative"? Shit, I'd be happy if a few less relatives actively enabled people, "That doctor doesn't know what he's talking about, you're fine, mom, besides, it's kind of a pain for us to drive 10 minutes over to your house to help with an errand and then 10 minutes home. Just drive, no-one's going to pull you over."
> Straw man. Harsh and arbitrary are mostly orthogonal.
It's "arbitrary" because it's something that the legislature has not specifically allowed for. We do not allow judges to make up things on the spot for good reason.
> I do. If the headline were she got years in jail, I'd bet at least a few families would weigh the cost of confronting a relative against the risk that they have to see them behind bars.
I think the chance that grandpa might see prison time for driving is not really something that is going to change things much for families compared to "grandpa might kill someone" or "grandpa might get himself killed."
So your hypothetical is that someone reads the headline "elderly woman kills family of four with car due to incapacity, receives no jail time" and goes "oh, no jail? No biggie" but if they read a headline "... and receives life in prison" they're going to rush out and take away grandma's keys because now they care?
> And it doesn't work there, so why would it work for impaired driving?
It does actually. See how thieves resident in Florida travel to New York to work because of the different enforcement regimes for one of the clearest possible examples[1].
Even if deterrence didn’t work at all putting people in prison is good because of incapacitation. Committing crimes is stupidly right tailed[2]. Every career criminal in jail for a year is a year society doesn’t suffer their crimes.
Note that New York seems to have much lower property crime rates than Florida. It's usually difficult to compare this between jurisdictions but it seems pretty clear cut in this case.
It also seems like the percentage of goods lost to retail theft is slightly lower in New York than Florida.
c.f. you have a thirdhand cherry-picked quote from someone on a political site that implies differently.
> Not only that, the driver was being incredibly reckless, apparently driving 70 mph in a residential area.
I don't defend that woman at all and as someone who walked by that intersection on the day of the incident, 70 mph seems physically impossible there for a reasonable driver.
But it was not a totally residential area, it was a major transit hub of that part of town, where light rail and bus lines meet, a verrry short block away from lots of retail and restaurants.. That actually is an argument to go slower than in a purely residential area, because it's actually a congested area.
Definitely not given back. If I didn't misread it, she needs to take a new driver's test at 83, which she already declined applying for (though it'll be her right; we'd have to see if she stays by the decision or if the examiner deems her a safe driver)
> You're punishing her for being criminally reckless. You're creating an incentive structure that should reduce the frequency of future criminality.
Wtf? Try applying logic somewhere in the process. People don't enjoy killing others by accident, paying 64k, 200h community service, three years of trying to use American public transport before you can start the process of getting a license back, going through a whole court system, and, y'know, guilt that I'd imagine would cripple me for years
Edit: I'm very surprised, reading your other comments, they're overall legit sensible. Really struggling to comprehend how, here, you get from "someone did something by accident" to "you need life punishments or they'll have an incentive to mow the next person down". There's zero incentive for citizens to kill people in any society that I'm aware of, again even ignoring the internal problems it causes
> Definitely not given back. If I didn't misread it, she needs to take a new driver's test at 83, which she already declined applying for (though it'll be her right; we'd have to see if she stays by the decision or if the examiner deems her a safe driver)
Pretty likely that DMV Driver Safety has her record flagged and wants some additional evidence of medical capacity if she reapplies, too.
Your full-throated defense of Mary Lau is completely beside the point (and for what it's worth, it would be a fifth life, not a "second" -- she killed an entire family of four). GP claimed that human drivers who commit vehicular manslaughter get the book; they don't.
Sorry if my throat sounded full to you, just writing what I think fits the context. In this case, apparently an 80yo getting punished in various ways is what GP had as example of how criminals are getting off easy. I see this pattern constantly, where people can't be bothered to read an article with the background info (much less the court case summary itself) but join the march and sign the petitions to lock the person up for life or whatever the outcry is
It feels unfair to me, like it could have been me or the commenter in a parallel universe, and I don't expect either of us are evil and intending to do bad, so I bring up what the article actually says were the circumstances (no intent or recklessness proven beyond doubt) and consequences (at least, besides the guilt factor). Don't you feel this could happen to you tomorrow just as easily as to anyone else? Should you get a worse punishment than all of what this woman got (see above) for getting into an accident with a fatal outcome? (Assuming you drive a vehicle, of course)
So, like, a six year prison sentence? Maybe more for multiple counts here? At least revocation of driving privileges forever (she's not getting any younger)? None of that happened.
As well as making acquaintances with other criminals at a time where you're losing your job, apartment, your social network if the sentence lasts long enough
But, yes, also those two. It's a very multifaceted sword, and thankfully not the only option, not for any of the three goals
> Deterrence doesn't affect crimes born from impulse
And yet I've seen way more people call an Uber instead of drive home drunk not because they thought they'd kill someone, but because they didn't want a DUI.
Sounds like the insight is that people have varying degrees of forethought. Crime isn't mono-causal and therefore solutions shouldn't be expected to be monolithic.
And taking away a license in order to achieve that in the case of traffic offences couldn't possibly be the cheaper option for deterrence or incapacitation
There's a test every 5 years after iirc 65yo where they check things like response time, if you have enough strength for handling the wheel completely unimpeded, and if you aren't suffering from dementia. At least that's what I've heard from my grandparents about the tests they had to do. If that doesn't cover the age risk, imo that test would be the thing to fix. Not sure how strict those are in the USA
Since the article doesn't speak of her well-being, I don't think we can judge here whether this woman should have taken herself out of society already (from what I hear, the USA isn't exactly public transport or walking friendly, assuming she can still walk distances in the first place, idk what old people are supposed to do there)
The other three factors you mentioned were not at play here according to the linked article. But I agree in general of course, and in those cases I don't disagree with extra punishment (and/or, the better preventor: increasing the odds of being caught)
Every 5 years is ridiculous. The difference between 80 and 85 can be stark. I have to get refresher training every two years to legally fly a small plane and that’s something where it takes some serious work to kill anyone who isn’t me or my passenger.
In a sense you're right, but the problem is that post-facto consequences are all we are left with when there is no political will to pre-regulate. If one started talking about requiring retesting to keep your license starting at age 60 or even 70, the pitchforks would come out. But that is the type of thing it would have taken to avoid "ruining" the first four lives here.
(and the same pattern plays out on a much larger scale in the world of big business)
Is that a question? I'm not sure if you're expecting an answer about maybe she should have tried praying for the person to be brought back or what would legit help the situation at that point?
Odd point to raise in a thread about a family killed while waiting at a bus stop in broad daylight. Do you think reflective clothing would have changed the outcome of the event significantly?
In the context of this thread, it's worth pointing out that "trying to deceive regulators" is quite normal behavior for individual human drivers involved in car incidents, and iirc the Cruise collision itself also involved a human driver performing a hit-and-run who didn't afaict ever get prosecuted or come forward to police.
They have to operate in California though, so I don't blame them.
This is a state that made me a criminal for putting the wrong air filter on my car (Clearly my bad for putting on the 49 State legal version that makes the tailpipe emissions cleaner).
It wasn't "because of an incident", it was because they were required to submit a report about that (or any other) incident, did so, and then the security footage proved that they straight up lied in the report about that particular incident.
If they just told the truth, they wouldn't lose their licence, but they couldn't even oblige by this piss-poor regulatory action in which they were required to do nothing but self-report any incident.
I believe you, but that really highlights how dangerous small regulatory overheads are. One - quite reasonable - frame on what you're saying is that there was no problem with Cruise except they failed to engage with the bureaucracy properly on some relatively minor points.
That sort of behaviour should be an aggravating factor if they're actually misbehaving. If they aren't, then it is poor policy to try and put them out of business over paperwork.
The refutation of your point is in the article itself. The standard, by law, punishment involves jail time or home confinement. The judge explained how those punishments were not appropriate because of the exceptional circumstances.
> And there is precedent for the light manslaughter sentencing of an older driver. In 2003, George Weller, 86, killed 10 pedestrians at the Santa Monica Farmers Market after confusing the gas and brake pedals. He received five years of probation. The judge in that case said that Mr. Weller’s age and declining health had contributed to the decision.
This is the assertion. You can recognize it because the obvious reply is that it is not at all a representative example, but one that you just handpicked. You're question-begging.
Twin Cities, 2010-2014: 95 pedestrians killed in 3,069 crashes. 28 drivers were charged and convicted of a crime, most often a misdemeanor ranging from speeding to careless driving. ~70% of pedestrian-killing drivers faced no criminal charge[0].
Bay Area, 2007-2011 (CIR investigation): sixty percent of drivers that were at fault, or suspected of being at fault, faced no criminal charges. Over 40 percent of drivers charged did not lose their driver's licenses, even temporarily[1].
Philadelphia, 2017–2018: just 16 percent of the drivers were charged with a felony in fatal crashes[2].
Los Angeles, 2010–2019: 2,109 people were killed in traffic collisions on L.A. streets... and nearly half were pedestrians. Booked on vehicular manslaughter: 158 people. The vast majority of drivers who kill someone with their car are not arrested[3].
I can literally do this all day. The original statement was correct, the case representative.
Now we’re talking. So much misinformation in this thread. There’s a reason that the saying, “if you want to kill someone, do it with a car” exists. Fortunately, it seems like judges are finally starting to wake up to the idea that it’s unreasonable for drivers to claim ignorance about the increased risks (and thus intent) of making poor/illegal decisions when being the wheel.
This thread talks about driverless cars; vehicular manslaughter requires negligence or intent, do you want to find narrowed statistics for driverless cars that are restricted to negligence or intent?
Criminality is basically just a checkbox for this stuff. Most of the time people wouldn't be going to jail for these sorts of crimes, it'd just be big fines and penalties. There's almost always administrative/civil infractions of the same or similar name that has the same or greater punishment but are far more efficient for the state to prosecute because the accused has fewer rights.
It makes for good appeal to emotion headlines to say these people aren't getting charged with crimes, but that's only half the story. They're likely lawyering up and pleading to a civil infraction that has approx the same penalties.
And this is true not just for this issue but for many subject areas of administrative law. Taxes, SEC, environmental, etc, etc, all operate mostly like this.
It's easy for a writer to pander to certain demographics and get people whipped into a frenzy by writing an easy article about prosecuting rates using public data. Actually contacting these agencies and figuring out what they actually did is hard and in the modern media economy doesn't offer much upside for the work.
Someone (i forget who) wrote that if someone invented a technology equally beneficial and equally harmful it wouldnt even be considered today but 100 years ago they wouldnt even question it. It was labor as usual.
Personally i would like to see a more granual permission to drive based on performance, need and demography.
I think it's not too surprising that the law treats people with diminished capacity differently. It's not a bug, it's a feature, even though it may feel upsetting. There's no winning solution in a case like that.
Well, if the law treats them differently when it comes to punishment, then maybe it should treat them differently when it comes to being able to drive in the first place?
Yup. And we do have some degree of safeguards here-- admittedly, less in California than many other states. They are: physician required reporting of disqualifying conditions, ability for other people to report concerns about capability to drive, and the requirement to show up and undergo vision testing and not flag other concerns in the process.
There's a tradeoff between reducing the very low rate of unsafe driving by the elderly and the burden added to the very old. People over 65+ are still possibly safer, overall, than teenagers.
In the US, 11 deaths per billion miles driven (or about 47k per year) is currently seen as an OK cost.
More than twice as much per mile as places like Sweden and Switzerland, and still substantially more than places like Canada, Australia or Germany (all three in the 6-8 deaths per billion miles range). So it's not like there isn't room to improve. The effort to do so just isn't seen as worth the cost at the societal or government level
Turning that into a monetary cost would change the ethics slightly, but it wouldn't be a monumental shift
The issue here is that a lot of the concerns about AV's are orthogonal to the standard metrics of concern.
I'm a strong transit alternatives advocate, but even I recognize that a firetruck or ambulance being blocked by an AV has the potential to cause an outsized amount of death and destruction, because deaths aren't always linear and a fire that is able to get out of control can do catastrophic damage compared to a single out of control vehicle.
I'm genuinely stunned that AV's do not have the ability to be "commandeered" by Police/Fire/EMS in a pinch, and I'm honestly surprised that regular citizens can't just hit a red button that signal "this is seriously an emergency." These are fairly simple steps to mitigate the tail risk of AV's but the platforms aren't going to prioritize that if there are no incentives.
We already accept that it’s fine for human drivers to block emergency services and we generally refuse to build, say, bus and bike lines that can be used by emergency services.
So the uproar over AV’s blocking emergency vehicles seems incredibly manufactured or inconsistent, much like the hoopla over AI and water.
e.g. You can take anyone complaining about this and you’ll find they didn’t care about emergency vehicles or water until just now regarding one thing. I’d like to see some consistency.
The difference is blocking emergency vehicles in predictable, high traffic areas that can be intentionally avoided vs randomly blocking an entire road because you couldn’t handle a weird event.
People actually think hard about these problems. The entire point of my post is that it is trivial to mitigate.
I was in the middle of the SF blackout, and witnessed the Waymos stopped at lights and actually commended Waymo for handling the emergency so well. At the same time, I’ve seen many ambulances get blocked just seconds away from the hospital because of Waymos unable to navigate complex intersections like oak/fell and stanyan.
> I'm genuinely stunned that AV's do not have the ability to be "commandeered" by Police/Fire/EMS in a pinch, and I'm honestly surprised that regular citizens can't just hit a red button that signal "this is seriously an emergency."
The passenger of a Waymo can, but not anyone outside it. There's a very prominent "call for help" button on the screen when you get inside.
I've never actually tried it, but I would expect customer service to be able to move the car out of the way or push it to someone who can remotely pilot it.
Again, the main issue is that these things can cause problems with nobody is in the car. It shouldn't even be a debate. Emergency services should have a key that unlocks them and allows them to be commandeered. Everyone inside is being filmed all the time, so anyone going for a joyride is being watched, the car could be shut down remotely, and the person could trivially charged with a number of felonies, and then that access key could be removed.
If Waymo can't play well with emergency services, then they've got long term sustainability problems.
At least in SF, there’s both a phone number and a QR code on a sticker on the driver-side window, and per what’s linked from https://waymo.com/firstresponders/ it seems like that’s a dedicated phone line.
I wonder quite what the priority matrix looks like for support requests; I’d expect something like:
1. First responders
2. Human-initiated in-vehicle
3. Autonomous-initiated vehicle
But I of course don’t know.
Buttons are something that seem inherently obviously (both internal and external), but I’m also never sure quite how useful they’d be: a lot of the things that have gathered press have involved vehicles driving when it was unsafe to do so, and then any external button is of minimal use.
I also expect they have some level of concern about anything external having an abuse potential? (e.g., deliberately walk in front of an AV just to stop it in the road)
Something like “give first responders some mobile app which provides some level of direct control” feels like it should be doable (authentication there seems unlikely to be harder than the various “educational” authentication gates that Alphabet has in many products) — though of course that doesn’t scale with more AV operators, and thus maybe this just falls into the category of “this should be standardised” (by whatever SDO).
And some can clearly just leverage existing datasets — many jurisdictions have ways to publish things like “this road is closed from X to Y”, and you can imagine a slightly broader case of “close a radius of Z from point A” being something you might want, especially in the AV case (imagine a “police incident” closing an intersection, such as the one a Waymo drove through a few months ago — you probably want to close a bit beyond the interaction itself in all directions!).
And sure, to some extent things can be handled by AVs getting better at understanding their surroundings, but we’ll always have the question of whether they’re good enough, especially when they fail in non-human like ways.
Interesting, I can't say I've seen that sticker, but I've never looked for one there, either, as you're not supposed to use the driver's seat and it's always buckled up.
Don't forget to add rail incidents to that metric. I live in Spain, this year we had 4 derailments for a total of 48 deaths and 195 injured. The USA has had 0 passengers killed or injured from train accidents this year. Portugal had 15 death after a tram derailment. In Amsterdam, the tram is more dangerous than the car.
Also Germany is very high (for European standards) because of the Autobahn. They can save around 140 lives a year by having a limit on the Autobahn but the car lobby in Germany is very strong. Those 140 lives are seen as an OK cost just to go vroom on the Autobahn.
> Not to mention that trains are far safer than automobiles too.
This claim is situationally true, but not universally so like many people seem to believe. For example, Brightline rail service in Florida has been operating since 2017 and averages (by my math) 29.8 deaths / 100M passenger-miles, while the road system in Florida averages 0.89 deaths / 100M passenger-miles. Those deaths are mostly not suicides, and imo we should treat pedestrian deaths from trains as substantially more morally weighty than passenger deaths, since it's a victim that didn't opt-in to the risk.
For what it's worth, the unusual spike in Spain train crashes this year seems to have pushed them barely over the fatality numbers of Spanish cars (0.91 deaths/100M pax-mi vs 0.73 for cars) but that's pretty clearly an outlier.
If you measure per vehicle-mile rather than per passenger-mile I'm pretty sure trains are always way more dangerous, although that's a less fair comparison.
Hm, it's only something like 10% of German traffic fatalities that occur on the autobahn. And according to wikipedia, Germany doesn't rank high in terms of traffic fatalities, even by European standards. France has a similar number of highway deaths. I'm personally not a fan of the autobahn and especially not the unrestricted speed. It seems obvious that it should cause lots of fatalities, but the evidence for it just doesn't seem to be there.
But in general: freeways/motorways (whatever you want to call them) almost never account for the majority of fatalities anywhere — there’s a lot that makes them safer than the average rural road even given comparable speeds, and there’s fewer vulnerable road users around.
Maybe I expressed myself poorly. Generally, higher speed is associated with higher fatality rates, all else being equal. So, one would assume a highway without speed limits would cause lots of fatalities. Most people would probably be surprised to learn that this is not the case.
If there is anything remotely potentially dangerous, unlimited speed ends and the road gets well defined and enforced speed limit. If the traffic on that segment of the road gets high, they put in speed limit sign too.
Moreover, there is a question of liability for the insurance purpose. If you go above 130, you are assumed to be caused of the accident. So, most Germans go roughly 130 in those segments anyway.
> Don't forget to add rail incidents to that metric. I live in Spain, this year we had 4 derailments for a total of 48 deaths and 195 injured.
Yeah and how many in the 15 years prior? 112. Of which 80 were in a single (TGV) crash.
How many people die each year in Spanish roads? Thousands.
> The USA has had 0 passengers killed or injured from train accidents this year.
Can't have rail accidents if you don't have rail *taps side of head*
> Portugal had 15 death after a tram derailment.
Oh my god, after a 140-year old tourist attraction malfunctioned! Hardly representative of any transit system whatsoever.
> In Amsterdam, the tram is more dangerous than the car.
This is just not true, by any metric.
And also, why are cars comparatively less dangerous in Amsterdam than in most other places? Because it is not designed for cars first, there are low speed limits enforced by traffic calming (like speed humps and narrow cobbled streets) everywhere.
Trams in Amsterdam should be replaced with busses. Busses stop much faster and don't weigh as much. Trams are literal death machines. It's really scary to ride bicycle in Amsterdam and hear the ding-ding-ding when you are about to be run over by a tram and you quickly have to move over.
Also you seem to be a bit confused, Amsterdam does not use narrow cobbled streets for traffic calming. Maybe you are thinking of France or Belgium.
No. The traffic rules for trams or tram stop positions should be adjusted and people in Amsterdam should be educated to behave around trams, i.e. in traffic in general if they want fewer deaths.
There are literally marks on every step of their path "tram is going through here, coming from there", so those that die anyway should be the ones at fault. It's horrible that they die, but banning trams is not a valid response to it. After the people have started behaving like that around trams, there isn't really a reason to assume they won't start being (even more) reckless around the less predictable and bulkier busses. You fixed braking time, but cyclists get clipped more often going out of their track as they do already. I mean, look at the description of an accident: allegedly she wore a hoodie with headphones and some stops after the intersections incentivize higher tram speeds.
Start fixing that before banning the safest and the most efficient form of transport (57x more than cars, with the amount of cars they have, number of close interactions with cyclists/pedestrians, and the imposed traffic rules for cars, isn't really a valid multiplier), scrapping all the tram lines and adjusting road tracks widths just to have buses brake harder on asphalt isn't really a fix of the problem, just a reaction to a symptom.
You sound like someone trying to justify guns. "People should be educated to behave round them". No. Trams in Amsterdam are very dangerous and replacing them with long busses makes everything better.
Tram is not the safest form of transport, that would be the bus. As stated trams are way more deadly than cars.
And no, trams are not marked. Not in Amsterdam. Trams share the exact same path as pedestrians and cyclists, they don't have their own lanes for most parts of the route.
What about people who are visually impaired? Have hearing troubles? Should those people just stay home?
Well, I hope you don't have a say in that matter, not because you disagree, but because you ignored all of the reasoning behind my points, just to repeat the same.
Your analogy about guns is irrelevant because all the negative aspects of advocating for guns are missing here, while education is always helpful. I am advocating for the safest and the most efficient option for everyone. And I said why is it so. You only mentioned braking time/distance without any evidence about buses being less lethal in the long run when substituting trams:
The same braking time can be achieved by decreasing the trams' speed (30 km/h to 20 km/h) around pedestrians and cyclists, which is more efficient than removing the tram network, making space for buses, buying and maintaining twice as many buses for the same throughput, and replacing the asphalt quite often. Keeping the trams will decrease the likelihood of pedestrians and bicyclists being clipped by bulky long buses (double the number of encounters compared to trams), while still making it easier for everyone to know where the tram may come from whenever they see the tracks (and it can't swerve, so a person knows exactly how to move in a close encounter), so that they can steer clear of its path and only cross it after they make sure there is no tram passing. Introducing the buses either reintroduces toxic exhaust gases, or buses' weight advantage gets massively decreased by carrying the batteries, while increasing the tires' and asphalt damage and shedding. Also, it doesn't mean that the trend of increasing recklessness won't continue around "safer" vehicles: I bet people were more wary of trams before, just like they are in other cities with trams.
Recklessness and abandonment of personal responsibility for own safety shouldn't be a reason for everyone else to bend over backwards. There is enough of a safety net for the wannabe Darwin award winners as-is, with trams in place. Decreasing speed, moving the stations ahead of intersections, and raising awareness that the trams are still dangerous is a reasonable change of policy. Even a pilot-project driving buses on a dangerous tram lane could be reasonable, to gather data. Blindly overhauling the whole network without a strong indicator that it's even a move in the right direction, just to maybe find a way to prolong the lives of those who themselves don't really care about their lives.
Btw, visually impaired and those of bad hearing generally know very well to use their other senses to stay safe in this as well as even worse conditions. And are better off with rails marking the trams' path (or even other markings, if introduced), than relying on the buses' braking distance.
And please avoid pretending to be dumb and saying that the trams are more deadly than the cars, without taking into account how separated the cars' roads are from pedestrians' and cyclists paths as well as their passenger throughput in Amsterdam and their speed limits. If Amsterdam had the same throughput of passengers in buses instead of trams, with buses equally mixing with pedestrians and cyclists, I bet the situation wouldn't be much different, with you equally fixated only on absolute numbers multiplier, asking for trams.
Btw, why don't you ask for cars to replace the trams? Buses, despite not being as mixed with pedestrians as trams are, racking in kilometers after midnight and between cities like cars do, still cause 15x more deaths per km than cars do.
Coming from a bio background, I’ve always been confused why auto fatality stats are normalized per miles driven. Epidemiological metrics like incidence or prevalence seem like they would work fine? Town A would be “safer” than town B if people’s commutes are 20% shorter, even if accidents occur w same frequency
Because it yields a simple corollary that to make travelling safer you can reduce the number of miles driven. Mostly by giving people viable alternatives to driving, be it long-distance rail or bike lanes to move around quicker and safer in the city.
Fair point - a combo might be the best approach.. I understand the idea of accidents correlating w/ miles driven, but it seems to be optimizing for driving safety rather than human life? Does that make sense?
Because fines are automatic. If you register a vehicle to your name and don't insure it within 28 days you get a €500 fine. The government can fine you up to three times a year for a total of €1500. And that is if you actually pay the fines. If you do not pay the fines and let the fees stack up, you are looking at around €4500 per year.
And if you are caught driving uninsured that is a €700 fine on top of all that. With many police cars now having ANPR systems it just isn't possible to drive around uninsured without receiving fines that cost way more than just getting insurance.
> there are a large group of people dependent on their driver's license
Are there "no licence cars" in Belgium and the US ? Basically a moped motor and a seat inside a box. 45kmh and no highway, but a bit more confortable and fast than a ebike for rural environment.
Those do exist in Belgium, but (joke starts here) that's because Belgium is enormous, far too large to get proper public transport going (joke ends). I am seeing more and more cargo e-bikes (e-cargo bikes?), which I find a positive change, though it does differ from place to place (Antwerp's fairly okay for bikes, same for Leuven, Brussels was pretty bad last time I was there).
Not really, the cross section of people who lose their license/insurance and those that could use something like an ebike reliably for their commute is practically zilch. The US is really big and a lot of people have rural 30+ minute commutes where it snows ~6 months out of the year.
> The US is really big and a lot of people have rural 30+ minute commutes
The size of the country in which a commute is contained is immaterial to the length of that commute. What you mean is not "the US is big" but "things are really far apart in the US". Which they are, but precisely because of car-centric (car-only, actually) design.
You are right that this happens frequently in the United States compared to Europe, but you are overstating the degree to which this culturally and legally acceptable. People who are doing this are not typically broadcasting it to others, and I can assure you that when they do, for the most part people will tend to "bat an eye" at the very least.
Note that motor vehicle insurance in most of Europe is more tightly regulated and generally more affordable than in the United States. Also, I suspect the car-dependent individuals in urban areas with robust public transportation in Belgium are generally vastly higher income than the typical uninsured compulsory driver in the United States. Happy to be corrected though
> you are overstating the degree to which this culturally and legally acceptable
In Florida it's a $150 fine [1]. If you do it again within 3 years, they charge you $250. If you do it again within that three-year period, they'll just charge you $500 each time. It's not even a crime [2].
> But if you ask someone if they'd drive without insurance, or without driver's license they look at you like you've asked them to do the impossible.
> Whereas in the US no-one bats an eye when that happens. Half the time the cops just issue a ticket, and don't even tow the car.
A lot of the people driving without insurance or licenses in the US are illegal immigrants, which means enforcement of driving illegally is caught up in the same cultural-war fight over immigration law enforcement that has dominated American news since Trump got re-elected. "And now people who obey the law need to take out extra insurance for under/uninsured motorists" is specifically an anti-illegal-immigrant talking point.
It's equally a consequence of not immediately arresting and deporting illegal immigrants the moment the government learns about their presence on US soil.
The easy way to accomplish that would be to go after the businesses that employ them. At this point, however, I think it's safe to assume it's not the real objective, and the economy would crash into a ditch if policy was anything but theater.
> Losing one's license means destitution for many Americans.
That'd be the same for a Swede who lives in the middle of nowhere too. Although I'm sure both groups, if they'd loose their license, would continue driving anyways.
...But what percentage of Swedes is that? vs the vast majority of working-class Americans.
Remember, outside of its few biggest and wealthiest cities, the US just does not have decent, reliable public transport, and most places don't have any.
And how many Americans live in places without any public transport?
As a European I spend some time in LA and Las Vegas and while not optimal I could get everywhere without a car. I could even do a day-trip to Bakersfield by bus.
Your anecdata to this one time you took a trip to California doesn’t help.
You can just look at % of urban residents that use transit, which is lower in US than any western country. Clearly transit isn’t built or available in a sufficient way to majority of people
> So it's not like there isn't room to improve. The effort to do so just isn't seen as worth the cost at the societal or government level
That effort being what, exactly?
Road fatalities per mile driven don’t translate cleanly from country to country because the type of roads and even types of deaths (single vehicle, multi vehicle) are different.
We could set the speed limit at 25mph everywhere and force all vehicles to not exceed that limit and that would make the number go down, but the cost would be extreme for everyone.
So what, exactly, are the solutions you are proposing?
Doesn’t that 11 per billion statistic include commercial drivers as well? And doesn’t the United States have by far the largest percentage of commercial miles driven of any developed nation?
There’s a far cheaper solution available. Log books.
We subsidize driving by somewhat over a trillion dollars annually, mostly due to lax penalties for negligence which shift liability to drivers’ victims[1]. One way to tackle all of these problems would be requiring drivers to cover the full damages.
Another simple and effective measure would be changing fines from absolute values to a percentage of income. Right now, parking in a bike lane usually doesn’t kill anyone so drivers are only thinking there’s a small chance of a small fine, but if it was a chance of, say, 0.1% of annual income Waymo technology would magically be capable of not doing that. Add a right of private action and enforcement would be high enough to really speed things along, too, and that’d improve safety and travel times for all road users.
Yeah, making fines relative to income would change behaviors for sure. A $20 ticket when you make $20 an hour hits different when you're making $200 or $2,000/hr. If it was a percentage of pay, then the ticket would actually sting.
> If a human driver commits vehicular manslaughter, they get the book. What about AV?
They get their licenses pulled statewide [1]. Cruise's single negligent manslaughter event carried more consequence than dozens of human cases combined.
The CEO gets charged with manslaughter? I work in healthtech and the responsible individual is certainly personally liable for any harm that results from reckless behavior, it should be the same here.
Same as if someone were driving, if a person just jumps in front of your car while you're driving under the limit/sober/etc, you aren't at fault, so the AV should also not be at fault if it couldn't reasonably avoid the harm. You balance these things, benefit to society vs harm to society, and you come to an acceptable tradeoff.
Could you provide examples of healthcare executives held personally liable for harm resulting from reckless decision-making? I have never heard of such a thing happening in healthcare so framing CEO responsibility as a solution to the problem sounds like a stretch to me.
Some examples: Elizabeth Holmes got canned for lying to investors, not harming patients. Purdue Pharma plead guilty to misleading regulators and giving doctors kickbacks, not causing some hundreds of thousands of opioid deaths, but no Sackler family members were personally tried.
I work in the UK, where regulations are different, and there have been a few cases. Maybe not as many as there should be, but in theory this is something that exists in law.
> The CEO gets charged with manslaughter? I work in healthtech and the responsible individual is certainly personally liable for any harm that results from reckless behavior, it should be the same here.
This is in like China, yes? Certainly not in the US of A, hence Luigi and all that…
> We can’t let AV manufacturers use “there’s no driver” as a way to escape responsibility, externalizing the harms AC cause onto society.
There is essentially nothing to be gained from doing this because it will not in either case be manufacturer; it will be an insurance company.
If the liability is paid by the vehicle owner's insurance then things work as they do now. You buy a car, insure it, if there is a liability there is an insurance claim and then the victim has someone to pay them for their injuries. Meanwhile the manufacturers still have a financial incentive to make safer cars because buyers want neither accident prone vehicles as the one they use nor high insurance rates. The insurance rates in particular are in direct competition with the car payment for the customer's available income.
Whereas if you try to put the liability on the manufacturer, several stupider things happen.
First, they're just going to buy insurance anyway, but now the insurance cost has to be front-loaded into the purchase price, which increases costs because now you're paying car loan interest on money to cover insurance five and ten years from now, when you otherwise wouldn't have needed to pay the premiums until the time comes.
Second, what happens to cars from manufacturers who no longer exist? They can't continue paying for insurance if they're bankrupt, so you need it to be someone else. Worse, if a company produces a vehicle which is unsafe, that will tend to cause them to go bankrupt. But then people still have them, and would continue to operate them if they're allowed to point victims at the bankrupt manufacturer, whereas the incentive you want is for the premiums on those cars to go up for the vehicle owners so that they stop operating them.
> What if $10 million fine per X AV miles driven is an OK cost of doing business?
It’s the same cost/benefit we accept under current rules. Why have cars that can go 3x the speed limit? Why not require breathalyzers in cars before starting them? Why not fine logistics companies if one of their drivers breaks the law? And so on… Because it’s worth it
I hope it’s better than other sensor tech in cars that think they need to warn you that you’re about to hit something at the front when the car is in reverse, that can't distinguish a bike rack statically attached to the car from the environment, and so on.
Your questions are pertinent but what’s the benefit "worth" you’re referring to? The two first proposals would risk a politician popularity and the last one would be lobbied to he’ll buy the logistic companies. IMHO inconvenience isn’t worth driving among drunk coursier at 200kmh.
If we consider fairness/retribution/justice then we won't get this future of less road deaths.
1. There will always be a probability of death from a vehicle. This can never go to 0%.
2. If the probability of a AV causing death is many magnitudes lower than human driving then that is the future we must choose.
If 1 and 2 holds and we hold AV manufactures accountable in the sense that Executives go to jail or are personal liable financially for deaths/injuries then AV will never get released or become mainstream even if this results in less total deaths. The sense of fairness/justice/retribution may make us feel better but result in more overall deaths. Logically this means that there must be a standard. Something like x deaths per y cars manufactured. If above the threshold you get big fines as a company. As technology gets better you can lower the threshold. Anything apart from causing deaths either purposefully or negligently would have be ignored.
Can we as a species accept this? That is another question.
We can look to other forms of automation to get a sense of what to do. For example, planes largely fly themselves and a loss of life due to manufacturing errors from the manufacturer would deem them liable for those deaths. Seems like the solution here is large penalties and generally broad disincentives for incurring harm.
These people want to play god with our lives but at the same time move fast and break things. Look at software quality anywhere, it's a mess and only about to get much worse.
We should not let them. Jail time for anyone involved in any of the decision making process, applied at scale with the number of vehicles and deaths.
Why should the standards be any different? They want to change the status quo with tech only so they can get paid and extort us with yet more subscriptions.
AVs will never substantially reduce road deaths. They will optimize to just being slightly better than human, but fail in new and more unexpected ways. There is not enough incentive for them to make it safer.
I think jail time for executives should be table stakes. Another thing would be fines well in excess of $10 million. The fines should be defined as percentages of gross revenue, or maybe even (to target VC-funded operations that operate at a loss) percentages of gross expenses. The penalties should be such that a few crashes can put the company entirely out of business.
I also hope AV will reduce road deaths in the future but I don't think what will make the difference is regulatory. Rather the tech will advance from doesn't work to works in Waymos but is expensive to works in most cars and has become cheap.
People are killed by industrial equipment fairly regularly.
I'd say we actually have a perfectly functional legal framework for all of this, and the real issue is a lot of new people are about to find out it also applies to them as well.
Whether it was working well in the first place is the real question.
Simple. Blame the owner of the vehicle. They relied on automation and it failed. They go to jail for negligent homicide (whatever flavor is appropriate). That will tank sales of any AV tech that cannot maintain standards.
Many things already reduce road deaths and they are infinitely easier to do that driverless cars, namely: viable alternatives to driving! Trains, streetcars, bike lanes, whatever.
Then it’s an okay cost of doing business. $10 million is a lot of money and consequences for these companies are not purely legal they are also social consequences.
I had to look up a name for this. "Utopian Fallacy."
You don't have to get rid of genuine progress just because your utopian vision has something better. The USA is on the path to autonomous vehicles. They are not on the path to public transportation excellence.
Yup. Even if "safer per mile", more cars and more miles driven will probably outweigh the benefits. And still be hazardous to cyclists and pedestrians, still make us design stupid cities (built for cars, not people), etc.
Like how electric cars were for saving the car companies, not the planet, autonomous will be the same.
We've had public transportation for a couple of centuries and no where has it really led to a road death free utopia. I like public transport but no harm trying something new.
Societies can already reduce road deaths to nearly zero, it's cheap, it's easy, and it's fun. It's just redirecting all of the cash we spend on vehicles/cars/highways/roadways/signs/etc into public infrastructure that is all encompassing.
A hundred billion dollars a year [0] on construction (reading the definition I'm not 100% sure what is included in this due to how definitions can be hazy) has goes a long way, not to mention the amount we spend on gasoline, car maintenance, etc etc.
The reason I say it's fun, is because I love being on a train. First time I was able to ride one, which due to living in the good old USA wasn't until I was 23, I yelled "I'm on a train" . The Germans traveling with me weren't as into it.
Just because you like trains does not mean that it is actually a solution to everyone’s problem. For example, until proper law-enforcement starts happening on public transit, nobody in my family is allowed to take it in USA (they are allowed to do so in Singapore or Japan)
We can take the LEO's that would have patrolled highways/city streets and have them patrol on public transport, same job just slightly different environment.
Can I ask why you feel that public transit is unsafe in the US?
This is the same attitude as people who are afraid of commercial flying despite it being the single safest form of transport. I get it. But it's irrational.
You might not get stabbed, but driving is incredibly dangerous. Even just in terms of violence: road rage is tolerated to a large extent in America. The difference is that the news doesn't report even a small fraction of the traffic deaths in this country. In Iowa, the state I used to live in, around 300 people died every year from driving. I don't know a single one of those people despite their death being a tragedy. Whereas the stories you linked were broadcast coast to coast.
I can control the safety of my car by buying a bigger car, driving certain ways, etc. You are comparing risks you have no control over with risks that you do.
But I am in no way stopping you. Feel free to take USA public transit, and (i truly do not know how) look your family in the eyes and encourage them to do the same. I truly hope that I do not read about your or your family in the news in this light (nobody deserves that), but your chances will be higher than mine.
Holding executives responsible for actual violence is considered promoting violence on this site and is not allowed. Cue the handwringing and moralizing from the usual suspects.
To be blunt it doesn't matter if you have a choice or not - this sort of behavior shouldn't be permitted either way. It's an appliance that at this point serves an essential function in society so user hostile behavior ought to be strictly prohibited.
The guiding principle should continue to be that manufacturers and retailers don't get to control the second hand market or dictate what users do with the things they purchase. Digital controls used to thwart the owner's freedom should be outlawed.
Apple is, because of vendor-lock in. Once you're sufficiently dependent on Apple's ecosystem it becomes painful to switch to a competitor because it requires switching to a different smartphone which then locks you out of most of Apple's ecosystem.
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Hi, my name is Calvin. I'm a staff SWE with 6.5 years experience spanning from operating system development to cloud, full-stack to simulation solutions. I'm comfortable at every level of the stack, and enjoy teaching what I know. I have an eye for quality and performance, and love hard problems.
You can say the same thing as we invented the atomic bomb.
Cool science and engineering, no doubt.
Not paying any attention to societal effects is not cool.
Plus, presenting things as inevitabilities is just plain confidently trying to predict the future. Anyone can san “I understand one day this era will be history and X will have happened”. Nobody knows how the future will play out. Anyone who says they do is a liar. If they actually knew then go ahead and bet all your savings on it.
I do say the same thing about the bomb. It was very cool science and engineering. I've studied many of the scientists behind the Manhattan Project, and the work that got us there.
That doesn't mean I also must condone our use of the bomb, or condone US imperialism. I recognize the inevitability of atomic science; unless you halt all scientific progress forever under threat of violence, it is inevitable that a society will have to reckon with atomic science and its implications. It's still fascinating, dude. It's literally physics, it's nature, it's humbling and awesome and fearsome and invaluable all at the same time.
> Not paying any attention to societal effects is not cool.
This fails to properly contextualize the historical facts. The Nazis and Soviets were also racing to create an atomic bomb, and the world was in a crisis. Again, this isn't ignorant of US imperialism before, during or after the war and creation of the bomb. But it's important to properly contextualize history.
> Plus, presenting things as inevitabilities is just plain confidently trying to predict the future.
That's like trying to admonish someone for watching the Wright Brothers continually iterate on aviation, witnessing prototype heavier-than-air aircraft flying, and suggesting that one day flight will be an inevitable part of society.
The steady march of automation is an inevitability my friend, it's a universal fact stemming from entropy, and it's a fallacy to assume that anything presented as an inevitability is automatically a bad prediction. You can make claims about the limits of technology, but even if today's frontier models stop improving, we've already crossed a threshold.
> Anyone who says they do is a liar.
That's like calling me a liar for claiming that the sun will rise tomorrow. You're right; maybe it won't! Of course, we will have much, much bigger problems at that point. But any rational person would take my bet.
There’s physical dependence and there’s psychological dependence. Most drugs can cause both, but hallucinogens in particular are usually thought to cause only psychological dependence. Whether that makes them less dangerous is debatable, but the fact is, they can still cause addiction if used carelessly.
Now to your main point... dopamine hits aren’t inherently good or bad. They can, however, also make things addictive, and drug abuse is indeed a good parallel here.
You can plot all activities on a spectrum of dopamine 'cheapness'. On one side of the spectrum is slot machines, various drugs, and doomscrolling. These generally involve little effort, and involve 'variable ratio reinforcement' which is where you get rewards at unpredictable intervals in such a way that you get addicted. Generally, after a long session of one of these activities, you feel like crap.
On the other side of the spectrum is more wholesome long-horizon activities like a challenging side project, career progression, or fitness goals. There's certainly an element of variable ratio reinforcement in all of these, but because the rewards are so much more tangible, and you get to exercise more of your agency, these activities generally feel quite meaningful on reflection.
Playing pinball is somewhere in the middle, probably on the cheaper side of the spectrum. Introspective people can generally reflect on a session and decide whether it was a good use of their time or not.
I really think that 'how do you feel after a long session of this' is a good measuring stick. Very few people will tell you that they feel good after a long session of social media scrolling or short-form content.
Another good measuring stick is 'do you want to want to be doing this?'. I want to want to go to the gym and gain 10kg of muscle. I do not want to want to spend hours on tiktok every day.
If we look at the effects, no, I don’t think so. I see how pinball could be optimized for addictiveness, but I don’t see a lot of people devoting all their free time to it.
Now, it is more nuanced than that. Is addiction bad for us? And at what point do we say we’re addicted to something? For me personally, when I can’t stop doing something (say, watching YouTube instead of working on a project), I won’t be happy long-term. It would be more gratifying short-term, sure, but I’d say it’s still not good.
One question is, even if I unwisely stay up all night doing something (reading comics, say), how do we decide whether to blame the thing for tricking me, or whether it's my own responsibility? Another question is, do we even know our own minds and truly know when we're being unwise? I note that many binges that I would have beaten myself up over at the time were in retrospect great, and the worthy things I assumed I should have been doing instead were actually pointless. So this suggests to me that having an authority dictate to, e.g., comic publishers "you are tempting the public into unwise habits, desist" would be a bad thing because the authority doesn't actually know what's unwise much better than we do.
We can look at intent: comic publishers want to make them interesting and capture your attention for some time, but do they make them addictive? And we can also look at the scale – if a product is reliably addictive across a wide audience, it might be bad for society, not just for individuals. If both criteria are met, it’s probably reasonable to blame the “dealer” of the thing in question.
But I agree that we should be able to decide for ourselves what is good for us – delegating it to authority isn’t a great solution, it should always be our own responsibility. We should, however, be especially cautious when making decisions about things that are known to be addictive for others.
Christ, this is like a textbook definition of sealioning. You've hijacked multiple threads here persistently asking for more and more evidence of their claims. If you don't agree with an argument, provide your own counter evidence. Stop harassing people and do your own work, or stop reading the threads with people you don't think have valid opinions or have no evidence.
At this point, I'd almost think you were a bot yourself, as your oblivious to the social standards of online forums and/or manipulating them intentionally.
Sounds like you are extremely valuable in the product you built.
In your experience it’s not just the manager direct report relationship that’s adversarial, it’s you against the whole company for the mismatched value they place in you.
You should use that as leverage. This comes with an mindset of looking out for yourself and not any loyalty to the company (I really wish that we could all find companies loyal and nice to their employees, in reality they are few and far between).
Something along the lines of “Hey I built our product. We’re making X in profit. I deserve Y in comp. I’ll give you a week to decide. If you reject I quit and build my own product or join another company.” Obviously add some fluff to reduce harshness.
The basic problem there was that salespeople were viewed as the ones who actually made things happen, engineering and building the actual product was just an inconvenient necessity.
Recently I’ve been thinking about the text form of communication, and how it plays with our psychology. In no particular order here’s what I think:
1. Text is a very compressed / low information method of communication.
2. Text inherently has some “authority” and “validity”, because:
3. We’ve grown up to internalize that text is written by a human. Someone spend the effort to think and write down their thoughts, and probably put some effort into making sure what they said is not obviously incorrect.
Intimately this ties into LLMs on text being an easier problem to trick us into thinking that they are intelligent than an AI system in a physical robot that needs to speak and articulate physically. We give it the benefit of the doubt.
I’ve already had some odd phone calls recently where I have a really hard time distinguishing if I’m talking to a robot or a human…
This is absolutely why LLMs are so disruptive. It used to be that a long, written paper was like a proof-of-work that the author thought about the problem. Now that connection is broken.
One consequence, IMHO, is that we won't value long papers anymore. Instead, we will want very dense, high-bandwidth writing that the author stakes consequences (monetary, reputational, etc.) on its validity.
The Methyl 4-methylpyrrole-2-carboxylate vs ∂²ψ/∂t² = c²∇²ψ distinction. My bet is on Methyl 4-methylpyrrole-2-carboxylate being more actionable. For better or worse.
Yes. Infinite low cost intelligence labor to replace those pesky humans!
Really reminds me of the economics of slavery. Best way for line to go up is the ultimate suppression and subjugation of labor!
Hypothetically can lead to society free to not waste their life on work, but pursue their passions. Most likely it’ll lead to plantation-style hungry-hungry-hippo ruling class taking the economy away from the rest of us
Perhaps these “obstinate” engineers have good reason in their decision. And it should be their decision!
To be so confident in what is “the right way (TM)” and try to force it onto others is... revealing.
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