Driverless Cars Immune From Traffic Tickets In California Under Current Laws (nbcnews.com) 52
According to NBC, law enforcement in California can't ticket driverless cars for traffic violations, thanks to a legal loophole requiring an actual driver in the car. NBC Bay Area reports: An internal memo from San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott, obtained by the NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit, instructs officers that "no citation for a moving violation can be issued if the [autonomous vehicle] is being operated in a driverless mode." Scott added, "Technology evolves rapidly and, at times, faster than legislation or regulations can adapt to the changes."
While autonomous vehicles in California have received parking citations, the state's transportation laws appear to leave driverless vehicles immune from receiving any type of traffic ticket stemming from moving violations. "I think it sends a message that it's not a level playing field, that fairness is not the priority," said Michael Stephenson, the founder and senior attorney of Bay Area Bicycle Law, a law firm that specializes in representing cyclists in accident cases.
Stephenson said that driverless vehicles don't exactly fit into the state's current legal framework and that California needs new laws to appropriately govern the evolving technology. "We're perhaps trying to shove a square peg into a round hole," he said. "We are very much in the Wild West when it comes to driverless cars." The report notes that other states have rewritten traffic laws to allow ticketing of driverless cars. "Texas, which rivals California as another popular testing ground for autonomous vehicles, changed its transportation laws in 2017 to adapt to the emerging technology," reports NBC. "According to the Texas Transportation Code, the owner of a driverless car is 'considered the operator' and can be cited for breaking traffic laws 'regardless of whether the person is physically present in the vehicle.'"
"Arizona, another busy site for autonomous vehicles, took similar steps," adds NBC. "In revising its traffic laws, Arizona declared the owner of an autonomous vehicle 'may be issued a traffic citation or other applicable penalty if the vehicle fails to comply with traffic or motor vehicle laws.'"
While autonomous vehicles in California have received parking citations, the state's transportation laws appear to leave driverless vehicles immune from receiving any type of traffic ticket stemming from moving violations. "I think it sends a message that it's not a level playing field, that fairness is not the priority," said Michael Stephenson, the founder and senior attorney of Bay Area Bicycle Law, a law firm that specializes in representing cyclists in accident cases.
Stephenson said that driverless vehicles don't exactly fit into the state's current legal framework and that California needs new laws to appropriately govern the evolving technology. "We're perhaps trying to shove a square peg into a round hole," he said. "We are very much in the Wild West when it comes to driverless cars." The report notes that other states have rewritten traffic laws to allow ticketing of driverless cars. "Texas, which rivals California as another popular testing ground for autonomous vehicles, changed its transportation laws in 2017 to adapt to the emerging technology," reports NBC. "According to the Texas Transportation Code, the owner of a driverless car is 'considered the operator' and can be cited for breaking traffic laws 'regardless of whether the person is physically present in the vehicle.'"
"Arizona, another busy site for autonomous vehicles, took similar steps," adds NBC. "In revising its traffic laws, Arizona declared the owner of an autonomous vehicle 'may be issued a traffic citation or other applicable penalty if the vehicle fails to comply with traffic or motor vehicle laws.'"
like parking tickets (Score:4, Insightful)
This should work like parking tickets, or other tickets your vehicle can get when you are not present, they just send an invoice to the registered owner along with the evidence. There is someone responsible, even if they are not sitting in the drivers seat.
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If all you care about is the revenue, who to send the invoice to would certainly seem like a solution. Meanwhile, traffic laws are about public safety, how should that work?
"Texas, which rivals California as another popular testing ground for autonomous vehicles..."
Wow, "rivals...as another", that says a whole lot. Texas is in the running as "another"! And does it? Dubious honor, competing for suckitude.
Re:like parking tickets (Score:5, Insightful)
Most moving violations are not immediate safety issues. Is it about revenue or about creating a culture around acceptable driving habits? If we eliminate all feedback, how do we indicate acceptable behavior? Based on these rules, I'm going to hack my autonomous car and tell it to drive 180MPH everywhere while I rest in the back seat. I'd argue that lack of enforcement opens the table to actually dangerous behavior.
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I would put forward that if an autonomous vehicle has been hacked, the penalty should be to remove it from traffic until the hack is removed, and find the culprit that hacked it and prosecute them.
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It is about revenue....plain and simple.
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Cogent citations, please. No AI, either.
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. If they were about public safety, bad driving would result in required remedial driving training or similar - not a ticket.
Newsflash: in the more developed parts of the world, they do. It's just you american - government is bad m'kay - view talking here.
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Actually, no - the evidence is global that road signage and speed limits decreases safety. It isn't something which takes a great deal of effort to inform yourself on.
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If all you care about is the revenue, who to send the invoice to would certainly seem like a solution. Meanwhile, traffic laws are about public safety, how should that work?
If someone else was driving they can rat them out. If it's a driverless car, then the owner is obviously responsible and should pay the fine..
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It's about revenue...that's it.
If it were about safety...whenever there is a move to remove a law or, even better example, when some cities removed traffic cameras, what is the FIRST thing the city govt and police bitch about?
Yep, you guessed it...money.
Not a word about "won't someone please think about the safety"....
I'll tell you
Not like parking tickets (Score:3)
This should work like parking tickets, or other tickets your vehicle can get when you are not present
No, it should not because it is not at all like a parking ticket. While the choice of parking spot, even for a driverless car, is under the control of the human in the car how that car drives in moving traffic is only under the control of the company who wrote the software that is driving the car. If your driverless car goes through a red light it is not only not your responsibility but that of the programmer in control of your vehicle.
Rather than fine the owner it should be the case that the owner is c
Re: Not like parking tickets (Score:3)
And I should have insurance like for any other car. The insurance company can figure out whether my car has more or fewer accidents costing more or less money, and charge their premiums accordingly.
Re: Not like parking tickets (Score:5, Insightful)
If I send my self-driving car to pick up my children from school, it should my responsibility as well.
So if the car you purchased malfunctions and runs down a crowd of people then you should be liable for manslaughter/murder too? Really? If a manufacturer sells you a product telling you that it will do X and it fails to do X when used as directed then that's a defective product and the manufacturer, not the user, is liable.
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You seem to assume that the programming will only work within whatever the law is where the vehicle is sitting right now. You seem to assume that I would be unable to command my autonomous car to speed for example. Well I put a tiny little 100MPH speed limit sticker on the camera lens, my car thinks it is in a 100MPH zone at all times.
Of course the operator can be at fault, because you are still the operator even if you are not driving an autonomous car.
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I suspect it really is a non-issue. On the other hand there are idiots who try to say they're immune to tickets because they were not "driving" but merely "traveling", part of the sovereign citizen bullshit that people are gullible to.
If the speed limit law doesn't cover driverless vehicles, then just resort to an overarching law. Claim it's unsafe and deny access to public roads if a vehicle breaks the law. Because driverless vehicles have no rights to be on the road. Restrict them to private roads whe
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I'm not entirely sure what the point is. It's not like owner has control over the car, so what is he being punished for? And how do you punish a car?
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I'm not sure that's a great analogy. In the case of the horse, the owner can reasonably be expected to exercise control of the horse such that he can prevent it from behaving in a way that horses are known to behave.
In the case of the car, it's not under the owner's control, and software bugs produce unpredictable behavior. They aren't known in advance, and they can't be.
In the case of injury or property damage I can see suing the manufacturer for liability, but attaching a punishment to an equipment malfun
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I don't think traffic tickets are the solution (Score:5, Insightful)
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If there are consistent problems across the fleet (rather than with a specific vehicle), the correct answer is a mandatory recall until they are certified fixed. And that's not a state level action, it's federal, and is perfectly feasible under existing laws.
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https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/24... [cnn.com]
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That isn't a recall.
Re:I don't think traffic tickets are the solution (Score:4, Interesting)
Get rid of fines completely in any cases involving cars. Parking tickets and moving violations.
Replace it with community service, which MUST be done by whoever is in control of the vehicle. If that's uncertain, it's the registered owner's responsibility to either do the community service, or provide proof of who was driving.
As it is now, a $300 ticket will financially devastate a lot of people, and will be such a minor inconvenience it's simply a cost of driving to many others. Give everyone a community service fine instead. If a guy worth millions has to spend a few weekends out picking up trash off the side of the highway because he was going an unsafe speed or ran through a red light, he might think twice next time. If a guy who can't afford to feed his family and pay the fine gets a ticket, he'll think twice the next time and won't have to worry about how he's going to make rent in addition to paying.
In your example, make the corporate board of Waymo responsible. If they don't think their vehicles are advanced enough to drive around without committing traffic offenses, then they're not ready to be on public roads.
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the business that designed and/or operates them.
Bingo! And these days that entity always owns the software: Every product's packaging says "Software is Licensed, Not Sold" -- That company who retains ownership is the ONLY entity in a position to take action to Prevent the driverless system from committing violations,
And they're the ones who should be held directly responsible for any kind of Unsafe operation or violations of Serious traffic rules.
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The cars are not really independent agents as they will all share the same behavior on behalf of the same entity - the business that designed and/or operates them. So, just issuing a $200 speeding ticket to an individual Waymo car doesn't make a lot of sense. Regulation backed up by fines substantial enough to motivate compliance should be levied on the company not the car.
The effect of this will be to make autonomous cars too cautious as not to get a ticket sent to the company who owns it.
A precedent for this already exists, if I get a traffic ticket in a car I've rented in California, the rental company charges me for it or in the many places in Europe, I can be nominated as the driver and the fining authority deals directly with me. The lawyers will ensure that something like this happens and their liability is limited.
It seems to me.. (Score:2)
The owner is merely using a software & servo interface instead of their own hands on the wheel, but they are the operator nonetheless. That should be enough to hold them responsible for what it does in public... and if it does something they don't approve of, they can sue the manufacturer.
And you don't have to rewrite all the traffic law to get that effect. You change the definition of 'operator' to explicitly include someone operating a vehicle by delegating control to an autonomous driving system.
B
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And you don't have to rewrite all the traffic law to get that effect. You change the definition of 'operator' to explicitly include someone operating a vehicle by delegating control to an autonomous driving system.
That would be excatly what the article is talking about, yes. Under current California vehicle codes, "change the definition" requires an act of the legislature.
Beyond that, police should have full authority to use whatever means required to stop an autonomous vehicle determined to be in violation - even if that means damage is done to the car. If the car isn't smart enough to stop for a cop, that's not the cop's problem.
What we will end up with - and there's no possible way we won't - is police cars equipped with a device that just remotely shuts down the vehicle. And about five minutes after that's mandated on automated cars, it will be mandated on all new vehicles, "for safety reasons." (It's been proposed before, long before self driving cars were more than a gl
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What we will end up with - and there's no possible way we won't - is police cars equipped with a device that just remotely shuts down the vehicle.
We don't need it and it shouldn't be implemented. What should be implemented is Identification of driverless vehicles.
If a citation occurs, then the Officer should get capture it on video, And mail the Citation to the manufacturer of the driverless vehicle: Who should be responsible to pay per each violation of traffic rules that occurred, Unless they can
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What we will end up with - and there's no possible way we won't - is police cars equipped with a device that just remotely shuts down the vehicle.
We don't need it and it shouldn't be implemented.
Whether or not we need it is is irrelevant, since need is not a factor in whether or not it's implemented. It's been a goal of police departments (and government bureaucrats) for decades.
What should be implemented is Identification of driverless vehicles.
Sounds great until it's you in front an out of control car the cops have not way to stop. I guarantee you, the first time that happens, police controlled remote kill switches will be mandated on all new cars. (They already exist in some of the "roadside assistance" systems, but aren't directly accessible to police - yet.)
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Sounds great until it's you in front an out of control car the cops have not way to stop. I guarantee you, the first time that happens, police controlled remote kill switches will be mandated
This has already happened. Out of control vehicles causing accidents happens every single day.
There are more repeated situations that happen less often, for example the Safety issue with cars rapidly accelerating on their own and the driver being unable to stop them, but troubles like this Do and already happened.
St
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They just proposed law (not sure if it passed yet) at the federal level, mandating that all new cars have cameras and devices that can detect if you are intoxicated or tired, etc....basically your car will continuously monitor you and if it judges you are impaired it will not start.
That's barely a short step away from forcing a shut down if it thinks you are sleepy and even shorter step from cops (or any other govt. authority)
How soon (and if) the law gets updated (Score:2)
depends, this being California, on how many of the nameless, faceless party officials who pull the strings in Sacramento are invested in companies operating self driving cars.
it's always been this way. (Score:1)
Here come the new laws (Score:3)
San Francisco, 1 April 2027 - A driverless car was charged with DUI because its main CPU was caught running Windows 13. It was sentenced to a year in jail, but in CPU GHz speeds, that means it will spend forty-five human-equivalent minutes in the lockup.
It will also have to have a human monitor attached to it for 90 days. The human will yell loudly if the car leaves its garage.
Re:Here come the lawyers (Score:2)
Not a surprise. (Score:2)
Judging from what I see on the news, nearly all crime has been legalized in California. Next, traffic tickets will be eliminated entirely.
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I'm not sure about that. Catching shoplifters doesn't generate any revenue. Traffic tickets do.
open container (Score:2)
fair's fair. (Score:2)
Dear California,
When you rewrite the laws to fine the registered owner of driverless cars, or perhaps the weathiest occupant, rewrite the traffic laws to include bicycles.
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The traffic laws already do include bicycles. They get only one free legal carve-out, the requirement that you not approach nearer than 3' to a bicycle while driving. (Nobody has explained adequately how you are supposed to handle situations where the cyclist approaches within 3' of YOU, which should also be illegal, but let's put that aside for a moment.) Cyclists are required by law to obey traffic signals and signs, to not go anywhere that vehicles cannot go unless it's specifically for-purpose (i.e. the
Sounds like a problem of poor terminology to me (Score:2)
Sounds like a problem of poor terminology to me.
A driverless car can't drive, at most it can roll until it hits something. It makes sense that it can't be ticketed for traffic violations, because it can't commit them.
However, what we're actually dealing with is a car with an robotic driver - a robot that's doing EXACTLY what it was told to by its manufacturer.
As such, the reasonable outcome would be to ticket the driver that is in full control of the car - a.k.a. the manufacturer.
Interesting (Score:2)
That's interesting. Wealthy people are immune to traffic tickets where I'm from.
The CEO is always responsible (Score:2)
The CEO is responsible for the crmies of his corporation, so send them to the CEO.
just wait for them to rack an big toll bill and th (Score:2)
just wait for them to rack an big toll bill and them this will change.
Meanwhile outside the USA, it's already solved (Score:2)
The registered keeper of the vehicle (usually the owner) is responsible, unless they can prove someone else was in charge of the vehicle at the time, note not driving it, but in charge - autonomous vehicles (currently) still have someone in charge of them ...
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