Car insurers recoil in horror from paying auto autos' speeding fines

Petrolk Station Operators

The plans in the bill to force petrol station operators to install electric car charging points are lunacy. The vast bulk of our petrol stations are relatively small sites geared up to cars driving in, filling up, paying and driving out again with perhaps a slight irritating delay while people pick up shopping. With the exception of motorway and major highway service stations they do not have the physical space and support facilities to allow a meaningful number of cars to be moored there for 30 minutes at a time.

Let the petrol station operators choose to provide them if they have both space and a business case.

Over my dead body

Williams was forthright on this, saying: "Our view was that when you're talking about a ton of metal that's travelling at high speed on the roads, you should potentially lose that right to take risks with other people's lives. Our input would be that we think the updates should be implemented right away."

What if you were "rushing out of the house?" asked Conservative MP Iain Stewart. Should that count in your favour? Nope, said Williams: "If there's a fatal flaw in the software likely to make it veer off the road, my view is that the vehicle should be immobile" until the patch is installed.

This is appalling. There are times in life when your car must be available. Obviously no car is guaranteed to be 100% reliable, but then as an owner you normally have a choice of when maintenance is done, etc.

No one books their car in for a service when their Mrs is near the end of a pregnancy.

So if Tesla, or anyone else, chose that exact critical moment to apply a large patch and you had zero control over its application and the car won't move, you could be looking at a still born child as a result.

Who is responsible for that?

Call an ambulance? Great; the ambulance service would have to have enough vehicles and crews on standby to do the job instead, just in case some manufacturer pushes out an update and suddenly all the pregnant mothers, all the sick elderly relatives, etc, have to be collected instead of taken in by family.

Who's going to pay for that?

They have got to make it so that an autonomous vehicle can be driven. That means that the driver actually has to be a qualified driver.

Better off as we are.

referring to outdated government advice that diesels were less polluting than petrol cars – a policy rapidly U-turned upon when it was realised the precise opposite is true.

Seems this might be another piece of misinformation:

Old banger v diesel: Which is more toxic?

Basically, it would seem that in order to pass the new Euro emissions tests, the engine is being tuned such that in normal usage it can emit significantly more emissions than an older engine not tuned to pass the test...

Divadroid Inc.

"...today was Robert Llewellyn, the actor who played endearingly awkward android Kryten..."

Don't you mean "plays"? It only becomes past tense when they turn around and say "no more Red Dwarf".

The controller of the vehicle is responsible for the speeding ticket, in case of an autonomous car it is the software which was written by the car manufacturer so they would have to be responsible as they are the only ones who can change behavior of the car and would be keen to not exceed speed limits..this is the point of fines.

If they could prove the council had made the signage difficult to read then they could pass the fine to the council.

As for patching i would hope that any software was designed to be patched on the fly and not requiring excessive downtime.

My main concern is that so far car companies have shown complete ineptitude of a magnitude that is bordering on criminal when it comes to security, so hacking, both for performance and malicious intent, is highly likely and could be by a simple drive by hack OTA of hundreds of vehicles.

Pretty simple really. Manufacturers of autonomous vehicles should set up and pay into a shared ownership company responsible for the tickets their cars get.

I get the impression that Williams hadn't thought about the possibility of this question in advance and wasn't very good at thinking on his feet. It's a pity he didn't get the obvious follow-up questions. "The vehicle is doing 70mph in the overtaking lane when a software update becomes available. What happens then? Does this mean that the vehicle veers off the road to apply the update? Isn't that the scenario you were trying to avoid and now you've caused it? And what happens when there are several adjacent vehicles of the same model in close proximity, all trying to get off the road to apply their updates?"

Or they could just make speed limits advisory...

Fines should be for dangerous driving, regardless of arbitrarily imposed numbers that falsely imply driving below them is safe or above them is unsafe.

But since their real purpose is revenue generation, that probably won't happen any time soon.

Why does the car need to be fined at all?

Why does a self-driving car need to be fined at all? Fines are a human construct designed to punitively punish a human for breaking the law. A vehicle cannot learn the lesson from paying a fine, and having the insurer pay it is also dumb because they aren't breaking the law.

The vehicles will have enough on-board smarts to deal with the different speed zone appropriately and safely, and even when enough cars become self-driving speed zones can be seriously increased or even eliminated.

In the case of what-to-do about the car missing the sign, the manufacturer can be made aware so the situation can be investigated and patches applied.

Then there is intra-vehicle and vehicle-roadway communications systems so that the cars don't even need to see a sign to be notified of a speed zone change, for example, an RF system embedded in the road and the car passing over it is notified the speed limit is changing in X meters and can deal appropriately, or as cars pass into a new speed zone they broadcast the zone limit change to all vehicles within range along with GPS coordinates of where the zone is.

Critical updates

Suppose a safety-related update becomes available while my autonomous car is on level -4 in an underground parking under a high-rise building. The car will not know there is an update until it actually sees the light of day. At what point is it supposed to become immobile to apply the patch? When it is blocking the exit from the parking? When it is out in a busy city street with no empty parking space in sight? When it is doing 70mph on a carriageway?

A critical mechanical failure would immobilize a non-autonomous car, but that's a failure, not a software update, importance as the latter may be.

I'd think of warning the owner/custodian/occupant (and maybe insurer) that there is an essential update and give the responsible party a reasonable grace period to install it. Beyond that grace period, however, rules change.

It is essential that the grace period should start after the car becomes aware of the update, i.e., the car is started and there is an indicator of the dashboard, etc. Otherwise, the car may be out of range - e.g., in an underground parking garage - while the owner is on a month-long vacation abroad.

At this point...

I am seriously considering alternatives. Boat, plane or anything to get me off the roads. It is going to be dangerous.

Oh, the software or hardware? It's possible to get working... but people will find a way to break it!

It is simple - you still gotta be a driver

If you own a vehicle with auto-pilot capability, you still have to have a driver in control - the idea being you should be able and ready to take control If you notice anything wrong - and I think that includes exceeding the speed limit. I know the idea is that you can relax a bit but is that really realistic?

If you don't when you should, this is still driving without due care in my book. No need to muddy the waters with "iffs" and "whens"

It should only be an insurance thing if the vehicle is driver-less , like the little pods they are trialing at various cities around the world. So you couldn't allow a little old lady to buy a tesla as a personal taxi if she can't drive.

Change is needed in the approach to enforcement

The system of fines and points for drivers is intended as an incentive to drive responsibly, a disincentive to dangerous driving and a method to identify and remove from the road those who are likely to ignore safe driving practices and cause accidents.

In this post, I am ignoring the clear fact that most authorities end up abusing this system and operate it as a revenue stream. Clearly, the intention must be that if our enforcement were perfectly successful there would be no fines or points issued because the rules would never be broken.

With driverless vehicles, this becomes very possible. If the system of sensors and software that make up the vehicle are properly designed, it should be possible to make a vehicle that never intentionally breaks any of the rules laid down. The first thing that must be determined in the case of a potential infraction is whether the vehicle was operating in full autonomous mode at the time, and that no software or sensor modifications had been made by the operator.

If there's any deviation from the vendor's system/software or the vehicle was being used manually then the normal points/fine process applies. To whom is problematic, but I won't get into that...

Otherwise, the vendor is effectively the driver. It is their responsibility to ensure that their system and software drives correctly in all circumstances. Per-incident fines and points are not the answer though. Each incident of a driverless car exceeding the speed limit must be identified and the cause fixed, not just arbitrarily fined to anyone (insurance/vendor/owner/operator).

There are several things that must be in place for this to happen.

The rules of the road system must be unambiguous and clear to the automated system. This means a separate GPS-based authority-certified map of speed limits that is available to all vendors at all times. The GPS-map must be authoritative for driverless vehicles such that in the case where the GPS map erroneously holds a 40 limit for a road, but the actual posted limit is 30, there was no infraction by the car/vendor and the responsibility lies with the local authority to go through the necessary steps to correct the GPS map (or correct the posted limits if they were incorrect).

Where the car had access to correct limits and still exceeded them, that must be submitted to the vendor for analysis with a requirement for an explanation and commitment to resolving the fault.

No fine is necessary per-incident, because the intention here is to get all vendors' vehicles to drive correctly, not to punish them for errors.

If, however, a vendor routinely fails to explain of fix incidents of its system breaking traffic laws, then escalating fines will start to be applied to that vendor. Ultimately, a vendor might prove itself incapable of managing its own systems/software and rack up so many fines that it cannot stay in business.

Hopefully, that vendor's existing fleet of vehicles can be taken on and fixed by another vendor, but realistically it probably would leave owners with a vehicle that the cannot use (or can only use in manual mode).

Even in that worst-case scenario, I think I'd still prefer to be left with a vehicle that I cannot drive, rather than left with a licence that's revoked due to the vendor's incompetence -- and no longer able to drive or insure any other vehicle.

Driver? what driver? Owner? who?

These things can break speed limits with nobody sitting in them, or nobody but children, so then what?

They can be part of some Dial-A-Car fleet, maybe headquartered in Ireland, and probably many will.

Quiet Roads

Just think how quiet the roads will be on the mornings after the self driving zero-days start to hit.

UnCommon Sense?

Insurers/Manufacturers are responsible for accidents. Up to them to decide if the vehicle was at fault or not. Vehicle "operator" is responsible for driving offences, in this case the vehicle/software manufacturer.

If malicious changes to speed limits are identified then criminal proceedings are warranted against those who are making the changes. Likewise for anyone who hacks their/other cars systems.

An autonomous vehicle should be capable of being a better driver than 99% of the population w.r.t. observing and obeying the laws of the road. GPS information should be enough if ALL roadworks have to be added to the database BEFORE any works commence. Variable speed limits can be set to communicate with the vehicle so it knows what the speed limits ahead are and can respond appropriately.

Everyone keeps on about the what-ifs. I'd be amazed if even the current systems weren't 1,000,000% better drivers than most of the feckwits currently supposed to be in control of their 1+ Ton lethal weapons, and that probably does include me and you! :-)

VW liability

Now you know your VW is over the limit with regard to emissions yes you are liable and should take it off the road and sue VW and/or the dealer to get it fixed.

If people did this we'd all breathe more easily.

It's not a new situation

""Surely the passenger is not then liable," Letwin persisted, referring to the human in the self-driving car."

Why not? I own a house. I've never seen the water and sewerage pipes, I didn't own the house when they were installed, I don't even know where they are, I've never done any work that could have affected or damaged them. But if a pipe leaks somewhere under my garden, it's my problem and my responsibility to fix it. It doesn't matter that I didn't make it myself, have essentially zero knowledge of where it is or how it works, and isn't my fault that something went wrong, simply owning the thing carries the responsibility of dealing with any problems caused by it.

Why should a car be any different? I may not be the driver, but I certainly am the owner/operator, and that makes me responsible for dealing with any issues regardless of whether they're ultimately my fault or not. And of course, the fact that I may not be able to prevent issues occurring or have the financial means to fix them is exactly why insurance exists. If a pipe bursts under my garden, my home insurance will pay for repairs. If my autonomous car does something wrong, my car insurance will pay for it.

As for the various hypothetical malicious actions people suggest might be targeted at autonomous cars, that won't fundamentally change anything. If someone maliciously digs a hole in my garden and trashes my water pipe, my insurance will still pay for it. The only difference is that if they're able to figure out who did they'll get the money back from them, as well as asking the police to have a little word with them. And while that particular example may be somewhat unlikely, there's plenty of petty crime and vandalism that is just as anonymous as putting up fake speed limit signs that is currently dealt with exactly this way (although councils may often be effectively self-insured rather than requiring a third party); including, interestingly enough, quite a few instances of people actually putting up fake speed limit signs.

Best of all, insurance gives us a great way to see how well autonomous cars actually work. Insurance is based on risk, and the companies who deal with it are really rather good at figuring out how much they need to charge in order to make their profit. Given that insurance companies have to pay out for all the problems autonomous cars have and/or cause, we know they'll be working as intended when it becomes cheaper to insure an autonomous car than a manual one.

Farmer Giles

Living out in the sticks there is one problem I wonder how autonomous cars deal with- MUD ON THE ROAD. Normal practice is to put an A4 sized notice 10ft in front of the mud. Will the car camera pick this up in time? Will the farmer finally be forced to clear the mess up as he makes it, as the Road Traffic Act states? Will the 'Have you had an accident...' ambulance chasers make a fortune??

Sign Recognition Doesn’t Work

I have it fitted to my 8 month old European made car that cost £34k.

On an unmapped new road the signs are 40MPH and the speed shown is 25 MPH (I guess it defaults to assuming 40 is KPH?).

On the motorway, where the limit is 70, it sometimes shows 90MPH where it picks up a 90 from the back of a continental lorry. If this was connected to the speed of the car then there could be the potential for a fine or an accident.

Worse still, the thing read 10MPH on a fast stretch of motorway. Imagine the chaos and danger if it went in to emergency braking mode from 70MPH to 10MPH with a queue of traffic behind it!

Where there's blame

Simple the owner is responsible for the maintainance and the software drives the car so the manufacturer/programmer is liable for its operation.

In a fully autonomous world where the car is controlled by the software and owned by a car share company, why would the passenger need insurance?

if the programming is robust and rigourously tested, why would an autonomous car break the speed limit in the first place, and for that point with no humans on the road, why would there neeed to be a speed limit anyway?

Surely the way to manage this would be to make the local authority responsibe for providing real time speed limit data to autonomous cars... Some kind of transmitter in lamp posts or on existing speed signs.or even an API that can be called send your route and it returns current limits for the roads that your traveling on and near taking into account temp road works etc...

Having the cars recognise and read actual speed signs seems a bit stupid.