Skip to main content

Finding Fault

Much to think about in the court decision about who is at fault in the case of a car on auto-pilot killing people

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration confirmed that the Autopilot driver-assistance feature was active at the time of the crash. That makes this case notable in that these are the first felony charges to result from a fatal crash involving a partially automated driving system.

If there is a driver in the car, no matter what mode the car is operating in, the driver is responsible for safety - that seems to be the premise of the decision. Now if it were that (for instance) the car were to spontaneously catch on fire due to electrical failure and hurt others in the vicinity then it would not be the driver's fault. 

So if anyone has been dreaming of sleeping behind the wheel as their self-driving car takes them wherever their heart desires, this ruling should serve as a great wake-up call. For the rest of us who are skeptical about the driverless technology and its efficacy, we have no reason yet to change our minds. I like my car fairly dumb and plan to keep it that way as long as I can. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques...

Reading Shantaram

I finished listening to Shantaram on audiobook after several weekends of being absorbed in the story. This book had been on my to-read list for a long time and I am glad I chose the audio version of it. It is an extraordinary story teeming with colorful characters and rich detail. As an Indian who is a stranger to Mumbai and Maharashtra in that I have never spent years of my life there. I have to rely on what I know second hand. As a fan Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance, where in my mind I imagined the action taking place in Mumbai, this book was a chance for me to know the city through another author even if an Australian.  The author,  Gregory David Roberts comes across as someone who is able to see the soul of India through all that ails it. And in connecting with that soul, he finds some answers to his life's hard questions. India does not save him but it keeps his soul alive and striving. Most of his experiences would be unrelatable to the average person who lives a far m...