A 5 minute google search indicates that self driving cars will exceed the speed limit. As long as they are within 10mph of the speed limit I don’t really see a problem with this.
But what happens when a cop decides 9mph over is worthy of a ticket? Who gets the ticket? 10 or 30 years from now when self driving cars are ubiquitous, the speed of the car will be determined by a software engineer, not the driver. My grandkids might not even know how to drive a car by then.
I would be willing to bet the manufacturers are gonna have a metric buttload of attack lawyers standing by to address “the car did it” scenarios.
I don’t think there’s a factual answer yet. Self-driving cars are illegal in nearly all jurisdictions, so the more detailed laws simply haven’t ever been worked out.
Anyways, in a scenario where self-driving cars are ubiquitous, why should it be assumed that the legal framework surrounding driving will still be the same? Maybe the whole concept of “tickets” will go out with gas pedals.
Why do you think they will exceed the speed limit? GPS devices have been able to know the speed limit of every road your on for years now and alert you with an alarm if you exceed it (if desired). Linking this into a self-driving system is a no-brainer.
There are very few scenarios where it is acceptable for a human driver to go beyond 2-3 mph in excess of the speed limit.
I would expect far better from a computer.
Surely - one major advantage of computer operated cars is that they will all travel at the same speed - whatever the ‘safe’ speed is determined to be. No one will be overtaking and they will all obey all the rules meticulously.
I agree rules will need to be rewritten which could put a end to traffic enforcement and liability as we know it. Such things would have to be given up for faster, safer, more environmentally friendly travel.
This opens up a lot more, if the software designer gets the ticket then they may program all the self driving cars to obey the sped limit, and that would cause massive traffic problems (as proven on certain drive the speed limit protest days). For this reason I suspect that the court would want to avoid that, and would want to get the money from the driver, but owners of self driver cars (at least at first) may have ample resources to fight this ticket.
For this reason I suspect the ticket would be thrown out if challenged.
From what I recall (sorry, no site), exceeding the speed limit what an “add on” after it was discovered that human drivers tend to exceed the speed limit slightly, and thus a self-driving car adhering to the law was actually an obstacle on the road.
Once most cars will be computerized, this shouldn’t be a problem.
Is the cop human or self-ticketing?
tldr: Lots of stuff will change. And not overnight. This is just one more minor issue to be worked.
Rest of story:
This won’t be a black-and-white thing, where one day we’re all driving manual cars with the current attitudes and legal framework and the next day everybody has Google-mobiles with all new laws.
To survive in mostly-manual traffic, Googlemobiles will have to drive at more or less the speed of other traffic. What they won’t do is drive crazy, weaving through traffic faster than everybody else.
Once 99% of cars *are *Googlemobiles, then we can end the fiction of posted 45 really means 50 and posted 70 really means 80. At some point a law change goes in, with a corresponding software change, that all vehicle obey the limit as posted. And perhaps at the same time, all limits go up 5 or 10 mph to keep the speed of traffic the same.
Along the way we’re going to have faster speeds in what is now jammed traffic due to better driving and fewer accidents. And we may have 120mph express lanes restricted to Googlemobiles only.
I think this is speculation. Of course there are instances where speed limits are set unnecessarily low, and traffic could run more smoothly, without considerable reduction in safety, at a higher velocity. But these are exceptions. By and large, traffic would become more, not less, safe if people obeyed the speed limit, and I doubt that “massive traffic problems” would follow.
I tentatively agree with this. I think once all cars are self-driving, speed limits will go up in most cases.
Obviously, areas that are heavily populated (whether residential, business, or industrial) are still going to have to have slower traffic for safety reasons, but I don’t see any reason why highway traffic won’t be able to go as fast as road configuration and weather conditions will bear.
I’m thinking the Total Recall Johnny Cab type of cop. Should be an improvement.
I wasn’t suggesting that surface street speed limits would change.
I was suggesting that on a given highway, the same number of Googlemobiles would cause less congestion-related slowdowns than the same number of manually-driven cars. With the effect that, statistically speaking, people would be traveling faster even though the speed limits themselves aren’t changed.
I agree. The national 55 mph limit was imposed to save energy. Period. The whole ‘it saves lives’ thing was a complete after thought. Worse, in the past forty years speed limits have become 100% revenue streams for localities in the form of speeding tickets (and significant ones at that), and have absolutely nothing to do with public safety.
The road is full of self driving cars now. People are no longer drivers, but passengers free to enjoy the scenery, talk on their phones, text, take a nap, etc., as they cruise along very, very close to the speed limit.
They are called busses.
An owner will be able to set the speed limit options for their car. A meticulous driver might tell his car to always obey all speed limits. A wilder driver might authorize 55 in a 50 zone and 80 in a 70 zone, except in one particular municipality where the cops are known to be speed-trappers. In all cases, the car will also judge the road conditions and come up with its own maximum safe speed, possibly lower than the one authorized by the owner or by the law, and will always heed that internally-determined limit. If a cop decides to enforce the law against a speeding car, then, the owner can be held accountable, just like now, because the owner had to authorize that.
When the idea of writing speeding tickets is obsolete, how will law enforcement agencies and local governments replace that very large revenue stream?
If they keep the abusive behavior up much longer, I see that option being taken away by the citizens. No law of physics says ticket revenue *has *to flow to the city or agency writing the tickets. That’s just current practice.