Post Race!

I'm mostly excited about self driving cars. Every time I pass a crash on the interstate, I realize how fallible we are. You don't get fender benders on a freeway without some inattentive driving. On the other hand, it will certainly open up a whole new, and interesting, section of the law. If you aren't driving your car, then you certainly aren't liable for any accidents, but who is? Some accidents are unavoidable. I was following a canoe carrier that launched a canoe at me while doing 65 mph. Fortunately, the canoe bounced into the ditch, but it could have gone a different direction. Under the right circumstances, there just isn't anything that can be done about it....except that you could armor what is now the windscreen, such that debris is less likely to enter the passenger compartment.

It'll be interesting. Probably better, too, but interesting.

It definitely opens up a whole can of worms, because who would be liable? The driver presumably has no neglect if he/she isn't driving. The car company wouldn't be liable just like gun manufacturers are not liable for homicides with guns. Would the developer have any liability?

My guess is that it would fall under owner of the vehicle (not necessarily the driver).

I would guess that it would fall to the car company. I don't think it would be like guns. If a person uses a gun to kill somebody, the gun didn't fail (unless it jammed and then....but that's being pedantic). If a driverless car hits a pedestrian, then if there was a bug that resulted in the collision, the car company would be liable. If the accident were ruled to be pure chance, such as being struck by parts flying off a vehicle, or a deer bounding into the road without time for the car to stop (it would react, since no deer is that fast, but physics still wins), then it would likely be a no-fault accident. There might be something like an FAA crash investigation, except likely with FAR more data to go on. Similarly, accidents would likely go down as data goes up.

The more I think about it, the more I am optimistic about it....I just don't want to be first.

There’s an argument to be made that the government should have a pool, similar to the high risk pool only polar opposite, and the government pay for the liability. Not only would the car companies be encouraged to start developing self driving vehicles, but if the results show that the number of deaths and disabilities from car related accidents drastically decrease from the decrease in humans driving then government would likely come out ahead in terms of revenue generated from potential taxes (income, sales, etc.) that otherwise would not of existed. Sort of like the same principle as the laffer curve. Of course this would cause some serious moral hazards because people would then have an incentive to attempt to get injured by self driving vehicles and car companies wouldn’t have to worry about any potential liability on them.

I’m telling you, I’m following this closely because it impacts me most. Most of my business is auto insurance.

Yeah, I'd bet that would be of interest, then.

Quote:

---

Would the developer have any liability?

---

Only if it was an act of code.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker

Well, that's one interpretation. I don't know about the proposal in CA, but I've long argued that gas taxes are too low. That's the primary source of funding for highways (or it was meant to be). Costs go up, revenues are going down, and we all still drive plenty. Perhaps people weren't as confused as you think.

---

It really wouldnt be a problem for most people if they actually used gas taxes for its intended purposes but they dont. they borrow from the fund for stupid things, like the bullet train to nowhere, and never repair the loan. Then the fund is too broke to actually repair or improve roads. so they figure htye need to raise gas taxes again and then the cycle continues

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by RobDog888

It really wouldnt be a problem for most people if they actually used gas taxes for its intended purposes but they dont. they borrow from the fund for stupid things, like the bullet train to nowhere, and never repair the loan. Then the fund is too broke to actually repair or improve roads. so they figure htye need to raise gas taxes again and then the cycle continues

---

Yeah I voted to repeal the tax but actually I'm pretty indifferent about most tax cuts. Like you said if one place has money then other entities will find a way to get their sticky little fingers on it. The government, on all levels, is not going to cut back spending. So if the tax is cut in one place it will eventually be raised in other places to make up for the lose. It amazes me how much the American people get caught up in the term "Tax Cut" when in reality there is no such thing without an overall budget reduction (spending cuts). How many times have you seen the State or National budget be less than the prior year?

First off, it would require no raises, or reduced services. If everything else were held constant, raises would require the budget to go up unless offset by layoffs. In theory, layoffs could be accomplished through greater productivity, but there's a limit to that. Without pay raises that equal inflation, there is a net pay cut to employees. So budgets pretty much have to go up with constant staffing levels.

The alternative would be cutting things, but when it comes to government, there will be a constituency for pretty much everything. Furthermore, there are loads of people clamoring for a bigger part of the budget (this as CA burns....so we can guess at least one group who will be doing the clamoring pretty soon).

Of course, it's always good to remember that it's all fiction created by society. Most people want more of good things and less of bad things, including hardships.

Quote:

---

Of course, it's always good to remember that it's all fiction created by society. Most people want more of good things and less of bad things, including hardships.

---

I'd agree with that.

I'm amazed that after all the Tax Cuts our government has given us over the years that we still have to pay any taxes at all. To be honest I'm very apathetic about our government budget/taxes. What ever I owe I pay and don't get emotional about it. But I'm old, if I were 25 I'd be very worried about what financial shape our nation is in. I feel there will come a time when our nation debt will cause the dollar to collapse. Come to think about it, I have kids, grandkids and great grandkids, maybe I should get involved. Oh well, their not that great of kids. :p:p:p

Quote:

---

First off, it would require no raises, or reduced services.

---

Are you saying that you don't think there's any "bloat" in our government that be cut.

They're grand...but not all THAT grand.

I do think there's bloat in government. What I'm not so sure about is whether or not it can be cut. My thoughts on that are two-fold. For one thing, whenever you get above one, efficient, person, there is a certain amount of waste involved with keeping everybody on the same page. As any programmer knows, adding a second person to a project doesn't double the speed. Add enough people, and each additional person adds nothing at all, and may even slow things down (in fact, they likely will). So, whenever you get a large enough system, there is a certain amount of waste just due to size. Nobody can solve that, so why bother trying?

Except that we DO bother trying, and that ends up creating more bloat. I work with fish hatcheries. State hatcheries can get by with half the staffing that federal facilities require. The reason is that the feds have to jump through a LOT more hoops. You can often see where those hoops came from. Many were good intentions. Some were the result of trying to slim down the government.

I remember having to sign a form saying that I was complying with the paperwork reduction act. In other words, I had to sign a form saying that I was reducing the number of forms I had to sign, even though I have no idea why I would have signed more forms had I not signed that one. Everybody knows where that came from: Some people pressured a politician to do something about the waste in government. The politician passed a bill about reducing paperwork. That bill then had to be implemented by the agencies, who had no idea what they were supposed to do, since the bill would be vaguely written (they almost always are, which is why agencies have to turn bills into rules of action). Agencies asked lawyers what they had to do to comply with the law. The lawyers told them that they had to have a record that they were in compliance...so yet another form was created to record the fact that they were complying with a law that was intended to reduce waste.

Essentially, in a desperate attempt to keep public servants from wasting anything, or getting away with anything that others might not get away with, the government, at the behest of agitators, buries people under such mountains of paperwork that they need extra bodies to keep on top of it all...and so we bloat.

The government will NEVER be streamlines. We won't let it. If it ever became streamlined, a large number of people would be howling about it. That's life.

Quote:

---

They're grand...but not all THAT grand.

---

lol, their pretty grand I guess

Yeah, what we see as bloat, another sector of society could see as essential. I worked as a Reliability Engineer for a few years and our company main customer was the military. We had to do everything according to Mil-Specs. There was even Mil-Specs for sun glasses. Always mountains of paper work. I know there's lots of waste in the government but I have no real answers. But there's plenty of people smarter than me out there so I think there has to be a way to make progress. Or I should say I have hope.

Progress around bloat will come in small bites around the edges. However, as any dieter knows, any weight you lose will be regained in short order.

The longer I live (and it's been a few decades, by now), the more I see organizations as being almost random. I work with a great group of people. These folks mean well, are dedicated, and are generally pretty nice to be around. Yet they make mistakes, as do we all. In retrospect, there are some significant decisions which should have been made differently, but they were reasonable at the time with the knowledge at hand to the people who made the decision. Some of those decisions resulted in pretty bad waste, they just weren't clearly wrong when they were made.

Another point to that is that within this organization (some 700 people), a few have had outsized impacts from middle-management positions. The guy who hired me had been around for a long time, knew all the rules, knew all the shortcuts, controlled the largest budget in the organization, and was quite the king maker. He got things done that he wouldn't have been able to do had he just worked within the system. He basically bent the rules where he could to get to the place he wanted to be. Had his goal been something shallow, like personal gain, that could have ended up illegal, but his goal was the good of the organization, and his rule bending benefited the organization in tangible, material, ways. My job was one of those bent rules, as he hired a biologist with programming skills for an agency that didn't, yet, believe in computers. Nothing has replaced the programs I wrote those decades back, and they are still in constant use. Where would we have been had he not been so forward-thinking? There are not a lot like him in this organization, or any other, but there are a few. Since everybody is dedicated, then everybody moves things forwards....but some move it forwards faster and more effectively. The result is that a large, purposeful, organization is like a glacier: Grinding slowly forwards, with occasional short lurches. The analogy breaks down when you get talking about direction, though. There is no objective to be reached. Progress is only realized in hindsight, and then it can be hard to decide whether the progress attained was the most that could have been attained, or not.

Is it place for offtopic?

Quote:

---

Is it place for offtopic?

---

no no, nothing offtopic happening around here, move along now no dawdling !!

I got a new bed frame

My wife and I broke our old one

:D

-queue kool-aid man oh yeah-

If you hadn't gone there, I would have.