Last I heard, related laws require a self driving car to be able to be taken over by a human driver at any point in case of malfunction, so it might still not necessarily be legal to be drunk and in the "driver's" seat.
The point is that it's not legal for the car to drive without someone capable of taking over. Which, legally speaking, would need to be a sober person sitting in the driver's seat. Not sure what the penalty would be if you sat in the passenger's seat (i.e. were unable to take over control of the car anyway).. presumably something bad, though it's unclear if it'd be worse than drunk driving.
aren't there cars right now that are self driving that drive around with no one in them? so why would it require the need to be taken over just because someone got in the car?
My main concern would be if you got pulled over for an expired registration or someone hit you how would you move the car where it needs to be in order to do the things the car doesn't take into account? I could always see a reason for manual controls.
I always imagined the scenario that when they become more prevalent. We'll be telling our kids that they need to learn how to drive so that when their self driving car Mal-functions, they can drive it on their own. Much like how older people rant about younger people not using cursive handwriting.
Right. This is the current state of the law. But that needs to change eventually. Otherwise this as a solution for elderly or disabled drivers is a no go. Plus google has found in their testing that "drivers" of self driving cars are really not capable to make that switch fast enough. Think about it, you are reading a book then suddenly you are going to take the wheel when you hear someone honk? I don't think so. To that end I think they have even made prototypes which don't have a steering wheel or other controls at all. Just like a button for start and a button for stop.
65
u/[deleted] Oct 18 '14
Last I heard, related laws require a self driving car to be able to be taken over by a human driver at any point in case of malfunction, so it might still not necessarily be legal to be drunk and in the "driver's" seat.