[Drakim]

A big difference is that you can't put a robot in jail. Even though the person driving the car is usually not harmed by hitting somebody on foot, it's still a life-or-death level situation, they might be looking at multiple years in prison, a large portion of their life gone.

The same even stakes are not there with robots killing humans. For one side it's a life-or-death situation, while for the other side it's profit margins and numbers. Companies are usually very happy to increase yearly profit for something as minor as a decimal percentage rise in human deaths spread across society, that's not even controversial.

Heck, not only can you not put a robot in jail, you can't even stop it from driving the next day as if nothing happened because it's duplicate running the exact same software and hardware is all over society.

I still think robot cars is a good thing though, because they will have a lot less accidents than us humans who love to drink and drive, or speed for no good reason. Still, it will raise some big important questions.

[Kique]

At least in most parts of the US, hitting and killing a pedestrian does not usually result in jail time for the driver - unless the driver was driving under the influence or was driving recklessly. Most times their license isn't even taken away.

Older article that I remember but still remains true based on news reports I read https://revealnews.org/article/bay-area-drivers-who-kill-ped...

[spankalee]

> A big difference is that you can't put a robot in jail

We rarely put human drivers in jail even when they're clearly at fault. We often don't even take their license away.

[bluGill]

We have put CEOs in prison in the past. We could do so again. If a company really operates with blatant disregard for safety we should. Waymo's CEO makes it clear that she thinks their cars are better than normal humans, so long as that is really the case and she isn't ignoring issues she shouldn't go to prison for deaths their cars cost, but it is (or should be) an option if the company isn't careful.

[drivingmenuts]

The point of failure is probably not the CEO, though. They are rarely technical people directly supervising the taxis. If it can be proven that management skimped on quality, then, by all means, jail them. Otherwise, it becomes the fault of the people monitoring the systems.