[ExI] Why Tesla Can Program Its Cars to Break Road Safety Laws

[Dave S]

On Wed, Jan 26, 2022 at 8:17 AM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> Indeed, one could similarly ask "Why are cars sold today with speed
> governors whose limits are set beyond any legal speed limit?" These car
> manufacturers are allowing drivers to violate the law.
>

One reason is that cars are sometimes used in places where speed limits
don't apply.

The answer is there are many situations where it is acceptable to break a
> law under the "choice of evils" defense:
>

Sure. People should be able to intentionally violate the law. Putting your
self-driving car in an aggressive mode that violates laws for no other
reason than saving a few seconds or being "cool" is not sufficient
justification, IMO.

I wouldn't want to be in a car that prevented the vehicle from performing
> an illegal U-turn in the event a tornado us spotted on the horizon. Will
> self-piloting cars be capable of recognizing such dangers, or weighing
> harms and evils, or does that require Turing-test-passing levels of
> intelligence?
>

A human could always take over the driving and accept responsibility for
their aggressive driving. Of course, if a Tesla is involved in an accident
and it's determined that it was due to the car being in aggressive mode,
the driver could certainly be culpable.

-Dave
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20220126/b6e60839/attachment.htm>