In its February 4 response letter to Google, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) clarified whether the self-driving system (SDS) in their autonomous cars is exempt from certain federal regulations or is actually itself a “driver” as defined in those regulations. NHTSA decided to go with the latter and more or less allowed Google to continue removing human drivers from the autonomous driving situation. This was not entirely unexpected, especially considering that Google's research so far has shown that the “supervising” driver in an autonomous car is rather useless, if not downright dangerous.
NHTSA’s decision comes amid a larger discussion about our society’s relationship with cars and transportation as a whole. There exists a tension between our desire to embrace the convenience of SDSs and our reluctance to trust that technology with our safety. Plenty of the conversation has been focused on the hypothetical situation in which an SDS “chooses” to intentionally harm one person to avoid greater harm to others. Such a situation, while difficult to plan for, is most likely going to occur far less often than human drivers “choosing” to harm others by drinking too much or relentlessly staring at a phone while they drive.
Interestingly, the “robot ethics” conversation also calls into question our own traffic laws and why safely driving so often requires us to violate those laws. Humans may never match computers at performing mundane tasks. However, where humans seem to excel is where they need to bend the rules and react to completely new situations by identifying similarities to a past experience. In fact, that particular skill is really the next step for the SDS. The robots are learning it quickly and will soon be venturing outside Mountain View, Mcity, and Warren.
Whether it was sailing across the ocean for the first time, firing up that first boiler on an early locomotive, or first gliding over Kitty Hawk, we have covered all this territory before. Technological advances force us to answer very difficult questions about ourselves, but everything always seems to work out better in the end. So relax, put your feet up, and leave your commute to the SDS. And if you really enjoy driving, which I do, that should get better too. After all, the unburdening of the horse worked out all right.