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Intel Proposes System to Make Self-Driving Cars Blameless

[Philip Lelyveld comment - it sounds like Intel's lawyers have come up with standards that will protect Intel, but will produce a self-driving car riding experience that no person in a hurry will tolerate.]

Intel Corp. has developed a system it says ensures that self-driving vehicles can’t cause accidents where they are at fault, an effort to reassure a skeptical public and help speed adoption of driverless cars on the road.

The world’s largest chipmaker is publishing a set of standards, based on mathematical formulas, that will govern the behavior of robot cars and trucks. If they’re adopted, Intel argues, it will bring certainty to questions of liability and blame in the event of an accident.

To illustrate what Intel has in mind, under the guidelines a robot vehicle would move past parked cars at a speed slow enough to make sure it could stop in time to avoid a pedestrian who suddenly stepped out into the road. That calculation is possible because we know the maximum speed at which a human can move and can model it, according to Intel. Similarly, computers can easily calculate the safe stopping distance to a vehicle in front and make sure the vehicle they’re piloting stays far enough away. If an aggressive human driver cuts in front of the robot car and causes an accident, the standards would clearly show who’s fault it was, even if the machine-driven car rear-ended the other vehicle.

See the full story here: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-18/intel-proposes-system-to-make-self-driving-cars-blameless