Driving a self-driving car, if there is an accident, who is responsible? Some people think that the driver should be responsible, while others believe that car companies that provide autonomous driving should pay the bill.
The debate hasn't stopped since self-driving cars hit the road. Even the laws and regulations of various countries have not deeply touched this gray area, but there is such a car company that has taken the lead in taking action.
Mercedes was the first to eat crab
Recently, according to foreign media reports, Mercedes-Benz announced that it will bear legal responsibility for the operation of its vehicle equipped with L3 level automatic driving system Drive Pilot. This means that if the owner of the car is involved in a car accident while using the system, Mercedes-Benz will be liable. A stone stirs up a thousand layers of waves.
According to the standards agreed by the automotive industry, the accident of L0-L2 is the responsibility of the driver, L4-L5 is the responsibility of the system, and the automatic driving of the L3 level can be said to be the gray area of automatic driving. Under normal circumstances, if there is a car accident at L3 level, in law, car companies maintain three different statements, do not actively promote the level of automatic driving, do not reject the title of automatic driving, are not responsible for automatic driving accidents, and will be said later on the problem of automatic driving.
And Mercedes-Benz suddenly announced that it was responsible for L3 driving, why is it? Can such a shout break consumer's doubts about L3 level automatic driving? Will Tesla, the new car-making force Weilai and Xiaopeng, who have repeatedly committed crimes in the "autopilot" accident, follow up?
Symbolism is greater than product significance
In a group of car companies that blur the responsibility of automatic driving with "no initiative, no refusal, and later", Mercedes-Benz's statement can be called a clear stream, but on closer inspection, its symbolic significance is far stronger than the product significance.
In accordance with the international safety requirement UN-R157 "Automatic Lane Keeping System", the German Federal Motor Vehicle Administration (KBA) approved the Launch of the Drive Pilot, a Mercedes-Benz L3 level autonomous driving system, at the end of last year.
The first models to apply L3 autonomous driving technology are the new generation of S-Class and EQS, with prices of about 920,000 yuan to 1.78 million yuan and 1.08 million to 1.52 million yuan respectively, which are accessible to non-civilians.
Behind the gorgeous price is a string of conditions that make people's backs chill. The responsible statement stipulates that Mercedes-Benz's L3 level autonomous driving can only be driven at speeds of less than 60 km / h on the highway.
This condition avoids complex urban road conditions while avoiding vicious accidents in high-speed driving conditions. By analogy, in China's urban road conditions, L3 level autonomous driving can also be implemented, which can be limited to driving at speeds of less than 20 km/h on urban elevated roads. However, according to the latest traffic regulations, turtle speed driving is also a violation.
In addition, for unexpected situations, Mercedes-Benz also requires a lot. It said that in the event of an unexpected situation, the system issued a warning and it would take the driver 10 seconds to take over. If the driver does not respond to the warning, the vehicle stops on its own to prevent an accident. In addition, the doors will not be locked to allow rescuers to enter the vehicle.
Mercedes-Benz uses this to show off its skills and highlight its advantages in the field of automatic driving, but considering the limited surprises brought to consumers by L3 level automatic driving, consumers are more worried about becoming the guinea pig of Mercedes-Benz L3 level automatic driving.
In the face of Mercedes-Benz's statement that it is responsible for the L3 level automatic driving system car, some netizens said, "Mercedes-Benz's abacus is really good, even if there is a car accident, it is also their own money, consumers out of life." ”
Autonomous driving: ideal fullness, realistic bone feeling
The reason why consumers are so anxious is mainly how full the previous propaganda of automatic driving is, and how bone-like reality is. The most important "safe" attribute in driving is frequently questioned in aggressive autonomous driving campaigns.
In 2016, on China's Beijing-Hong Kong-Macau Expressway, a Tesla in "autopilot" state crashed into a road sweeper, killing the Tesla driver. Tesla also admitted that the vehicle was in a state of automatic driving at the time of the incident, but to this day, the "Tesla Autopilot" fatal case is still unresolved.
On August 12 last year, the owner of the 31-year-old Fujian NIO ES8 died tragically after rear-ending the front engineering vehicle on the highway. According to his friend, Lin Wenqin enabled the automatic assisted driving function of Weilai Automobile at the time of the incident.
In September last year, a Xiaopeng P7 rear-ended a truck on the highway, the owner of the car was then hospitalized with concussion, it is said that the NGP automatic driving function was turned on at the time of the incident, and the Xiaopeng P7 did not significantly slow down when it saw the large truck in front of it, and directly crashed into the large truck.
Abroad, in March 2018, a self-driving car at Uber hit a woman crossing the street in the United States, killing her. At that time, an Apple engineer failed to identify obstacles when Tesla's Autopilot system was turned on, and he died in a car accident. Both verdicts are not responsible for companies, and the court said that this "automatic driving" cannot replace artificial visual vision and that the driver must maintain always-on control of the car as it travels.
The report shows that from 2014 to 2018, cars in "autonomous driving" mode in California had a total of 38 accidents during the driving process, and most of the causes of accidents were due to the driver's overly reassuring vehicle to the "automatic driving" system.
It is this ambiguous "autonomous driving" system that leads the driver astray. This also shows that as L3-level self-driving cars or models under the banner of "autonomous driving" are gradually approved on the road, the division of system and human responsibilities has become more and more urgent.
The law remains a blind spot
How to clarify the fault of the driver and the driver and the automatic driving system developer is not clearly stipulated in the laws of China and the United States.
At this year's two sessions, a number of representatives of the two sessions suggested that the division of responsibilities for automatic driving should be stipulated. Chen Hong, chairman of SAIC Motor, suggested that standard rules and disposal mechanisms for the division of responsibilities between human drivers and "automatic driving systems" be formulated, and suggested the establishment of a grade evaluation and certification system and access mechanism for "automatic driving systems".
Zeng Qinghong, chairman of GAC Group, suggested adding the mandatory provision that "intelligent driving cars should install key data storage black boxes or cloud backups of key data" to determine whether the responsible entity for controlling the vehicle at the time of traffic accident is the driver or the intelligent driving system, and on the basis of the current traffic accident attribution, add the relevant legal provisions for determining traffic accidents when the intelligent driving car is controlled by the system, and make it clear that the responsibility of the intelligent system is borne by the producer.
Before the specific laws and regulations landed, considering the complex situation of human-machine co-driving, including Volvo, Ford, Baidu, Changan, GAC and other companies even directly said that they gave up L3 and went straight to L4, after all, there was an accident in automatic driving, and the lawsuits generated were difficult to deal with.
Write at the end
Here, we issue an initiative that major car companies should exercise restraint when promoting automatic assisted driving or "automatic driving", at least make the conditions of use clear, and do not mislead consumers to simply and rudely equate these immature technologies with "automatic driving", so as to make dangerous actions and bring safety risks to others and themselves.
As an ordinary car owner and pedestrian, Xiao Zhi believes that it is better not to be too gullible to car manufacturers with certain purposes of publicity, after all, life is only once.
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