The legal issue comes after the moral one. The questions posed is a classic choice of "sacrificing one to save more than one" an ethical dilemma, not a legal one. Laws may be written to codify the ethical decision that has been made but, the ethics must be resolved before laws can be created to uphold those morals.

Thanks for giving me the opening for this thought (Charliemopps)... While reading the article, I was again amazed by the lengths that some individuals will go to in order to avoid answering the moral question before them. In the case presented someone is going to die; either the driver or the two bystanders. It doesn't matter why the situation exists, it exists, we've gone past why. You must choose who will die as the dilemma dictates someone must die.

Stopping the car isn't an option that is available or putting it another way, stopping the car results in either the death of the driver or the two bystanders.

Driverless is not very accurate description of what is going on. Semi-autonomous seems a bit better but lacks marketing flash.

I'd suspect that no matter what the 'driver' is going to be given the ticket, maybe the 'car' gets a copy too. Some investigation will have to be done (and laws updated) to determine fault (what is you live in a no fault state). Was the car in autonomous mode? Was the firmware/software current? Did the driver ignore a warning?

The expectations of the driver will also have to be defined. Can the driver fall asleep? How much attention must the driver pay to the vehicle's operation?

Lot's of questions, not problems

Hmm, what part of the male anatomy does a rocket resemble? 'nuff said

Chances are you'd get a faster response from Google.

#1 - It's not an excuse, it's a reason get in the proper mindset.

#2 - You already know the reason and bonus, bean counters love this. You're gonna save the company long term dollars with a short term expenditure.

First time for this task ;-)

#EpicFail, can't count, shoulda been #8...

The first time a task comes up deal with it manually, it may or may not be related to a problem.

The second time this task occurs deal with it manually.

The third time this task occurs, it's time to start scripting.

It may take you a day or more to write the script, test debug, etc. or even longer for complex tasks but, this behavior tends to be a winner. The script is already some degree of documentation, it records the steps, etc. If it's robust enough it can be used to by your support techs to resolve issues, expanding the number of people who can resolve an issue, freeing the admin for other tasks. Scripts tend not to make typos (yes, I know your command line skills are legendary) and can save a lot of time and effort in the long run.

Not that the LAPD is playing fast and loose with the equipment (okay that this level of poor behavior is being allowed to continue is inconceivable) but, that the equipment isn't self monitoring and reporting. I mean really, they are under the watchful (and apparently sleepy) eye of the DoJ and no one thought to add a monitoring feature? The police have some of the most wired cars around and the tech to push or pull, at least, daily status reports on the health and activity of the recording systems wasn't included?

Wow, even WOW, or OMFGWOW are not adequate to express my disdain.

"Attitude reflects leadership, captain." Julius Campbell (Wood Harris), Remember the Titans (2000)

Ever get the feeling Google should be paying us $.02/month per gigabyte, just sayin'

I'd add a couple corollaries to that:

1. when you don't trust your co-workers and/or subordinates
2. when you don't know how to run a meeting

.

Add to this the lack of incentive to save money and you've got a right good mess. After spending time and effort to save funds on a program (government in this case), we ended the year with a surplus of funds (in the 10x of 1,000's range, I know it's a drop in the bucket but, we were quite proud at the time). When next year rolled around we were suddenly "poor estimators" and had "poor financial management", so our budget was cut by several times over our savings from last year.

That was many years ago but, since then I experienced a similar mentality in the private sector, especially when dealing with government contracts.

Also, our parent company recently took over management of our capital purchases. We have the money, we have the need, we have reviewed the data but, now it takes and extra 4-6 months to purchase something (e.g. a upgraded SAN). It seems that another subsidiary had some issue with their purchasing process, so rather than deal with the problem, Mother (our loving term for our parent company), created several more.

I've seen demos (albeit on TV documentations) of dogs having been trained for cancer detection. While I can see it might be a boon in third world countries, where folks tend not be to as uptight as most are on this side of the pond, I don't see it catching on in the U.S. I just can't imagine folks laying on a table (the kind where each arm and leg is supported separately) in their skivvies and letting Toto go for a bit of a walk while he sniffs your wobbly bits.

Can't saw I'm a big fan of adding cellular or WiFi to a car for this purpose but, how hard would it be to "have an app for that" connect your phone via USB and wala you have control and choice. The app notifies you of an update, etc. Of course you'd also incur the liability for having not installed a software update that has been made available.

Granted no matter what method is chosen, there will be risks and issues. Pretty sure their is something better than what we are doing or not doing now.

Hmm, but, you have to weigh that risk (and okay, I'm assuming software updates won't occur while the car is moving) against the risk of not updating a vehicle. Yes it's a numbers game and their are vested interests both ways (e.g. I have a vested interest in your car getting a safety update).