Waymos crash less than human drivers

Nah, just revoke their licenses and make it much harder to get one to begin with. Autonomous driving removes the economic necessity of having one. Just get a proper car that can drive you to work. No need for you to do anything. Catch up on lost sleep (a common cause of accidents is people being to tired to drive) or whatever.

Expect to pay for the privilege of driving yourself and putting others at risk. If you really want to drive yourself, you'll just have to skill up to get a license and proper training, get extra insurance for the increased liability, etc. And then if you prove to be unworthy of having a license after all, it will be taken away. Because it's a privilege and not a right to have one and others on the road will insist that you are competent to drive. And with all the autonomous and camera equipped cars, incompetent drivers will be really easy to spot and police.

It will take a while before we get there; this won't happen overnight. But that's where it's going. Most people will choose not to drive most of the time for financial reasons. Driving manually then becomes a luxury. Getting a license becomes optional, not a rite of passage that every teenager takes. Eventually, owning cars that enable manual driving will become more expensive or may not even be road legal in certain areas. Etc.

>>Nah, just revoke their licenses and make it much harder to get one to begin with

I 1000% agree with you, but unfortunately in some countries like the US that kind of argument leads to nowhere, because people think driving is a human right and also the entire country is built around having a car so you are actually truly screwed if you don't have one.

>> Autonomous driving removes the economic necessity of having one. Just get a proper car that can drive you to work.

Sure, except it doesn't exist and I honestly doubt it ever(in the next 50-100 years) will. If you need autonomous driving that takes you to your destination that already exists though - it's called a taxi.

Someone from Germany could confirm or correct this, but I have been told that if you get a DUI in Germany, your driver’s license is toast —for good.

You can banned for a longish time and then have to do an "idiot" test (as they call it) to get your license back. In addition you have to supply hair samples so that you prove you've not been taking any further substance (in recent history).

Generally you have to do a lot to get banned for life - remember Germany is run by car lobbies, they are not interested in banning people from driving,

Thanks! That makes more sense, to me.

> you have to supply hair samples

That seems like an idea that could be useful, over here, but we have a pretty strong sin lobby, so it's unlikely to happen.

My impression from the internet is that the US is particularly weak on this - people talk about tickets for DUIs like it's not a big deal.

In the UK you get a minimum 12 month ban, an unlimited fine (which are based on income and have been quite big in the past (Dec of Ant and Dec got an £86000 fine). I don't think this approach is uncommon in Europe.

> Autonomous driving removes the economic necessity of having one.

...Once autonomous cars can go everywhere human-driven cars can, in all the conditions humans can drive in.

Remember that Waymo is still very restrictive in where they choose to operate.

It’s not. Yearlong suspension where I live, major fines, and you basically need to get a lawyer to navigate the process which is generally at least $10k. You become almost uninsurable and have to show proof to the court you carry insurance, or else you go straight to jail and your car gets impounded if you get pulled over.

With a valid employment reason (such as snow plow operator) you can get an employment only permit. Your insurance will easily be $1000 a month just for basic liability. I’ve known a few guys in this situation.

The bigger problem is people who are judgment proof and don’t mind spending some time in jail. They just drive drunk over and over and don’t care if their car (which is often a relative’s) gets impounded. They have no valid licence and no insurance. Short of permanent incarceration, there isn’t much they can be done about such people.

Lower income people, in the U.S., tend to live in cheap areas and use a car to access employment in an hour+ radius. Making driving expensive for them simply means limiting their employment or cutting them off from it entirely.

Driving should not be a privilege exclusively for rich people. Poor people cannot afford to pay an Uber to drive them around and can’t afford to buy some Tesla with FSD either. Waymo would be grossly unaffordable for a 120 mile daily round trip commute.

In Australia I met people with even longer commutes - going 150km to get to a job, mostly due to how unaffordable housing has become.

If you want to take away people’s cars, you need to make sure they can access employment and have affordable, safe housing. Remember that half the population makes less than the median income.

> pretty strong sin lobby

Sin is ok here, that's why our policitians have little or no hair ;)

If you are caught driving above the legal limit of 0.05% you are fined roughly $570, are prohibited from driving for 1 month, and receive 2 “points”. Points accumulate and once you reach 8 you lose your drivers license. In this case you would keep the points for five years. Many different driving offences give you points.

For comparison, to get a similar penalty by speeding you would have to exceed the speed limit by 51 km/h (32 mph).

There are many additional related offences you could commit, with different consequences. Repeat offences to the above, for example, are punished more severely: you get 3 months instead of 1 and the fine is doubled and tripled for the second and third offence, respectively. Already with a blood alcohol level of 0.03% you risk legal consequences, e.g. if you make an error while driving. If you endanger someone else (or property) with that level you are committing a crime, will lose your license, and can go to prison. If you are in your probationary period (two years after acquiring your license), any nonzero level is an offence.

Losing your license is generally temporary. You are blocked from re-acquiring it for some time, depending on the offence (at least 6 months, but can be multiple years). You have to complete an MPU, which certifies your ability to safely drive. For alcohol based offences, this would include demonstrating that you have reduced your consumption significantly. This can be quite harsh; you may, for example, be required to show complete abstinence for a period of one year. Of course, you are also looking at costs close to $1000 for the MPU alone. It is possible to get permanently blocked from driving, but it's quite difficult, I believe.

Driving is not a right, it is a privilege.

Someone's individual economic circumstances are irrelevant. You can either drive safely or you can't.

In the vast majority of cases, being a bad driver is a lifestyle choice, not an incurable condition. No-one should be granted a right to present a significant danger to other people as a consequence of making bad and avoidable lifestyle choices.

> The bigger problem is people who are judgment proof and don’t mind spending some time in jail. They just drive drunk over and over and don’t care if their car (which is often a relative’s) gets impounded. They have no valid licence and no insurance. Short of permanent incarceration, there isn’t much they can be done about such people.

Yep, when you get down to this root fact, it's nearly impossibly to _actually_ stop someone from driving a car. If you make insurance mandatory, they will still not buy insurance. If you revoke their license, they will keep driving without it. If you fine them, they just won't pay. If they go to jail for it, they'll resume driving when they get out.

If you stop one person then maybe it becomes impossible to get from their give to their job. If you stop all the poor people from doing it then what happens? The jobs don't evaporate. Maybe it becomes economical to run a bus, or open more businesses outside the CBD.

No one said it isn’t a privilege.

I don’t agree with making driving something only the wealthy do, though.

The type of people who frequently cause collisions are the same people that will drive without a license. And because they're also judgment proof deadbeats they often don't have liability insurance either.

False equivalency. Even taken to extreme ends nothing here can be construed as suggesting "only the wealthy" should be allowed or able to drive.

The moment someone suggests enforcement of a law someone comes running in yelling about how it's regressive and will disproportionately affect the poor, and by extension "only the wealthy" will be able to do whatever.

Everything disproportionately affects the poor because it's very hard to be poor.

And the moment you say we shouldn't enforce laws because it will make poor peoples' lives harder you are saying that something is no longer a privilege. That poor people should be able to break the law with lesser or no consequence because they are poor.

I wonder if there should be a two-tiered structure to replace the traditional drivers license. In flying, you can get a Private Pilot License, or you can get a Sport Pilot Certificate, which is easier to get but has fewer privileges. It would be interesting to see a state replace a drivers license with the Sport level license, which would only let you drive a vehicle up to 6,000 pounds (Cadillac Escalade), have other restrictions, and have a higher insurance rate. Then the higher level license would require additional training (somewhere between current DL requirements and the monthlong requirement for a CDL) and let you drive the full limit of 26,000 pounds and you'd get discounted insurance.

I wonder if there will be a gap between (1) AVs being so common that driving for Uber doesn't make financial sense, and (2) AVs being able to operate in all driving conditions. I imagine people at a concert all fleeing for AV taxis after receiving alerts of unexpected fog coming.