S.19.4-1: Transport Industry Jobs Protection Act (Statute)

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Section I: Title and Terms
1.1) This shall be known as the "Transport Industry Jobs Protection Act" or "TIJ-Pro Act"
1.2) Terms
a) Self Driving Vehicle Technology (SDVT)
b) Trucking Industry – Vehicles that fall under the description of Commercial Drivers Licenses (CDLs), Rail Road, water going vehicles used for the transportation goods.
c) Passenger Transport Industry – Taxis, buses, public transport & mass private transport (anything greater than 6 passengers).

Section II: Self Driving Vehicle Technology Ban
2.1) SDVT is banned for use for both trucking and passenger transport industries in the Southern Region.
2.2) Any businesses currently using SDVT at the implementation of this bill has two month phasing out period.

Section III: Exemptions & Registration Fees
3.1) SDVT is legal for use on one private vehicle.
3.2) Private vehicles using SDVT will pay an additional registration fee of $240 annually.
3.3) Luxury vehicles using SDVT will incur an additional registration fee of $2,400 annually.

sponsor: Muaddib

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

the impact this bill would have on productivity in the Southern economy is deeply concerning to me.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I do not generally hold the view that self-driving vehicles will result in lesser safety - if anything the reduction of the threat posed by human error is something to welcome. Thus this bill, unintentionally in my view, actually harms the long-term safety in regards to transport in the south, relatively speaking.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I do not generally hold the view that self-driving vehicles will result in lesser safety - if anything the reduction of the threat posed by human error is something to welcome. Thus this bill, unintentionally in my view, actually harms the long-term safety in regards to transport in the south, relatively speaking.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/20/driverless-cars-arent-safe-or-ready-for-the-road-robotics-expert.html

Currently, there are no state or federal regulations around how driverless cars are tested, Jason Levine, executive director at the Center for Auto Safety

https://gizmodo.com/the-deadly-recklessness-of-the-self-driving-car-industr-1831027948

-According to an email recently obtained by the Information, Uber’s self-driving car division may not only be reckless, but outright negligent. The company’s executive staff reportedly ignored detailed calls from its own safety team and continued unsafe practices and a pedestrian died. Before that, a host of accidents and near-misses had gone unheeded.
- At least one major executive in Google’s autonomous car division reportedly exempted himself from test program protocol, directly caused a serious crash, injured his passenger, and never informed police that it was caused by a self-driving car. Waymo, now a subsidiary of Google, has been involved, by my count, in 21 reported crashes this year, according to California DMV records, though it was at fault in one.
- On two separate occasions, Autopilot, Tesla’s semi-autonomous driving system, was engaged when drivers suffered fatal car crashes. In October, a Florida Tesla owner sued the company after his car was in a serious crash while on Autopilot, claiming the company “has duped consumers ... into believing that the autopilot system it offers with Tesla vehicles at additional cost can safely transport passengers at highway speeds with minimal input and oversight from those passengers.” (Tesla, of course, refutes this characterization.) These cases are muddier because Tesla explicitly warns not to let the system drive the car entirely and has safeguards installed to deter this type of bad driver behavior. Yet Tesla continues to advertise that it offers “Full Self-Driving Hardware on All Cars” on its website, and its own engineers told regulators that they anticipated some drivers would rely fully on the system. Yet publicly, Tesla continues to deny that their system might engender in drivers any dangerous reliance on its semi-autonomous system.

do tell, how many car accidents do Atlasians involve themselves in every year? In relative terms what you just talked about is mere small potatoes...
I'm not dead-set against regulation of these sorts of things but to villainize them is folly.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I do not generally hold the view that self-driving vehicles will result in lesser safety - if anything the reduction of the threat posed by human error is something to welcome. Thus this bill, unintentionally in my view, actually harms the long-term safety in regards to transport in the south, relatively speaking.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/20/driverless-cars-arent-safe-or-ready-for-the-road-robotics-expert.html

Currently, there are no state or federal regulations around how driverless cars are tested, Jason Levine, executive director at the Center for Auto Safety

https://gizmodo.com/the-deadly-recklessness-of-the-self-driving-car-industr-1831027948

-According to an email recently obtained by the Information, Uber’s self-driving car division may not only be reckless, but outright negligent. The company’s executive staff reportedly ignored detailed calls from its own safety team and continued unsafe practices and a pedestrian died. Before that, a host of accidents and near-misses had gone unheeded.
- At least one major executive in Google’s autonomous car division reportedly exempted himself from test program protocol, directly caused a serious crash, injured his passenger, and never informed police that it was caused by a self-driving car. Waymo, now a subsidiary of Google, has been involved, by my count, in 21 reported crashes this year, according to California DMV records, though it was at fault in one.
- On two separate occasions, Autopilot, Tesla’s semi-autonomous driving system, was engaged when drivers suffered fatal car crashes. In October, a Florida Tesla owner sued the company after his car was in a serious crash while on Autopilot, claiming the company “has duped consumers ... into believing that the autopilot system it offers with Tesla vehicles at additional cost can safely transport passengers at highway speeds with minimal input and oversight from those passengers.” (Tesla, of course, refutes this characterization.) These cases are muddier because Tesla explicitly warns not to let the system drive the car entirely and has safeguards installed to deter this type of bad driver behavior. Yet Tesla continues to advertise that it offers “Full Self-Driving Hardware on All Cars” on its website, and its own engineers told regulators that they anticipated some drivers would rely fully on the system. Yet publicly, Tesla continues to deny that their system might engender in drivers any dangerous reliance on its semi-autonomous system.

I agree with the Speaker that eventually it would be safer on the road, in the workplace, etc. due to automation but as the former President has shown this technology is nowhere near ready for the road.

How should we go about regulating the development of this technology and/or what level(s) of SDVT does everyone think should be banned if any?

No levels of SDVT should be banned, but if need be we can put in place some safeguards.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Nay