The only difference is that human driver can get out of the car, examinine a situation, and remove the cone. So I guess this makes self-driving cars an equivalent of human disabled/handicapped drivers?
This corporate entity does have the ability to remove a cone from the vehicle. It just lacks a convenient agent to remove the cone, because that would require an additional expenditure that breaks the business model of profitably selling taxi rides without human taxi drivers.
It is not a crime to break a business model. Never has been, and with any luck, never will be.
Saying "driver is a corporate entity" makes as little sense as saying "driver of this regular bus is AC Transit".
It's like: imagine someone hates AC Transit, so they started approaching the busses and putting huge, obscuring stickers on the windshield. Would AC transit suffer from that? Sure. And so would the passengers and other vehicles on the road.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_(franchise)#The_Butlerian...
Waymo’s safety record (desktop only): https://docalysis.com/files/hldxxn
I looked up some relevant regulations for California. So the following arguments are probably only relevant in the state of California. I would be surprised if they are not subject to change in the near future. Also, I am not a lawyer, so not only is the following not legal advice, it might also be totally incorrect. But it’s interesting to think about.
I found there are at least three relevant sections of the California Vehicle Code, namely Section 227, Section 228, and Section 38750.
Section 38750(a)(4) states:
An “operator” of an autonomous vehicle is the person who is seated in the driver’s seat, or, if there is no person in the driver’s seat, causes the autonomous technology to engage.
A copy of a law enforcement interaction plan that meets all of the requirements specified in Section 227.38(e) of Article 3.7.
How to communicate with a remote operator of the vehicle who is available at all times that the vehicle is in operation, including providing a contact telephone number for the manufacturer;
So, there is a remote operator available at all times, in both testing and deployment of autonomous vehicles. This remote operator can operate the vehicle remotely, and presumably one remote operator can be responsible for many autonomous vehicles, because otherwise the business plan breaks.
I would be interested to see if in the future there is a mandated ratio of vehicles per remote operator. My guess is the ratio will approach one.