Change is needed in the approach to enforcement
The system of fines and points for drivers is intended as an incentive to drive responsibly, a disincentive to dangerous driving and a method to identify and remove from the road those who are likely to ignore safe driving practices and cause accidents.
In this post, I am ignoring the clear fact that most authorities end up abusing this system and operate it as a revenue stream. Clearly, the intention must be that if our enforcement were perfectly successful there would be no fines or points issued because the rules would never be broken.
With driverless vehicles, this becomes very possible. If the system of sensors and software that make up the vehicle are properly designed, it should be possible to make a vehicle that never intentionally breaks any of the rules laid down. The first thing that must be determined in the case of a potential infraction is whether the vehicle was operating in full autonomous mode at the time, and that no software or sensor modifications had been made by the operator.
If there's any deviation from the vendor's system/software or the vehicle was being used manually then the normal points/fine process applies. To whom is problematic, but I won't get into that...
Otherwise, the vendor is effectively the driver. It is their responsibility to ensure that their system and software drives correctly in all circumstances. Per-incident fines and points are not the answer though. Each incident of a driverless car exceeding the speed limit must be identified and the cause fixed, not just arbitrarily fined to anyone (insurance/vendor/owner/operator).
There are several things that must be in place for this to happen.
The rules of the road system must be unambiguous and clear to the automated system. This means a separate GPS-based authority-certified map of speed limits that is available to all vendors at all times. The GPS-map must be authoritative for driverless vehicles such that in the case where the GPS map erroneously holds a 40 limit for a road, but the actual posted limit is 30, there was no infraction by the car/vendor and the responsibility lies with the local authority to go through the necessary steps to correct the GPS map (or correct the posted limits if they were incorrect).
Where the car had access to correct limits and still exceeded them, that must be submitted to the vendor for analysis with a requirement for an explanation and commitment to resolving the fault.
No fine is necessary per-incident, because the intention here is to get all vendors' vehicles to drive correctly, not to punish them for errors.
If, however, a vendor routinely fails to explain of fix incidents of its system breaking traffic laws, then escalating fines will start to be applied to that vendor. Ultimately, a vendor might prove itself incapable of managing its own systems/software and rack up so many fines that it cannot stay in business.
Hopefully, that vendor's existing fleet of vehicles can be taken on and fixed by another vendor, but realistically it probably would leave owners with a vehicle that the cannot use (or can only use in manual mode).
Even in that worst-case scenario, I think I'd still prefer to be left with a vehicle that I cannot drive, rather than left with a licence that's revoked due to the vendor's incompetence -- and no longer able to drive or insure any other vehicle.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
