alt Hacker NewsIdeally the fees would be similar to the Norway model, where some tickets are tied to the income of the driver, in this case the pre-tax earnings of the company that created the driverless car.
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Driverless taxi services are all blowing through venture capitol, so does having a negative income mean that they get a payment, instead of a fine?
Assuming you divide it down to the earnings per car, that makes perfect sense. Of course right now they aren't making any profit at all, and by the time it is relevant it is likely that the cars will commit substantially no violations at all.
I think this could be a good compromise. Could have a floor value but the ceiling can vary accordingly.
Agreed. We need to look at reforming fines in general.
Fines should be scaled to income and the value of the vehicle and should exponentially increase for reoffense when in the same catagory of offense.
Isn't Norway only for drunk driving? Finland has it for massive speed excesses, but it is based on net taxable income taking out business expenses for taxi drivers, and Waymo is still negative.
If they become profitable you'd want to normalize by number of miles, unless you just want an incentive system to get more people on the road (extra drivers) and increase chance of humans suffering road injuries to boost employment in an internal service sector.
But even then coming out with a more efficient fleet than a competitor for higher margin would be penalized. You'd rather disincentivize skimping on safety for margin and not disincentivize better maintenance and fuel economy.
That can make sense (opinions differ) for individuals, but it's not like the company is advertising with "we get you there at 1.2x legal speed". They're not competing on that; they're not choosing to do this on purpose like an individual might choose to speed (for example because of economic incentives if their hourly price is high)
If they were, then it makes sense to fine them to some multiple of the benefit they got from this advertising tactic, but as it is, I don't see why it should be different from anyone else's ticket. The company isn't likely to enjoy a flood of this administrative work, besides the cost of the actual fines, so they'll work to minimise them anyway