Intel's Mobileye Proposes Formula to Assign Accident Fault in Self-Driving Era

Mobileye CEO and Intel Senior Vice President Amnon Shashua presented a mathematical formula said to prove the safety of autonomous vehicles, at the World Knowledge Forum in Seoul, South Korea. The companies said Shashua and colleague Shai Shalev-Shwartz developed the formula in an effort to “bring certainty to the open questions of liability and blame in the event of an accident when a vehicle has no human driver.” Mobileye’s proposed “responsibility sensitive safety” model provides what Shashua said are specific and measurable parameters for the human concepts of responsibility and caution and defines a “safe state,” where the autonomous vehicle “cannot be the cause of an accident, no matter what action is taken by other vehicles.” In his presentation, Shashua urged industry and policymakers to “collaboratively construct standards that definitively assign accident fault” when human-driven and self-driving vehicles inevitably collide. He said rules and regulations today are framed around the idea of a driver in control of the car, and new parameters are needed for autonomous vehicles. “Just like the best human drivers in the world, self-driving cars cannot avoid accidents due to actions beyond their control,” said Shashua, “but the most responsible, aware and cautious driver is very unlikely to cause an accident of his or her own fault, particularly if they had 360-degree vision and lightning-fast reaction times like autonomous vehicles will.” The model would formalize a way to ensure self-driving cars operate only within the framework defined as “safe” according to clear definitions of fault that are agreed upon across the industry and by regulators, he said.