Remote driving in UK from abroad should not be allowed, says Law Commission

Can&#x27;t wait to get killed by a car driven by somebody with 250ms of latency, 20% packet loss, who is underpaid and is forced to drive 3 cars at once.<p>Driving also varies a lot between countries. I can&#x27;t imagine having to switch between left- and right-hand driving multiple times a day, let alone remotely. Nor can I imagine switching between the relatively calm (if somewhat pedestrian hostile) style of driving in the UK, to the structured chaos of driving somewhere like India.

The commission lists a whole load of reasons why this is an issue (loss of connection, cyber attack, etc.). But these are all just as much a problem if someone is remotely driving a car from Gdansk or from Brighton. Possibly connection errors and response times would become an issue at much greater distances and that&#x27;d mean you couldn&#x27;t have someone in Saigon driving a car in London. But there&#x27;s no technical reason it couldn&#x27;t be done from Eastern Europe.<p>However, they do list one reason that matters a lot: criminal liability. What happens if the overworked, underpaid driver in a Hertz sweatshop in Hyderabad breaks traffic laws, or crashes and injures someone? Which will happen.

I Germany you pay easily 2500€ to get a driver&#x27;s license. Just the thought that you would share the road with cars driven remotely by call center employees in Asia is hilarious and frightening at the same time.

I did not know that this is a thing. I mean it&#x27;s not something I am&#x2F;should be surprised that <i>is</i> a thing - hell we &#x27;offshore&#x27; all sorts of things and the tech is completely there - but I do have to wonder what safeguards are in place. The picture shows the car without anyone in the driving seat, which I would hope is not what the company selling the service is encouraging (a la Tesla &#x27;Autopilot&#x27; still requires an attentive driver to override when necessary) but without any kind of regulation I also wouldn&#x27;t be surprised if they did.

I think remote driving could be interesting in combination with automated driving.<p>For example, self-driving cars are already &quot;safer&quot; than human drivers in ideal conditions, but what about when conditions change rapidly. Can a self-driving car detect when the situation is 100% ideal and it&#x27;s 100% certain there is nothing going wrong, and differentiate from being less than 100% sure that everything is optimal?<p>Can a human at a dispatch center be brought in to potentially assist when this happens? And can this make the trip overall safer?<p>For example, a self-driving car driving along an empty highway in daylight on a dry day is very unlikely to encounter any issues, but an animal may still jump out in front of the car. If that happens, it should be able to brake on its own, but a human at a dispatch center might be brought in as copilot also, to ensure things go smoothly.<p>Maybe it&#x27;s not an animal, but a shadow crossing the road from a stray cloud overhead. The AI might not be able to determine 100% whether it&#x27;s safe to proceed. A human can make this determination and continue the trip (or slam on the brakes)

The article makes it clear that the UK definition of &quot;driving a vehicle&quot; is currently centred on the physical location of the vehicle, inverse legal question of &quot;Is the driver considered to be driving a vehicle in the country where they are physically location country?&quot; which I&#x27;d imagine varies quite a lot too as many countries probably didn&#x27;t foresee remote operation when drafting their laws.<p>You could potentially end up in a situation where a remote driver in Estonia needs a driving license and insurance in both Estonia <i>and</i> the UK to fully cover themselves.

What about those itsy bitsy delivery rovers by companies like coco?

Dunno about UK, but if you can remotely murder people in other countries with drones&#x2F;missiles, I think remote driving is the least of the problems.

Real Late Stage Capitalism to push up the cost of learning to drive to absurd amounts (along with a massive shortage in driving test places) - easily 3k+ GBP nowadays, and then just offshore driving jobs remotely.