CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Debate!
Self-driving cars 'must have driver', regulators insist
(120 posts)-
Posted 6 years ago #
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@ chdot, sorry completely forgot I was going to get you some vids etc of proximity sensors! The company who fit them , not scania, have pretty generic videos on there site, I am pop north again tomorrow so will have time to photograph stuff for you !! The company is tvg safety cameras, sure there web site will have nicely edited positive messages!!
Incidentally, I have a new role as well as just driving the things, if any one needs access to big trucks for safety demos, then please contact me!Posted 6 years ago # -
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-41084508
How would you like your pizza to be delivered to you in a self-driving car?
In the next few weeks the idea is going to be tested on some of Domino's customers in the US city of Ann Arbor in Michigan.
The aim is not to test if self-driving cars work, but to see if customers are happy to go out of their homes to collect the pizza from an empty car.
The research is being carried out with Ford, which plans to start making self-driving vehicles in 2021.
Amusingly, the test vehicles will not be self-driven and will be driven by a regular Windows 3.1 Human Being. The car will also carry researchers as well.
It makes you think just how much money is it worth spending to remove a few minimum-wage employees from your payroll (who are probably "self employed contractors" anyway). The answer is a lot, it seems. I wonder how much more would be saved by buying cargobikes. Maybe Deliveroo with their mobile-phone based model and no employees or infrastructure will kill this sort of thing dead by virtue of its pure capitalist efficiency.
I do wonder if a self-driving Dominos car will be able to park itself quite so badly and obstructively as their employees currently do.
Posted 6 years ago # -
"I do wonder if a self-driving Dominos car will be able to park itself quite so badly and obstructively as their employees currently do."
Well, it depends how much such things are programmed for the real world (a or b).
A - like it is now, park where you can get away with.
B - parking in full accordance with all parking (and other) rules.
Posted 6 years ago # -
'Amusingly, the test vehicles will not be self-driven and will be driven by a regular Windows 3.1 Human Being. The car will also carry researchers as well.'
It seems unlikely that pizza would survive such a journey.
Posted 6 years ago # -
A self-driving, self-balancing cargo bike would be pretty awesome.
Posted 6 years ago # -
Posted 6 years ago #
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Just heard on BBC R4 that the fatality was a cyclist, although the link says pedestrian.
Posted 6 years ago # -
R4 now saying pedestrian as in the link.
Posted 6 years ago # -
I imagine the only way they could get self-drive cars not to run over pedestrians would be to constrain the movement of pedestrians even more. Remember how it took pressure from motorists to make jay-walking i.e. crossing at the most convenient point a crime?
Posted 6 years ago # -
Arizona has established itself as a testing ground for Uber and Google’s Waymo, each of which has deployed fleets of autonomous vehicles on the streets of the Phoenix metro. Sunny days and reliable car-centric infrastructure make the area well-suited for the evolving technology, which struggles with unusual road and weather conditions.
Posted 6 years ago # -
"Update, March 19, 2018: The photo on this post was changed to match the make of the Uber car involved in the accident."
Uber and SUV.
Posted 6 years ago # -
"struggles with unusual road and weather conditions."
Forget Scotland then! Never going to happen.
Posted 6 years ago # -
There's so much capital invested in autonomous vehicles, I bet, at least in America, that early incidents like this will result in a tightening of jaywalking laws. Especially with this president who will undoubtedly view pedestrians as 'losers'.
Posted 6 years ago # -
There was either the driver of a Tesla, or the Tesla itself, that killed a cyclist on an A-road in England recently.
I wonder if it was in autonomous mode at the time? I wonder if the police checked that? I wonder if we’ll ever find out?
I think in the US of A, all autonomous crashes have to be reported centrally & and crash data made public. I bet that doesn’t happen here
Posted 6 years ago # -
@nedd1e_h do you have a link? I didn't see it anywhere. Tesla don't do full autonomy just yet, but unfortunately some of their customers seem to think that they do (and have actually paid for it in advance).
Posted 6 years ago # -
There was a Law in Action episode on Radio 4 last week about the law and autonomous driving. I think there's some legislation being drafted at the moment
Posted 6 years ago # -
R4 now says “walking with her bicycle”.
Posted 6 years ago # -
Police saying the vehicle was speeding but she wasn't on a crossing so that's alright then.
Posted 6 years ago # -
@jdanielp
Here you go:
More news articles by Googling:
cyclist killed tesla model s
Posted 6 years ago # -
"early incidents like this will result in a tightening of jaywalking laws"
This is what will inevitably happen. Jaywalking was invented to provide cars with unhampered space. Autonomous vehicles will not work with unpredictable humans wandering, or cycling about on the roads. We will be mandated against...
Posted 6 years ago # -
It's going to be a big battle to ensure we don't go the US route. (To be honest, I think I see some of that thinking in the proposed Leith Walk plans with pedestrians expected to use only widely-spaced two-stage crossings...)
Posted 6 years ago # -
@nedd1e_h thanks (and apologies for being lazy and not just searching myself). I'm not sure how I missed that at the time.
Posted 6 years ago # -
On the presumption that self-driving cars are indistinguishable from robots, refer to the three laws of robotics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics
If people are being harmed by self-driving cars, because those people are exhibiting human behaviour and making human errors, it is the fault of the vehicle – and the unconscious bias that it may possess by way of its human-written programming.
Posted 6 years ago # -
I'm not sure that any company claims to have a fully autonomous vehicle yet that isn't restricted to either very low speed and/or an essentially closed environment, hence the continued presence of humans for real world testing. On this basis, surely these human 'drivers' remain at fault for now given that they are there to prevent accidents if vehicles 'make a mistake'? (However, they may also be the cause of accidents by taking over inappropriately.)
Posted 6 years ago # -
Brent Toderian's take:
https://twitter.com/BrentToderian/status/975841089247633408
Also, there seems to be some doubt as to whether the victim was riding the bike or not:
https://twitter.com/mateosfo/status/975794993049649154
Some (possibly cynical people) are saying that by declaring the victim as a pedestrian "not in the crosswalk" puts the blame on her, rather than if she was cycling on the road (there is a painted-bike lane there) the blame would lie squarely on the driver/vehicle.
Posted 6 years ago # -
Welcome to the future.
"Uber’s self-driving car saw the pedestrian but didn’t swerve – report"
Posted 5 years ago # -
So there we have it...
A straightforward engineering trade-off of smoothness of ride & passenger comfort (avoiding false positives), versus the lives of non-motorised (non-weaponised?) human beings.
Posted 5 years ago #
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