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Self-driving cars 'must have driver', regulators insist

(120 posts)

  1. Murun Buchstansangur
    Member

    Brilliant that Uber appear to have handed over their heuristic programming to the IAM petrolheads and their "making sufficient progress" mantra.

    Posted 5 years ago #
  2. Murun Buchstansangur
    Member

    Uber driver was watching tv show prior to fatal crash, police say

    https://abcnews.go.com/US/uber-driver-watching-tv-show-prior-fatal-crash/story?id=56088595

    Quelle surprise

    Posted 5 years ago #
  3. wingpig
    Member

  4. Stickman
    Member

  5. acsimpson
    Member

  6. chdot
    Admin

    Last par of Stickman’s link -

    This pursuit of the driverless car dream is therefore not only crowding out better ways of improving transport, but also stymying scientific development. Of the 20 or so exhibitors I spoke to, not a single one believed autonomous cars would be on our roads within a decade. There are a myriad problems, ranging from insurance issues to the limitations of the technology and the resistance of the public to travelling in them. Rather than swallowing the fatuous statements from politicians about how driverless cars are going to change our lives, we need a sober assessment of their potential benefits, if any, and, crucially, of their downsides.

    Posted 5 years ago #
  7. crowriver
    Member

    SELF-DRIVING CAR SURVEY SHOWS WHO EXACTLY THE WORLD WANTS AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES TO SACRIFICE

    Animals and the old chosen to be killed in huge survey

    Also, people who "walk in the road". No mention of cyclists, but I presume that doesn't even need to be mentioned, it's a given...

    https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/self-driving-car-autonomous-vehicle-survey-kill-death-road-crash-study-a8599981.html

    Posted 5 years ago #
  8. gembo
    Member

    Unlike Brexit, this survey cannot have had a dominant grey demographic.

    Choosing humans to live in The human - animal scenario also throws up the dilemma that no animals were surveyed? (For @jdanielp, the animal in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe has been bred to want you to eat it)

    Posted 5 years ago #
  9. wingpig
    Member

    "...cars should favour law-abiding citizens over those that might be walking in the road."

    Walking in the road is not illegal, at least in this country. Maybe they meant "people walking in the road wearing a mask over their eyes with a VCR tucked under their arm".

    Posted 5 years ago #
  10. Blueth
    Member

    Surely the occupants of the vehicle should be the first "to be sacrificed" given that it was their choice to use the vehicle.

    Posted 5 years ago #
  11. wingpig
    Member

    "Surely the occupants of the vehicle should be the first "to be sacrificed" given that it was their choice to use the vehicle."

    One rendition of this story I read had replies from the people involved in the programming of the self-driving cars, whose response was that a car would always try to brake first before swerving.

    Posted 5 years ago #
  12. crowriver
    Member

    "Walking in the road is not illegal, at least in this country. "

    Indeed not, but I'm betting the software is being written in North America.

    I wager many drivers would sacrifice people who "looked at me in a funny way" too.

    Posted 5 years ago #
  13. acsimpson
    Member

    If minor transgressions put you on the hit list for automated cars then the standard of driving for the remaining manual vehicles should show a marked improvement.

    The whole thing is as usual a minor detail though the number of lives saved will be vast compared to the unfortunate incident where a human is hit by a self driving car.

    Posted 5 years ago #
  14. Blueth
    Member

    Probably, wingpig, because these guys will be "the average driver" who seldom looks far enough ahead to see developing situations and, on suddenly finding themself in the middle of one, just slams on the brakes.

    The ideal way to avoid an incident is to analyse what is going on ahead (it'd be nice to think a self driving car could do this) and just avoid it but otherwise there are four options: braking, acceleration, change of course or some combination of those three. At least two of these never seem to occur to most drivers.

    However, provided there's no injury, it can be entertaining watching someone press on regardless in to a situation they should have seen developing from way back.

    And cyclists can be just as guilty.

    Posted 5 years ago #
  15. neddie
    Member

    Great blog on the “trolley problem” con:

    https://visionzerolondon.wordpress.com/2018/10/25/the-trolley-problem-is-a-big-con/

    Posted 5 years ago #
  16. wingpig
    Member

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/14/cars-drivers-ethical-dilemmas-machines?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard

    "Above all, however, it will be directly life-saving. Around the world, more than 1 million people are killed in car accidents each year, most because of driver error. The driverless car won’t go to the pub, won’t get distracted by its mobile phone, won’t become drowsy at the wheel."

    Posted 5 years ago #
  17. chdot
    Admin

  18. crowriver
    Member

    Why People Keep Rear-Ending Self-Driving Cars

    "California crash reports make clear that humans expect other humans to bend or break traffic rules, rolling through four-way intersections, accelerating to make a yellow light, or cruising over the speed limit. But his robots won’t follow suit."

    https://www.wired.com/story/self-driving-car-crashes-rear-endings-why-charts-statistics/

    Posted 5 years ago #
  19. Arellcat
    Moderator

    Perhaps they should build in a certain amount of random deviation from algorithms with safety as the prime directive.

    I was thinking the other day, when I used a lift at work, that we humans think nothing of thrusting a hand between the closing doors of the lift in order to delay its imminent departure and buy us time to board. It's only because we know the doors won't crush us to DETH. Do passengers on the London Underground do the same? No, because the doors only detect an object once it obstructs a pressure strip, and by then you're sorely reminded that these door closing mechanisms are really quite strong.

    Will people alter their behaviour, to encompass what would otherwise be risky, around automous vehicles? Almost certainly, if they can tell that such-and-such a vehicle is autonomous. Will people intentionally walk out in front simply because they know the vehicle will detect them and stop before horribleness occurs?

    Posted 5 years ago #
  20. chdot
    Admin

    “Will people intentionally walk out in front simply”

    Probably - once.

    “because they know the vehicle will detect them and stop before horribleness occurs?”

    Ah well, depends on speed.

    Car might react faster than a human driver.

    Car may brake with ‘perfect efficiency’ - ie no skidding - but physics still requires relatively fixed stopping distances related to speed.

    Posted 5 years ago #
  21. neddie
    Member

  22. crowriver
    Member

  23. unhurt
    Member

    Well, that the design / testing process is shaped by structural racism. (Kinda like structural sexism - the stuff in the recent Criado-Perez book about design that assumes a "standard" body based on a somewhat limited standard: saw some excerpts that noted women drivers are more likely to die than a man in a similar vehicle & impact because e.g. they tend on average to be seated closer to the steering wheel and lean back less in order to see / reach.)

    Posted 5 years ago #
  24. sallyhinch
    Member

    I forget where I read it - it was a long time ago, back when airbags were first becoming widespread - but apparently an airbag designed to save the life of a 6' 200lb man not wearing a seatbelt will decapitate a 4'10" woman (i.e. many Asian women, especially older ones). I remember thinking then, perhaps let's not prioritise the life of the guy who can't be bothered to buckle up ...

    Posted 5 years ago #
  25. neddie
    Member

    This is scary:

    [+] Embed the video | Video DownloadGet the Flash Video

    .
    From about 15:23 on.

    It seems to have no hazard awareness and is constantly trying to "push" up to the maximum speed set by the user.

    No hazard awareness shown of the following:
    - a cyclist
    - a school
    - speed bumps
    - "keep clear" markings

    Posted 4 years ago #
  26. EdinburghCycleCam
    Member

    "I think it did recognise the cyclist, but not quick enough"
    No - it saw the cyclist after the driver took control (you can see in the bottom left screen) but then "lost" them. The reason the car slowed down is because of the oncoming car.

    Posted 4 years ago #
  27. toomanybikes
    Member

    Autopilot is a fancy lane keeping and merging device. It's a long way off being self driving, especially in cities. Tesla probably have a few iterations with more features, but they're remaining internal for the foreseeable future.

    The only company remotely close to launching a self driving service to the public is Waymo (Google). Here's it dealing with a very classic cycle lane problem. Even when they launch it'll be in Arizona, which is all wide highways with good sight lines and sunny weather.

    [+] Embed the video | Video DownloadGet the Flash Video

    Posted 4 years ago #
  28. unhurt
    Member

    Driverless Tesla coasting along mall parking lot raises questions, causes confusion
    https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/driverless-tesla-richmond-b-c-1.5349855

    "Video of a driverless Tesla moving at a brisk walking pace at a mall parking lot in Richmond, B.C. — sometimes in the wrong lane — raises questions about what is and isn't legal when regulations don't come close to capturing the advances or potential dangers of self-driving vehicles."

    Posted 4 years ago #
  29. chdot
    Admin

  30. neddie
    Member

    It warned that the technology used by AVs – which includes lidar, radar, cameras, AI – as well as other advanced sensors and semiconductors, can all be used to collect data on American citizens and infrastructure that could be shared back to China

    https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2023/07/chinese-driverless-vehicles-present-spying-risk-us-transport-chief-warns

    No mate, ALL MODERN CARS ARE A POTENTIAL SPYING RISK

    They all contain cameras, GPS, sensors, radar and feed data back to their manufacturers (and potentially governments, others) via the internet

    Of course, this is really about American protectionism - they just don't like it that China is getting "ahead"

    (I put "ahead" in quotes because more cars and more internet-connected stuff isn't really progress)

    Posted 7 months ago #

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