Slashdot Mirror
California To License Self-Driving Cars
DevotedSkeptic writes "Californian senators have passed a bill that looks set to make the state the second in the US to approve self-driving cars on its roads. The bill was passed unanimously by state senators, and now hits the desk of governor Jerry Brown, who's expected to sign it into law. It calls on the California Department of Motor Vehicles to start developing standards and licensing procedures for autonomous vehicles. 'This bill would require the department to adopt safety standards and performance requirements to ensure the safe operation and testing of 'autonomous vehicles', as defined, on the public roads in this state,' it reads."
With reports of Google's self-driving car crashing left and right how could anyone want to be in one of these vehicles? They just aren't safe. When something happens when you're driving then it's at least your fault and you could do something about it, but not in self-driving cars.
Considering half the drivers there don't seem to be paying attention to their driving, self-driving cars would probably be a huge improvement.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
...and they'll work the security into it after the first major hacker-caused pile-up.
And your driver's license lets you vote in CA, does that mean these cars get to vote? Can they vote themselves "car friendly" politicians? Will we be talking about "vehicle rights" in the next election?
In a panic, will we try and pull the plug?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
what about stuff like code review and liability?
Now there are 2 big liability parts criminal liability and civil liability.
and no who makes the car and or the software coders who make the code can't hide behind a mandatory arbitration or an eula.
Even more so if say the car hit's some thing out side of the car.
There are a lot of interesting legal implications for these self driving cars but all that a side I dream of the day when a drunk can stumble out of the bar and fall into the back of his car and wake up in the drive way of his home the next morning.
Anyone who seriously moves to prevent the self driving car from becoming reality regardless of how safe they are is simply against saving lives. I'm sure most people will wonder how anyone could be flat out against self driving cars but people like that do exist and at some point this will move from a legal issue to a political issue when it starts looking like mass adoption might happen and these people will come out.
Don't put any ethanol in the tank! Or you'll see a lot more DUIs...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Liability won't be an issue. If (when) these are truly safer than humans driving, the insurance industry will be falling over themselves to insure the cars. It'll be pure profit for them, and the incredibly rare incidents that pop up will be more than covered by all the other people driving problem-free.
I assume that in order to actually have one of these things drive on public roads, insurance is required? And which insurance company will insure this relatively incalculable risk, and at what price?
autopilots acting on bad data or coding issues??? had lead to crashes.
What about that air show crash where you had stuff like
Thus he may not have heard these warnings (and thus any other warning or alarm as they sound in cockpit and not always in the headset).
that black boxes had been tampered with. (maybe to cover up the airbus issues with it's autopilot)
In the month prior to the accident, Airbus had posted two Operational Engineering Bulletins (OEBs) indicating possibilities of anomalous behavior in the A320 aircraft. These bulletins were received by Air France, but were not sent out to pilots until after the accident:
A320 crashes
http://www.airdisaster.com/cgi-bin/view_details.cgi?date=03221998®=RP-C3222&airline=Philippine+Airlines
The aircraft overran runway 4 while landing. A malfunction of the onboard flight computers prevented power from being reduced to idle, which inhibited thrust reverse and spoilers from being used. The offending engine was shut down, and brakes applied, but the aircraft was unable to stop before the end of the runway
I'm expect a lot of political trouble from trucking unions etc. Driving is many peoples livelihoods.
It's clearly just a matter of time until automomous cars are head and shoulders safer than those driven by people. Once this happens, adoption will be driven by the insurance companies. It will become prohibitively expensive to drive your own car.
I actually look forward to this, and wonder how it will change the interior design of cars. Will we turn the front seat around and go for a more social living room style arrangement? Will we dispense with the view from the front windshield in favour of an immersive large-screen TV? Beds for those long drives? Will we have refrigerators and microwaves so we can get breakfast on the morning commute? The possibilities are awesome.
It's not as if cars don't already contain software today that affects how it drives, from anti-lock braking to engine control to powered steering to... It's simply the next (admittedly, big) step, not going from complete manual control to complete automatic control.
Donate free food here
Car drives you!
You know you were all thinking it.
what about criminal liability the insurance industry can't cover that.
And who will go to jail if say a auto car some how things a small kid on the street is a bird or road kill and runs it over?
...street view "live" !
how many accidents on average do Google autonomous cars have per mile, and how does that relate to the average for human-driven cars?
not enough data. Sample size of Google autonomous cars too small.
Who is doing the code review on your brain? Serious question. People crash cars all the time and the automated cars have already been demonstrated to be at least as safe as the best human drivers. Are automated cars perfect? No; but so far their record is.
-1 overrated isn't the same thing as "I disagree".
your going to nanny nag me to death with stupid ass labels on everything telling me its going to kill me
Can't wait to jailbreak my Google WheelDroid car to tinker with its firmware and make it go faster by compiling -O9.
Nobody. Same as now.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Who is doing the code review on your brain?
From what I've been able to determine, most people seem to be written in an early variant of Visual Basic.
Wake me up when they've been refactored.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
What did you think the "Motor Voter" bill was about a couple of years ago?
Meanwhile, the DMV seems to have decided that the robots don't speak Spanish, so it's ok to let them drive.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Somewhat off topic, I know. But if we're going to have auto-driving/piloting, then wouldn't self-navigating ships be more important, from a practical perspective? (Though I can see the fun and technological offshoots in designing self-driving cars.)
Self navigating cargo ships might need to be be piloted manually when leaving and entering docks (at least to start with), but in the open oceans they could auto-navigate and be centrally monitored.
Open water piracy would take a dent as there would be no crew to kidnap, and there would be no incentive for ship owners to follow pirates' demands to reroute ships. After all, if you're going to lose a ship and its cargo either way, then might as well do it by not appeasing pirates.
It would also mean that ships would not be piloted by crews who try to navigate tricky waters to cut corners.
I already have an autopilot in my car which is constantly giving audio prompts and attempting to take control, but enough about the wife. I for one welcome our new autonomous car overlords - as at least I can kick the wife out... heh
Saftey critical systems require less then 1 fatality in 10^9 hours of continual operation. That's 114000 years of non stop operation. Good Luck.
We're seeing the birth of the San Angeles Police Department. By the way, you are fined 1 demerit for violation of the verbal morality statute.
A320 crashes http://www.airdisaster.com/cgi-bin/view_details.cgi?date=03221998®=RP-C3222&airline=Philippine+Airlines
The aircraft overran runway 4 while landing. A malfunction of the onboard flight computers prevented power from being reduced to idle, which inhibited thrust reverse and spoilers from being used. The offending engine was shut down, and brakes applied, but the aircraft was unable to stop before the end of the runway
I couldn't read the article you referenced ("server not responding"), but the accident report states this was caused by pilot error, not malfunctioning computers. From Wikipedia: "A selection by the pilot of the wrong mode on the onboard flight computers prevented power from being reduced to idle, which inhibited thrust reverse and spoilers from being used. The offending engine was shut down, and brakes applied, but the aircraft was unable to stop before the end of the runway".
There's a surprising number of people who believe that the high level of automation on Airbus is intrinsically more dangerous, but the figures show that the Airbus A320 is the safest narrow-body jet you can fly on. It's true that automated stuff can go wrong, but this can be more than compensated for by the ways it makes flying (or driving) safer.
but I don't think many taxi drivers would.
self-driving firetrucks with fire-detecting robots?
self-driving delivery with a robo-caller to let you know your pizza/laundry/package is waiting?
with license plate recognition, driving the speed limit, this might be a huge windfall for cash-strapped states that have to rely on expensive CHP officers.
There are roads near me where the traffic flow is typically 10 or 15 MPH over the posted limit, because the posted limit is ridiculous and everyone knows it is there only for revenue generation, not safety. Well in excess of 95% of the drivers drive at least 10 over, and if you rigorously follow the limit, you'll gum up the traffic flow something terrible, not to mention piss off all the drivers stuck behind you who will then tailgate each other in frustration.
That's fine if you suppose all the cars are auto-driving, but if you mix one with normal humans in such situations, I foresee a lot of anger and road rage.
Will be the police. When these go online, a HUGE revenue stream for them will dry up when they can't really get drunk drivers that much anymore and next to no one will be breaking the rules since they will not be the ones driving and the computer will not break them. I see this as a great thing. Now maybe they can get off their bum ass, do their jobs and actually start chasing crimes more instead of padding their resumes with petty stuff so much. They shouldn't be chasing low hanging fruit or treating it as a for profit venture.
Also, I am wondering how this will effected the trucking companies. I am betting they will have the truck on auto-pilot everyone and have 1 person in the vehicles at all times as a just in case for when it breaks down, needs gas or legal reasons. The trucks will never have to stop really except for gas and the trucker really is just a babysitter who will spend most of his time sleeping or reading or maybe going back to school since he no longer has anything to do. But I am expecting the wages to drop steeply as they also cut the number of drivers and will probably double up on the size of the loads as much as possible with a trucker driving with 2 rigs chained together to cut costs further. Not even going into how they are getting a tax break on the highway wear and tear compared to the damage they do.
Even with the increased cost of gas, I can also see this leading to more families going on long distance vacations as they will no longer have to wait months in advance for plain tickets at decent prices and they can sleep on the way.
With the exception of the truckers (say hello to increased unemployment and even lower wages and even fewer job opportunities, they may have used the bait and switch during the industrial revolution but no need to hide it this time) I see this as nothing be a giant win in everything else.
When police start riding these, we're all in trouble. Imagine a police car which at any given moment knows the exact speeds of the cars around it, and can read license plates of those ahead. Heck, just drive on the highway in an unmarked car, and have it automatically issue speeding tickets to everyone. Neat.
Drive, er ride, these silly things in rush hour commuting to and from a major city like NY, LA, Boston for a year and we'll talk.
Simply getting to where you need to be in a non-ludicrous amount of time requires breaking laws and safety rules minute-to-minute.
Primary examples:
On and off Ramps
Merging
Following Distance
Oh, and BTW, we only hear of the car's success, not any of the failures. There must have been numerous failures, as in any engineering project. Without knowing the failures and weaknesses (for example - what situations do they avoid driving in?) we have no objective framework to evaluate these car's performance in.
After all, if corporations can be people, why shouldn't cars be people, too?
And speeding tickets? Ha! When cars drive themselves they will be unable to do wrong, again, just like corporations. And if one ever should, well, the owner will get the ticket and have to pay, won't he? It will be just like today when your car gets stolen and the thief gets caught speeding or blowing a light by a traffic-cam, or parks its remains illegally after he strips and abandons it, when you, the owner, get the traffic and parking tickets and the bill for towing and storage to the impound.
Lenina Huxley: I thought your life force had been prematurely terminated!
John Spartan: Yeah, I thought I was history too. What the hell happened? All of a sudden, this car turned into a cannoli.
[End Of Line]
Actually no, insurance companies make money as a percentage of their sales. More accidents, higher costs, higher premiums, higher profits.
Less accidents, less costs, lower premiums, lower profits.
The insurance industry will not be very happy overall. Although some companies may take targeted approaches to make money as the market changes over. Hoping to take a larger percentage of the overall reduced pot once things sort themselves out.
"unions aren't designed to protect peoples jobs from automation"
glad you awoke from what I assume was the 50s...
just to cite one example I remember being in Hawaii 10 yrs ago when pacific longshoremen striked to protect clerical jobs from wireless computers (& this was yrs before iPad)
This has a certain apples to oranges component to it in the first place (self-driving cars vs truck drivers). But if they end up at cross-purposes, then trucking unions etc. would get a political response from spileptics, and we can scream. If I had one of these cars I'd be so happy I'd have to start using Google for searches again.
Epilepsy is a varied disability, but on average driving with epilepsy increases the risk of an accident approximately 11% per mile over a comparable driver lacking it. There are other chronic diseases found to generate more dangerous drivers with higher rates, but of course a catastrophe from epilepsy is easily imaginable even without a damn car.
CA is one of a bunch of states that revokes your license if you have a seizure. I've lived in California as a software engineer more than ten years,
living alternately between having fistfuls of cash and brushing the edge of homelessness, mostly from inadequate job markets closer than driving distance, and from the risk of leaving the house for very long at all. After a seizure at home, I just have a hangover. If I spend any time outside, every so often I'll wake up inside an ambulance taking me to a local ER so they can strap me face up with post-ictal nausea and migraine to a board for six hours while some lab somewhere tests blood samples for a spectrum of illegal drugs (medical bracelets, ER history, etc. etc. etc. notwithstanding). These stupid trips cost more than a grand each. Being outside has a certain financial risk per hour, ultimately, thanks to the density of heroes around here with cellphones and driver's licenses.
Although in fact I have to confess (in another state, in my twenties) I actually did have seizures while driving. Usually I saw auras before then, and not being a total idiot, I would arrange a ride or call a taxi. But two or three seizures had auras that must have been too brief to pull over.
In no way advisable (I mean duh, so shut up), it's actually possible to still drive a car around during an epileptic fugue where you have lost consciousness, especially on familiar trips. I've seen it happen to me on a bike too. Frankly I'm surprised to still be alive.
During recovery from a fugue one is slowly regaining consciousness. At first simple automatisms can take over your actions- you steer a wheel to stay between lines, you see a red light and you get in line, you might make right turns, maybe four or five in a row. You'll feel like going faster and push the right pedal; etc. Even if the route is familiar, you go straight and miss lots of turns. I had a seizure at work once and even walked up to a guy's cubicle and started typing gibberish into the keyboard- that's how sophisticated they get. Once a familiar commute enters unfamiliar neighborhoods, the avalanche of unexpected visual stimuli, and the sense of being lost, will present itself as a problem. That may trigger the emergence of consciousness since these are first moments that form any long term memories- of encountering some legitimate frustration beyond the ability of automatisms to control. Then the suspicion dawns of possibly just having had a seizure. They hide themselves from recent memory fairly well- I can end up sending emails to people asking if there was just a seizure after a sudden inability to type in a single line of code. (Skills return on varied schedules.) In a car, once I regained full consciousness, I always realized I had gotten lost. (this was pre-GPS). But surprisingly it also dawned on me that I hadn't crashed into anything, and frankly, still can't figure out why. But of course the State of California isn't going to care about stuff like that.
So once I find out that I can afford a self-driving car, you can bet your ass I'm getting one with tinted windows.
I would assume that none of these laws allow vehicles to actually drive themselves without human supervision, so I would say that the human behind the wheel has the final responsibility to override the software in case it tries to do something crazy.
While, as other users have pointed out, the articles the parent links to may be anecdotal, do you really think he was trolling? Modding down should not be a proxy for disagreement.
You're naive if you think the insurance companies will lower rates in line with their costs. Sure, they'll lower them SOME, just to appease everyone, but costs will be so much lower that they'll be more profitable in the end run.
But if all the other cars are automatic, no one will be going over the speed limit.
I'm a little uneasy at what will happen when most people are driving these and how they will interact with the police. I suppose there wouldn't be any point in trying to ticket one, but I still would expect they'll eventually do something like on a signal from a police car, the autonomous car will pull over and stop itself. Things just get more ominous, if more unlikely from there. What if it was set up that, if the Government wants you, any autonomous car you get into will automatically drive you to the nearest police station nonstop?
I don't reply to ACs
Lenny: Hey look! Homer has one of those new robot cars.
Carl: Yeah, one of those AMERICAN robot cars.
same as if you built a microwave that killed children.
Yeah but if everyone else is also in automated cars there will be no one to fine. We could drastically lower the police force numbers.
Here is a scenario where if a self-driving car can pass 100% of the time, then I would deem it safe to get into.
Driving on a mountain road around a sharp corner where there is a steep cliff on the right side. Auto-car is passed on the left by some *sshole "manual" driver, but then the *sshat driver cuts in short because of oncoming traffic at the last second. Robo-driver identifies there is suddenly a car intruding into its safe-T-zone (TM) and does what its programming tells it to do, avoid hitting other vehicles. So the self-driving wonder swerves right to avoid the other car and zooms off the cliff.
A human driver would recognize that hitting the other car in this instance is the safer solution then to go careening off the steep cliff.
I agree that a self-driving car can work, and 99% of the time will perform adequately to protect its occupants from disaster. But since we have not mastered true AI yet, all self-driven cars will be built with flaws in their logic that will fail catastrophically. "Avoid hitting all cars", for instance, is not a good enough directive to ensure the safety of the occupants in 100% of all situations.
Someone mentioned that the deaths caused by self-driven cars would be far less then manual drivers, but then I would disagree that any technology introduced on the highways would be adequate to allow any fatality, especially in scenarios where a human driver may have been able to avoid death.
Basically what I am waiting for is the inevitable 100 car pile up with massive fatalities that WILL occur at some point in time where investigation will identify that a self-driven car, or cars, was the cause of it. Any company involved in programming or manufacturing that self-driven car will be sued out of existence and the "love affair" everyone seems to have about auto-driving cars will end quickly.
I am amazed at how delusional governments are into so quickly allowing this technology on the roads, sounds to me like there is some massive lobbying going on to short-cut the necessary amount of time to test auto-driven cars under all senarios, not just ones in controlled and predictable setups like we have seen. 5 years ago robo-cars could not drive around a dirt track, now they are quickly being allowed on our highways. That just is irresponsible.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Just as soon as they make a CPU faster than my brain and AI smarter than my reasoning, they can rubber stamp that all they want. Until then, get robocar out of my way.
I already use one of these self driving cars. It's more commonly called "a bus."
-- Experience is a wonderful thing. It enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.
Instead of building this: http://www.et3.com/
Humans would rather build automated cars....
It's the same logic as having an individual elevator for every guest at a hotel.
Such a waste of resources, when we could be building objects of such greatness such as ET3.
Slow vehicle driving significantly black the prevailing speed cause accidents for other vehicles, while seldom getting hit themselves. They cause chain reaction fender benders two or three cars back, which they are seldom even aware of, and drive away, never to show up in accident statistics.
The California Highway Patrol agrees with you. Here in the Bay Area you don't see police on the interstates during rush hour. They know that everyone is speeding and everyone is tailgating. They know that when they get on the freeway people in their immediate vicinity hit their brakes often causing accidents. The only time I see the highway patrol is when there is already an accident. Of course this means that the interstates have the most appalling bad behavior from some drivers. It's a law free zone. I'm not saying I think this is a good thing, it is just the way it is.
I see biggest problems being with the interaction of human and AI cars. If the AI cars drive the limit and stay on the right, it might work. If an AI car will move to the right and yield right of way to a faster car or someone who flashes their lights (as is required in CA) then great. It might even be fun.
Here is a benefit I haven't hear yet. What if we could re-task our police away from traffic duty and get them working solving crime! In a place like Oakland where there are over 100 murders per year and most go unsolved, that would be a huge benefit. In a place like Marin where violent street crime is less common, you could actually reduce the number police!! I've always thought that the presence of heavily armed public employees who think they are above the law was detrimental to our society. Wouldn't it be nice to give half of the the pink slip?
-- QED
The summary (and the article) identify California as the second state to approve self-driving cars. They don't tell us that Nevada was the first.
Example source: http://www.examiner.com/article/google-s-autonomous-cars-clear-california-hurdle
Slashdot link: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/02/17/1320206/nevada-approves-rules-for-self-driving-cars