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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."
Not safe right now... the difference being is that we can make continually make self driving cars more safe, since driving only requires a set of rules and environmental awareness. Humans will never become more safe, in general, because they are inherently mistake prone due to fatigue, poor judgement, distractions, intoxication, and many other factors.
Just look at the wonders of automated flight. Most airline accidents that aren't due to terrorism or mechanical malfunction are due to pilots overriding the autopilots.
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Oh come on. Both articles you link to are full of nothing but conjecture and opinion, and both are about the same accident. Plus, anecdotal evidence tells us nothing. What I want to know is: how many accidents on average do Google autonomous cars have per mile, and how does that relate to the average for human-driven cars?
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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.
Was this meant to be sarcastic? Both of those posts referred to the same accident. These cars have logged hundreds of thousands of miles, with ONE accident(which may well have been human error). That's far, far safer than the average human driver. If you're in the drivers seat of the self driving car, you CAN take control of it should you feel the need, too.
However, realistically that's not going to be useful. The car will be better at accident avoidance than you are - it's not that big a programming challenge to achieve that. People don't like to admit it - it bruises their delicate little egos - but the car knows *exactly* how fast every car around them is moving, their acceleration, and can put itself exactly where it wants to be every time. No delayed reactions due to inattention, no slight overreaction due to panic.
Yes, self driving cars will be involved in accidents, and will be at fault, from time to time. This does not make them less safe - it's inevitable, particularly when human drivers are involved as well. Human drivers, on the other hand, are extremely unsafe. Everyone wants to think that they are special, and unlike everyone else they're awesome drivers, but the reality remains that human drivers are in accidents extremely regularly.
Don't get me wrong. I'd hate to be in a robotically driven car. Logically, I know I'd be much safer than with a human driver, but I'd be enormously squirrelly about the whole process. And, of course, I love driving - I'd never be comfortable giving that up to a machine. I consider myself a good driver, too (like everyone else), and I've never been in an accident for which I'm at fault, but I can acknowledge that there have definitely been times I've driven with far less than ideal circumstances. Distraction, emotional distress, tiredness, ill health, the list goes on an on. In all those cases, I'm less than 100%.
Meh.
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.
I would suspect the first waves of cars would be big companies like Google running tests. In that case, they could meet the legal requirements for insurance themselves. After that, we'll probably have enough data to calculate the risks with far greater accuracy than human drivers.
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Well, 300,000 miles, one non-fatal accident (with, again, a human at the wheel - but we'll ignore that for now).
Now, I pulled these numbers of a set of google searches. There was a fairly wide range of stats, so I took a bit of an average:
Insurance industry assumes one accident CLAIM per 17.9 years (lots of minor accidents go unclaimed, but we'll ignore them too). Average of 15,000 miles per year per driver. Thus, an average of one accident per 268,500 miles per human driver.
Of course, while the human driver stats are numerous (and this is why insurance is expensive!) the self driving car stats are not. Only one accident with new, unrefined technology in 300,000 miles... and that with a human in control of the car.
That said, your example? That's where a self driving car is much, much better than a human. A human driver with a pregnant woman giving birth, woken up in the middle of the night is going to be tired, highly agitated and distracted and definitely not at his best. The self driving car isn't tired. It doesn't care what time it is. The self driving car will be aware of the speeding racers - and know their exact speed, trajectory, and likely path - sooner than the human driver will, as these are very simple computations to make. The self driving car is indifferent to the passenger; which is also important. It's not distracted, worried, or anxious.
Of course, there certainly are cases where that's just not good enough, extreme emergency cases. That's why all these self driving cars can be driven in manual mode. You've always got that option if need be.
Obviously, routes being set aside for autonomous vehicles will be safer, but routes mixed will be safer than pure-human routes, because autonomous cars are simply safer than human driven cars overall.
I've been rearended while stopped at traffic lights six times in the last twenty years; every time due to an inattentive driver. None of those would happen with an autonomous car.
Finally, yes, mechanical/electronic failure can result in crashes. Just like it can with human drivers - sticking accelerators, for example, failing steering linkages, brakes, etc. Software problems? No different than a human driver having a heart attack, stroke, seizure, getting stung by a bee, etc - those all happen all the time. There's no real difference there.
Meh.