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California Legalizes Self Driving Cars

Posted by Unknown on from the third-place-leaders-of-the-free-world dept.

Hugh Pickens writes writes "The Seattle PI reports that California has become the third state to explicitly legalize driverless vehicles, setting the stage for computers to take the wheel along the state's highways and roads ... 'Today we're looking at science fiction becoming tomorrow's reality,' said Gov. Brown. 'This self-driving car is another step forward in this long, march of California pioneering the future and leading not just the country, but the whole world.' The law immediately allows for testing of the vehicles on public roadways, so long as properly licensed drivers are seated at the wheel and able to take over. It also lays out a roadmap for manufacturers to seek permits from the DMV to build and sell driverless cars to consumers. Bryant Walker Smith, a fellow at Stanford's Center for Automotive Research points to a statistical basis for safety that the DMV might consider as it begins to develop standards: 'Google's cars would need to drive themselves (by themselves) more than 725,000 representative miles without incident for us to say with 99 percent confidence that they crash less frequently than conventional cars. If we look only at fatal crashes, this minimum skyrockets to 300 million miles. To my knowledge, Google has yet to reach these milestones.'"

12 of 508 comments (clear)

  1. Must past this test by o5770 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Must past this test by queazocotal · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I note that in the USA, the pass rate of the driving test in general exceeds 50% by a considerable margin.
      This is not due to great tuition and driver skill and knowledge.
      Also, a number of other safety features that would considerably reduce deaths are not implemented.

      If the autodriver is safer than the average auto driver, ...

    2. Re:Must past this test by NeutronCowboy · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

      Someone has never, ever taken an AI class. Or even an algorithm class dealing with risk. Here's how the calculation actually works (and by the way, that approach is about 20-30 years old).
      Every situation is assessed an impact value: driving into oncoming traffic, 0 (very bad); driving into the right ditch, 10; swerving into a legal lane, 50; etc. Every situation is given a set of possible actions, with each action having a probability of being completed successfully. The algorithm multiplies the outcome with the odds of achieving that outcome, and picks the highest value. You can set it up in different ways, but the idea is the same: multiply outcome severity with odds of achieving outcome, pick lowest combined risk/outcome. In your situation, driving off the cliff (which is assumed to be very bad, since the car can see a very steep drop-off with no bottom) is going to have a much worse outcome than hitting the car in front of it. Hitting the car in front of it is guaranteed, but so is driving off the cliff. As a result, the algorithm will make the automated car hit the car in front of it, rather than drive off the cliff.

      Not to mention that cars don't sleep, always behave optimally (according to the algorithms in place), and have no blind spots.

      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.

      You mean like the ones that regularly happen in fog and icy/rainy conditions?

      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.

      That is a very real risk. Not sure how the laws will deal with it. But until that question is addressed, we won't see large-scale sales of automated cars. I suspect that we'll see the equivalent of ToS: by using this car, you agree to be fully responsible for all its actions and accidents.

      --
      Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
    3. Re:Must past this test by h4rr4r · · Score: 3, Interesting

      We can only hope that driving tests become harder and harder and only those who pass them will be allowed to drive themselves.

      Why would you ever want to turn off the automated driver? Do you think rich folks are constantly putting their limo driver in the back and taking the wheel themselves?

    4. Re:Must past this test by Altanar · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Self driving cars *never* swerve. They brake. Statistically they know that swerving almost always is worse than the incoming accident. Humans on the other hand will swerve. See all the accidents that occur when attempting to miss an animal crossing the road.

    5. Re:Must past this test by BasilBrush · · Score: 5, Interesting

      1) You reaction time is far worse than a computer.
      2) Your estimation of distances is far worse than machines absolute measurements.
      3) You are limited to two forward facing eyes, augmented by 3 small mirrors. And you share some of the vision time with looking at the dash. An auto-car can look in all directions at once, and monitor all dashboard information and more at the same time.
      4) An auto-driver will be better at maintaining a safe speed. Able to stop in the distance it knows to be clear far more often than a human driver.
      5) I'd expect an auto-driver system to be seperate from any other computing devices in the car, and connected to the internet or any other vector for hacking. I'd expect them to be as immune to hacking as an auto-pilot system in a plane.

    6. Re:Must past this test by Aqualung812 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Did you mean this forecast to sound neutral, damming, or hopeful?

      I see it as hopeful. Driving a car on a public road isn't a right. If you want to drive with manual control, do it on a road you paid for yourself.

      --
      Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
    7. Re:Must past this test by gorzek · · Score: 4, Interesting

      That brings up another thing autocars will be better about than humans. Individual humans can learn from their mistakes, but that knowledge is not directly transferable to other humans. Any mistake a self-driving car makes, however, can have its solution incorporated into all self-driving cars (or at least all the ones of that model.) So, lots and lots of testing should ultimately give us very safe and effective cars.

      --
      Check out my world simulator thingy.
  2. I wanna "Ask Slashdot" on this by OzPeter · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I have been thinking about driverless cars and I'd love to ask the people at Google (or where ever) how they cope with several real life issues
     
    * Emergency vehicles in general
    * Vehicles on the side of the road. In general you move over to the other side (road,next lane etc) to give them some room. But where I am (VA) its an offense if you fail to move over when passing a cop car on the side of the road.
    * Temporary speed limits posted during road works
    * School zones
    * Really bad weather where you can't even see 20 feet ahed of you
    * Looking down the road and predicting that there will be an issue and doing your best to avoid it (ie slowing down/lane changing to avoid the person on the phone who is weaving from side to side)
    * Crap lying all over the road (saw lots of rocks on a mountain road yesterday)
     
    I'm sure there are lots of other "interesting" situations that human drivers have to deal with day to day that would be difficult to encode into hueristics for the self driving cars.

    --
    I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
  3. Why the 99% confidence interval? by Dr_Barnowl · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The usual standard for a statistical "proof" is held to be a 95% confidence, or a p value of 0.05 that the hypothesis is wrong.

    Using a 99% confidence interval is skewing the numbers away from the usually accepted standard of proof, which makes me suspicious about the motives of the person proposing it.

  4. Re:The Land of Fruits and Nuts by BasilBrush · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Why do Luddites chose to come to Slashdot?

  5. Re:if that's the question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The problem is that most people overestimate their own driving skill - a 1981 study (Svenson) found that 93% of American drivers tested ranked themselves as being above the median in driving ability.