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Kids With Wheels: Should the Unlicensed Be Allowed To 'Drive' Autonomous Cars?
Hallie Siegel (2973169) writes "From the Open Roboethics Research Initiative: Earlier this month, when we asked people about your general thoughts on autonomous cars, we found that one of the main advantages of autonomous cars is that those who are not licensed to drive will be able to get to places more conveniently. Some results from our reader poll: About half of the participants (52%) said that children under the legal driving age should not be able to ride driverless cars, 38% of the participants believe that children should be able to ride driverless cars alone and the other 10% also think that children should be able to drive autonomous cars with proven technology and specific training."
It's not like the guy sitting in the seat is the actual "driver" of an autonomous car.
And it's not like anyone is actually required to sit in that seat.
Note that if an "autonomous car" that requires someone to sit in the driver's seat and pay attention, you might as well not bother making it autonomous. If I have to pay as much attention as if I were the real driver, I might as well drive it myself, since the act of driving at least helps me keep my attention on the traffic.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Should kids be allowed to ride trains/metros all by themselves? Same answer.
If the autonomous car is reliable there should be no need for a drivers' license, for the same reason I wouldn't be required to have one if driven by a chauffeur.
Who ordered that?
no. the idea of an autonomous vehicle with no possible driver to override it is just plain stupid.
The idea of a manually-operated vehicle with no possibility of a more accurate automated system overriding it is just plain stupid.
It all comes down to risk. Obviously today autonomous vehicles aren't ready to take over completely. However, they will steadily improve, and it seems unlikely that human drivers will improve at all. At some point the risk of a computer causing an accident will drop below the risk of a person causing one, and at that point it becomes safer to just not let people interfere with the operation of the vehicle.
Would you consider it wise to give passengers in an airliner the ability to take over in case the pilot makes a mistake? Such a feature is far more likely to cause a disaster than avert one. Once cars get to the point where they can be operated more safely than aircraft (which are already safer than cars are today) then taking control of a car in a crisis will just be getting in the way of the proven driver: the machine.
no. the idea of an autonomous vehicle with no possible driver to override it is just plain stupid.
The idea of requiring a driver's license to "ride" in an autonomous car is stupid. What's the point if you need to be able to drive?
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Agreed. If there WERE fully autonomous vehicles (like computer controlled trams in airports are now), it shouldn't matter who drives them. If we get to the point where we trust automobiles to be completely devoid of manual control and override then what difference does it make who's inside?
Until then, no... as long as there are controls or overrides that someone can cause dangerous scenarios then you should have a license. Maybe we can have a different conversation about an "emergency stop" or changing destinations or minor route corrections, but the way the cars are built now allow for pretty complete driving responsibilities, and they should require similar of not identical rules for the drivers.
Is there a scenario in which the unlicensed will be required to operate the vehicle themselves?
If yes, the unlicensed can't drive.
If no, they can.
For a partially autonomous car requiring occasional driving an unlicensed user obviously can't use it.
For a fully autonomous car there should never be a necessity to drive since an autopilot failure will require a graceful break down mode regardless. Even if there's a manual drive mode an unlicensed user won't be allowed to use it and the car will essentially be broken down on the road.
The only time it comes up is with a partially autonomous car requiring occasional non-driving guidance. Then it's simply a question of whether you design an alternate certification process for the unlicensed and it really depends on the degree of user interaction required.
I stole this Sig
Exactly. By the time this question is germane it will be equivalent of "would you let your kid ride in a taxi without you?".
The long term direction is a far safer driving experience solely based on removing human drivers from all cars. Allowing them to "override" the automated systems just makes them far more dangerous than cars today where at least the norm is drivers who are somewhat used to driving. Letting people who rarely if ever driver override is just a disaster waiting to happen.
The government would jail you for leaving your child at home alone. If your autonomous vehicle is as safe as being at home, then the government should also prevent children from operating such a vehicle. Perhaps the child could be allowed to ride alone only if a parent or guardian programmed the destination....
Or perhaps we need to go back to the 1970's and allow children as much freedom and autonomy as I had when I was eight or ten, when my mother would tell me "Go out and play, and be back before dark."
In my city (Vancouver), trains are basically run automomously under normal circumstances unless there's an interruption, in which case staff at HQ. could manually take control of the vehicles. This is at least somewhat over simplified, as they run on almost entirely isolated railways without much risk of outside risk factors, but a highly advanced car with little more than a GPS (with auto-nav) / stop peddle and an on-star-like communications terminal for emergency stop responses and rescue situations could eventually become a valid and functional road driving system for cities. Even a 'manually driven' option for truly rural areas not covered by the grid could be an option that 'turns off' when entering managed city roads.
I don't see why we couldn't 'have faith' in central city command and control centers which are paid for by road taxpayers to help manage and mitigate risk to public safety. Do you think the added taxes in supporting this would be more or less than the amount lost to accidents/life lost/insurance of a non-managed roadway?
Oh, well, nice dream but I don't see it happening any time soon. Here's hoping I happens before die and..fdsfzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Bye!
The reimagined Battlestar Galactica copped a lot of (somewhat) deserved flak for its filler episodes, but my favourite episode of the entire series is also one of the more blatant filler episodes ("Scar").
In particular, I loved the scene where it is revealed that Cylon raider-ships also reincarnate, just as their fleshy biological counterparts do. Sharon even spells it out for the characters.
Starbuck: Raiders reincarnate?
Sharon: Makes sense, doesn't it? It takes months for you to train a nugget into an effective Viper pilot. And then they get killed and then you lose your experience, their knowledge, their skill sets. It's gone forever. So, if you could bring them back and put them in a brand new body, wouldn't you do it? 'Cause death then becomes a learning experience.
This is why, I believe, the future will eventually belong to automated drivers. The initial ones are already very good, but there will be holes. There will be headlines like "automated car drives headlong into school, killing 10 of the world's cutest orphans". Human drivers have similar issues and events like that are almost everyday occurrences all around the world. The problem is, as Sharon pointed out, when those drivers die their experience is lost. With an automated system, the skill set improves. Someone discovers that, for example, hey, if a drunk passenger opens the door to a self-driving car at low speed and falls out the system doesn't realise they're gone and blindly drives away.
So the system improves. The car's internal systems track passengers, and if one exits the car, the vehicle will double back and pick them up. Or contact emergency services if the speed is high enough, and form a roadblock so that this person isn't hit again. Or simply lock the doors to begin with. Or any number of more sane actions. The point is: the accident becomes a learning experience. With a human driver, we spend months training people to become drivers. Then one day they make a stupid mistake -- one other drivers have learnt to avoid, but not this driver -- and become a red smear. Their skill set, their experience and training, is lost.
With automated systems, every mistake is an opportunity to grow. I personally believe that automated driving systems are already better than humans, but this massive evolutionary benefit (directly learning from the mistakes of others drivers as though they were that other) ensures that they will continue to improve, whereas human lifespans are finite and so ours will not.
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
There are three broad topics that I feel need to be addressed before allowing minors to ride around unaccompanied in automated vehicles:
Liability: Who is responsible for the safety of an unaccompanied minor in the event of an accident or vehicle malfunction, especially if the vehicle is a long distance from home? More importantly, who will be willing to accept that kind of liability and at what cost?
Capacity: Is there enough room on our roads and in our parking lots to accommodate children riding around in their own personal vehicles? Will the efficiencies of automated vehicle traffic be enough to overcome an overall increase in vehicle traffic? How much will associated expansion projects cost? Can we afford to pay for them?
Energy: Can we afford the increase in energy consumption associated with increasing vehicle traffic at a time when the capacity of available energy reserves is questionable and energy policy is all over the place?
We already allow kids alone on the streets on foot and on bicycles at parental discretion. As you say, a proper automated vehicle will be safer than a car piloted by an adult human, so it will be far, far safer than a bicycle piloted by a child. I don't see how there's even a question.
In the next few decades there'll be plenty of elderly that need to get around: They're a huge part of active society, yet for simple physical reasons (eye-sight or limb coordination issues) many of them can no longer drive, and a lot of them are homeowners that live in the suburbs, far away from public transportation. I'd say that's a much bigger market, especially in the next 30 or 40 years.
I'm a parent of four precocious kids in a small college town in the mountains of NC.
We have taxpayer-funded public transportation here. 12 years old and up are allowed to ride the bus alone (to go to the library, etc). Would I let my 7-year old if he were allowed? No. Would I let him go with his 12-year-old brother who has a way to stay in touch with me? Probably.
I don't think the issue here is automotive safety. A fully-automated car should be safe enough for kids to ride in by themselves, or it shouldn't be on the road. I think the bigger concern is, when is it okay to let your kids out in public without supervision? 72% of the people who said flat out "no" did so because they have the impression that parents should be attached to their children at the hip, or because there was no option for, say, 15 and up. Maybe kids should be able to earn the freedom of being out without their parents with good grades above a certain age, etc. The survey sucked. There should have been an option for unlicensed adolescents but not younger children, etc. Parental consent and discretion should be part of the equation as well. We're the ones responsible for our kids, and with that responsibility should come some discretion on our part.
On a side note, I think autonomous cars will reduce the need for us to go out for non-social things. I mean, aside from losing the ability to pick the best produce, I certainly wouldn't mind telling my car to make a run to the grocery store for me. For me, shopping is just time I'd rather spend with my family.
Russian crash video's what will never be the same?
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
So, just so I am clear... When the autonomous vehicle runs someone over because it failed to "see" the person, the CEO of the company making the vehicle as well as the developers go to jail for manslaughter, right? Then I'm fine with it.
Sure, as long as when a human runs somebody over we send their parent and every driving instructor they ever had to jail for manslaughter as well.
A CEO who comes up with a car that saves the lives of the 40k people who die every year in the US from car accidents and then fails to save the life of a few odd people is a hero in my book.
So are humans. Every single workplace safety program starts and ends with "stop and think what you're about to do before doing it". Our higher functions operate at the timespan of minutes, not fractions of a second. This is also the reason we have traffick laws: they turn driving from an activity requiring judgement into a mechanical exercise. When that fails, accidents follow.
Apart from negating the entire reason one might want to get an automated vehicle in the first place, it's also not physically possible to stay alert and pay attention to a system - in this case traffick - that you aren't actively participating in. This means that you have no idea when the computer is about to do something wrong, much less what to do about it.
Humans have next to no intellectual contextual awareness in realtime situations. Various levels of automation drive your body, most social situations, and even activities usually considered intellectual, like math or programming. "Intellectual contextual awareness" is what you use to pick a career, and often not even then.
Is there a rock beneath the bag? You can't know. You can, however, guess there isn't and adjust your estimates about any future bags containing rocks should this one be harmless. That happens all the time, and is one of the numerous ways in which human rationality tends to break down.
No, it doesn't. Your survival instinct manifests as a bunch of reflexes, which do little to help (shielding yourself with your arms) or even need to be worked around (ABS brakes). It doesn't stop people from speeding or ignoring the road in favour of their cellphone, whereas a computer that's told to obey the speed limit will obey the speed limit.
This being a good example of a gross, heuristic assumption. Your "safe" accelerator can be defeated by a cable jam, metal fatigue in the spring, or even a simple bit of sticky dirt on the cabin floor.
And this calling for something that doesn't exist.
And how would you go about "fixing" humans?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Catch with that. Taxi drivers are largely kid proof and computers are not. Much like elevators, those devices that interact within public space are very difficult to make child proof. Even something a simply as a swing is rather difficult to make child proof and something that needs to be used with adult supervision. Let alone the most obvious danger hacking of the service to facilitate remote control abduction of children. Children require adult supervision, that is their nature, they are learning to be human beings and will make many mistakes. Adult supervision reduces the number of mistakes children will make and the greater the risk the greater the need for adult supervision. Simple hack of an automated car and yet very disruptive especially in rush hour, would be for the child to instruct the vehicle to drive round and round, a roundabout actively denying other vehicles access, yet completely legal.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen