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Self-Driving Cars In California: 4 Out of 48 Have Accidents, None Their Fault
An anonymous reader writes: The Associated Press reports that 48 self-driving cars have been navigating the roads of California since the state began issuing permits last year. Of those, only four have been in accidents, and none of the accidents were the fault of the autonomous driving technology. Seven different companies have tested autonomous cars on California's roads, but Google, which is responsible for almost half of them, was involved in three of the four accidents — the other one happened to a car from Delphi Automotive. All four of the accidents happened at speeds of under 10 mph, and human drivers were in control during two of them. The Delphi accident happened when another car broadsided it while its human driver was waiting to make a left turn.
The AP pieced together its report from the DMV and people who saw the accident reports. But critics note that there aren't direct channels to find this information. Since one of the chief selling points of autonomous cars is their relative safety over cars piloted by humans, the lack of official transparency is troubling. "Google, which has 23 Lexus SUVs, would not discuss its three accidents in detail." Instead, the company affirmed its cars' accidents were "a handful of minor fender-benders, light damage, no injuries, so far caused by human error and inattention."
The AP pieced together its report from the DMV and people who saw the accident reports. But critics note that there aren't direct channels to find this information. Since one of the chief selling points of autonomous cars is their relative safety over cars piloted by humans, the lack of official transparency is troubling. "Google, which has 23 Lexus SUVs, would not discuss its three accidents in detail." Instead, the company affirmed its cars' accidents were "a handful of minor fender-benders, light damage, no injuries, so far caused by human error and inattention."
This is all well and good having self driving cars, however, (ok, so this is through reading the unfortunate things that happen to people through stupidity, and malice on reddit, liveleak, etc)....
Hopefully we'll never get to the stage where you just 'pop the infant' into the car and tell it to go to grandmas (assuming grandma is there, and nothing happens along the way). Sad, far fetched, but you can bet that this will happen somewhere and some unfortunate may be hurt as a result in something entirely preventable).
This was a waking dream this morning. Sad thing to wake up to. Hopefully never happen.
Computers are still too stupid.
One of the analogies I've seen at a speech on the subject went something like, "A computer can detect an object in the roadway, but it can't yet tell if it's a paper bag that can be safely run over or a rock that's apt to damage the car."
This was a few years ago, so I don't know if it's still true or not, but it does demonstrate the programming challenge in processing something exceedingly simple that even the most inexperienced human driver would be able.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
How does one make eye contact with an autonomous vehicle at an intersection, or when merging lanes? Human drivers will have to learn a separate protocol.
No it is NOT a selling point, because NO ONE is selling these cars yet.
You may not be able to buy them yet, but they're certainly already selling you on the concept of it.
The fact that we're talking about it here demonstrates that the marketing department for these cars is already in full swing.
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Big issue with AI controlled cars in a human-dominated traffic is that AI doesn't react the same way people do. Sure, all-AI traffic would likely be more efficient and less prone to accidents, but we are nowhere near this. Instead we have AI that to humans is hard to predict.
For example, huge puddle on the road, most humans would unwisely drive through it. What would AI do? No idea, and I wouldn't want to be driving behind it when that happens. What about a hobo at the end of the offramp begging for change? Would AI freak out about pedestrian on the road? No idea, and I wouldn't want to be driving behind it to see what happens.
Honestly, you can say it wasn't their fault, but nearly 10% of them in 6 months have been involved in accidents. Even if it wasn't the fault of the technology itself, why is the accident rate so high?
Actually theres a historical precedent for legislation concerning semi autonomous non human traffic. Horses.
It's not entirely as ridiculous an analogy as it initially sounds.
This is why "no fault" insurance was invented. Even with people, the liability in traffic accidents is often complex. Require no-fault insurance, you insurance is responsible for you, mine is responsible for me, and you are basically done - at least as far as car insurance is concerned.
What may be left is civil liability. If a manufacturer produces a genuinely faulty product, they can be sued in a completely separate action. The laws are already in place for that. The problem I see is the exact opposite of what you are worried about: People will sue, regardless of the quality of the product. Because bad things aren't supposed to happen, and if they do, someone must be to blame.
So someone without insurance t-bones my autonomous car, and I want compensated. The other driver is broke, so I sue my car manufacturer. Stupid, but entirely possible under US law. Loser pays would be the simplest solution: if you file a stupid lawsuit, you'll be paying the other side's legal costs. In the case of class action suits, the attorneys for the class should be liable for the loser's legal costs if they lose.
Before any company brings autonomous cars to market, the US tort system has got to be fixed.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Paper bags being full of nails is not a normal thing and so is a risk that can be ignored.
Bags, cardboard boxes etc move differently in the wind depending on the weight of their contents, a human can judge the weight of an object by how it gets pushed by wind, a computer can't necessarily do that.
What about a road covered in leaves, should the car just stop and wait for the leaves to go away? And slight flooding?
It's a shame that these autonomous car systems are so propriety and that companies are keeping quiet about the details because it's a very interesting subject.
Right now it looks like autonomous cars can only drive in ideal driving conditions, they can't even handle heavy rain afaik, it'd be interesting to know how they're planning on dealing with this. Can they even drive at night?
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Accident rate in general: 4-5%
Accident rate so far with only 48 vehicles: 8-9%
Without details I'm not going to accept "someone else's" fault as fact.