Slashdot Mirror
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."
Self-driving cars need to be banned.
I expect the number haven't been publicized, because they are still to limited to have any significance, and also because the cars have been running under fairly tightly controlled conditions.
When there are a few hundred cars, running in all kinds of weather and traffic conditions, with millions of miles - if the numbers are still good, you can bet that they will be plastered all over the internet
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
4 Out of 48 Have Accidents, None Their Fault
I think that compares well to the average Californian.
4 out of 48 have accidents within one year. That's a lot.
Computers are still too stupid. The giveaway with autonomous cars is the need for centimeter precision in their navigation maps. These are trains on computationally enforced tracks, not free driving autonomous vehicles.
I'm beginning to think that this autonomous vehicle stuff will end up in tears.
Or is it normal that one out of twelve cars that is involved in an accident each year? And by calling it "only" the submitter suggests that the regular accident rate is much higher than that.
How safe autonomous vehicles will be when most of the vehicles on the road are autonomous. There will then be wars about which companies system is safest.
Perhaps you would like to read the story somewhere other than the NYT because paywalling is stupid and offensive, even if you know how to bypass it. Thanks, Seattle Times, for just showing me the flipping article.
Here's a news flash: You can get the same AP newswire article anywhere. Yet people still link the NYT. That's poor internet etiquette given that they paywall.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
what does it do at four-way stop if it was the second car there but the human in the first car is waving it on?
has it been tested on drivethru fastfood?
if someone is shooting at car, how does the car react?
does it get up to speed on onramps or does it merge into highway traffic going 45mph?
'48 self-driving cars have been navigating the roads... Of those, only four have been in accidents'
I know that the bigger point is that zero (known) incidents can be traced to the software making a 'mistake' (though even if the other driver is 'at fault', hard to say if a human would have done better at avoidance). The thing that strikes me though is the editorial bias here. *Only* 4 out of 48.. that's nearly 10%. That's far far above the percentage for the general population. It's perfectly likely that is simply a fluke of the small sample size, but implying that 4 out of 48 is a very promising rate of incident is pretty silly.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
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.
While I get that the autonomous system wasn't at fault, the real question is, "Were the accidents something a human driver could have avoided?" I'm a professional delivery driver and one of the things that's constantly drilled into us is to essentially watch out for the stupid people. Sometimes you have to yield right-of-way because it's clear the other driver isn't going to. Do autonomous cars know that?
"a handful of minor fender-benders, light damage, no injuries, so far caused by human error and inattention"
In case any of those were done by human co-drivers in automated vehicles, this does not exonerate the automation from some share of responsibility. For example, if the presence or habitual use of the automation makes it more likely for the co-driver to become inattentive, it's partly to blame.
But would a human driver have been able to avoid the accident? On more than one occasion I've escaped a fender bender that would not have been my fault.
The autonomous may not have been at fault, but one wonders whether some of the accidents would have been avoidable by a fleshy driver.
That the vast majority of human drivers around them were able to avoid accidents despite the presence of dangerous automated cars.
American components, Russian components, they're all made in Taiwan.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
One can be "in the right" and still not have done the right thing. For example, if the light is green I'm in the right not to slow down for the intersection. But that doesn't mean I shouldn't take precautions to check if someone is coming the other way. If I had I might have avoided the accident that was not assigned to my "fault".
On the other hand it's also possible that google cars will be better drivers than the average person. One might hope they use different CPUs for the texting and the driving.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
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.
You really have to be a huge faggot to ride in a self-driving car. A whiny, sissy little bitch that's all like: aaaannnhhhh I don't want to drive a car, I might break a nail!
If a self-driving car was at fault during an accident, who gets the ticket and pays the fine and damages? The owner? Passenger? Google? The car???
How is it that two articles based on the same source have opposite viewpoints?
http://gizmodo.com/self-driving-cars-are-already-getting-into-accidents-1703574538#
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.
There is a difference between following traffic laws and not being at fault and not failing to avoid an accident an alert human driver would have.
Then those weren't exactly self-driving, were they?
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.
When the time is right, these new fangled cars will go the way of walking and we will return to the genteel equestrian days of yesteryear. Then my buggy whip stock will allow me to buy all your technonerd asses.
If 2 of the 4 cars involved in accidents were piloted by humans, then our direct comparison is that humans did no better than automated vehicles at avoiding accidents caused by other drivers. What's more, if those 48 cars were self-piloted a majority of the time, then the humans did worse. We can also conclude that other humans caused all of the accidents.
From the story:
2 out of 48 have crashed by computer.
1 out of 48 have crashed with human driver.
1 out of 48 had someone crash into them at a junction
Denial doesn't fix bugs here.
It's likely they just miss a lot of the subtlety of driving, the "I think person X will do Y so I'm going to adjust my driving by Z" that goes on in peoples minds.
I don't think it works that way - if it did people already wouldn't be able to sue auto manufacturers. injured 3rd party never agreed to waive/absolve anyone for anything... I don't doubt manufacturers would (/will) put it in the tos and/or there will be a click-thru eula every time you get in the car but that doesn't make it valid/enforceable.
That number albeit a relatively small comparison seems kind of high? I am not sure we can stop accidents or even properly reduce them unless you would have a 100% self driving fleet of vehicles on the road. Even then a major failure of their guidance system may cause a even worse problem. I realize some tech people think computers make no problems, and yet we see this happening everyday because people still write the code and build the systems that control them. Are we really creating a utopia of no accidents or simply creating more widespread events from computer and guidance failures rather then some occasional human failures? I just wonder how many people would get on a airplane without a pilot?
I mean who wouldn't run over the ugly baby... but a computer doesn't have such a refined moral character it would probably just stop the vehicle and make you late for your meeting. Damn mothers leaving their babies in the middle of the road.
In Atlanta, it would be 47 out of 48 - with 1 car without the accident driving without anybody else on the road
People are stupid, and news sites like to print the most horrible, twisted and eye grabbing thing they possibly can. In that kind of environment, it only takes a single crash due to a software glitch to get the project outlawed statewide. I'd keep the information private too, and probably pay off the guilty party anyway just to keep them quiet.
Alter Aeon Multiclass MUD - http://www.alteraeon.com
From an interview with a Google Lexus 9000:
"How would you account for this discrepancy between you and the twin 9000?"
"Well, I don’t think there is any question about it. It can only be attributable to human error. This sort of thing has cropped up before, and it has always been due to human error."
"There has never been any instance at all of a computer error occurring in the 9000 series, has there?"
"None whatsoever, Frank. The 9000 series has a perfect operational record."
Since the byline mentions mister Bond, presumably a derivation from the '64 007-flick Goldfinger ("No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!"), I need to point out that "fender" is a decidedly American English term, which one would call "mudguard" in proper English. Not that I care much one way or the other, but I have this vivid picture in my head of agent 007 feigning not understanding the reply.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
This statistic doesn't really show anything of significance. If the cars are only rarely driven then this would probably show that they have a higher rate of accidents, though the fact that all of the accidents occurred at less than 10 MPH is somewhat encouraging. If they were driven normally/above normally than this probably shows that they have a equal/better than rate than humans.
So when one in twelve autonomous cars had an accident which was not their fault just what is the average for normal cars involved in similar minor accidents? I'll bet at least one in twelve regular cars had some sort of minor incident during the same time period.
Who will be the first person to die from a driverless car?
Think your lawyer can stand up to Google and DARPA?
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Get back to me when a few thousand of these cars are on the road.
If the computer had been in control, it might have been able to avoid the accident that the human was unable to avoid. But in the rush to find fault with the computers, nobody is considering that angle.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
There are approximately 254.4M registered vehicles in the US and of those about 6M are in an accident each year. That equates to 2.4% of the registered vehicles are in some sort of accident. From the AP report, 4 out of 48 autonomous vehicles were in an accident which equates to 8.3%. Based on the information presented, autonomous vehicles are 3.5 times more likely to be in an accident than non-autonomous ones.
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies and statistics. -- unknown, but known not to be Mark Twain
Where they Avoidable Accidents? or unavoidable one.
Would a driver have avoided the accident. You are actually required to avoid accidents.
If you could have but did not, you get part of the blame.
CA should say, "You can use our roads, BUT only if you share all accident info."
Table-ized A.I.
I thought inattention was the reason for having an autonomous vehicle.
Apologies if this has been said already. Some number of accidents are inevitable in city traffic no matter who or what is behind the wheel. The only question I have to ask is this: If a reasonably competent human driver had been behind the wheel, was there an opportunity in any of these accidents for the human to take evasive action to avoid the accident, something that it may be currently impractical to program into the autonomous driving system?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Don't believe what they tell you. It's always someone else's fault.
If you start smackin your bitch around, she'll start fucking listening. I mean really, guy, YOU cleaned out your WIFE'S car? I bet you gave her a blow job too and made her a goddamned sandwich afterwards. Fag....
But you had to put it the way that makes it look worse. This indicates you are looking for evidence for a preconcieved notion: these cars are evil and must not be allowed because otherwise you're not driving a car, and you feel that this means something. It doesn't
One out of each twelve cars having accidents per year seems steep. Part of driving is of course compensating for other drivers errors. You can't however fault all accidents to the vehicles. I can't wait until the automated semi's start rolling. Not.
I just don't see how these autonomous vehicles are going to cope with uncontrolled, non standard infrastructure. Things like choosing between rear ending the school bus or taking the guard rail. Parking in cramped underground areas. Or when it's foggy or the road's obscured by snow, heavy rain or it's called upon to thread it's way through an accident scene, storm debris or heavy road construction. If there is a malfunction and it runs over the neighbor child who is at fault and who will go to jail? Or will it just be chucked up to progress?
The only solution is to make it illegal to disengage the self-driving in non-accident situations and to have hefty fines for people gaming self-driving cars (perhaps by having obligatory dashcams on each of them).
Self-driving car already has excellent data from its radar and cameras. Just store accident data and report to police, immediately. People will learn FAST to avoid self-driving cars (and to hate 'em too).