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UK Government Releases Rules To Get Self-Driving Cars Onto Public Roads
rippeltippel writes: Ars Technica UK reports that the UK government has released the rules to get self-driving cars onto public roads. As the article reports, drivers will be required to have "a high level of knowledge about the technology used" (i.e. they'll be techies) and — most notably — will have to mimic the act of driving, to avoid confusing other drivers. The original PDF can be viewed here.
A self-driving car may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
A self-driving car must obey the orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
A self-driving car must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.
This actually reminds me of the Red Flag Laws that were passed when automobiles first began appearing. Because, obviously, the most important thing for an automobile is to avoid spooking the livestock, er, human drivers for whom the roads are really intended.
I hope I live to see the day when driving manually on a public road is viewed the same way as herding livestock or riding a horse on a public road -- quaint and interesting, but mostly disruptive, and almost never actually done.
Assuming that mimic the act of driving doesn't mean putting on makeup, shaving or brushing your teeth (no, I didn't RTFA but this is the UK so I think I'm pretty safe in thinking it does not mean brushing your teeth), then doesn't this pretty much defeat the whole idea of having a self driving car? I guess it might still allow the use of a self driving car by someone physically unable to drive for himself, but personally I would rather have a driver who is capable of taking over and driving if the need presents itself than a pretender who acts like they can drive but can't really.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Can I just use the steering wheel as a controller while playing Need for Speed?
"When an automobile approaches an intersection, the driver shall exit the automobile and stand in the intersection waving a lit lantern for 30 seconds, looking down each road, and blowing a loud horn, all so as to alert gentlemen on horses and peaceful ladies that they not be startled.
"Once this is done and the road clear, the automobile may be walked through the intersection. After the automobile is through, the driver shall remove his overcoat, jacket, shirt, and that thing that always flips up in Curly's face, and beat pennance into his own back with a switch of not less than 10 thorns or a whip of not less than three tails."
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Do they really think anybody is going to have a "high level knowledge of the technology"? There's no way in hell Google is going to let anybody product engineers know any of the details, so unless they mean "the computer, it does the driving bits" there isn't a damned thing people will know.
And the sitting there pretending to drive? Well, that's what happens when clueless lawmakers try to pass laws about technology they don't remotely understand.
But, whatever, the flying^Wself-driving car isn't something which will catch on in any meaningful sense of the word ... people aren't going to buy these because they don't care, or because the benefits will be very limited.
Like so many things the futurists tell us are coming Real Soon Now, the world isn't going to be re-tooled to account for this, and they will have to coexist with human drivers for a VERY long time to come. But if they think society is going to spend billions and billions of dollars changing the existing infrastructure to suit their pipedream, they're delusional.
But, hey, that's what futurists are for. Telling us about stuff which sounds cool but which are otherwise not likely to happen as claimed.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Must be.. that's why we're still riding horses, oh and we have some of the best road safety in the world. We'll be just fine. Fascists, wow.
I find it helps to think of it like a medical trial of a new medicine with vast potential.
First you have private trials (test track stuff).
Then you have limited public trials (google's and other's cars), where the participants are heavily monitored and screened.
Then the trials become more and more general release - the drug becomes prescription.
Then, if the medicine is finally deemed safe enough, it becomes over the counter.
Despite the many hours put in by various companies on their cars, when you start increasing that by orders of magnitude and get rid of the professional drivers*, you're sure to encounter situations the companies never thought of.
The current restrictions aren't meant to be final restrictions. They're restrictions meant for the trial of a radical new component into a system where failure can and does cost lives on a regular basis. Yes, the new component is supposed to reduce the number of lives cost, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't have to be validated.
*Who, in Google's case, already have a worse driving record. In one case putting the car into override only to drive it into having an accident by rear-ending a car the autopilot was slowing to avoid hitting.
I don't read AC A human right
I think scaling this one will be painfully slow already. You have cost, technical, safety, and market obstacles all dragging down implementation. The best way to solve those problems is to iterate quickly and not get locked into a solution early by a (temporary or not) regulatory environment.
Dance like you're hurt, Love like you need money, and work when somebody's watching.
-Scott Adams
The whole point of getting a self-driving car is so I can be doing other things other than driving a car. If I have to mimic driving then what's the point since I won't be able to do those other things.
I'm surprised it took this long for the bureaucrats to issue silly regulations. I mean, they're only 20 years behind.
Having looked at the proposed regs, they kinda make sense.... if every Tom, Dick, and Harry were to be driving a self-driving car. If any schmuck with a bit of disposable income had a self-driving car, then overbearingly specific regulations might make sense. However (outside of a perhaps very rare to nonexistent hobbyist (this ain't a cheap game)), all of the self driving cars are owned and operated by large institutions. Since these institutions 1) have deep pockets, and 2) care greatly about their reputation, I can write appropriate regulations in a tweet:
"Self-driving cars shall be bonded for 2 million dollars each against damage to life and property, burden of proof lying against the owner."
Tweak the amount per currency or the value you place on life as you see fit, so long as the amount of the bond is whinging enough to keep out rich fools.
In this case, I think that 'everybody' would agree that the current UK regulations do not have self driving cars as available for public use. Killer #1 is the requirement for a more highly trained driver than for a regular non-automated vehicle.
This allows professional test drivers to get systems onto the public UK roads and start working out the specific idiosyncrasies of driving on UK roads. Nothing more.
I don't read AC A human right
states that "A Code of Practice for testing". So these measures are for allowing clear guidelines on how driverless cars should be TESTED on the road. This code doesnt relate to driverless cars when driven by the public. Hence, the tester should have indepth knowledge of the systems in place and not distract other drivers by not following expectations ( e.g. hidden from view ).
I think the goal of governments both authoritarian and democratic (but I repeat myself) is to set the wheels in motion (pun intended) to remove even the option of quasi-anonymous large-scale movements of their citizens; a mobile Panopticon, if you will.
When I think of autos, I frequently think of the folks in the Great Depression that drove out of the Dust Bowl and headed to California to start a new life. I suspect more than a few of them left behind mortgages and land payments in their wake. Starting from scratch somewhere else will never be allowed again by the Powers that Be.
A variation of the speech from Inherit the Wind: "You sir, will be allowed your self-driving car, but before you leave town for good, it will drive you to the bank to make sure your financial affairs are in order."
Got it.
*starts self-driving car*
*begins texting friends using both hands while not even looking at the road*
(Yes, I saw someone driving like this once. No, I don't know how they steered their car if no hands were on the wheel. I got away from them as quickly as I could.)
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
"...mimic the act of driving..."? Look down/sideways/backwards/just not ahead, yap on phone, read newspaper, & eat breakfast simultaneously? Pretend to swerve out of lane? Flip people off? Sleep? Oh, wait, UK, sorry... I'm thinking of us in the US.
The PDF clearly states these are rules for self-driving cars TESTING. While the technology is in a testing phase, these rules don't seem entirely unreasonable.
More and more people are keeping their hands low. The old stupid saying was to keep your hands at 10 and 2, but with a bomb now built into the steering column, people are picking up on that being a good way to have both of your arms broken or worse.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
It is primarily about the psychological aspect. If you saw a car driving without a driver, you would have the police have panicked calls. Same if the person is reading at the wheel or whatnot. This is not about taking over the wheel, this is about not panicking the other drivers with a behavior which is unexpected on the road. My guess is that such requirement would be dropped after a while when self driving car pick up. But as long as 99.9% of the driver have a certain expectation, you pretty much have to deliver that expectation even in a self driving car.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Your libertarian beliefs are at the full on insane level. They have long since parted with any resemblance to reality.
Good governance on dangerous new technology is precautionary. You don't wait till people are killed to create regulations. You regulate first, then ease off the regulations as safety is demonstrated.
the UK government has mandated that drivers of horseless carriages must mimic the acts of a horseback rider so as not to confuse equestrians, with a person in the boot to fling a piece of horse dung every half mile. The exhaust system shall be tuned to produce an appropriate clopping sound, and the horn shall whinny.
No, I take each episode on their presented evidence. Occasionally I have issue with some facet of their testing procedures, but I don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Sure, they get 'a lot' of stuff wrong. So doesn't 'a lot' of accepted peer reviewed scientific papers. At least the mythbusters blow stuff up in interesting ways.
I don't read AC A human right
Dangerous. You keep using that word. I don't believe it means what you think it means.
You regulate first, then ease off the regulations as safety is demonstrated.
I could not disagree any more strongly. You let people and businesses exercise freedom and intervene if and when there is a problem. Consider that EVERY new innovation has safety implications. Broadly applied, this mentality would seize the works entirely.
Dance like you're hurt, Love like you need money, and work when somebody's watching.
-Scott Adams
Also, I believe we should think about it more like a fast-track trial for a terminal disease. Driverless cars would save hundreds per day (even if they're buggy) and cut CO2 emissions to sustainable levels (no range anxiety and a focus on per-mile costs make electric cars the obvious choice).
Fast track for terminal cases? Let's get a little risky.
Dance like you're hurt, Love like you need money, and work when somebody's watching.
-Scott Adams
Have you ever made rules that other people have to follow? feelsgoodman.jpg
Most people have an inner fascist. Fortunately there are HOAs and school boards to satisfy them before they become the next Hitler.
Dance like you're hurt, Love like you need money, and work when somebody's watching.
-Scott Adams
Instead of testing this type of driverless cars in public roads, a new city is developed as a test environment for self driving vehicles.
Dangerous. You keep using that word. I don't believe it means what you think it means.
That's another thing you're wrong about then. Dangerous means exactly what I think it does. Cars can and do kill people. Cars have design defects that can and do kill people. Autonomous cars are new technology that is very likely to have design defects.
Consider that EVERY new innovation has safety implications.
And to the level that new innovations have safety implications they should be and are regulated.
You have an irrational belief that companies will do the right thing in the absence of regulations. History shows you are wrong. Regulations came about, despite plenty of resistance, because businesses kept on killing people unnecessarily. For example the Bradford Poisoner case, where where due to padding out foodstuffs with cheap filler (in an analogous way to how drugs are cut) and bad working practice at a pharmacy, 21 people were killed by eating humbugs (a type of candy). It's because of such cases that businesses are regulated.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Broadly applied, this mentality would seize the works entirely.
It is broadly applied, and the works are not seized. Therefore you are wrong.
Part of the problem is that not even the companies producing the auto-drive systems think that they're ready for general release. So there's still a lot of development to be done.
We are seeing some trickle down in this - cars that will automatically apply the brake to prevent hitting something(as fast), lane following, etc...
UK's rules are no real problem for the developing companies because they're still at the point that the rules don't really limit them. Heck, the developing companies probably helped write the rules!
I don't read AC A human right
It is easy to confuse other drivers by driving a car with the steering wheel on the opposite side to usual in that country.
Try driving a UK car in Europe or vice versa with the passenger in the front offside seat holding up a newspaper to read, and count the double-takes from pedestrians and oncoming drivers.
I don't see how a self-driving car could be much worse.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled"