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How Autonomous Cars' Safety Features Clash With Normal Driving
An anonymous reader writes: Google's autonomous cars have a very good safety record so far — the accidents they've been involved in weren't the software's fault. But that doesn't mean the cars are blending seamlessly into traffic. A NY Times article explains how doing the safest thing sometimes means doing something entirely unexpected to real, human drivers — which itself can lead to dangerous situations. "One Google car, in a test in 2009, couldn't get through a four-way stop because its sensors kept waiting for other (human) drivers to stop completely and let it go. The human drivers kept inching forward, looking for the advantage — paralyzing Google's robot." There are also situations in which the software's behavior may be so incomprehensible to human passengers that they end up turning it off. "In one maneuver, it swerved sharply in a residential neighborhood to avoid a car that was poorly parked, so much so that the Google sensors couldn't tell if it might pull into traffic."
Amber means stop you can do so safely:
https://www.gov.uk/government/...
It does not mean try to squeeze through because you think you have time. I know people who've had tickets for running the amber, despite being across the line before it went red.
Which is always going to be the problem ... because as long as there are human drivers on the road, there will always be cases in which the computer utterly fails.
And any technology future which is predicated on suddenly replacing all drivers with autonomous cars is complete crap and will never actually happen. Because nobody is going to pay for it.
It's the corner cases which will always cause these things to go wrong. And, I'm sorry, but the driver with his right turn signal on who swoops across two lanes and turns left ... or the ones who think they can use the oncoming lane because there's something in their lane ... or who randomly brake because they can see a cat a half mile away ... or cyclists who do crazy and random shit ... or any number of crazy things you can see on a daily basis ... all of these things will create situations in which the autonomous car utterly fails to do the right thing.
As much as people think it will mostly work most of the time, if these things require the driver to constantly monitor it or have to swoop in when the system decides it doesn't know what to do, then the utility of the autonomous car pretty much vanishes.
I just don't see this technology ever becoming widespread or used in the real world, other than by companies trying to prove how awesome it is. Because it's just going to have too many cases which simply don't work, and the occupants will have to be ready to take the controls.
In which case you might as we be driving and actively engaged in the process instead of zoned out and not paying attention. Because the human reaction time is greatly diminished when you're reading the newspaper and suddenly have to take evasive reaction.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The NYT hates new car tech, especially EVs and robots. I seems to be in the pocket of some big vested interests (oil presumably, maybe other auto manufacturers who are falling behind). Remember the infamous Tesla Model S review by that Broder guy, where he did everything in his power to make it fail, exceeding the speed limit and slow-cooking himself with the heater etc.
This is just another hit-piece against autonomous cars. It might even be out to trash Tesla again, since they are introducing autopilot.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The other get out for hitting a driver in front is if said driver pulled into your safe braking distance.
So if some idiot pulls out of a junction without looking and you go into the back of them as a result it is not your fault. Another one would be someone overtaking pulling in and then slamming the brakes on (the last one is often done as part of an insurance fraud).
There are a whole bunch of others as well, though they can be hard to prove if you don't have a dashboard camera.
Not your job to prevent others from speeding. In fact in most cases the law is written forcing you to yield the left lane to the speeder as they are traveling faster then you.
It is more dangerous for you to go slowly in the left lane and force the speeders to pass you on the right, then it is for you to just get the hell over.