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."

Comments

Best solution:

[Anonymous Coward]

Ban human drivers.

Re:Best solution:

[Anonymous Coward]

No surprise this is up modded insightful. I'm betting many slashdotters are horrible technologists who assume the world needs to bend to technology. Simply put, that's not the case. If these cars can't handle driving around humans they are not ready for consumption. The fact that they can't properly work with and adapt with humans on the road means that these cars are unsafe. They may be "safe" from the definition of the laws, but they are not safe if they are causing or instigating traffic accidents. It seems it's blind luck that these cars haven't been the clear cut cause of an accident yet.

Re:Best solution:

[TWX]

More to the point, autonomous cars are currently not the cheaper technology. Any bill that would attempt to force conventional vehicles off of the road would be stillborn, there are far too many automotive enthusiasts that have already made inroads in the other direction (ie, looser emissions testing rules on cars with collectors' insurance) that it literally can not happen. There would also be pushback from those that simply cannot afford new cars and advocacy groups for them; one can buy running cars for less than $1000 on the used market, it will take a decade for there to even be a chance for a used autonomous vehicle to be that cheap, if not even longer.

There have been lots of discussions on attempting to change driver behavior. Those are also nonstarters. People are not going to change how they drive until conditions in the field force them to do so. Hell, we still have idiots driving below the speed limit in the left lane on busy freeways where they're actually posing a safety hazard and where the law actually states that one can be cited for failing to yield and being passed on the right. Most people probably don't even know the rules for what's defined as stopping (ie, remaining still for two seconds where I live) and have no interest in bothering to learn, and the police don't seem inclined to enforce either, so this simply won't change.

The cars are going to have to learn how to adapt to these conditions.

Poor example

[fred911]

"One Google car, in a test in 2009,..."

One would think that in 6 years some improvements would have been made. Do we have a more current example?

Re:Poor example

[PolygamousRanchKid]

it will be always be a challenge to have these control systems anticipate what human drivers intend to do.

This is complicated by the fact that some human drivers do not even know themselves, what they intend to do. So how should a computer control system be able to anticipate what a human driver intends to do, when the human drivers don't even know themselves?

I really don't think it is that many . . . maybe only 1% of all human drivers. However, one clueless driver can confuse and tie up 99 drivers who know where they want to go, and can communicate it to other drivers.

It's like being on a escalator at the airport or train station. Two folks don't know where they are going. So they stop dead in their tracks at the end of the escalator, blocking the path for all the other folks on the escalator. An accordion affect ensues, with all the folks on the escalator getting squished together. The two people doing the blocking, are totally oblivious to this fact. Their field of vision ends at their own noses. They are entirely engulfed in themselves, and can't even conceive that there are other living beings around them.

This is what happens on the road, as well. The driver of the car parked halfway into the street, is just not capable of thinking, that other drivers might be confused by this. Is the car really parked? Or is the driver trying to park? Or maybe trying to drive away . . . ? At any rate, some drivers need to be taught that it is terribly important to anticipate how others might interpret their actions.

Re:Poor example

[McWilde]

Take your idiotic talent to the track. In traffic, you put your foot down at the intersection. This causes you no delay at all, since you can start creating forward movement with the other foot still on the pedal.

Re:Poor example

[tompaulco]

To be fair, if some idiot cyclist was going back on forth at an intersection I would hesitate to drive as well. Of course, as a human I would quickly lose patience and just start driving with the assumption that he would just stop.

Well, I haven't really met up with a cyclist doing a track stand. In 99.9% of cases, the cyclist just blows through the intersection. The other 1 out of 1,000 times, the cyclist will do circles or figure eights.
Either of those cases will likely confuse the software. It certainly confuses regular drivers, and pisses them off.

In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

Millions of people on the road today deserve to have their license taken from them because they can't follow simple rules like signaling, not parking halfway out into the street and leaving enough room to brake in case the car in front of you brakes.

Re:In other news

[Lumpy]

Or speeding in residential areas. Those people are the scum of the earth.

Re:Actually, it IS the software's fault

[bickerdyke]

The article summary isn't very good. If the software is programmed in a way that causes a car to behave in a way that's dangerous, it IS the software's fault.

That's trivial but true.

It becomes interesting when the software has the car behaving in a way that is SAFE, but unexpected.

Re:What about speeding / useing the center of the

[H_Fisher]

This. All the studies that I've seen boasting about the enormous time advantages of self-driving cars ignore the fact that most human drivers tend to cruise from 5 to 15 MPH over the posted speed limit on many interstates and highways. I can't imagine a self-driving car being designed so as to operate above the posted speed limit in self-driving mode. Unless a second set of roads or a second set of rules is created for autonomous vehicles, you're going to have a difficult time convincing people of the advantage of being slower than anyone else on your morning commute.

Re:Programmed behaviour is programmed behaviour.

[Xyrus]

Computers follow rules. Humans (a.k.a every other asshole on the road) do not.

This is a no win situation. If you program a car to drive safely and follow rules, then it won't be safe on roads because of all the assholes who don't. If you program the car to behave more like an asshole ( a human driver), then it won't be safe since there's a good chance it will make the wrong call. If you program the car to just account for assholes but still drive safely, then it will basically choke in situations like a four way stop in southern California where every other asshole will just muscle or roll their way through the stop.

The long pole in the tent isn't developing an AI capable of driving. It's developing an AI that can deal with assholes.

Re:What about speeding / useing the center of the

[belthize]

If all the cars were autonomous the morning commute times could be cut in 1/2 or 1/3rd without changing the speed limit since rush hour style rubber band stop and go traffic would be a thing of the past.

Re:Programmed behaviour is programmed behaviour.

[swillden]

Program to take account of these things, or don't plan on driving on the road.

Duh.

Technology in development is imperfect. Big surprise. These issues are why Google hasn't yet started selling them to the public. None of them are insurmountable, but it takes a lot of time and effort to build sophisticated systems.

What if that was a cardboard box and it swerved heavily in case that box "pulled out"?

The cars can easily distinguish between a cardboard box and a vehicle. Determining whether or not the vehicle has a driver in the seat and might move... that's often impossible. Likely the reason that the car swerved sharply rather than braking earlier is because the badly-parked car was obscured by other obstacles.

If it can't make it's way through a junction where the drivers are following the rules, that's bad programming.

Six year-old programming, note. The article mentions that the current version of the software inches forward to establish intent to move.

and potentially weighs up collision with non-hazard vs collision with small child and gets it wrong

Google cars recognize pedestrians (of all sizes) and regularly notice them even when no human could. I'm sure the car would choose to hit another vehicle over a pedestrian or cyclist.

Really, your whole comment is a mixture of outdated information buttressed by invalid assumptions and layered over with a veneer of blindingly obvious conclusions.

Re:Programmed behaviour is programmed behaviour.

[swillden]

It's not a no-win situation. It just means that self-driving cars have to know when to break the rules. They can and should behave like the best of human drivers.

If you program the car to just account for assholes but still drive safely, then it will basically choke in situations like a four way stop in southern California where every other asshole will just muscle or roll their way through the stop.

The current programming of the car handles that situation. Less aggressively than a human would, but aggressively enough to assert its intention to go, and go.

Please give me an otherwise full-manual car

[jpellino]

with ABS, airbags and selectable 4WD. Window cranks, inert key and levers on the seat. Cheaper, less to break, and I think I can still manage.

Re:What about speeding / useing the center of the

[Gavagai80]

A slow commute isn't such an issue if you can spend it relaxing or working instead of driving... and even speeding by 15 MPH only saves a few minutes on a commute.