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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."
Ban human drivers.
"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?
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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.
“They have to learn to be aggressive in the right amount, and the right amount depends on the culture.”
Very true, When holidaying in Texas I quickly found out that stopping for a red light that had just turned would upset drivers behind me. The lights had a much longer amber time, so a whole lot of people who would have had to brake for the lights in the UK would go through
They are confused by BAD driving. People in general really really suck at driving and a computer will have problems with that.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
If the programming makes it jerk the steering away from a stationary hazard rather than, say, detect it earlier and slow down as it approaches, then it's not suitably programmed for coexistence with unexpected stationary hazards (Not even anything to do with human presence! What if that was a cardboard box and it swerved heavily in case that box "pulled out"?).
If it can't make it's way through a junction where the drivers are following the rules, that's bad programming. If it can't make it's way through a junction where other drivers don't come to a complete halt for it, it's not fit to be on the road with other drivers.
If you want a car to co-exist on the road, it has to be treated as a learner driver. If a learner driver swerved at a non-hazard, they would fail. If a learner driver refused to make progress at a junction because the masses didn't open up before it, they would fail. So should an automated car.
Unless - and this is important - you are saying that automated cars should only operate on automated roads where such hazards should never be possible and they are deliberately NOT programmed to take account of such things. Which, in itself, is expensive (separate roads with separate rules with no human drivers), stupid (that's otherwise known as a "train line", and because they can't do anything about it it will hurt more when it does happen), and dangerous (because what happens if a cardboard box blows over the automated road? etc.).
Program to take account of these things, or don't plan on driving on the road. The safety record is exemplary but equally there are only a handful of them and the eyes of the world are on them, and there are still humans behind the wheel, and even by miles travelled each one is probably dwarved by a single long-distance driver over the course of a year - and it's not hard to find a long-distance driver who's not had an accident for years.
If you're going to be on the roads, then you need to be able to take account of all these things, the same as any learner driver. Sure, you didn't hurt anyone by swerving or not pulling out, but equally - in the wording of my first driving test failure - you have "failed to make adequate progress" while driving.
A car sitting on a driveway would have an even better safety record but, in real life, it's still bog-useless compared to a human. Similarly for any automated vehicle that just stops at a junction because it can't pull out, or swerves out of the way of a non-hazard (and potentially weighs up collision with non-hazard vs collision with small child and gets it wrong).
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.
bickerdyke
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.
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.
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.
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