The Humans Crashing Into Driverless Cars are Exposing a Key Flaw (bloomberg.com)

schwit1 sends in a story from Bloomberg pointing out that the rigid adherence to traffic laws and overcautious programming have caused self-driving cars to rack up a crash rate twice that of an average human driver. "This may sound like the right way to program a robot to drive a car, but good luck trying to merge onto a chaotic, jam-packed highway with traffic flying along well above the speed limit. It tends not to work out well. As the accidents have piled up — all minor scrape-ups for now — the arguments among programmers at places like Google and Carnegie Mellon University are heating up: Should they teach the cars how to commit infractions from time to time to stay out of trouble?" While the autonomous vehicles aren't at fault in these crashes, their relative unpredictability on the road are nonetheless leading to more accidents than expected.

Comments

Unison

[Tukz]

I have always thought that for automated vehicles to be a reality, ALL traffic has to be automated.
It takes almost an A.I. to be able to adjust to the random nature of human driving.

Re: Unison

[Xest]

That's true anyway though. Speed limits are typically set not to completely prevent fatalities, but to minimise them.

Speed limits in the UK around pedestrianised areas are set at 30mph not because that means you're guaranteed to be able to stop if a kid runs out in front of you, but because at that speed there's a very high chance that such a collision will not be fatal (whereas at 40mph it would pretty much always be fatal).

Getting driverless cars to adhere to the limit doesn't seem like a particularly big deal - they don't need to slow down to avoid all collisions altogether, just enough to almost certainly prevent fatalities - that's always going to be way better than now where human reaction times are such that they can't react to drop speed as fast as a computer.

There is no moral dilemma because existing standards are sufficient, we've already made these decisions, computers needn't be treated specially. It's like saying if 5 people jump out in front of a car now, should you swerve into a wall and kill yourself, or should you kill them? Sorry but if they jump in front of a car that's travelling legally without giving it time to stop then that's on them - in this case the driver is the only innocent, because they're the one that hasn't acted in a profoundly stupid manner and so does simply not deserve to die, whereas the other 5 people were basically choosing an action equivalent to suicide.

Even if you come up with some convoluted theory such as "What if the people are being blown across the road by a hurricane and have no choice" there's no real argument, because you're legally supposed to drive in a manner safe enough for the weather conditions, not simply the speed limit - any driverless car programmed to follow the rules of the road will know this and will be travelling slowly and safely enough in hurricane conditions for this to not be an issue.

We already have automated trains, and if you jump out onto the track in front of them without them having chance to stop we call it what it is - suicide.

Driverless cars only really introduce questions of liability and responsibility for people who don't know that those liability and responsibility questions are already well answered in existing law. All you have to do is substitute "What should the computer do?" with "What should the driver do?" and you already have your answer enshrined and well tested in existing law.

Human drivers are terrible

[AthanasiusKircher]

I'm sure there will be AI defenders who will question the assertion about a crash rate "double" that of average humans. But it doesn't matter. The point is that human drivers are idiots and drive in all sorts of unpredictable ways. They also tend to hate other drivers who operate in demonstrably safer ways (e.g., allowing plenty of space in front of them, not accelerating wildly just to stop 100 feet ahead in stop-and-go traffic, not zooming past a slower lane in a merge situation, but instead attempting a "zipper merge" at the same speed as the slower lane, etc). Of course, a lot of the less safe human behaviors also tend to be the reason for traffic snarls in the first place, but you'll have a hard time convincing most drivers of that, since they want to drive as if they are on a racetrack and somehow think that weaving back and forth to get into that tiny gap you've left in front for safety is going to allow them to get home so much faster (even if it's only 2 seconds earlier).

I imagine the biggest problem with having AI cars obey traffic laws strictly is not the accidents -- rather that it's going to lead to human road rage, which often leads humans to be even more irrational and drive in even less safe ways. Thus, while AI cars are still a minority on the roads, I'm not sure it will lead to a net improvement in accident statistics -- just as a "slow driver" on a highway can block up traffic, cause other drivers to drive unsafely around them, and ultimately lead to the potential for more accidents, even if that slow driver thinks they are being "safe" by driving the speed limit or a little below.

Re:Human drivers are terrible

[BasilBrush]

Or... it's simply a learning curve. For both AI and human drivers.

Besides, all of the robot crashes have been minor fender benders. It may be worth living with double the rate of those if the serious crashes that injure people are perhaps halved.

Re:Human drivers are terrible

[PvtVoid]

All of this is true, yet accident rate of these idiotic humans is half of what rigidly-abiding robots are.

No. The accident rate of the idiot humans is twice as high with robot cars as it is with other idiot humans.

Re:Human drivers are terrible

[sinij]

Besides, all of the robot crashes have been minor fender benders. It may be worth living with double the rate of those if the serious crashes that injure people are perhaps halved.

Bingo. The relevant question is "What is the crash rate involving injury?"

Not quite. The relevant question is "What is the crash rate involving injury for a desired level of traffic throughput.

If all we wanted to do is reduce injury, we could enforce 10 mph speed limit with automatic speed traps and draconian fines and completely eliminate any kind of traffic-related injury.

Accident type is relevant

[PvtVoid]

From TFA: "They’re usually hit from behind in slow-speed crashes".

If this is in fact the dominant accident mode, I would suggest that this is not such a big deal and will, over the long term, be self-correcting as the insurance rates for idiot non-automated drivers shoot up because they can't get it through their thick skulls not to tailgate other vehicles.

Re:the new slow dummies in the left lane

[bulled]

Which is a great theory, but the reality is that if the speed limit is set very low on a road for no apparent reason

Oh there is a reason, it just has nothing to do with safety.

Re:Adaptation

[matbury]

Agreed. Human drivers tend to have this sense of entitlement and exceptionalism so that they believe that they can break the law but anyone else who does it is a dangerous idiot. Automated cars are a new type of vehicle that these drivers have to negotiate. Expect a learning curve with a spike in accidents while drivers get used to it. I remember the same thing happening in Barcelona when they re-introduced trams. There was a sudden, dramatic spike in accidents, some of them fatal, while drivers learned what they could and couldn't "get away with." The answer is to give time for lawless drivers to learn about automated cars and adjust their law-breaking appropriately so that they don't get involved in as many accidents. And while we're at it, how about automated cars recording everything that happens around them that can be presented as evidence in court?

Re: the new slow dummies in the left lane

[thegarbz]

It's people who don't understand that simple rule that cause accidents

People who don't understand that the overtaking lane is also not an excuse for speeding nor does it have a requirement that you do 30km/h above the limit is also what causes accidents. In general idiots who think they own the road in every which way cause accidents.

I get that about once a week. Overtaking some speed limited truck takes about 10-15 seconds when I'm driving the limit. Some idiot will come up behind me at a stupid speed and start flashing his lights and honking the horn. They are just as bad as those people who block the lanes for no reason.