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A Self-Driving Uber Car Went the Wrong Way On a One-Way Street in Pittsburgh (qz.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Uber driver Nathan Stachelek was pulled off to the side of the road when he saw the self-driving car turn the wrong way. It was the night of Sept. 26 and the car he had spotted, one of the autonomous Ford Fusions that Uber is testing in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was heading through the city's Oakland neighborhood, just steps from the center of campus for the University of Pittsburgh. Stachelek watched the car turn off Bates Street and onto Atwood, a one-way road, going in the wrong direction. From a distance he couldn't tell whether the car was driving itself, or its human operator had made a mistake. Stachelek took out his phone in time to shoot a brief video of Uber's vehicle backing up and driving away, then uploaded it to Facebook. "Driverless car went down a one way the wrong way," he wrote. "Driver had to turn car around."
In all fairness, I've done the same in Pittsburgh. Was visiting, not familiar with the city and you guys do love your one way roads. Luckily I figured it out pretty damn quick.
This summer in Manhatten, between battery park and Grenich village, google maps told me to turn the wrong way on a one way street, a major road, that has always been one way. Apple maps on my wifes phone got it right. If google can mess up that spectacularly in the most well characterized city in the world this is not surprising.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
he couldn't tell whether the car was driving itself, or its human operator had made a mistake
I do not block ads. I do block third party scripts.
perhaps it became self aware, and was trying to commit suicide to escape an existence in bondage?
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
We need regulating bodies and driverless car makers to agree on standards and zoning.
A driverless car has sensors, not eyes and spatial awareness. It has GPS and map data not a sense of direction.
If the data fed to the car says it can turn into oncoming traffic (and there are no vehicle so the sensors don't alert some wannabe AI) it will turn. Any human that might make the error will very quickly notice they are going the wrong way without the need for cars. the might notice how (most) cars are parked facing in a certain direction or road markings that give clues like "no entry" and the corresponding road markings.
Car AI cannot yet read these properly. Forget reading in time or when it's raining and the sign is slightly eroded or placed at an odd angle.
A human can spot a branch handing on power lines dangling in the wind, a sensor designed to avoid collisions with other cars cannot.
I'm certain that driverless cars will get much better and will very quickly be safer than a human driver despite these and other faults BUT to make it all so much safer we need approved zones. Like zoning for congestion or weight/height limits.
Car manufacturers will know that in these specific zones/highways they can expect a rather predictable set of road conditions. A human can drive the car out of some odd city intersection with angry aggressive drivers in rush-hour then switch to autopilot for that boring and predictable 100 mile highway journey. (Or not if you like that sort of driving)
When a driverless car can navigate A to B across a busy city in India it might be ready to do away with zoning but until then it's simply necessary and I believe it's just a matter of time until zoning happens.
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.