House Passes Bill To Speed Deployment of Self-driving Cars (go.com)

The House voted Wednesday to speed the introduction of self-driving cars by giving the federal government authority to exempt automakers from safety standards not applicable to the technology, and to permit deployment of up to 100,000 of the vehicles annually over the next several years. From a report: The bill was passed by a voice vote. State and local officials have said it usurps their authority by giving to the federal government sole authority to regulate the vehicles' design and performance. States would still decide whether to permit self-driving cars on their roads. Automakers have complained that a patchwork of laws states have passed in recent years would hamper deployment of the vehicles, which they see as the future of the industry. Self-driving cars are forecast to dramatically lower traffic fatalities once they are on roads in significant numbers, among other benefits. Early estimates indicate there were more than 40,000 traffic fatalities last year. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says 94 percent of crashes involve human error.

Comments

exempt automakers from safety standards???

[Joe_Dragon]

To what level????

I want see some CEO hulled in front of small town hard ass judge after a bad crash where they get into the local jail after they try to pull the NDA / EULA / 3rd party BS to get out of talking about the code. In a very bad car accident it can be an criminal trial.

Re:exempt automakers from safety standards???

[DickBreath]

If the self driving car is not at fault in the accident (the vast majority of present day cases), then the self driving car has tons of data both in visible light and other parts of the spectrum to show everything that happened prior to the crash.

It is an inevitability, once statistics catch up with it, that a self driving car will be the cause of a major accident. I doubt that this can ever be a criminal trial, because no criminal intent is involved at any level of the design or implementation of the self driving car. It's an accident.

As more self driving car accidents occur, the self driving cars will get better and better at avoiding them (unlike puny humans). If for no other reason than the designers will make improvements based on all of the data from each accident.

In court, the lawyers can argue about how the self driving car came to the decision to run over a group of people whose skin color it did not like. There won't be any NDAs. The owner of the technology will file a motion to keep the technology under seal. It will be discussed in court, but in a closed courtroom, with court members bound to secrecy about the technology. This is nothing new.

BTW, I'm all for requiring safety standards of automakers. (OMG! regulation!) As long as you can quantify it in a way that is clear in the law. You can't have laws that are so vague that you can unintentionally violate them. There needs to be a bright line.

The line cannot be that no accidents can occur -- because self driving cars are already safer than cars driven by puny humans.

Re:exempt automakers from safety standards???

[amiga3D]

I'd do it. It's safer than riding with my wife driving. Hell, it's safer than the majority of drivers. 34% have admitted to texting and driving and over half talking on a cell phone and driving. Then there are all the ones that should never have gotten a drivers license to start with. I was in Germany in the 80s and I was amazed at how many Americans failed the test to get a license to drive in Germany. I worked with ppl that took it 3 or 4 times before passing. My wife took it 3 times and gave up, she never drove at all in Europe.

Re:exempt automakers from safety standards???

[cayenne8]

I just hope they don't become mandatory....I prefer the fun of driving myself, hence my always buying sports/performance cars.

Re:exempt automakers from safety standards???

[geekmux]

You can't have laws that are so vague that you can unintentionally violate them.

No, but you can certainly have punishments so weak that manufacturers will find it worth it to intentionally violate them. You know, like bypassing security in order to be first to market. Not that we've ever seen that shit happen before...(cough, IoT, cough)

The line cannot be that no accidents can occur -- because self driving cars are already safer than cars driven by puny humans.

Let's see how the masses feel when they find out a loved one was one of 100,000 people killed after a DDoS-style mass attack against autonomous vehicles takes place in a major city. Watch as the manufacturer demands closed-door legal proceedings and produces redacted shit detailing their fault, negotiating death caused by an insecure product down to a free cup of fucking coffee for the next of kin.

If companies are already looking to push this technology by requesting a pass on current regulation, then it will probably go to market like damn near every other mass-produced thing we make, meaning shit for security. And I've already explained why they will do this; because it will be worth it.

Re:exempt automakers from safety standards???

[liquid_schwartz]

The line cannot be that no accidents can occur -- because self driving cars are already safer than cars driven by puny humans.

This is the point that I hope gets understood sooner rather than later. Accidents happen currently to the tune of ~3000 people dying a month and many times that injured. If self driving cars reduce this then progress has been made. The data I've seen is that self driving / driver assist reduces car accidents by ~20% and injuries by ~25%. That's huge. As long as some jackass lawyer doesn't get to have punitive damages that are in excess of what a regular driver would get then it should be fine. Meaning that if Ford doesn't get fined more than some random human driver then it will be OK since insurance can cover those cases.

Citations:

https://www.digitaltrends.com/...

Re:exempt automakers from safety standards???

[fluffernutter]

You have only seen data from self driving that either A) has a human to correct for it, or B) drives only where driving is simple and straightforward. We don't know if self driving will ever be adequate for all conditions. And self driving has made progress on those dead or injured only as long as it hasn't injured or killed anyone else that wouldn't have died otherwise.

Re:exempt automakers from safety standards???

[amiga3D]

When I drive in Atlanta I'm wrapped in a 2.5 ton steel machine that is on a full steel frame. It's a 2003 Mercury Grand Marquis and in one accident a toyota splattered itself to pieces on the side of it and 1,000 dollars later my car was fine. I'm still afraid, not because of me but because of the idiots that change lanes without looking, talking on phones, texting and just flat out stoned. I'll settle for lack of control if it will solve the problem of all these idiots flying around not paying attention to the road. Over 40K dead last year, that doesn't count the numbers hurt and maimed.

Re: exempt automakers from safety standards???

[Hadlock]

I deal with these things daily, ride my bike in traffic with them daily, they're just cautiously driven cars. Maybe when you finally see and interact with one you will understand.
 
In the case you state ,that was me, I was facing with the direction of traffic, about 2' from the road at the crosswalk, then turned 180 degrees to face traffic. The car sensed that I was changing direction (lidar is amazing, can track rotation of objects) and towards the lane. By the time my right foot hit the ground (about 8" closer to the curb) the car came to a stop, it had decided there was a good chance I was going to enter the crosswalk.
 
Now, granted, I did NOT step in to the crosswalk, but the important thing here is that it saw my change in direction and picked up my foot and started moving closer to the street, near a crosswalk. It predicted that I was going to enter the crosswalk and so it stopped, rather than risk running me over. How cool is that?
 
  These cars aren't just stopping and starting in a herky-jerky motion, they're keeping track of everything on the street and their relative motion to the street. I'm sure after that event the engineers tweaked the predictive levels for stopping the car, but overall I feel extremely safe around them and trust them quite a bit more than humans at this point. The drivers are generally pretty chilled out, attentive, but not having a bad time being driven about.

Re:exempt automakers from safety standards???

[serviscope_minor]

When I drive in Atlanta I'm wrapped in a 2.5 ton steel machine that is on a full steel frame. It's a 2003 Mercury Grand Marquis and in one accident a toyota splattered itself to pieces on the side of it and 1,000 dollars later my car was fine. I'm still afraid, not because of me

Well, you probably should be because you're clearly poor at making choices. The "splattering" you so deride is caused by things called "crumple zones". Those absorb the energy of the impact so that the car splatters, not you. That person's car going "splatter" likely saved *you* from serious injuries. You're basically gambling that most people have safer cars than you and that one of those unsafe car drivers won't be the one to hit you.

What's amazing is you clearly know how dangerous the roads are, yet knowingly drive a car that doesn't have good crash test ratings.

Re:exempt automakers from safety standards???

[geekmux]

Replace every instance of "self-driving car" you just wrote with "plane" and you have the same argument. Except it hasn't happened.

Every commercial airliner is equipped with autopilot. You still will not see one leave the ground without a trained and certified human pilot. There's a reason for that.

The move for autonomous cars is looking to eliminate the human driver altogether. We're even questioning the need for training or licensing human drivers in the future.

And from a regulatory standpoint, they aren't even fucking close, so lets stop trying to compare apples and oranges.

"94% of crashes involve human error"

[queazocotal]

And a sizeable fraction of the remainder would be eliminated by automatic monitoring of car performance. (brake failure due to neglect say).
Then there are those accidents that are 'unavoidable' (debris falling on road say).

But become not-unavoidable if you have an AI with reflexes beyond a trained stunt/rally driver who has a week to prepare.

Re:"94% of crashes involve human error"

[Kierthos]

Here's some stats:

http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topic...

Re:"94% of crashes involve human error"

[Obfuscant]

But automated cars are controlled by computers that make decisions in fractions of a second! They should absolutely be able to avoid debris falling on the road.

Let's test that hypothesis. You get your AV going down I5 at posted legal speed and I'll drop a rock on it from an overpass. I predict your AV will not avoid "debris falling on the road" when the laws of physics say your AV cannot stop in time to avoid hitting/being hit by it.

If they don't have the sensors for it, then that's a problem.

I have three significant chips in my windshield that came from small rocks being kicked up by trucks in front of me. I challenge you to have a camera with sufficient resolution, and computer with sufficient processing speed, to detect, much less avoid such damage. Then consider that the camera you may have trying to detect this stuff may be the target of that rock, and it becomes not so good for much.

Re:Percentage

[Captain Splendid]

That will make dying hurt less right?

No, but the ~90% reduction in auto-related fatalities will.

Congress doing something right?

[GerryGilmore]

Damn! Will wonders never cease? Look, all of you self-driving car Luddites can just stay the hell away from them. For the rest of us, though, it makes PERFECT sense to have National standards for these cars in the same way that we currently have National standards for all current vehicles. Otherwise, you'd have an amalgam of incompatible state-based standards that would severely hinder development and deployment. (California's stricter emissions standards being the only exception I'm aware of.) What's wrong with that?

Re:Congress doing something right?

[cdwiegand]

Nice try, but already several states have emissions standards, and had the Feds used their unconstitutional "right" to pass a law only permitting Federal jurisdiction over emission standards, CA's rules (which like 10 other states follow) would NEVER have seen the light of day. And those standards have helped push electric vehicles, even self-driving cars (which arguably would not exist if alternative fuel cars wasn't as big of a market as it is - it's sparked innovation in a previously dead market).

In the end, the Feds don't really have authority to do this, if the States would finally stand up and remind the federal government of their rights under the 10th amendment. Great point: I may not be a leftie or rightie (I'm actually centrist), but how would you feel if the Feds also demanded concealed carry reciprocity nation-wide? Or blocked LGBT marriage nation-wide? Most liberals squirm, at best, at the thought, yet ITS THE SAME IDEA - the feds taking away the right for a State to determine its own laws entirely within that state. It's only when something is commerce cross-state boundaries that the feds should be doing anything like this, and several states (esp. out west) are larger than many European countries, so I have a hard time believing they are having a hard time doing business in California (practically its own country already).

Re:Percentage

[stevelinton]

But advancements in mechanical technology, combined with standards, enforcement, liability etc. have led to a massive reduction in the number of random dangerous mechanical failures in correctly maintained vehicles.

Bad human decision making vs. AI Bugs

[Scroatzilla]

I'm always curious when self-driving discussions appear. I'm "somewhat" informed on this topic, and am relatively neutral; but, I can't help but believe that tech folks are a bit too optimistic about the benefits of "eliminating human error." For example, I see in these types of discussions the example of debris on the road. Theoretically, most human drivers have the ability to see such debris and determine a course of action, and most of the time they choose correctly and avoid disaster.

On the other hand, it would only take a single bug in an AI "debris subroutine" running in a whole bunch of self-driving cars to choose the wrong course of action 100% of the time. Such a bug would *probably* only be identified after enough failures were accurately recorded to piece together a pattern that could point to it (i.e., an incomplete test plan didn't catch it, a code review didn't catch it, differences between virtual test worlds vs. the real world hid the defect, etc.).

I guess if someone could convince me that it is possible to write 100% bug-free code, I would feel better about this. However, what I perceive as the somewhat naive optimism of technical folks is somewhat terrifying in this context.

Re:Bad human decision making vs. AI Bugs

[Kjella]

On the other hand, it would only take a single bug in an AI "debris subroutine" running in a whole bunch of self-driving cars to choose the wrong course of action 100% of the time. Such a bug would *probably* only be identified after enough failures were accurately recorded to piece together a pattern that could point to it

What makes you say that? I would expect any SDC accident or near-accident where the car is potentially at fault to be given a thorough hearing, FAA style. I expect the "black box" in SDCs to give you all the raw sensor data from the last 30 seconds which will be put into simulators and ran not just on what did happen but a ton of variations to see what could happen. And for any change in the programming to be ran through a bunch of regression tests to check that you don't have any unexpected behavior changes or side effects.

Humans make individual errors and there's only so much point in studying them, like you say SDCs should have predictable behavior in that they all work the same and should react in exactly the same way to exactly the same input. So you pounce on the first instance that it might have a problem and fix it, also updating all other cars on the road who haven't ran into that oddball combination of circumstances that caused a problem before there's ever a second accident. Not that you'll ever have 100% coverage or that there won't be bad patches, but I see this as inherently much better.

Every year there's a new age cohort of drivers on the road with zero experience and they make newbie mistakes, so was I once. And even with experience we're not 100% concentrated on driving like a race driver, we have small lapses because we're distracted, tired, emotionally unbalanced and so on. I don't expect perfection from a SDC, but computers tend to have exceptional consistency. Of course there's too many variables for every day to be exactly the same, but at least the car will drive the same way, every time.

If you break it down to "micro-situations" maybe there aren't that many different algorithms, because you only have to identify the situation sufficiently to reach a conclusion. If it's a drunk man or person in wheelchair or child or pet or wild animal in the road all amounts to animate object in road, stop. Also the rules for passing through an intersection are pretty universal, you have to identify the specifics of traffic lights and cars and pedestrians and whatnot, but I expect that to be one "thing" that's tweaked and refined to work in 99.9% of intersections 99.9% of the time. And the reminder it'll just be a stopped idiot.