Slashdot Mirror
Fully Driverless Waymo Taxis Are Due Out This Year, Alarming Critics (arstechnica.com)
Alphabet's Waymo is launching a driverless taxi service in Phoenix in the next three months -- and it's open to the public. But due to the limited regulations surrounding self-driving cars, many critics argue that more regulations are needed to ensure the safety of these vehicles before they roll out for public and commercial use. Ars Technica reports: If a company wants to sell a new airplane or medical device, it must undergo an extensive process to prove to federal regulators that it's safe. Currently, there's no comparable requirement for self-driving cars. Federal and state laws allow Waymo to introduce fully self-driving cars onto public streets in Arizona without any formal approval process. That's not an oversight. It represents a bipartisan consensus in Washington that strict regulation of self-driving cars would do more harm than good.
Mary "Missy" Cummings, an engineering professor at Duke, agrees. "I don't think there should be any driverless cars on the road," she tells Ars. "I think it's unconscionable that no one is stipulating that testing needs to be done before they're put on the road." But so far these advocates' demands have fallen on deaf ears. Partly that's because federal regulators don't want to slow the introduction of a technology that could save a lot of lives in the long run. Partly it's because they believe that liability concerns give companies a strong enough incentive to behave responsibly. And partly it's because no one is sure how to regulate self-driving cars effectively. When it comes to driverless cars, "there's no consensus on what it means to be safe or how we go about proving that," says Bryant Walker Smith, a legal scholar at the University of South Carolina.
Mary "Missy" Cummings, an engineering professor at Duke, agrees. "I don't think there should be any driverless cars on the road," she tells Ars. "I think it's unconscionable that no one is stipulating that testing needs to be done before they're put on the road." But so far these advocates' demands have fallen on deaf ears. Partly that's because federal regulators don't want to slow the introduction of a technology that could save a lot of lives in the long run. Partly it's because they believe that liability concerns give companies a strong enough incentive to behave responsibly. And partly it's because no one is sure how to regulate self-driving cars effectively. When it comes to driverless cars, "there's no consensus on what it means to be safe or how we go about proving that," says Bryant Walker Smith, a legal scholar at the University of South Carolina.
...Google has been testing driverless cars for years now?
"Currently, there's no comparable requirement for self-driving cars."
Human drivers cause 6,5 million accidents per year, killing tens of thousands of people and injuring several millions.
This can only be better.
Developer data acquired over the past decade of real street testing strongly indicates self-driving cars would save lives. Is a government safety certification process going to accomplish anything these companies have not already considered? What of the lives that can be saved in the mean time?
"Self-driving car advocates argue that slowing down the development of self-driving cars could ultimately cost more lives than it saves. In 2016, more than 37,000 people died from highway crashes, with many being caused by human error, so self-driving cars have the potential to prevent thousands of highway deaths in the coming years."
Stipulate the special scenarios where the human has to take over and let the machines handle all other scenarios.
Mary "Missy" Cummings, an engineering professor at Duke, agrees. "I don't think there should be any driverless cars on the road," she tells Ars. "I think it's unconscionable that no one is stipulating that testing needs to be done before they're put on the road."
What does she assume this whole time self driving cars have just been something in people's heads? Every company who's in on this technology brags about their logged road time... Glad she ain't my prof.
I tend to rant.
I don't worry much about the cars themselves, but about the potential for legislation mandating we have self-driving cars. If you are old enough, you'll recall all the arguments about motorcycle helmet laws. How motorcycle accidents without helmets overloaded ER rooms and cost the public a lot of money in medical care. There is a clear precedent for my fears, The argument is the same. Don't forget that driving is a privilege not a right.
I used to work for a medical device manufacturer. While having to deal with a lot of regulations was certainly annoying (mostly because they are written by lawyers and you need to be a lawyer to really understand them), the great thing about them was that once you complied, you didn't have to worry nearly as much about liability. If there were no regulations (basically a form of self-regulation), then how exactly do you prove that you were not negligent? Maybe you think all the tests you did were enough. Maybe the lawyers you hired for advice thought so too. But you'll never know until it is tested in court. With regulations it is more-or-less black and white as to whether you have done enough to absolve yourself of responsibility for unforeseen events.
Another important point is that regulation creates a powerful barrier to entry in a market. The infrastructure required (in terms of processes and procedures) is immense, and large companies can gain economies of scale for these work. While the tech is enough of a barrier to entry right now, as time goes on this will change for driverless vehicles as well.
Found APK.
All they need to do is kill one pedestrian, and then it will be the same shit.
How much adversarial attacks have those cars been exposed to? Just because a car can safely drive down a standard road while supervised, doesn't mean it can't fail in catastrophic ways when exposed to non-standard situations. You don't want to have some jocksters paint stripes down a cliff and the cars blindly driving to their doom Wile E. Coyote style.
I wouldn't trust those cars one bit until they have been shown to be able to handle freak situations in a reasonable way.
I wouldn't trust those cars one bit until they have been shown to be able to handle freak situations in a reasonable way.
That statement should apply to both self-driving and human cars: No human-driven cars should be allowed on the road until humans have been shown to handle freak situations in a reasonable way. Sadly, this is provably not the case.
If a company wants to sell a new airplane or medical device, it must undergo an extensive process to prove to federal regulators that it's safe. Currently, there's no comparable requirement for self-driving cars.
How are these things comparable? We require medical devices to prove that they work because quackery is a real thing with real consequences. As such we require medical device manufacturers to prove that they actually provide therapeutic value. It's expensive but the alternative of people not being able to trust the treatment is FAR more expensive. People who are ill and in need of treatment aren't routinely able to determine for themselves whether a device works or is well made and most medical treatments aren't really voluntary. I freely admit I have no way to tell if an EKG machine is providing useful information or not and unless you have the letters MD after your name chances are you haven't a clue either. So we have regulation because market forces won't result in a good outcome.
A self driving car that doesn't function as a self driving car is going to be almost immediately self evident and market forces (and lawyers) will do what they do rather quickly. Your decision to get in one is pretty much 100% voluntary and most people are perfectly well qualified to determine if it functions properly for the purpose of transportation. Current cars carry a risk of injury just like driverless cars so there isn't much of a difference there aside from who is the liable party in the event of an accident. Yes there are going to be some injuries and fatalities in the development of the technology but that is true for literally every transportation technology ever invented.
It is inevitable that they pass laws allowing machines to kill x number of people. It can be no other way. And that will be a major devaluing of human life.
The question is, will it be more or less devaluing than the currently allowed rate of 40K+ people a year killed by human-driven cars in the US?
Umm, no.... It definitely COULD be worse with driverless cars. There are a lot of numbers bigger than 6.5 million. Obviously there is no point to the endeavor if the driverless cars have a worse accident rate than human driven cars but it's certainly among the possible outcomes. And there definitely will be fatalities and injuries with driverless cars. We're just hoping for (substantially) better than current technology.
I don't worry much about the cars themselves, but about the potential for legislation mandating we have self-driving cars. If you are old enough, you'll recall all the arguments about motorcycle helmet laws. How motorcycle accidents without helmets overloaded ER rooms and cost the public a lot of money in medical care. There is a clear precedent for my fears, The argument is the same. Don't forget that driving is a privilege not a right.
Eventually it WILL be better for everyone that EVERYONE be mandated to have a self-driving car.
I don't expect that to happen anytime soon. Probably not for at least another 30 years or more... but eventually yes, people won't drive themselves... and that's a good thing.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
What came first, the automobile or traffic laws? The airplane or the FAA?
The nature of safety regulations is such that they must be reactive. Some issues can be predicted, like liability in case of a crash, but most will only be revealed after implementation.
How much adversarial attacks have those cars been exposed to? Just because a car can safely drive down a standard road while supervised, doesn't mean it can't fail in catastrophic ways when exposed to non-standard situations. You don't want to have some jocksters paint stripes down a cliff and the cars blindly driving to their doom Wile E. Coyote style.
I wouldn't trust those cars one bit until they have been shown to be able to handle freak situations in a reasonable way.
Humans fail in catastrophic ways when exposed to non-standard and standard situations all the time. Nothing will ever be perfect. That includes self-driving cars. The question is: Do they have a significant potential to be a lot safer than human drivers? Is a self driving car more likely to:-
eat a burger while driving down the road?
text?
rubber-necking?
weave in and out of traffic?
race it's buddies on the highway?
engage in road rage?
speed?
put on makeup?
etc etc
compared to a human?
The fact that you think people function like computers is amusing... and revealing.
It is inevitable that they pass laws allowing machines to kill x number of people. It can be no other way. And that will be a major devaluing of human life.
The statistics for car accidents are no mystery and are objectively rather appalling yet we seem to be largely ok with the current state of affairs. We are letting machines operated by humans kill X number of people even though we have the technical ability to reduce this number any time we want. Whether a person is killed by a programmed machine or killed by a mistake a human makes directly operating a machine is really of no consequence to the dead. Insurance is literally a valuation of human life and we can give you a figure for what it is worth. This makes some people uncomfortable but it's an objective fact.
Here's the thing. The machine didn't kill anyone. There is no such thing as a machine error. There are only human errors. It might be the human operating the machine or it might be the fault of the engineer who designed the machine or it might be the fault of the human who assembled the machine but at the end of the day it was a human decision that is to blame. The fact that a program designed by a human is steering the vehicle rather than a human operator physically turning the wheel is not logically any different - that is the means not the cause. It creates a few new wrinkles on who is liable but at the end of the day it's still a human decision that is the root of the problem.
The standard shouldn't be "Is it perfectly safe" - it should be "is it safer than humans"...
Humans make shitty drivers...
Even if safety is "covered", doesn't anyone notice how often abnormal road situations occur? (Pay attention next time, you'll see what I mean.) Anything out of the norm would snarl these things and all the traffic behind them, daily.
As you know, then, the FDA changed it's rules on adverse effect reporting a few years ago, putting the burden on device manufacturers to figure out if their devices are causing issues or not. These changes came with little to no guidance on how to properly report on these incidents. The FDA will let you know you are doing something wrong when they fine or sue you.
There are good regulatory regimes and there are bad ones. With the government structured the way it is, it's a bit of a crap-shoot as to what you get.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
That's bull, because if a human driver kills a human, then that human has made a mistake. If an automated car kills a human, THEY ALL make the mistake.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I have an adversarial scenario for you: turn off the traffic lights at any intersection and then watch as the brilliant, adaptable humans fail to treat it as a four-way stop and just zoom on through.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Or do you think "courts" follows your reasonable ?
And that Arizona specialty, blasting down a freeway going the wrong way after the bars close.
There's an intersection on my way to work, with traffic lights that are disabled early in the morning. There's a shocking number of cars (at least half) that no longer have any clue what to do, because they are so used to the lights working. I've seen all kinds of crazy behavior, such as cars not yielding when they should, yielding when they shouldn't, or go at 3 mph across the intersection because they realize they have no idea what they're doing.
I wouldn't trust those cars one bit until they have been shown to be able to handle freak situations in a reasonable way.
That statement should apply to both self-driving and human cars: No human-driven cars should be allowed on the road until humans have been shown to handle freak situations in a reasonable way. Sadly, this is provably not the case.
Humans are a few orders of magnitude better than the numbers that waymo posted for there cars. Typical humans go 100s of thousands of miles without needing an intervention. Waymo cars (according to their own data) need an intervention every 5600m or so.
So, yeah, humans may not be perfect, but according to the numbers they're a hell of a lot better than the best SDCs available so far.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
That's bull, because if a human driver kills a human, then that human has made a mistake.
In most cases, the driver's insurance just pays the damage, and the human climbs back in a new car without personal consequences. For driverless cars, that would be the same.
Book taxi to drive somewhere quiet for a pickup.
Put bomb in dummy on back seat while dressed head-to-toe in black.
Set taxi destination to some sensitive location, or as near as damn it.
Boom.
Wait for the fallout as they realise the only thing they have is a rural location and a pre-pay credit card to link it all back to.
The fact that you think people function like computers is amusing... and revealing.
When it comes to driving, there is no real functional difference except that computers don't get emotional, so they won't get themselves into an emotional state which causes them to make mistakes. Even immediately after a near-collision, the computer will still have the same lack of emotions that it had right before a near-collision. That means that it will retain control of the vehicle in situations where many humans would simply stop functioning, i.e. "panic" and "freeze up". The computer can sustain more G shock than the human and continue operating, so even after an initial collision the computer will continue to attempt to avoid further accidents. The computer will be able to determine when a wheel is locked up due to damage (e.g. fender -> wheel) and will be able to lock up the opposing wheel so as to maintain brake balance, while using the remaining two wheels to control the vehicle's direction (using electronic skid control, even if it personally doesn't have control over that function.) in conditions where a human would be completely useless.
The human driving process is not all that different from the AV driving process. We have sensors with which we interpret what we see on the road in front of us, which we sometimes get wrong. Humans mistake road debris for other types of road debris, humans fail to spot potholes, humans neglect to turn their head and merge straight into other vehicles which are obviously there, humans don't know where they're going and merge straight from the leftmost passing lane to the exit offramp, humans read books while they're supposed to be driving... AVs will make some of those mistakes, but they won't make other ones. They have less distractions because they are only ever "thinking" about driving.
Humans kill humans with automobiles every day so the only standard that has to be passed in order to make it safer and to alleviate pressure on the court system is that AVs kill less humans than humans do. And frankly, it looks like they're there already for some types of driving.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
That statement should apply to both self-driving and human cars
No, because they're not the same at all. Self-driving cars are in many respects attractive nuisances. If you don't think they will be tempting targets for malicious interference (e.g., spray-paint cameras or laser pointers aimed at cameras), then you haven't thought about it enough.
I understand that Waymo and others have done a lot of testing and undoubtedly have their own sets of standards they think are sufficient to ensure a reasonable level of safety, but I don't have access to those standards or the test data, so I have no way of assessing the results. What I don't see are the automotive equivalent of FAA regulations (FARs) or airworthiness standards (e.g., MIL-STD 516).
Why is that inevitable? 1.3 million die in auto accidents every year. Life is already devalued. Historically, life has never been valued more highly. You used to lose dozens of people building a stinking bridge - now the largest public infrastructure project in the US has had one minor injury. The $4 billion Tappan Zee bridge was completed without any deaths or serious injuries.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Who is this engineering professor who says they need to do "testing"? What do you think Waymo has been doing for the past 2+ years. I live in SE Phoenix and I see Waymo's vans driving CONSTANTLY on the streets here (with people inside of them). They have been logging tens of thousands of miles doing testing. Driving during rush hour. Driving at night. All sorts of driving.
The better question back to these people freaking out is what KIND of testing are you arguing for, and HOW MUCH testing is needed to make you feel better? Because Waymo has been doing lots and lots of testing.
And then THEY ALL can be fixed, probably with an over-the-air update. No drunk driving PR campaign, no driver outreach or training, no expensive modification of signage or intersections, etc. This is an advantage. Only a hardware limitation would be similar to the current paradigm, and even then it would be no worse.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
the rule should be "For the purpose of liability and insurance requirements, any self-driving car is considered as being driven by the CEO"
So when Jack Krafcik goes to jail for one of the cars killing a pedestrian or passenger then maybe they'll slow down the rollout.
-a.e.mossberg
They can't be fixed in a way that guarantees new flaws aren't being introduced.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Self-driving car is cool. Car that reports everywhere you go to Google, because they don't have enough information about you, is very much not cool./p.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
What came first, the automobile or traffic laws? The airplane or the FAA?
Wrong question. The right questions are, "How long did commercial passenger flights operate before the government started creating aircraft safety regulations?", and "Whose idea was it to have the Federal government get into the business of creating aircraft safety regulations?" By the way, the FAA wasn't created until 1958. The Department of Commerce was the original regulating authority, and actually took over some functions from the Post Office Department.
The first scheduled commercial airline flight was in 1914. The Air Commerce Act of 1926, gave the Federal government the power to regulate civil aviation. This legislation was passed at the urging of the aviation industry, whose leaders believed the airplane could not reach its full commercial potential without federal action to improve and maintain safety standards.
So, if you want to draw parallels between airplanes and self-driving cars, you should be asking why Waymo and other developers of the technology aren't asking for government regulation, not maintaining that no regulation should be required.
I'm all for car drivers and pedestrians to wear crash helmets. As well as offering protection from impact, making HUDs mainstream would be safer than walking or driving around looking down at smartphone screens.
Also true of signage, intersection design, human training, etc.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
At least the people yielding when they shouldn't or going 3 mph have a sensible fail safe :)
The scary ones are the people who are like, huh, lights out... I guess I should just plow through the intersection as if there was no stop light at all!
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Cite evidence that sign design and intersection design is exactly as misunderstood as neural networks.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I think we're about to see just how good humans are at driving.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
If that is your threshold, then just go away unconvinced because that kind of analysis isn't going to happen in a slashdot discussion thread. Comparing the systemic complexity of transportation system design with and without the added variable of artificial intelligence is thesis material, at least. All you'll get out of me is that they are both very hard, subject to continuous change and improvement, and both very imperfect. No, I don't know the relative magnitudes and neither do you.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Yes but those people are quickly removed from the pool of drivers through death or loss of license, won't happen with the cars.
You don't honestly think loss of license means that a person is no longer in the "pool of drivers" do you? Currently 1 in 5 accidents are caused by unlicensed drivers in the US equating to about 8400 deaths annually. So obviously a lack of a license means nothing to tens of thousands of people.
it's a taxi service. They can always limit service to areas they're comfortable driving in. 80% coverage would still be plenty profitable. Heck 50% would.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Emotions are exactly what prevent humans from entering into dangerous situations in the first place.
They do no such thing. They can dissuade some humans from getting into some situations, but they can also encourage some humans to get into some other situations. People think they can do things that they can't do because of emotions all the time, with disastrous results.
You have emphasized exactly why a person painting lines to a cliff is a valid concern.
It's a valid concern because human actors do dumb things. And the vehicles compare data from multiple sources (GPS, sensors, etc.) so they will not be easily fooled in this manner. Not just that, but the vehicle looks to see if there is a road there, and it knows there's a body of water there (from GPS.)
The fact that AI has no fear is a huge problem, because it will not hesitate to follow its rules into a dangerous situation.
Humans do dumb things and die in their cars all the time, either because they overestimate their competence or because they're just idiots, for example people who do what their GPS tells them even if it doesn't make sense. An AV isn't going to turn where there is no road simply because the GPS data is bad, it'll decide it has no route to go there and either pull over and stop on the shoulder, or try to re-route.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You don't have it, because it is a ridiculous proposition.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
The regulations are mostly for safety, such as proving that the device cannot deliver an electric shock from the mains supply, while wires are attached to your body.
Of course the regulations are for safety but there is a lot more to it than that. My company makes wiring harnesses for heart and lung machines so I'm more familiar than I really care to be with what is required. There are a lot of requirements regarding how they are made, the quality systems, traceability of materials and processes, calibration of equipment, and more. Product design is of course a piece of the puzzle too but it's not the only piece by a long shot. I've seen the FDA crawl up the ass of one of our customers who weren't meeting requirements the way they should have been and it's not just physical device safety I can assure you.
I agree that a lot of regulation will come after. We have no idea what protections will need to be in place to make it safe. There's going to be some trial and error.
I suspect I big part of the lack of regulation is that the government doesn't know how to regulate it properly. That is to say, when the government designs the test, people are rightly or wrongly going to assume that it is safe. They can put whatever disclaimers they want on it, that will be the perception of people and companies. Companies will also view the government test as the testing they need to do.
On the surface, I fully agree that there is a lack of government testing. Just grab a few of these cars. drive around some small test track. Throw in obstacles. Pedestrian crossing illegally. Construction changes to road patterns. Rapid breaking... whatever. It can act as a good baseline for testing. But since no one knows what testing is 'good enough', the government isn't going to do that because then it's testing will be taken as bible.
It's a human behavioral problem and once you get the government tests, many people will view that as THE TEST of safety. It's unfortunate, but that's life. I've worked in enough industries to know that's the case.
That fact that you don't think people function like computers is tragic... and revealing.
Seriously. If you don't know how dumb people are, you really should educate yourself.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
I just had to swerve out of an exit lane, pass someone, and get back into it in front of them because they were going 30 under the speed limit at the start of it and swerving around all over the place. I was damn worried that the cars behind me exiting were going to plow into the back of me if I slammed on my brakes and went his speed. As I passed the jackass, I could see him pounding down a messy sub with both hands and driving with his elbow. And this means that he pulled it out, unwrapped it, and started eating it somewhere back on the highway.
Sorry, but I'll take self-driving cars any day. At least their failure modes will have logical reasons for failing.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
need to test in cold and rainy citys as well + snow!
How did you calculate 30 years? If you take into consideration exponential growth and previous examples of technology improving faster than predicted, you can't use intuition to predict the timeline for future tech.
In other words, I and people who have a history of predicting tech correctly, think that you are wrong.
One clear proof should be Waymo. Single accident would cause huge PR damage. Do you really think they want to test it how it goes without being absolutely sure that it works? So yes, seld driing cars in good driving conditions is here today. For bad conditions it might take more time, perhaps even a year or two.
10 years to get the technology to be
a) I figure there are at least 10 years of development before the technology is ready for the masses.
b) Average car on the road is 10 years old- so even when the technology is ready there will be a long transition before the majority of cars on the road are self driving.
c) Government will give a long grace period for people with human driven cars that are late to the self-driven technology to switch over.
It's not going to happen in less than 30 years.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Should say 10 years to get the technology to be ready for mass-consumer.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
It's not ridiculous at all. Your assumption that the existing system is simple is ridiculous. 30,000 automotive deaths per year is a sufficiently large problem to solve such that if it were easy it would have been done by now. You are going after me for data - where's your data? We are in the same position.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
... gooole is typically comfortable with launching full fledged products in beta. Don't worry, they will come out of beta in few years.
over-the-air update need to be free and no roaming fees.
OR you really want an car the need to go the dealer each X mouths for an $200 software update. (60 software + 140 labor) and maybe even BS like the map data is needs more HDD space come the dealer for an $260 500GB SSD + 150 labor to install it.
black box need to be safe from manufacturers deleting data so they can't cover up when there software fails.
Chicago city driving + Chicago land highway driving is the real test as well. They better be ready to do 70+ in a 55 speed limit
Also, if a particular model of self-driving car has a flaw that causes multiple accidents, there will be massive pressure to fix it. The pressure may come from a government decertifying that model, or it may come from liability issues, I'd be happy with more government involvement here (governments are slow but faster than the free market in these cases), but either way it will be fixed. Taking away someone's license for a year doesn't make them a better driver.
black box need to be safe from manufacturers deleting data so they can't cover up when there software fails.
Yes, I said that.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Aren't we getting a little ahead of ourselves? :)
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
A human driver kills another human: the human driver goes to jail.
A so-called 'self driving car' kills a human: the manufacturer throws some settlement money at the next-of-kin, and goes on like nothing happened.
Is that what you want?
Since I don't live in AZ, I'm okay with Arizonians voluntarily being guinea pigs. When bot-car co's get the kinks out via real world trial-and-error, my state then can have the benefits without the possible high accident rate of new tech.
I just hope Arizonians are not hypocrites such that they don't panic and rant if there are too many accidents. I will even solute the Arizonians who sacrificed their lives so mine can be better as I step into my first ever bot-car ride. Thank You, oh brave flatties of AZ!
Table-ized A.I.
Waymo cars are far better drivers than the Humans the luddites quoted in that article are begging for.
Where is the Apps guy when we need him!
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Well, you're in for a rude awakening, because self driving cars have nowhere near the logged safe miles than humans do.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
30,000 deaths per year out of 3.22 TRILLION MILES driven. Put it into perspective.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I might add, it's not just 3.22 trillion miles driven by humans per year, but those miles are anywhere in the continental US, in any weather and any situation; not just on clearly marked roads with proper traffic signals.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
When you're averaging across 222 million licensed drivers in the US alone humans have pretty persistent flaws. If they were an industry with that rate of faulty product we'd pull it from the market and fire the QA department. Personally I'm not too worried because it's not enough that there's a bug, there also has to be the conditions to trip the bug and most of the time you'd probably notice it earlier through near-misses and lesser accidents. Once they have something resembling a fleet they're going to see very quickly if there's a spike in problems and you can react to it. With humans you more or less just have to accept that's how people are.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
If this were a new drug, there would be clinical trials. These taxis are a drug being dosed on the general population.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
No, because they're not the same at all. Self-driving cars are in many respects attractive nuisances. If you don't think they will be tempting targets for malicious interference (e.g., spray-paint cameras or laser pointers aimed at cameras), then you haven't thought about it enough.
So the good news is that we already have laws to correct the problem. Just as we jail everyone who throws a brick off an overpass, we can jail everyone who maliciously interferes with the operation of an automated vehicle.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
Humans drive 3.22 trillion miles a year and get into around 20 million accidents (yes I have accounted for 30% unreported accidents). This means they drive 161,000 safe miles per accident, giving them a failure rate of 1 every 161,000 miles. Let's not quibble about the fact that this success rate is beyond comparable to self driving because this is all weather, all places, all circumstances. You can't tell me Apple has less than a 0.0006% failure rate for their electronics, or that people get into accidents more often than vehicles break down.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I've got it. I'm not claiming that self-driven cars are anywhere near ready to completely take over for humans. And even if they were, the cost is currently not economically viable.
With that said, the parameters of their operation is currently constrained. That makes the problem much simpler, and it means that potential solutions to future problems can be tested against the same dataset as the original software, and then the solution can be fanned out in stages. You cannot easily test human and infrastructure changes in such a manner - you pretty much need to wait for the field results to come in... a botched intersection design with human drivers is going to remain dangerous until money is available for capital improvements. A perennial problem like drivers blowing through intersections with dark traffic lights would probably require some kind of technological solution.
I don't think anyone is talking about letting automated taxis tackle arbitrary roads under arbitrary conditions. Baby steps.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Needing an intervention doesn't mean there would otherwise be an accident without intervention -- only that there's risk and so to be on the safe side intervention is requested. Humans get into risky situations on the road much more often than they have actual accidents too. We do not have numbers to compare apples to apples here.
This space intentionally left blank
A human driver kills another human: the human driver goes to jail.
Almost never happens, except in extreme negligence or intentional homicide. Instead, insurance companies throw settlement money around.
Besides, most deaths due to cars are because humans drive too fast, or too tired, or too drunk, or too upset, or whatever. Computers don't do any of that. There will still be deaths; multi-ton vehicles moving at 50+ mph cannot be safe. But a lot fewer.
Human-driven cars are very tempting targets for malicious interference too. Somebody spray-painted my car's windshield once, which made it unsafe for me to drive. The traditional teenage tactics are to slash a car's tires or break the windows, both of which happened to my parents' cars in the past.
The difference is a self-driving car will detect the damage and refuse to move until repaired, while a human might choose to drive unsafely.
This space intentionally left blank
This article is about using self driving as a Taxi soon. That tells me they are willing to let them drive anywhere without constraint.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Just as we jail everyone who throws a brick off an overpass, we can jail everyone who maliciously interferes with the operation of an automated vehicle.
Just as we jail everyone who is caught in the act of throwing a brick off an overpass, we can jail everyone who is caught in the act of maliciously interfering with the operation of an automated vehicle. There, fixed that for you.
Do you have any idea what the clearance rate is for property crimes? You can find out here.
Also, there's the little detail that while jail is great for punishing the offender, it does nothing to protect the victim of the crime, and little to prevent the crime from being committed in the first place. It seems that jail is only effective in preventing law-abiding citizens from committing crimes.
30 years is about the minimum, because there are a significant number of people driving 25 year old cars.
This space intentionally left blank
Is a self driving car more likely to:-
eat a burger while driving down the road? text? rubber-necking? weave in and out of traffic? race it's buddies on the highway? engage in road rage? speed? put on makeup? etc etc
You left out the most obvious one: be drunk.
Computers are always perfect!
Wrong.
AI is smarter than humans!
Wrong. They can't think, they have no capacity to do that.
Self driving cars are better in every way to human drivers!
Wrong. They're rushed to market and are inadequate. Please stop believing the media hype. Unless you're an AI researcher or SDC engineer, that's all you have to go by is media hype and press releases from SDC companies. These cannot be considered 'facts'. The only 'facts' we have so far shows machines that can't handle the job, have to 'phone home' to have a human operator remotely drive it through things it can't handle (because it can't think), and blindly killing a pedestrian. Otherwise, 25mph (or less) drives through pre-determined street courses don't mean a damn thing.
The poor excuse for 'AI' everyone and their brother keeps trotting out will never be capable of doing this job by itself because it has no actual cognitive capability; 'deep learning algorithms' are not in any way shape or form a substitute for the ability to actually think. If and when we find a way to solve the puzzle of how human brains produce the phenomenon of thought, we will not be able to build machines that can also posess this quality, and until that's possible, 'self driving cars' that are fully capable of performing the job without help and without fault will not be possible.
It's icy there, you should understand why they drive kind of slow.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
c) Driver education, training, and testing reforms, nation-wide, producing safe, competent drivers, and excluding unsafe, incompetent drivers; removing current incompetent drivers, who cannot become competent through remedial education and training, from the roads, permanently.
We don't need shitty half-assed 'self driving cars' that are death machines. Stop believing the hype.
Eventually it WILL be better for everyone that EVERYONE be mandated to have a self-driving car.
I don't expect that to happen anytime soon. Probably not for at least another 30 years or more... but eventually yes, people won't drive themselves... and that's a good thing.
I basically agree, though I would guess 50 years instead of 30. But that's just a guess.
The major issue is that the transition to requiring self-driving cars can't be done in one year, and the current politicians in the US lack any ability to put together a plan that goes beyond the next election. It's the kind of thing that needs to be planned years, probably even a couple decades, in advance. Self-driving cars are most effective when the only other cars that they have to deal with are also self-driving, but they may not be any better, or maybe even slightly worse, when all of the cars around them are human-driven. So you may need a plan where you mandate all new cars have the capability, especially regarding hardware, for self-driving by 2040 (to pick an arbitrary year), and then mandate turning on the self-driving functionality in 2065.
He pulled 30 years out of his ass.
Self driving requires cars that can understand what all the actors around it are _planning_.
That requires strong AI. Which will require a breakthrough. You can't schedule breakthroughs. It could be much longer, very unlikely it will be shorter. We don't know where to start.
Highways are done. 25 mph residential streets may _never_ be done. Because of the variety of actors the car will need to understand.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The Tesla that killed the dude by driving straight into a crete highway barrier had just gotten an update. The previous version wouldn't have wrecked like that.
That was just lane following, a much simpler problem than general autonomous driving.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Of course everyone with an experience different from your own is a lying shill...
Replying to your actual point, I live just outside of Philly. People SHOULD stop at out-of-service lights, but I'd say 25-75% do not, depending on the light - especially if one of the roads is significantly larger than the other (2-lane vs 1-lane, for instance). It's breathtakingly stupid.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
No it does not imply that at all. I'm sure the taxi's destinations will be heavily constrained at first. There's been a self-driving bus going up and down the Vegas strip for months now, but that doesn't mean self-driving buses are ready to go anywhere man-driven buses go.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I wouldn't trust those cars one bit until they have been shown to be able to handle freak situations in a reasonable way.
I'm sure they've never tested them in those type of situations. Just sunshine and empty parking lots for Waymo cars. Now they are turning those death machines loose on the public. I even hear they have chainsaws mounted on the bumpers.
I like you you emphasized the last part. Really drove home your point.
The point you whooshed on is that humans aren't safe either (not even close). A system that results in fewer deaths overall is a plus for society. If you are maimed in a traffic accident, will take solace in the fact that it was a drunk teenager? I mean, better to be maimed by a human than have the chance (see that emphasis?) of being maimed by a machine, right?
Emotions are exactly what prevent humans from entering into dangerous situations in the first place.
HAHAHA.
HA.
HAH.
Eh hem. Okay. You don't drive much do you?
If you don't think they will be tempting targets for malicious interference (e.g., spray-paint cameras or laser pointers aimed at cameras), then you haven't thought about it enough.
In the same way I get my break line cut and windshields spray painted and tires punctured every day. Oh wait. That doesn't happen.
Just as we jail everyone who is caught in the act of throwing a brick off an overpass, we can jail everyone who is caught in the act of maliciously interfering with the operation of an automated vehicle. There, fixed that for you.
Go ahead and link to all the cases where people throw bricks off an overpass and don't get caught. You hear about it happening every 5 years or so. Maybe there's some terrible epidemic of unreported, unsolved brick throwing off overpass crimes but you're going to have to prove that it you want anyone to take you seriously.
Actually, the question I can't help wondering is whether unused deaths will be able to be traded like carbon credits.
When someone says, "Any fool can see
It is inevitable that they pass laws allowing machines to kill x number of people. It can be no other way. And that will be a major devaluing of human life.
Oh please.
We all know that self driving cars will go nowhere if they can't offer a significant reduction in accidents and deaths. I'll be happy to hear your cries in 10 years when and if the roads are filled with bloodstained Waymo cars. Until then, relax.
Driverless will progressively develop like most tech , so surprised there is not more attention on initial limited scope application. For instance Tokyo has a set route. If roads can be better equipped to handle driverless vehicles with signs, sensors and other safety controls should help progress.
You seem to be confused about whom you should be replying to. Go back and read the post to which I was replying; then you'll understand.
I think that the FAA has an given scrip for testing safety and for the most part that works.
If you don't think they will be tempting targets for malicious interference (e.g., spray-paint cameras or laser pointers aimed at cameras), then you haven't thought about it enough.
In the same way I get my break line cut and windshields spray painted and tires punctured every day. Oh wait. That doesn't happen.
You have a self-driving car? No? So what the hell are you talking about again?
Well at least the human drivers will have at some point passed an independantly verified driver's licence test.
No robocar has, and until one has passed a standard driver's test in every state and province, day or night and in all weather conditions, I would never bet my life on one.
Sure they will. But if you naively think that there will be no machine-caused deaths then you fail to live in reality. And machine-caused deaths, allowed by law and government are not the same as deaths caused by humans who can feel remorse and guilt and are subject to legal punishment personally. It devalues humans and strips them of their connection to other humans to turn driving over to machines and to indemnify they against responsibility by making it a "sue the company" kind of thing. Companies don't care. And we know that they make decisions to repair or not repair critical faults with their cars according to which path is the most expensive to take. If the cost of being sued is less than the cost of fixing the problem they will, and have let people die. That is long established. It is business. And the saving of lives is an assumption that they intend to test with your life and mine. Not only that, but self-driving cars of sufficient numbers will slow down everything because they have to conform strictly to the legal speed limits to limit corporate exposure. It is a fundamental change in the way we think about human life to LET machines kill people. Legislatures, corrupted by corporate money, will let them do that too.
E Proelio Veritas.
Presently it is only an assumption that lives will be saved. And they intend to test that with your life and mine. And everything must slow down when you take human driving out of the driving environment. How will business like that? How will YOU like that when it takes longer to get anywhere?
E Proelio Veritas.
And why is it unacceptable to have robots killing humans on the battlefield, but ok on the roads of our country? It can be argued that allowing robot killing machines on the battlefield will more quickly end wars and save lives. The "save lives" argument is used to justify everything, but we must see it for what it is: merely a call to something that no one feels they can oppose in order to support an unsupportable dehumanizing cause.
E Proelio Veritas.
That said, you already answered your last question. There was a 12 year gap between the first commercial flight and the passage of the Air Commerce Act, which means it could have taken the industry 10 years to start thinking that regulation would be to their benefit. In other words, the industry likely started off not wanting regulations, developed in their absence, and only over time discovered where regulation was needed and how it was beneficial.
So the reason Waymo isn't pushing for regulations is that it's a new industry and that neither it nor the government know what or how to regulate. After a few years, that will become clear and the industry will start asking for rules.
I think you should be careful about comparing the introduction of commercial aircraft into mostly empty skies, with the introduction of self-driving cars into an environment already crowded with cars and pedestrians.
Although the Air Commerce Act wasn't passed until 1926, commercial air travel didn't become routine until after World War II, and wasn't truly accessible to the masses until the late 1950s or early 1960s.
One interesting footnote regarding the FAA: Both the general public and the airline industry agitated for government intervention following a collision between two passenger aircraft over the Grand Canyon in 1956, killing 126 people. There was a great deal of public outrage over the antiquated state of Air Traffic Control and the lack of official interest in upgrading and modernizing the system. The FAA was created in 1958 with the passage of the Federal Aviation Act.
And they intend to test that with your life and mine.
Mostly, they'll be testing it on people who knowingly buy or get into a self-driving car. Yes, they could kill pedestrians or people in other cars, too. What can I say? Are we going to choose this moment to suddenly take a new approach to automotive innovation? If so, I hope you like paying Boeing prices for cars.
How will YOU like that when it takes longer to get anywhere?
I'll revel in the extra free time when I'm freed from the tedium of driving.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
But if you naively think that there will be no machine-caused deaths then you fail to live in reality.
Nobody said that anywhere is this thread. They said, accurately, the *expectation* is that overall accidents and deaths will be lowered with self driving cars. If it doesn't lower them, people aren't morons. We won't have self driving cars on the road.
Companies don't care.
Companies do care about profits. If Waymo cars slaughter millions of pedestrians, that's not good for business.
It is a fundamental change in the way we think about human life to LET machines kill people.
No it isn't. It's about saving lives. Do you think you'd take solace in the fact that your son was killed by a drunk, distracted teenager? I mean, thank goodness, at least we don't have self driving cars getting into fender benders!
Your problem is you think everyone in the world is an idiot (but you apparently). We are smart enough to evaluate the success or failure of self driving car trials. Well at least I am. Are you?
You have a self-driving car? No? So what the hell are you talking about again?
No, but I have a regular car and it doesn't get vandalized. It gets parked on a dark street at night the same way as will a self driving car.
Apparently you are suggesting that people will just hate self driving cars and wander the streets at night looking to attack them... because... some reason. Interesting theory. Let's see if that plays out before we just through out self driving cars though.
Apparently you are suggesting that people will just hate self driving cars and wander the streets at night looking to attack them... because... some reason.
Not at all. I'm suggesting that vandals will find them attractive targets because they're new and different, and vulnerable to a wide variety of attacks. Privately owned vehicles may be parked during off-work hours, but taxis will spend a fair amount of time motoring around with no passengers, travelling from drop-off to pick-up points. Can you understand that the vulnerability is highest when they're operating and not when they're parked? This has nothing to do with hatred, but lots to do with a common mentality that enjoys screwing around with things just for the entertainment value. You need look no further than script kiddies to find examples of this sort of behavior.
I'm suggesting that vandals will find them attractive targets because they're new and different, and vulnerable to a wide variety of attacks.
If only they'd been doing trials over the last 3 years. Then they'd have some idea if this was going to be a problem.
If only they'd been doing trials over the last 3 years. Then they'd have some idea if this was going to be a problem.
Let me fix that for you.
They'd been doing trials over the last 3 years. They should have known that this was going to be a problem.
Why would a self-driving car company name itself
!! WHAMO !!
?
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
But if you naively think that there will be no machine-caused deaths then you fail to live in reality.
Nobody said that anywhere is this thread. They said, accurately, the *expectation* is that overall accidents and deaths will be lowered with self driving cars. If it doesn't lower them, people aren't morons. We won't have self driving cars on the road.
Companies don't care.
Companies do care about profits. If Waymo cars slaughter millions of pedestrians, that's not good for business.
It is a fundamental change in the way we think about human life to LET machines kill people.
No it isn't. It's about saving lives. Do you think you'd take solace in the fact that your son was killed by a drunk, distracted teenager? I mean, thank goodness, at least we don't have self driving cars getting into fender benders!
Your problem is you think everyone in the world is an idiot (but you apparently). We are smart enough to evaluate the success or failure of self driving car trials. Well at least I am. Are you?
"Expectation" -- there is the speculation with human lives that I'm talking about and you don't even see. You are talking about testing this "saving of lives" with lives like we are monkeys in a lab. Pure corporate-speak. "If Waymo cars slaughter millions of pedestrians, that's not good for business." There it is again, the cold-blooded corporate-speak denial of the value of human lives. Gee, I guess that didn't work, maybe we should stop doing that? Huh? (then the boards of directors laugh at the joke) And if robots killing people on the battlefield is so controversial today - and may be outlawed internationally - why are we going to allow robots to kill people on our streets? Your comments are frighteningly cold and anti-human - just what I would expect from someone involved in the industry.
E Proelio Veritas.
30 years is a minimum to clear all the other hurdles. Even if Waymo made them available tomorrow (and it won't)- it would still take 20 years before government would make them mandatory. You have to wait for costs to come down and for the majority of people to have them before you make them mandatory. If they came out tomorrow- because of costs they wouldn't make up the majority of new sales. The average age of cars on the road is now 10 years - which means a significant number are reaching 20 year on the road.
Government mandating all cars be self-driving... That won't happen for at LEAST 30 years. I don't know how long- but it simply couldn't happen in the next 30... we have to develop the car... bring prices down... and wait for the old cars to become a minority first.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
You are talking about testing this "saving of lives" with lives like we are monkeys in a lab.
No, you said that.
I'm sure you can understand that nothing is zero risk. So I guess you are trying to argue that SD cars are high risk and untested. Well, offer your evidence of that. If you can't (and yes, you can't) then you are just spreading FUD. If you are looking for people that scare easily about killer robots you are posting to the wrong website.
And if robots killing people on the battlefield is so controversial today
Yeah, good try, but we aren't talking about that.
They should have known that this was going to be a problem.
Right, based on the zero accidents. If you disagree, link to the cases of Waymo getting in accidents and / or killing people. Here'll do it for you. Here's the only one:
https://www.usatoday.com/story...
But don't forget this:
The self-driving van was not in autonomous mode at the time of the crash, said a spokesperson for the Mesa Fire and Medical Department.
Oh...
Stripes painted by Wile E. Coyote ...or the DOT
Tesla dutifuly follows stripes into wall
And let's not forget what a Tesla does when it can't find the stripes: it follows the vehicle in front of it. Lawyers can't wait 'til a drunk driver leads a train of Telsas off a cliff.