The Coming Zombie Robot Driving Apocalypse of You

SerialRenter

sabretoothtigger wrote: »

IThe intent to find number of passengers would have to be a deliberate direction taken by the computers creator.
He'd have to spend alot of effort to allow it to distinguish reliably especially in a short period of rapid movement with window reflections.

Thats an inefficient way of finding the number of passengers.

My assumption would be that smartcars of the future would constantly be talking to each other via a mesh network to determine a precise model of everything around it. One of the variables it could be passing to other cars is how many passengers are onboard. Which would be quite simple to determine but putting a switch under the seats.

In fact these passenger detectors are already in cars and will "bing" at you incessantly until they put a seatbelt on.

princeofpounds

Let cars save the occupant and people will spend big money on safety features.

Let cars save external victims and people aren't so bothered.

There a reason why pedestrian airbags came much later than driver airbags.

cells

Why would such a car kill you and pay out the £10 million in compensation when it could say eject you in some form of airbag and save the both of you

why would such a smart car be in the position of having to make that choice to crash. For instance it could decelerate much more rapidly than a human driven car. It could even deplpy a big front airbag to tripple the crash distance and massively reduce the car deceleration thus saving you

With computer cars the number of cars at peak and busy times will be greayly reduced which reduces the chances of car to car crashes.


The idea that a car will be in a position to need to make that decision imo would be near nil.



Also think about crime. Everyone needs transport and a computer car could take criminals directly to jail. The only way to avoid the law would be to not use computer cars which would be very difficult as they will displace trains and most airplanes and likely most human cars.

cells

The biggest cause of car accidents is not being aware of the danger.

A computer can react 0.3 seconds faster than a human and at 80mph it will stop about 10 meters before the human car. That alone is good but not hugely fantastic.

But what if the computer car knew the position and speed of all the cars on the road and all the roads on and off that road. Even in pitch black it would know if there was an accident or one about to develop even if it was 5 miles down the road.

Mobile internet makes this easy and poasivle right now. After all you can get apps on your smartphone to record location posotion time and speed. Even if you wanted to know the position and speed of the nearest 1000 cars every second its only 2000 data sets per second. Sounds a lot but its trivial both in computation and bandwidth. Imagine a HD video. Its something like 6 million rbg pixels wirh 250 odd shades refreshed 30 times a second to give some 50 billion datapoints a second

lostinrates

SerialRenter wrote: »

Thats an inefficient way of finding the number of passengers.

My assumption would be that smartcars of the future would constantly be talking to each other via a mesh network to determine a precise model of everything around it. One of the variables it could be passing to other cars is how many passengers are onboard. Which would be quite simple to determine but putting a switch under the seats.

In fact these passenger detectors are already in cars and will "bing" at you incessantly until they put a seatbelt on.

They aren't that accurate. A heavily laden bag sets one off in a car sometimes I drive. As does the middle sized dog I have. Not sure if the terrier does. While I might equate my dogs life with that of a small child I gather the world at large might feel sore if I and three dogs survived while a mother and child didn't.

cells

lostinrates wrote: »

They aret accurate. A heavily laden bag sets one off in his carn a car sometimes I drive. As does the middle sized dog I have. Not sure if the terrier does. While I might equate my dogs life with that of a small child I gather the world at large might feel sore if I and three dogs survived while a mother and child didn't.

Many people die each year from cars

I know of one such person who was driving and Killed himself and 3 of the 4 passengers in his car and 2 people in the car they crashed into. 5 people dead and 1 disabled in one human incident. The cause was alcohol speed and stupidity. Computers don't get drunk or fall asleep or take their eyes off thr road. They don't speed or break the ruels of the road.

they will be far less likely to be in a position to have a crash, if in that position they will react without panic and in a manner best fit to stop the accident, if those two fail and an accident is imminent and has to happen they can deploy extra safety features like for example external air bags to reduce any harm.

all of these combined could mean two orders of magnitude less accidents. Crashes could fall to 1% of current levels. Of that 1%, perhaps only 1% will be severe.


will people doe at the hands of computer cars. Probably.
But you don't need them to be faultless you jusy need them to be better than the average driver who has many many accidents and kills many many people

SerialRenter

lostinrates wrote: »

They aren't that accurate. A heavily laden bag sets one off in a car sometimes I drive. As does the middle sized dog I have. Not sure if the terrier does. While I might equate my dogs life with that of a small child I gather the world at large might feel sore if I and three dogs survived while a mother and child didn't.

Quite right,

And it would be simple to swap out that sensor for something more accurate, for example a heart beat monitor in the seat, which should be able to differentiate species by the bpm.

But i would still foresee the method of detection being local to each car, if infact it was important enough to warrant that level of accuracy. As in indeed would if it was decided that automated cars should make a distinction based on number of souls.

The aim of automation is three fold; to increase the capacity of the roads, reduce incidents and provide a better experience for the passengers.

advanced sensing and communication with other vehicles would allow them to drive much closer together to increase capacity and benefit from the slipstream's mpg advantages too. However, whilst this may be safer it would be impossible to completely rule out any incidents.

What happens if a tree falls on the road suddenly, or a tire burst? Well, it might be able to dodge that, communicating with cars in the other lane to make room.

But faster events like explosives/terror attacks or objects falling off the back of a lorry you're slipstreaming are more problematic. Which is where the OP's question really fits in. Should the cars behaviour be to avoid at all costs, even if this will cause a collision with another car? Or should it take the hit as it can't risk hurting a third party that's not in immediate risk unless the car takes action?

tldr: perfect implementation of automatic cars = safer, not perfectly safe.

IronWolf

One manufacturer would make a robot that protected you instead of other people, and everyone would buy that one.

Capitalism would soon fix this problem

N1AK

IronWolf wrote: »

One manufacturer would make a robot that protected you instead of other people, and everyone would buy that one.

I wouldn't bet on it. Firstly it rather assumes that they'd be allowed to. Secondly, a manufacturer that writes an algorithm that will save the drivers life at the cost of many more other lives is going to be facing some extremely expensive lawsuits. Can you imagine how much a jury, especially in the US, might award the family of 3 young children killed by a Ford which chose to run them over rather than risk a severe injury to the driver?

michaels

Like I said above, if you are in a computer car don't play chicken with one driven by a huiman....