Self-driving cars more dangerous

Pennywise

AnotherJoe wrote: »

Why dont pedestrians do that today, eg jump in front of cars to stop traffic?? Why doesn't that happen now with human drivers ? After all if someone jumps in front of my car, I'd try to stop and no doubt you would do the same as well.

Because they're scared of human reaction if they did it.

Look at how many people (mostly children) deliberately block the censors on revolving doors to make them stop - it's a popular past-time at supermarkets and shopping centres. Look at how kids press buttons on lifts. Playing with such tech is fun because it's seen as victimless.

Trying it with cars driven by humans is completely different. Firstly, they risk the human being incompetent and hitting them, secondly, they risk the human being a thug who gets out of his car and beats them up.


When we have driverless cars, once kids know that they'll stop if they run in front of them, the towns and cities will become gridlocked.

Arklight

If anyone jumps in front of my automated car my robot butler is going to give them a whupping.

BobQ

Arklight wrote: »

If anyone jumps in front of my automated car my robot butler is going to give them a whupping.

I quite like this idea of driverless cars being controlled by an automaton looking like a human.

Think of the possibilities. We could all chose our celebrity automaton chauffeur (Brad Pitt, Teresa May etc) The automatons could also talk to the passengers, tell jokes etc. We could chose the automaton's temperament from one that calmly accepts the traffic jams to one that fights the other automatons in an accident. The options are endless.:)

System

AnotherJoe wrote: »

Why dont pedestrians do that today, eg jump in front of cars to stop traffic?? Why doesn't that happen now with human drivers ? After all if someone jumps in front of my car, I'd try to stop and no doubt you would do the same as well.

It's completely different. It's very very risky engineering a confrontation with a human motorist. They are notoriously prone to spontaneous road-rage, quite apart from the unknown number who are drunk or high on drugs. You take your life in your hands just gesturing at someone or sounding the horn.


An autonomous car will presumably not be programmed to behave like that, so teasing them will be virtually risk-free fun.


Even normally sensible older people will exploit this feature. Ever been crossing three streams of slow-moving traffic on foot, in a hurry to get across the road, for a train or something? You flap your hands a bit in annoyance, as if to make someone slow or move along a bit, and make eye contact to try and pick on a driver who looks more likely to give way?
If they were all autonomous cars you could just walk straight across, knowing they would all jam their brakes on for you.

Arklight

Clifford_Pope wrote: »

It's completely different. It's very very risky engineering a confrontation with a human motorist. They are notoriously prone to spontaneous road-rage, quite apart from the unknown number who are drunk or high on drugs. You take your life in your hands just gesturing at someone or sounding the horn.


An autonomous car will presumably not be programmed to behave like that, so teasing them will be virtually risk-free fun.


Even normally sensible older people will exploit this feature. Ever been crossing three streams of slow-moving traffic on foot, in a hurry to get across the road, for a train or something? You flap your hands a bit in annoyance, as if to make someone slow or move along a bit, and make eye contact to try and pick on a driver who looks more likely to give way?
If they were all autonomous cars you could just walk straight across, knowing they would all jam their brakes on for you.

Don't worry, we're a very long way away from an automated vehicle that can reliably not run over a pedestrian, which is why you won't be seeing fully automated vehicles in any of our lifetimes.

System

Arklight wrote: »

which is why you won't be seeing fully automated vehicles in any of our lifetimes.

But if you don't know how automated a particular car is, you won't know how to respond to its movements and signals. Part of the art of driving is the communication with other drivers through your own signals, road placement, and your interpretation of these in other cars.


Just one example; there's often a kind of tacit agreement that you let one car into a stream or across a flow, but no more. The next car waiting has to "negotiate" with the driver behind. So if you get an aggressive second or third driver trying to push his luck you can sometimes with reasonable confidence be a bit more robust in not letting him in.
But how will an autonomous car act or respond? Will it know the etiquette? If it's only semi-autonomous, how much can you assume it knows? Do you need to be very careful to make sure its driver has woken up and taken control before assuming that it is hanging back deliberately to let you in, or is simply not under control for a second?


With a normal car, the driver takes full responsibility. With a properly autonomous car there won't be a driver, so the car itself or it's manufacturer takes responsibility. But if the driver is only partly in control, some of the time? Or cars vary in their degree of automation? How dangerous is that going to be?

BobQ

With a normal car, the driver takes full responsibility. With a properly autonomous car there won't be a driver, so the car itself or it's manufacturer takes responsibility. But if the driver is only partly in control, some of the time? Or cars vary in their degree of automation? How dangerous is that going to be?

Which comes back to regulation. Do you allow a manufacturer the engineering freedom to drive courteously or more assertively? Or do you regulate the design to that all autonomous vehicles follow the same rules?

System

BobQ wrote: »

? Or do you regulate the design to that all autonomous vehicles follow the same rules?

The snag being that they are going to develop gradually and be introduced gradually. There isn't going to be a day when all ordinary cars are taklen off the roads and the next day replaced by 100% Mark 1 autonomous cars.
In a few years time they won't all be upgraded on one day to Mark 2s. There will be a mixture of all kinds, so all of them, autonomous, semi-autonomous, and ordinary, will have to manage to work together.


Some will have been upgraded with the latest level of moral awareness, some will still have the old level 1.

BobQ

Clifford_Pope wrote: »

The snag being that they are going to develop gradually and be introduced gradually. There isn't going to be a day when all ordinary cars are taklen off the roads and the next day replaced by 100% Mark 1 autonomous cars.
In a few years time they won't all be upgraded on one day to Mark 2s. There will be a mixture of all kinds, so all of them, autonomous, semi-autonomous, and ordinary, will have to manage to work together.


Some will have been upgraded with the latest level of moral awareness, some will still have the old level 1.

Indeed but even when all vehicles are driverless, they will need to carry people safely. Can one be programmed to allow a vehicle joining the road to enter in front of them or will that driverless car just wait until the road is free to enter (even if that takes hours). At present there is human discretion but can AI be taught discretion!

BikingBud

Zxcv_Bnm wrote: »

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/02/in-2017-the-feds-said-tesla-autopilot-cut-crashes-40-that-was-bogus/

"the activation of Autosteer actually increased crash rates by 59 percent."

have to wait a bit longer for this one i think

You must have a comparator, you cannot just say more dangerous.