Autonomous driving legal next year

zagfles

MattMattMattUK said:

theoretica said:

I think it will be interesting to see what happens to car insurance rates for these vehicles.  Will it be high because they are expensive and anyway the driver can override them so they cannot prevent dangerous driving?  Or will insurance rates, if you have and use them, come down - perhaps especially for drivers without their own long driving record.

The automotive insurance industry is one of the biggest opponents of self-driving vehicles. Those who continue to human drive will almost always be liable and when the majority, and then all vehicles are self-drive the business model of the insurance companies will be dead.

Of course it won't be. Cars will still need insuring even if self driving technology is perfect, which it obviously won't be as anyone who knows anything about IT will know (for instance there've been several plane crashes causes by faulty software). Plus theft, vandalism, acts of "god" etc need insuring against.

If the risk is significantly lowered the insurance industry would love it as insurance would still be needed but they'd have to pay out far less. Insurance companies probably make more insuring low risks than high risks.

lincroft1710

MouldyOldDough said:

Potholes, Wornout road markings and double lining (where lines are moved temporarily due to roadworks) these appear to have been ignored...
How will an autonomous system cope with these? 

You must live in the same town as me!!

facade

Sea_Shell said:

Have they solved the conundrum yet (even in testing) of what to [choose to] hit or avoid..and in who's best interests?! 😉

Swerve to avoid a child running out between two parked cars and risk head-on crash with oncoming lorry?

I would imagine that they have thought about this.

Wheras a human driver would likely react to just the child in front, and then realise they had swerved to run over a marching band, the machine should not swerve into another collision but just brake and deploy pedestrian safety measures, or even, shock horror!, have slowed down and left plenty of room when overtaking the parked cars in the first place!

Reminds me of the Trolley problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem

The correct answer to that is to do nothing, then whatever happens isn't your fault. (unless they are people you care about, then it becomes a matter of who you care about the most )

ididgetwhereiamtoday

Hopefully these self drive cars will know the safe distance from the car in front unlike 97% of humans. 

prowla

My car tech is far from perfect; it:

• often can't get the speed limit right and misses road signs,
  
• thinks one 30 mph road is 80 and other 40 mph road is 100(!),
  
• panics if here's someone on the pavement at a bend in the road,
  
• mistook someone waiting on a motorbike at a give-way junction as a hazard,
  
• completely got the satnav wrong and thought I was driving through a lake,
  
• once mistook a manhole cover for an obstacle in the road and jammed the brakes on,
  
• fights me if I want to change lane (I turned off that feature),
• goes mental and starts beeping as I drive through a nawwor gap out of my garages,
• tells me its disabling its safety features in bad weather.

The idea that I would trust that tech to drive me along a motorway at 70 is just plain ludicrous.

unforeseen

prowla said:

My car tech is far from perfect; it:

• often can't get the speed limit right and misses road signs,
  
• thinks one 30 mph road is 80 and other 40 mph road is 100(!),
  
• panics if here's someone on the pavement at a bend in the road,
  
• mistook someone waiting on a motorbike at a give-way junction as a hazard,
  
• completely got the satnav wrong and thought I was driving through a lake,
  
• once mistook a manhole cover for an obstacle in the road and jammed the brakes on,
  
• fights me if I want to change lane (I turned off that feature),
• goes mental and starts beeping as I drive through a nawwor gap out of my garages,
• tells me its disabling its safety features in bad weather.

The idea that I would trust that tech to drive me along a motorway at 70 is just plain ludicrous.

Sounds like you have a Nissan. 

photome

prowla said:

My car tech is far from perfect; it:

• often can't get the speed limit right and misses road signs,
  
• thinks one 30 mph road is 80 and other 40 mph road is 100(!),
  
• panics if here's someone on the pavement at a bend in the road,
  
• mistook someone waiting on a motorbike at a give-way junction as a hazard,
  
• completely got the satnav wrong and thought I was driving through a lake,
  
• once mistook a manhole cover for an obstacle in the road and jammed the brakes on,
  
• fights me if I want to change lane (I turned off that feature),
• goes mental and starts beeping as I drive through a nawwor gap out of my garages,
• tells me its disabling its safety features in bad weather.

The idea that I would trust that tech to drive me along a motorway at 70 is just plain ludicrous.

Sounds like your tech is a bit naff, mine doesn’t make those mistakes

photome

ididgetwhereiamtoday said:

Hopefully these self drive cars will know the safe distance from the car in front unlike 97% of humans. 

It does and it works very well

MattMattMattUK

prowla said:

My car tech is far from perfect; it:

• often can't get the speed limit right and misses road signs,
  
• thinks one 30 mph road is 80 and other 40 mph road is 100(!),
  
• panics if here's someone on the pavement at a bend in the road,
  
• mistook someone waiting on a motorbike at a give-way junction as a hazard,
  
• completely got the satnav wrong and thought I was driving through a lake,
  
• once mistook a manhole cover for an obstacle in the road and jammed the brakes on,
  
• fights me if I want to change lane (I turned off that feature),
• goes mental and starts beeping as I drive through a nawwor gap out of my garages,
• tells me its disabling its safety features in bad weather.

The idea that I would trust that tech to drive me along a motorway at 70 is just plain ludicrous.

Nothing on the roads for consumer usage is anywhere near fully autonomous which is Level 5, most is level 2 or 3 and this system is nominally level 3+ or level 4 but only in very specific circumstances, good weather on motorways. Current systems are almost entirely cameras, the L5 systems use a combination of camera arrays (using standard, UV and IR), LIDAR and in some cases ultrasonic sensors working as a combined system.

zagfles

facade said:

Sea_Shell said:

Have they solved the conundrum yet (even in testing) of what to [choose to] hit or avoid..and in who's best interests?! 😉

Swerve to avoid a child running out between two parked cars and risk head-on crash with oncoming lorry?

I would imagine that they have thought about this.

Wheras a human driver would likely react to just the child in front, and then realise they had swerved to run over a marching band, the machine should not swerve into another collision but just brake and deploy pedestrian safety measures, or even, shock horror!, have slowed down and left plenty of room when overtaking the parked cars in the first place!

Reminds me of the Trolley problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem

The correct answer to that is to do nothing, then whatever happens isn't your fault. (unless they are people you care about, then it becomes a matter of who you care about the most )

The problem's likely to be the opposite when it's all automonous driving. If pedestrians, cyclists etc can be confident cars will do everything possible to avoid hitting them, you'll probably get pedestrians crossing roads causing cars to slow/stop to give way to them, you'll get kids playing games with them as they currently do with those automonous delivery robots.

There's a couple of places I know in the city centre where pedestrians wanting to cross the road are pretty much constant, there's a pelican but when the man turns red and the traffic light goes green it doesn't stop them crossing, they only stop when cars start actually moving (edging forwards slowly) ...wonder how autonomous would handle that. Or 4 cars at a mini roundabout etc.