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Google Says It’s Not the Driverless Car’s Fault. It’s Other Drivers’

nytimes.com

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Re: Google Says It’s Not the Driverless Car’s Fault. It’s Other Drivers’

#41

Post by revelation »

seibelj wrote: post #2

I'm a big self-driving cars skeptic. Expecting humans to "drive less idiotic" is basically saying that google's cars won't work until human drivers are banned. Driving is something of an art, and it's full of edge cases. So many edge cases. I'll just keep reading articles that say they are 5 years away, just as I did 5 years ago, and the armchair futurists will keep dreaming...

You should keep reading articles, because you clearly didn't read this one. The Google car is perfectly safe in the presence of morons.

Re: Google Says It’s Not the Driverless Car’s Fault. It’s Other Drivers’

#42

Post by vezzy-fnord »

olalonde wrote: post #32
jerf wrote: post #5

'“It’s always going to follow the rules, I mean, almost to a point where human drivers who get in the car and are like ‘Why is the car doing that?’” said Tom Supple, a Google safety driver during a recent test drive on the streets near Google’s Silicon Valley headquarters.' This is a drum that, like privacy and encryption, we techies need to start banging hard before it's too late. The fact that laws are fundamentall…

I'm playing the devil's advocate here but another alternative would be to write laws that are meant to be literal and enforced 100% of the time.

This is already the case for the ones where such a quality is relevant. Enforcement is a separate duty from penning legislation, and so will come with its own discretions that may lead to situations where certain laws are enforced with a lower priority because of a lack of practicality.

Re: Google Says It’s Not the Driverless Car’s Fault. It’s Other Drivers’

#43

Post by Retra »

tclark225 wrote: post #33
jerf wrote: post #5

'“It’s always going to follow the rules, I mean, almost to a point where human drivers who get in the car and are like ‘Why is the car doing that?’” said Tom Supple, a Google safety driver during a recent test drive on the streets near Google’s Silicon Valley headquarters.' This is a drum that, like privacy and encryption, we techies need to start banging hard before it's too late. The fact that laws are fundamentall…

I definitely agree with this, but how could you specifically change the laws in this case such that they are still, by some measure, "fair" and "just"? Most people would probably agree that there is no reason to adhere to the letter of driving laws all the time. Speeding on an empty highway to get somewhere more quickly is mostly harmless. Running a red light in a dangerous neighborhood might be safer than waiting. T…

You'll want to encode enforcement rules in the laws themselves. Fundamentally, our laws really aren't constraints on what you can do, but guidelines for what you can enforce. You need to take it a step further and write down what you will enforce.

Re: Google Says It’s Not the Driverless Car’s Fault. It’s Other Drivers’

#44

Post by Shorel »

makeitsuckless wrote: post #19

Being a cyclist in Amsterdam, the lack of driver eye contact and understanding of body language is what worries me about the application of self driving cars. Amsterdam traffic is a chaos in which pedestrians and cyclists mix with cars, and the former two frequently (some would say always) ignore the rules. Not out of some anarchistic impulse, but for mutual convenience. Especially with cyclists, for whom coming to a…

Until you actually live surrounded by self-driving cars, your speculation is nothing more than that.

As someone who also commutes by bicycle, I would vastly prefer predictable, 100% consistent car behavior.

Re: Google Says It’s Not the Driverless Car’s Fault. It’s Other Drivers’

#45

Post by scrabble »

dman wrote: post #31
sschueller wrote: post #28

Two driverless cars are about to crash into each other on a tight mountain pass (maybe a bug that couldn't for see the accident). There are 3 possible outcomes: 1. Car 1 and Car 2 crash into each other killing all passengers. 2. Car 1 with 3 passengers drives of the cliff, car 2 with 1 passenger survives. 3. Car 2 with 1 passenger drives of the the cliff, car 1 with 3 passengers survives. The cars can communicate wit…

What do you think happens in this situation currently with human drivers? Are we holding machines to different standards than we hold each other?

Yes.

Not too long ago I had the opportunity to have a surgery performed by a robot controlled by a human surgeon. My wife was adamantly against it since there had been accidents previously with the robot other places in the world. Overall, the rate of incident was lower than the rate of incident for human surgeons, but to her that was not the important point.

There are people who will definitely hold machines to higher standards, and if they don't meet them, to them they are clearly inferior.

Re: Google Says It’s Not the Driverless Car’s Fault. It’s Other Drivers’

#46

Post by Cieplak »

civilian wrote: post #13

Heh, google is training cars to drive like grandmas. > But the technology, like Google’s car, drives by the book. It leaves what is considered the safe distance between itself and the car ahead. This also happens to be enough space for a car in an adjoining lane to squeeze into, and, Mr. Windsor said, they often tried. Yeah. We just don't have the infrastructure in major cities for all of us to drive safely. We've be…

Once robots take over the roads, they can communicate over radio frequencies to optimize their packing and throughput. Until then, I hope they are programmed to yield to passing traffic and not block the passing lanes.

Re: Google Says It’s Not the Driverless Car’s Fault. It’s Other Drivers’

#47

Post by danharaj »

tclark225 wrote: post #33
jerf wrote: post #5

'“It’s always going to follow the rules, I mean, almost to a point where human drivers who get in the car and are like ‘Why is the car doing that?’” said Tom Supple, a Google safety driver during a recent test drive on the streets near Google’s Silicon Valley headquarters.' This is a drum that, like privacy and encryption, we techies need to start banging hard before it's too late. The fact that laws are fundamentall…

I definitely agree with this, but how could you specifically change the laws in this case such that they are still, by some measure, "fair" and "just"? Most people would probably agree that there is no reason to adhere to the letter of driving laws all the time. Speeding on an empty highway to get somewhere more quickly is mostly harmless. Running a red light in a dangerous neighborhood might be safer than waiting. T…

What if we step outside of the law in organizing our societies? Law being an abstraction, any usefulness it has must be realized in its substrate: human relationships. When law fails, it is because the abstraction has leaked. We can find remedy by working with the fundamental thing and restoring the abstraction.

In NYC, there is an unspoken more that people who wish to stand on subway escalators should stay on the right so that people who wish to walk up escalators can use the left side. This is not a law; it is not derived from authority; it is not enforced with coercion. The worst you'll get, probably, is a snide 'excuse me'.

Authority is a degenerate form of respect. Law is a degenerate form of consensus. Arbitration is a degenerate form of mediation. Holding ideas accountable to human beings is superior to holding human beings accountable to ideas. At the end of the day, we are only accountable to each other, not the law.

Re: Google Says It’s Not the Driverless Car’s Fault. It’s Other Drivers’

#48

Post by danharaj »

Retra wrote: post #43
tclark225 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely agree with this, but how could you specifically change the laws in this case such that they are still, by some measure, "fair" and "just"? Most people would probably agree that there is no reason to adhere to the letter of driving laws all the time. Speeding on an empty highway to get somewhere more quickly is mostly harmless. Running a red light in a dangerous neighborhood might be safer than waiting. T…

You'll want to encode enforcement rules in the laws themselves. Fundamentally, our laws really aren't constraints on what you can do, but guidelines for what you can enforce. You need to take it a step further and write down what you will enforce.

How do you guarantee the enforcement of the rules of enforcement? The fundamental problem is a vicious circle. The abstraction of law leaks.

Re: Google Says It’s Not the Driverless Car’s Fault. It’s Other Drivers’

#49

Post by [deleted] »

joeclark77 wrote: post #35
fizzbatter wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'll just keep reading articles that say they are 5 years away, just as I did 5 years ago, and the armchair futurists will keep dreaming... I'm quite surprised that you can be a skeptic on the concept as a whole. Being skeptical about the given timeframes is perfectly reasonable (and probably correct), but humans do so, so many things terribly. We have automated away so many tasks in our world, both for efficiency…

Cars give us freedom. The reason that technocrats love "self-driving" cars is the same reason they love trains of all kinds: it means that "the system" controls who may go where, and when. A lot of us are skeptical of self-driving cars because a lot of their advocates want the next step to be banning private citizens from driving , which you've just confirmed, thanks.

[deleted]

Re: Google Says It’s Not the Driverless Car’s Fault. It’s Other Drivers’

#50

Post by tcdent »

duaneb wrote: post #25
rlpb wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not convinced that leaving shorter gaps between cars increases volume. Instead it creates waves of drivers slamming on the brakes because they are unable to react gradually, creating congestion instead. If we all left bigger gaps, we'd all be able to drive faster, increasing throughput (on highways, at least). > Now I wonder if google-driven cars would actually be less efficient for LA. Sure there wouldn't be any…

> Self-driving cars in a line could detect and link up with each other, sharing sensor data on obstacles up ahead. In the end, this has the potential to safely reduce the gaps between cars at higher speeds and thus actually increase throughput, since the congestion issues with human drivers reacting separately would not apply. Isn't this already true to a certain extent with map software? It automatically directs you…

In my experience, including such prestigiously congested roadways as the 405, 101 and the 10, it has a lot to do with behavior (ie. the 'caterpillar' effect) than route.

Rather, it's not physical space, but delays in processing speed adjustments. Distracted drivers accelerate and brake late, causing complete stops and quick acceleration to catch up.

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