31–40 of 72 posts
double getMaxSpeed(clear_road_ahead){ return speedAtWhichStoppingDistanceIs (clear_road_ahead/3); } enforceTopSpeed(getMaxSpeed(clear_road_ahead)); Engineering solved morality once again.
try {
enforceTopSpeed(getMaxSpeed(clear_road_ahead));
}
catch (CatastrophicBrakeFailureException ex) {
// ???
}I'm going to be extremely unpopular for saying this, but I still think the self driving car problem should be solved by having them value the people in the car more than those on the road around them. Is that immoral? Maybe, but if I'm buying a car, I like to think it's looking out for me first and someone else seven hundred and fifty sixth. Of course, this is rather less of an issue that it seems, since the article…
I actually got a rather deep insight from the article, which was "How would an autonomous car get itself into such a situation?" Such a car would not drive so close to a truck that it could not simply stop should the truck lose its cargo. It would not approach a tunnel at a rate of speed where it could not brake to avoid an obstruction. People do that because they ignore risk in favor of some perceived time advantage…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I actually got a rather deep insight from the article, which was "How would an autonomous car get itself into such a situation?" Such a car would not drive so close to a truck that it could not simply stop should the truck lose its cargo. It would not approach a tunnel at a rate of speed where it could not brake to avoid an obstruction. People do that because they ignore risk in favor of some perceived time advantage…
I think there's a positive feedback loop in there too... As cars go autonomous, they'll communicate faster, drive more predictably, and generally be safer. At some point - 1%, 5%, 20%? - the network as a whole will benefit with less accidents and less of the resulting delays which means human drivers will be less likely to be late which takes away anxiety and potential distractions, making it even safer. Therefore, I…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I actually got a rather deep insight from the article, which was "How would an autonomous car get itself into such a situation?" Such a car would not drive so close to a truck that it could not simply stop should the truck lose its cargo. It would not approach a tunnel at a rate of speed where it could not brake to avoid an obstruction. People do that because they ignore risk in favor of some perceived time advantage…
Supposing autonomous cars actually drive extremely safely and this results in them going 20 km/h under the speed limit. Are drivers going to be happy about the length of their commute increasing while regular car drivers (due to human recklessness) wiz by in the left lane at 130 km/h? I think you'd see a lot of human drivers get frustrated and turn off the AI.
Particularly when this "getting ahead" behavior results in accidents that require road closures that back up highways for hours of bumper-to-bumper traffic.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I actually got a rather deep insight from the article, which was "How would an autonomous car get itself into such a situation?" Such a car would not drive so close to a truck that it could not simply stop should the truck lose its cargo. It would not approach a tunnel at a rate of speed where it could not brake to avoid an obstruction. People do that because they ignore risk in favor of some perceived time advantage…
Supposing autonomous cars actually drive extremely safely and this results in them going 20 km/h under the speed limit. Are drivers going to be happy about the length of their commute increasing while regular car drivers (due to human recklessness) wiz by in the left lane at 130 km/h? I think you'd see a lot of human drivers get frustrated and turn off the AI.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I actually got a rather deep insight from the article, which was "How would an autonomous car get itself into such a situation?" Such a car would not drive so close to a truck that it could not simply stop should the truck lose its cargo. It would not approach a tunnel at a rate of speed where it could not brake to avoid an obstruction. People do that because they ignore risk in favor of some perceived time advantage…
Supposing autonomous cars actually drive extremely safely and this results in them going 20 km/h under the speed limit. Are drivers going to be happy about the length of their commute increasing while regular car drivers (due to human recklessness) wiz by in the left lane at 130 km/h? I think you'd see a lot of human drivers get frustrated and turn off the AI.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do we actually have a model that can predict death vs. serious injury vs. minor injury in advance?
Perhaps not perfectly, but surely there are scenarios where it is predictable.
All this hang-wringing about the decision a driverless car will make when faced with the trolley problem is pointless. Driverless cars will result in a MASSIVE reduction in deaths of drivers and passengers, a MASSIVE reduction in harm to human pedestrians and non-drivers and to the environment. Driverless cars do not look at their cell phones. Driverless cars do not drive drunk. Driverless cars are not in a hurry, no…
There is almost zero percent likelihood that the scenarios presented in this article would happen (as pointed out everywhere here). But just for shits and grins, it doesn't matter what decision is made at the macro level. Because while n people may die in a very unlikely scenario, where n is the maximum possible deaths in that scenario, the total number of lives saved in that same moment by driverless cars renders all moral questioning moot.
Edit: to boot, driverless cars aren't amoral. The decision tree in these unlikely scenarios have already been programmed in by humans. It's their morality that you find yourself governed by.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think there's a positive feedback loop in there too... As cars go autonomous, they'll communicate faster, drive more predictably, and generally be safer. At some point - 1%, 5%, 20%? - the network as a whole will benefit with less accidents and less of the resulting delays which means human drivers will be less likely to be late which takes away anxiety and potential distractions, making it even safer. Therefore, I…
It's all about perspective. If 1M people a year die in auto accidents and you improve that by dropping it to 100K a year, you've done something worthwhile with technology. But, once it's 100K, taking it to 10K deaths a year is 10X as hard of a problem. Etc. What I'm saying is that there are diminishing returns on eliminating all accidents, unless you are continuously elevating someone's life to an infinite value (you…
However it works out, on the whole, there will be fewer deaths and injuries with autonomous cars. So, we can try to weight the different scenarios to give one a handicap over another --but this pales in comparison to all the lives saved by having autonomous cars.
Yes, I know, I know, suburban sprawl, rural communities, etc. But rather than perpetuating car-centric design and the inevitable, though fewer, deaths, maybe we should concentrate on designing walkable, bikeable, liveable cities instead.