Who's going to underwrite the insurance?
U.S. eliminates human controls requirement for fully automated vehicles
121–130 of 376 posts
Re: U.S. eliminates human controls requirement for fully automated vehicles
#122I was at a crosswalk and saw a car with the big cameras on top coming
Normally I walk and have confidence the human will stop and not want the consequences, or I at least make eye contact with the human driver for reassurance they will stop
This time I ran, mumbling “self driving car fuck that”
Re: U.S. eliminates human controls requirement for fully automated vehicles
#123I was at a crosswalk and saw a car with the big cameras on top coming Normally I walk and have confidence the human will stop and not want the consequences, or I at least make eye contact with the human driver for reassurance they will stop This time I ran, mumbling “self driving car fuck that”
This is obviously the real biggest issue facing AV companies. Technology will get there; social acceptance is a bigger hurdle. You have to trust that the machine is at least as likely to stop for you as a human, and that will take a long time for everyone.
Re: U.S. eliminates human controls requirement for fully automated vehicles
#124I was at a crosswalk and saw a car with the big cameras on top coming Normally I walk and have confidence the human will stop and not want the consequences, or I at least make eye contact with the human driver for reassurance they will stop This time I ran, mumbling “self driving car fuck that”
Eye contact is also a major component of driving a motorcycle safely.
When at an intersection, you know another car sees you by looking through their windshield and judging whether the person is distracted or if they're aware of your presence.
It would really benefit motorcyclists, pedestrians, and other drivers if there were some mechanism for self-driving cars to visually and outwardly acknowledge your presence.
How often do you wave or signal other drivers with your hands when you both arrive at a stop sign at the same time? What's the replacement for this in a world where half of cars don't have a driver?
Re: U.S. eliminates human controls requirement for fully automated vehicles
#125If your vehicle is heading relentlessly toward a group of schoolchildren it would be nice to have a way to override it. Either that or no windows so you won't be haunted by it every night of your life.
I'm not sure if I'm optimistic about autonomous vehicles or just very pessimistic about human drivers. I have no confidence that the next driver making a left turn while I'm crossing the road won't kill me. I'm much more comfortable with a computer that is programmed to avoid killing me, even if the software may have the occasional bug, than with a human who may or may not prioritize my life over whatever else it is…
Literally, when my dad taught me to drive, the first thing he told me was: 'Every other driver on the road is an idiot and a murderer. Act accordingly.'
Re: U.S. eliminates human controls requirement for fully automated vehicles
#126If your vehicle is heading relentlessly toward a group of schoolchildren it would be nice to have a way to override it. Either that or no windows so you won't be haunted by it every night of your life.
I'm not sure if I'm optimistic about autonomous vehicles or just very pessimistic about human drivers. I have no confidence that the next driver making a left turn while I'm crossing the road won't kill me. I'm much more comfortable with a computer that is programmed to avoid killing me, even if the software may have the occasional bug, than with a human who may or may not prioritize my life over whatever else it is…
Today I'm not sure which I have more confidence in. However long term I'm confident that we can eliminate enough bugs that the autonomous vehicle is better. Once statistics start to come out (real ones that account for all factors, not potentially biases ones from the company making the cars) I'll be looking for the time when we ban non-autonomous cars.
Re: U.S. eliminates human controls requirement for fully automated vehicles
#127This is problematic for a number of reasons. The most important in my mind is that the risk of the vehicle being hacked and carjacked remotely is always present. With the presence of an automation kill-switch and manual human controls the driver can always take back control. Without those, the driver is at the mercy of the hacker. Vehicle automation falls under the SCADA sub-domain of cyber-security. SCADA stands for…
> With the presence of an automation kill-switch and manual human controls the driver can always take back control
Isn’t this envisioning a car with no passengers who can drive? Agree there needs to be a physical fallback. But fallback to a parallel system running on ROM might be the safer option.
Re: U.S. eliminates human controls requirement for fully automated vehicles
#128If we think we have class antagonism and rural vs. urban antagonism now, wait until self-driving trucks decimate trucking as an industry. It's one of the largest well-paying employers of "blue collar" people. We are still a ways off but it's definitely coming. We have to do something about inequality or we will have totalitarianism. It will either be in the form of a totalitarian fascist or communist revolution, or a…
One of my favorite youtubers did an hour long video on the trucker convoy from California to DC and it was a peak into another world. The thing I thought about after watching it was wondering what it looks like when that group has mass unemployment in 10 years. Truck driving employs 1% of the US population and if those jobs are lost to automation, there's no chance of them coming back like they did throughout other r…
People will run out of jobs only when they run out of needs and desires.
Re: U.S. eliminates human controls requirement for fully automated vehicles
#129I wonder if many of the problems with automatic driving could be solved using platooning (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpuwG4A56r0, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Re__KRr4NU).
There could be dedicated lanes assigned to the autonomous cars and platooning-protocols that ensure that the cars use their automatic capabilities only on relatively safe highways, only queued between other autonomic vehicles.
Should be a more predictable environment and thereby safer
Re: U.S. eliminates human controls requirement for fully automated vehicles
#130I think any automated vehicle, no matter how advanced, should always have a big red button to make it stop whatever it's doing. Kind of like the emergency brake on a passenger train.
So if it was already in the midst of slowing down to pull over safely, pushing this big red button would do what, stop it suddenly in the middle of the road?