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U.S. eliminates human controls requirement for fully automated vehicles

reuters.com

241–250 of 376 posts

Re: U.S. eliminates human controls requirement for fully automated vehicles

#241

I think a lot of people are misreading this. Right now one of the rules to pass a crash test is that there is a steering wheel. This didn't used to be controversial, but now it is. The rules were written in the 70s and just assumed there would always be a drivers seat. The only thing here is that the government rewrote the rules to no longer assume those things. It's not saying those things aren't necessary, just not…

> It would be like saying today that you can't have a computer without an on/off switch because in the 70s every computer had a physical switch. As aside, that’d be great.

Think about having a switch on a laptop. And if the switch doesn't just kill power (which it shouldn't to safely shut down), then it shouldn't be a switch it might be better as a button.

Re: U.S. eliminates human controls requirement for fully automated vehicles

#242

I would go further - if the vehicle is autonomous, it should be illegal for it to have a steering wheel. The idea that you can make a deadly self-driving car, and then jail the driver because he could not react in 0.2 seconds when your car suddenly swerved is the greatest handover of money and power to corporations since the times of slavery. So make the choice clear - either tha car has controls, or it doesn't. And…

If it doesn't have a steering wheel then no one will buy it. It's too weird and different and will be a major obstacle to adoption. So yeah, corporate wants it to have a steering wheel for numerous reasons...including the one you cite.

Not noone.

If there was a low-end car that could drive my kids to/from school without a licensed driver present, I'd buy it in a heartbeat.

So would any other parent who has the money, and regularly has a conflict between where work would like them to be, and where they need to be for their children's school. (Yes, I'm familiar with and have used rideshare. Uber's liability won't cover taking kids, HopSkipDrive will, but they cost a lot more and every so often you get the situation where they don't find a driver. The convenience of, "Don't have to worry about it" would be worth a lot to me, and would give the children a lot of freedom.

Re: U.S. eliminates human controls requirement for fully automated vehicles

#243

I would go further - if the vehicle is autonomous, it should be illegal for it to have a steering wheel. The idea that you can make a deadly self-driving car, and then jail the driver because he could not react in 0.2 seconds when your car suddenly swerved is the greatest handover of money and power to corporations since the times of slavery. So make the choice clear - either tha car has controls, or it doesn't. And…

The owner is going to be liable, regardless of who is in control. Just like if someone else is driving your car and causes an accident, you (the owner) are the one who will pay.

Re: U.S. eliminates human controls requirement for fully automated vehicles

#244
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or am I missing something important? We absolutely want to remotely control cars at some point, how else will you send a self-driving taxi to a customers or "ask" a car to comeback to the garage for a recall on the underlying hardware or for general maintenance?

Have it poll once a minute and ask for instructions with a display in the car that says "instructed to go to X, accept?" and then have it auto accept after another minute. Sure that means maybe waiting two minutes for the car to move, but that's not a huge deal, especially if you know that happens and request it two minutes in advance, but it gives anyone in the car the chance to cancel the request if it's invalid.

Replacing accept-incoming-connections with polling just changes the threat story from "An outside attacker can compromise the machine" to "An outside attacker can compromise the machine every sixty seconds."

Re: U.S. eliminates human controls requirement for fully automated vehicles

#245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As soon as I typed that I knew someone would reply with this. :). I agree it would be nice and I sometimes miss physical switches, but imagine how clunky a Raspberry Pi would be with a physical switch. And besides, I almost never used the switch on the computer anyway. I was always told to put it into a power strip and use that, because it was a lot cheaper to replace the power strip than the broken power switch on t…

I recently disconnected the capacitive power button on my desktop thanks to my stupid cat repeatedly turning off my computer. Instead, I've turned on the feature in the BIOS to boot up when power is applied. Now, to turn on my desktop, I just flip the power switch on the back. Feels satisfyingly retro.

As an aside, that sounds like a smart cat, not a stupid one. Perhaps your cat enjoys seeing you react to its shenanigans? :)

Re: U.S. eliminates human controls requirement for fully automated vehicles

#246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It would be like saying today that you can't have a computer without an on/off switch because in the 70s every computer had a physical switch. As aside, that’d be great.

Think about having a switch on a laptop. And if the switch doesn't just kill power (which it shouldn't to safely shut down), then it shouldn't be a switch it might be better as a button.

"Turns off when I tell it to and does not disobey me" is part of "safe".

Re: U.S. eliminates human controls requirement for fully automated vehicles

#248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have it poll once a minute and ask for instructions with a display in the car that says "instructed to go to X, accept?" and then have it auto accept after another minute. Sure that means maybe waiting two minutes for the car to move, but that's not a huge deal, especially if you know that happens and request it two minutes in advance, but it gives anyone in the car the chance to cancel the request if it's invalid.

Replacing accept-incoming-connections with polling just changes the threat story from "An outside attacker can compromise the machine" to "An outside attacker can compromise the machine every sixty seconds."

Not really, because the server where the request is pulled from would have to be compromised, and it's a lot easier to secure a single remote server than every individual car. It's also a lot easier to monitor a single server for intrusions.

Sure, that single server becomes a juicy target, but that's where the defense in depth comes in, where the car still doesn't execute the command until the user accepts it.

Re: U.S. eliminates human controls requirement for fully automated vehicles

#249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people choose to use cars despite that increasing both death rate and accident rate.

>Most people choose to use cars despite that increasing both death rate and accident rate. In most of the US (not where I live, thankfully) the "choice" is use a car or stay home. Not much of a choice.

Sure, the fact that people choose the more appealing option doesn't mean there wasn't a choice. That's just what people do when they have multiple options: they choose the one that's best according to whatever their criteria are. And many people might make a similar choice to reclaim multiple hours per day of driving time to do other things (like sleep, work, relax, etc.) while their car drives itself.

Re: U.S. eliminates human controls requirement for fully automated vehicles

#250

I 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”

I was thinking about that recently, that there needs to be some kind of “I see you” system. Maybe an external light that tracks you or something. Anything that can help me as a pedestrian understand what its internal state is.

Reminds me of a mail delivery robot at an office that had a feature like that. They had to tweak it because it was freaking out visitors by staring at them during elevator rides.
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