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

reuters.com

281–290 of 376 posts

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

#281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm much more comfortable with a computer that is programmed to avoid killing me I think the real concern that the car is actually programmed explicitly to kill you if it has to, to ensure it's own safety or the safety of it's riders or something.

I think a human is far more likely than a car to have a self-protection tendency. If a car is programmed that way, how does that benefit the car company (or the programmer)? It's just a different family that sues them if someone dies that didn't have to die. Are you thinking they could advertise it as "prioritizes your life more than random other people!" That's just begging for a lawsuit. And they especially wouldn'…

A human is less likely to mistake a garbage can for an oncoming car and then make the choice to run me over out of self preservation, though.

Comparing a car programmed for self preservation versus a human seeking their self preservation only really makes sense if the car and human are both equally capable of assessing threats.

At the moment I don't think cars are at the same level. Maybe I'm wrong. Humans are fallible too of course.

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

#282
post #167
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a suspicion that housing will stop being a crisis due to a combination of: 1) the main expense is the land, the houses themselves are cheap, so anything that causes existing-but-undesirable houses to now be in a commuter zone increases useful supply 2) self-driving vehicles will allow people to commute while asleep or doing their hobbies (this is a terrible idea with current tech, people already get in trouble…

> self-driving vehicles will allow people to commute while asleep or doing their hobbies This doesn't eliminate the traffic issues and energy consumption associated with long commutes. Self-driving cars are a substitute for the efficiency benefits of density. If anything, the expansion of remote work has just pushed the housing crisis into more housing markets.

> pushed the housing crisis into more housing markets.

FWIW I prefer density but isn’t this good? The reality of yesterday was too few zip codes with too much demand and not enough good will to increase supply.

Instead we now have a lot more zip codes that can make decentralized decisions about building more housing. Hopefully they vote for more development and use it as a way to stimulate jobs in their local construction industry.

How can this be a bad thing?

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

#283
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be an assumption, but I think of it as akin to the assumption that Wilbur and Orville Wright had that heavier than air flying craft could become practical. Unproven, but one would be a fool to bet money against it happening on the OP’s “eventually” timeline.

> but one would be a fool to bet money against it happening on the OP’s “eventually” timeline. Well, I mean, duh. You’d be a fool to bet against seeing a unicorn on an “eventually” timeline. Try to collect and I say it’s not eventually yet.

and yet…

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

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer is patches. The more complex and "smart" something gets the more patches you need. And since you dont want to go to the mechanic every time, firmware over the air it is.

>The answer is patches. The more complex and "smart" something gets the more patches you need. And since you dont want to go to the mechanic every time, firmware over the air it is. Maybe in your vehicle. But certainly never in mine. Any vehicle whose software can be remotely modified is one I'll never buy. As I said, that's a disaster waiting to happen.

I absolutely agree, however that likely means no self driving car for either of us for the given reason. Unless you are planing on weekly trips to the mechanic?

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

#285

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.

Since my cat learned to press the red button to get my attention, it would be fabulous.

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

#286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been the status quo for the whole car industry for decades. If executives were jailed for car accidents people we would have trains and trams in every corner.

... and if makers of kitchen implements were jailed for knife accidents/crime then we'd be eating soup with plastic spoons for every meal. It doesn't make sense to have universal product liability in that way: there are too many creative idiots.

In terms of complexity and security features a car is much closer to an airplane than a knife.

It's very disingenuous to compare it to a knife.

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

#287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly there is no requirement because plenty of cars don't connect to the internet. There are plenty of reasons. Whether or not they are good depends on your opinion, but for me at least good reasons include: * Triggering my home alarm if someone interferes with the car while it's parked in my driveway. * Remote tracking/disabling if stolen. Not actually that useful directly but if most cars have this then fewer pe…

>* Triggering my home alarm if someone interferes with the car while it's parked in my driveway. Why should that require the Internet? An analog radio can do exactly that. >* Remote tracking/disabling if stolen. Not actually that useful directly but if most cars have this then fewer people will steal them. This is the worst reason. As we've seen, this has led to disabling of cars on the highway by auto finance compan…

Well like I said, you could disagree whether they are good reasons but to me they are good reasons.

> An analog radio can do exactly that.

An analogue radio can do anything that an internet connection or digital radio does, but it's sort of redundant to reimplement all the functionality that modern IP gives you just because you don't like the internet.

In particular, my alarm doesn't have any programmable analogue radio, so I'd presumably need some sort of module to interface with my alarm or to change my alarm for one that supports the analogue radio that the car alarm uses. With the internet-based approach, I have a little script that reads my car's API and triggers my home's alarm with its API.

I can also do things like sending me a push notification on my phone if something happens to my car when it's parked in a public car park.

Also, analogue radios aren't necessarily safe either. In most cases, digital technology has better encryption as it's easier to implement. In the UK, signal amplification attacks are becoming an increasingly common way to steal cars, which obviously wouldn't be possible using an internet-backhaul. Digital also tends to use less power and is less prone to interference.

> no software that actually controls the operation of a vehicle should be remotely accessible -- to anyone.

Remote disabling of cars in operation is obviously not good. However, MOST cars implement lockouts by having it so if you turn them off they can't be turned on again, which is a lot safer - and works more like an immobiliser which is a well proven technology. Both this and immobilisers sometimes have faults, but it's probably one of the least likely things to cause a fatal accident on a car.

> But why should something like that be linked to the driving/operation software?

Well I wasn't arguing strictly for linking to driving software, just reasons to connect a car to the internet. But I think the reason these systems have a connection to the operational software is to detect what's actually happened to the car - has the airbag gone off, what was the speed of the impact, what do the sensors say, etc. I don't believe there is any intent that they can control the car, but as soon as you link anything digitally there's always the possibility.

> That's the worst idea.

For most people, it's a great thing. I'm not sure there's ever been an attack caused by a remote update system in a car, but at least in computers, remote auto-update has been one of the best things for security and stability in the last few decades. There are a ton of theoretical issues with it, but in practice the benefits outweigh them.

Imagine your car's fly-by-wire software is discovered to have an unintentional acceleration bug. Remote updates means everyone's car is patched immediately. Traditional updates mean maybe if you bother taking it in for your annual service to an official dealer, it might get patched if they remember. You might be one of the 0.001% who would put it on a USB pen and patch it yourself or obey a recall, but almost nobody else would bother.

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

#288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is a weird, awkward solution to a problem which is far better solved cryptographically (eg, by paired SSL certs).

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

#289

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'm sure this is location specific, but I don't trust human drivers to stop until they're already hitting the brake, even if I make eye contact with them. I'd feel a lot more confident stepping out in front of a self-driving car.

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

#290

... And with that women said "eff that!" nailing the coffin of the FAV

Do women specifically want steering wheels or something? I’m not sure I understand.

Women specifically do not want to be in cars which they cannot even theoretically control.
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