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An autonomous car in SF blocked a fire truck responding to an emergency

wired.com

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Re: An autonomous car in SF blocked a fire truck responding to an emergency

#41

Post by sokoloff »

SllX wrote: post #30
flutas wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article. > a San Francisco Fire Department truck responding to a fire tried to pass a doubled-parked garbage truck by using the opposing lane. a traveling autonomous vehicle (...) was blocking its path. While a human might have reversed to clear the lane, the Cruise car stayed put (......) Tiffany Testo, a spokesperson for Cruise, confirmed the incident. She said the driverless car had correctly yielded to t…

> I think the real issue here is a double parked garbage truck forcing the fire truck to go into oncoming traffic in the first place. Maybe there's a need for a loading only zone there so that the garbage truck doesn't have to block the travel lane. If there’s a discussion to be had here, it’s not through the frame of the needs of driverless cars. Self-driving has to work in the driving environment that exists today…

When the emergency vehicle is delayed, what percentage of the delay is Cruise’s fault and what percentage is the garbage truck’s? I assign less than 50% to Cruise.

Re: An autonomous car in SF blocked a fire truck responding to an emergency

#42

Post by gmfawcett »

gojomo wrote: post #6

Given that often human-driven, or human-parked, cars create similar temporary obstacles, the most important question here is: does this happen more-often, or for longer-periods, with autonomous cars? I don't see the article, or quoted sources, even trying to make that comparison - so this is really only a half-story, compared to what's relevant. Further, given the remote-guidance possibilities with autonomous cars, i…

Wouldn't the apples-to-apples comparison be: how many human drivers have been in the path of a honking fire truck, yet refused to move? Including parked cars and other "obstacle" cases is imbalanced.

Re: An autonomous car in SF blocked a fire truck responding to an emergency

#43

Post by LinuxBender »

Interesting. Emergency vehicles already interact with automation and have done so for a very long time. For example they have strobes that communicate with signal lights to make them turn green for the fire truck. It seems more like the ball was dropped here as the same automation could have been integrated into the autonomous vehicles to make them get out of the way. Not just the strobes but detecting emergency vehicle lights, sirens, etc.

Re: An autonomous car in SF blocked a fire truck responding to an emergency

#44

Post by aetherson »

flutas wrote: post #18
gojomo wrote: post #6

Given that often human-driven, or human-parked, cars create similar temporary obstacles, the most important question here is: does this happen more-often, or for longer-periods, with autonomous cars? I don't see the article, or quoted sources, even trying to make that comparison - so this is really only a half-story, compared to what's relevant. Further, given the remote-guidance possibilities with autonomous cars, i…

> Given that often human-driven, or human-parked, cars create similar temporary obstacles, the most important question here is: does this happen more-often, or for longer-periods, with autonomous cars? Honestly the article is pure tech-scare bait. It blames a car that stopped (while it was driving) when a truck was driving at it head on, but tries to glance over the fact that a (human driven) garbage truck is the rea…

What's your suggestion here? That garbage trucks don't pick up on streets without two lanes in each direction?

The reality of driving is that there are a lot of these messy situations, and driverless cars need to be able to handle them.

Re: An autonomous car in SF blocked a fire truck responding to an emergency

#45

Post by anyfoo »

gojomo wrote: post #6

Given that often human-driven, or human-parked, cars create similar temporary obstacles, the most important question here is: does this happen more-often, or for longer-periods, with autonomous cars? I don't see the article, or quoted sources, even trying to make that comparison - so this is really only a half-story, compared to what's relevant. Further, given the remote-guidance possibilities with autonomous cars, i…

The problem is that there are literally uncountably many situations that a human with "general intelligence" will understand and react to accordingly. Sometimes smoothly, sometimes less so. But a non-conscious automatic entity needs to have the required behavior programmed in explicitly.

So yes, you might argue that for this particular situation, you "just" need to put in the proper programming and AI/ML training and then "maybe the car will notice more often than a human" as long as the situation is within very specific bounds. At least now that somebody made an article about it.

But it does not change that the autonomous machine does not understand the complex world it is driving in in the slightest, and that, for example, swerving into an unmanned fruit stand without being able to brake is much better than swerving into an unmanned gas pump.

Re: An autonomous car in SF blocked a fire truck responding to an emergency

#46

Post by InitialLastName »

gojomo wrote: post #6

Given that often human-driven, or human-parked, cars create similar temporary obstacles, the most important question here is: does this happen more-often, or for longer-periods, with autonomous cars? I don't see the article, or quoted sources, even trying to make that comparison - so this is really only a half-story, compared to what's relevant. Further, given the remote-guidance possibilities with autonomous cars, i…

> Human drivers sometimes fail-to-notice sirens or other high-priority demands on road capacity.

In the lane directly in front of them, facing them, and honking?

Re: An autonomous car in SF blocked a fire truck responding to an emergency

#47

Post by Spoom »

ben174 wrote: post #26
anyfactor wrote: post #23

The trend of autonomous cars is one of the things that I believe is not practical. Even the most sophisticated machine learning algorithm requires repetition and constant input to be optimized. But there is infinitely many variables when it comes to driving on a street level. Driving is intuitive on a city street. The scope of autonomous vehicles should be limited to places where there is clarity of transit and very…

This seems to warrant repeating every time this is brought up: It just needs to be 1% better than human drivers. If the net result is 1% less tragedies - sign me up. If it's better than the alternative, I'm in.

That's the engineering argument. The societal expectation, however, is that it's 100% better than human drivers, as in, it must not cause harm, ever. The reality is that the vast majority of folks won't accept autonomous vehicles if they don't meet this high bar.

Opinions my own.

Re: An autonomous car in SF blocked a fire truck responding to an emergency

#48

Post by Volundr »

flutas wrote: post #32
BeefWellington wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the real issue here is a double parked garbage truck forcing the fire truck to go into oncoming traffic in the first place. Maybe there's a need for a loading only zone there so that the garbage truck doesn't have to block the travel lane. I disagree. Driverless vehicles NEED to be able to handle these unexpected situations in an appropriate manner. That they don't currently is in fact a "real issue" and in…

> Driverless vehicles NEED to be able to handle these unexpected situations in an appropriate manner. That they don't currently is in fact a "real issue" and in this case at least is evidence this tech may not be ready for primetime. Personal opinion here, but I think defaulting to "stop and contact support staff" is as good of a "fix" as we will have for a long time. According to Cruise (so potentially biased) it to…

> Personal opinion here, but I think defaulting to "stop and contact support staff" is as good of a "fix" as we will have for a long time.

I both agree, and see this as yet another reason driverless cars are on the road WAY too early.

Re: An autonomous car in SF blocked a fire truck responding to an emergency

#49

Post by mirntyfirty »

InitialLastName wrote: post #46
gojomo wrote: post #6

Given that often human-driven, or human-parked, cars create similar temporary obstacles, the most important question here is: does this happen more-often, or for longer-periods, with autonomous cars? I don't see the article, or quoted sources, even trying to make that comparison - so this is really only a half-story, compared to what's relevant. Further, given the remote-guidance possibilities with autonomous cars, i…

> Human drivers sometimes fail-to-notice sirens or other high-priority demands on road capacity. In the lane directly in front of them, facing them, and honking?

Proof by strawman imaginary counter-example

Re: An autonomous car in SF blocked a fire truck responding to an emergency

#50

Post by yupper32 »

ben174 wrote: post #26
anyfactor wrote: post #23

The trend of autonomous cars is one of the things that I believe is not practical. Even the most sophisticated machine learning algorithm requires repetition and constant input to be optimized. But there is infinitely many variables when it comes to driving on a street level. Driving is intuitive on a city street. The scope of autonomous vehicles should be limited to places where there is clarity of transit and very…

This seems to warrant repeating every time this is brought up: It just needs to be 1% better than human drivers. If the net result is 1% less tragedies - sign me up. If it's better than the alternative, I'm in.

Most people (including me) think they're better drivers than average. I think I'm probably in the top 10%, at least. Whether or not that's actually true doesn't matter for my argument.

All that considered, I need autonomous vehicles to be MUCH better than average human drivers to consider riding in them. They need to be better than I think I am, so maybe top 5% or so of talent on the road.

1% better than the average human is still an awful driver IMO.

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