Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 240 posts

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

#101

Post by ithkuil »

anyfoo wrote: post #45
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…

While I do agree that even a below average human intelligence can better cope with this kind of situations (also because it has access to many more opportunities to understand, for example we can understand what's going on by seeing at the face and the hand waving and/or yelling if the driver in the other vehicle; humans are quite good at understanding other humans), I don't think it follows that conscience is necessary to achieve that.

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

#102

Post by philip1209 »

Research shows that ambulance lights and sirens minimally impact response times. Perhaps the fire truck would have arrived faster if it had yielded to oncoming traffic, or if the garbage truck had itself been autonomous.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10634288/

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

#103

Post by SoftTalker »

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…

> an automated system could broadcast the planned-routes of dispatched priority vehicles to every autonomous car in the city, allowing the autonomous cars to preemptively clear paths, before it even becomes an issue of local-reasoning about an exceptional-situation

These cars can barely drive themselves with hyper-accurate maps on a sunny day without any surprises, and we want them to receive and evaluate emergency dispatches from some central system that doesn't yet exist, and respond accordingly? I think we're a ways away from that.

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

#104

Post by droopyEyelids »

zinekeller wrote: post #33
tpmx wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stating the obvious, but: 25 secs I agree that the difference (5 secs) most of the time isn't all that important. I just don't see the need to round up for no particular reason.

Does your point appreciably change the meaning of the argument? Definietely not, even a 10-second delay is too long for emergencies. There are times where that five-second difference matters but I feel this falls into a bad-faith argument.

"Bad Faith" is when someone is consciously trying to deceive you. It's not a superlative like 'really' or 'very'.

If the point someone is trying to make is bad, inaccurate, or unconvincing that doesn't mean it's made in bad faith. It's actually less likely to be in bad faith.

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

#106

Post by Mordisquitos »

rglullis wrote: post #72
ripper1138 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there no cars in Europe?

There are, we are not as dependent on it, and you can bet that the absolute majority of people could live on car-sharing and cab-hailing systems, which would mean that 99% of the "self-driving" problems would go away.

While I agree with you that car dependency is a serious problem in North America and I am also very critical of the obsession with self-driving, I don't think they are necessarily correlated with each other. In fact, one could argue that car-sharing and car-hailing are more amenable to self-driving than a market in which each individual is expected to own a car.

I think self-driving is more established in North America than in Europe due to less strict regulations, more availability of capital and technological investment, and particularly the greater predictability and homogeneity of the car-centric roads when compared to European countries. I'd like to see how a self-driving car handles Rome for example—if it can.

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

#107

Post by treesprite82 »

LinuxBender wrote: post #43

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 vehi…

From what I can tell, it detected the emergency vehicle and yielded to the right. Just that it didn't reverse back into the intersection to clear the lane completely.

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

#108

Post by pas »

aeturnum wrote: post #29

I do think this is a little unfair, but I think it points to a real issue "around" driverless cars (that is not the cars' fault exactly): everyone is trained to deal only with human agents. It does seem like the car "acted reasonably" (so to speak) - but it still did not act like a person which is what the emergency workers were trained for. The challenge of integrating non-human actors into a previously human-only s…

if a reckless driver would just abandon the car in the middle of the road the situation would be the same. (eg. double parking)

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

#109

Post by kazinator »

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…

You're missing the angle that when a human blocks passage for an extended period of time with their vehicle, it's almost always because the human is away from the vehicle: the human has deliberately parked where they are not supposed to and then walked away.

When the computer does this, it's always "sitting" in the vehicle, and is not acting on a selfish intent: it's just carrying buggy/incomplete requirements.

A human sitting in the vehicle is generally capable of responding to "sir, can you move your car?", or a horn from the fire engine or whatever.

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

#110

Post by piperswe »

google234123 wrote: post #90
rglullis wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Start with better zoning laws so that people are not pushed to live 15 miles away from the their work and general/light commerce areas. After that, just copy the playbook from the Netherlands. Amsterdam was very much like most big American cities until the 70s, their streets were steadily being redesigned for human scale and less car dependency . It can be done and it can be done easily if Americans stop believing in…

We live in a democracy where people living in an area have some control over it. And they use this control to block zoning laws.

They don't block zoning laws, rather they seem to ensure they are as strict as possible
Post reply on HN