An autonomous car in SF blocked a fire truck responding to an emergency • Hacker News Board

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

#181

Post by rglullis » Fri, May 27, 2022, 11:35 PM UTC

aetherson wrote: post #175

rglullis wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may seem an wild idea for those in North America, but how about just eliminating car dependency in the first place ?

Yes, why don't we just do the easy thing and fundamentally rework all the physical infrastructure of every locality all at once. Gosh, why didn't we think of that.

It doesn't have to be all at once. The point is that all the money, time and intellectual capital put into the "building FSD cars" are not going to solve the most fundamental problems that exist in car-dependent cities and societies.

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

#182

Post by routerl » Fri, May 27, 2022, 11:43 PM UTC

DennisP wrote: post #174

routerl wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are not uncountably many OP was obviously not using that term mathematically (i.e. the cardinality of the power set of natural numbers), and obviously meant something in the neighborhood of "effectively not countable". And, again, in all but the formal mathematical meaning of the word "countable", many things are not countable (e.g. no one will live long enough to count all the natural numbers). In the real w…

> Are we doing the same for self-driving cars? Effectively we are, as long as their developers fix the problems that led to the crash. Change the software and you have a new driver.

And just let them keep driving until that happens?

What proof to we have that any of these issues have been solved?

And self-driving is a combined hardware/software system, not just software. Certain problems aren't bugs, but limitations of the hardware.

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

#183

Post by anyfoo » Fri, May 27, 2022, 11:44 PM UTC

krisoft wrote: post #180

anyfoo wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> for example, swerving into an unmanned fruit stand without being able to brake is much better than swerving into an unmanned gas pump. This is just ridiculous. If you believe that humans are making rational decisions in split seconds then you are delusional. A swerving, breakless human driven car will hit whatever happens to be where physics takes it. The scared monkey descendant holding on to the controls will as…

Runaway trucks are a very real problem, we even have emergency escape ramps in places where they are most common. There is usually no split second decision here: You have a comparable eternity to decide where you want your non-braking truck to end up.

However you construe my particular example to be "ridiculous" under the additional constraints that you imposed on it yourself, you are looking at an instance where an autonomous vehicle failed to make a reasonable decision that a human would right in this article.

In fact, a human, the garbage truck driver, had to react. They were not a "jet pilot" or "rally driver", and yet they were perfectly able to resolve the situation that the AV had gotten themselves into.

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

#184

Post by treesprite82 » Fri, May 27, 2022, 11:51 PM UTC

everforward wrote: post #169

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…

> It does seem like the car "acted reasonably" I would firmly say that it did not act reasonably. Blocking the other lane of traffic is the second worst action I can think of, only behind ramming into the emergency vehicle. It would have been better to ignore the emergency vehicle and continue driving, which would have at least cleared the jam. I worked in the space at one point, and I would put the issue down to aut…

> It would have been better to ignore the emergency vehicle and continue driving, which would have at least cleared the jam.

With the fire truck using the oncoming lane to overtake the garbage truck, and with the articles saying a human could have reversed back into the intersection to clear the lane, it sounds like the fire truck would be in the way of the autonomous car just driving forwards.

> The same thing would have happened with 2 autonomous vehicles, because neither even attempts to understand what the other is trying to do

I don't think this is true in general - they seem to rely heavily on judging the intent/target of other vehicles to predict future path and react to those possibilities.

Likely that the autonomous car A (in the position of the fire truck) would not overtake the garbage truck when it can see car B oncoming in that lane in the first place, but in the event that it does occur, car B would likely slow to prevent a potential accident (understanding car A is attempting an overtake and may continue forward) and car A would probably pull back in behind the garbage truck (understanding that it'd be in the way of car B continuing forwards).

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

#185

Post by mlyle » Sat, May 28, 2022, 12:04 AM UTC

anyfoo wrote: post #183

krisoft wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> for example, swerving into an unmanned fruit stand without being able to brake is much better than swerving into an unmanned gas pump. This is just ridiculous. If you believe that humans are making rational decisions in split seconds then you are delusional. A swerving, breakless human driven car will hit whatever happens to be where physics takes it. The scared monkey descendant holding on to the controls will as…

Runaway trucks are a very real problem, we even have emergency escape ramps in places where they are most common. There is usually no split second decision here: You have a comparable eternity to decide where you want your non-braking truck to end up. However you construe my particular example to be "ridiculous" under the additional constraints that you imposed on it yourself, you are looking at an instance where an…

> you are looking at an instance where an autonomous vehicle failed to make a reasonable decision that a human would right in this article.

And remote assistance/teleoperation was reacting at the same time, for the vehicle.

Humans will screw up similar cases: end up in the emergency vehicle's way and panic and do the wrong thing. In fact, I saw a fire truck impeded Wednesday because of some judgment mistakes by a human driver that an AV would be unlikely to make.

So, frequency of "doing the wrong thing", and severity (here, probably measured in seconds) are completely reasonable questions to ask-- even if the circumstances where each tends to mess up are different. I don't think it's reasonable to ask that the autonomous vehicle be superior than a typical human in every axis of performance, just overall superior.

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

#186

Post by mr_toad » Sat, May 28, 2022, 12:15 AM UTC

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…

> But it does not change that the autonomous machine does not understand the complex world it is driving in in the slightest

It only needs to understand when to ask for help:

the driverless car had correctly yielded to the oncoming fire truck in the opposing lane and contacted the company’s remote assistance workers, who are able to operate vehicles in trouble from afar. According to Cruise, which collects camera and sensor data from its testing vehicles, the fire truck was able to move forward approximately 25 seconds after it first encountered the autonomous vehicle

I don’t understand why people think that driverless cars need to deal with every one in a million scenario, it makes no sense.

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

#187

Post by mr_toad » Sat, May 28, 2022, 12:35 AM UTC

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…

> I think for those intuitive situations the vehicles could even be driven remotely by a real person in a data center.

They already are.

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

#188

Post by anyfoo » Sat, May 28, 2022, 12:38 AM UTC

mr_toad wrote: post #186

anyfoo wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> But it does not change that the autonomous machine does not understand the complex world it is driving in in the slightest It only needs to understand when to ask for help: the driverless car had correctly yielded to the oncoming fire truck in the opposing lane and contacted the company’s remote assistance workers, who are able to operate vehicles in trouble from afar. According to Cruise, which collects camera and…

> I don’t understand why people think that driverless cars need to deal with every one in a million scenario, it makes no sense.

That a particular situation is rare, does not mean that you won't encounter multiple rare situations in a given time frame.

(By the way, the article stated in the beginning that the garbage truck had to move? Either way, it required manual intervention and a human's situational awareness. How does the car ask for the proper help at freeway speeds within seconds--not even split seconds?)

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

#189

Post by LadyCailin » Sat, May 28, 2022, 12:56 AM UTC

mtoner23 wrote: post #40

ben174 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

if you want 1% fewer driving tragedies, we should all just drive less

That has downsides. Autonomous driving needs to be 1% net better. Less driving has up sides, but also downsides, and it’s not clear how to do a net comparison there. But yeah, if it is net positive, we should do that too.

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

#190

Post by rimunroe » Sat, May 28, 2022, 1:02 AM UTC

krisoft wrote: post #180

anyfoo wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> for example, swerving into an unmanned fruit stand without being able to brake is much better than swerving into an unmanned gas pump. This is just ridiculous. If you believe that humans are making rational decisions in split seconds then you are delusional. A swerving, breakless human driven car will hit whatever happens to be where physics takes it. The scared monkey descendant holding on to the controls will as…

> If you believe that humans are making rational decisions in split seconds then you are delusional. A swerving, breakless human driven car will hit whatever happens to be where physics takes it.

I was in a car accident a few years ago where someone left a stop sign without realizing that there was traffic (me) in a lane they couldn't see. I wouldn't describe having felt like time slowed down, but that isn't an absurd way to describe it. I had a weird sense of clarity for the few moments before impact. I was able to slam the brakes, but I was way too close to avoid hitting them. I had a distinct feeling of "the front of the car is heavier and there's a person there". I swerved left instead of right to avoid hitting the front and slammed into the rear passenger side of their car. This spun their car completely around and totaled both cars, but both of us were able to walk away without any injuries.