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Let’s Talk About Self-Driving Cars

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Re: Let’s Talk About Self-Driving Cars

#11

Post by lg »

gambiting wrote: post #3

"If it’s true that algorithms are statistically better than drivers then we shouldn’t let people to drive. But there are still a lot of people that love to drive. This can be a fun recreational activity but we just don’t need those people on the road." I don't know who "we" is in that sentence, but thanks for making the decision for everyone. "we" as a society also absolutely don't need smokers, drinkers and people w…

if self-driving cars will be as safe as people say, manual driving should have the same legal status as drunk driving due to the unnecessary danger it creates.

Re: Let’s Talk About Self-Driving Cars

#12

Post by nmbdesign »

sharemywin wrote: post #9
nmbdesign wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think comparing drinking to driving is a good idea, think of drunk driving, it's illegal. Why? Because it kills people it brings negative experiences such a death on a scale, just drinking at the bar doesn't cause this, right? The same thing with driving in an autonomous environment, if it causes rapid increase in killings - it should be illegal in the same way as drunk driving. Don't you think so?

so guns should be banned? large knives? red meat because all the methane?

Please read my comment above, I'm not saying the TOOL or an object should be banned but a COMBINATION of a USE should be banned. And yes, the use large knives in public places where there is a risk of killing people should be banned, is there any objection to this?

Re: Let’s Talk About Self-Driving Cars

#13

Post by francoisdevlin »

losteverything wrote: post #4

Excellent overview and opinion of future outcomes. Is good for people like me whose gut says this is not desireable or workable as it gives simple language lawmakers can read.

What are you concerns? What should engineers in this space be considering?

Re: Let’s Talk About Self-Driving Cars

#14

Post by nmbdesign »

lg wrote: post #11
gambiting wrote: post #3

"If it’s true that algorithms are statistically better than drivers then we shouldn’t let people to drive. But there are still a lot of people that love to drive. This can be a fun recreational activity but we just don’t need those people on the road." I don't know who "we" is in that sentence, but thanks for making the decision for everyone. "we" as a society also absolutely don't need smokers, drinkers and people w…

if self-driving cars will be as safe as people say, manual driving should have the same legal status as drunk driving due to the unnecessary danger it creates.

yes! thanks for making this point in a much clear way than my discussion in another comment thread haha

Re: Let’s Talk About Self-Driving Cars

#15

Post by SFjulie1 »

gambiting wrote: post #3

"If it’s true that algorithms are statistically better than drivers then we shouldn’t let people to drive. But there are still a lot of people that love to drive. This can be a fun recreational activity but we just don’t need those people on the road." I don't know who "we" is in that sentence, but thanks for making the decision for everyone. "we" as a society also absolutely don't need smokers, drinkers and people w…

Well, autonomous car are better than most drivers: violation of insecure/nonprudential behaviour are systematically under-enforced.

The freedom to scare bikes and pedestrians who have had the right to move freely in cities for centuries is a given. The weight of car lobbying creating the jay walking crime have resulted in a culture of road violence turned to the systematic acceptation of behaviour that would over-wise be considered psychopathic asocial. And cars are killing/injuring more citizen worldwide than guns and terrorisms: 35K deaths in 2016 in USA alone for instance.

However why are autonomous cars more secure? Spoiler alert of the secret recipe for progress: because they respect security distance, right priority, stop when pedestrian are engaged on a crossing. Self driving cars don't behave like assholes!

However I see a problem with autonomous car: their sensors can trigger false positive or negative.

Behaving correctly in respect to the other users on the road would cost lest to the collectivity and bring more peace. But, it would mean a political decision, a loss of business for car manufacturer and software industry, it would mean ruling that having money to buy a car don't give you special privileges in the public space.

This would mean that economy should not rule our life.

Only left leaning social-liberals would go for this.

And given who people are voting for recently in occident, we at best head towards a status quo to avoid pissing the car drivers, or hidden subsidies to industry by forcing users to have self driving cars under the claim it will save life.

The giving up on freedom for security.

Ideally, still, not tolerating and sanctioning heavily the violent behaviours could be the right move. Car accidents when injuries are resulting from a non respect of a secure/prudential behaviour should be prosecuted as a criminal intention. And car/software manufacturers should also be held accountable under the same rule of their engineering bugs not solved with due diligence as soon as they are revealed.

Re: Let’s Talk About Self-Driving Cars

#16

Post by Ajedi32 »

dahart wrote: post #10

> Level by level or straight to level five? This strikes me as a slightly strange question. Maybe it's just an excuse to present the six level system as a framework for thinking about it, but a huge chunk of commodity new cars on the market this year are level 2. A small chunk of higher end cars are level 3. Teslas are arguably level 4, and we all know there are level 4 & 5 cars on the road around the bay and few oth…

AFAIK there are no cars yet that are _truly_ levels 4 or 5. Both Google and Tesla's cars strive towards that goal, but SAE level 4 requires that the system perform ["all aspects of the dynamic driving task, _even if a human driver does not respond appropriately to a request to intervene_"][1]. (Emphasis mine.)

So until you can fall asleep at the wheel without endangering yourself or other passengers, neither of those cars are at level 4.

Level 5 has even more stringent requirements, requiring ["the full-time performance by an automated driving system of all aspects of the dynamic driving task under all roadway and environmental conditions that can be managed by a human driver"][1].

So until a car can autonomously drive in snow and other less-than-ideal conditions, it's not level 5.

[1]: https://www.sae.org/misc/pdfs/automated_driving.pdf

Re: Let’s Talk About Self-Driving Cars

#17

Post by bryanlarsen »

gambiting wrote: post #3

"If it’s true that algorithms are statistically better than drivers then we shouldn’t let people to drive. But there are still a lot of people that love to drive. This can be a fun recreational activity but we just don’t need those people on the road." I don't know who "we" is in that sentence, but thanks for making the decision for everyone. "we" as a society also absolutely don't need smokers, drinkers and people w…

Driving 100 mph is also a fun recreational activity that's mostly banned because it's dangerous.

If you want to drive 100mph, you need to either go to a track or go to the Autobahn. In the future, I imagine that manually driving will be similarly constrained.

Re: Let’s Talk About Self-Driving Cars

#18

Post by ghaff »

dahart wrote: post #10

> Level by level or straight to level five? This strikes me as a slightly strange question. Maybe it's just an excuse to present the six level system as a framework for thinking about it, but a huge chunk of commodity new cars on the market this year are level 2. A small chunk of higher end cars are level 3. Teslas are arguably level 4, and we all know there are level 4 & 5 cars on the road around the bay and few oth…

Part of the problem is that I'm not sure the defined levels are necessarily a particularly good framework for thinking about the level of automation going forward.

-- What's a sufficient time margin for someone to take control?

-- How commonly might someone need to take control?

-- Can someone take control?

-- How broad is the use case?

It's pretty clear that we're pretty much at the point where a car can tool down at least certain highways in good weather with a (theoretically) attentive driver ready to take over if needed.

What's less clear is what the intermediate stages are between that and "don't need a steering wheel in any weather on a maintained road and can park in an unmarked spot" looks like.

Re: Let’s Talk About Self-Driving Cars

#19

Post by CPLX »

I find it odd the way people talk about moving through the levels sequentially without really acknowledging there's a massive phase change that happens somewhere between level two and four, where a self-driving car could easily be way more dangerous than the average human driver.

That comes as soon as you have a situation where the automation has to be able to handle all foreseeable scenarios without failing because the human is no longer paying attention.

It's a fixture of complex adaptive systems analysis that one encounters scenarios where having anything short of perfection is just as good as useless. The implicit assumption in this post is that there are linear returns to incremental progress. That's not necessarily true at all.

It's quite possible -- I would argue likely -- that we'll be very tantalizingly close-but-not-good-enough to full automation for a decade or three before we actually change the fundamental nature of transportation.

Re: Let’s Talk About Self-Driving Cars

#20

Post by gambiting »

nmbdesign wrote: post #8
gambiting wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is, that "negative effect/activity" is not an objective thing. To me, drinking(alcohol) is a pointless activity, with literally no upside. It costs money, doesn't feel good, I don't see the social aspect of it, and the danger it poses to people is well documented - it's a "negative" for society in my book. But, at the same time, I am fully happy to acknowledge that there are people who enjoy it, who like…

I don't think comparing drinking to driving is a good idea, think of drunk driving, it's illegal. Why? Because it kills people it brings negative experiences such a death on a scale, just drinking at the bar doesn't cause this, right? The same thing with driving in an autonomous environment, if it causes rapid increase in killings - it should be illegal in the same way as drunk driving. Don't you think so?

No, actually I think that long time before autonomous cars are common, or anyone even thinks about banning manual cars, vast majority of cars on the market will be already equipped with systems preventing accidents. There will be no reason to ban manual cars, because manual cars will be nearly impossible to crash, unless you specifically want to crash(and I bet you will be able to do that in an autonomous cars too since I can't imagine it won't have some sort of manual override).

Also, just to address your last point - why would manual driving cause increase in killings? In the worst possible case, it would stay at the same level as now,no? In fact, it's hard to argue that it won't get better, because autonomous cars will avoid dangerous situations caused by manual drivers better than humans would.

In other words - in increasingly autonomous environment, the risk factor of manual drivers will go down, not up.

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