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Self-Driving Cars Must Meet 15 Benchmarks in U.S. Guidance

bloomberg.com

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Re: Self-Driving Cars Must Meet 15 Benchmarks in U.S. Guidance

#131

Post by Animats »

From the regulations: "Fall back strategies should take into account that—despite laws and regulations to the contrary—human drivers may be inattentive, under the influence of alcohol or other substances, drowsy, or physically impaired in some other manner."

NHTSA, which, after all, studies crashes, is being very realistic.

Here's the "we're looking at you, Tesla" moment:

"Guidance for Lower Levels of Automated Vehicle Systems"

"Furthermore, manufacturers and other entities should place significant emphasis on assessing the risk of driver complacency and misuse of Level 2 systems, and develop effective countermeasures to assist drivers in properly using the system as the manufacturer expects. Complacency has been defined as, “... [when an operator] over- relies on and excessively trusts the automation, and subsequently fails to exercise his or her vigilance and/or supervisory duties” (Parasuraman, 1997). SAE Level 2 systems differ from HAV systems in that the driver is expected to remain continuously involved in the driving task, primarily to monitor appropriate operation of the system and to take over immediate control when necessary, with or without warning from the system. However, like HAV systems, SAE Level 2 systems perform sustained longitudinal and lateral control simultaneously within their intended design domain. Manufacturers and other entities should assume that the technical distinction between the levels of automation (e.g., between Level 2 and Level 3) may not be clear to all users or to the general public. And, systems’ expectations of drivers and those drivers’ actual understanding of the critical importance of their “supervisory” role may be materially different."

There's more clarity here on levels of automation. For NHTSA Level 1 (typically auto-brake only) and 2 (auto-brake and lane keeping) vehicles, the driver is responsible, and the vehicle manufacturer is responsible for keeping the driver actively involved. For NHTSA Level 3 (Google's current state), 4 (auto driving under almost all conditions) and 5 (no manual controls at all), the vehicle manufacturer is responsible and the driver is not required to pay constant attention. NHTSA is making a big distinction between 1-2 and 3-5.

This is a major policy decision. Automatic driving will not be reached incrementally. Either the vehicle enforces hands-on-wheel and paying attention, or the automation has to be good enough that the driver doesn't have to pay attention at all. There's a bright line now between manual and automatic. NHTSA gets it.

Re: Self-Driving Cars Must Meet 15 Benchmarks in U.S. Guidance

#132

Post by notahacker »

RHSeeger wrote: post #85
travoc wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not accurate. They seem more concerned that every bit of power given to government to do something right will eventually be used to do something wrong.

To be fair, there's a long and repeated history in the US of ---- GOV: We know this law is overreaching, but we promise we'll only use it the "right" way. ... 2 years goes by ... GOV: If you don't , we'll tack on a charge of breaking , even though you didn't violate what it's supposed to be about, and add 20 years to your sentence. ---- It's seen over and over. The US citizen's distrust of government getting more pow…

Conversely, and more relevantly to regulations on self-regulating cars, there's a long and repeated history of

--

GROUP: The regulation is anti-business, anti-freedom and massively outdated. We should sweep it all away and deregulate this sector as much as possible. The market will take care of the bad companies.

...2 years goes by...

GROUP: Do you know how important it is that this industry survives? Please give us some money to fix it. And some of the behaviour of some companies in our industry is unethical and dangerous and really should be stopped. Why didn't you step in earlier?

Re: Self-Driving Cars Must Meet 15 Benchmarks in U.S. Guidance

#133

Post by Animats »

vblord wrote: post #97
owyn wrote: post #79

It wasn't mentioned in the bloomberg article, but the 15 areas covered are: • Data Recording and Sharing • Privacy • System Safety • Vehicle Cybersecurity • Human Machine Interface • Crashworthiness • Consumer Education and Training • Registration and Certi cation • Post-Crash Behavior • Federal, State and Local Laws • Ethical Considerations • Operational Design Domain (operating in rain, etc) • Object and Event Dete…

Interesting "Federal, State and Local Laws". So what happens when the self driving car violates a law and the police office pulls it over. Who gets the ticket? If there is no steering wheel... can it even get pulled over?

NHTSA level 1 and 2, the driver. NHTSA level 3-5, the vehicle manufacturer.

Re: Self-Driving Cars Must Meet 15 Benchmarks in U.S. Guidance

#134

Post by ArtDev »

angryasian wrote: post #80
dhagz wrote: post #5

I'm astounded that it seems like these regulations are going to be sensible and promote the technology. It's a good thing that these are going into place, since autonomous vehicles should definitely not be legislated on a state-by-state basis.

I think the biggest benefit for self-driving cars is that there is really no big corporation or lobbying group that is against this technology. Car manufacturers probably would have put up the biggest battle but they are all pushing for the adoption of the technology. Had car manufacturers felt this technology was a thread to their business model, you'd definitely see a lot of push back and crazy stipulations.

We will see what happens when auto sales decline due to really cheap auto-taxis.

Hopefully, car companies will deal with reduced demand by going upscale with more fancy cars for a smaller market.

Of course, someone needs to build all of those auto-taxis. They are going to be do very very well for themselves.

Re: Self-Driving Cars Must Meet 15 Benchmarks in U.S. Guidance

#135

Post by legulere »

jcranmer wrote: post #53
peteretep wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would say the majority of regulations (at least in > OECD countries) are sensible I think it can be shocking to non-Americans just how much the Americans distrust and think their lawmakers and -- especially shockingly, their civil servants -- are both incompetent and have malicious intent. American friends have found it incredible -- for example -- that something like NICE[0] can exist and people don't assume it'…

> I think it can be shocking to non-Americans just how much the Americans distrust and think their lawmakers and -- especially shockingly, their civil servants -- are both incompetent and have malicious intent. The EU is often criticized (e.g., Brexit) as being something that promulgates useless regulations (e.g., curvature of a banana).

The EU regulation is often criticized as bad and dumb, but not as malicious.

Re: Self-Driving Cars Must Meet 15 Benchmarks in U.S. Guidance

#136

Post by Animats »

krisoft wrote: post #66
ams6110 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree with almost all of this. Liability should be with the owner of the car, like it mostly is today. They are the ones buying it and operating it on the public roads. They should have insurance to cover this liability.

I'm worried about the following: Hapless Joe buys a nice, well reviewed, good looking and performant self-driving car. He enjoys it very much for a year, goes for all the required maintenance checks. Then suddenly as he is taking a nap on his usual daily commute the car swerves onto the sidewalk and runs over my wife. Turns out there is a very rare race condition in the path finding algorithm, which makes it do that…

The NTSB is doing that right now.[1] They're looking at Tesla's first fatal crash with the level of detail they apply to air crash investigations. This takes months.

Incidentally, in aviation and aerospace, everybody reads crash reports. Pilots study them in training. Engineers read them at work. Flying magazine publishes monthly summaries in their "Aftermath" column. The safety culture is very different from software. In commercial aviation, just about all the single points of failure have already been dealt with. It's a design criterion of aviation that there must be a way to recover from single failures. When you're one single failure away from real trouble, it's time to land. When you read a crash report today, there are two or three things that went wrong, not just one. That's what a safety culture looks like. Self-driving cars may have to get there.

[1] http://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Pages/HWY...

Re: Self-Driving Cars Must Meet 15 Benchmarks in U.S. Guidance

#137

Post by ghurtado »

rayiner wrote: post #125
2bitencryption wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems suspiciously like government getting something right... with regards to a quickly-evolving new technology market... has this ever happened before?

Can you think of a concrete example where the government got it wrong?[1] For the sake of argument, the federal government in the last 50 years? Maybe the encryption export ban. Or the CDA, but that was quickly reversed and the part that's left (Section 230) was really instrumental in the rise of the modern web. [1] And I don't mean wrong as in "NSA spying" because you disagree with the policy. I mean like, "regulati…

> Can you think of a concrete example where the government got it wrong?

Stem cell research.

Re: Self-Driving Cars Must Meet 15 Benchmarks in U.S. Guidance

#138

Post by XorNot »

shanusmagnus wrote: post #92
jcranmer wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it can be shocking to non-Americans just how much the Americans distrust and think their lawmakers and -- especially shockingly, their civil servants -- are both incompetent and have malicious intent. The EU is often criticized (e.g., Brexit) as being something that promulgates useless regulations (e.g., curvature of a banana).

At first I thought you were making up a super funny and clever thing, but by god, you're only referencing a pre-existing funny thing [1]. Although funny in a different way. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commission_Regulation_(EC)_No....

Hey, nevermind that the article you linked expressly notes that the entire policy is around a standard for the classification of produce, and that the EU is first and foremost an economic union with the goal of harmonized trade regulations.

You know, the type of thing where standard gradings and classification of produce and manufactured goods would be fairly important? (and you know, in no way different to any other modern nation or industrial group).

Re: Self-Driving Cars Must Meet 15 Benchmarks in U.S. Guidance

#139

Post by rayiner »

ghurtado wrote: post #137
rayiner wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you think of a concrete example where the government got it wrong?[1] For the sake of argument, the federal government in the last 50 years? Maybe the encryption export ban. Or the CDA, but that was quickly reversed and the part that's left (Section 230) was really instrumental in the rise of the modern web. [1] And I don't mean wrong as in "NSA spying" because you disagree with the policy. I mean like, "regulati…

> Can you think of a concrete example where the government got it wrong? Stem cell research.

I think 2bitencryption's point is more along the lines that the government regulates fields and that regulation quickly becomes unworkable because its a "quickly-evolving new technology market." For example, if the government mandated that all computers had to be Windows 9x-compatible that might have prevented the rise of the iPhone.

The embryonic stem-cell research ban didn't have anything to do with the underlying science and technology--it was based on a moral objection to the practice of destroying embryos for research. If the government had, for example, mandated the use of some testing methodology that soon became obsolete, that might be more on point.

Re: Self-Driving Cars Must Meet 15 Benchmarks in U.S. Guidance

#140

Post by XorNot »

luma wrote: post #39
e40 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people automatically assume a government can't make up sensible regulations. There are a lot of them in the US. It's a meme you hear all the time, especially in a POTUS election year.

I think it might be deeper than that. I don't feel that the US government, on it's own, is incapable of drafting up reasonable legislation. The problem is that the US government is 100% for sale to the highest bidder, and corruption runs deep (we just call it "campaign contributions" as if that makes it better). If sensible regulation is proposed, it'll last 30 seconds before the good senator from [some self-driving…

This is not an informed opinion. This is an opinion carefully shaped by the same influences from different industries over the last 30 years who generally benefit from the removal of their regulatory environment (miners, oil industry).

The real byline is in your proposed commitment to trying too improve government process: you don't have any. You think it's hopeless. You're apathetic. Which is what everyone, pushing any agenda, wants from you.

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