Why is everyone considering it a forgone conclusion that self driving cars will quickly become much, much safer than human driven cars? Yes, lots of people die every year in human driven car accidents. But it is equally true that our most sophisticated AI/ML can only really operate within very narrowly defined parameters (at least when compared to the huge sets of uncertain parameters humans deal with every day in the real world). Driving is perhaps one of the most unpredictable activities we can engage in, anecdotally supported by my daily commute. What if our self driving software never becomes good enough? How many more deaths are we willing to go through to find out?
Video suggests huge problems with Uber’s driverless car program
181–190 of 244 posts
Re: Video suggests huge problems with Uber’s driverless car program
#182This event has me thinking about job of the behind-the-wheel backup driver. They get an easier job than a real driver, at the cost of potentially taking the fall if an accident occurs. I wonder if the pay is better.
It's an equivalent job to a train driver
Re: Video suggests huge problems with Uber’s driverless car program
#183"Uber recently placed an order for 24,000 Volvo cars that will be modified for driverless operation. Delivery is scheduled to start next year." Wow. The other driverless car players should be all over this lobbying to shut Uber down. If Uber massively deploys a commercial service with subpar quality in order to "win", and then those cars start getting into accidents, the entire field is going to be delayed by 10 year…
Could Uber be doing this on purpose? They're way behind on self-driving tech, so maybe if they can't have it, no one can.
Re: Video suggests huge problems with Uber’s driverless car program
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s not a blind spot I’m worried about. People frequently walk at full speed up to the edge of the sidewalk, then stop just before they would walk into traffic. Should an autonomous car assume that any pedestrian walking towards an intersection is going to continue into the roadway, even if they don’t have the right of way? That’s not what a human driver does. Likewise, I can be standing still with my toes on the cu…
> That’s not what a human driver does. A human should be aware that these pedestrians might enter the roadway. The human should perceive those pedestrians as a risk, and be ready to take action. > Should a self-driving car assume that every pedestrian standing at a crosswalk could walk into traffic at any moment, Yes. > and slow down accordingly? This doesn't follow. The car don't need to slow down. It does need to b…
My bigger point, which is getting lost, is that there are rules to traffic (pedestrian, bike and auto) that we are all expected to obey. I do not agree that we can simply assume that a self-driving car assumes all liability for any accident (which is what the parent to my original comment posited). The rules of the road let us operate vehicles at tolerances that make it physically impossible to avoid every kind of collision - for example, as I’ve mentioned, a pedestrian that suddenly sprints into cross traffic traveling 40 mph.
I fully agree that autonomous vehicles can and should do everything they can to avoid accidents. We are in violent agreement there. However, I also think that if we set some kind of unrealistic standard for safety, then we are going to make self-driving vehicles completely unappealing to everyone, because they are going to drive like a cross between my grandmother and a startled squirrel.
This is not a new idea of mine - the issue of the too-polite autonomous car has been extensively studied and reported on. See https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.nytimes.com/2015/09/02/t... for just one example.
Re: Video suggests huge problems with Uber’s driverless car program
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
My point is not that children would jump in front of cars. It’s that they would run toward the curb with a heading and velocity that would dictate a collision, then stop just before entering the street. They would do it for the main reason that children do things - because it would be hilarious to watch self-driving cars leave a patch on the road and jerk their passengers back with seatbelt pretensioners. If you don’…
In most countries obstructing the flow of traffic, no matter the method, is illegal. And what alternative do you suggest? Not braking?
For your consideration: https://www.google.com/amp/s/spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-thi...
Re: Video suggests huge problems with Uber’s driverless car program
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
What if it has nothing to do with ML? You see a point cloud that's moving toward your lane at a speed estimate of say 2 mph. If that's below the sensor noise threshold, you might classify the cloud as a stationary object on the other lane (say a stranded car). In that case, by the time you realize that this stationary object has somehow moved itself into your own lane, it is already too late.
You slow down anyways, because it will almost always improve the situation and reduce your liability. Secondly, if the vision is so bad that it can't identify objects in its lane or predict vectors, it's not ready for the real world.
Yes! This is how a sensible driver would behave - not quite sure what's going on ahead of you? SLOW THE FUCK DOWN.
The story in the linked article about an Uber whipping through an intersection at 38mph next to two stationary lanes, seems sufficiently conclusive to me that their self-driving system is not ruled by a sense of caution.
Here in the UK, we have speed limits, but the rules of the road also call drivers to consider "appropriate speed" - you slow down in situations where you might have to react with very little warning. This ought to be extremely easy for an automated system - it can measure its braking distance with high accuracy, it can measure distances to objects around it with high accuracy, it can determine exactly which areas of the world around it it can't see, that could pose a threat with relatively low warning, so just fucking slow down.
I've long been bearish on full autonomous driving because I consider there to be so many corner cases in real world driving where ad-hoc non-verbal communication is required to solve traffic flow, that the computers would never catch up. Now I wonder if their solution is to just plough through every problem at 98% of the speed limit and then disclaim responsibility.
Re: Video suggests huge problems with Uber’s driverless car program
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't really understand a whole of similar comments. It's as if Uber and all other autonomous driving pursuer is doing so for the betterment of life for everyone and so their laziness in making sure their tech is good enough can be excused. The car in question failed spectacularly and the response is her death was not in vain? Uber is doing this for money, so is all the other companies even if there are some potent…
The pharmaceutical industry tries to save lives, for money. They're driven by greed. They also have a long track record of fucking up big time and people dying because of it. Does this mean we should stop giving people medicine? Would letting people get sick and die be preferable than allowing imperfect industries with a profit motive try and save them?
That's a strawman argument... These driverless car tests are more like early phase clinical trials. Clinical trials are conducted under very tight controls, using participants who have given informed consent. Drugs don't get licensed until they can prove efficacy and safety and are approved by the FDA.
The current procedures for clinical trials are the result of decades of experience, where mistakes (and yes, occasionally shortcuts driven by greed) did result in avoidable deaths of trial participants.
For an example of how the pharma industry deals with this 'safety first' versus 'stifling innovation' dilemma, read this article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1526936/
The inevitable result of this crash is driverless vehicle testing will get regulated more like drug trials...
Re: Video suggests huge problems with Uber’s driverless car program
#188"Testing" of driverless cars seem to be the wrong way around. Software should try to learn from human drivers: watch them instead of being watched by them. The way it would work would be: the human is driving and the software is, at the same time, watching the driver and figuring out an action to take. Every time the driver's and the software's behavior differ, is logged and analyzed to figure out why there was a dif…
No, what that gets you is smooth normal driving and poor handling of emergency situations. People have tried using supervised learning for that - vision and human actions for training, steering and speed out. Works fine, until it works really badly, because it has no model of what to do in trouble.
While I understand the issues, it's still much better in the sense that it doesn't kill anyone while failing to learn how to drive. The fact that we fail to develop something without exposing people to risk doesn't create a right to expose people to risk. It should be seen as either an impassible obstacles, or motivation to solve the problem of learning safely.
Some argume that it is okay, because it will decrease risks in traffic in the long run. This is not a valid argument to allow on road bug-testing, as there is a lot of medical research that we as a society don't allow because of ethical concerns, even some research where the risk of death is essentially zero. Applying research ethics to the Uber situation, Ubers vehicles would under no circumstances be allowed on the road until it could be proven that they were at least as safe as all vehicles already operating on the road.
So while the technique suggested might not work well to solve the problem of safe autonomous cars, the more dangerous alternatives should absolutely not be allowed.
Re: Video suggests huge problems with Uber’s driverless car program
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think your first paragraph is written from the perspective of a human driver. The machine can predict based on physics. If anything a person who does not see a car will be more predictable, not less, as they will tend to be moving uniformly and not taking evasive action. Taking into account optimal (computer driven) car stopping distances, the maximum acceleration of a person and typical pedestrian densities, I don…
My point is not that children would jump in front of cars. It’s that they would run toward the curb with a heading and velocity that would dictate a collision, then stop just before entering the street. They would do it for the main reason that children do things - because it would be hilarious to watch self-driving cars leave a patch on the road and jerk their passengers back with seatbelt pretensioners. If you don’…
This makes no sense.
If I see a kid running towards the road, I'm going to slow or stop my car. I'm not going to think "oh it's just a kid being a jerk, they'll definitely stop before the road" because I don't want to run the risk of squashing a kid.
Therefore, I behave exactly the same as a cautious AI would be expected to behave.
So, why aren't kids running to the edge of the sidewalk when I'm driving?
Re: Video suggests huge problems with Uber’s driverless car program
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well maybe not currently safer than human drivers. I don't think any sound-minded person would claim that they will never be.
Currently we're losing a million lives a year (about a 9/11 per day) to auto accidents. I think there's a serious argument that it's ethical to push autonomous driving onto the road before they're safer than humans if that would help them debug the software faster and advance to superhuman safety levels even a day sooner.
So you're volunteering to be an unpredictable pedestrian or cyclist around large numbers of early-stage driverless cars? Put your ethics into practice!
The rationale response for individual cities is to say: "Do your risky testing elsewhere, thank you very much. You may come back here once you are as safe as our average driver."