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U.S. urges states not to allow general use of self-driving cars

detroitnews.com

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Re: U.S. urges states not to allow general use of self-driving cars

#31

Post by omellet »

maeon3 wrote: post #9

Also, driving in the snow and ice safety is about 3 orders of magnitude more difficult to do than driving on dry pavement. There also needs to be an indicator: "It's snowing, please wait until the road is warm and dry, or have the carbon unit take over". But that's no good, we have to get to where we are going, so tens of thousands of people, who havn't been practicing driving AT ALL for about 8 months now dust off t…

What makes you think computers will be worse than human drivers at driving in poor conditions? I'd think it'd be the other way around.

Re: U.S. urges states not to allow general use of self-driving cars

#32

Post by mikeash »

tokenizer wrote: post #22
roguecoder wrote: post #7

Given how bad humans are at driving cars safely, it is unfortunate that we are holding self-driving cars to a higher standard than we hold humans. It will cause needless loss of life.

Regardless of how bad I or someone driving around me is, I would rather have complete control. If I'm going to relinquish that control, then the alternative better be superb. This is one of those paradigms where we need software engineering to be flawless, which history can tell us, is never the case. Not disagreeing with you just offering an opinion which is more centered and cautious.

I'm not sure I'd describe preferring control over safety would really qualify as "more centered and cautious".

I understand that a lot of people are more concerned about control than safety (e.g. tons of people who are more afraid to fly than to drive, even though it's vastly safer), but it's a clearly irrational preference.

Re: U.S. urges states not to allow general use of self-driving cars

#33

Post by protomyth »

Goronmon wrote: post #17
maeon3 wrote: post #9

Also, driving in the snow and ice safety is about 3 orders of magnitude more difficult to do than driving on dry pavement. There also needs to be an indicator: "It's snowing, please wait until the road is warm and dry, or have the carbon unit take over". But that's no good, we have to get to where we are going, so tens of thousands of people, who havn't been practicing driving AT ALL for about 8 months now dust off t…

Automated vehicles also potentially means automated plowing/sanding vehicles. Roombas for the roads basically.

Not unless sensors get a lot better, as starring into white and finding the road is a rather large problem[1]. Nevermind the actual skill of those drivers, it is not an easy job.

1) GPS + Maps is not the answer as it wrong sometimes.

Re: U.S. urges states not to allow general use of self-driving cars

#34

Post by freehunter »

Goronmon wrote: post #17
maeon3 wrote: post #9

Also, driving in the snow and ice safety is about 3 orders of magnitude more difficult to do than driving on dry pavement. There also needs to be an indicator: "It's snowing, please wait until the road is warm and dry, or have the carbon unit take over". But that's no good, we have to get to where we are going, so tens of thousands of people, who havn't been practicing driving AT ALL for about 8 months now dust off t…

Automated vehicles also potentially means automated plowing/sanding vehicles. Roombas for the roads basically.

I'm not sure if that means more plow trucks taking out my mailbox or fewer...

Re: U.S. urges states not to allow general use of self-driving cars

#35

Post by forgottenpaswrd »

Well, it does not talk about the main problem that sef-driving cars have today:

One cars works ok, as it uses an active super expensive light(Lidar) and radar sensors.

Put two cars together using the same LIDAR light or the same frequencies and you have a terrible problem.

Also using Lasers will be dangerous when people look at the thing and the thing is working near you as the power of the light could do bad things to your eyes and you don't see it.

Re: U.S. urges states not to allow general use of self-driving cars

#36

Post by wwweston »

DannyBee wrote: post #3

"NHTSHA urges that cars have the capability of detecting that their automated vehicle technologies have malfunctioned 'and informing the driver in a way that enables the driver to regain proper control of the vehicle'" Yes, unless the system to detect that has malfunctioned. Past the car screaming "shit's broke, take the wheel", i'm not sure what other ways they have of informing the driver.

> Yes, unless the system to detect that has malfunctioned.

Are the systems that detect malfunction right now single-overseer systems that do sanity checks, or are they redundant driving systems that check to see if they agree?

You'd probably want both, but it seems some arrangement of the latter (maybe 3-5 systems) would be likely to provide a better failover scenario: the driving systems constantly check if they agree, if they don't, there's a majority vote for short-term action and an alert to the driver that they should take over and get the car serviced.

I'm sure there's still scenarios where that wouldn't work -- car-wide problems or outside interference impacting all systems at once, or even just improbable simultaneous failures that would happen with enough time -- but maybe it's what they have in mind.

Re: U.S. urges states not to allow general use of self-driving cars

#37

Post by maxerickson »

maeon3 wrote: post #9

Also, driving in the snow and ice safety is about 3 orders of magnitude more difficult to do than driving on dry pavement. There also needs to be an indicator: "It's snowing, please wait until the road is warm and dry, or have the carbon unit take over". But that's no good, we have to get to where we are going, so tens of thousands of people, who havn't been practicing driving AT ALL for about 8 months now dust off t…

I think some of that difficulty is because we mostly build up driving intuition on clear roads. An auto-driver will have relatively objective heuristics to evaluate road conditions, which is where humans make a lot of their mistakes (that is, humans frequently just fail to realize that the road is slippery).

Re: U.S. urges states not to allow general use of self-driving cars

#38

Post by [deleted] »

Goronmon wrote: post #17
maeon3 wrote: post #9

Also, driving in the snow and ice safety is about 3 orders of magnitude more difficult to do than driving on dry pavement. There also needs to be an indicator: "It's snowing, please wait until the road is warm and dry, or have the carbon unit take over". But that's no good, we have to get to where we are going, so tens of thousands of people, who havn't been practicing driving AT ALL for about 8 months now dust off t…

Automated vehicles also potentially means automated plowing/sanding vehicles. Roombas for the roads basically.

[deleted]

Re: U.S. urges states not to allow general use of self-driving cars

#39

Post by pyoung »

youngerdryas wrote: post #15

Industry standard is to drive 10mph over the speed limit so unless self-driving cars are allowed to break the law they may make traffic even worse. Maybe they would be good for drunk drivers and emergencies but I can barely stand letting my wife drive so self-driving cars may be too agitating for me.

I'm pretty sure self-driving cars will make traffic better, because it has been shown that most traffic jams are caused by and exacerbated by poor driving habits.

Re: U.S. urges states not to allow general use of self-driving cars

#40

Post by warfangle »

protomyth wrote: post #27
maeon3 wrote: post #9

Also, driving in the snow and ice safety is about 3 orders of magnitude more difficult to do than driving on dry pavement. There also needs to be an indicator: "It's snowing, please wait until the road is warm and dry, or have the carbon unit take over". But that's no good, we have to get to where we are going, so tens of thousands of people, who havn't been practicing driving AT ALL for about 8 months now dust off t…

This is my biggest fear with automated cars. Snow, ice, and animals are problematic and having the car drive all summer means poor winter driving[1]. I still worry about how it figures what is safe to push through versus what will cause an accident. The constant flurries / drifting is also going to be a huge sensor problem. Car companies are pretty bad about winter driving as is[2][3], so I expect we will have a lot…

Animals: Google driverless car has already been shown to avoid collisions with unexpected animals (like, say, a deer).

Snow and Ice: the sensors about wheel rotation and speed used in fancy automatic suspensions are more than able to control for slippage. I'm willing to bet that once prepared, a driverless car could deal with these hazards with much more finesse than a human pushing a pedal with no idea what kind of friction coefficient their vehicle's tire is getting.

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