Humans Are Slamming Into Driverless Cars and Exposing a Key Flaw

[LTC8K6]

It seems that driverless cars know how to drive by the book, but they have no common sense...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...-into-driverless-cars-and-exposing-a-key-flaw

 

[thecoolnessrune]

It seems that driverless cars know how to drive by the book, but they have no common sense...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...-into-driverless-cars-and-exposing-a-key-flaw

Hardly a thing to do about common sense. They just don't have the proper programming to deal with crappy humans. Normally, humans, being the self-serving sort that they are, make mistakes while driving and attempt to make others shoulder the consequences of it. We see this all the time when someone jumps giant lanes of traffic so they don't miss an exit, or drive on the shoulder of the road to force their way in up ahead.

The solution is simply to keep pushing towards removing the human element from our roadways. Driving can only get better as the self-serving human involvement of driving on public roads is removed.

What percentage of self-driving car accidents were the car's fault caused by illegal maneuvers? How many of those accidents were caused by others simply not paying attention and obeying traffic laws?

 

[jdoggg12]

Catch 22:

Too many shitty drivers on the road so safe/law-abiding driverless cars are the answer
Law abiding cars are shitty drivers bc they can't deal with shitty drivers

 

[LTC8K6]

Hardly a thing to do about common sense. They just don't have the proper programming to deal with crappy humans. Normally, humans, being the self-serving sort that they are, make mistakes while driving and attempt to make others shoulder the consequences of it. We see this all the time when someone jumps giant lanes of traffic so they don't miss an exit, or drive on the shoulder of the road to force their way in up ahead.

The solution is simply to keep pushing towards removing the human element from our roadways. Driving can only get better as the self-serving human involvement of driving on public roads is removed.

What percentage of self-driving car accidents were the car's fault caused by illegal maneuvers? How many of those accidents were caused by others simply not paying attention and obeying traffic laws?

Did you read the article?

It says none of the accidents were the fault of the autonomous cars.

I think most incidents were the cars stopping because they did not know what to do, and the human drivers were not expecting a car to just stop like that in traffic.

I think the point is that the cars lack the capacity to deal with many driving situations that a human handles easily. There's a ton of stuff that's not in the rule book, and not covered by the law. There's a ton of "on the fly" decision making involved in driving. This is partly why driving a car for a long time exhausts you.

There are even times when a technical violation of the law is the best option.

Merging is a great example. I can easily see how the driverless cars would have a lot of trouble, where (most) humans just breeze on through.

 

[Lean L]

A bit unrelated but I can totally see how there needs to be more algorithms to match how a human would drive.

I remember one day while driving around a slight bend this car pulls out in front of me while I was going probably 45. I had the choice of slamming the brakes and potentially lose steering and driving into a ditch or braking hardish and using the small shoulder and potentially hit this idiot. I chose to use the shoulder and to hit him if it came to it.

That is the very definition of selfish since now two cars are damaged instead of one but it seems fair to me. Would a computer do the same thing? Now the guy that pulled out unsafely just drives off while you're in a ditch.

Luckily, in this case, he heard my blaring and pulled a bit to the left so I could avoid him and there was no accident.

 

[jdoggg12]

So long as they remain autonomous and they don't do something stupid like try to get them to communicate with one another. Doing so is begging to be hacked in a manner like "my car now has priority when merging/lane changing".

It's already scary to think that some current vehicles can be wirelessly hacked and rendered inoperable or forced to crash, a la http://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-highway/

 

[soulcougher73]

I think the only way self driving cars can really work is if its an all or nothing scenario basically. Time will tell though.

 

[quikah]

i encounter the google self driving cars on a daily basis. One of their offices is literally next door to me. The cars drive like old women. The newer bubble looking ones are excruciatingly slow. After a stop a HUGE gap always opens up in front of them as they accelerate so slowly, I can see a LOT of people getting frustrated and trying to get around them. They are pretty much annoying as hell.

There was an interesting encounter I had with one a couple weeks ago. I was stopped at a red light at a T intersection getting ready to make a right on red. I had to pull forward a bit to see past the car next to me. The self driving car that was coming on the cross STOPPED right in front of me. It saw I was moving and I guess took emergency action. Kind of silly, I was crawling forward to get a better view.

 

[Mandres]

I think the only way self driving cars can really work is if its an all or nothing scenario basically. Time will tell though.

That's the conclusion I keep coming to also. It seems wasteful and perhaps impossible to spend all this energy designing algorithms to try to deal with unpredictable human driving behavior. But I guess there's no other option - you can't replace all the cars at once and you can't build a separate set of roads for just autonomous vehicles.

 

[Jumpem]

They need to start actually enforcing speed limits. It wouldn't be difficult for cars to have a camera that can read speed limit signs and govern the car to that speed.

At the least, start governing cars to 70 MPH.

 

[tweakmonkey]

So people driving their own cars are running into self driving cars? Is that any worse than the other scenario, where those people would run into other drivers of cars instead?

 

[disappoint]

Why is a driverless car doing 24mph in a 35mph zone with traffic piling up behind it? Maybe they need to process information faster to keep up with traffic flow?

 

[C1]

From what Im reading about automated cars, then they are a danger.

Never stop in the middle of a busy roadway (re: automated cars stop when they dont know what to do). If one doesnt drive with the pace of traffic, then other drives become ugly & they themselves start taking on more risky actions (such as changing lanes to quickly pass; tempers flare). A bet is that once people spot an automated vehicle, then they will work to distance themselves from it, which, in heavy traffic, could be an issue.

In the end, automation might not itself get into vehicular crashes, but instead be a catalyst for them.

 

[marvdmartian]

The solution is simply to keep pushing towards removing the human element from our roadways. Driving can only get better as the self-serving human involvement of driving on public roads is removed.

Before you go that far, you'd better figure out how the individual states are going to make up the taxes and fees they're raking in, by giving a driver's license to anyone who's not a total spaz (and even some who are!).

Think about it:
- you get your license, they get a fee
- you buy a car, they collect a sales tax
- you register and title that car, they get a fee
- you insure that car, they get corporate taxes from the insurance company (directly, as well as income taxes from that company's employees, indirectly)
- you get into an accident, or get a ticket, they get a fee, plus the money that's paid to the repair shop (corporate sales tax), etc.
- you buy gasoline, they collect a tax

It used to be that you actually had to have some skills to be allowed to legally drive a car on the roads. But greed has led the states to allow any window licking moron behind the wheel, and it shows. Before you take them off the road (or, at least, out from behind the wheel), you'd better figure out how the states will make up that loss!

 

[MongGrel]

It says none of the accidents were the fault of the autonomous cars.

I think most incidents were the cars stopping because they did not know what to do, and the human drivers were not expecting a car to just stop like that in traffic.

Those two statements you made one after another show a real problem.

 

[JeffMD]

I see alot of people coming to the conclusion that these handful of accidents are caused by driverless cars not anticipating bad human drivers, as if THAT WOULD STOP THIS FROM HAPPENING!

The same accidents are happening to other human drivers in the THOUSANDS on a DAILY BASES. As long as humans are in control of cars, these accidents will not stop. They will run into driverless cars, driven cars, inanimate objects, even large bodies of water that have been around since the dawn of time.

The day we go full auto cannot come soon enough.

 

[SparkyJJO]

The solution is simply to keep pushing towards removing the human element from our roadways.

No.

Driving can only get better as the self-serving human involvement of driving on public roads is removed.

And no.

There are those of us out there that like driving and have vehicles that are fun to drive (sporty cars, motorcycles, etc). If you hate driving, well, autonomous cars will likely get better where they can properly share roads, or be somehow given their own ares to drive in away from non-autonomous vehicles.

 

[Ns1]

I don't understand though - I thought only ciclists are scofflaws and drivers were law abiding saints. How could this be possible?

 

[LTC8K6]

I don't understand though - I thought only ciclists are scofflaws and drivers were law abiding saints. How could this be possible?

Well, we need to wait for the autonomous bicycles/motorcycles to see how that will work out.

All camps will have the freedom to yell and gesture at will when all vehicles are robotic.

 

[boomerang]

I think the only way self driving cars can really work is if its an all or nothing scenario basically. Time will tell though.

I agree but I also wonder whether they are even practical in our highly litigious society.

Self driving cars raise all kinds of legal and ethical questions. Who is at fault if a self driving car is involved in an accident? This article touches on some interesting points.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...rs-give-lawyers-bottomless-list-of-defendants

I especially find the insurance aspects of driverless cars interesting and the article goes into that a bit.

Not Foreseen

What makes the issue so tricky is that current law holds a car owner, often the driver, responsible for accidents, first and foremost. If an owner wants to blame the manufacturer, then he or she must prove the company was negligent in some way. But modern product-liability law didn’t contemplate cars without drivers.
“There’s going to have to be some changes to the laws,” Strickland said. “There is no such thing right now that says the manufacturer of the automated system is financially responsible for crashes.”
And the owners of self-driving cars might not feel so responsible in a collision, especially if they’re sleeping in the back seat or, as Volvo’s Eugensson suggested, “updating Facebook.”
No Clarity

“No one wants to be sued or be arrested for a crash that they were powerless to prevent,” said Bryant Walker Smith, assistant professor of law at the University of South Carolina who has written extensively on driverless-car liability.
So the first owner of a driverless car to be in such an accident will have an opportunity to set a precedent by suing the maker of the autonomous system, which could be a car company or a technology firm. Such a case might also test current insurance-coverage notions, which presume that the driver is primarily responsible.
Anyone suing won’t find much clarity in existing case law. A search of court records found limited litigation over autonomous features, such as automatic braking or lane-keeping, which steers a car back into the correct position if it crosses the line.

The article goes on to say that legislation has been proposed in California that would require a human to always be ready to take the wheel. A typical morning commute may be boring but driving at least does keep the mind engaged to a certain degree. Put that same mind in a driverless car where that mind must still be engaged in the driving process in order to take over should the need arise and that person will probably be wondering why they have a driverless car at all. The novelty of it will very quickly fade.

I think that self driving cars are an interesting diversion. I see no practical use for them at this time. If they do eventually become mainstream, the transition process with both driver controlled and driverless cars on the roads will be pure chaos besides being a field day for lawyers.

I as the consumer, will not be interested in paying for coverage that covers the car manufacturer. Car manufacturer's will be loath to subsidize insurance for their customers even though they, the car manufacturer, will hold the greatest degree of liability when accidents occur. Somebody is to blame and somebody must cover the costs in our society as it is currently structured.

Self driving cars are a fad. The truly smart guys will be working on the transporter. That is a solution to a whole slew of problems. Self driving cars are an interesting diversion in the meantime and as long as private industry is willing to cover the costs I say go for it. It might be best to perfect the airbag first though. Just a thought.

 

[LTC8K6]

Having a human "always be ready" to take the wheel isn't going to work at all.

Humans pretty much can't do that. We can see this when people talk on the phone or text while driving. They pretty much cannot do both at once safely.

Imagine if they were not paying attention at all, instead of just trying to use the phone. There's no way they would "take the wheel" in time to avoid anything or to "catch" the car.

 

[thecoolnessrune]

No.



And no.

There are those of us out there that like driving and have vehicles that are fun to drive (sporty cars, motorcycles, etc). If you hate driving, well, autonomous cars will likely get better where they can properly share roads, or be somehow given their own ares to drive in away from non-autonomous vehicles.

You can like driving all you want, but it doesn't change anything. I like driving as well. But humans are terrible drivers, plain and simple. We are, for the large part, inattentive, selfish, and abhorrent judges of risk. The day of major roadways being taken over by self-driving vehicles is inevitable, but one that is well in the future. You don't have to worry about government coming into your house and taking yer cars!

 

[Griffinhart]

I think the only way self driving cars can really work is if its an all or nothing scenario basically. Time will tell though.

I see more of a mix of borrowing some tech from autonomous cars and exclusive lanes for them. We are already seeing some tech in a wide range of cars. Adaptive cruise control, Collision avoidance and other driver assist systems are a good example.

As a lot of these features start to trickle into manually controlled cars, most of these type of accidents will go away. Especially the auto breaking stuff making its way into many new cars.

Really, my only problem with the self driving car craze are the unrealistic expectations. I think too many people believe they will be seeing tons of them in just a few years. Realistically, we are still a decade or two away. They just can't suddenly replace all cars at once, so they need live with cars that have no such systems. As cars age, more and more cars will get them, but this will take decades.

Then there is the problem that self driving cars still can't handle situations that human drivers do. Google likes to point out that their cars have millions of miles under their steel belts, but those miles do not include most conditions human drivers deal with. Heavy rain, snow, heading into heavy sunlight during sunrise and sunset all are major issues that still need to be resolved. Hell, traffic cones have been enough to stymie them if it means they need to cross the roads center line.

It should eventually get there, but it will be closer to 2030 than 2020.

 

[bradly1101]

This will never work unless ALL vehicles are driverless and talking to each other.

 

[shabby]

Having a human "always be ready" to take the wheel isn't going to work at all.

I can't imagine that working either, always watching what the car is doing and correcting it when it does something wrong? That'll probably be more stressful that driving the car.