10 ms·

How fixed-gear bikes can confuse Google’s self-driving cars

135 points by santaclaus 11y ago

zer00eyz 11y ago
"Gartner placed autonomous vehicles at the peak of inflated expectations" Sounds about right. I think that we all want to see self driving cars, but I don't think were ready for software with morality. If I'm driving a car filled with kids and I'm faced with the choice of running over the old lady or driving the kids off the cliff I'm pretty confident in what choice I'm going to make. Is that the choice everyone would make? is that the choice the programer made? do I have a morality switch in the car? will it make value judgements about the occupants and the external world when forced to make a bad call? Its going to be interesting times if these things end up on the road.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- melling 11y ago
  Yeah, there's always someone with a contrived answer like yours. If 1/10th the people die because the computer isn't perfect, aren't we much better off? Deaths are actually increasing this year: http://www.newsweek.com/us-traffic-deaths-injuries-and-related-costs-2015-363602 http://www.newsweek.com/us-traffic-deaths-injuries-and-relat... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths... "In 2010, there were an estimated 5,419,000 crashes (30,296 fatal crashes), killing 32,999 and injuring 2,239,000.[2] The 32,479 traffic fatalities in 2011 were the lowest in 62 years (1949). Records indicate that there has been a total of 3,551,332 motor vehicle deaths in the United States from 1899 to 2012."
  - gress 11y ago
    Self driving cars are by no means the only solution to road deaths.
    - valhalla 11y ago
      Probably true, but they're the most effective tool that would have the greatest singular impact available to us right now.
      - gress 11y ago
        Self driving cars are not available to us right now.
    - UnoriginalGuy 11y ago
      That's a truism. What are these solutions, how much do they cost, what are the relative pros/cons compared to self driving cars?
      - gress 11y ago
        That's for self driving car advocates to state, rather than simply raising the bogeyman of road deaths every time there is any commentary that detracts from their position.
        NhanH 11y ago
        The easiest answer to your argument is for self driving car advocates to claim that it's the ONLY solution to reduce road deaths. Note that you are the one who claimed there are more than one solution.
        gress 11y ago
        Except that that is self-evidently false, and we're not talking about some meaningless argument in a vacuum, but one between humans who have experience of the world.
        UnoriginalGuy 11y ago
        > That's for self driving car advocates to state Uhh what? You said: > Self driving cars are by no means the only solution to road deaths. I asked you "what other solutions?" You're literally pointing at other unnamed solutions as better alternatives to road deaths, it is very reasonable to ask you to be more specific. It is in no way up to driverless car advocates to complete an argument that you made.
  - ThrustVectoring 11y ago
    We are much better off, of course, but that isn't enough to get the thing done. We also need to figure out how the "much better off" gets distributed, in a way that convinces everyone to actually do the thing. If, for instance, Google is held liable for accidents while reducing the overall rate, self-driving cars aren't going to be a thing (unless you fix that particular problem). Or if the victims of self-driving car accidents have difficulty getting compensated.
  - zer00eyz 11y ago
    Is my above scenario contrived, yes. Is it demonstrative of the kind of ethical questions that are going to have to be answered by developers, rather than individuals. It absolutely is. If you note I'm not even dismissive of "self driving cars", I only point out that its going to be INTERESTING if we ever see them. The reality is that at some point, some where, some piece of software is going to have to make a very hard choice. The road will always have exposure to irrational actors (kids, drunks, a random person crashing their bike). Are we at a point where we WANT software making that decision? If I have terminal cancer I might make a different choice than if I just had a baby and I was a human behind the wheel. Will we be able to inform the system that were willing to commit self sacrifice? Is there going to be weighing on the system based on ages of those involved? What happens when someone decides to kill themselves by jumping in front of a self driving car? Lets forget about the legal battle that ensues the first time this happens. We will pretend that no lawyers will be allowed to be involved. The guy who wrote the code that said 4 kids > granny do you tell him? Maybe you have to go back and tell him his code killed 4 kids, and NOT granny and he has to fix it, cause that was wrong? I saved 32,999 people in THEORY but I know my code killed 4, they told me, it was a bug, I have to fix it now. Lets look for a real world example where we see some of this today. Train drivers kill people on a fairly regular basis. Some times its because people choose to kill themselves, sometimes it really is an accident where there was no intent on the part of the person killed. Do you know what happens to those folks? Do you realize the impact these actions have on their lives? They certainly do, its part of the job, they get training before they go out and drive, the get counseling after. For some of them IT DOESNT HELP. Stats aren't people, they don't react the way we want or expect. Like I said it is going to be INTERESTING.
    - NhanH 11y ago
      Shouldn't you got the pick the morality of the car you're in? Which will probably ends up with everyone choosing to protect themselves. And if that causes too much externality to society (some kind of Prisoner Dilemma where everyone tries to protect themselves being the worst?), then we have regulation step in and regulate the morality of the systems. It's not going to be easy, but I don't agree it's harder than the gazillions moral choice we already made as a society nowadays.
- sandworm101 11y ago
  Maybe autodrive cars, but I certainly do not want to see driverless cars. I want meat onboard. Licensed meat. Someone to get the tickets. Someone to sue when the robot does something stupid. Someone with a foot on the hydraulic braking system and mechanical steering for when the electrics fail.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    Where is the meat operating Predator/Reaper/Global Hawk drones? Thousands of miles away in an air-conditioned cargo container in the outskirts of Las Vegas.
    - sandworm101 11y ago
      The chances of those drones flattening me and my motorcycle are extremely slim.
      - toomuchtodo 11y ago
        Motorcycles are already 45 times more dangerous than a car. I have a hard time (even as an ex-motorcycle owner/rider) feeling bad for motorcycle riders who are worried about self-driving cars (which are already better drivers than humans).
        sandworm101 11y ago
        Except that in many ways a motocycle is no different than a bicycle, wheelchair, pedestrian, moped, horse+rider, or anyone else not wrapped in steal. Cars must share the road with non-cars.
        toomuchtodo 11y ago
        Right. Google and several other tech companies are going to keep pouring vast amounts of money into self-driving tech (to ensure its ability to "share the road with non-cars"), and naysayers are going to yell angrily at clouds. In this case, I appreciate the momentum behind self-driving vehicles. The sooner people are replaced, the better.
- stephentmcm 11y ago
  Where do you live that little old ladies are jumping out in-front of fast moving traffic with cliff edges that lack any safety barrier?! The car is going to make the best effort to minimise impacts to its self, given there's a cliff for it to fall off it's not going to swerve over it. Also as said in a sister comment while you're car full of precious children go over the cliff you can find peace in the knowledge that on average less children have died because there's self driving cars.
  - zer00eyz 11y ago
    I agree that my scenario is contrived. It was meant to be illustrative of the actual ethical dilemmas were going to face when this happens. Does my car have ethics? If I'm terminal can I tell my car that in a me or someone else situation choose them? What other factors come into play if Im not saying I'm willing? Is it age? Does my car have some sense of WHO is involved and makes a decision based on some arbitrary stat? does it flip a coin? In theory 32k people live with self driving cars. In theory 32k people live if we all stop driving. If you are give you the choice of writing two programs, one that prevents cars from working at all or one that is going to kill four kids what program are you going to write? There are a lot of things about this that aren't cut and dry at all. Like I said its going to be interesting if we ever get them.
- jfoster 11y ago
  How do you cope with situations where the person driving might not be aligned with your decisions? (taxis, Ubers, buses, etc.)
  - zer00eyz 11y ago
    It doesn't bother me actually. The point of the clearly contrived situation is to make one think about the ethics involved. If I'm terminal with cancer, can I tell my car that when it gets to a me vs them, that I'm willing to sacrifice myself? What happens when the me vs them scenario is someone attempting to kill themselves by jumping in front of a car? How does the car resolve the conflict in a case where it has NO other parameters? Are we going to say "auto sacrifice car occupant"? Do we have the ability to make a guess based on age of the involved? How about the "value" of the people involved? Would you trust a self driving car built by bill gates in a scenario between you and bill gates to choose you over bill? Like I said, its going to be interesting.
- monochromatic 11y ago
  I'm having trouble imagining a scenario where I have enough time to consider who should live and who should die, make a decision, and act on it... but not enough time to just brake and avoid the accident.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
seibelj 11y ago
I truly believe that general purpose self driving cars are much farther away than the latest press releases would suggest. Apparently they don't work well at night, in the rain, when the road lines aren't perfect, etc[1]. They basically only work in the perfect weather and roads of Mountain View during the day. In Boston, the roads are shit, the drivers are crazy (including me), and everything is permanently under construction. Once people learn how to spot these cars, very quickly the tricks to passing them are going to be learned. Not to mention the jokers using laser pointers and whatnot to mess with them. If you think this won't happen, you are sorely naive. I think self driving cars will work for specialized cases, like long haul trucking on highways, but for the commuter, it's going to be a long ways off. [1] http://gizmodo.com/6-simple-things-googles-self-driving-car-still-cant-han-1628040470 http://gizmodo.com/6-simple-things-googles-self-driving-car-...
- magicalist 11y ago
  > Once people learn how to spot these cars, very quickly the tricks to passing them are going to be learned Crazy driving is itself often tricks to pass human-driven cars. > Not to mention the jokers using laser pointers and whatnot to mess with them. If you think this won't happen, you are sorely naive. No need to wait; laser pointers are effective at messing up human vision sensors today. But no epidemic yet... Most of the operation of current society depends on the vast vast majority of us not being in a mass-murderous mood.
  - seibelj 11y ago
    It's harder to be aggressive when dealing with human-driven cars because people can react. The commuter dozing in his self-driving car is not aggressively driving, and with his car legally mandated to be in super-safe mode, it's going to take twice as long for it to make it through rush hour traffic.
    - sneak 11y ago
      > it's going to take twice as long for it to make it through rush hour traffic. So read a book or work on something on your laptop or go on Amazon and buy a present for your partner with the health insurance money you'll eventually save by registering your commute as autonomous.
sandworm101 11y ago
Lol. This reminds me of communizing on my motorcycle in the rain (vfr800). Whenever I lay flat on the tank to avoid the rain a bit every human-driven car thought I was about to rocket past them. I wonder if a similar thing could happen with a motocycle. Someone on a sportbike can strike a much more speed-like pose than someone on a bicycle. Perhaps a motocycle looking like it was speeding into the intersection could convince the robot to panic break?
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
tdaltonc 11y ago
How should the car have responded to the cyclist? In ambiguous stops like this I find non-verbal social cues like nods, facial expressions, and hand waves are the only way to break the impasse.
- idlewords 11y ago
  To a fixie? Pursue it remorselessly at top speed for however long it takes to run it down.
  - Locke1689 11y ago
    I would prefer if they stalk it at low speed until the cyclist gives out from exhaustion, like a pack of wild dogs bringing down a deer.
    - idlewords 11y ago
      I don't often say this on HN but... you are right and I am wrong.
- nxb 11y ago
  Yes, communicating / negotiating the decision with the other person. That's how humans do it. Now try driving in dense NYC traffic, and you'll see humans communicating everywhere. Good luck to self driving cars in that scenario - unless humans are 100% off the roads.
  - Zigurd 11y ago
    Even a minority of self-driving cars will change traffic, probably for the better in the vast majority of cases. Human drivers following a self-driving car will have to adopt the self-driving car's caution, moderate acceleration, and deference to pedestrians and cyclists.
    - jarek 11y ago
      Good luck getting anywhere in Manhattan if you practice total deference to pedestrians and communicate that you do (e.g. by looking like a Google car)
jonknee 11y ago
> “The odd thing is,” wrote the cyclist, “I felt safer dealing with a self-driving car than a human-operated one.” In the not so far future this will be a concept impossible to explain to kids. That we all used to drive around these multi-thousand pound machines and rely on the expertise of often distracted strangers to not be maimed or killed (and dying by the millions by the way)... It already is starting to sound ridiculous. The thought of no machine in control will be terrifying before long.
- LesZedCB 11y ago
  One of my favorite jokes is a grandparent talking to their grandchild, saying, "Did you know, when I was a kid, we used to drive cars ourselves?" "No way, grandpa! And nobody ever got hurt?" "Oh no! Every year millions died!"
- krapp 11y ago
  I, too, look forward to the day when the concept of independent human autonomy is too terrifying to contemplate. Wait, no I don't.
  - copsarebastards 11y ago
    I don't know if this is really the best example. That said, I am very frightened about the closed-source software that will be running in these cars.
    - jonknee 11y ago
      > That said, I am very frightened about the closed-source software that will be running in these cars. That is perfectly valid, but currently we have humans who vary widely in skills and reaction times who are controlling cars. I'll take closed-source software over a random person any day.
      - krapp 11y ago
        We also have humans who vary widely in skills who are writing software. The same people who allow acceleration and braking to be linked to the entertainment system, and by extension, controllable over the internet. You seem to be assuming the worst possible case for autonomous car software will necessarily be better than the best human driver, but that's not an assumption backed up by reality. More likely (to me) is that, while both humans and autonomous cars might be safe in most situations, the fail states for autonomous cars are likely to be less predictable.
coin 11y ago
Can someone explain what a "track stand" is?
- gnopgnip 11y ago
  Where you stay still without removing your feet from the pedals by pedaling the bike slightly forward or backwards and turning the handlebars.
- stickydink 11y ago
  There's a YouTube video linked in the article. Basically, stand off the seat, and balance while stationary by rocking forwards and backwards. Possible on a fixed gear bike because pedaling backwards moves the wheel backwards.
  - alistairSH 11y ago
    Also possible on a "normal" freewheeled bicycle. Just takes a bit of an incline and a bit more body english. Not super useful, but a neat trick, and good balance exercise. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbeaB3G79vI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbeaB3G79vI
    - ScottBurson 11y ago
      Indeed. I can't do it -- well, I've never really tried -- but I saw a guy doing it this morning. His bike definitely had derailleurs. (Though hmm -- I suppose I don't know for an absolute fact that it had a freewheel. But I've never heard of a rear cluster without a freewheel.)
- rhinoceraptor 11y ago
  It's balancing in place on a bike. You turn the handlebars 45 degrees one way or the other, and find the balance point. Since the front wheel is turned, when you pedal forward you lean one way, and when you pedal backward you lean the other way. It's sometimes employed in track cycling (where fixed gear bicycles are used), hence 'track stand'.
Lendal 11y ago
I wonder how they're going to handle event traffic. Football games, concerts and other events where the traffic is being heavily managed by traffic officers on the street. You're supposed to obey the traffic officer and ignore traffic lights, stop signs and even road directionality. If they direct you to go the wrong way down a one-way street, that's what you do because it is special event traffic. Will the self-driving cars be able to handle this?
- dantiberian 11y ago
  Perhaps Google will open up an API for authorities to override map information for temporary events.
  - ninkendo 11y ago
    I think that solution would be far worse. Could you imagine if it got hacked? Some hacker sends all self-driving cars the wrong way down some one-way street.
    - kuschku 11y ago
      And even if the Google side doesn’t get hacked – as we’ve seen before, the government side will contract this out to the lowest bidder, who’ll hire some guy in china to do it and give him full root access.
  - blahedo 11y ago
    Ooh, just wait til that gets hacked. Yikes. ...not that I think you're wrong.
- frankchn 11y ago
  I don't know if they can handle it at the moment, but traffic management during events at Shoreline Amphitheater definitely provides a great opportunity for Google to test this in its backyard.
- MattHeard 11y ago
  The TED talk that Chris Urmson gave shows an example of the Google cars detecting a police officer giving signals.[1] [1] https://youtu.be/tiwVMrTLUWg?t=10m https://youtu.be/tiwVMrTLUWg?t=10m
nkozyra 11y ago
This obviously has nothing to do with the bike and everything to do with detecting and reacting to movement. I think the lede is buried here.
ipsin 11y ago
While a human driver can easily see a rider doing a track stand isn’t going anywhere... Ok, I'm just going to come out and say, I'm a licensed human driver and a bicyclist, and I find track stands confusing too. Like a skateboarder in the bike lane, there's a lot of potential for unexpected motion, and that needs to be accounted for. The bicyclist is wobbling in place, but could easily transition to going forward or backwards without warning. The bicyclist is intent on the stand, so drivers won't be able to gain eye contact. I think the cloud of uncertainty around bicyclists is also why cars wrongly yield to my bike so often at stop signs. Some bicyclists do unpredictable things, and drivers incorporate that into their mental models. People learn, and I'm confident that self-driving cars will too. Eventually.
- ninkendo 11y ago
  I hope their cars keep a good log of exactly what logic led them to every decision they make, so when an accident happens, the car's log can clearly indicate something like: "The bicyclist to my left appeared to be in a 'track stand' position, indicating he was yielding to me, so I went forward through the intersection." Although I suppose keeping a rolling video of everything would suffice as well, for diagnosis purposes.
  - JoBrad 11y ago
    Maybe team up with the Nest Team, they could only record video of important events?
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    Videos of events are actually a terrible idea, for the defendant. There's way to much tendency for 'backseat drivers' to second-guess a decision made in a moment. Videos give them a 'sound byte' of a complex event. Juries make terrible decisions that way.
    - cryptophreak 11y ago
      Isn’t it interesting how possessing barely any information can lead people to confidently make decisions “based on the evidence”?
001sky 11y ago
"But the track stand, which are generally done only by riders on fixed-gear bikes, quickly became a problem." Track stand on reg bike no problem. So that's a problem.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
Zigurd 11y ago
Closed. Not a bug.
drcode 11y ago
Please Google Engineers: If your car knows where bicyclists are anyways, can you please have an additional safety to stop people from opening the driver-side door, even in a parked car, if a bicyclist is actively passing the car? That is probably the biggest danger to me as a bicyclist in the city: People opening doors on parked cars for me to slam into (and potentially throwing me into a lane of car traffic) Your cars could easily outperform most humans in preventing this dangerous situation.
- matthewmcg 11y ago
  For that matter, this could probably be implemented in cars with rear cameras or backup sensors without too much additional tweaking.
- branchless 11y ago
  Wow this is a great thought. Imagine: cycling without worrying about being car doored.
- DanAndersen 11y ago
  A warning or alarm would be good, but would you feel comfortable being prevented from manually exiting your car? Sounds like a great avenue for edge-case hazards.
  - drcode 11y ago
    Fair point... maybe a 3 second delay with an alarm.
    - nfoz 11y ago
      Along with a red LED glow along the door handle!
- jaytaylor 11y ago
  The notion of physically preventing the doors from opening makes me uncomfortable. How about instead providing some kind of warning so people will know it's a bad time to open the door? This would be some cool tech for sure!
morganvachon 11y ago
> If self-driving vehicles almost never crash, roads will become immensely more safe and inviting to cyclists. Not unless the more aggressive cyclists also start following the rules of the road as they pertain to bicycles. I can't count the times I've seen near accidents caused by cyclists who make abrupt, last-second dashes into oncoming traffic because they feel they have 100% of the right-of-way 100% of the time. And I say that as a bicyclist myself.
- Zigurd 11y ago
  As a driver who recently had a jackass cyclist cut across opposing traffic across Mass Ave in Central Square in front of me, I'd rather have the self-driving car I'll soon be robot chauffeured in stand on the brakes than hit the cyclist, had he been more of a jackass than he was. People inconvenienced for a few seconds by cyclists need to get over themselves and probably have the wrong attitude to have a driver's license.
  - delinka 11y ago
    "Inconvenienced" is not the right word. "Frightened witless" is more apropos. Example: The cyclist cuts in front of me, violating traffic laws, and I hit him and he's injured or killed. Not only does this affect me emotionally, but suddenly I'm in the liability hotseat unless I can prove the cyclist was in the wrong. After all, I'm in a one ton car and he's on a 30lb bike. It is this situation that I'm hoping to avoid, and if a cyclist nearly causes it, I'm pissed. Unless it'd been another car. Then the damage to the other vehicle is pretty obvious and, since we're on city streets, neither driver is injured.
    - jessaustin 11y ago
      The impression I get from the media and from cycling advocates is that auto drivers are very rarely ticketed for killing or injuring cyclists. But please, ignore that fact and continue to drive so as not to kill and injure cyclists.
  - morganvachon 11y ago
6t6t6 11y ago
> We repeated this little dance for about two full minutes and the car never made it past the middle of the intersection. The two guys inside were laughing and punching stuff into a laptop. That's what I would call to have a great job.
fabrice_d 11y ago
I'm commuting by bike and on my route in Mountain View I see quite many Google cars. They are very conservative and so far I haven't seen one that acted based on my arm turn signals. Either they don't recognize them, or they don't trust me ;) Overall I feel much more secure biking around autonomous Google cars than human drivers. Just the number of people doing red light violations is incredible here in the SV.
anonu 11y ago
Hate to nitpick, but... the title is misleading. The effect of doing a track stand causes the self-driving car to be confused. Not the fact that the bike has a fixed-gear. I have a free-wheel single gear bike that I can do track stands on...
- LanceH 11y ago
  I guess you could do one stopped uphill, but with a free wheel, you're just balancing. There is no way to pedal the bike in reverse.
futhey 11y ago
Interesting. I didn't know the term "track stand" existed, but, yeah, as a cyclist myself, I know a human driver would have flipped me off after a few seconds and plowed through the intersection.
andygates 11y ago
Track stands are "almost moving" by design - every rock is supposed to be nearly the explosion that leaps you ahead of the other guy for victory, fortune and glory. It's a bit like a sprinter's crouch - and as a driver, if I saw a sprinter's crouch by the roadside, I'd be cautious and confused. Good to see the car handled it safely.

135 points by santaclaus 11y ago

"Gartner placed autonomous vehicles at the peak of inflated expectations" Sounds about right. I think that we all want to see self driving cars, but I don't think were ready for software with morality. If I'm driving a car filled with kids and I'm faced with the choice of running over the old lady or driving the kids off the cliff I'm pretty confident in what choice I'm going to make. Is that the choice everyone would make? is that the choice the programer made? do I have a morality switch in the car? will it make value judgements about the occupants and the external world when forced to make a bad call? Its going to be interesting times if these things end up on the road.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
melling 11y ago
Yeah, there's always someone with a contrived answer like yours. If 1/10th the people die because the computer isn't perfect, aren't we much better off? Deaths are actually increasing this year: http://www.newsweek.com/us-traffic-deaths-injuries-and-related-costs-2015-363602 http://www.newsweek.com/us-traffic-deaths-injuries-and-relat... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths... "In 2010, there were an estimated 5,419,000 crashes (30,296 fatal crashes), killing 32,999 and injuring 2,239,000.[2] The 32,479 traffic fatalities in 2011 were the lowest in 62 years (1949). Records indicate that there has been a total of 3,551,332 motor vehicle deaths in the United States from 1899 to 2012."
- gress 11y ago
  Self driving cars are by no means the only solution to road deaths.
  - valhalla 11y ago
    Probably true, but they're the most effective tool that would have the greatest singular impact available to us right now.
    - gress 11y ago
      Self driving cars are not available to us right now.
  - UnoriginalGuy 11y ago
    That's a truism. What are these solutions, how much do they cost, what are the relative pros/cons compared to self driving cars?
    - gress 11y ago
      That's for self driving car advocates to state, rather than simply raising the bogeyman of road deaths every time there is any commentary that detracts from their position.
      - NhanH 11y ago
        The easiest answer to your argument is for self driving car advocates to claim that it's the ONLY solution to reduce road deaths. Note that you are the one who claimed there are more than one solution.
        gress 11y ago
        Except that that is self-evidently false, and we're not talking about some meaningless argument in a vacuum, but one between humans who have experience of the world.
      - UnoriginalGuy 11y ago
        > That's for self driving car advocates to state Uhh what? You said: > Self driving cars are by no means the only solution to road deaths. I asked you "what other solutions?" You're literally pointing at other unnamed solutions as better alternatives to road deaths, it is very reasonable to ask you to be more specific. It is in no way up to driverless car advocates to complete an argument that you made.
- ThrustVectoring 11y ago
  We are much better off, of course, but that isn't enough to get the thing done. We also need to figure out how the "much better off" gets distributed, in a way that convinces everyone to actually do the thing. If, for instance, Google is held liable for accidents while reducing the overall rate, self-driving cars aren't going to be a thing (unless you fix that particular problem). Or if the victims of self-driving car accidents have difficulty getting compensated.
- zer00eyz 11y ago
  Is my above scenario contrived, yes. Is it demonstrative of the kind of ethical questions that are going to have to be answered by developers, rather than individuals. It absolutely is. If you note I'm not even dismissive of "self driving cars", I only point out that its going to be INTERESTING if we ever see them. The reality is that at some point, some where, some piece of software is going to have to make a very hard choice. The road will always have exposure to irrational actors (kids, drunks, a random person crashing their bike). Are we at a point where we WANT software making that decision? If I have terminal cancer I might make a different choice than if I just had a baby and I was a human behind the wheel. Will we be able to inform the system that were willing to commit self sacrifice? Is there going to be weighing on the system based on ages of those involved? What happens when someone decides to kill themselves by jumping in front of a self driving car? Lets forget about the legal battle that ensues the first time this happens. We will pretend that no lawyers will be allowed to be involved. The guy who wrote the code that said 4 kids > granny do you tell him? Maybe you have to go back and tell him his code killed 4 kids, and NOT granny and he has to fix it, cause that was wrong? I saved 32,999 people in THEORY but I know my code killed 4, they told me, it was a bug, I have to fix it now. Lets look for a real world example where we see some of this today. Train drivers kill people on a fairly regular basis. Some times its because people choose to kill themselves, sometimes it really is an accident where there was no intent on the part of the person killed. Do you know what happens to those folks? Do you realize the impact these actions have on their lives? They certainly do, its part of the job, they get training before they go out and drive, the get counseling after. For some of them IT DOESNT HELP. Stats aren't people, they don't react the way we want or expect. Like I said it is going to be INTERESTING.
  - NhanH 11y ago
    Shouldn't you got the pick the morality of the car you're in? Which will probably ends up with everyone choosing to protect themselves. And if that causes too much externality to society (some kind of Prisoner Dilemma where everyone tries to protect themselves being the worst?), then we have regulation step in and regulate the morality of the systems. It's not going to be easy, but I don't agree it's harder than the gazillions moral choice we already made as a society nowadays.
sandworm101 11y ago
Maybe autodrive cars, but I certainly do not want to see driverless cars. I want meat onboard. Licensed meat. Someone to get the tickets. Someone to sue when the robot does something stupid. Someone with a foot on the hydraulic braking system and mechanical steering for when the electrics fail.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  Where is the meat operating Predator/Reaper/Global Hawk drones? Thousands of miles away in an air-conditioned cargo container in the outskirts of Las Vegas.
  - sandworm101 11y ago
    The chances of those drones flattening me and my motorcycle are extremely slim.
    - toomuchtodo 11y ago
      Motorcycles are already 45 times more dangerous than a car. I have a hard time (even as an ex-motorcycle owner/rider) feeling bad for motorcycle riders who are worried about self-driving cars (which are already better drivers than humans).
      - sandworm101 11y ago
        Except that in many ways a motocycle is no different than a bicycle, wheelchair, pedestrian, moped, horse+rider, or anyone else not wrapped in steal. Cars must share the road with non-cars.
        toomuchtodo 11y ago
        Right. Google and several other tech companies are going to keep pouring vast amounts of money into self-driving tech (to ensure its ability to "share the road with non-cars"), and naysayers are going to yell angrily at clouds. In this case, I appreciate the momentum behind self-driving vehicles. The sooner people are replaced, the better.
stephentmcm 11y ago
Where do you live that little old ladies are jumping out in-front of fast moving traffic with cliff edges that lack any safety barrier?! The car is going to make the best effort to minimise impacts to its self, given there's a cliff for it to fall off it's not going to swerve over it. Also as said in a sister comment while you're car full of precious children go over the cliff you can find peace in the knowledge that on average less children have died because there's self driving cars.
- zer00eyz 11y ago
  I agree that my scenario is contrived. It was meant to be illustrative of the actual ethical dilemmas were going to face when this happens. Does my car have ethics? If I'm terminal can I tell my car that in a me or someone else situation choose them? What other factors come into play if Im not saying I'm willing? Is it age? Does my car have some sense of WHO is involved and makes a decision based on some arbitrary stat? does it flip a coin? In theory 32k people live with self driving cars. In theory 32k people live if we all stop driving. If you are give you the choice of writing two programs, one that prevents cars from working at all or one that is going to kill four kids what program are you going to write? There are a lot of things about this that aren't cut and dry at all. Like I said its going to be interesting if we ever get them.
jfoster 11y ago
How do you cope with situations where the person driving might not be aligned with your decisions? (taxis, Ubers, buses, etc.)
- zer00eyz 11y ago
  It doesn't bother me actually. The point of the clearly contrived situation is to make one think about the ethics involved. If I'm terminal with cancer, can I tell my car that when it gets to a me vs them, that I'm willing to sacrifice myself? What happens when the me vs them scenario is someone attempting to kill themselves by jumping in front of a car? How does the car resolve the conflict in a case where it has NO other parameters? Are we going to say "auto sacrifice car occupant"? Do we have the ability to make a guess based on age of the involved? How about the "value" of the people involved? Would you trust a self driving car built by bill gates in a scenario between you and bill gates to choose you over bill? Like I said, its going to be interesting.
monochromatic 11y ago
I'm having trouble imagining a scenario where I have enough time to consider who should live and who should die, make a decision, and act on it... but not enough time to just brake and avoid the accident.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

seibelj 11y ago

I truly believe that general purpose self driving cars are much farther away than the latest press releases would suggest. Apparently they don't work well at night, in the rain, when the road lines aren't perfect, etc[1]. They basically only work in the perfect weather and roads of Mountain View during the day. In Boston, the roads are shit, the drivers are crazy (including me), and everything is permanently under construction. Once people learn how to spot these cars, very quickly the tricks to passing them are going to be learned. Not to mention the jokers using laser pointers and whatnot to mess with them. If you think this won't happen, you are sorely naive. I think self driving cars will work for specialized cases, like long haul trucking on highways, but for the commuter, it's going to be a long ways off. [1] http://gizmodo.com/6-simple-things-googles-self-driving-car-still-cant-han-1628040470 http://gizmodo.com/6-simple-things-googles-self-driving-car-...

magicalist 11y ago
> Once people learn how to spot these cars, very quickly the tricks to passing them are going to be learned Crazy driving is itself often tricks to pass human-driven cars. > Not to mention the jokers using laser pointers and whatnot to mess with them. If you think this won't happen, you are sorely naive. No need to wait; laser pointers are effective at messing up human vision sensors today. But no epidemic yet... Most of the operation of current society depends on the vast vast majority of us not being in a mass-murderous mood.
- seibelj 11y ago
  It's harder to be aggressive when dealing with human-driven cars because people can react. The commuter dozing in his self-driving car is not aggressively driving, and with his car legally mandated to be in super-safe mode, it's going to take twice as long for it to make it through rush hour traffic.
  - sneak 11y ago
    > it's going to take twice as long for it to make it through rush hour traffic. So read a book or work on something on your laptop or go on Amazon and buy a present for your partner with the health insurance money you'll eventually save by registering your commute as autonomous.

sandworm101 11y ago

Lol. This reminds me of communizing on my motorcycle in the rain (vfr800). Whenever I lay flat on the tank to avoid the rain a bit every human-driven car thought I was about to rocket past them. I wonder if a similar thing could happen with a motocycle. Someone on a sportbike can strike a much more speed-like pose than someone on a bicycle. Perhaps a motocycle looking like it was speeding into the intersection could convince the robot to panic break?

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

tdaltonc 11y ago

How should the car have responded to the cyclist? In ambiguous stops like this I find non-verbal social cues like nods, facial expressions, and hand waves are the only way to break the impasse.

idlewords 11y ago
To a fixie? Pursue it remorselessly at top speed for however long it takes to run it down.
- Locke1689 11y ago
  I would prefer if they stalk it at low speed until the cyclist gives out from exhaustion, like a pack of wild dogs bringing down a deer.
  - idlewords 11y ago
    I don't often say this on HN but... you are right and I am wrong.
nxb 11y ago
Yes, communicating / negotiating the decision with the other person. That's how humans do it. Now try driving in dense NYC traffic, and you'll see humans communicating everywhere. Good luck to self driving cars in that scenario - unless humans are 100% off the roads.
- Zigurd 11y ago
  Even a minority of self-driving cars will change traffic, probably for the better in the vast majority of cases. Human drivers following a self-driving car will have to adopt the self-driving car's caution, moderate acceleration, and deference to pedestrians and cyclists.
  - jarek 11y ago
    Good luck getting anywhere in Manhattan if you practice total deference to pedestrians and communicate that you do (e.g. by looking like a Google car)

jonknee 11y ago

> “The odd thing is,” wrote the cyclist, “I felt safer dealing with a self-driving car than a human-operated one.” In the not so far future this will be a concept impossible to explain to kids. That we all used to drive around these multi-thousand pound machines and rely on the expertise of often distracted strangers to not be maimed or killed (and dying by the millions by the way)... It already is starting to sound ridiculous. The thought of no machine in control will be terrifying before long.

LesZedCB 11y ago
One of my favorite jokes is a grandparent talking to their grandchild, saying, "Did you know, when I was a kid, we used to drive cars ourselves?" "No way, grandpa! And nobody ever got hurt?" "Oh no! Every year millions died!"
krapp 11y ago
I, too, look forward to the day when the concept of independent human autonomy is too terrifying to contemplate. Wait, no I don't.
- copsarebastards 11y ago
  I don't know if this is really the best example. That said, I am very frightened about the closed-source software that will be running in these cars.
  - jonknee 11y ago
    > That said, I am very frightened about the closed-source software that will be running in these cars. That is perfectly valid, but currently we have humans who vary widely in skills and reaction times who are controlling cars. I'll take closed-source software over a random person any day.
    - krapp 11y ago
      We also have humans who vary widely in skills who are writing software. The same people who allow acceleration and braking to be linked to the entertainment system, and by extension, controllable over the internet. You seem to be assuming the worst possible case for autonomous car software will necessarily be better than the best human driver, but that's not an assumption backed up by reality. More likely (to me) is that, while both humans and autonomous cars might be safe in most situations, the fail states for autonomous cars are likely to be less predictable.

coin 11y ago

Can someone explain what a "track stand" is?

gnopgnip 11y ago
Where you stay still without removing your feet from the pedals by pedaling the bike slightly forward or backwards and turning the handlebars.
stickydink 11y ago
There's a YouTube video linked in the article. Basically, stand off the seat, and balance while stationary by rocking forwards and backwards. Possible on a fixed gear bike because pedaling backwards moves the wheel backwards.
- alistairSH 11y ago
  Also possible on a "normal" freewheeled bicycle. Just takes a bit of an incline and a bit more body english. Not super useful, but a neat trick, and good balance exercise. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbeaB3G79vI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbeaB3G79vI
  - ScottBurson 11y ago
    Indeed. I can't do it -- well, I've never really tried -- but I saw a guy doing it this morning. His bike definitely had derailleurs. (Though hmm -- I suppose I don't know for an absolute fact that it had a freewheel. But I've never heard of a rear cluster without a freewheel.)
rhinoceraptor 11y ago
It's balancing in place on a bike. You turn the handlebars 45 degrees one way or the other, and find the balance point. Since the front wheel is turned, when you pedal forward you lean one way, and when you pedal backward you lean the other way. It's sometimes employed in track cycling (where fixed gear bicycles are used), hence 'track stand'.

Lendal 11y ago

I wonder how they're going to handle event traffic. Football games, concerts and other events where the traffic is being heavily managed by traffic officers on the street. You're supposed to obey the traffic officer and ignore traffic lights, stop signs and even road directionality. If they direct you to go the wrong way down a one-way street, that's what you do because it is special event traffic. Will the self-driving cars be able to handle this?

dantiberian 11y ago
Perhaps Google will open up an API for authorities to override map information for temporary events.
- ninkendo 11y ago
  I think that solution would be far worse. Could you imagine if it got hacked? Some hacker sends all self-driving cars the wrong way down some one-way street.
  - kuschku 11y ago
    And even if the Google side doesn’t get hacked – as we’ve seen before, the government side will contract this out to the lowest bidder, who’ll hire some guy in china to do it and give him full root access.
- blahedo 11y ago
  Ooh, just wait til that gets hacked. Yikes. ...not that I think you're wrong.
frankchn 11y ago
I don't know if they can handle it at the moment, but traffic management during events at Shoreline Amphitheater definitely provides a great opportunity for Google to test this in its backyard.
MattHeard 11y ago
The TED talk that Chris Urmson gave shows an example of the Google cars detecting a police officer giving signals.[1] [1] https://youtu.be/tiwVMrTLUWg?t=10m https://youtu.be/tiwVMrTLUWg?t=10m

nkozyra 11y ago

This obviously has nothing to do with the bike and everything to do with detecting and reacting to movement. I think the lede is buried here.

ipsin 11y ago

While a human driver can easily see a rider doing a track stand isn’t going anywhere... Ok, I'm just going to come out and say, I'm a licensed human driver and a bicyclist, and I find track stands confusing too. Like a skateboarder in the bike lane, there's a lot of potential for unexpected motion, and that needs to be accounted for. The bicyclist is wobbling in place, but could easily transition to going forward or backwards without warning. The bicyclist is intent on the stand, so drivers won't be able to gain eye contact. I think the cloud of uncertainty around bicyclists is also why cars wrongly yield to my bike so often at stop signs. Some bicyclists do unpredictable things, and drivers incorporate that into their mental models. People learn, and I'm confident that self-driving cars will too. Eventually.

ninkendo 11y ago
I hope their cars keep a good log of exactly what logic led them to every decision they make, so when an accident happens, the car's log can clearly indicate something like: "The bicyclist to my left appeared to be in a 'track stand' position, indicating he was yielding to me, so I went forward through the intersection." Although I suppose keeping a rolling video of everything would suffice as well, for diagnosis purposes.
- JoBrad 11y ago
  Maybe team up with the Nest Team, they could only record video of important events?
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  Videos of events are actually a terrible idea, for the defendant. There's way to much tendency for 'backseat drivers' to second-guess a decision made in a moment. Videos give them a 'sound byte' of a complex event. Juries make terrible decisions that way.
  - cryptophreak 11y ago
    Isn’t it interesting how possessing barely any information can lead people to confidently make decisions “based on the evidence”?

001sky 11y ago

"But the track stand, which are generally done only by riders on fixed-gear bikes, quickly became a problem." Track stand on reg bike no problem. So that's a problem.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

Zigurd 11y ago

Closed. Not a bug.

drcode 11y ago

Please Google Engineers: If your car knows where bicyclists are anyways, can you please have an additional safety to stop people from opening the driver-side door, even in a parked car, if a bicyclist is actively passing the car? That is probably the biggest danger to me as a bicyclist in the city: People opening doors on parked cars for me to slam into (and potentially throwing me into a lane of car traffic) Your cars could easily outperform most humans in preventing this dangerous situation.

matthewmcg 11y ago
For that matter, this could probably be implemented in cars with rear cameras or backup sensors without too much additional tweaking.
branchless 11y ago
Wow this is a great thought. Imagine: cycling without worrying about being car doored.
DanAndersen 11y ago
A warning or alarm would be good, but would you feel comfortable being prevented from manually exiting your car? Sounds like a great avenue for edge-case hazards.
- drcode 11y ago
  Fair point... maybe a 3 second delay with an alarm.
  - nfoz 11y ago
    Along with a red LED glow along the door handle!
jaytaylor 11y ago
The notion of physically preventing the doors from opening makes me uncomfortable. How about instead providing some kind of warning so people will know it's a bad time to open the door? This would be some cool tech for sure!

morganvachon 11y ago

> If self-driving vehicles almost never crash, roads will become immensely more safe and inviting to cyclists. Not unless the more aggressive cyclists also start following the rules of the road as they pertain to bicycles. I can't count the times I've seen near accidents caused by cyclists who make abrupt, last-second dashes into oncoming traffic because they feel they have 100% of the right-of-way 100% of the time. And I say that as a bicyclist myself.

Zigurd 11y ago
As a driver who recently had a jackass cyclist cut across opposing traffic across Mass Ave in Central Square in front of me, I'd rather have the self-driving car I'll soon be robot chauffeured in stand on the brakes than hit the cyclist, had he been more of a jackass than he was. People inconvenienced for a few seconds by cyclists need to get over themselves and probably have the wrong attitude to have a driver's license.
- delinka 11y ago
  "Inconvenienced" is not the right word. "Frightened witless" is more apropos. Example: The cyclist cuts in front of me, violating traffic laws, and I hit him and he's injured or killed. Not only does this affect me emotionally, but suddenly I'm in the liability hotseat unless I can prove the cyclist was in the wrong. After all, I'm in a one ton car and he's on a 30lb bike. It is this situation that I'm hoping to avoid, and if a cyclist nearly causes it, I'm pissed. Unless it'd been another car. Then the damage to the other vehicle is pretty obvious and, since we're on city streets, neither driver is injured.
  - jessaustin 11y ago
    The impression I get from the media and from cycling advocates is that auto drivers are very rarely ticketed for killing or injuring cyclists. But please, ignore that fact and continue to drive so as not to kill and injure cyclists.
- morganvachon 11y ago

6t6t6 11y ago

> We repeated this little dance for about two full minutes and the car never made it past the middle of the intersection. The two guys inside were laughing and punching stuff into a laptop. That's what I would call to have a great job.

fabrice_d 11y ago

I'm commuting by bike and on my route in Mountain View I see quite many Google cars. They are very conservative and so far I haven't seen one that acted based on my arm turn signals. Either they don't recognize them, or they don't trust me ;) Overall I feel much more secure biking around autonomous Google cars than human drivers. Just the number of people doing red light violations is incredible here in the SV.

anonu 11y ago

Hate to nitpick, but... the title is misleading. The effect of doing a track stand causes the self-driving car to be confused. Not the fact that the bike has a fixed-gear. I have a free-wheel single gear bike that I can do track stands on...

LanceH 11y ago
I guess you could do one stopped uphill, but with a free wheel, you're just balancing. There is no way to pedal the bike in reverse.

futhey 11y ago

Interesting. I didn't know the term "track stand" existed, but, yeah, as a cyclist myself, I know a human driver would have flipped me off after a few seconds and plowed through the intersection.

andygates 11y ago

Track stands are "almost moving" by design - every rock is supposed to be nearly the explosion that leaps you ahead of the other guy for victory, fortune and glory. It's a bit like a sprinter's crouch - and as a driver, if I saw a sprinter's crouch by the roadside, I'd be cautious and confused. Good to see the car handled it safely.