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California DMV: Self-driving cars must have driver behind wheel

42 points by not_that_noob 11y ago

chrisfosterelli 11y ago
> That cautious approach requires that the cars have a steering wheel, and a licensed driver must be ready to take over if the machine fails. The article takes the tone that this will drastically limit the technology, but honestly at this point a restriction like this seems completely reasonable. The cars are not good enough to completely drive themselves in all scenarios. At times, they will decide they can't handle a situation and safely ask a driver to take over. This is becoming more and more rare, but it's definitely still the case. Until the technology is proven to basically never need human intervention, it seems reasonable to require a person who can drive to be present.
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  For cases such as if the car detects a malfunction, this probably won't be a big deal, but for most extreme situations where a human will need to take over, and that can't be fixed by stopping the car, will a human be able to take over in a timely enough manner to solve the issue? We are often talking split second decisions, and it will involve a human who likely wasn't paying any more attention to the road than a passenger. Imagine a car where the passenger's side is fully set up to drive, and with the push of a single button, the driver can swap all control to the passenger. I'm having a hard time thinking of situations where this is better than just stopping the car.
  - mamon 11y ago
    Hmm, that's makes me wonder how driving lessons work in US. In Poland it is a legal requirement that the car used for such purpose has a second set of pedals on passenger side, where instructor sits. When I took a driving lessons my instructor was perfectly capable of pressing the brake or overtaking the wheel on time when I was about to do something stupid. I don't see why manual override of autonomous car should be harder. I see however, that this can easily defeat purpose of using autonomous car: if the driver must be fully concentrated all the time, be ready to react, then it is even worse than driving normal car.
    - telotortium 11y ago
      It works the same way in the US. However, in that case, the instructor is normally paying attention to the road and the student's driving, to grade them if nothing else. Usually, passengers can't be relied on for that level of attention.
    - kingnothing 11y ago
      When I took driving lessons in the US, the instructor had a brake on the passenger side but no other controls.
  - chrisfosterelli 11y ago
    That's a great question, and my understanding is that the car simply doesn't ask humans to take over in that case. The "handoff" technique is primarily useful in situations where the car's confidence in the situation slowly degrades, not for sudden collision avoidance. An example would be a confusing construction area, or navigating with rocks on the road after a landslide. In these areas where road lines and signs aren't as applicable, the car needs a human driver. The human driver is so people aren't abandoning cars at the start of construction zones, not so they can step in to avoid a sudden collision. Google recently did a study and determined it takes over 5 seconds for a human to take over in a scenario, the car won't be able to expect them to handle anything that is happening quicker than that.
  - dawnbreez 11y ago
    One such situation: Car detects malfunction while in an intersection. If it comes to a sudden stop, then at the least it will block the intersection, and you'll have the passengers sitting in a box in the middle of the intersection struggling to get the car going. Further, a malfunction while in the left lane of the highway would be just as dangerous. I don't even drive that much, all my commuting is done by bike. These are just a couple things I can think of off the top of my head.
  - cpplinuxdude 11y ago
    > Imagine a car where the passenger's side is fully set up to drive, and with the push of a single button, the driver can swap all control to the passenger. I'm having a hard time thinking of situations where this is better than just stopping the car. I don't know about you, but when I'm a passenger in a car, I'm attentive to everything. I guess the fact I often have strong rapport with the driver (usually a family member) means we are in sync; I mean I'll literally do blind spot checks, and carry out many of the driver's visual rituals simultaneously. I think this is an interesting scenario; machines assisting men in, for example, collision avoidance systems, or in this case all the way up to self driving; and men being required to help self-driving machines in unusual situations.
  - knughit 11y ago
    Drver heart attack aka computer sensor failure.
- mhurron 11y ago
  > The article takes the tone that this will drastically limit the technology, but honestly at this point a restriction like this seems completely reasonable. This does seem like what the first step to getting self driving cars on the road would look like.
- sorryalwaysnew 11y ago
  For a time, why not allow the cars in fully-autonomous mode on a restricted set of roads, even particular lanes on particular roads, at particular max speeds, marked as such so everyone, including the cars, knows what to expect? In the case of unusual construction particular routes could be temporarily disabled. This would severely curtail the number of outlier cases the software has to be ready for, be actually safe, and allow for awesome quality of life improvement for commuters on those routes who can do something else while commuting. And in the meantime, gain huge number of hours driving experience for the software, enabling the fully autonomous routes to be slowly expanded over time.
  - jcrawfordor 11y ago
    The large part of the complexity of implementing self-driving cars comes from the fact that the roadway is not a fully protected space. You can find a number of examples of fully unattended automated vehicles that have been around for a while (for example, AGT people-movers that are common at airports), but they are dependent on a fully protected pathway so that they do not require very much intelligence. So what about roadways? Freeways have a certain degree of protection, but it's still not comparable with an elevated train ROW. It is certainly possible to develop roadways with a sufficient degree of protection for less sophisticated automation to be reliable, but it would be very expensive: they would need much more intensive maintenance, traffic density would have to be quite a bit more limited, they would need careful physical protection with at least fencing. In the end, I don't think that the infrastructure investment would be worth it considering that the period of time for which this infrastructure is needed will probably be quite short (in infrastructure terms).
not_that_noob 11y ago
Even though it doesn't look like it, this is actually great news since this provides a path for Google et al to get out there and build broad customer comfort around the technology. And frankly I don't ever foresee driverless cars that don't have some form of manual ovveride - there will always be situations that won't make sense to the computer that make perfect sense to me. ==== Edited to add this clarification, as people on HN seem overly ready to pick nits. ==== The larger point is that humans will be humans and will never buy a car that will interfere with their freedom to do what they think is right at that moment. And if you want a better example - maybe I want to speed to get to the hospital in an emergency. Maybe I want to block another car that's leaving the scene of a crime. You get the idea.
- tomschlick 11y ago
  > park in this no parking zone blocking traffic for 30 seconds while I run to get something. I think you just made an argument against manual override there...
  - HeyLaughingBoy 11y ago
    ...until you learn that the reason he had to stop in a no-parking zone for 30 seconds is because it was the shortest, safest route for a severely disabled person to get into the car.
- pc86 11y ago
  > park in this no parking zone blocking traffic for 30 seconds while I run to get something. No? Either park legally or go without. You are literally saying to everyone else "me saving 5 minutes by not having to park is more important than whatever it is you're doing."
  - not_that_noob 11y ago
    You realize it's a hypothetical right? The larger point is that humans will be humans and will never buy a car that will interfere with their freedom to do what they think is right at that moment. And if you want a better example - maybe I want to speed to get to the hospital in an emergency. Maybe I want to block another car that's leaving the scene of a crime. You get the idea.
thinkingkong 11y ago
Does the requirement need to have a control unit at all times? It would be neat to continue to make it an option but also allow the console to hide the wheel and perhaps replace it with some more fly-by-wire smaller replacement.
- tomschlick 11y ago
  Maybe not hands on the wheel control but I would at least want it to be a wheel that is ready to go by just grabbing it, same with the brakes. If they collapsed or folded into the dash that could lead to issues where a software glitch doesn't let you take back control and the robot overlords end you.
state 11y ago
When I read the geohot article [1] earlier I was thinking that there was no way what he was working on was legal. Would be curious to have someone with more expertise weigh in though. Does this make comma.ai [1] or cruise [2] more acceptable in the eyes of the state? 1 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10744206 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10744206 2 - http://www.getcruise.com/ http://www.getcruise.com/
- Animats 11y ago
  California rules (summarized): A manufacturer may conduct testing of autonomous vehicles on public roads in California if: (a) The manufacturer is conducting the testing. (b) The vehicle is operated by an autonomous vehicle test driver who is an employee ... (c) The manufacturer can cover $5M in damages via insurance, bond, etc. (d) Manufacturer’s Testing Permit from DMV. Current California permit holders: Volkswagen Group of America Mercedes Benz Google Delphi Automotive Tesla Motors Bosch Nissan Cruise Automation BMW Honda Ford
mtgx 11y ago
Sounds like a good idea for the first 10 or so years of self-driving cars. Remember, not all self-driving cars will be made by Google or Tesla. Some will even be made by the spaghetti-code-Toyota, the cheating-Volkswagen, or the we-send-updates-over-unencrypted-HTTP-BMW. It's best not to jump head-first (literally?) with this. And it's not just about the "safety" code of these self-driving cars, either. Many of them probably still won't care too much about hiring top-notch security experts in the first few years, to protect their cars against remote hacking (which could be much easier with self-driving cars if they are connected to the Internet).
donpdonp 11y ago
Its nonsensical to think a human can take over at a moment's notice during a particular maneuver. Its the threat of death/accident that makes me pay attention to every moment of driving. On autopilot I wont have that kind of attention. Its simply a trait of the human attention span. That being said, every self-driving car needs a manual override because there are plenty of situations that cant be easily explained to a computer. the override could be done with a steering wheel and gas pedal, or just a joy-stick mode on the touchscreen pad. For instance someone has a big empty lot and they want to move a car from row A to row B. The new spot is exactly 50 feet to the right. I just want to back the car up, and go forward while steering over to the right a bit. Row B has no 'street address' to program into a route-computer. I could click on a map but the map doesnt know where on the grass i want to drive. Even with lidar, etc. there are grey areas that self-driving algorithms are going to have trouble with. Drop a sheet of tissue in the path of a self-driving car moving at 60MPH. The lidar will see it as a solid object and might decide a very dangerous plan - maximum braking - is the best plan, when going through it is actually the best plan.
- not_that_noob 11y ago
  This already happens today with cruise control - and yes, the driver will have to be paying attention while driving, at least in this version of the rules.
  - mindslight 11y ago
    Cruise control still requires one to mostly drive, and the only "moment's notice" thing a human would do with cruise control would be stomp the brake. Regardless of what any rule says, stand-by humans will not be paying attention and ready to drive. Even if reading/sleeping/daydreaming were successfully policed, the human will still be out of touch with how the car responds to controls. Think of the first time you drive after not having driven for a few months - now imagine being already moving at highway speed.
  - mmanfrin 11y ago
    All cruise control does is set the speed, it is not analogous to self-driving.
joesmo 11y ago
This would be a huge setback if approved simply because once approved, such things are unlikely to change even when the time comes that human drivers will not only be unnecessary, but the most dangerous component in all situations. I understand the state's motives: liability, fear of bad press, keeping traffic cops employed (and thus the biggest avenue for random arrests), etc. but none of them justify limiting the technology simply to serve their rather short-sighted, selfish needs. At the same time, the people that could benefit most from driverless cars like the elderly, disabled, youth, etc. are shit out of luck. And all this without a single accident yet attributed to driverless cars (afaik).
jryan49 11y ago
I feel like it could be more unsafe this way. What if a human gets scared, takes control, and overreacts when the car is properly handling the situation? Might cause more accidents. EDIT: reworded sentence so it actually made sense :P
- maxxxxx 11y ago
  The human who drives a self driving car now should know what he's doing. These cars are prototypes now and whoever takes them to the road should be responsible.
daniel-cussen 11y ago
Brilliant idea on the DMV's behalf. I'm reminded of Douglas Adam's thought, in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, that solving a problem ("Now that it's perfectly air-conditioned,") shouldn't allow the removal of redundancy ("...you won't need to open the windows, ever."). Because the problem won't REALLY be solved in all cases, and if the driver finds he's in an ugly situation where he cannot act, there's no steering wheel to handle the convenient killing machine he's riding. Can you imagine the horror?
- jack9 11y ago
  > Can you imagine the horror? About the same as something falls from the sky and crushes a child. Unlikely enough that I don't waste my time thinking about it. The self-driving cars are more cautious than in all situations and ceases to be a killing machine and acts like what it is. A transport device. Even with the possibility of error, I am supremely confident that a self-driving car is more competent than the average driver. The legislation is out of touch with reality, as usual.
- nulltype 11y ago
  We can include an emergency bike in the trunk so you can still get where you are going.
  - daniel-cussen 11y ago
    Bikes have the highest practical value of 100% computer-free objects, so this looks like a reasonable solution.
lutorm 11y ago
Maybe the cars should be required to pass a CA driver's test? If it's good enough to test a driver, why not a car?
- Zikes 11y ago
  This reminds me of the recent discussion about Baidu's expulsion from an image recognition competition. They submitted too frequently, causing their machine learning algorithm to solve specifically for the test, rather than for general purpose image recognition. In your proposed scenario, knowing the CA driver's test constraints, the engineers could easily (and perhaps even inadvertently) be able to design a driver AI capable of passing the test with flying colors, yet fail horribly once faced with real-world driving. That's not to say that's actually what would happen, only to say that the test would actually be rather useless to certify a self-driving car.
  - uremog 11y ago
    Another win for Test Driven Development!
- vinceguidry 11y ago
  A bad actor could in the future simply engineer the cars around the driver's test, and not the real world. In the future, it won't just be Google / Apple / Tesla making cars.
- Someone1234 11y ago
  I'd hope that is the MINIMUM they would be required to pass.
abduhl 11y ago
How will this impact one of the key arguments for self-driving cars: elimination of DUIs? If a driver is required behind the wheel able to take over at a moment's notice then the self-driving car's purpose is defeated - you cannot do work while the car drives, you can't use the car as a sober ride home from the bar, you can't take a nap on your commute, etc. This is a legislated death sentence for self-driving cars as we envision them.
- gkoberger 11y ago
  While I agree that it defeats many of the purposes (including Uber-style services), remember that this legislation is in response to current state of self-driving cars. Once they get better, legislation can become more lax.
  - abduhl 11y ago
    As a general rule of thumb, legislation never becomes more lax.
    - gkoberger 11y ago
      That's a silly thing to say. Uber and AirBnb were illegal when they launched. You couldn't use your phone on an airplane during takeoff until recently. The original speed limit for cars was "no faster than walking". With the lobbying power of Google, Tesla, Apple and all the car manufactures? It will change.
  - michaelmrose 11y ago
    Actually it most likely will lag years or more likely decades behind the capability of the cars because the people that stand to profit from such rules limiting the usefulness of self driving cars.
- Someone1234 11y ago
  Little soon to be doomsaying. First generation self driving vehicles might have these types of limitations, but second generation? Third generation? Ten generation? It is all about building trust. Truth for the general public, and those who will be held responsible if something goes wrong. Aircraft still, to this day, have this exact system. Ask any pilot if the system is pointless simply because they have to be paying attention? It still requires less mental energy than actually driving, in particular for longer road trips where the mind wonders.
yarrel 11y ago
, servant walking 20 paces in front carrying red flag.
mindslight 11y ago
This is the exact wrong idea. Frankly, consumer-ready self-driving cars should be prohibited from changing into "manual mode" without a user request. And the manufacturer should be liable for an at-fault accident in auto-drive mode. Until these conditions can be satisfied, self-driving cars are simply not ready for prime time. The proposed rule will lead to proliferation of shoddy "99%" software designed around an expectation that a human can take over at a moment's notice. But humans don't work that way, so any such exceptional condition will likely result in a crash. The only acceptable failure procedure for a self-driving car is to stop.
- dawnbreez 11y ago
  See my comment above on two situations where coming to a stop is actually more dangerous. TL;DR: If the car fails while driving on a highway or crossing a busy intersection, stopping will cause a wreck.
  - mindslight 11y ago
    Sure, coming to a stop is dangerous in those situations if other drivers don't react appropriately. It's not a great idea, but I also don't mean that self-driving cars should be doing such emergency stops regularly. And obviously they should do it only as an extreme last resort, when things like pulling over have failed. I still think it's more reasonable to stop either of those two places than to suddenly hand control of a car traveling 75mph to a human who hasn't driven in a year or longer. edit: concrete example: You're biking along. Would you rather A. a car in front of you come to an abrupt stop, or B. a car passing you at twice your speed be controlled by a drowsy driver who doesn't know where the edges of his car are and doesn't have a feel for how the steering wheel reacts ?
    - dawnbreez 11y ago
      A fair point. The argument really comes down to this: Is it likely that a malfunction will occur while the auto-car is closely followed by another car?
ctoth 11y ago
Welp. As a blind person who has been looking forward to self-driving vehicles since the 2004 DARPA grand challenge, this is a not totally unexpected kick in the balls.
rabboRubble 11y ago
If I have to be responsible for AI and mechanical errors, I don't want an AI driving my car. Either I want to read a book or take a nap, completely zoned out, or I want to be alert and paying attention to the road. Sitting there doing nothing bored and disengaged, not able to read a book, not actively engaged in the activity of driving, and also held responsible by the state for failures is the worst of both worlds.
- mquander 11y ago
  If that AI has, say, one-third the risk of accidents as I would have, then I want it driving my car even if I enjoy it slightly less.
  - rabboRubble 11y ago
    It's not the I would enjoy the experience less, it's that the experience of just sitting there would render me an inattentive dullard with very poor response to a mechanical or AI failure. If I'm suppose to be responsible per California State, I need to be paying attention. Just sitting there, inactive, mile after mile, hour after hour doing nothing, maybe for months or even years at a time, I will be woefully unprepared to respond to the emergency. I actually gave up driving for 16 years then restarted when I last moved. What I found when I restarted was that, while physically I could operate the car, my decision making skills when faced with a problem were non-existent. I could see problems coming my way, but the reflexive decision making was gone. I had to relearn the decision making process. Designing the system to place responsibility on humans to take over only occasionally will ensure that the system creates catastrophic results when humans are found to be unprepared for the responsibility.
Animats 11y ago
CA DMV's position is basically "let's try it with human backup for 3 years, then re-evaluate". That's reasonable enough. Tesla may have set the field back. They released their "autopilot" as a beta, didn't provide sensors to enforce driver hands-on-wheel, shipped a system that works well only on freeways but will engage on other roads, and claimed that if it crashes, it's the driver's fault. Everybody else shipping similar capabilities (BMW, Mercedes, Cadillac, etc.) has put more restrictions on them (such as a hands-on-wheel sensor) to avoid over-reliance on the automation. Now Tesla has had to remove some features from their "autopilot".[1] Google may be able to get approval for their 25MPH max speed mini-car operating without driver hands-on-wheel, on the basis of the slow speed. Google's system is much more advanced, and has a detailed model of what everything else moving around it is doing. Expecting the human driver to take over if the automation fails will not work. The limits of human monitoring are well known from aircraft automation. It takes seconds to tens of seconds for a pilot to grasp the situation and recover properly if the autopilot disconnects in an upset situation. That's for pilots, who are selected and trained much better than drivers, and who go through elaborate simulator training in which failures are simulated. Watch "Children of the Magenta"[2], where a chief pilot at American Airlines talks to his pilots about this. [1] http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2015/12/16/tesla-to-limit-self-driving-functions.html http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2015/12/16/tesla-to-... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN41LvuSz10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN41LvuSz10
- WatchDog 11y ago
  Also pilots generally have much more time to respond to a automation failure. If the automation fails in a car, even a 1 second driver response could not be enough.
- knughit 11y ago
  Planes are more complex than cars. Drivers react to road surprises far faster than 10s, when making a decision to brake or swerve
  - truncate 11y ago
    That reaction is not necessarily right, its just reflex which can produce more disastrous results than no reaction at all. Can't trust them much, particularly when I'm not fully aware of the situation around me (and I think one is unlikely to be fully aware of situation when on self-driven cars).
ars 11y ago
Most driving is fairly routine, but without strong AI I don't see how a self driving car can handle things like: There is a car accident on the side of the road, and there is a human cop waving cars one at a time to drive past on the wrong side of the road. I am part of a funeral procession, or a police escorted parade and I need to drive through red lights in order to stay in the procession. (That at least I know from the start to take manual control - except google wants a car with no wheel, and in a world with lots of such cars people won't know how to drive.) Or, there is an ambulance behind me sirens wailing and in order to get out of the way I must drive illegally for a moment (through a red light, or on the wrong side of the road). How about something as simple as driving the car up some ramps so I can service the car. How would you do that without both a steering wheel and experience in how to drive? I don't see how a self driving car can handle any of those.
- cheez 11y ago
  Self-driving cars should only need to handle 90% of driving tasks. For the rest, a qualified human can and should be required to take over.
  - ars 11y ago
    That leaves humans without enough experience to actually know how to drive. It takes years of driving to get good at it. If people drove only 1/10 as much as now no one would ever get good at it. It's called "The Paradox of Automation" and it's a huge problem. Basically the better the Automation the less often humans do anything, but it means that when humans do have to do something it's much much more critical than usual. Which is exactly the situations the humans have no experience with since they take control so rarely. Basically some automation is good, but a lot of automation is actually detrimental to safety. For each industry you have to calculate that cutoff point and do no further automation past that point, until you are able to reach 100% perfection.

42 points by not_that_noob 11y ago

> That cautious approach requires that the cars have a steering wheel, and a licensed driver must be ready to take over if the machine fails. The article takes the tone that this will drastically limit the technology, but honestly at this point a restriction like this seems completely reasonable. The cars are not good enough to completely drive themselves in all scenarios. At times, they will decide they can't handle a situation and safely ask a driver to take over. This is becoming more and more rare, but it's definitely still the case. Until the technology is proven to basically never need human intervention, it seems reasonable to require a person who can drive to be present.

Lawtonfogle 11y ago
For cases such as if the car detects a malfunction, this probably won't be a big deal, but for most extreme situations where a human will need to take over, and that can't be fixed by stopping the car, will a human be able to take over in a timely enough manner to solve the issue? We are often talking split second decisions, and it will involve a human who likely wasn't paying any more attention to the road than a passenger. Imagine a car where the passenger's side is fully set up to drive, and with the push of a single button, the driver can swap all control to the passenger. I'm having a hard time thinking of situations where this is better than just stopping the car.
- mamon 11y ago
  Hmm, that's makes me wonder how driving lessons work in US. In Poland it is a legal requirement that the car used for such purpose has a second set of pedals on passenger side, where instructor sits. When I took a driving lessons my instructor was perfectly capable of pressing the brake or overtaking the wheel on time when I was about to do something stupid. I don't see why manual override of autonomous car should be harder. I see however, that this can easily defeat purpose of using autonomous car: if the driver must be fully concentrated all the time, be ready to react, then it is even worse than driving normal car.
  - telotortium 11y ago
    It works the same way in the US. However, in that case, the instructor is normally paying attention to the road and the student's driving, to grade them if nothing else. Usually, passengers can't be relied on for that level of attention.
  - kingnothing 11y ago
    When I took driving lessons in the US, the instructor had a brake on the passenger side but no other controls.
- chrisfosterelli 11y ago
  That's a great question, and my understanding is that the car simply doesn't ask humans to take over in that case. The "handoff" technique is primarily useful in situations where the car's confidence in the situation slowly degrades, not for sudden collision avoidance. An example would be a confusing construction area, or navigating with rocks on the road after a landslide. In these areas where road lines and signs aren't as applicable, the car needs a human driver. The human driver is so people aren't abandoning cars at the start of construction zones, not so they can step in to avoid a sudden collision. Google recently did a study and determined it takes over 5 seconds for a human to take over in a scenario, the car won't be able to expect them to handle anything that is happening quicker than that.
- dawnbreez 11y ago
  One such situation: Car detects malfunction while in an intersection. If it comes to a sudden stop, then at the least it will block the intersection, and you'll have the passengers sitting in a box in the middle of the intersection struggling to get the car going. Further, a malfunction while in the left lane of the highway would be just as dangerous. I don't even drive that much, all my commuting is done by bike. These are just a couple things I can think of off the top of my head.
- cpplinuxdude 11y ago
  > Imagine a car where the passenger's side is fully set up to drive, and with the push of a single button, the driver can swap all control to the passenger. I'm having a hard time thinking of situations where this is better than just stopping the car. I don't know about you, but when I'm a passenger in a car, I'm attentive to everything. I guess the fact I often have strong rapport with the driver (usually a family member) means we are in sync; I mean I'll literally do blind spot checks, and carry out many of the driver's visual rituals simultaneously. I think this is an interesting scenario; machines assisting men in, for example, collision avoidance systems, or in this case all the way up to self driving; and men being required to help self-driving machines in unusual situations.
- knughit 11y ago
  Drver heart attack aka computer sensor failure.
mhurron 11y ago
> The article takes the tone that this will drastically limit the technology, but honestly at this point a restriction like this seems completely reasonable. This does seem like what the first step to getting self driving cars on the road would look like.
sorryalwaysnew 11y ago
For a time, why not allow the cars in fully-autonomous mode on a restricted set of roads, even particular lanes on particular roads, at particular max speeds, marked as such so everyone, including the cars, knows what to expect? In the case of unusual construction particular routes could be temporarily disabled. This would severely curtail the number of outlier cases the software has to be ready for, be actually safe, and allow for awesome quality of life improvement for commuters on those routes who can do something else while commuting. And in the meantime, gain huge number of hours driving experience for the software, enabling the fully autonomous routes to be slowly expanded over time.
- jcrawfordor 11y ago
  The large part of the complexity of implementing self-driving cars comes from the fact that the roadway is not a fully protected space. You can find a number of examples of fully unattended automated vehicles that have been around for a while (for example, AGT people-movers that are common at airports), but they are dependent on a fully protected pathway so that they do not require very much intelligence. So what about roadways? Freeways have a certain degree of protection, but it's still not comparable with an elevated train ROW. It is certainly possible to develop roadways with a sufficient degree of protection for less sophisticated automation to be reliable, but it would be very expensive: they would need much more intensive maintenance, traffic density would have to be quite a bit more limited, they would need careful physical protection with at least fencing. In the end, I don't think that the infrastructure investment would be worth it considering that the period of time for which this infrastructure is needed will probably be quite short (in infrastructure terms).

not_that_noob 11y ago

Even though it doesn't look like it, this is actually great news since this provides a path for Google et al to get out there and build broad customer comfort around the technology. And frankly I don't ever foresee driverless cars that don't have some form of manual ovveride - there will always be situations that won't make sense to the computer that make perfect sense to me. ==== Edited to add this clarification, as people on HN seem overly ready to pick nits. ==== The larger point is that humans will be humans and will never buy a car that will interfere with their freedom to do what they think is right at that moment. And if you want a better example - maybe I want to speed to get to the hospital in an emergency. Maybe I want to block another car that's leaving the scene of a crime. You get the idea.

tomschlick 11y ago
> park in this no parking zone blocking traffic for 30 seconds while I run to get something. I think you just made an argument against manual override there...
- HeyLaughingBoy 11y ago
  ...until you learn that the reason he had to stop in a no-parking zone for 30 seconds is because it was the shortest, safest route for a severely disabled person to get into the car.
pc86 11y ago
> park in this no parking zone blocking traffic for 30 seconds while I run to get something. No? Either park legally or go without. You are literally saying to everyone else "me saving 5 minutes by not having to park is more important than whatever it is you're doing."
- not_that_noob 11y ago
  You realize it's a hypothetical right? The larger point is that humans will be humans and will never buy a car that will interfere with their freedom to do what they think is right at that moment. And if you want a better example - maybe I want to speed to get to the hospital in an emergency. Maybe I want to block another car that's leaving the scene of a crime. You get the idea.

thinkingkong 11y ago

Does the requirement need to have a control unit at all times? It would be neat to continue to make it an option but also allow the console to hide the wheel and perhaps replace it with some more fly-by-wire smaller replacement.

tomschlick 11y ago
Maybe not hands on the wheel control but I would at least want it to be a wheel that is ready to go by just grabbing it, same with the brakes. If they collapsed or folded into the dash that could lead to issues where a software glitch doesn't let you take back control and the robot overlords end you.

state 11y ago

When I read the geohot article [1] earlier I was thinking that there was no way what he was working on was legal. Would be curious to have someone with more expertise weigh in though. Does this make comma.ai [1] or cruise [2] more acceptable in the eyes of the state? 1 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10744206 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10744206 2 - http://www.getcruise.com/ http://www.getcruise.com/

Animats 11y ago
California rules (summarized): A manufacturer may conduct testing of autonomous vehicles on public roads in California if: (a) The manufacturer is conducting the testing. (b) The vehicle is operated by an autonomous vehicle test driver who is an employee ... (c) The manufacturer can cover $5M in damages via insurance, bond, etc. (d) Manufacturer’s Testing Permit from DMV. Current California permit holders: Volkswagen Group of America Mercedes Benz Google Delphi Automotive Tesla Motors Bosch Nissan Cruise Automation BMW Honda Ford

mtgx 11y ago

Sounds like a good idea for the first 10 or so years of self-driving cars. Remember, not all self-driving cars will be made by Google or Tesla. Some will even be made by the spaghetti-code-Toyota, the cheating-Volkswagen, or the we-send-updates-over-unencrypted-HTTP-BMW. It's best not to jump head-first (literally?) with this. And it's not just about the "safety" code of these self-driving cars, either. Many of them probably still won't care too much about hiring top-notch security experts in the first few years, to protect their cars against remote hacking (which could be much easier with self-driving cars if they are connected to the Internet).

donpdonp 11y ago

Its nonsensical to think a human can take over at a moment's notice during a particular maneuver. Its the threat of death/accident that makes me pay attention to every moment of driving. On autopilot I wont have that kind of attention. Its simply a trait of the human attention span. That being said, every self-driving car needs a manual override because there are plenty of situations that cant be easily explained to a computer. the override could be done with a steering wheel and gas pedal, or just a joy-stick mode on the touchscreen pad. For instance someone has a big empty lot and they want to move a car from row A to row B. The new spot is exactly 50 feet to the right. I just want to back the car up, and go forward while steering over to the right a bit. Row B has no 'street address' to program into a route-computer. I could click on a map but the map doesnt know where on the grass i want to drive. Even with lidar, etc. there are grey areas that self-driving algorithms are going to have trouble with. Drop a sheet of tissue in the path of a self-driving car moving at 60MPH. The lidar will see it as a solid object and might decide a very dangerous plan - maximum braking - is the best plan, when going through it is actually the best plan.

not_that_noob 11y ago
This already happens today with cruise control - and yes, the driver will have to be paying attention while driving, at least in this version of the rules.
- mindslight 11y ago
  Cruise control still requires one to mostly drive, and the only "moment's notice" thing a human would do with cruise control would be stomp the brake. Regardless of what any rule says, stand-by humans will not be paying attention and ready to drive. Even if reading/sleeping/daydreaming were successfully policed, the human will still be out of touch with how the car responds to controls. Think of the first time you drive after not having driven for a few months - now imagine being already moving at highway speed.
- mmanfrin 11y ago
  All cruise control does is set the speed, it is not analogous to self-driving.

joesmo 11y ago

This would be a huge setback if approved simply because once approved, such things are unlikely to change even when the time comes that human drivers will not only be unnecessary, but the most dangerous component in all situations. I understand the state's motives: liability, fear of bad press, keeping traffic cops employed (and thus the biggest avenue for random arrests), etc. but none of them justify limiting the technology simply to serve their rather short-sighted, selfish needs. At the same time, the people that could benefit most from driverless cars like the elderly, disabled, youth, etc. are shit out of luck. And all this without a single accident yet attributed to driverless cars (afaik).

jryan49 11y ago

I feel like it could be more unsafe this way. What if a human gets scared, takes control, and overreacts when the car is properly handling the situation? Might cause more accidents. EDIT: reworded sentence so it actually made sense :P

maxxxxx 11y ago
The human who drives a self driving car now should know what he's doing. These cars are prototypes now and whoever takes them to the road should be responsible.

daniel-cussen 11y ago

Brilliant idea on the DMV's behalf. I'm reminded of Douglas Adam's thought, in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, that solving a problem ("Now that it's perfectly air-conditioned,") shouldn't allow the removal of redundancy ("...you won't need to open the windows, ever."). Because the problem won't REALLY be solved in all cases, and if the driver finds he's in an ugly situation where he cannot act, there's no steering wheel to handle the convenient killing machine he's riding. Can you imagine the horror?

jack9 11y ago
> Can you imagine the horror? About the same as something falls from the sky and crushes a child. Unlikely enough that I don't waste my time thinking about it. The self-driving cars are more cautious than in all situations and ceases to be a killing machine and acts like what it is. A transport device. Even with the possibility of error, I am supremely confident that a self-driving car is more competent than the average driver. The legislation is out of touch with reality, as usual.
nulltype 11y ago
We can include an emergency bike in the trunk so you can still get where you are going.
- daniel-cussen 11y ago
  Bikes have the highest practical value of 100% computer-free objects, so this looks like a reasonable solution.

lutorm 11y ago

Maybe the cars should be required to pass a CA driver's test? If it's good enough to test a driver, why not a car?

Zikes 11y ago
This reminds me of the recent discussion about Baidu's expulsion from an image recognition competition. They submitted too frequently, causing their machine learning algorithm to solve specifically for the test, rather than for general purpose image recognition. In your proposed scenario, knowing the CA driver's test constraints, the engineers could easily (and perhaps even inadvertently) be able to design a driver AI capable of passing the test with flying colors, yet fail horribly once faced with real-world driving. That's not to say that's actually what would happen, only to say that the test would actually be rather useless to certify a self-driving car.
- uremog 11y ago
  Another win for Test Driven Development!
vinceguidry 11y ago
A bad actor could in the future simply engineer the cars around the driver's test, and not the real world. In the future, it won't just be Google / Apple / Tesla making cars.
Someone1234 11y ago
I'd hope that is the MINIMUM they would be required to pass.

abduhl 11y ago

How will this impact one of the key arguments for self-driving cars: elimination of DUIs? If a driver is required behind the wheel able to take over at a moment's notice then the self-driving car's purpose is defeated - you cannot do work while the car drives, you can't use the car as a sober ride home from the bar, you can't take a nap on your commute, etc. This is a legislated death sentence for self-driving cars as we envision them.

gkoberger 11y ago
While I agree that it defeats many of the purposes (including Uber-style services), remember that this legislation is in response to current state of self-driving cars. Once they get better, legislation can become more lax.
- abduhl 11y ago
  As a general rule of thumb, legislation never becomes more lax.
  - gkoberger 11y ago
    That's a silly thing to say. Uber and AirBnb were illegal when they launched. You couldn't use your phone on an airplane during takeoff until recently. The original speed limit for cars was "no faster than walking". With the lobbying power of Google, Tesla, Apple and all the car manufactures? It will change.
- michaelmrose 11y ago
  Actually it most likely will lag years or more likely decades behind the capability of the cars because the people that stand to profit from such rules limiting the usefulness of self driving cars.
Someone1234 11y ago
Little soon to be doomsaying. First generation self driving vehicles might have these types of limitations, but second generation? Third generation? Ten generation? It is all about building trust. Truth for the general public, and those who will be held responsible if something goes wrong. Aircraft still, to this day, have this exact system. Ask any pilot if the system is pointless simply because they have to be paying attention? It still requires less mental energy than actually driving, in particular for longer road trips where the mind wonders.

yarrel 11y ago

, servant walking 20 paces in front carrying red flag.

mindslight 11y ago

This is the exact wrong idea. Frankly, consumer-ready self-driving cars should be prohibited from changing into "manual mode" without a user request. And the manufacturer should be liable for an at-fault accident in auto-drive mode. Until these conditions can be satisfied, self-driving cars are simply not ready for prime time. The proposed rule will lead to proliferation of shoddy "99%" software designed around an expectation that a human can take over at a moment's notice. But humans don't work that way, so any such exceptional condition will likely result in a crash. The only acceptable failure procedure for a self-driving car is to stop.

dawnbreez 11y ago
See my comment above on two situations where coming to a stop is actually more dangerous. TL;DR: If the car fails while driving on a highway or crossing a busy intersection, stopping will cause a wreck.
- mindslight 11y ago
  Sure, coming to a stop is dangerous in those situations if other drivers don't react appropriately. It's not a great idea, but I also don't mean that self-driving cars should be doing such emergency stops regularly. And obviously they should do it only as an extreme last resort, when things like pulling over have failed. I still think it's more reasonable to stop either of those two places than to suddenly hand control of a car traveling 75mph to a human who hasn't driven in a year or longer. edit: concrete example: You're biking along. Would you rather A. a car in front of you come to an abrupt stop, or B. a car passing you at twice your speed be controlled by a drowsy driver who doesn't know where the edges of his car are and doesn't have a feel for how the steering wheel reacts ?
  - dawnbreez 11y ago
    A fair point. The argument really comes down to this: Is it likely that a malfunction will occur while the auto-car is closely followed by another car?

ctoth 11y ago

Welp. As a blind person who has been looking forward to self-driving vehicles since the 2004 DARPA grand challenge, this is a not totally unexpected kick in the balls.

rabboRubble 11y ago

If I have to be responsible for AI and mechanical errors, I don't want an AI driving my car. Either I want to read a book or take a nap, completely zoned out, or I want to be alert and paying attention to the road. Sitting there doing nothing bored and disengaged, not able to read a book, not actively engaged in the activity of driving, and also held responsible by the state for failures is the worst of both worlds.

mquander 11y ago
If that AI has, say, one-third the risk of accidents as I would have, then I want it driving my car even if I enjoy it slightly less.
- rabboRubble 11y ago
  It's not the I would enjoy the experience less, it's that the experience of just sitting there would render me an inattentive dullard with very poor response to a mechanical or AI failure. If I'm suppose to be responsible per California State, I need to be paying attention. Just sitting there, inactive, mile after mile, hour after hour doing nothing, maybe for months or even years at a time, I will be woefully unprepared to respond to the emergency. I actually gave up driving for 16 years then restarted when I last moved. What I found when I restarted was that, while physically I could operate the car, my decision making skills when faced with a problem were non-existent. I could see problems coming my way, but the reflexive decision making was gone. I had to relearn the decision making process. Designing the system to place responsibility on humans to take over only occasionally will ensure that the system creates catastrophic results when humans are found to be unprepared for the responsibility.

Animats 11y ago

CA DMV's position is basically "let's try it with human backup for 3 years, then re-evaluate". That's reasonable enough. Tesla may have set the field back. They released their "autopilot" as a beta, didn't provide sensors to enforce driver hands-on-wheel, shipped a system that works well only on freeways but will engage on other roads, and claimed that if it crashes, it's the driver's fault. Everybody else shipping similar capabilities (BMW, Mercedes, Cadillac, etc.) has put more restrictions on them (such as a hands-on-wheel sensor) to avoid over-reliance on the automation. Now Tesla has had to remove some features from their "autopilot".[1] Google may be able to get approval for their 25MPH max speed mini-car operating without driver hands-on-wheel, on the basis of the slow speed. Google's system is much more advanced, and has a detailed model of what everything else moving around it is doing. Expecting the human driver to take over if the automation fails will not work. The limits of human monitoring are well known from aircraft automation. It takes seconds to tens of seconds for a pilot to grasp the situation and recover properly if the autopilot disconnects in an upset situation. That's for pilots, who are selected and trained much better than drivers, and who go through elaborate simulator training in which failures are simulated. Watch "Children of the Magenta"[2], where a chief pilot at American Airlines talks to his pilots about this. [1] http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2015/12/16/tesla-to-limit-self-driving-functions.html http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2015/12/16/tesla-to-... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN41LvuSz10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN41LvuSz10

WatchDog 11y ago
Also pilots generally have much more time to respond to a automation failure. If the automation fails in a car, even a 1 second driver response could not be enough.
knughit 11y ago
Planes are more complex than cars. Drivers react to road surprises far faster than 10s, when making a decision to brake or swerve
- truncate 11y ago
  That reaction is not necessarily right, its just reflex which can produce more disastrous results than no reaction at all. Can't trust them much, particularly when I'm not fully aware of the situation around me (and I think one is unlikely to be fully aware of situation when on self-driven cars).

ars 11y ago

Most driving is fairly routine, but without strong AI I don't see how a self driving car can handle things like: There is a car accident on the side of the road, and there is a human cop waving cars one at a time to drive past on the wrong side of the road. I am part of a funeral procession, or a police escorted parade and I need to drive through red lights in order to stay in the procession. (That at least I know from the start to take manual control - except google wants a car with no wheel, and in a world with lots of such cars people won't know how to drive.) Or, there is an ambulance behind me sirens wailing and in order to get out of the way I must drive illegally for a moment (through a red light, or on the wrong side of the road). How about something as simple as driving the car up some ramps so I can service the car. How would you do that without both a steering wheel and experience in how to drive? I don't see how a self driving car can handle any of those.

cheez 11y ago
Self-driving cars should only need to handle 90% of driving tasks. For the rest, a qualified human can and should be required to take over.
- ars 11y ago
  That leaves humans without enough experience to actually know how to drive. It takes years of driving to get good at it. If people drove only 1/10 as much as now no one would ever get good at it. It's called "The Paradox of Automation" and it's a huge problem. Basically the better the Automation the less often humans do anything, but it means that when humans do have to do something it's much much more critical than usual. Which is exactly the situations the humans have no experience with since they take control so rarely. Basically some automation is good, but a lot of automation is actually detrimental to safety. For each industry you have to calculate that cutoff point and do no further automation past that point, until you are able to reach 100% perfection.