8 ms·

The Pennsylvania Turnpike crash is disturbing, because it's the case the "autopilot" is supposed to handle - divided limited-access highway under good condition

The Pennsylvania Turnpike crash is disturbing, because it's the case the "autopilot" is supposed to handle - divided limited-access highway under good conditions. The vehicle hit a guard rail on the side of the road. That may have been an system failure. Too soon to tell. This is the one I'm very interested to hear more about. From what I've heard, Tesla's self-driving is very aggressive in swerving to avoid obstacles -- was hitting the guard rail the result of a deliberate swerve, and if yes then was there a logic error, a sensor error, or in fact a legitimate reason to swerve?

wyldfire 10y ago
> or in fact a legitimate reason to swerve? Reasoning about what's legitimate can be a really fine line. Oncoming car, raccoon, fawn, human, doe, coyote, elk: some of these obstacles might actually be net-safer to not swerve around [perhaps depending on speed]. I'd be really curious if any of the autopilots have a value system that tries to minimize damage/loss of life. And how does it value the exterior obstacle against the passengers in the car?
- laksjd 10y ago
  Such a value system would be a nightmarish thing so I hope that it doesn't exist yet. Just imagine your car calculating that it should let you die in order to save a group of school children... except that the school children were in fact a bunch of sheep that the system mis-identified. The danger of AI isn't in paperclip optimizers (at least for now), it's in humans over-relying on machine learning systems.
  - esteth 10y ago
    I think such a value system is fine in as much as it preserves the safety of the driver. I'd like my car to make value judgements about what's safer - braking and colliding with an object or swerving to avoid it. I'd rather it brakes and collides with a child than swerve into oncoming traffic, but I'd rather it swerved into oncoming traffic to avoid a truck that would otherwise T-bone me. As long as the system only acts in the best interest of it's passengers, not the general public, it's fine by me.
    - Twisell 10y ago
      http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/self-driving-car-ethics http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/self-driving-car-ethics
    - kozak 10y ago
      It's fine for you until you step outside the car.
    - vacri 10y ago
      The moral choice is the opposite direction: the car should prefer to kill the occupant than a bystander. The occupant is the reason why the car is in use; if it fails, the penalty for that failure should be on the occupant, not bystanders.
      - pc86 10y ago
        This is a great argument if your goal is no autonomous cars. Nobody buys a car that will choose to kill them.
        jessaustin 10y ago
        Society will not tolerate a robocar that cheerfully kills our children to avoid some inconvenience to its occupants. One might think that we're not talking about inconvenience, but we are, because after all any car may be driven slowly enough to avoid killing children in the road. A particular robocar that is not driven that slowly (which, frankly, would be all useful robocars), must avoid killing children in the road above all other priorities, including the lives of passengers. A VW-like situation in which this were discovered not to be the case, would involve far more dire consequences for the company (and, realistically, the young children and grandchildren of its executives) than VW faces for its pollution shenanigans.
        vacri 10y ago
        Why would I want to be in a society where every other driver has a car that would act in the interests of it's occupants and not the general public?
- taejo 10y ago
  In some countries it's illegal to swerve to avoid an animal. I assume this means that they've judged it safer not to swerve.
  - qbrass 10y ago
    It usually means if you swerve and cause an accident, it's your fault and you can't blame it on the animal jumping out in front of you.
    - Too 10y ago
      Probably because it would be impossible to prove that there was an animal there at that time.
      - brokenmachine 10y ago
        Many cars have dashcams now, especially Teslas. But definitely the law could, and probably is, out of touch.
  - pluma 10y ago
    Technically the swerving itself is not necessarily illegal, but it makes you liable for anything that could have been avoided by not swerving. If you swerve on a free and open road and don't cause any damage or injury to anything or anyone (including yourself and your car), it's not like you will still be dragged to court just because you didn't want to unnecessarily run over someone's pet.
- easytiger 10y ago
  > obstacles might actually be net-safer to not swerve around In the UK its illegal to swerve for these things. In the sense that if you subsequently cause an accident for swerving to avoid a cat, you are at fault.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - eropple 10y ago
    Wait, it's illegal to swerve for a moose (TIL: moose are called elk in Europe, American elk are totally different) in the UK? Hitting a moose is a fast route to the grave.
    - vacri 10y ago
      I guess that they can let the courts set precedence when the UK has it's first moose-on-road-based collision...
    - pjc50 10y ago
      There are no moose in the UK. There's the occasional deer on the road, and parts of the country with unfenced sheep grazing, but no moose. Common sense will be applied and liability is not strict nor is it a criminal offence per se. https://www.clarkewillmott.com/personal-injury-and-medical-negligence/accidents-involving-animals/ https://www.clarkewillmott.com/personal-injury-and-medical-n...
      - eropple 10y ago
        Hitting a deer or a sheep in most cars has a pretty good chance of getting you killed in a coupe or a sedan.
  - protomyth 10y ago
    How about cows?
- ekidd 10y ago
  > elk I'm pretty sure that hitting a full-grown elk is a poor choice, and often a fatal one. A large, full-grown elk can weigh 600 pounds and stand 5 feet tall at the shoulder, which means it will probably go over the crumple zone and directly strike the windshield. This happens commonly with moose in New England, which run up to 800 pounds and 6.5 feet tall at the shoulder. A car will knock their legs out from under them but the body mass strikes much higher and does an alarming amount of damage to the passenger compartment. You can Google "moose car accident" and find some rather bloody photos. The standard local advice is to try really hard to avoid hitting moose, even at the cost of swerving. I would prefer that an autopilot apply a similar rule to large elk. Even if you wind up striking another obstacle, you at least have a better chance of being able to use your crumple zone to reduce the impact.
  - dsfyu404ed 10y ago
    The cost of swerving is very, very minimal (especially in a modern car that won't go sideways no matter what you do). Imagine a two lane road with a car traveling toward an obstruction in its lane. The distance required to get the car out of the obstructed lane via the steering wheel is much less than stopping it via the brakes. There's a reason performance driving has the concept of brakes being an aid to your steering wheel as opposed to being operated as a standalone system.
  - jessaustin 10y ago
    In this situation, small-to-normal passenger cars are actually much safer than typical American trucks and SUVs. When the legs are taken, the mass of the body strikes the roof of the lower vehicle and bounces over the top. The larger vehicles direct the body through the windshield into the passenger compartment. I'm not sure about moose, but with more nimble animals, swerving is no guarantee of avoiding collision. A deer can change direction quicker than an automobile, and if it had any sense, it wouldn't be running across the road in the first place. It's definitely safer to slow down and honk your horn than it is to try to guess which direction the damn thing will jump. [EDIT:] When I was learning to drive, my father often recounted the story of a hapless acquaintance who, in swerving to avoid a snake, had precipitated a loss of control that killed her infant child. He's not a big fan of swerving for animals.
jacquesm 10y ago
You'd hope the system has sensor, video and audio logs and some kind of black box arrangement to at least get the maximum value in terms of information out of those crashes that do happen. If so it should be possible to get a real answer to your question.

wyldfire 10y ago

> or in fact a legitimate reason to swerve? Reasoning about what's legitimate can be a really fine line. Oncoming car, raccoon, fawn, human, doe, coyote, elk: some of these obstacles might actually be net-safer to not swerve around [perhaps depending on speed]. I'd be really curious if any of the autopilots have a value system that tries to minimize damage/loss of life. And how does it value the exterior obstacle against the passengers in the car?

laksjd 10y ago
Such a value system would be a nightmarish thing so I hope that it doesn't exist yet. Just imagine your car calculating that it should let you die in order to save a group of school children... except that the school children were in fact a bunch of sheep that the system mis-identified. The danger of AI isn't in paperclip optimizers (at least for now), it's in humans over-relying on machine learning systems.
- esteth 10y ago
  I think such a value system is fine in as much as it preserves the safety of the driver. I'd like my car to make value judgements about what's safer - braking and colliding with an object or swerving to avoid it. I'd rather it brakes and collides with a child than swerve into oncoming traffic, but I'd rather it swerved into oncoming traffic to avoid a truck that would otherwise T-bone me. As long as the system only acts in the best interest of it's passengers, not the general public, it's fine by me.
  - Twisell 10y ago
    http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/self-driving-car-ethics http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/self-driving-car-ethics
  - kozak 10y ago
    It's fine for you until you step outside the car.
  - vacri 10y ago
    The moral choice is the opposite direction: the car should prefer to kill the occupant than a bystander. The occupant is the reason why the car is in use; if it fails, the penalty for that failure should be on the occupant, not bystanders.
    - pc86 10y ago
      This is a great argument if your goal is no autonomous cars. Nobody buys a car that will choose to kill them.
      - jessaustin 10y ago
        Society will not tolerate a robocar that cheerfully kills our children to avoid some inconvenience to its occupants. One might think that we're not talking about inconvenience, but we are, because after all any car may be driven slowly enough to avoid killing children in the road. A particular robocar that is not driven that slowly (which, frankly, would be all useful robocars), must avoid killing children in the road above all other priorities, including the lives of passengers. A VW-like situation in which this were discovered not to be the case, would involve far more dire consequences for the company (and, realistically, the young children and grandchildren of its executives) than VW faces for its pollution shenanigans.
      - vacri 10y ago
        Why would I want to be in a society where every other driver has a car that would act in the interests of it's occupants and not the general public?
taejo 10y ago
In some countries it's illegal to swerve to avoid an animal. I assume this means that they've judged it safer not to swerve.
- qbrass 10y ago
  It usually means if you swerve and cause an accident, it's your fault and you can't blame it on the animal jumping out in front of you.
  - Too 10y ago
    Probably because it would be impossible to prove that there was an animal there at that time.
    - brokenmachine 10y ago
      Many cars have dashcams now, especially Teslas. But definitely the law could, and probably is, out of touch.
- pluma 10y ago
  Technically the swerving itself is not necessarily illegal, but it makes you liable for anything that could have been avoided by not swerving. If you swerve on a free and open road and don't cause any damage or injury to anything or anyone (including yourself and your car), it's not like you will still be dragged to court just because you didn't want to unnecessarily run over someone's pet.
easytiger 10y ago
> obstacles might actually be net-safer to not swerve around In the UK its illegal to swerve for these things. In the sense that if you subsequently cause an accident for swerving to avoid a cat, you are at fault.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- eropple 10y ago
  Wait, it's illegal to swerve for a moose (TIL: moose are called elk in Europe, American elk are totally different) in the UK? Hitting a moose is a fast route to the grave.
  - vacri 10y ago
    I guess that they can let the courts set precedence when the UK has it's first moose-on-road-based collision...
  - pjc50 10y ago
    There are no moose in the UK. There's the occasional deer on the road, and parts of the country with unfenced sheep grazing, but no moose. Common sense will be applied and liability is not strict nor is it a criminal offence per se. https://www.clarkewillmott.com/personal-injury-and-medical-negligence/accidents-involving-animals/ https://www.clarkewillmott.com/personal-injury-and-medical-n...
    - eropple 10y ago
      Hitting a deer or a sheep in most cars has a pretty good chance of getting you killed in a coupe or a sedan.
- protomyth 10y ago
  How about cows?
ekidd 10y ago
> elk I'm pretty sure that hitting a full-grown elk is a poor choice, and often a fatal one. A large, full-grown elk can weigh 600 pounds and stand 5 feet tall at the shoulder, which means it will probably go over the crumple zone and directly strike the windshield. This happens commonly with moose in New England, which run up to 800 pounds and 6.5 feet tall at the shoulder. A car will knock their legs out from under them but the body mass strikes much higher and does an alarming amount of damage to the passenger compartment. You can Google "moose car accident" and find some rather bloody photos. The standard local advice is to try really hard to avoid hitting moose, even at the cost of swerving. I would prefer that an autopilot apply a similar rule to large elk. Even if you wind up striking another obstacle, you at least have a better chance of being able to use your crumple zone to reduce the impact.
- dsfyu404ed 10y ago
  The cost of swerving is very, very minimal (especially in a modern car that won't go sideways no matter what you do). Imagine a two lane road with a car traveling toward an obstruction in its lane. The distance required to get the car out of the obstructed lane via the steering wheel is much less than stopping it via the brakes. There's a reason performance driving has the concept of brakes being an aid to your steering wheel as opposed to being operated as a standalone system.
- jessaustin 10y ago
  In this situation, small-to-normal passenger cars are actually much safer than typical American trucks and SUVs. When the legs are taken, the mass of the body strikes the roof of the lower vehicle and bounces over the top. The larger vehicles direct the body through the windshield into the passenger compartment. I'm not sure about moose, but with more nimble animals, swerving is no guarantee of avoiding collision. A deer can change direction quicker than an automobile, and if it had any sense, it wouldn't be running across the road in the first place. It's definitely safer to slow down and honk your horn than it is to try to guess which direction the damn thing will jump. [EDIT:] When I was learning to drive, my father often recounted the story of a hapless acquaintance who, in swerving to avoid a snake, had precipitated a loss of control that killed her infant child. He's not a big fan of swerving for animals.

jacquesm 10y ago

You'd hope the system has sensor, video and audio logs and some kind of black box arrangement to at least get the maximum value in terms of information out of those crashes that do happen. If so it should be possible to get a real answer to your question.