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Edge. Cases. Such scenarios are rare enough that they could be handled either remotely, or not at all. The ambulance won't get through and its patient will di

Edge. Cases. Such scenarios are rare enough that they could be handled either remotely, or not at all. The ambulance won't get through and its patient will die. Tough luck. But think of the many accidents those automated cars avoided in the first place. It sucks, but it's still worth it. Also, cars don't have to be fully automated. They can still be remotely controlled, or otherwise warn their company that they should call a tow truck. My favourite example is automated trucks: you'll most likely have a central dispatch per region, with a few operators that manage 50 trucks each. Once a truck has a problem the computer can't handle, it just calls the relevant dispatch, where humans take over. Also, automated cars don't have to do better than humans in every dimensions. Safety is paramount, but resilience in the face of unusual situations is not. It is okay for the computer to get you to your destination a bit more slowly, or even not at all from time to time. Even public transportation has way less than 99% reliability for my commute to work, and I still take it.

ars 10y ago
It's ALL edge cases. Everything. The non edge case are the easy part. It's the edge cases that is hard. Saying it's fine "it's just edge cases" completely ignores the difficulty. > But think of the many accidents those automated cars avoided in the first place. It sucks, but it's still worth it. Did you read the rest of my post? Do you understand just how good the computer would have to be to have any impact at all? I have a feeling you don't. > They can still be remotely controlled No they can't. Wireless internet service is not even remotely close to good enough to make that possible. > Also, automated cars ... every dimensions. Safety is paramount This is why I say highways only. That covers that majority of the use cases, and the most dangerous part, and the easiest part. It's a triple win. The use case for city roads is basically non existent with the exception of self parking. > has way less than 99% reliability That 1% doesn't mean death. It's means slowness. That's not what I mean. The self driving car has to be basically perfect or death is the result. People very much underestimate just how good people are at driving.
- loup-vaillant 10y ago
  > It's ALL edge cases. Let's arbitrarily decide that 99.9% of driving time is made up of the "common" cases, and the rest (0.1%) is the "edge" cases. I'm pretty sure there are many more edge cases than common ones. Now let's further assume that whenever an "edge" case occurs (that would be a couple times per hours), the cars just slows down until it stops or stop being in that edge case. It's not very convenient, but I'm quite sure it is rather safe. > Do you understand just how good the computer would have to be to have any impact at all? From what I have gathered, computers are already good enough to work on sunny roads with few surprises. Including towns. Or maybe the google cars don't work as well as I though they did? I wonder how many times the human had to push the emergency shutdown button in their tests. > No they can't. Wireless internet service is not even remotely close to good enough to make that possible. Just use a regular cell phone, and communicate through the speakers. 56kb/s is more than enough bandwidth (space stuff like the Mars rover use way less bandwidth than that, and suffer from way more latency). > The self driving car has to be basically perfect or death is the result. We don't need computers to be perfectly safe. We need them to be safer than humans. If automated cars kill on average half as many people as humans do, that's already a huge win. Not enough to stop there of course, but more than enough to switch. Besides, I believe that abiding the traffic code and slamming the brakes whenever something goes wrong is not hard, and already safer than human driving (which take chances, speeds, rides too close to other cars…). Bugs on the other hand may prove most problematic (see Toyota's unintended accelerations). We may need Nasa like processes to ship that code on the road.

ars 10y ago

It's ALL edge cases. Everything. The non edge case are the easy part. It's the edge cases that is hard. Saying it's fine "it's just edge cases" completely ignores the difficulty. > But think of the many accidents those automated cars avoided in the first place. It sucks, but it's still worth it. Did you read the rest of my post? Do you understand just how good the computer would have to be to have any impact at all? I have a feeling you don't. > They can still be remotely controlled No they can't. Wireless internet service is not even remotely close to good enough to make that possible. > Also, automated cars ... every dimensions. Safety is paramount This is why I say highways only. That covers that majority of the use cases, and the most dangerous part, and the easiest part. It's a triple win. The use case for city roads is basically non existent with the exception of self parking. > has way less than 99% reliability That 1% doesn't mean death. It's means slowness. That's not what I mean. The self driving car has to be basically perfect or death is the result. People very much underestimate just how good people are at driving.

loup-vaillant 10y ago
> It's ALL edge cases. Let's arbitrarily decide that 99.9% of driving time is made up of the "common" cases, and the rest (0.1%) is the "edge" cases. I'm pretty sure there are many more edge cases than common ones. Now let's further assume that whenever an "edge" case occurs (that would be a couple times per hours), the cars just slows down until it stops or stop being in that edge case. It's not very convenient, but I'm quite sure it is rather safe. > Do you understand just how good the computer would have to be to have any impact at all? From what I have gathered, computers are already good enough to work on sunny roads with few surprises. Including towns. Or maybe the google cars don't work as well as I though they did? I wonder how many times the human had to push the emergency shutdown button in their tests. > No they can't. Wireless internet service is not even remotely close to good enough to make that possible. Just use a regular cell phone, and communicate through the speakers. 56kb/s is more than enough bandwidth (space stuff like the Mars rover use way less bandwidth than that, and suffer from way more latency). > The self driving car has to be basically perfect or death is the result. We don't need computers to be perfectly safe. We need them to be safer than humans. If automated cars kill on average half as many people as humans do, that's already a huge win. Not enough to stop there of course, but more than enough to switch. Besides, I believe that abiding the traffic code and slamming the brakes whenever something goes wrong is not hard, and already safer than human driving (which take chances, speeds, rides too close to other cars…). Bugs on the other hand may prove most problematic (see Toyota's unintended accelerations). We may need Nasa like processes to ship that code on the road.