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This got me thinking, how does a police officer tell a self driving vehicle to pull over? Or do they have to pull out the road strips? Does the car just keep go

This got me thinking, how does a police officer tell a self driving vehicle to pull over? Or do they have to pull out the road strips? Does the car just keep going when it's been disabled? Do they have to do a bump turn? How do they react and get out of the way of an emergency vehicle?

fred256 10y ago
AFAIK all the self-driving cars currently on the road still have a human at the wheel to take over in cases like these.
- grogenaut 10y ago
  Seems like a big gap to getting them live on the road.
  - ____nope 10y ago
    Exactly. The biggest impediment is going to be insurance and liability. What do you think it will cost to insure a robotic driving vehicle? On whom does the liability fall in the case of an accident – the owner, or the manufacturer?
    - maxerickson 10y ago
      It will likely cost less to insure self driving systems. Especially over time. It won't get ever get drunk, it won't get tired. It will be less likely to operate a vehicle that is in disrepair, it will be less likely to operate a vehicle in weather it can't cope with. It won't be in a hurry. It won't be eating. It will learn from mistakes made by other self driving systems. It's also pretty likely that whatever framework develops to license the systems will address liability (I think by requiring the operator of record to insure the vehicle).
      - abalone 10y ago
        It is unclear how the existing insurance system will translate to a future where all liability is concentrated on the manufacturer. Currently major fatal accidents often result in bankruptcies and may even incur criminal charges. They are not fully covered by insurance. All precedent is that auto manufacturers are responsible for manufacturing defects that lead to injury or death, not the owner or driver. Even the term "operator of record" has new meaning in the fully autonomous era. Bottom line if software bugs cause injury it's the software writers that are responsible. You mention many problems with human drivers. But software has been known to have bugs too, and the world is an almost infinitely complex learning environment. It is most likely that the safer future will involve the intersection and mutual augmentation of these two control systems, not the swift replacement of one by the other. As is the case for example with aircraft.
        maxerickson 10y ago
        Currently major fatal accidents often result in bankruptcies and may even incur criminal charges. They are not fully covered by insurance. How often is the driver in those cases under insured? I also wonder how often criminal charges pop up for drivers that weren't being negligent.
        abalone 10y ago
        Even if fully insured, most policies have a limit under $100k/person. The really serious accidents result in millions of dollars in damages (especially when lawsuits are involved). What would have been isolated to a personal backruptcy is now concentrated on the autonomous auto manufacturer. As for criminal charges, the key question is whether a bad bug can constitute negligence. That will no doubt be tested in courts when lives have been lost.
        maxerickson 10y ago
        Even if fully insured, most policies have a limit under $100k/person. What does 'fully insured' mean here? A sensible approach is to have liability coverage sufficient to protect your assets. That might be a lot more coverage than the legal minimum, but a large personal umbrella policy might be hundreds of dollars a year. People go bankrupt because they skimp on insurance, not because it is onerously expensive.
    - ksdale 10y ago
      If they are really safer than human driven vehicles, then it will likely cost less to insure them than human driven vehicles. And as a higher percentage of vehicles become autonomous, the roads as a whole should get safer (assuming self driving cars are actually safer) and that will also lower insurance costs. As for liability, there is already generally strict liability when products malfunction. If the product didn't malfunction, then that would mean someone else was at fault, and the cases where there was no malfunction and no one else at fault should be rare. Regardless, there's a huge body of law out there regarding product liability. Once again, I'm assuming that autonomous vehicles deliver on the safety promises. If they become as safe as a lot of people think they can be, there will be so many fewer accidents that I don't think insurance and liability will be as big of an issue as they are now for human driven vehicles.
    - jrockway 10y ago
      Robots in safety-critical applications are not new. Who do you sue if the fire alarm in your building fails to detect a fire? Who do you sue if the railroad crossing gates don't go down when a train is coming? Who do you sue when you're walking on the sidewalk, a bicyclist yells at a cab driver, the cab driver gets flustered, jumps the curb, and amputates one of your legs? The answer is: it's complicated. That's why we have courts. We don't even have it sorted out for human drivers yet; if you kill someone with your car, you may get off without even a ticket, you may end up in prison for manslaughter. I honestly don't think robotic drivers add any complexity: there's already infinite complexity ;)
- KKKKkkkk1 10y ago
  Waymo's demo video showed a blind man traveling alone in their vehicle.
  - agildehaus 10y ago
    Their video from 2012 also showed the same man (Steve Mahan) and it also showed the car going through a Taco Bell drive thru on its own. It's going to be some time before both of them are reality.
  - dimino 10y ago
    It's a promotional video, representing what will be possible, not what is currently happening on public roads.
JshWright 10y ago
I don't believe there is any particular standard for this at the moment, and it likely on a list of special cases where the human "observer" takes over. In general though, I don't think this is something that automated vehicles will have trouble with. Picking out strobing lights is pretty trivial for computer vision, and a couple of external microphones located on opposite sides of the vehicle would have an easy time localizing the direction of sirens even before the EV is in line-of-sight. I suspect eventually there will be some sort of preemption signal that EVs will be able to transmit that communicates their intended route to vehicles in their path. I look forward to the day that I have a big ol' "get out of my way" button on the dashboard of my ambulance...
- js2 10y ago
  I look forward to the day that I have a big ol' "get out of my way" button on the dashboard of my ambulance... I think I saw a light change on demand in my hometown (Wake County, NC) for an ambulance the other day. It was late at night with minimal traffic and the light had just turned red ahead of me. The ambulance was between me and the light and the light immediately cycled back to green as the ambulance approached. I'd never seen or heard of this before, but do you know whether emergency vehicles are now able to influence traffic signals? edit: apparently so - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_signal_preemption https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_signal_preemption
  - mikeyouse 10y ago
    Yep. A few people got busted for buying/selling the devices on Ebay a couple years ago. Not so legal to mess with traffic signals to speed up your commute -- damn tempting though. One such article: https://boingboing.net/2006/04/18/man-fined-50-for-usi.html https://boingboing.net/2006/04/18/man-fined-50-for-usi.html
    - tempestn 10y ago
      Only a $50 fine! Makes it even more tempting. :P
  - 10y ago
cbhl 10y ago
The same way they should react and get out of the way of a cyclist -- building a machine learning model of a police car with its lights and sirens on, and then making sure the car pulls over in that situation.
- grogenaut 10y ago
  Sure but all the talk about cars on HN usually is about how ready for the road they are. Also I don't think police are going to be too happy about a vehicle that is going to be probabilistic about pulling over. Nor would I really be happy about that in the back of an ambulance.

fred256 10y ago

AFAIK all the self-driving cars currently on the road still have a human at the wheel to take over in cases like these.

grogenaut 10y ago
Seems like a big gap to getting them live on the road.
- ____nope 10y ago
  Exactly. The biggest impediment is going to be insurance and liability. What do you think it will cost to insure a robotic driving vehicle? On whom does the liability fall in the case of an accident – the owner, or the manufacturer?
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    It will likely cost less to insure self driving systems. Especially over time. It won't get ever get drunk, it won't get tired. It will be less likely to operate a vehicle that is in disrepair, it will be less likely to operate a vehicle in weather it can't cope with. It won't be in a hurry. It won't be eating. It will learn from mistakes made by other self driving systems. It's also pretty likely that whatever framework develops to license the systems will address liability (I think by requiring the operator of record to insure the vehicle).
    - abalone 10y ago
      It is unclear how the existing insurance system will translate to a future where all liability is concentrated on the manufacturer. Currently major fatal accidents often result in bankruptcies and may even incur criminal charges. They are not fully covered by insurance. All precedent is that auto manufacturers are responsible for manufacturing defects that lead to injury or death, not the owner or driver. Even the term "operator of record" has new meaning in the fully autonomous era. Bottom line if software bugs cause injury it's the software writers that are responsible. You mention many problems with human drivers. But software has been known to have bugs too, and the world is an almost infinitely complex learning environment. It is most likely that the safer future will involve the intersection and mutual augmentation of these two control systems, not the swift replacement of one by the other. As is the case for example with aircraft.
      - maxerickson 10y ago
        Currently major fatal accidents often result in bankruptcies and may even incur criminal charges. They are not fully covered by insurance. How often is the driver in those cases under insured? I also wonder how often criminal charges pop up for drivers that weren't being negligent.
        abalone 10y ago
        Even if fully insured, most policies have a limit under $100k/person. The really serious accidents result in millions of dollars in damages (especially when lawsuits are involved). What would have been isolated to a personal backruptcy is now concentrated on the autonomous auto manufacturer. As for criminal charges, the key question is whether a bad bug can constitute negligence. That will no doubt be tested in courts when lives have been lost.
        maxerickson 10y ago
        Even if fully insured, most policies have a limit under $100k/person. What does 'fully insured' mean here? A sensible approach is to have liability coverage sufficient to protect your assets. That might be a lot more coverage than the legal minimum, but a large personal umbrella policy might be hundreds of dollars a year. People go bankrupt because they skimp on insurance, not because it is onerously expensive.
  - ksdale 10y ago
    If they are really safer than human driven vehicles, then it will likely cost less to insure them than human driven vehicles. And as a higher percentage of vehicles become autonomous, the roads as a whole should get safer (assuming self driving cars are actually safer) and that will also lower insurance costs. As for liability, there is already generally strict liability when products malfunction. If the product didn't malfunction, then that would mean someone else was at fault, and the cases where there was no malfunction and no one else at fault should be rare. Regardless, there's a huge body of law out there regarding product liability. Once again, I'm assuming that autonomous vehicles deliver on the safety promises. If they become as safe as a lot of people think they can be, there will be so many fewer accidents that I don't think insurance and liability will be as big of an issue as they are now for human driven vehicles.
  - jrockway 10y ago
    Robots in safety-critical applications are not new. Who do you sue if the fire alarm in your building fails to detect a fire? Who do you sue if the railroad crossing gates don't go down when a train is coming? Who do you sue when you're walking on the sidewalk, a bicyclist yells at a cab driver, the cab driver gets flustered, jumps the curb, and amputates one of your legs? The answer is: it's complicated. That's why we have courts. We don't even have it sorted out for human drivers yet; if you kill someone with your car, you may get off without even a ticket, you may end up in prison for manslaughter. I honestly don't think robotic drivers add any complexity: there's already infinite complexity ;)
KKKKkkkk1 10y ago
Waymo's demo video showed a blind man traveling alone in their vehicle.
- agildehaus 10y ago
  Their video from 2012 also showed the same man (Steve Mahan) and it also showed the car going through a Taco Bell drive thru on its own. It's going to be some time before both of them are reality.
- dimino 10y ago
  It's a promotional video, representing what will be possible, not what is currently happening on public roads.

JshWright 10y ago

I don't believe there is any particular standard for this at the moment, and it likely on a list of special cases where the human "observer" takes over. In general though, I don't think this is something that automated vehicles will have trouble with. Picking out strobing lights is pretty trivial for computer vision, and a couple of external microphones located on opposite sides of the vehicle would have an easy time localizing the direction of sirens even before the EV is in line-of-sight. I suspect eventually there will be some sort of preemption signal that EVs will be able to transmit that communicates their intended route to vehicles in their path. I look forward to the day that I have a big ol' "get out of my way" button on the dashboard of my ambulance...

js2 10y ago
I look forward to the day that I have a big ol' "get out of my way" button on the dashboard of my ambulance... I think I saw a light change on demand in my hometown (Wake County, NC) for an ambulance the other day. It was late at night with minimal traffic and the light had just turned red ahead of me. The ambulance was between me and the light and the light immediately cycled back to green as the ambulance approached. I'd never seen or heard of this before, but do you know whether emergency vehicles are now able to influence traffic signals? edit: apparently so - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_signal_preemption https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_signal_preemption
- mikeyouse 10y ago
  Yep. A few people got busted for buying/selling the devices on Ebay a couple years ago. Not so legal to mess with traffic signals to speed up your commute -- damn tempting though. One such article: https://boingboing.net/2006/04/18/man-fined-50-for-usi.html https://boingboing.net/2006/04/18/man-fined-50-for-usi.html
  - tempestn 10y ago
    Only a $50 fine! Makes it even more tempting. :P
- 10y ago

cbhl 10y ago

The same way they should react and get out of the way of a cyclist -- building a machine learning model of a police car with its lights and sirens on, and then making sure the car pulls over in that situation.

grogenaut 10y ago
Sure but all the talk about cars on HN usually is about how ready for the road they are. Also I don't think police are going to be too happy about a vehicle that is going to be probabilistic about pulling over. Nor would I really be happy about that in the back of an ambulance.