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Yes, but this system seems to be worse than my driving. For instance, I wouldn't have hit the back of that goddamn truck.

by hugh3 17y ago

ugh 17y ago
How do you come to that conclusion? With the information we have it seems to me that this system can’t make your driving any worse. It’s a emergency system, it’s supposed to only kick in when you already failed. It too failed in this case, but that only means that with or without the system, sometimes you are dead either way. This system doesn’t even want to be autonomous which means that if the worst thing is does is flat out fail (and not, say, misfire) it’s no better but more importantly also no worse than a car without the system.
- tomjen3 17y ago
  I theory you are right, but I fear that drivers don't pay so much attention to their driving, since "after all the computer will do it for me". There has been a fascinating linked posted a couple of times to a story about a guy who worked on the London road system: each time he would clear out congestion issues, more cars would go on the road - which meant that the average speed didn't change. He argued (or the article did, can't seem to recall whom) that people had a specific level of risk they were prepared to accept: make it safer than that, and people drove less safely.
  - MikeCapone 17y ago
    > He argued (or the article did, can't seem to recall whom) that people had a specific level of risk they were prepared to accept: make it safer than that, and people drove less safely. Tom Vanderbilt also writes about this in his book "Traffic". I recommend it to anyone interested in the psychology of driving and road design.
- hugh3 17y ago
  I worry that if it's buggy enough to get false negatives (not braking when it should) then it might also get false positives (slamming on the brakes when it shouldn't). Maybe one day I'll have a car with a system like this, but I'd want to see it get quite a few years' real-world testing before I'd trust it to slam on my brakes whenever it felt like it.
  - chc 17y ago
    That's illogical. We could design a system that works exactly like brakes do now — never engaging on their own — and it would get an enormous number of false negatives. By your logic, it probably gets a lot of false positives too. In general, false negatives aren't a sign that the system is buggy, but that a heuristic is tuned to avoid false positives. Also, this wasn't a false negative — the system wasn't turned on in the first place.

Yes, but this system seems to be worse than my driving. For instance, I wouldn't have hit the back of that goddamn truck.

by hugh3 17y ago

Yes, but this system seems to be worse than my driving. For instance, I wouldn't have hit the back of that goddamn truck.

ugh 17y ago

How do you come to that conclusion? With the information we have it seems to me that this system can’t make your driving any worse. It’s a emergency system, it’s supposed to only kick in when you already failed. It too failed in this case, but that only means that with or without the system, sometimes you are dead either way. This system doesn’t even want to be autonomous which means that if the worst thing is does is flat out fail (and not, say, misfire) it’s no better but more importantly also no worse than a car without the system.

tomjen3 17y ago
I theory you are right, but I fear that drivers don't pay so much attention to their driving, since "after all the computer will do it for me". There has been a fascinating linked posted a couple of times to a story about a guy who worked on the London road system: each time he would clear out congestion issues, more cars would go on the road - which meant that the average speed didn't change. He argued (or the article did, can't seem to recall whom) that people had a specific level of risk they were prepared to accept: make it safer than that, and people drove less safely.
- MikeCapone 17y ago
  > He argued (or the article did, can't seem to recall whom) that people had a specific level of risk they were prepared to accept: make it safer than that, and people drove less safely. Tom Vanderbilt also writes about this in his book "Traffic". I recommend it to anyone interested in the psychology of driving and road design.
hugh3 17y ago
I worry that if it's buggy enough to get false negatives (not braking when it should) then it might also get false positives (slamming on the brakes when it shouldn't). Maybe one day I'll have a car with a system like this, but I'd want to see it get quite a few years' real-world testing before I'd trust it to slam on my brakes whenever it felt like it.
- chc 17y ago
  That's illogical. We could design a system that works exactly like brakes do now — never engaging on their own — and it would get an enormous number of false negatives. By your logic, it probably gets a lot of false positives too. In general, false negatives aren't a sign that the system is buggy, but that a heuristic is tuned to avoid false positives. Also, this wasn't a false negative — the system wasn't turned on in the first place.