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Self-driving car needs to adapt to the world; if police need a special device to communicate with the car, the car is unsafe and should be banned from public ro
by massysett 10y ago
Self-driving car needs to adapt to the world; if police need a special device to communicate with the car, the car is unsafe and should be banned from public roads.
- rwmj 10y agoSo the enormous benefits of self-driving cars (many saved lives, mobility for people who cannot drive, reduced costs) should be prevented because we cannot equip police with a few radio transmitters? -- Assuming that is even needed, because Waymo's cars can recognize gestures made by cyclists already, so it's hardly a stretch to imagine them recognizing gestures made by policemen.
- landryraccoon 10y agoIt think it's more pragmatic than that. If Kansas doesn't want to equip their police with transmitters, then transmitters simply won't happen. It's a political problem which is much thornier than technical problems. I'm sure you could already apply that rubric today : If only government agency X would implement simple technology Y, everyone's life would be easier. In the real world, that fails to happen all the time. Self driving cars are probably just going to have to recognize hand signals. That's simply the reality.
- massysett 10y agoIt's not just a matter of equipping police. Police are not the only people who occasionally need to make gestures that need to be recognized by cars: think construction workers in a crowded city, parking lot attendants, or anyone at the scene of an accident. The car needs to be able to communicate with people outside of it, or it needs to have a human inside who can drive it.
- iak8god 10y agoBecause I don't want my car stopping when a panhandler/hitchhiker/etc is trying to wave me down, this is actually a much more complicated problem than simply recognizing gestures.
- mikeash 10y agoFortunately, recognizing hand gestures can be done.