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Driverless shuttle in Las Vegas gets in fender bender within an hour

117 points by watchdogtimer 9y ago

gvb 9y ago
It has no horn?! "What Makes for a Street Legal Vehicle?" Horn – It may not seem the most important piece of safety equipment, and many big cities even limit how it can be used, but to be street legal every vehicle must have a horn that is audible for at least 200 feet. The horn can generally be any note or sound (even ones that play musical tunes are usually permitted), so long as the minimum volume requirements are met. Ref: https://www.hg.org/article.asp?id=31563 https://www.hg.org/article.asp?id=31563
- ajnin 9y ago
  Maybe it has one. It just wasn't programmed to use it.
  - jacobush 9y ago
    If a tree falls in the forest? Did it really have a horn then?
    - dijit 9y ago
      Not sure why the downvotes, this is a very good point. If a requirement for being street legal is having a horn then the assumption is that the driver has the ability to press the horn. (like having a condom sitting on a shelf, it's not effective if not used). Not programming the car to use the horn is basically the same as not making a button in the cabin which can activate the horn for a human driver. In that case it would be not road legal.
      - lmm 9y ago
        > Not programming the car to use the horn is basically the same as not making a button in the cabin which can activate the horn for a human driver. In that case it would be not road legal. Isn't it more akin to having a working horn but a driver who never presses it? Would a human driver ever be prosecuted for not using their horn?
        CydeWeys 9y ago
        The difference is, though, that the human driver is always capable of pressing it, and you have no way of proving that they certifiably never do in any situation. If a self-driving car isn't programmed to ever use the horn, though, then that's a different situation. It's easy to prove that it can't ever use the horn because it isn't programmed to do so. That's more akin to a normal car having a horn in it that isn't wired up.
        lmm 9y ago
        > The difference is, though, that the human driver is always capable of pressing it, and you have no way of proving that they certifiably never do in any situation. Why should that make a difference though? Imagine e.g. a truck backed into a car when the (human) driver didn't press the horn. Is the car driver liable? Whether the driver might have pressed the horn under other circumstances doesn't seem like it has any bearing on that question. We're judged on what we did, not what we might have done - shouldn't it be the same for the software?
        Piskvorrr 9y ago
        Not quite. We're also judged on intent: "why didn't the driver press the horn? Was it because he was busy not-driving-into something else, because he was busy texting, or because the horn was not connected to the button?". If we were judged only on did/didn't, law would be a straightforward and uninteresting field of human endeavor.
        dsfyu404ed 9y ago
        >Whether the driver might have pressed the horn under other circumstances doesn't seem like it has any bearing on that question Replace that with some other subsystem that is practically necessary for safe operation in a commonly encountered subset of driving situation requires manual activation and we require vehicles to have. Lights, wipers, brakes, seatbelts, defrost, etc. See the problem?
        9y ago
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  So, are they going to take the driver to court? Sarcasm aside, who is deemed to be in control, who do you sue for the damage if this vehicle crashes in to you - isn't it the manufacturer that causes the crash (not in this case necessarily, I'm talking generally).
  - ams6110 9y ago
    > who do you sue for the damage if this vehicle crashes in to you Generally, the owner of the at-fault vehicle is responsible.
    - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
      I own my vehicle, if you drive it and cause an accident aren't you primarily at fault. Assuming normal circumstances (so not considering things like me letting a child drive, or letting you drive drunk, etc.). The person/persons in control of the vehicle are surely at fault - being the owner doesn't give you power to alter the programming and so you are powerless to avoid a crash. The company directors, who instruct the system's programmers, are the one's able to avoid the crash by making the vehicle operate effectively. There may be circumstance where a crash could not be avoided but there are going to be plenty when alternative actions - for which there is a strong rationale - would avoid a crash too.
      - icebraining 9y ago
        I agree, it should be considered a part with a manufacturing defect, not the owner's fault.
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      > Generally, the owner of the at-fault vehicle is responsible. Generally, the driver is at fault and liable if the driver violated a traffic law; if the accident resulted from a manufacturing defect, the manufacturer is (and potentially other participants in the stream of commerce are) liable. The owner, as distinct from the driver, may be liable in certain cases, such as (IIRC) maintenance problems. The absence of a driver reduces the difficulty of ascribing liability by reducing the possibilities.
michaelbuckbee 9y ago
Saved a click: it stopped. A human controlled truck did not and grazed the SDV.
- radiorental 9y ago
  Could be a bit more involved than that. The Machine acted in a way that was not expected by the human driver. This gets to a fundamental issue we will have in the transition to the utopian driverless future. Learning to identify and react to this new class of driver.
  - mannykannot 9y ago
    I am not sure that the truck driver had any expectations, as he acted as if he had not seen the shuttle. The article sneers that "surely this situation is not so rare that the shuttle’s designers did not allow for it?", but of course it is not that simple - there are a great many cases in everyday driving where the projected motion of the vehicles would lead to a collision if nothing was done to stop it, and so it is clearly infeasible to react to all such situations as if nothing else will be done. The passengers of the shuttle recognized the impending collision because they understood that the truck driver had probably not seen the shuttle. Approximating these applications of our theory of mind is probably the hardest part about automated driving.
  - spyspy 9y ago
    Really moving the goal post here. Apparently _drive safely_ is an "unexpected" behavior.
    - agumonkey 9y ago
      next: following the law should be illegal
    - jacobush 9y ago
      Was it driving safely, then?
unityByFreedom 9y ago
So the shuttle stayed still while a truck backed into it. Apparently, simply having the ability to stop does not make a self driving car better than a human. It should evade, or at least honk.
- gonyea 9y ago
  On the flip side, attempting to evade situations can cause greater catastrophe. I’d rather they wire up the horn and call it done.
  - rmah 9y ago
    I'd rather that the software sense it's surroundings and make an assessment of risk for various possible actions. In this case, backing up a bit since there was no one behind it would have been the safest option.
    - deleted 9y ago
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    - radix07 9y ago
      And what if the truck keeps backing into it? Does the car just keep avoiding it forever? When is the truck driver expected to take responsibility for doing something technically illegal.
rjmunro 9y ago
"Truck reverses into stationary object" is not really news. I think there are too many possible risks of programming the vehicle to do anything except stop dead in an emergency situation - you rapidly get into very complex programming with all kinds of failure modes - e.g. what if the problem was a faulty sensor? The vehicle might try to avoid a non-existent threat by crashing into something else. Stopping is the safe thing to do. If you want to react, you rapidly have to make lots of moral decisions like (The Trolley Problem). Briefly sounding a horn in an unexpected emergency stop situation is probably a good idea, particularly if it's a white noise type thing, rather than a siren, so that other road users can localise it's source quickly.
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  A horn needs to be a horn, add a white noise generator too, but the recognised noise and the one people are "programmed" to react to is a car horn. Aside: emergency vehicles in the UK have stopped using the broad-band noise sirens AFAICT, I don't know why but the reason may be pertinent to any attempts to use it here? Actually, they often ride without the siren at all, which is completely ridiculous to me; they put it on at the junction meaning there's no time to get out of the way, if they used it continually you can hear them coming.
  - mathw 9y ago
    They're trained to look ahead, anticipate and adapt to the road conditions, judging when they need the siren and when they don't. This is important in built-up areas, because there's no gain in waking up people at 2am when you didn't actually need a siren to proceed safely. When they're putting it on at a junction and you're already in it, they're not expecting you to magically disappear out of their way. They're expecting you to look at where they're going and stay out of their path. This might involve proceeding as you were going to in order to clear it for them. What they really want is to stop anybody else from entering it until they've got through.
    - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
      Here, UK, they don't put it on at all during the day, travelling through built up areas, particularly Ambulances it seems. When the sirens are used it's great because you can tell what road they're coming along (after a while, it was much better with the "squelch" sirens) and anticipate in good time. Agreed, waking everyone at 2am is not needed generally, but howabout alerting people at 3pm. You appear to have inside knowledge here, presumably there's been some change in policy on this in the last - I don't know - 5 years, where it's been chosen during normal daytime callouts not to use sirens if at all possible?
crazygringo 9y ago
This feels like a really tricky question, actually -- what to do when an moving object is headed towards a stopped self-driving car? It's easy to say the car should be smart enough to move -- but what if, as it moves in one direction, the object (like a truck trying to avoid the car) suddenly swerves in that direction too? Then does the car become responsible for the collision? And of course, it feels like there could be a real-world version of the trolley problem [1] -- what if there are 5 occupants in the vehicle who will be killed by an oncoming truck, but in the only direction where it can move out of the way, it will have to run over a single pedestrian? Glad I'm not the one having to make these kinds of programming decisions. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem
- dzdt 9y ago
  Honk!
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- maxerickson 9y ago
  It can't know that the truck is going to kill the 5 passengers so it can't take aggressive preventative action, it has to do the conservative thing, which is to move as much out of the way of the truck as is possible without hitting an object.
- CydeWeys 9y ago
  Lay on the horn for starters. That's what I've done in a similar situation and it worked. Also, just back up a bit (also done that). It's not hard for a person or a self-driving car to ascertain that you're gonna get hit if you stay where you are but that if you back up a little bit while honking you buy yourself more room.
- Cthulhu_ 9y ago
noonespecial 9y ago
These crashes seem to be caused by the "weird" way self-driving machines behave as compared to humans. Perhaps we need some sort of placard that is legally mandated and easily visible (like the "student driver" placard) to let people around these vehicles be aware of them and expect different behaviors than "ordinary" divers.
- Cthulhu_ 9y ago
  I'm fairly sure this car in particular was designed and lettered obviously enough to draw the attention at least.
- Harvey-Specter 9y ago
  What's weird about the actions of the self-driving vehicle in this case? It detected that a truck was backing into it's path, and stopped in an attempt to prevent a collision. The truck driver didn't properly check his mirrors and continue backing up which resulted in the truck 'grazing' the front bumper of the car. What exactly is a human supposed to do differently in that situation? Attempt to continue driving straight and potentially end up being t-boned by the truck instead? Also, this vehicle looks super weird already. If the truck driver didn't see it, a 'placard' isn't going to make it more noticeable.
  - friedButter 9y ago
    >What exactly is a human supposed to do differently in that situation? Attempt to continue driving straight and potentially end up being t-boned by the truck instead? Honk
BanzaiTokyo 9y ago
it will be impossible to park another car close to a self driving vehicle - it will always move away.
- dominotw 9y ago
  can't wait to bully a self driving car for a parking spot :).
throw2016 9y ago
Surely something as basic as typical traffic patterns in a town have been simulated? Because a vehicle coming onto you seems to be as basic and mundane an everyday traffic event as you will get. It's in self driving proponents own best interest to have stringent standards, because if the public loses faith its going to be an uphill battle. Simply demonizing human drivers and hand waving away errors is too self serving to work.
Overtonwindow 9y ago
Not only does it not seem to have a horn, but it can't back up... I think those might be features the engineers should explore.
- radix07 9y ago
  To what end should a self driving vehicle back up or avoid a collision? You could essentially hijack a self driving car by boxing it in if it avoided all obstacles and impacts. Stopping seems to be the normal and best reaction to these sorts of illegal actions. At some point the driver in the wrong will need to take responsibility for doing something illegal.
  - filesystem 9y ago
    Have you ever seen a car try to go through a yellow light, it turns red just a hair too soon, and the car decides to hit the breaks. Often times the car ends up well into the intersection and they have to back up, forcing the cars behind them to do so as well. I’m not defending the action of that driver who ends up in the intersection - they are obviously in the wrong. However, having a car stopped in the middle of the intersection is a dangerous situation, the other human drivers recognize that and reluctantly back up. Driverless software must recognize situations like this and adapt in order to win the future. We will not go from manually operated cars to 100% driverless cars overnight. They will have to prove their worth and/or superiority alongside human drivers for a long time.
    - radix07 9y ago
      I have been on both ends of this situation, hitting a car behind me while trying evade a car backing into me and I have been backed into while stationary at a light and not having time to respond. In the end it's best not to try to back into traffic regardless. You just can't depend on traffic behind you to back up, especially if it is human driven, why would we expect an automated car to? It's not the responsibility of vehicles behind that car in the intersection to fix things, human or otherwise. You could also argue that a self driving car wouldn't be going as fast behind a car chasing a yellow light and could allow more room to handle this situation before it gets to that point.
honknow 9y ago
Make it honk!!!
upofadown 9y ago
Hard to judge this without seeing it. A human driver might of been able to anticipate what the truck was eventually going to do sooner so as to find a better place to stop. A human driver understands the difference between a truck backing blind and other vehicles.
exabrial 9y ago
I have another question, how does the vehicle detect that it was in a collision? Does it have impact sensors?
forapurpose 9y ago
> A City of Las Vegas representative issued a statement that the shuttle “did what it was supposed to do, in that its sensors registered the truck and the shuttle stopped to avoid the accident.” It also claims, lamely, that “Had the truck had the same sensing equipment that the shuttle has the accident would have been avoided.” Note a subtle shift, with government now shilling for the driverless vehicles. That's the first time I've seen it; I suspect it won't be the last.
blhack 9y ago
A semi truck backed into it. If anything this just highlights to me how much commercial vehicles need self driving tech (I guess I, lamely, agree with the mayor). My office used to be in an industrial district. The trucks there scare me. They absolutely do not follow the rules of the road, and it's dangerous for everybody around them. Stuff like this: just backing up and expecting everybody to move out of their way, or taking a turn too tight and expecting everybody at the light to back up, were almost daily occurrences. Yeah, self drivers need to account for this, but the bigger problem IMHO is getting those trucks and their drivers either off of the road or in compliance with driving laws.
Digory 9y ago
I'd say the shuttle's insurer should be partly responsible here. The Engadget article seems to show the shuttle stopping in the truck's blindspot.[0] A reasonable truck driver would assume the driver of the other car would back up a little bit. But in this case, the car stopped where the truck couldn't see whether it was backing up or not, and wasn't programmed to understand the truck's movements at this angle. So, software was responsible for: 1. Stopping too close. 2. Stopping in the blindspot of a truck. 3. Having no horn. 4. Not backing up or understanding fairly common motion by a truck. [0] https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/09/las-vegas-self-driving-shuttle-bus-crash/ https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/09/las-vegas-self-driving-s...
- wavefunction 9y ago
  The truck driver was cited for 'illegal backing' so they were not exactly operating in a reasonable manner themselves.
  - Digory 9y ago
    True. Nevada appears to be a contributory negligence state, so the truck driver might be out of luck if that makes him mostly responsible. I guess we don't know if the Shuttle was, or could be, ticketed for something. In most 'no-fault' states, though, I think the shuttle would shoulder some of the responsibility.
- lsaferite 9y ago
  "We could see his mirrors the whole time and he should have seen us." https://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/self-driving-bus-crash-vegas-account/ https://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/self-driving-bus-crash-ve...
odammit 9y ago
Ugh. This really worries me - not because I’m afraid of driverless cars but because this is the kind of “news” headline that will get anti-driverless car jerks all up in a righteous tizzy. Title should be NO_TITLE because “doofus driving truck backs into something” isn’t news.
- ben_jones 9y ago
  At the same time there are issues that need to be addressed / forced. I'm still waiting for mean spirited drivers to start bullying self-driving cars. For instance commuters cutting them off knowing they will stop to avoid an accident. Which leads to another question. Will driverless cars report bad drivers to police? Making tech companies police informants... will laws be pass forcing this behavior?
  - odammit 9y ago
    Oh. I would love it if they did.
    - crankylinuxuser 9y ago
      I can only imagine... Here's the logs of the aggressive driving, during the last 50 seconds. These logs entail a full 3d pointcloud showing that they were not responding to other drivers' potentially erratic patterns. Other driver came within 1 foot of car on multiple occasions. License plate is ABC123 and facial scan of user is $face . User appears to have wronged our passengers with the following laws: $list We're talking an open and shut case here. And every car with enough of these sensors could provide "dumps".
    - AlexandrB 9y ago
      Are you sure? Sounds like a crowdsourced surveillance dystopia to me. What if driverless cars reported every jaywalker too?
      - odammit 9y ago
        Great. Ambiguity creates accidents. "Are you walking? Should I stop!? Oh no you aren't walking I can go, oh wait you are I should stop." How many times have you had that happen when you're driving and you see someone hesitantly about to jaywalk? Also, as a cyclist, when a cyclist doesn't ride on the road and follow the laws it drives me nuts. Are you a vehicle or a pedestrian? Please don't be both.
d0100 9y ago
> It also claims, lamely, that What kind of writing is that?
- smsm42 9y ago
  Modern journalism one, where you do not trust the reader to read the information and make their own conclusion, but instead must shove your viewpoint down their throats, for their own good of course.
justboxing 9y ago
> Now, it must be said that technically the robo-car was not at fault. It was struck by a semi that was backing up, and really just grazed — none of the passengers was hurt. I get that it wasn't the Driverless car's fault, but this brings up an important use case that the driverless cars currently don't seem to be able to handle. In an ALL-Human situation, what would've occurred is that the parked car (if it had a passenger inside) would honk at the car that is trying to back into it, or open the door and yell at the person trying to back up, and the accident would be avoided. Driverless car doesn't (or didn't) honk even if it does detect something backing up into it. Hence the accident.
CodeWriter23 9y ago
What I want to know is if the shuttle automatically called AAA for assistance.
smsm42 9y ago
Better title: "Human driver hits self-driving shuttle within an hour of it appearing on the streets".
throwaway929292 9y ago
I fully expect every death caused by a self-driving cars to make national headlines in the next few years. Hysteria, whether justified or not, will set in and legislation will pass banning autonomous vehicles in the US. Self-driving cars may have a faster reaction time, but they will never reach the level of human awareness of their surroundings while driving. Let's see a self-driving car navigate through a construction zone, watch for instructions from a police officer who is directing traffic, or stop when kids are playing baseball in a yard and the ball rolls across the street. Answering, "well they'll have that capability someday" isn't a very compelling answer. Truly self-driving cars are dependent on technology that simply hasn't been invented yet. How nice it will be sitting behind a fleet of self-driving cars dragging their asses down the highway at exactly the speed limit, or slamming on the brakes when a leaf flies in front of the sensors. In addition to that, you think masses of people will be silent while losing their jobs because these robot overlords are taking the wheel? Source: I work for a self-driving car startup.
- deleted 9y ago
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- tghw 9y ago
  > Self-driving cars may have a faster reaction time, but they will never reach the level of human awareness of their surroundings while driving. Self driving cars can simultaneously see in 360 degrees with multiple types of sensors. They already see better than humans. Now they just need to understand better, which doesn't seem far off. Maybe you just work for a bad self-driving car startup?
  - Piskvorrr 9y ago
    Doesn't seem far off. That is a fitting description - anything looks easy from the sidelines; specifically computers-understanding-context always seem to be just around the corner, for half a century now.

117 points by watchdogtimer 9y ago

gvb 9y ago

It has no horn?! "What Makes for a Street Legal Vehicle?" Horn – It may not seem the most important piece of safety equipment, and many big cities even limit how it can be used, but to be street legal every vehicle must have a horn that is audible for at least 200 feet. The horn can generally be any note or sound (even ones that play musical tunes are usually permitted), so long as the minimum volume requirements are met. Ref: https://www.hg.org/article.asp?id=31563 https://www.hg.org/article.asp?id=31563

ajnin 9y ago
Maybe it has one. It just wasn't programmed to use it.
- jacobush 9y ago
  If a tree falls in the forest? Did it really have a horn then?
  - dijit 9y ago
    Not sure why the downvotes, this is a very good point. If a requirement for being street legal is having a horn then the assumption is that the driver has the ability to press the horn. (like having a condom sitting on a shelf, it's not effective if not used). Not programming the car to use the horn is basically the same as not making a button in the cabin which can activate the horn for a human driver. In that case it would be not road legal.
    - lmm 9y ago
      > Not programming the car to use the horn is basically the same as not making a button in the cabin which can activate the horn for a human driver. In that case it would be not road legal. Isn't it more akin to having a working horn but a driver who never presses it? Would a human driver ever be prosecuted for not using their horn?
      - CydeWeys 9y ago
        The difference is, though, that the human driver is always capable of pressing it, and you have no way of proving that they certifiably never do in any situation. If a self-driving car isn't programmed to ever use the horn, though, then that's a different situation. It's easy to prove that it can't ever use the horn because it isn't programmed to do so. That's more akin to a normal car having a horn in it that isn't wired up.
        lmm 9y ago
        > The difference is, though, that the human driver is always capable of pressing it, and you have no way of proving that they certifiably never do in any situation. Why should that make a difference though? Imagine e.g. a truck backed into a car when the (human) driver didn't press the horn. Is the car driver liable? Whether the driver might have pressed the horn under other circumstances doesn't seem like it has any bearing on that question. We're judged on what we did, not what we might have done - shouldn't it be the same for the software?
        Piskvorrr 9y ago
        Not quite. We're also judged on intent: "why didn't the driver press the horn? Was it because he was busy not-driving-into something else, because he was busy texting, or because the horn was not connected to the button?". If we were judged only on did/didn't, law would be a straightforward and uninteresting field of human endeavor.
        dsfyu404ed 9y ago
        >Whether the driver might have pressed the horn under other circumstances doesn't seem like it has any bearing on that question Replace that with some other subsystem that is practically necessary for safe operation in a commonly encountered subset of driving situation requires manual activation and we require vehicles to have. Lights, wipers, brakes, seatbelts, defrost, etc. See the problem?
        9y ago
pbhjpbhj 9y ago
So, are they going to take the driver to court? Sarcasm aside, who is deemed to be in control, who do you sue for the damage if this vehicle crashes in to you - isn't it the manufacturer that causes the crash (not in this case necessarily, I'm talking generally).
- ams6110 9y ago
  > who do you sue for the damage if this vehicle crashes in to you Generally, the owner of the at-fault vehicle is responsible.
  - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
    I own my vehicle, if you drive it and cause an accident aren't you primarily at fault. Assuming normal circumstances (so not considering things like me letting a child drive, or letting you drive drunk, etc.). The person/persons in control of the vehicle are surely at fault - being the owner doesn't give you power to alter the programming and so you are powerless to avoid a crash. The company directors, who instruct the system's programmers, are the one's able to avoid the crash by making the vehicle operate effectively. There may be circumstance where a crash could not be avoided but there are going to be plenty when alternative actions - for which there is a strong rationale - would avoid a crash too.
    - icebraining 9y ago
      I agree, it should be considered a part with a manufacturing defect, not the owner's fault.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > Generally, the owner of the at-fault vehicle is responsible. Generally, the driver is at fault and liable if the driver violated a traffic law; if the accident resulted from a manufacturing defect, the manufacturer is (and potentially other participants in the stream of commerce are) liable. The owner, as distinct from the driver, may be liable in certain cases, such as (IIRC) maintenance problems. The absence of a driver reduces the difficulty of ascribing liability by reducing the possibilities.

michaelbuckbee 9y ago

Saved a click: it stopped. A human controlled truck did not and grazed the SDV.

radiorental 9y ago
Could be a bit more involved than that. The Machine acted in a way that was not expected by the human driver. This gets to a fundamental issue we will have in the transition to the utopian driverless future. Learning to identify and react to this new class of driver.
- mannykannot 9y ago
  I am not sure that the truck driver had any expectations, as he acted as if he had not seen the shuttle. The article sneers that "surely this situation is not so rare that the shuttle’s designers did not allow for it?", but of course it is not that simple - there are a great many cases in everyday driving where the projected motion of the vehicles would lead to a collision if nothing was done to stop it, and so it is clearly infeasible to react to all such situations as if nothing else will be done. The passengers of the shuttle recognized the impending collision because they understood that the truck driver had probably not seen the shuttle. Approximating these applications of our theory of mind is probably the hardest part about automated driving.
- spyspy 9y ago
  Really moving the goal post here. Apparently _drive safely_ is an "unexpected" behavior.
  - agumonkey 9y ago
    next: following the law should be illegal
  - jacobush 9y ago
    Was it driving safely, then?

unityByFreedom 9y ago

So the shuttle stayed still while a truck backed into it. Apparently, simply having the ability to stop does not make a self driving car better than a human. It should evade, or at least honk.

gonyea 9y ago
On the flip side, attempting to evade situations can cause greater catastrophe. I’d rather they wire up the horn and call it done.
- rmah 9y ago
  I'd rather that the software sense it's surroundings and make an assessment of risk for various possible actions. In this case, backing up a bit since there was no one behind it would have been the safest option.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - radix07 9y ago
    And what if the truck keeps backing into it? Does the car just keep avoiding it forever? When is the truck driver expected to take responsibility for doing something technically illegal.

rjmunro 9y ago

"Truck reverses into stationary object" is not really news. I think there are too many possible risks of programming the vehicle to do anything except stop dead in an emergency situation - you rapidly get into very complex programming with all kinds of failure modes - e.g. what if the problem was a faulty sensor? The vehicle might try to avoid a non-existent threat by crashing into something else. Stopping is the safe thing to do. If you want to react, you rapidly have to make lots of moral decisions like (The Trolley Problem). Briefly sounding a horn in an unexpected emergency stop situation is probably a good idea, particularly if it's a white noise type thing, rather than a siren, so that other road users can localise it's source quickly.

pbhjpbhj 9y ago
A horn needs to be a horn, add a white noise generator too, but the recognised noise and the one people are "programmed" to react to is a car horn. Aside: emergency vehicles in the UK have stopped using the broad-band noise sirens AFAICT, I don't know why but the reason may be pertinent to any attempts to use it here? Actually, they often ride without the siren at all, which is completely ridiculous to me; they put it on at the junction meaning there's no time to get out of the way, if they used it continually you can hear them coming.
- mathw 9y ago
  They're trained to look ahead, anticipate and adapt to the road conditions, judging when they need the siren and when they don't. This is important in built-up areas, because there's no gain in waking up people at 2am when you didn't actually need a siren to proceed safely. When they're putting it on at a junction and you're already in it, they're not expecting you to magically disappear out of their way. They're expecting you to look at where they're going and stay out of their path. This might involve proceeding as you were going to in order to clear it for them. What they really want is to stop anybody else from entering it until they've got through.
  - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
    Here, UK, they don't put it on at all during the day, travelling through built up areas, particularly Ambulances it seems. When the sirens are used it's great because you can tell what road they're coming along (after a while, it was much better with the "squelch" sirens) and anticipate in good time. Agreed, waking everyone at 2am is not needed generally, but howabout alerting people at 3pm. You appear to have inside knowledge here, presumably there's been some change in policy on this in the last - I don't know - 5 years, where it's been chosen during normal daytime callouts not to use sirens if at all possible?

crazygringo 9y ago

This feels like a really tricky question, actually -- what to do when an moving object is headed towards a stopped self-driving car? It's easy to say the car should be smart enough to move -- but what if, as it moves in one direction, the object (like a truck trying to avoid the car) suddenly swerves in that direction too? Then does the car become responsible for the collision? And of course, it feels like there could be a real-world version of the trolley problem [1] -- what if there are 5 occupants in the vehicle who will be killed by an oncoming truck, but in the only direction where it can move out of the way, it will have to run over a single pedestrian? Glad I'm not the one having to make these kinds of programming decisions. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem

dzdt 9y ago
Honk!
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maxerickson 9y ago
It can't know that the truck is going to kill the 5 passengers so it can't take aggressive preventative action, it has to do the conservative thing, which is to move as much out of the way of the truck as is possible without hitting an object.
CydeWeys 9y ago
Lay on the horn for starters. That's what I've done in a similar situation and it worked. Also, just back up a bit (also done that). It's not hard for a person or a self-driving car to ascertain that you're gonna get hit if you stay where you are but that if you back up a little bit while honking you buy yourself more room.
Cthulhu_ 9y ago

noonespecial 9y ago

These crashes seem to be caused by the "weird" way self-driving machines behave as compared to humans. Perhaps we need some sort of placard that is legally mandated and easily visible (like the "student driver" placard) to let people around these vehicles be aware of them and expect different behaviors than "ordinary" divers.

Cthulhu_ 9y ago
I'm fairly sure this car in particular was designed and lettered obviously enough to draw the attention at least.
Harvey-Specter 9y ago
What's weird about the actions of the self-driving vehicle in this case? It detected that a truck was backing into it's path, and stopped in an attempt to prevent a collision. The truck driver didn't properly check his mirrors and continue backing up which resulted in the truck 'grazing' the front bumper of the car. What exactly is a human supposed to do differently in that situation? Attempt to continue driving straight and potentially end up being t-boned by the truck instead? Also, this vehicle looks super weird already. If the truck driver didn't see it, a 'placard' isn't going to make it more noticeable.
- friedButter 9y ago
  >What exactly is a human supposed to do differently in that situation? Attempt to continue driving straight and potentially end up being t-boned by the truck instead? Honk

BanzaiTokyo 9y ago

it will be impossible to park another car close to a self driving vehicle - it will always move away.

dominotw 9y ago
can't wait to bully a self driving car for a parking spot :).

throw2016 9y ago

Surely something as basic as typical traffic patterns in a town have been simulated? Because a vehicle coming onto you seems to be as basic and mundane an everyday traffic event as you will get. It's in self driving proponents own best interest to have stringent standards, because if the public loses faith its going to be an uphill battle. Simply demonizing human drivers and hand waving away errors is too self serving to work.

Overtonwindow 9y ago

Not only does it not seem to have a horn, but it can't back up... I think those might be features the engineers should explore.

radix07 9y ago
To what end should a self driving vehicle back up or avoid a collision? You could essentially hijack a self driving car by boxing it in if it avoided all obstacles and impacts. Stopping seems to be the normal and best reaction to these sorts of illegal actions. At some point the driver in the wrong will need to take responsibility for doing something illegal.
- filesystem 9y ago
  Have you ever seen a car try to go through a yellow light, it turns red just a hair too soon, and the car decides to hit the breaks. Often times the car ends up well into the intersection and they have to back up, forcing the cars behind them to do so as well. I’m not defending the action of that driver who ends up in the intersection - they are obviously in the wrong. However, having a car stopped in the middle of the intersection is a dangerous situation, the other human drivers recognize that and reluctantly back up. Driverless software must recognize situations like this and adapt in order to win the future. We will not go from manually operated cars to 100% driverless cars overnight. They will have to prove their worth and/or superiority alongside human drivers for a long time.
  - radix07 9y ago
    I have been on both ends of this situation, hitting a car behind me while trying evade a car backing into me and I have been backed into while stationary at a light and not having time to respond. In the end it's best not to try to back into traffic regardless. You just can't depend on traffic behind you to back up, especially if it is human driven, why would we expect an automated car to? It's not the responsibility of vehicles behind that car in the intersection to fix things, human or otherwise. You could also argue that a self driving car wouldn't be going as fast behind a car chasing a yellow light and could allow more room to handle this situation before it gets to that point.

honknow 9y ago

Make it honk!!!

upofadown 9y ago

Hard to judge this without seeing it. A human driver might of been able to anticipate what the truck was eventually going to do sooner so as to find a better place to stop. A human driver understands the difference between a truck backing blind and other vehicles.

exabrial 9y ago

I have another question, how does the vehicle detect that it was in a collision? Does it have impact sensors?

forapurpose 9y ago

> A City of Las Vegas representative issued a statement that the shuttle “did what it was supposed to do, in that its sensors registered the truck and the shuttle stopped to avoid the accident.” It also claims, lamely, that “Had the truck had the same sensing equipment that the shuttle has the accident would have been avoided.” Note a subtle shift, with government now shilling for the driverless vehicles. That's the first time I've seen it; I suspect it won't be the last.

blhack 9y ago

A semi truck backed into it. If anything this just highlights to me how much commercial vehicles need self driving tech (I guess I, lamely, agree with the mayor). My office used to be in an industrial district. The trucks there scare me. They absolutely do not follow the rules of the road, and it's dangerous for everybody around them. Stuff like this: just backing up and expecting everybody to move out of their way, or taking a turn too tight and expecting everybody at the light to back up, were almost daily occurrences. Yeah, self drivers need to account for this, but the bigger problem IMHO is getting those trucks and their drivers either off of the road or in compliance with driving laws.

Digory 9y ago

I'd say the shuttle's insurer should be partly responsible here. The Engadget article seems to show the shuttle stopping in the truck's blindspot.[0] A reasonable truck driver would assume the driver of the other car would back up a little bit. But in this case, the car stopped where the truck couldn't see whether it was backing up or not, and wasn't programmed to understand the truck's movements at this angle. So, software was responsible for: 1. Stopping too close. 2. Stopping in the blindspot of a truck. 3. Having no horn. 4. Not backing up or understanding fairly common motion by a truck. [0] https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/09/las-vegas-self-driving-shuttle-bus-crash/ https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/09/las-vegas-self-driving-s...

wavefunction 9y ago
The truck driver was cited for 'illegal backing' so they were not exactly operating in a reasonable manner themselves.
- Digory 9y ago
  True. Nevada appears to be a contributory negligence state, so the truck driver might be out of luck if that makes him mostly responsible. I guess we don't know if the Shuttle was, or could be, ticketed for something. In most 'no-fault' states, though, I think the shuttle would shoulder some of the responsibility.
lsaferite 9y ago
"We could see his mirrors the whole time and he should have seen us." https://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/self-driving-bus-crash-vegas-account/ https://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/self-driving-bus-crash-ve...

odammit 9y ago

Ugh. This really worries me - not because I’m afraid of driverless cars but because this is the kind of “news” headline that will get anti-driverless car jerks all up in a righteous tizzy. Title should be NO_TITLE because “doofus driving truck backs into something” isn’t news.

ben_jones 9y ago
At the same time there are issues that need to be addressed / forced. I'm still waiting for mean spirited drivers to start bullying self-driving cars. For instance commuters cutting them off knowing they will stop to avoid an accident. Which leads to another question. Will driverless cars report bad drivers to police? Making tech companies police informants... will laws be pass forcing this behavior?
- odammit 9y ago
  Oh. I would love it if they did.
  - crankylinuxuser 9y ago
    I can only imagine... Here's the logs of the aggressive driving, during the last 50 seconds. These logs entail a full 3d pointcloud showing that they were not responding to other drivers' potentially erratic patterns. Other driver came within 1 foot of car on multiple occasions. License plate is ABC123 and facial scan of user is $face . User appears to have wronged our passengers with the following laws: $list We're talking an open and shut case here. And every car with enough of these sensors could provide "dumps".
  - AlexandrB 9y ago
    Are you sure? Sounds like a crowdsourced surveillance dystopia to me. What if driverless cars reported every jaywalker too?
    - odammit 9y ago
      Great. Ambiguity creates accidents. "Are you walking? Should I stop!? Oh no you aren't walking I can go, oh wait you are I should stop." How many times have you had that happen when you're driving and you see someone hesitantly about to jaywalk? Also, as a cyclist, when a cyclist doesn't ride on the road and follow the laws it drives me nuts. Are you a vehicle or a pedestrian? Please don't be both.

d0100 9y ago

> It also claims, lamely, that What kind of writing is that?

smsm42 9y ago
Modern journalism one, where you do not trust the reader to read the information and make their own conclusion, but instead must shove your viewpoint down their throats, for their own good of course.

justboxing 9y ago

> Now, it must be said that technically the robo-car was not at fault. It was struck by a semi that was backing up, and really just grazed — none of the passengers was hurt. I get that it wasn't the Driverless car's fault, but this brings up an important use case that the driverless cars currently don't seem to be able to handle. In an ALL-Human situation, what would've occurred is that the parked car (if it had a passenger inside) would honk at the car that is trying to back into it, or open the door and yell at the person trying to back up, and the accident would be avoided. Driverless car doesn't (or didn't) honk even if it does detect something backing up into it. Hence the accident.

CodeWriter23 9y ago

What I want to know is if the shuttle automatically called AAA for assistance.

smsm42 9y ago

Better title: "Human driver hits self-driving shuttle within an hour of it appearing on the streets".

throwaway929292 9y ago

I fully expect every death caused by a self-driving cars to make national headlines in the next few years. Hysteria, whether justified or not, will set in and legislation will pass banning autonomous vehicles in the US. Self-driving cars may have a faster reaction time, but they will never reach the level of human awareness of their surroundings while driving. Let's see a self-driving car navigate through a construction zone, watch for instructions from a police officer who is directing traffic, or stop when kids are playing baseball in a yard and the ball rolls across the street. Answering, "well they'll have that capability someday" isn't a very compelling answer. Truly self-driving cars are dependent on technology that simply hasn't been invented yet. How nice it will be sitting behind a fleet of self-driving cars dragging their asses down the highway at exactly the speed limit, or slamming on the brakes when a leaf flies in front of the sensors. In addition to that, you think masses of people will be silent while losing their jobs because these robot overlords are taking the wheel? Source: I work for a self-driving car startup.

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tghw 9y ago
> Self-driving cars may have a faster reaction time, but they will never reach the level of human awareness of their surroundings while driving. Self driving cars can simultaneously see in 360 degrees with multiple types of sensors. They already see better than humans. Now they just need to understand better, which doesn't seem far off. Maybe you just work for a bad self-driving car startup?
- Piskvorrr 9y ago
  Doesn't seem far off. That is a fitting description - anything looks easy from the sidelines; specifically computers-understanding-context always seem to be just around the corner, for half a century now.