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If nothing else, this article provided a link to the California vehicle code that covers autonomous vehicles. That is an interesting read. Back to the article,

by Isamu 9y ago

If nothing else, this article provided a link to the California vehicle code that covers autonomous vehicles. That is an interesting read. Back to the article, they point out impatient overrides by the test driver are apparently not being counted as disengagements and do not appear on the reports to the DMV. The author tries to make this into a safety concern, but it just isn't. Maybe it is against the intent of the code as written, but maybe not, since it seems to be concerned with true safety violations. The code: https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/d48f347b-8815-458e-9df2-5ded9f208e9e/adopted_txt.pdf?MOD=AJPERES https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/d48f347b-8815-458e...

sgillen 9y ago
I agree with the idea that an overide because the car has been stopped for too long is less dangerous than a more active sort of overide. But I think it still is a safety issue. I’m mostly thinking of when we take the human out of the equation completely, if the car is stopped indefinitely that is going to cause all sorts of problems. If it’s blocking a city street you’re creating traffic as well as potentially slowing down first responders. Being stopped on a highway is very much a safety hazard. Even with a human driver to take control there are places where coming to a stop would be a very bad thing (an on or off ramp for example).
- asynchronous13 9y ago
  > if the car is stopped indefinitely that is going to cause all sorts of problems. Your comment is true, but consider the context. There was a vehicle already blocking the lane that caused the autonomous car to stop. The autonomous car did not block an unobstructed lane, the lane was already blocked.
  - khc 9y ago
    I've seen Cruise's cars braking for no reason, including once at the intersection (there's nothing in front of the car) I couldn't tell if it figured out it's safe to proceed on its own or if someone took over. It's also possible that the human drivers were doing the braking but if that's the case they clearly need better safety drivers
    - BRAlNlAC 9y ago
      i watched a Cruise driver sit through multiple opportunities to make a left against traffic, until the light turned red and the traffic clear out complentely, basically wasting the green light. It was rather infuriating to watch, i joked to my girlfriend who also watched that we are all screwed if the Valley cant get its act together to hire really top notch drivers to train driverless cars. We dont need the roads full driverless cars who dont know there own power.
ars 9y ago
> impatient overrides It's not impatient. It's the car having no idea what to do next, so it just sits there waiting for something to happen. I count that as a failure in the path to autonomous driving. Remember: Those 1% scenarios are the hardest part, yet they are critical. You can't just say "99%" it's good - after all humans drive perfectly 99.999% of the time (measured by time on the road vs assuming 5 minutes per accident - which is probably high, since the error leading to the accident probably took less time than that), yet that's not good enough.
- taneq 9y ago
  We need to distinguish between the two. For any kind of self-driving vehicle, making a silly mistake and needing a human to override it to prevent a collision is not OK at any significant frequency. I'd guess the maximum acceptable rate would be no more than one collision in multiple years of driving. For a self-driving private vehicle with manual controls, pulling over and saying "help me, human!" once every few months is perfectly acceptable. For a standalone self-driving taxi with no manual controls, it's not. For a self-driving fleet taxi with a remote operator able to take over and help it when it gets stuck, it may be.
  - ars 9y ago
    > no more than one collision in multiple years of driving That's really high, that's worse than what people do (on average a person will probably have an accident every 18 years, none fatal). And that's with a person watching? That's really bad. > once every few months is perfectly acceptable Not really. The people inside it will have no practice (or even ability) at driving. Such a car is not really useful, you'll just make things more dangerous, not less. The bar for self driving cars is so incredibly high, I doubt you'll see them on regular (non-instrumented, restricted) city streets until we have true AI. Most likely there will be train-like intercity roads, dedicated (and instrumented) for self driving cars and trucks. But unrestricted city driving? Very unlikely to ever happen. Despite how high the accident rate is, people are actually really really good at driving. And computers are really really bad at being reliable. When you can have a complex computer program that simply manages to have 99.9999% uptime, then we can start to talk about self driving cars. We don't even have that, self driving cars are an impossible dream. And that 99.9999% number is not just random, it's how good you have to be to beat a human at driving.
xbmcuser 9y ago
The main thrust of the article is that the disengagement numbers are not a good judge of which ai is better. As the companies have to much leeway to fudge the numbers as they are self reported.

by Isamu 9y ago

sgillen 9y ago

I agree with the idea that an overide because the car has been stopped for too long is less dangerous than a more active sort of overide. But I think it still is a safety issue. I’m mostly thinking of when we take the human out of the equation completely, if the car is stopped indefinitely that is going to cause all sorts of problems. If it’s blocking a city street you’re creating traffic as well as potentially slowing down first responders. Being stopped on a highway is very much a safety hazard. Even with a human driver to take control there are places where coming to a stop would be a very bad thing (an on or off ramp for example).

asynchronous13 9y ago
> if the car is stopped indefinitely that is going to cause all sorts of problems. Your comment is true, but consider the context. There was a vehicle already blocking the lane that caused the autonomous car to stop. The autonomous car did not block an unobstructed lane, the lane was already blocked.
- khc 9y ago
  I've seen Cruise's cars braking for no reason, including once at the intersection (there's nothing in front of the car) I couldn't tell if it figured out it's safe to proceed on its own or if someone took over. It's also possible that the human drivers were doing the braking but if that's the case they clearly need better safety drivers
  - BRAlNlAC 9y ago
    i watched a Cruise driver sit through multiple opportunities to make a left against traffic, until the light turned red and the traffic clear out complentely, basically wasting the green light. It was rather infuriating to watch, i joked to my girlfriend who also watched that we are all screwed if the Valley cant get its act together to hire really top notch drivers to train driverless cars. We dont need the roads full driverless cars who dont know there own power.

ars 9y ago

> impatient overrides It's not impatient. It's the car having no idea what to do next, so it just sits there waiting for something to happen. I count that as a failure in the path to autonomous driving. Remember: Those 1% scenarios are the hardest part, yet they are critical. You can't just say "99%" it's good - after all humans drive perfectly 99.999% of the time (measured by time on the road vs assuming 5 minutes per accident - which is probably high, since the error leading to the accident probably took less time than that), yet that's not good enough.

taneq 9y ago
We need to distinguish between the two. For any kind of self-driving vehicle, making a silly mistake and needing a human to override it to prevent a collision is not OK at any significant frequency. I'd guess the maximum acceptable rate would be no more than one collision in multiple years of driving. For a self-driving private vehicle with manual controls, pulling over and saying "help me, human!" once every few months is perfectly acceptable. For a standalone self-driving taxi with no manual controls, it's not. For a self-driving fleet taxi with a remote operator able to take over and help it when it gets stuck, it may be.
- ars 9y ago
  > no more than one collision in multiple years of driving That's really high, that's worse than what people do (on average a person will probably have an accident every 18 years, none fatal). And that's with a person watching? That's really bad. > once every few months is perfectly acceptable Not really. The people inside it will have no practice (or even ability) at driving. Such a car is not really useful, you'll just make things more dangerous, not less. The bar for self driving cars is so incredibly high, I doubt you'll see them on regular (non-instrumented, restricted) city streets until we have true AI. Most likely there will be train-like intercity roads, dedicated (and instrumented) for self driving cars and trucks. But unrestricted city driving? Very unlikely to ever happen. Despite how high the accident rate is, people are actually really really good at driving. And computers are really really bad at being reliable. When you can have a complex computer program that simply manages to have 99.9999% uptime, then we can start to talk about self driving cars. We don't even have that, self driving cars are an impossible dream. And that 99.9999% number is not just random, it's how good you have to be to beat a human at driving.

xbmcuser 9y ago

The main thrust of the article is that the disengagement numbers are not a good judge of which ai is better. As the companies have to much leeway to fudge the numbers as they are self reported.