5 ms·

> And the primary causes of those fatalities are the kinds of things most easily addressed by automation - lane drift. Running red lights and stop signs. Speedi

by kalenx 8y ago

> And the primary causes of those fatalities are the kinds of things most easily addressed by automation - lane drift. Running red lights and stop signs. Speeding. Driving too fast for conditions. Aggressive maneuvering leading to loss of control. That's the thing. Fair enough, autonomous cars cannot be drunk or sleepy, but they have _others_ issues that "are most easily addressed by human driving". A human might be distracted, but it won't see a bicyclist for 10 seconds while thinking "I shouldn't do anything in case it's a false positive". Human driver won't directly swerve in a concrete wall because it followed to wrong white line. Human driver will predict better the trajectory of other humans, especially infants. All in all, I do agree that automation can bring improvements to road safety, but in the current situation, it is not clear at all if this can counteract the automation downsides. It will surely improve, but hastiness might not be the way to go here...

beat 8y ago
In the Uber case, the system that would have automatically braked upon seeing the bicyclist was disabled. According to their data, it would have stopped on its own, had it been engage. Additionally, there was no system to automatically alert the driver of the hazard the car had been ordered to ignore. And the driver wasn't paying attention. So it's not nearly as bad as it's made out to be. the fatality was a consequence of multiple human errors, both consciously and neglectfully. The automation was not in error.
- kalenx 8y ago
  Of course the automation was in error: it was so much in error they have to disable it! All the arguments about the driver that should have been alerted or reacted are simply not autonomous driving so unrelated. Again, I'm not saying that automation will never be a good replacement for human drivers, but as of right now, it is not clear at all if its positive aspects counterbalance its shortcomings.
  - beat 8y ago
    Right. So the question is, at what point do we start turning auto-autos (I should use that word) loose on the road for live testing? Do we have to wait until they are demonstrably better than human drivers? How do we prove that? After reading the Atlantic's Waymo article, I'm more convinced that Uber is doomed in this race. They're not investing properly in simulation, and Waymo is getting an enormous amount of programming done based on controlled simulations that Uber isn't - billions of miles, and repeatable scenarios. Tesla is really in the game, I think, because they're able to collect so much data from the AutoPilot systems currently on the road, even if they're not in use. They still get all the telemetry for complex real-world situations. But at some point, you have to let experimental software out on the road, to learn from the real world. Simulation is insufficient. Or, we simply refuse to allow auto-autos at all, permanently establishing that humans will always be more capable, without evidence. So it's a question of when, not if. There's a couple of currents going in the arguments here. Some say "not yet", and some say "never". I think the "never" people are nuts. Auto-autos that broadly outperform human drivers safety-wise seems achievable to me in the not-too-distant future.

by kalenx 8y ago

beat 8y ago

In the Uber case, the system that would have automatically braked upon seeing the bicyclist was disabled. According to their data, it would have stopped on its own, had it been engage. Additionally, there was no system to automatically alert the driver of the hazard the car had been ordered to ignore. And the driver wasn't paying attention. So it's not nearly as bad as it's made out to be. the fatality was a consequence of multiple human errors, both consciously and neglectfully. The automation was not in error.

kalenx 8y ago
Of course the automation was in error: it was so much in error they have to disable it! All the arguments about the driver that should have been alerted or reacted are simply not autonomous driving so unrelated. Again, I'm not saying that automation will never be a good replacement for human drivers, but as of right now, it is not clear at all if its positive aspects counterbalance its shortcomings.
- beat 8y ago
  Right. So the question is, at what point do we start turning auto-autos (I should use that word) loose on the road for live testing? Do we have to wait until they are demonstrably better than human drivers? How do we prove that? After reading the Atlantic's Waymo article, I'm more convinced that Uber is doomed in this race. They're not investing properly in simulation, and Waymo is getting an enormous amount of programming done based on controlled simulations that Uber isn't - billions of miles, and repeatable scenarios. Tesla is really in the game, I think, because they're able to collect so much data from the AutoPilot systems currently on the road, even if they're not in use. They still get all the telemetry for complex real-world situations. But at some point, you have to let experimental software out on the road, to learn from the real world. Simulation is insufficient. Or, we simply refuse to allow auto-autos at all, permanently establishing that humans will always be more capable, without evidence. So it's a question of when, not if. There's a couple of currents going in the arguments here. Some say "not yet", and some say "never". I think the "never" people are nuts. Auto-autos that broadly outperform human drivers safety-wise seems achievable to me in the not-too-distant future.