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And this is why engineers have invented the dead man's switch a long time ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_man%27s_switch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D

by k_sze 8y ago

And this is why engineers have invented the dead man's switch a long time ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_man%27s_switch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_man%27s_switch The basic idea is that the switch can only be maintained in a non-braking state by an alert, not-incapacitated person. If you press too hard, it brakes; if you don't press hard enough, it brakes. You have to apply just enough force, and that's something only an alert person can do. Clearly, using the gas pedal to turn off auto-pilot is not good enough. By the way, we now have a pilot program in Hong Kong where cameras are installed in buses and use computer vision to detect if a bus driver is dozing off. The system then automatically makes the driver's seat vibrate and sound an alarm to wake the driver up.

dsamarin 8y ago
How do you expect a driver to maintain a dead man's switch the entire time they are driving in manual mode? Or conversely, suppose the switch must be maintained while the car is in autonomous mode, should the car pull over and stop on the side of the freeway? In terms of user experience I would expect the car to continue to the destination. The commenter discussing the use of sensors to detect the state of the driver and act accordingly makes more sense.
- akira2501 8y ago
  > In terms of user experience I would expect the car to continue to the destination. I ultimately hope this is a question answered by legal standards rather than by "user experience." If we're requiring drivers to be present even in autonomous cars, then they need to pull over and possibly take other alerting actions. > The commenter discussing the use of sensors to detect the state of the driver and act accordingly makes more sense. Are they asleep or merely in a diabetic coma? Can we tell? If we can't, should we even try this? Ultimately, I'm really concerned about this line: "Improvements in this case meant altering night-shift protocol to have two safety drivers instead of one." Humans may be bad drivers, I'd say a good look at the data would suggest otherwise; even so, the lesson for Waymo should be "Humans are also bad engineers."
- jackvalentine 8y ago
  > In terms of user experience I would expect the car to continue to the destination. For a production car, sure. But these are test drivers in test cars.
sangnoir 8y ago
> Clearly, using the gas pedal to turn off auto-pilot is not good enough. It's a trade-off: if the auto-pilot is doing something unsafe, it is better to have the human intervene immediately (this might mean stepping hard on the gas-pedal, or braking, or turning, depending on the scenario, which is impossible to know in advance). The assumption is that the software/data are not perfect (yet) and the human knows what's best. I don't think "don't trust the human test-driver" is one of the current parameters, especially since that is their literal job.

by k_sze 8y ago

dsamarin 8y ago

How do you expect a driver to maintain a dead man's switch the entire time they are driving in manual mode? Or conversely, suppose the switch must be maintained while the car is in autonomous mode, should the car pull over and stop on the side of the freeway? In terms of user experience I would expect the car to continue to the destination. The commenter discussing the use of sensors to detect the state of the driver and act accordingly makes more sense.

akira2501 8y ago
> In terms of user experience I would expect the car to continue to the destination. I ultimately hope this is a question answered by legal standards rather than by "user experience." If we're requiring drivers to be present even in autonomous cars, then they need to pull over and possibly take other alerting actions. > The commenter discussing the use of sensors to detect the state of the driver and act accordingly makes more sense. Are they asleep or merely in a diabetic coma? Can we tell? If we can't, should we even try this? Ultimately, I'm really concerned about this line: "Improvements in this case meant altering night-shift protocol to have two safety drivers instead of one." Humans may be bad drivers, I'd say a good look at the data would suggest otherwise; even so, the lesson for Waymo should be "Humans are also bad engineers."
jackvalentine 8y ago
> In terms of user experience I would expect the car to continue to the destination. For a production car, sure. But these are test drivers in test cars.

sangnoir 8y ago

> Clearly, using the gas pedal to turn off auto-pilot is not good enough. It's a trade-off: if the auto-pilot is doing something unsafe, it is better to have the human intervene immediately (this might mean stepping hard on the gas-pedal, or braking, or turning, depending on the scenario, which is impossible to know in advance). The assumption is that the software/data are not perfect (yet) and the human knows what's best. I don't think "don't trust the human test-driver" is one of the current parameters, especially since that is their literal job.