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>> Snow, freezing rain, fog; Well, self-driving cars can currently handle none of the aforementioned conditions. That's why they are being tested where those c
by m0zg 8y ago
>> Snow, freezing rain, fog;
Well, self-driving cars can currently handle none of the aforementioned conditions. That's why they are being tested where those conditions don't exist, and that's why we're about 20 years from widespread adoption. It rains and snows in much of the rest of the world.
- chongli 8y agoIt rains and snows in much of the rest of the world. Yes, I live in the rest of the world and my family has been affected by fatal collisions brought on by adverse weather. I remain skeptical that self driving cars will be able to handle all of these things. I do think they'll be okay for mundane driving where the biggest risk is driver distractions, however. I would like to see cars and maybe even roads made smarter in order to make driving safer. If all the cars on the road were part of a wireless network and they could signal to one another when they're braking or turning, then other vehicles could respond more quickly. Heck, these systems could even be included in phones and pedestrian crossings so that cars could be signalled instantly when a pedestrian steps into the road in order to cross.
- Swenrekcah 8y agoI used to think that this kind of system must be the future, but now I can only think of the greatly increased attack surface if my self-controlled car is not only taking directions from visual input and other sensors, but also all sorts of other unknown devices.
- chongli 8y agoThe system needs to be sane. The network should not be able to force your car to drive into a wall. Like any safety critical system, it should fail-safe. That means if the data it receives over the network would be unsafe to follow, given information from the other sensors, then it should discount that information as erroneous. This is something humans do all the time when, for example, reading a stranger's intentions.
- Swenrekcah 8y agoBut people are just too creative when it comes to exploiting systems. What if I force someone’s car to halt just under a bridge and then accidentally drop another car on top of it. Oops, a terrible ‘accident’! I realise this is a bit ridiculous but some other people are way more creative than I in this way.
- Cpoll 8y agoWhat if I point a gun at someone and shoot them? As usual, the only thing that keeps you alive is that there are no motivated individuals that want to kill you. If there are, then they don't need you to drive a self-driving car.
- m0zg 8y agoYou're ignoring the possibility of a mass-exploit, meaning the kind of cheap exploit that affects multiple vehicles at the same time, possibly killing a bunch of people, destroying infrastructure, or stopping the flow of traffic. Your typical adversarial "single pixel" change that makes your network believe unreasonable things, but in the real world. The existence of such exploits has already been demonstrated.
- m0zg 8y agoI think there is a potential for them to exceed human performance in all driving conditions. Machines can perceive and react much faster than humans, and once the perceptual and control problems are solved, all of them will become uniformly "good" at driving in difficult conditions. BUT (and there's always a "but"), the problem is exponentially hard, and it can't be solved with today's technology. I agree with you that widespread adoption will require modification of roadways, and potentially also segregation of autonomous and human-controlled traffic streams.