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I wonder why Uber (and other self-driving car companies) don't have remote employees monitoring the road who can take over in case the appointed driver doesn't

I wonder why Uber (and other self-driving car companies) don't have remote employees monitoring the road who can take over in case the appointed driver doesn't react quickly enough. The problem with these driver-assisted self driving cars is that the driver is unlikely to be paying attention at any given time since the system is 99% reliable. By adding remote monitoring, you could even have multiple people monitoring each car. It might be impossible to safely steer the car from a remote location, but they could surely activate the breaks and/or trigger other simple directives to drastically decrease a fatalistic collision. Given that the average driver reaction time in a car collision is 2.3s [1], I doubt network latency would pose much of a problem, and cost surely isn't an issue for these companies. A remote person could also use the car's cameras to gain a superior field of vision (especially at night time) when compared to the in-car driver. [1] https://copradar.com/redlight/factors/IEA2000_ABS51.pdf https://copradar.com/redlight/factors/IEA2000_ABS51.pdf

rossdavidh 8y ago
From what I've seen/read, the more people are responsible for monitoring something, the less likely each one is to monitor it, sometimes to the point where more monitors can get a worse rate of catching problems. Sort of like why the driver of a "self-driving" car is more likely to watch TV instead of paying attention to the road.
userbinator 8y ago
If someone sitting in the vehicle can lose attention, there is not much hope for someone watching from afar on a TV (even if you're streaming at something like 4k 120fps --- which would be an immense amount of bandwidth to handle for each car --- it's still not much more immersive than watching someone playing a driving game.)
- smallgovt 8y ago
  Maybe they can make it more like a video game, where you're constantly saving cars from collisions, and you don't know which is a simulation and which is real. Give them bonuses based on what percentage of collisions they successfully deter.
  - dymk 8y ago
    And let's have Facebook moderators be shown a small percentage of images known to be of rape or beheadings just to test if they're flagging images correctly. You see how that might be a bad idea?
JustSomeNobody 8y ago
> ... since the system is 99% reliable. Where did that number come from?

rossdavidh 8y ago

From what I've seen/read, the more people are responsible for monitoring something, the less likely each one is to monitor it, sometimes to the point where more monitors can get a worse rate of catching problems. Sort of like why the driver of a "self-driving" car is more likely to watch TV instead of paying attention to the road.

userbinator 8y ago

If someone sitting in the vehicle can lose attention, there is not much hope for someone watching from afar on a TV (even if you're streaming at something like 4k 120fps --- which would be an immense amount of bandwidth to handle for each car --- it's still not much more immersive than watching someone playing a driving game.)

smallgovt 8y ago
Maybe they can make it more like a video game, where you're constantly saving cars from collisions, and you don't know which is a simulation and which is real. Give them bonuses based on what percentage of collisions they successfully deter.
- dymk 8y ago
  And let's have Facebook moderators be shown a small percentage of images known to be of rape or beheadings just to test if they're flagging images correctly. You see how that might be a bad idea?

JustSomeNobody 8y ago

> ... since the system is 99% reliable. Where did that number come from?