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> Americans will experience 10,948,000 anomalies per year. Or, about 20.8 events per minute. One possibility is that driving is simply too challenging in the

> Americans will experience 10,948,000 anomalies per year. Or, about 20.8 events per minute. One possibility is that driving is simply too challenging in the general case. Note one of the problems discussed in the article, that self-driving algorithms can't cope with bad weather such as snow when road markings are invisible. Humans also can't cope with this situation. We don't drive with strict adherence to the rules of the road, and for example the tracks left by the car in front of you are far more important than any buried lane marking. If we demand (for example) that autonomous vehicles cause less than one accident per 1 million km driven, then some situations that humans brave on a daily basis (thunderstorms, blizzards, icy roads, residential streets with children around) may never meet that standard even with a "perfect" autonomous system. Thus far, we've papered over the contradiction because we have human drivers to blame.

CamperBob2 7y ago
Subsurface mapping is worth keeping an eye on. [1] It offers a more-or-less instant solution to most of these concerns, if it can be made to work. [1] http://news.mit.edu/2017/lincoln-laboratory-enters-licensing-agreement-to-produce-localizing-ground-penetrating-radar-0718 http://news.mit.edu/2017/lincoln-laboratory-enters-licensing...
rayiner 7y ago
> Humans also can't cope with this situation. What exactly does that mean? People will happily drive on I85/95 in Atlanta in torrential downpours where the lane markings are almost impossible to see. For the most part they don’t crash, because they know where the lanes should be. Humans are unmatched at filling in missing information like that. People drive in rain, sleet, snow. And they still manage to go 500,000 miles between crashes on average.
- asdff 7y ago
  In Atlanta people are coped to that situation, but in places like Los Angeles people come to a crawl in a drizzle with otherwise zero traffic. In places with snowstorms, people still regularly loose traction and spin off the roads or start sliding backwards down a hill. I remember a picture a couple years ago from a snowstorm that hit the south, could have been Georgia even, that looked like a scene from an apocalyptic movie complete with a flipped over car burning in the distance. Some people crash, some people do fine with skill. Will a self driving car be able to counter steer an ice induced drift into safely regaining traction like an experienced human car driver could? All up in the air right now.

CamperBob2 7y ago

Subsurface mapping is worth keeping an eye on. [1] It offers a more-or-less instant solution to most of these concerns, if it can be made to work. [1] http://news.mit.edu/2017/lincoln-laboratory-enters-licensing-agreement-to-produce-localizing-ground-penetrating-radar-0718 http://news.mit.edu/2017/lincoln-laboratory-enters-licensing...

rayiner 7y ago

> Humans also can't cope with this situation. What exactly does that mean? People will happily drive on I85/95 in Atlanta in torrential downpours where the lane markings are almost impossible to see. For the most part they don’t crash, because they know where the lanes should be. Humans are unmatched at filling in missing information like that. People drive in rain, sleet, snow. And they still manage to go 500,000 miles between crashes on average.

asdff 7y ago
In Atlanta people are coped to that situation, but in places like Los Angeles people come to a crawl in a drizzle with otherwise zero traffic. In places with snowstorms, people still regularly loose traction and spin off the roads or start sliding backwards down a hill. I remember a picture a couple years ago from a snowstorm that hit the south, could have been Georgia even, that looked like a scene from an apocalyptic movie complete with a flipped over car burning in the distance. Some people crash, some people do fine with skill. Will a self driving car be able to counter steer an ice induced drift into safely regaining traction like an experienced human car driver could? All up in the air right now.