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Self-Driving Cars Have a Problem: Safer Human-Driven Ones

101 points by Bostonian 7y ago

vikramkr 7y ago
If fully self driving is ever going to be fully safer than humans, which I think is almost a given, then this is not a problem as much as it is a great new way to monetize that tech en route to full self driving cars. If it isnt going to be better than self driving tech + a human at the wheel, then oops.
- simion314 7y ago
  The self driving tech would still be used for driver assist functions, if today would be possible to replace all the cars in the world with new models that include all the safety features and a system to detect a drunk or sleepy driver I think we would get better statistics then Tesla or Google AI(for the same driving conditions)
pjc50 7y ago
A human paying attention assisted by a computer paying attention is always going to be safer than either separately. It's just that a mostly self-driving system erodes human attentiveness. And we're not going to get to a system that's so much safer as to render human attention irrelevant without a much more solid and theoretically sound approach to safety engineering.
- dsego 7y ago
  As assisting systems mature, we will get humans paying less and less attention to driving. Just last night I was watching air crash investigations and there were a series of accidents on a 777 where the pilots where "expecting" the airplane do something because usually the automated system picks up the slack, well except in that particular circumstance when the accident occurred. And these are trained pilots and they understand these systems fairly well (at least when they are told about them). I don't think the general population will ever be trained or have a deep understanding of their car's assistance modes, they will expect it to work. Overall, cars will probably be safer, but we are probably going to witness freak accidents as a combination of driver inexperience and software bugs.
  - nradov 7y ago
    You're probably thinking of a different airplane? The Boeing 777 is pretty much the safest airliner and hasn't had any "series of accidents". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_777#Accidents_and_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_777#Accidents_and_incid...
    - dsego 7y ago
      Maybe not a series on that same type. The crash investigation was about a pilot moving from an airbus to boeing, and it was a 777. The plane did what it was supposed to but the captain didn't know what he was doing. It was on an approach to SF and several people died, someone got run over by a fire truck. The series of accidents mentioned was probably attributable to pilots vs automation and not only to that particular plane model.
      - hodgesrm 7y ago
        You are thinking of Asiana Flight 214. Pilot error was the main cause of the accident though there were contributing causes like auto-pilot documentation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiana_Airlines_Flight_214 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiana_Airlines_Flight_214
- melling 7y ago
  No, it isn’t. Perhaps in the short-term, but if you listen to Elon Musk compare it to like having elevator operators, it makes sense that computers will eventually do a much better job and humans will only introduce problems. https://www.zdnet.com/article/elon-musk-on-teslas-autopilot-in-a-year-a-human-intervening-will-decrease-safety/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/elon-musk-on-teslas-autopilot-...
  - close04 7y ago
    Depends what you consider short term. Do you expect autonomous cars to get to human level in all conditions in the next 5 years? 10? 25? Most likely computers will become far better than humans at some point. But it may be far enough in the future that it doesn’t really contradict the point made above. Contrary to popular belief, “640K should be enough” isn’t the kind of statement meant to cover all eternity.
  - lm28469 7y ago
    > if you listen to Elon Musk If you listen to Elon Musk we have fully autonomous cars every 2 years since 2015 and we'll have Mars cities in 2050.
    - anchpop 7y ago
      A couple Mars colonies in 30 years doesn't really sound that optimistic to me
      - pjc50 7y ago
        How many moon colonies did we have 30 years after the moon landings?
        melling 7y ago
        None, because we didn’t want to spend the money.
        7y ago
- Recurecur 7y ago
  "A human paying attention assisted by a computer paying attention is always going to be safer than either separately." No. Stating something as a fact without analyzing it in the slightest is bad. Example: (1) Only a computer is "paying attention" performing the "assisted emergency breaking" role. The computer has an effective reaction time of 1/100 of a second. Within 2/100 of a second of a qualifying event, the vehicle will be in full antilock brake mode. (2) A human and a computer are "paying attention" performing the "assisted emergency breaking" role (this is a little silly in that the human is already the primary brake operator...). The computer still has 1/100 s reaction time, but the human's reaction time is 25/100 s. What exactly is the human bringing to the table? It is true that the human may detect an actual threat the computer doesn't...however that slow reaction time means it likely won't make a difference in the outcome. On the other hand, the human may "detect" a false alarm, and emergency brake by mistake. That activity often leads to wrecks! I submit that the computer-only emergency brake assist is safer than the combination of human and computer. Further, all of these "human in the loop" systems suffer from a fatal flaw - the inability of people to pay attention unless it's absolutely crucial. The way people use Tesla Autopilot shows that full autonomy is necessary, and will in fact be safer than any "assisted" system.
  - FabHK 7y ago
    Presumably, GP means as a whole, confronted with the entire array of challenges, not for a single simple task at which the computer happens to be unambiguously better.
  - tomatocracy 7y ago
    The human can often predict that some type of avoidance will be needed several seconds earlier in a way that computers can't at the moment and thus avert the need for emergency braking entirely. The two can, and should, be complementary.
    - Recurecur 7y ago
      "The human can often predict that some type of avoidance will be needed several seconds earlier in a way that computers can't at the moment and thus avert the need for emergency braking entirely. The two can, and should, be complementary." What you're saying is true, but doesn't fall under the purview of "assisted emergency braking".
- zaroth 7y ago
  I find, for example, in heavy stop and go traffic my car drives safer on AutoPilot than I do manually. I can get tense or fed up with stupid drivers around me causing me to drive less than ideally, while the AutoPilot just smoothly moves along, perfectly centered in the lane, never caring if the car ahead stays stopped too long, never getting flustered from being cut off. Switching on the AutoPilot also makes me suddenly care a lot less about optimizing for that 1/10th of a second here and there. When the car’s driving, I get there when I get there. I can just relax and the traffic matters that much less.
  - aidenn0 7y ago
    I do not know how safe I am in heavy stop-and-go because I completely zone out. Traffic is pretty light where I live now, but in other areas, I've had the subjective sense of falling asleep, only to "wake up" several miles down the road an hour later. That's really scary.
    - clairity 7y ago
      stop-and-go on a freeway during the day (e.g., rush hour) is probably the safest and easiest set of real conditions for self-driving. speed is low on average and the opportunities for surprise are limited, as you likely won't meet other objects unexpectedly going much faster or slower than you.
      - cardiffspaceman 7y ago
        What about motorcycles? My favorite expansion of the overloaded motorists' workload is when "firemen" holding "boots" get in traffic lanes during the morning commute in order to gather donations. Is that in the model?
        clairity 7y ago
        that happens for you? panhandling happens here on the on-/off-ramps, but i don't see panhandlers on the actual freeway. in any case, i'd guess current algorithms can detect that fairly reliably in the noted conditions, since self-driving cars also trained on urban streets.
- pishpash 7y ago
  Not even true in theory. A human and a computer can disagree and be less safe.
  - lowlevel 7y ago
    Exactly why I turn off all assist systems in our vw. I can't tell you how many times it misread the lines and nudged my steering into oncoming traffic. Eventually everyone will realize this stuff is just a bad idea.
- m463 7y ago
  I think it would be nice to have a heads-up display (or other status system) that shows what the AI is seeing. That way it would actually be "assist".
seqastian 7y ago
human vs human road interaction is mostly based on trust, and it usually works out because most humans are sane and healthy while driving. the same thing can not work with machines cause they are bad at detecting when humans are not all right and humans are bad at trusting machines. as soon as we just accept that the save way to operate in close proximity of others, is to do it at way slower speeds. we will have very save roads with humans and robots behind the wheel.
- ocdtrekkie 7y ago
  Speed is not the issue, difference in speed is the issue. Road safety actually improves when you raise the speed limit to the speed most drivers are actually driving.
  - AdamHede 7y ago
    This is only true in a very theoretical sense. Going 180 km/h will 9/10 be more dangerous than going 120 km/h. Reaktion time, brake time, requirements to equipment, everything is tougher at higher speeds.
    - zaroth 7y ago
      I’m pretty sure Autobahn fatality numbers disprove your thesis. The correct conclusion is that the safe speed directly depends on the present conditions, and depending on that, you can be going unsafely fast or unsafely slow (or both, if you’re drunk or inattentive).
      - Tade0 7y ago
        Actually, British motorways are much safer than German autobahns: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thelocal.de/20190201/are-germanys-autobahns-really-the-safest-highways-in-the-world/amp https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thelocal.de/20190201/are-ge...
    - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
      If by "theoretical sense" you mean "doesn't fit your personal world view" then sure. The safest speed limit being one that the overwhelming majority of people would naturally follow were it not posted is basically considered fact in the civil engineering world. There is study upon study backing it up. The desire to minimize the speed at which crashes happen literally costs lives when applied in the real world because reducing the frequency of crashes is the superior option.
seibelj 7y ago
The industry’s PR team starting to place stories about why self driving cars will take longer than they promised their investors. Tens of billions of dollars invested and it’s still decades away. I guess we blame other drivers now(?)
- TomMarius 7y ago
  I thought we blamed human drivers all the time up until now? It's human drivers that make the chaos on the road, if everything was driven by a computer the issue would be much easier.
- Recurecur 7y ago
  "Tens of billions of dollars invested and it’s still decades away." "Decades away"? LOL Fully autonomous vehicles are already on the road in large numbers. See Waymo in AZ and Voyage in Florida... The economic and safety incentives are huge. I predict by 2030 over half of new vehicles sold will have L5 autonomy.
  - glogla 7y ago
    Also see Uber where they killed a woman, faked evidence (with purposefully making the video look darker) and got away with it.
    - mdorazio 7y ago
      I must have missed the part of vehicular accident law where people hit while jaywalking at night aren't at fault for the accidents. By your logic, the 1000+ jaywalking fatalities every year must all result in human drivers "getting away with it". Uber messed up big time in multiple ways, but legally it's pretty clear that the pedestrian was at fault in this case, not Uber.
  - brandmeyer 7y ago
    I predict that an autonomous car will never be sold as a personally-owned vehicle. The entire point of the industry is to get a continuous revenue stream through taxi services.
IgorPartola 7y ago
Here is my proposal for self driving cars: forget trying to make them drive on local roads at first. Add transponders to all interstate tarmac that can be used to detect location and lane position. Then use a much cheaper LIDAR just to map where the other cars are. Boom: you have made long haul driving autonomous. You can then slowly expand this to smaller roads. But why try to recreate human drivers when machines can use much better sensors than us, but can process visual info much slower, and gather it with worse fidelity?
- Eire_Banshee 7y ago
  $$$. If you put the cost on taxpayers it will never be approved. Needs to be privately funded.
  - throwaway743 7y ago
    Would rather not have a privately nor publicly funded and owned physical panopticon. Too much room for control and abuse.
  - IgorPartola 7y ago
    Yes, let's have the Ford highway that only Ford vehicle can drive on because the transponders are proprietary. We don't have privately painted lane markings, why would we have privately installed radio lane markings?
- agildehaus 7y ago
  Because yours is a ludicrous proposal. It'd be well more expensive to modify infrastructure than to build a computerized driver. Not only is the modification expensive, you have to convince the local authority to foot the bill, do it right, maintain it, etc. Never going to happen. Your proposal also lacks reliability. What if one of these "transponders" fails? We can build redundancy into a self-driving car quite easily (a second computer, never relying on just one sensor). Providing redundancy to road infrastructure planet-wide is ... a much larger problem.
  - 7y ago
ChicagoBoy11 7y ago
As a private pilot it astounds me how the self-driving car industry has seemingly taken every lesson we've learned from automation in aviation and chucked it out the window in these systems. There's a "trust but verify" element of airplane automation that is ingrained in you as a pilot. The ML aspect of self-driving cars generally make it a lot less easy to reason about and predict. That's problem 1. Problem 2 is then speed; Even in the airline world, there are published minimums at which pilots need to be absolute certain that the AP is doing the right thing before they commit to land, even in cases where the autopilot is responsible for the entire landing (Autoland is a capability that a lot of airliners have had for many decades). What we're talking about here is several seconds heads-up with visual AND instrument confirmation, that the computers are doing what they're supposed to before we allow the plane to land. Not only that, but we bend over backwards ensuring that there is all kinds of redundancy and procedures in place to ensure the accuracy of the system: Multiple instruments using different kinds of technologies confirming one another, greater separation between aircraft to guarantee ILS radio beacon accuracy, etc. Conversely, in the self-driving world, we're having these ML algorithms make split-second decisions with no real way of informing the driver what it is basing it on in an environment that is far less predictable and constantly-changing with someone who is not a professional behind the wheel.
- ozim 7y ago
  Self driving car approach has to be different because whole idea is different than airplane automation. You want self driving car to be autonomus without need to rely on trained and disciplined human element. End goal is totally different and you cannot make progress to have fully autonomous car if you would come from: "yeah human will be in control all the time, not being stupid or drunk".
  - nradov 7y ago
    It's by no means clear that the end goal and approach should be different. Personally I think that aiming toward level 4-5 autonomous vehicles right now is misguided and unlikely to succeed (outside of a few controlled access roads in limited areas). A better approach would be to require the human driver to actively control the vehicle at all times, but have the computer step in to brake or steer when it detects a high probability of a dangerous situation. Like how auto GCAS works on modern aircraft.
rexgallorum2 7y ago
Just a few points: 1. Addressing (and reducing) major causes of road accidents and fatalities such as impaired and/or distracted driving (alcohol, drugs, sleep deprivation, inattentiveness, fiddling with phones, radios, touch screens, etc.) would make a tremendous difference, and automated driving systems and sensors could potentially intervene in such situations without necessarily being online all the time. 2. Inattentiveness and distraction caused by (over)dependence on automated systems (as in jets with autopilot) could become a major hazard. This is already a problem with road designs that minimise driver engagement by removing obstacles to traffic and designing roadways entirely for cars (compare European style traffic calming to US style widening of lanes and rounding of corners). 3. As mentioned above, infrastructure and urban planning practices are major issues, both in terms of maintenance and design. Automating passenger cars may improve safety in some respects, but perpetuating the dominance of individual motor vehicles (and the vast infrastructure outlay they require) as the dominant mode of transport is probably the wrong approach. Gradually transforming urban planning and design to promote mass transit, reduce commuting, and accommodate bicycle and pedestrian traffic would generally reduce the need to use cars in the first place. One difference between traffic death statistics in countries like Germany and the US is that virtually everybody has to drive long distances on a daily basis in much of the US, with few if any alternatives, and urban sprawl encourages lengthy detours to travel trivial distances between fully separated residential/commercial/industrial zones, whereas e.g. in urban Germany, there are many alternatives, and driving is not a necessity (compare death rates per capita vs. per km driven). In Germany and much of Europe, driving is and has always been a privilege, and one that requires a degree of skill to earn, whereas in the US driving is viewed more or less as a right, something everyone does and has to do on a daily basis, i.e. it's easy to get a license and you only lose it for serious infractions, and even then penalties for driving without a license (as many people do!) are comparatively minor. What I am getting at is that the best way to tackle road safety and environmental problems is to gradually abandon the passenger car as the dominant mode of transportation. Hybrid automated/human-operated vehicles could be a great improvement in the short term, but using bikes would be better in the long term. Freight transport might be another matter though.
mannykannot 7y ago
This is an odd way of looking at it. Far from being a problem for self-driving cars, the development of ever-more capable assistance and warning technologies is the rational way to go about refining the technologies that will be needed for fully self-driving cars. This situation is only a problem for those manufacturers who want to pass off partial autonomy as the real thing.
- adrianmonk 7y ago
  I basically agree with you, but after some head scratching, I think I follow their argument, which seems to be this: 1. Lack of higher reasoning is a disadvantage that self-driving cars won't escape any time soon. 2. But SDCs can more than make up for that by making fewer dumb mistakes, giving them a better overall safety. 3. However, if you use machines to take away the dumb mistakes from humans, you change that equation, and the overall stats could go the other direction. In reality, I don't think it's that simple. When ABS was newer, they studied it (https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/811182 https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...) and found that ABS improved overall safety, but safety paradoxically got worse in slick conditions (rain, snow, ice). The effects of safety improvements aren't always what you'd expect, so theorizing doesn't tell you much.
dejaime 7y ago
Automatic emergency breaking and other "safer human-driven" cars is not making the human-driven aspect any safer, but rather putting the working and stable parts of autonomous vehicles as a tool for unsafe human-driven vehicles. That said, it will obviously fare better than fully autonomous vehicles, but it is still just a part of autonomous vehicles in general. In this sense, these cars are not "a problem self-driving cars have" as the title implies, they are actually a stepping stone for self-driving cars.
torpfactory 7y ago
I suggest everyone take a look at the most recent available NHTSA data to help create informed opinions on the topic of car safety with respect to fatal accident causes: https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812580 https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/... My personal takeaways: 1) The sum of speeding + alcohol is 55% of the total number of fatalities. Self driving cars won't get drunk (we hope) and speeding is something which could certainly be limited in software. Lots of reasons to believe self driving will make a significant impact here, whenever it finally arrives. On the other hand, you don't really need self driving to prevent these. You could force all vehicles to have a breathalizer interlock before driving (assuming these devices could be made to be very accurate and not spoofable, I believe these are both technically feasible goals). Or just enforce the living daylights out of it - driving drunk, lose your license for the rest of your life. Not nice I suppose but neither are ten thousand deaths per year. Speeding is a similar story. Why not put a GPS device in every car (I think this may already be the case) and geo-fence speed limits? Technically very feasible. Some people will claim you need to speed sometimes but I believe these arguments to be total bullshit. Ambulances may need to speed sometimes. Or again just enforce the living daylights out of it. Speeding over 5MPH above the speed limit, license gone for the rest of your life. Not nice I suppose but neither are ten thousand deaths per year. We probably won't do any of the non-self driving things I mentioned above because they are politically untenable in America. Death on the roads is such a normalized facet of modern life that most people don't really consider the alternative: limited loss of freedom with many fewer deaths and injuries. 2) The wearing of seat-belts seems to still be a big problem for some people. 44% of motor vehicle occupants who died were not wearing one. No self driving needed here. In fact, this problem is somewhat orthogonal to self-driving. You would still want to be restrained in a self driving car. It would be easy enough to create an occupant sensor and seat belt interlock to operate the car. The car already beeps at you if you're not wearing it. Why not take the beeping a step further. 3) Running into cyclists (both motorized and human-powered) is also a reasonably large problem. Self driving will almost certainly help here (uber's incident not withstanding) but there are non technological solutions to consider. What about increasing the liability for drivers who injure or kill cyclists? What about steep criminal penalties for hitting a cyclist? 4) There isn't even a category for "mechanical failure". Cars don't really crash due to problems with the car per-se. Or at least not a rates that matter compared to the others. 5) Rural driving seems pretty dangerous - 50% of fatalities but only 19% of the population lives there. I don't think they dig into the details here but I'd be interested to see the cause breakdown for rural users. Growing up in Wisconsin, driving home drunk from rural bars was basically ubiquitous. I always advise to stay off the roads around bar time if possible. It is important to consider that our roads are unsafe mostly because of the system of policies we have set up governing them. We still aren't serious enough about drunk driving. The debate around safety and speeding is hardly even happening. Hitting and killing non-automobile road users is often just a traffic citation. The licensing system is a joke. In what other safety-critical certification system can you take one exam at age 16 and then renew your certification for the rest of your life without any kind of additional training or examination? There is a ton we _could_ be doing outside of self-driving technology to make the roads safer. Personal preferences on the above discussion: FOR self driving cars, even ones that are only marginally safer than humans. FOR geo-fenced speed limits. FOR breathlizers in all vehicles. FOR steep penalties for drunk driving, speeding, and killing non-automobile road users. FOR much more stringent licensing requirements. Death on the roads ought not be a feature of modern life.
mcguire 7y ago
"ultra-detailed, centimeter-accurate maps of much of the U.S. highway system" Is this a joke? The roads aren't centimeter-accurate from day to day.
happppy 7y ago
I DO NOT FEAR MACHINES!!!
YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago
>> Initially, all fully self-driving vehicles will be Level 4—that is, they have to be in geographically constrained areas, and will only operate in good weather, as does Waymo’s fleet of self-driving vans that it is testing in Phoenix. Truly autonomous, aka Level 5, cars are still science fiction. Nobody has actually created a level 4 system yet, not even a prototype, let alone one ready for production. So level 4, too, is still science fiction. The same goes for level 3, actually. It's science fiction. And so are claims like the following: >> Researchers at Cleveland State University estimate that only 10 to 30 percent of all vehicles will be fully self driving by 2030. 2030 is in ten years from now. In ten years from now, we'll reach "full self-driving"? Waymo was founded ten years ago and its cars are still in level 2 (allegedly, trying to "jump over" level 3 and go straight to level 4). How are we going to be suddendly, magickally transported from level 2 to level 5 in the next ten years, when we haven't budged from level 2 in the last ten?

101 points by Bostonian 7y ago

If fully self driving is ever going to be fully safer than humans, which I think is almost a given, then this is not a problem as much as it is a great new way to monetize that tech en route to full self driving cars. If it isnt going to be better than self driving tech + a human at the wheel, then oops.

simion314 7y ago
The self driving tech would still be used for driver assist functions, if today would be possible to replace all the cars in the world with new models that include all the safety features and a system to detect a drunk or sleepy driver I think we would get better statistics then Tesla or Google AI(for the same driving conditions)

pjc50 7y ago

A human paying attention assisted by a computer paying attention is always going to be safer than either separately. It's just that a mostly self-driving system erodes human attentiveness. And we're not going to get to a system that's so much safer as to render human attention irrelevant without a much more solid and theoretically sound approach to safety engineering.

dsego 7y ago
As assisting systems mature, we will get humans paying less and less attention to driving. Just last night I was watching air crash investigations and there were a series of accidents on a 777 where the pilots where "expecting" the airplane do something because usually the automated system picks up the slack, well except in that particular circumstance when the accident occurred. And these are trained pilots and they understand these systems fairly well (at least when they are told about them). I don't think the general population will ever be trained or have a deep understanding of their car's assistance modes, they will expect it to work. Overall, cars will probably be safer, but we are probably going to witness freak accidents as a combination of driver inexperience and software bugs.
- nradov 7y ago
  You're probably thinking of a different airplane? The Boeing 777 is pretty much the safest airliner and hasn't had any "series of accidents". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_777#Accidents_and_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_777#Accidents_and_incid...
  - dsego 7y ago
    Maybe not a series on that same type. The crash investigation was about a pilot moving from an airbus to boeing, and it was a 777. The plane did what it was supposed to but the captain didn't know what he was doing. It was on an approach to SF and several people died, someone got run over by a fire truck. The series of accidents mentioned was probably attributable to pilots vs automation and not only to that particular plane model.
    - hodgesrm 7y ago
      You are thinking of Asiana Flight 214. Pilot error was the main cause of the accident though there were contributing causes like auto-pilot documentation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiana_Airlines_Flight_214 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiana_Airlines_Flight_214
melling 7y ago
No, it isn’t. Perhaps in the short-term, but if you listen to Elon Musk compare it to like having elevator operators, it makes sense that computers will eventually do a much better job and humans will only introduce problems. https://www.zdnet.com/article/elon-musk-on-teslas-autopilot-in-a-year-a-human-intervening-will-decrease-safety/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/elon-musk-on-teslas-autopilot-...
- close04 7y ago
  Depends what you consider short term. Do you expect autonomous cars to get to human level in all conditions in the next 5 years? 10? 25? Most likely computers will become far better than humans at some point. But it may be far enough in the future that it doesn’t really contradict the point made above. Contrary to popular belief, “640K should be enough” isn’t the kind of statement meant to cover all eternity.
- lm28469 7y ago
  > if you listen to Elon Musk If you listen to Elon Musk we have fully autonomous cars every 2 years since 2015 and we'll have Mars cities in 2050.
  - anchpop 7y ago
    A couple Mars colonies in 30 years doesn't really sound that optimistic to me
    - pjc50 7y ago
      How many moon colonies did we have 30 years after the moon landings?
      - melling 7y ago
        None, because we didn’t want to spend the money.
        7y ago
Recurecur 7y ago
"A human paying attention assisted by a computer paying attention is always going to be safer than either separately." No. Stating something as a fact without analyzing it in the slightest is bad. Example: (1) Only a computer is "paying attention" performing the "assisted emergency breaking" role. The computer has an effective reaction time of 1/100 of a second. Within 2/100 of a second of a qualifying event, the vehicle will be in full antilock brake mode. (2) A human and a computer are "paying attention" performing the "assisted emergency breaking" role (this is a little silly in that the human is already the primary brake operator...). The computer still has 1/100 s reaction time, but the human's reaction time is 25/100 s. What exactly is the human bringing to the table? It is true that the human may detect an actual threat the computer doesn't...however that slow reaction time means it likely won't make a difference in the outcome. On the other hand, the human may "detect" a false alarm, and emergency brake by mistake. That activity often leads to wrecks! I submit that the computer-only emergency brake assist is safer than the combination of human and computer. Further, all of these "human in the loop" systems suffer from a fatal flaw - the inability of people to pay attention unless it's absolutely crucial. The way people use Tesla Autopilot shows that full autonomy is necessary, and will in fact be safer than any "assisted" system.
- FabHK 7y ago
  Presumably, GP means as a whole, confronted with the entire array of challenges, not for a single simple task at which the computer happens to be unambiguously better.
- tomatocracy 7y ago
  The human can often predict that some type of avoidance will be needed several seconds earlier in a way that computers can't at the moment and thus avert the need for emergency braking entirely. The two can, and should, be complementary.
  - Recurecur 7y ago
    "The human can often predict that some type of avoidance will be needed several seconds earlier in a way that computers can't at the moment and thus avert the need for emergency braking entirely. The two can, and should, be complementary." What you're saying is true, but doesn't fall under the purview of "assisted emergency braking".
zaroth 7y ago
I find, for example, in heavy stop and go traffic my car drives safer on AutoPilot than I do manually. I can get tense or fed up with stupid drivers around me causing me to drive less than ideally, while the AutoPilot just smoothly moves along, perfectly centered in the lane, never caring if the car ahead stays stopped too long, never getting flustered from being cut off. Switching on the AutoPilot also makes me suddenly care a lot less about optimizing for that 1/10th of a second here and there. When the car’s driving, I get there when I get there. I can just relax and the traffic matters that much less.
- aidenn0 7y ago
  I do not know how safe I am in heavy stop-and-go because I completely zone out. Traffic is pretty light where I live now, but in other areas, I've had the subjective sense of falling asleep, only to "wake up" several miles down the road an hour later. That's really scary.
  - clairity 7y ago
    stop-and-go on a freeway during the day (e.g., rush hour) is probably the safest and easiest set of real conditions for self-driving. speed is low on average and the opportunities for surprise are limited, as you likely won't meet other objects unexpectedly going much faster or slower than you.
    - cardiffspaceman 7y ago
      What about motorcycles? My favorite expansion of the overloaded motorists' workload is when "firemen" holding "boots" get in traffic lanes during the morning commute in order to gather donations. Is that in the model?
      - clairity 7y ago
        that happens for you? panhandling happens here on the on-/off-ramps, but i don't see panhandlers on the actual freeway. in any case, i'd guess current algorithms can detect that fairly reliably in the noted conditions, since self-driving cars also trained on urban streets.
pishpash 7y ago
Not even true in theory. A human and a computer can disagree and be less safe.
- lowlevel 7y ago
  Exactly why I turn off all assist systems in our vw. I can't tell you how many times it misread the lines and nudged my steering into oncoming traffic. Eventually everyone will realize this stuff is just a bad idea.
m463 7y ago
I think it would be nice to have a heads-up display (or other status system) that shows what the AI is seeing. That way it would actually be "assist".

seqastian 7y ago

human vs human road interaction is mostly based on trust, and it usually works out because most humans are sane and healthy while driving. the same thing can not work with machines cause they are bad at detecting when humans are not all right and humans are bad at trusting machines. as soon as we just accept that the save way to operate in close proximity of others, is to do it at way slower speeds. we will have very save roads with humans and robots behind the wheel.

ocdtrekkie 7y ago
Speed is not the issue, difference in speed is the issue. Road safety actually improves when you raise the speed limit to the speed most drivers are actually driving.
- AdamHede 7y ago
  This is only true in a very theoretical sense. Going 180 km/h will 9/10 be more dangerous than going 120 km/h. Reaktion time, brake time, requirements to equipment, everything is tougher at higher speeds.
  - zaroth 7y ago
    I’m pretty sure Autobahn fatality numbers disprove your thesis. The correct conclusion is that the safe speed directly depends on the present conditions, and depending on that, you can be going unsafely fast or unsafely slow (or both, if you’re drunk or inattentive).
    - Tade0 7y ago
      Actually, British motorways are much safer than German autobahns: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thelocal.de/20190201/are-germanys-autobahns-really-the-safest-highways-in-the-world/amp https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thelocal.de/20190201/are-ge...
  - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
    If by "theoretical sense" you mean "doesn't fit your personal world view" then sure. The safest speed limit being one that the overwhelming majority of people would naturally follow were it not posted is basically considered fact in the civil engineering world. There is study upon study backing it up. The desire to minimize the speed at which crashes happen literally costs lives when applied in the real world because reducing the frequency of crashes is the superior option.

seibelj 7y ago

The industry’s PR team starting to place stories about why self driving cars will take longer than they promised their investors. Tens of billions of dollars invested and it’s still decades away. I guess we blame other drivers now(?)

TomMarius 7y ago
I thought we blamed human drivers all the time up until now? It's human drivers that make the chaos on the road, if everything was driven by a computer the issue would be much easier.
Recurecur 7y ago
"Tens of billions of dollars invested and it’s still decades away." "Decades away"? LOL Fully autonomous vehicles are already on the road in large numbers. See Waymo in AZ and Voyage in Florida... The economic and safety incentives are huge. I predict by 2030 over half of new vehicles sold will have L5 autonomy.
- glogla 7y ago
  Also see Uber where they killed a woman, faked evidence (with purposefully making the video look darker) and got away with it.
  - mdorazio 7y ago
    I must have missed the part of vehicular accident law where people hit while jaywalking at night aren't at fault for the accidents. By your logic, the 1000+ jaywalking fatalities every year must all result in human drivers "getting away with it". Uber messed up big time in multiple ways, but legally it's pretty clear that the pedestrian was at fault in this case, not Uber.
- brandmeyer 7y ago
  I predict that an autonomous car will never be sold as a personally-owned vehicle. The entire point of the industry is to get a continuous revenue stream through taxi services.

IgorPartola 7y ago

Here is my proposal for self driving cars: forget trying to make them drive on local roads at first. Add transponders to all interstate tarmac that can be used to detect location and lane position. Then use a much cheaper LIDAR just to map where the other cars are. Boom: you have made long haul driving autonomous. You can then slowly expand this to smaller roads. But why try to recreate human drivers when machines can use much better sensors than us, but can process visual info much slower, and gather it with worse fidelity?

Eire_Banshee 7y ago
$$$. If you put the cost on taxpayers it will never be approved. Needs to be privately funded.
- throwaway743 7y ago
  Would rather not have a privately nor publicly funded and owned physical panopticon. Too much room for control and abuse.
- IgorPartola 7y ago
  Yes, let's have the Ford highway that only Ford vehicle can drive on because the transponders are proprietary. We don't have privately painted lane markings, why would we have privately installed radio lane markings?
agildehaus 7y ago
Because yours is a ludicrous proposal. It'd be well more expensive to modify infrastructure than to build a computerized driver. Not only is the modification expensive, you have to convince the local authority to foot the bill, do it right, maintain it, etc. Never going to happen. Your proposal also lacks reliability. What if one of these "transponders" fails? We can build redundancy into a self-driving car quite easily (a second computer, never relying on just one sensor). Providing redundancy to road infrastructure planet-wide is ... a much larger problem.
- 7y ago

ChicagoBoy11 7y ago

As a private pilot it astounds me how the self-driving car industry has seemingly taken every lesson we've learned from automation in aviation and chucked it out the window in these systems. There's a "trust but verify" element of airplane automation that is ingrained in you as a pilot. The ML aspect of self-driving cars generally make it a lot less easy to reason about and predict. That's problem 1. Problem 2 is then speed; Even in the airline world, there are published minimums at which pilots need to be absolute certain that the AP is doing the right thing before they commit to land, even in cases where the autopilot is responsible for the entire landing (Autoland is a capability that a lot of airliners have had for many decades). What we're talking about here is several seconds heads-up with visual AND instrument confirmation, that the computers are doing what they're supposed to before we allow the plane to land. Not only that, but we bend over backwards ensuring that there is all kinds of redundancy and procedures in place to ensure the accuracy of the system: Multiple instruments using different kinds of technologies confirming one another, greater separation between aircraft to guarantee ILS radio beacon accuracy, etc. Conversely, in the self-driving world, we're having these ML algorithms make split-second decisions with no real way of informing the driver what it is basing it on in an environment that is far less predictable and constantly-changing with someone who is not a professional behind the wheel.

ozim 7y ago
Self driving car approach has to be different because whole idea is different than airplane automation. You want self driving car to be autonomus without need to rely on trained and disciplined human element. End goal is totally different and you cannot make progress to have fully autonomous car if you would come from: "yeah human will be in control all the time, not being stupid or drunk".
- nradov 7y ago
  It's by no means clear that the end goal and approach should be different. Personally I think that aiming toward level 4-5 autonomous vehicles right now is misguided and unlikely to succeed (outside of a few controlled access roads in limited areas). A better approach would be to require the human driver to actively control the vehicle at all times, but have the computer step in to brake or steer when it detects a high probability of a dangerous situation. Like how auto GCAS works on modern aircraft.

rexgallorum2 7y ago

Just a few points: 1. Addressing (and reducing) major causes of road accidents and fatalities such as impaired and/or distracted driving (alcohol, drugs, sleep deprivation, inattentiveness, fiddling with phones, radios, touch screens, etc.) would make a tremendous difference, and automated driving systems and sensors could potentially intervene in such situations without necessarily being online all the time. 2. Inattentiveness and distraction caused by (over)dependence on automated systems (as in jets with autopilot) could become a major hazard. This is already a problem with road designs that minimise driver engagement by removing obstacles to traffic and designing roadways entirely for cars (compare European style traffic calming to US style widening of lanes and rounding of corners). 3. As mentioned above, infrastructure and urban planning practices are major issues, both in terms of maintenance and design. Automating passenger cars may improve safety in some respects, but perpetuating the dominance of individual motor vehicles (and the vast infrastructure outlay they require) as the dominant mode of transport is probably the wrong approach. Gradually transforming urban planning and design to promote mass transit, reduce commuting, and accommodate bicycle and pedestrian traffic would generally reduce the need to use cars in the first place. One difference between traffic death statistics in countries like Germany and the US is that virtually everybody has to drive long distances on a daily basis in much of the US, with few if any alternatives, and urban sprawl encourages lengthy detours to travel trivial distances between fully separated residential/commercial/industrial zones, whereas e.g. in urban Germany, there are many alternatives, and driving is not a necessity (compare death rates per capita vs. per km driven). In Germany and much of Europe, driving is and has always been a privilege, and one that requires a degree of skill to earn, whereas in the US driving is viewed more or less as a right, something everyone does and has to do on a daily basis, i.e. it's easy to get a license and you only lose it for serious infractions, and even then penalties for driving without a license (as many people do!) are comparatively minor. What I am getting at is that the best way to tackle road safety and environmental problems is to gradually abandon the passenger car as the dominant mode of transportation. Hybrid automated/human-operated vehicles could be a great improvement in the short term, but using bikes would be better in the long term. Freight transport might be another matter though.

mannykannot 7y ago

This is an odd way of looking at it. Far from being a problem for self-driving cars, the development of ever-more capable assistance and warning technologies is the rational way to go about refining the technologies that will be needed for fully self-driving cars. This situation is only a problem for those manufacturers who want to pass off partial autonomy as the real thing.

adrianmonk 7y ago
I basically agree with you, but after some head scratching, I think I follow their argument, which seems to be this: 1. Lack of higher reasoning is a disadvantage that self-driving cars won't escape any time soon. 2. But SDCs can more than make up for that by making fewer dumb mistakes, giving them a better overall safety. 3. However, if you use machines to take away the dumb mistakes from humans, you change that equation, and the overall stats could go the other direction. In reality, I don't think it's that simple. When ABS was newer, they studied it (https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/811182 https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...) and found that ABS improved overall safety, but safety paradoxically got worse in slick conditions (rain, snow, ice). The effects of safety improvements aren't always what you'd expect, so theorizing doesn't tell you much.

dejaime 7y ago

Automatic emergency breaking and other "safer human-driven" cars is not making the human-driven aspect any safer, but rather putting the working and stable parts of autonomous vehicles as a tool for unsafe human-driven vehicles. That said, it will obviously fare better than fully autonomous vehicles, but it is still just a part of autonomous vehicles in general. In this sense, these cars are not "a problem self-driving cars have" as the title implies, they are actually a stepping stone for self-driving cars.

torpfactory 7y ago

I suggest everyone take a look at the most recent available NHTSA data to help create informed opinions on the topic of car safety with respect to fatal accident causes: https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812580 https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/... My personal takeaways: 1) The sum of speeding + alcohol is 55% of the total number of fatalities. Self driving cars won't get drunk (we hope) and speeding is something which could certainly be limited in software. Lots of reasons to believe self driving will make a significant impact here, whenever it finally arrives. On the other hand, you don't really need self driving to prevent these. You could force all vehicles to have a breathalizer interlock before driving (assuming these devices could be made to be very accurate and not spoofable, I believe these are both technically feasible goals). Or just enforce the living daylights out of it - driving drunk, lose your license for the rest of your life. Not nice I suppose but neither are ten thousand deaths per year. Speeding is a similar story. Why not put a GPS device in every car (I think this may already be the case) and geo-fence speed limits? Technically very feasible. Some people will claim you need to speed sometimes but I believe these arguments to be total bullshit. Ambulances may need to speed sometimes. Or again just enforce the living daylights out of it. Speeding over 5MPH above the speed limit, license gone for the rest of your life. Not nice I suppose but neither are ten thousand deaths per year. We probably won't do any of the non-self driving things I mentioned above because they are politically untenable in America. Death on the roads is such a normalized facet of modern life that most people don't really consider the alternative: limited loss of freedom with many fewer deaths and injuries. 2) The wearing of seat-belts seems to still be a big problem for some people. 44% of motor vehicle occupants who died were not wearing one. No self driving needed here. In fact, this problem is somewhat orthogonal to self-driving. You would still want to be restrained in a self driving car. It would be easy enough to create an occupant sensor and seat belt interlock to operate the car. The car already beeps at you if you're not wearing it. Why not take the beeping a step further. 3) Running into cyclists (both motorized and human-powered) is also a reasonably large problem. Self driving will almost certainly help here (uber's incident not withstanding) but there are non technological solutions to consider. What about increasing the liability for drivers who injure or kill cyclists? What about steep criminal penalties for hitting a cyclist? 4) There isn't even a category for "mechanical failure". Cars don't really crash due to problems with the car per-se. Or at least not a rates that matter compared to the others. 5) Rural driving seems pretty dangerous - 50% of fatalities but only 19% of the population lives there. I don't think they dig into the details here but I'd be interested to see the cause breakdown for rural users. Growing up in Wisconsin, driving home drunk from rural bars was basically ubiquitous. I always advise to stay off the roads around bar time if possible. It is important to consider that our roads are unsafe mostly because of the system of policies we have set up governing them. We still aren't serious enough about drunk driving. The debate around safety and speeding is hardly even happening. Hitting and killing non-automobile road users is often just a traffic citation. The licensing system is a joke. In what other safety-critical certification system can you take one exam at age 16 and then renew your certification for the rest of your life without any kind of additional training or examination? There is a ton we _could_ be doing outside of self-driving technology to make the roads safer. Personal preferences on the above discussion: FOR self driving cars, even ones that are only marginally safer than humans. FOR geo-fenced speed limits. FOR breathlizers in all vehicles. FOR steep penalties for drunk driving, speeding, and killing non-automobile road users. FOR much more stringent licensing requirements. Death on the roads ought not be a feature of modern life.

mcguire 7y ago

"ultra-detailed, centimeter-accurate maps of much of the U.S. highway system" Is this a joke? The roads aren't centimeter-accurate from day to day.

happppy 7y ago

I DO NOT FEAR MACHINES!!!

YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago

>> Initially, all fully self-driving vehicles will be Level 4—that is, they have to be in geographically constrained areas, and will only operate in good weather, as does Waymo’s fleet of self-driving vans that it is testing in Phoenix. Truly autonomous, aka Level 5, cars are still science fiction. Nobody has actually created a level 4 system yet, not even a prototype, let alone one ready for production. So level 4, too, is still science fiction. The same goes for level 3, actually. It's science fiction. And so are claims like the following: >> Researchers at Cleveland State University estimate that only 10 to 30 percent of all vehicles will be fully self driving by 2030. 2030 is in ten years from now. In ten years from now, we'll reach "full self-driving"? Waymo was founded ten years ago and its cars are still in level 2 (allegedly, trying to "jump over" level 3 and go straight to level 4). How are we going to be suddendly, magickally transported from level 2 to level 5 in the next ten years, when we haven't budged from level 2 in the last ten?