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Why are you trying to make a perfect car rather than just better enough than typical human? People wouldn't spot unsecured cargo more often than not until it f

Why are you trying to make a perfect car rather than just better enough than typical human? People wouldn't spot unsecured cargo more often than not until it falls on the ground. The big problem in legislation is that we just don't know how bad drivers humans are typically. Legislation is loose for us but somehow machines are supposed to be perfect.

michaelt 7y ago
For practical business reasons. A substantial majority of drivers - up to 80% - would rate themselves above average [1] so 80% of your target market thinks they're better than such a car. And if such a product takes off you know eventually it's going to kill someone who is legitimately a top 0.1% driver, who's been teaching advanced driving to secret service limo drivers for 30 years and never been in an accident. And if you ever end up in court, and jurors notice you've made many billions of dollars from this technology, arguments that the dead guy probably wasn't a very good driver anyway and statistically your system is above average might not win over jurors who are thinking "well I certainly wouldn't have crashed into that clearly marked concrete barrier in broad daylight" [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3730094 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3730094
- AstralStorm 7y ago
  So if you make a car better than what an average driver thinks of themselves, you win? That is achievable by either making a really good self driving car or by fixing those bad perceptions of car drivers. Not every country even has a jury based judicial system. And the good lawyer would ask the jurors to imagine how they would react in a given failure scenario while ignoring the fact that it is a self driving car, much like they're supposed to ignore the fact that a driver is of specific group (not even protected class) as not pertinent. The prosecution would have to show that the failure is caused specifically because it is a self driving car. Burden of proof. They objection is aimed at the justice not the jury. Negligence suit against a company is a separate matter than a car crash. And much harder for jurors. To calibrate juror expectations you might try to show footage from some related human crashes as part of initial presentation. It depends on the judge whether that would be allowed of course. Definitely should be allowed against an expert to establish their expertise in judging car accidents. First such case against a level 5 car would be very high profile. This of course means that driverless cars are allowed on the road, ultimately meaning there would be some sort of car certification.
a_imho 7y ago
Indeed, the average driver is pretty bad, that's not the level to aim for with additional vehicular traffic. It is entirely possible we would be better off with limiting the most dangerous elements' participation, but people actually need to go places while computers don't. If safety is your concern, how do autonomous cars stack up against actually enforcing traffic laws, speed limits, safe following distances, distracted driving? We do not know. IMO we need less cars not more. Better urban planning, remote working, improved public transport etc. are all different faces of the transportation problem, focusing on the current state of human drivers is just cherrypicking. We have autonomous underground trains today, we had them for years. Telecommuting will always be safer and quicker than autonomous cars (but less sexy and less profitable than AI hype).
- AstralStorm 7y ago
  Make that a self driving bicycle or self flying drone then. Similar related problems, in fact probably harder.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - a_imho 7y ago
    Are self driving bicycles really a thing? Anyway, it is apples to oranges, cars are way more dangerous.
    - AstralStorm 7y ago
      No, you won't get away with making a dangerous drone or bicycle, motorbike or scooter. Cars are obviously somewhat more dangerous due to mass and size but a small vehicle at a high speed... is almost as dangerous if not more so. Check motorbike statistics. See, cars are only a seductive topic because they're so common, and thus any risk reduction there should have high impact. Should any other mode of transportation be nearly as ubiquitous and fast, we'd be taking about them. For example, fast electric scooters are starting to get there.
infogulch 7y ago
The issue is that we only have an informal definition of a "good driver" that relies on fuzzy things like intuition, empathy, demeanor etc when humans evaluate each other for fitness (or judge each other in court), and self driving cars are forcing us to come up with an actual specification which we've never had to do before. One of the more impactful consequences comes from the way we tied the execution of civil liberties to the ability to drive oneself (at least in the US), and a fully defined specification for driving behavior will necessarily exclude many people that currently drive today and rely on driving for their agency. In fact we've kept the definition fuzzy intentionally in order to allow this. The existence of self driving cars is forcing our hand because you can't empathize with an algorithm.
- AstralStorm 7y ago
  Courts do not empathize and that's where self driving cars will be ultimately judged. The essential driving tests are fuzzy and weak not due to empathy. I've seen a lot of hate and rage directed at unskilled, mistaken or law breaking drivers. Or even just because. Road rage is a thing. The driving exams are weak because transportation is torn between safety and liberty or availability. Good enough self driving car would shift that balance. Additionally companies want cheap drivers and workers to reach them on their own, they do not care about accidents beyond certain base rate, even less so if a given driver breaks the law or annoys other users of the road. Including companies in the transportation business.

michaelt 7y ago

For practical business reasons. A substantial majority of drivers - up to 80% - would rate themselves above average [1] so 80% of your target market thinks they're better than such a car. And if such a product takes off you know eventually it's going to kill someone who is legitimately a top 0.1% driver, who's been teaching advanced driving to secret service limo drivers for 30 years and never been in an accident. And if you ever end up in court, and jurors notice you've made many billions of dollars from this technology, arguments that the dead guy probably wasn't a very good driver anyway and statistically your system is above average might not win over jurors who are thinking "well I certainly wouldn't have crashed into that clearly marked concrete barrier in broad daylight" [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3730094 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3730094

AstralStorm 7y ago
So if you make a car better than what an average driver thinks of themselves, you win? That is achievable by either making a really good self driving car or by fixing those bad perceptions of car drivers. Not every country even has a jury based judicial system. And the good lawyer would ask the jurors to imagine how they would react in a given failure scenario while ignoring the fact that it is a self driving car, much like they're supposed to ignore the fact that a driver is of specific group (not even protected class) as not pertinent. The prosecution would have to show that the failure is caused specifically because it is a self driving car. Burden of proof. They objection is aimed at the justice not the jury. Negligence suit against a company is a separate matter than a car crash. And much harder for jurors. To calibrate juror expectations you might try to show footage from some related human crashes as part of initial presentation. It depends on the judge whether that would be allowed of course. Definitely should be allowed against an expert to establish their expertise in judging car accidents. First such case against a level 5 car would be very high profile. This of course means that driverless cars are allowed on the road, ultimately meaning there would be some sort of car certification.

a_imho 7y ago

Indeed, the average driver is pretty bad, that's not the level to aim for with additional vehicular traffic. It is entirely possible we would be better off with limiting the most dangerous elements' participation, but people actually need to go places while computers don't. If safety is your concern, how do autonomous cars stack up against actually enforcing traffic laws, speed limits, safe following distances, distracted driving? We do not know. IMO we need less cars not more. Better urban planning, remote working, improved public transport etc. are all different faces of the transportation problem, focusing on the current state of human drivers is just cherrypicking. We have autonomous underground trains today, we had them for years. Telecommuting will always be safer and quicker than autonomous cars (but less sexy and less profitable than AI hype).

AstralStorm 7y ago
Make that a self driving bicycle or self flying drone then. Similar related problems, in fact probably harder.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- a_imho 7y ago
  Are self driving bicycles really a thing? Anyway, it is apples to oranges, cars are way more dangerous.
  - AstralStorm 7y ago
    No, you won't get away with making a dangerous drone or bicycle, motorbike or scooter. Cars are obviously somewhat more dangerous due to mass and size but a small vehicle at a high speed... is almost as dangerous if not more so. Check motorbike statistics. See, cars are only a seductive topic because they're so common, and thus any risk reduction there should have high impact. Should any other mode of transportation be nearly as ubiquitous and fast, we'd be taking about them. For example, fast electric scooters are starting to get there.

infogulch 7y ago

The issue is that we only have an informal definition of a "good driver" that relies on fuzzy things like intuition, empathy, demeanor etc when humans evaluate each other for fitness (or judge each other in court), and self driving cars are forcing us to come up with an actual specification which we've never had to do before. One of the more impactful consequences comes from the way we tied the execution of civil liberties to the ability to drive oneself (at least in the US), and a fully defined specification for driving behavior will necessarily exclude many people that currently drive today and rely on driving for their agency. In fact we've kept the definition fuzzy intentionally in order to allow this. The existence of self driving cars is forcing our hand because you can't empathize with an algorithm.

AstralStorm 7y ago
Courts do not empathize and that's where self driving cars will be ultimately judged. The essential driving tests are fuzzy and weak not due to empathy. I've seen a lot of hate and rage directed at unskilled, mistaken or law breaking drivers. Or even just because. Road rage is a thing. The driving exams are weak because transportation is torn between safety and liberty or availability. Good enough self driving car would shift that balance. Additionally companies want cheap drivers and workers to reach them on their own, they do not care about accidents beyond certain base rate, even less so if a given driver breaks the law or annoys other users of the road. Including companies in the transportation business.