4 ms·

I'm a self-driving skeptic, but this test is not fair. It's also illegal to do this, so it's not a valid edge-case.

• dmitrygr 7y ago
  Who cares? Would you feel better if you died due to someone breaking the law?
  • NicoJuicy 7y ago
    It's nice as a research part. But more people die because of human error and drunk drivers every day. I have yet to see someone die because of the illegal and "labor intensive" situation they created in this "research". > Would you feel better if you died due to someone breaking the law? I can respond that back, but then with problems that are factual ( drinking and driving). Not fictional or harder to execute do it in practice ( this research)
    • kelnos 7y ago
      I think the issue isn't always entirely rational. Even if self-driving cars could have a better accident record than humans by several orders of magnitude, incidents would still cause humans to react poorly -- "if I were in control that wouldn't have happened" -- even if it would have. Altering a speed limit sign may not be legal, but if it's done in a way that wouldn't fool a human, but would fool a self-driving system, that's just a way that a self-driving system could be unsafe that a human driver wouldn't, and people will react negatively toward the self-driving system. That's just human nature, even if it's not logical. Regardless, we need to be aware of these possible "exploits" on self-driving systems. Sure, no one would bother altering a speed limit sign to cause crashes, because human drivers have context and common sense that would make that mostly ineffective. But if it were known that some popular self-driving systems could be fooled by that, I'd expect to see this happen more often, perpetrated by people who would probably otherwise try to hurt people in other ways. It's not a "new idea" in the context of driving in general, but it's a new -- and potentially very effective -- idea to dangerously mess with self-driving systems.
      • NicoJuicy 7y ago
        I'm pretty sure it's futile. If selve driving vehicles become popular. The exploiter would have been recorded somewhere, identified and put to trial. Story would go viral and the cat and mouse game continues. No one is going to risk jail for letting cars drive 80 miles per hour, until the next road sign. This is a stupid exploit.
• dtho 7y ago
  Why would the legality make this test invalid or unfair? Illegal things still happen. I have seen countless street signs with graffiti on them. I could see rebellious teenagers doing this on purpose without fully understanding or caring about the consequences. Search google images for 'street sign graffiti' and you will see thousands of examples.
  • lostlogin 7y ago
    There has been an outbreak of modified stop signs near me. Some are quite professionally done with stickers championing pet projects. Stop animal farming, stop eating meat etc. If they weren’t at the end of a street, they would definitely look like a marketing campaign (which I suppose is exactly what they are).
• almost_usual 7y ago
  I’d argue most of the public breaks the law when driving. Self driving will need to account for any possible edge case on the road.
  • emiliobumachar 7y ago
    Self driving will need to account for any possible edge case on the road to be perfect. To be better than humans? I don't think so. When a human driver kills someone due to lawbreaking from a third party throwing an edge case that they couldn't handle, we say the driver was "not at fault". We even abuse it for "edge cases" that the driver could obviously handle if not for normal human distraction. Why hold the robot to such a higher standard?
• mayniac 7y ago
  >It's also illegal to do this, so it's not a valid edge-case. Road signs can get dirty or damaged. There definitely are edge-cases where a self-driving car might not comprehend an imperfect sign which a human would read just fine. Maybe this test in particular isn't fair, but it does raise questions.
• jobigoud 7y ago
  Jaywalking is also illegal in many places.