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Excellent question. And what if the other party, at fault or not, is not a driver? What if they are a pedestrian or a cyclist? What if they are alone, incapacit

Excellent question. And what if the other party, at fault or not, is not a driver? What if they are a pedestrian or a cyclist? What if they are alone, incapacitated and need medical help?

dheera 6y ago
> What if they are alone, incapacitated and need medical help? Although self-driving is a hard problem, automatically determining that the car may have had an accident and alerting humans in your control center is a much easier problem. I imagine the control center humans would be responsible for calling 911 if there was an injured human. They would probably be able to see out all the cameras in the car to help make that determination, or if the cameras are all malfunctioning you probably want to dispatch ambulances anyway.
- thisisnico 6y ago
  This technology already exists. GM already has this technology: GM Onstar. OnStar Corporation is a subsidiary of General Motors that provides subscription-based communications, in-vehicle security, emergency services, hands-free calling, turn-by-turn navigation, and remote diagnostics systems throughout the United States, Canada, China, Mexico, Europe, Brazil, and Argentina
- jonny_eh 6y ago
  What if the accident took out the cell tower and the car lost communication with HQ? Or more likely, the car was totaled and lost communication?
  - dheera 6y ago
    > What if the accident took out the cell tower and the car lost communication with HQ? Or more likely, the car was totaled and lost communication? What do you do if you are HQ in charge of an expedition team going along a pre-determined route and the team suddenly and abnormally loses communication with HQ? What do you do if a flight suddenly disappears over the ocean on air traffic control, and there happen to be some other planes and ships in the area? What do you do if a hiker doesn't come home and they left a note saying which trail they were going on for the day?
- glaucon 6y ago
  > Although self-driving is a hard problem, automatically determining that the car may have had an accident and alerting humans in your control center is a much easier problem I have a sneaky feeling that detecting whether a driverless car has hit a cyclist is not an easy problem. I can imagine scenarios where the contact took place towards the rear of the car (and therefore not at the primary focus of sensor attention), the cyclist goes careening off to the left or right and the car blithely goes on. I'm not saying such a scenario is impossible with a traditional car but it's a dam sight harder to ignore.
  - zoomablemind 6y ago
    Yes, the cyclist interaction came to my mind too. At times in slow traffic you may encounter the same cyclist sharing the same road over and over either in front, on the side, or about to catch-up to your car. Those blind spots are truly ennerving at such times... Do driverless cars have their kind of blind spots? How about dealing with potholes? Do they also swerve around to protect suspension or just ram through?
    - ironman1478 6y ago
      These cars don't have blind spots. They setup the spinny lidars to get almost 360 degree coverage and also dedicated lidars that are for nearfield detection. It's very hard, if not impossible, to sneak up on these cars. There are also techniques to drive defensively/safely if there is uncertainty about the scene. For potholes, it's a function of detection. You can't rely on mapping data, because potholes aren't something that might exist at the time of mapping, so you have use lidar/radar to detect a hole, but depending on angle, if there is another car in front, time of lidars, etc. it might be difficult to detect. My speculation is that the cars just ram through it.

Excellent question. And what if the other party, at fault or not, is not a driver? What if they are a pedestrian or a cyclist? What if they are alone, incapacitated and need medical help?

dheera 6y ago

> What if they are alone, incapacitated and need medical help? Although self-driving is a hard problem, automatically determining that the car may have had an accident and alerting humans in your control center is a much easier problem. I imagine the control center humans would be responsible for calling 911 if there was an injured human. They would probably be able to see out all the cameras in the car to help make that determination, or if the cameras are all malfunctioning you probably want to dispatch ambulances anyway.

thisisnico 6y ago
This technology already exists. GM already has this technology: GM Onstar. OnStar Corporation is a subsidiary of General Motors that provides subscription-based communications, in-vehicle security, emergency services, hands-free calling, turn-by-turn navigation, and remote diagnostics systems throughout the United States, Canada, China, Mexico, Europe, Brazil, and Argentina
jonny_eh 6y ago
What if the accident took out the cell tower and the car lost communication with HQ? Or more likely, the car was totaled and lost communication?
- dheera 6y ago
  > What if the accident took out the cell tower and the car lost communication with HQ? Or more likely, the car was totaled and lost communication? What do you do if you are HQ in charge of an expedition team going along a pre-determined route and the team suddenly and abnormally loses communication with HQ? What do you do if a flight suddenly disappears over the ocean on air traffic control, and there happen to be some other planes and ships in the area? What do you do if a hiker doesn't come home and they left a note saying which trail they were going on for the day?
glaucon 6y ago
> Although self-driving is a hard problem, automatically determining that the car may have had an accident and alerting humans in your control center is a much easier problem I have a sneaky feeling that detecting whether a driverless car has hit a cyclist is not an easy problem. I can imagine scenarios where the contact took place towards the rear of the car (and therefore not at the primary focus of sensor attention), the cyclist goes careening off to the left or right and the car blithely goes on. I'm not saying such a scenario is impossible with a traditional car but it's a dam sight harder to ignore.
- zoomablemind 6y ago
  Yes, the cyclist interaction came to my mind too. At times in slow traffic you may encounter the same cyclist sharing the same road over and over either in front, on the side, or about to catch-up to your car. Those blind spots are truly ennerving at such times... Do driverless cars have their kind of blind spots? How about dealing with potholes? Do they also swerve around to protect suspension or just ram through?
  - ironman1478 6y ago
    These cars don't have blind spots. They setup the spinny lidars to get almost 360 degree coverage and also dedicated lidars that are for nearfield detection. It's very hard, if not impossible, to sneak up on these cars. There are also techniques to drive defensively/safely if there is uncertainty about the scene. For potholes, it's a function of detection. You can't rely on mapping data, because potholes aren't something that might exist at the time of mapping, so you have use lidar/radar to detect a hole, but depending on angle, if there is another car in front, time of lidars, etc. it might be difficult to detect. My speculation is that the cars just ram through it.