6 ms·

That's the problem, no such system can guarantee it gives you a minimum amount of time. Some situations appear and develop in less than 3 seconds (think small c

That's the problem, no such system can guarantee it gives you a minimum amount of time. Some situations appear and develop in less than 3 seconds (think small child jumping in front of your car from between parked cars). You might only have 1s to react and if you are not "plugged in" and fully attentive at that instant you missed the window to react. The more you "disconnect" as a driver, the less likely you are to take over in a split second and this has been proven again and again with humans. A system that works 90% of the time is probably the worst because it's good enough to give you confidence but bad enough that it's a false one. The driver is in the position to buy the advertised "you can disconnect" feature but then only be able to use it under explicit risk of harm to themselves and others. It actually increases the mental load as drivers will try to both "disconnect" (type on the phone, watch a movie) while also "paying attention to the road". Of course both can't be reasonably done at the same time so both experiences are sacrificed. It's like encouraging people to take a taxi after drinking but then expecting them to take over whenever the driver makes a mistake and holding them responsible and accountable for the outcome. You won't enjoy the drink, or the drive. These half-way solutions are great for marketing and for people who are all about the hype. But not only are they the bad compromises, they're also fueled by bad and incomplete data, and by marketing departments wanting to sell more. Almost no self driving outfit provides data on how many times did a human make the slightest correction while the self driving was enabled. Or out of all possible driving conditions, what percentage of them were covered by those self driving miles. My personal philosophy is that cars are either self driving or they're not. Meaning they can either match an average human driver in all conditions they're expected to encounter over the lifetime, or they're just assisting the driver. If it's self driving except when it's not then it's just like a student driver. You wouldn't confuse them with being perfect drivers just because of their perfect safety record, given the supervisor corrects their every mistake.

drran 6y ago
> Some situations appear and develop in less than 3 seconds (think small child jumping in front of your car from between parked cars). You might only have 1s to react and if you are not "plugged in" and fully attentive at that instant you missed the window to react. Yeah, humans are weak at this task, which leads to numerous deaths on roads. Can we develop a tech for this? Something, that will watch the road and will assist the driver.
- mavhc 6y ago
  Humans already kill 3000 people every day while driving
  - ben_w 6y ago
    Politics is emotional, and emotions do not always agree with Utilitarian ethics. Self driving doesn’t just need to be safer, people also need to feel that it is.
    - Spivak 6y ago
      Sorta. Self-driving cars cannot a injure or kill someone in any situation where a human wouldn’t have. I feel this too. I would rather have a greater risk of death but be in control of my fate.
  - rayiner 6y ago
    Americans drive more than 3 trillion miles per year.
- pbhjpbhj 6y ago
  That's exactly the sort of task I'd expect an automated vehicle to perform better on. If they can't beat humans at that they're not ready for the public road. Of course hand-off could be for liability purposes, like Car: "I'm sorry Dave, I'm about to plow into a school, this is your problem now" Dave: [looks up briefly from his game of candy crush before dying in a crash]
  - jeffreygoesto 6y ago
    The problem is, they can't do this today with the necessary classification quality. Elaine was killed, because someone at Uber wanted these cars to drive so badly. It also is about culture and prediction. If the other participants behave differently to your prediction, it can get hazardous quickly at highway speeds. I can't find a better link [0], but maybe it's good enough to get the point across. The term is "warning dilemma" and means that you only have perfect information at the time of impact. Before, the classification if there will be a problem or not is worse, the earlier you ask. But asking early is necessary for the human to have a chance to react. [0] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326568066_Towards_an_Assistance_Strategy_That_Reduces_Unnecessary_Collision_Alarms_An_Examination_of_the_Driver's_Perceived_Need_for_Assistance https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326568066_Towards_a...
Gravityloss 6y ago
The systems probably already have some kind of an estimate of "surprise possibility in the next 3 s". For example on a narrow road with a building right in the corner, going around the corner, anything might happen. You don't know what's around the corner. So the system will either go so slow that there's ample warning time or then require driver attention already before attempting to turn, because the driver needs to be ready to react to potential up-and-coming new information fast. In contrast on a wide highway, it's a more easy-to-estimate environment, visibility is better etc. So as long as other cars are far away and the velocity differences are not huge etc, the driver can stay inattentive.
- buran77 6y ago
  The challenge self driving cars face is that being "overall better" is probably not enough. Regressions in certain segments would hardly be acceptable for anyone. You can't tell people "FSD cars lowered overall deaths by 10% but we now kill 30% more toddlers because [technical reason]", or that "highway deaths are going up", or basically any segment that anyone could reasonably care about. Cars have to match and exceed human drivers in every category for them to be acceptable, and even 99% there may not be enough.
  - sorbits 6y ago
    Another point is that there is a psychological difference between sitting behind the wheel in a vehicle knowing that around 10 in 100,000 people get themselves killed each year, and then sitting in a machine that kills 10 out of 100,000 people each year. In the first situation, you feel in control, and at least think that you can do what is necessary to avoid that you end up in the statistics. Personally I would be very skeptical about trusting my life to a machine that has a non-zero chance of getting me killed, even if the machine, on average, performs better than a human, because most of us think that we are better than the average driver.
- Aeolun 6y ago
  Unless, you know, there’s a reflective truck passing by. Or faulty recognition of lines on the road steer you straight into a barrier.
omilu 6y ago
>situations appear and develop in less than 3 seconds (think small child jumping in front of your car from between parked cars) I trust full self driving tech to handle this situation better than a human driver more often than not. The computer doesn't get distracted and has better reaction time.
- 6pac3rings 6y ago
  The Tiger Woods driving experience as informal industry use case standard to focus on is as good as the informal two golf bags carrying capacity.
- buran77 6y ago
  > full self driving tech Full self driving tech is presumably (and by definition) fully able to handle things by itself. We're talking about "partial self driving tech" (SAE L3) which relies on the driver taking over when it doesn't know what to do. The context switching for a regular human absolutely kills the reaction time in these situations making this a "I'll mostly drive myself but when I can't you're almost guaranteed to cause a crash" type issue.

drran 6y ago

> Some situations appear and develop in less than 3 seconds (think small child jumping in front of your car from between parked cars). You might only have 1s to react and if you are not "plugged in" and fully attentive at that instant you missed the window to react. Yeah, humans are weak at this task, which leads to numerous deaths on roads. Can we develop a tech for this? Something, that will watch the road and will assist the driver.

mavhc 6y ago
Humans already kill 3000 people every day while driving
- ben_w 6y ago
  Politics is emotional, and emotions do not always agree with Utilitarian ethics. Self driving doesn’t just need to be safer, people also need to feel that it is.
  - Spivak 6y ago
    Sorta. Self-driving cars cannot a injure or kill someone in any situation where a human wouldn’t have. I feel this too. I would rather have a greater risk of death but be in control of my fate.
- rayiner 6y ago
  Americans drive more than 3 trillion miles per year.
pbhjpbhj 6y ago
That's exactly the sort of task I'd expect an automated vehicle to perform better on. If they can't beat humans at that they're not ready for the public road. Of course hand-off could be for liability purposes, like Car: "I'm sorry Dave, I'm about to plow into a school, this is your problem now" Dave: [looks up briefly from his game of candy crush before dying in a crash]
- jeffreygoesto 6y ago
  The problem is, they can't do this today with the necessary classification quality. Elaine was killed, because someone at Uber wanted these cars to drive so badly. It also is about culture and prediction. If the other participants behave differently to your prediction, it can get hazardous quickly at highway speeds. I can't find a better link [0], but maybe it's good enough to get the point across. The term is "warning dilemma" and means that you only have perfect information at the time of impact. Before, the classification if there will be a problem or not is worse, the earlier you ask. But asking early is necessary for the human to have a chance to react. [0] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326568066_Towards_an_Assistance_Strategy_That_Reduces_Unnecessary_Collision_Alarms_An_Examination_of_the_Driver's_Perceived_Need_for_Assistance https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326568066_Towards_a...

Gravityloss 6y ago

The systems probably already have some kind of an estimate of "surprise possibility in the next 3 s". For example on a narrow road with a building right in the corner, going around the corner, anything might happen. You don't know what's around the corner. So the system will either go so slow that there's ample warning time or then require driver attention already before attempting to turn, because the driver needs to be ready to react to potential up-and-coming new information fast. In contrast on a wide highway, it's a more easy-to-estimate environment, visibility is better etc. So as long as other cars are far away and the velocity differences are not huge etc, the driver can stay inattentive.

buran77 6y ago
The challenge self driving cars face is that being "overall better" is probably not enough. Regressions in certain segments would hardly be acceptable for anyone. You can't tell people "FSD cars lowered overall deaths by 10% but we now kill 30% more toddlers because [technical reason]", or that "highway deaths are going up", or basically any segment that anyone could reasonably care about. Cars have to match and exceed human drivers in every category for them to be acceptable, and even 99% there may not be enough.
- sorbits 6y ago
  Another point is that there is a psychological difference between sitting behind the wheel in a vehicle knowing that around 10 in 100,000 people get themselves killed each year, and then sitting in a machine that kills 10 out of 100,000 people each year. In the first situation, you feel in control, and at least think that you can do what is necessary to avoid that you end up in the statistics. Personally I would be very skeptical about trusting my life to a machine that has a non-zero chance of getting me killed, even if the machine, on average, performs better than a human, because most of us think that we are better than the average driver.
Aeolun 6y ago
Unless, you know, there’s a reflective truck passing by. Or faulty recognition of lines on the road steer you straight into a barrier.

omilu 6y ago

>situations appear and develop in less than 3 seconds (think small child jumping in front of your car from between parked cars) I trust full self driving tech to handle this situation better than a human driver more often than not. The computer doesn't get distracted and has better reaction time.

6pac3rings 6y ago
The Tiger Woods driving experience as informal industry use case standard to focus on is as good as the informal two golf bags carrying capacity.
buran77 6y ago
> full self driving tech Full self driving tech is presumably (and by definition) fully able to handle things by itself. We're talking about "partial self driving tech" (SAE L3) which relies on the driver taking over when it doesn't know what to do. The context switching for a regular human absolutely kills the reaction time in these situations making this a "I'll mostly drive myself but when I can't you're almost guaranteed to cause a crash" type issue.