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I am really worried by the fact that I am the unwilling tester in the Great Driverless Car Experiment. Tradition has it that when you load-test a new bridge, y

• deleted 5y ago
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• fallingknife 5y ago
  You could say the same for regular cars when they first arrived on the road. Saying there should be a higher bar is useless unless you are able to say exactly what that bar should be.
  • MereInterest 5y ago
    People did say exactly the same for regular cars. The result was a massive advertising campaign to establish the concept of jaywalking, and to make the street the sole domain of the car. I can easily imagine a similar campaign to label pedestrians as irresponsible for walking outside without an ultrasonic emitter, or a lidar reflector, or whatever integrates with the self-driving system. Whatever shifts the responsibility away from the car and onto the deceased.
    • MathCodeLove 5y ago
      You say "advertising campaign" as if it were some conspiracy by the world's big auto manufacturers 1. Do you have any sources? 2. You don't think that roads should be a car only domain? What do you think roads are for?
      • jeromegv 5y ago
        1. https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history The forgotten history of how automakers invented the crime of "jaywalking" (books and more sources are quoted in that article) 2. Roads existed before cars. This is an extremely American view to think that roads should be exclusively for cars. Roads should be for PEOPLE, regardless of which mode of transport they are using.
        • MathCodeLove 5y ago
          As for point 2. Okay, but now cars do exist. Do you think it's reasonable for cars capable of traveling 40mph should be stuck behind pedestrians at walking speed? Our modern transportation infrastructure exists for a reason, and that reason is speed/effeciency. Most areas with heavy pedestrian traffic have sidewalks. If I'm going 60mph down the highway then the presumption that I should be subjected to pedestrians casually strolling across is absurd.
          • jcranmer 5y ago
            Already today, cars do not travel at 40mph in those areas with heavy pedestrian traffic--the typical speed limit on a city street is 25mph, and even that is probably above typical speeds. If you want cars to travel more quickly, you need to resort to highways that completely cut off pedestrian access, which has seriously deleterious effects on the neighborhoods it travels through. If you try to compromise, you end up with stroads... which turn out to be just as bad as highways for pedestrians in practice, thanks in no small part to people like you who believe that all of the compromises of street design and urban planning should be borne not by vehicular drivers but by pedestrians. (I'll add a side note here: a lot of efficiency depends on what you're trying to make efficient. Many people--including you, apparently--define efficiency as moving cars with as high throughput as possible. If you instead want to move people with high throughput, usually step one is to ditch cars, since single-occupant vehicles occupy vastly more space than any other form of transportation.)
            • 5y ago
  • InCityDreams 5y ago
    1) lights on when required. 2) ...
  • stefan_ 5y ago
    Let's start with setting the bar at "the driverless car only operating at night should have its lights on". And since Cruise so effortlessly limbod right under that one, we should probably ask for a root-cause analysis here and stop their operation immediately until then. God forbid they start disabling the brakes like Uber "because they cause disengagements".
• xadhominemx 5y ago
  We are all unwilling testers of every new teenage driver who hits the road.
  • Kye 5y ago
    A teenager is worried about: getting killed, killing someone else, hurting someone, wrecking their parents' car, losing their permit. I don't trust engineers working on the models that drive these cars to teach a computer the difference between a human and an open road. A teenager can discern these with no effort. I trust a teenager to care about not hitting me and try their best, and to choose a ditch over hitting someone when the decision time comes.
    • dgfitz 5y ago
      *A teenager is worried about only about themselves and their immediate happiness
      • mhh__ 5y ago
        I think you'd be immediately unhappy if you crashed your parents car
        • tremon 5y ago
          In the typical teenager's mind, that would be after, not if
          • mhh__ 5y ago
            We are discussing a hypothetical teenager who doesn't exist, who knows? Besides, I had thousands of HN karma (the most important metric of maturity of course) when I was a teenager not very long ago.
          • pempem 5y ago
            Was it an "if" in yours when you were a teenager? There are lots of strong statistical differences that are visible in the teenage population and trickle their way into insurance tables. Basically we could do a better job engendering concern from teenagers, its not some kind of inherent mental lack of capability.
• AmericanChopper 5y ago
  > I am really worried by the fact that I am the unwilling tester in the Great Driverless Car Experiment. You’re basically an non-consenting tester for every piece of innovation that society every has/ever will come up with, in one way or another. It’s an unavoidable feature of living on the same planet as 8 billion other people. Perhaps the safety of this technology does need to improve, or perhaps not. But there’s no level of improvement that would ever be able to satisfy this outrage you’ve expressed at something new existing in the same place as you.
  • CogitoCogito 5y ago
    > You’re basically an non-consenting tester for every piece of innovation that society every has/ever will come up with, in one way or another. It’s an unavoidable feature of living on the same planet as 8 billion other people. Perhaps the safety of this technology does need to improve, or perhaps not. But there’s no level of improvement that would ever be able to satisfy this outrage you’ve expressed at something new existing in the same place as you. Why do you say it's unavoidable? Regulations could certainly keep these tests off of public roads.
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    • Fernicia 5y ago
      They are speaking more broadly. Every day you walk past buildings with novel construction features, planes fly overhead without your permission, the ingredients to the food you eat change without your knowledge or consent. It's a simple fact of life that you test things without explicitly consenting. The driverless cars are no different.
      • paulryanrogers 5y ago
        Food ingredients are posted on the package. If the contents differ the manufacturer is liable.
    • dntrkv 5y ago
• svet_0 5y ago
  Autonomous cars are already safer than human drivers. Not as featureful or accurate, but safer.
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  • AbrahamParangi 5y ago
    This is almost certainly a data artifact, despite how often it gets repeated by optimists
  • QuarterReptile 5y ago
    This is not exactly irrelevant, but there is some indeterminate weighting factor that you would have to apply for the bad taste of algorithms killing people vs people killing people. Not that I'm an impartial judge... At the end of the autonomous car rainbow waits more parking, more driving, and fences to keep people out of streets.
• calyth2018 5y ago
  You're not wrong.
• xutopia 5y ago
  They've been driving for a while now. Can't you go with data from their existing rides to form an opinion? All you're going with is fear right now. Those cars are already better than the majority of drivers.
• rafale 5y ago
  I didn't know they load test bridges. Wouldn't that put unnecessary wear on the structure and age it prematurely?
  • jaywalk 5y ago
    What? No, not at all. The bridge has to be able to handle the max load, otherwise it's not safe. If the load test causes any issues with the bridge, that is a massive red flag.
  • JaimeThompson 5y ago
    The max load test is to verify it can support the max rated load before safety margin so they aren't testing it to the point right before it fails.
• AlwaysRock 5y ago
  The driverless car is already safer than the other people you share the road with everyday.
  • nullc 5y ago
    We can't make safe driverless cars if people frequently make false claims about their current safety.
    • AlwaysRock 5y ago
      We will never have driverless cars if we hold them to a standard that is unobtainable while continuing to let regular drivers cause accidents and deaths on a daily basis.
• carapace 5y ago
  This. These robots are massive and fast, they are killers. Yet as long as they look like cars we let them run loose on public streets. It's kinda nuts. (Arguably car traffic as it's set up now is kinds nuts too, but that's a different argument.) The obvious thing to do is start with something like a golf cart that is limited to, say, 5mph top speed, and work your way up.
  • WindyCityBrew 5y ago
    Lol. Drunk drivers are killers. People that text and drive are killers. People that get kicked by their kid and turn around for a second to yell at them are killers. I'll take an unfatigable, indistractable, computer that literally has eyes in the back of its head, and on the side of its head, and the front, and can bounce radar under cars, etc over the pitiful example of a "safe (human) driver" we have now.
    • JaimeThompson 5y ago
      >unfatigable, indistractable memory leaks, priority inversions, dropped packets / data. Lots of ways systems can act strangely.
    • carapace 5y ago
      > I'll take an unfatigable, indistractable, computer that literally has eyes in the back of its head, and on the side of its head, and the front, and can bounce radar under cars, etc over the pitiful example of a "safe (human) driver" we have now. Yes, friend, and when we have those so will I. Those (as yet still fictional) robot cars (and can we PLEASE call them "auto-autos"!?) are not the problem. - - - - > Drunk drivers are killers. People that text and drive are killers. ... Yes, and it's arguably fucking crazy that we let them do that. The whole reason is a deliberate campaign to normalize the carnage: "speed demons" were replaced by "jay walkers" and now more people (in the USA) have been killed by cars than by all the wars we've fought. "The Real Reason Jaywalking Is A Crime (Adam Ruins Everything)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxopfjXkArM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxopfjXkArM Anyhow, "people kill people so my robots should be allowed to kill people too." Is not a valid argument IMO.
• carabiner 5y ago
  You didn't design the aircraft that you fly on, which are incredibly computerized. Also the drugs that your doctor prescribes. Etc. You put your faith in myriad bureaucracies and trust networks that you have no hope of understanding. Driverless cars are just one more added to the list.
  • ethanbond 5y ago
    Neither aircraft nor drug development norms look anything like the norms of software development. I actually find a substantial difference in my trust level between a traditional car company that's building self-driving capabilities (e.g. Mercedes) than a company that fashions itself as a software company that happens to build cars (e.g. Tesla) for exactly the reason of the norms and behaviors that each org would encourage.
    • woah 5y ago
      Didn't aircraft development norms lead to several planes plunging out of the sky with zero mechanical issues, due to software failure?
      • gouggoug 5y ago
        It's actually _failure to follow aircraft development norms_ that lead to the crash of multiple 737-Max
    • dogman144 5y ago
      Generally agree but also knew people who worked on Boeing QA/SWE and the internal picture sounds dicy. I'm a bit disconcerted flying after learning about it.
      • skylanh 5y ago
        Boeing's issues were written on the wall about 2 decades ago when it moved it's hierarchy from an engineer-centric one to a Chicago accountant-centric one. That alone wouldn't have been an issue, but they had an immediate brain drain as half their HQ staff didn't follow the relocation. Imagine a thousand employees, half your HQ staff, that leave. There are several possible reasons: - they're older -> more corporate knowledge and knew the "magic recipes" - skill based mobility -> they're so good they can go anywhere, and Chicago isn't Seattle - etc https://hbr.org/2001/10/inside-boeings-big-move https://hbr.org/2001/10/inside-boeings-big-move This was widely thought on ... what was I browsing back then? Reddit? as a fore-warner of bad stuff to come The fore-warning came to fruition when the issues at various Boeing plants started developing over the next ten years (insider videos talking with an employee about being on drugs during crucial assembly work and shift mates being similarly high, "get it through your station" attitudes) and the Dreamliner issues that were hand-waved away (no training, 1-hour tablet self directed training, certification delays, and eventually crashes).
• jaywalk 5y ago
  > Tradition has it that when you load-test a new bridge, you put the architect underneath. Do you have any more info on this? It's a fascinating fact.
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• snikeris 5y ago
  This is one of the problems with technology that Ted Kaczynski wrote about. You can't opt out. > Even the walker’s freedom is now greatly restricted. In the city he continually has to stop to wait for traffic lights that are designed mainly to serve auto traffic. In the country, motor traffic makes it dangerous and unpleasant to walk along the highway. (Note this important point that we have just illustrated with the case of motorized transport: When a new item of technology is introduced as an option that an individual can accept or not as he chooses, it does not necessarily REMAIN optional. In many cases the new technology changes society in such a way that people eventually find themselves FORCED to use it.) Your problem is the same as the walker's. The walker has opted out of the automobile, but still has to breathe its pollution and risk being hit by it.
  • jonny_eh 5y ago
    We're quoting the Unabomber now? Certainly you can choose good quotes from non-serial killers.
    • s1artibartfast 5y ago
      Why not? It is a good and relevant point.
      • jonny_eh 5y ago
        Because it justifies their actions. Would we be quoting him if he didn't murder innocent people?
        • colinmhayes 5y ago
          I don't think his murders invalidate his manifesto. Luditeism has been very popular since the industrial revolution, I think it's reasonably likely we would be talking about Industrial Society and its Future or something similar if he hadn't killed people.
          • 5y ago
• wang_li 5y ago
  >I think we should set a much higher bar for allowing those cars on the streets, rather than "it kinda works, so let's roll with it". Indeed. The minimum before any self driving car can be put on the road is that the developers, managers, executives, and major investors and their immediate families have to spend 8 hours running back and forth across a track on which 40 self driving cars per mile of track are running laps at a minimum of 50 MPH. Additionally there need to be things like rains of nails on the road, suddenly floods of water, packs of dogs, tumbling tumbleweeds, and other hazards. If at any point the average speed drops below 50 MPH or if the cars hit anyone or hit each other, the car can't go on public roads.
• kylecordes 5y ago
  Maybe now is the time to start raising the bar on human and upcoming automated drivers. Both could have to pass a driving test that includes challenging, difficult situations. Day, night, rain, snow, fog, heavy traffic, missing lane lines, simulated pedestrians (including small children) leaping out between parked cars, and more. For further difficulty, both kinds of drivers could have to pass this within a x% margin of the fastest safe speed at which the maneuvers can be completed; no cheating by slowing down to traffic-disrupting speeds.
  • beambot 5y ago
    I suspect that a challenging driver assessment between AVs and humans would be the most rapid driver of AVs possible... Just remember: Most drivers think they're above average. Curiously, autonomous car technology also makes it feasible for us to rate drivers -- it's like having a professional watching over your shoulder all the time. IIRC, Tesla used something similar to determine rollout of new FSD capabilities.
  • nullc 5y ago
    The reason to hold humans and self driving cars to a different standard is that humans have already "class qualified" under ... well ... every condition that we drive in... with on the order of a billion driving years of total experience to the limitations of human-driving and far in excess of 10 million years of additional driving added per year along with a considerable amount of study across many decades. Though there are systematic flaws in human drivers they're reasonably well known given the level of experience we have, there are many mitigations in place in both our cars and road designs, and many of these flaws are intuitively modeled by the other humans on the road as well as pedestrians allowing for real-time compensation. The driverless cars, on the other hand-- we have radically less experience with as a class and there are many reasons to believe that vendor to vendor (e.g. due to sensor modalities) or even version to version will behave less self-consistently than human drivers do as a class. We know of some systematic faults in their operation which cause them to behave in ways that are highly surprising to humans, and we should expect to find many more as we gain experience. To the extent that the properties of self driving cars have been formally studied at all it's been primarily by their creators which are obviously self interested. Some of the practices used in early supervised self-driving also actively undermined understanding their safety (e.g. executing a hand over to the human once the car was already in an nonrecoverable unsafe state and then attributing the accident to human driving since at the time of the collision the human was back in charge, but maybe only by a hundred milliseconds; or companies committing perjury to use the DMCA to force down unfavorable videos created by others) This isn't an argument that we might not benefit from more rigorous driver testing or even from testing ideas that originated from self-driving car testing... but parity between driverless car tests and human testing shouldn't be a goal, particularly not when so many orders of magnitude separate our human driving experience from driverless experience.
• chasd00 5y ago
  > I am really worried by the fact that I am the unwilling tester.. stay inside in front of FANNG. You'll be safe there ( yet still an unwilling tester ).
• dogman144 5y ago
  This is the most challenging transition with tech in terms of the outcomes and the difficulty defining just what this trend is. Cybernetics is* ~insertion of a governance layer into our social contract that we didn't agree to relinquish our agency to... It just sort of happened, and we deal with the outcomes. The more disconcerting aspect to me is the latter. Suddenly, QR codes everywhere, good luck getting around without a smart phone, if that driverless car sideswipes you and doesn't stop, call someone I guess? If this area/trend interests you, there is a lot of reading available from the weird (CCRU, early Nick Land) to the fairly mechanical/academic (MIT, Norbert Wiener), to the openly behavioral governance-themed (Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab, B.J. Fogg), to adversarial-to-tech (The Cybernetic Hypothesis). * so-so definition of the space, but its the best I can sum it up.
• stonkdonk 5y ago
  plus the "beta" testers treat it like some kind of fun game. they're like "whoops, almost swerved into traffic. whoops, almost ran into a pedestrian crossing the street."
• conductr 5y ago
  My wife's 96 year old grandfather still has a driver's license because he passes some ridiculous vision test with 1 of his eyes. He can't read a newspaper or see a television well enough to enjoy sports (previously his favorite thing). He says he's memorized the vision test at his doctor's office and when asked the doctor refuses to file a report (or whatever procedural thing is required to remove his driving abilities). He totaled his car(s) every ~6 months for the past ~5 years. Luckily for other drivers, always doing something like hitting a concrete light pole base in a large parking lot. Although him and wife have been hospitalized each time as 1) age 2) sometimes happens at >35MPH. All to say, the roads being safe as a core assumption is completely false. I'd gladly share the road with beta AI versus other drivers like this. Being an occupant in beta AI is completely optional.
  • scoot 5y ago
    If there's one thing that seems the be much more forgiving in the US, it's car insurance. How has his premium and excess not become unmanageably expensive? Or not to have been denied insurance? UK car insurance feels more like US health insurance. High premiums, and heaven forbid if you get into an accident.
    • conductr 5y ago
      I think it has become expensive by most measurements. Except, for them at 96, the cost and vehicle buys them independence. The alternative is to move into a senior living situation, which is quite expensive as well. I’m pretty sure they only cover him for liability and he keeps just buying new cars every time. He has some minor wealth and mailbox money type arrangements and at this age he’s in a “can’t take it with me” phase of his financial justifications. So he pays the premiums. Why they keep insuring him with no sense of the danger he imposes to others is an interesting question and it’s because their financial exposure is all that matters. They are betting that he won’t kill anyone and if he causes some property damage they feel protected from a risk adjusted perspective. But no larger corporate responsibility / citizenship is in place.
  • jdavis703 5y ago
    If you’re in California, you can file a report with the DMV since you presumably know both his license plate and his name.
• tryitnow 5y ago
  I agree with your basic idea, but I don't think there's really any way around this - at some point these systems will have to be tested in a real world environment. I guess the question is: how much higher should the bar be set? And if we set it substantially higher then how much longer will it take to improve the performance and safety of these systems?
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• LocalPCGuy 5y ago
  Personally, any % above "average human driving skill" reliably should start to see more uptake of this new technology. Driverless cars have and will kill people. Sometimes it will be due to programming errors. But on the whole, they are, in many cases, on par or better than human drivers. I think it's good to be cautious, for the industry to be cautious. But I don't want to see people freaking out over a single accident because it involved an AI when there are thousands of non-AI accidents every day. Be consistent in judging them, not against some mythical 100% success rate but against the criteria, is it better/safer than most drivers.
• jklinger410 5y ago
  > I am really worried by the fact that I am the unwilling tester in the Great Driverless Car Experiment. Welcome to America, where you are an unwitting tester of many private ventures that have been signed off on by the American government on your behalf. Remember that complaining about these tests and demanding more control means that you are communist. Unless of course you don't mind waiting around to be harmed by such tests, and are either able to sue, or told that you had no reasonable expectation of safety.
• tedmiston 5y ago
  Previous articles mention that the cars provided rides to Cruise employees before the general public.