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From where I sit, there's a general perception that driverless cars ("tech") will reduce traffic accidents and fatalities and be an overall significant positive
by saulpw 3y ago
From where I sit, there's a general perception that driverless cars ("tech") will reduce traffic accidents and fatalities and be an overall significant positive improvement in transportation (source: partner is lifer at city DOT and is pro-driverless cars). There's a corresponding trust that companies/process/regulations wouldn't allow the deployment of driverless vehicles unless they're a safe and mature technology. And a similar lack of understanding of how mature the technology actually is (given mainstream hype from Musk etc). So a demonstration that extreme anti-social behavior will currently result, not from edge-case conditions that would be dangerous even for a human to be driving in, but from a simple hack that literally any miscreant could pull off in seconds and successfully run away from without any risk to themselves, might be sufficient to raise awareness that we can't trust creators of these vehicles or the larger system to do adequate testing before deployment, and that in fact the vehicles are already deployed widely enough to inflict transportation blockages with a minimum of miscreants and effort by same.
- nomel 3y ago> but from a simple hack that literally any miscreant could pull off in seconds and successfully run away from without any risk to themselves Without any risk to themselves, or anyone else. I don't think anyone will see this point of "not enough testing", when a car should not continue with a stop sign, road cone, or human on the hood, under any condition. I think most everyone will see this as expected and desired behavior, with a clear demonstration of safe handling of a dumb situation caused by some angry idiots. Here's a question for anyone with this perspective: What should a fully tested, fully qualified, car do in this situation? I see the "correct" answer as: immediately disable automation, and prompt a human for remote control. What's your "correct" answer? This is all opinion that could only be settled be a poll of those who became aware of this situation. I'm having trouble finding any, but this one from NY [1]. [1] https://observer.com/2014/12/majority-of-new-yorkers-want-protesters-to-stop-blocking-traffic-poll/ https://observer.com/2014/12/majority-of-new-yorkers-want-pr...
- saulpw 3y ago> Here's a question for anyone with this perspective: What should a fully tested, fully qualified, car do in this situation? Okay, fine: it should deploy an embedded all-purpose maintenance drone to exit the vehicle and move the cone to a safe and out-of-the-way location. It's a good thought experiment, and I think goes to show that we can't really have Level 5 Autonomous Vehicles without an embedded all-purpose maintenance drone. I mean the dream is for humanless robotaxis to drive themselves to their next fare, right? They shouldn't need a human to come out in order to remove a harmless 5-pound object. I mean how about any number of other things that might happen onto its hood? A plastic bag, or a half-eaten happy meal? These are routine urban annoyances that require 15 seconds of attention and an eyeroll at most.