4 ms·

Have insurance companies figured out how accidents, tickets and liability are being handled? If there is anything I've learned in my career it is that building

Have insurance companies figured out how accidents, tickets and liability are being handled? If there is anything I've learned in my career it is that building systems that are 100% completely error-free is pie in the sky thinking even in moderately controlled environments. Suffice it to say, I will be a very late adopter although I think the efforts are very exciting.

bgutierrez 14y ago
It doesn't need to be 100% error-free, it just needs to be on average way better than human drivers. Even if there are occasional major catastrophes (e.g., 1000 cars drive off a collapsed bridge) it will still be better than what we have now: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in...
- moocow01 14y ago
  From a statistical, macro perspective you are correct. But from the perspective of a driver this could be a hard sell. I would say it is similar in essence to air travel. Even though commercial airline travel is way safer than driving, I'm pretty sure more people fear airline travel due to the element of having no control. Unfortunately when they release probably any automated car crash, as rare as it may be, will be played up as death by machine. I think they will have to really play up the ability to easily override the automation (even though I doubt it will mitigate automated car crashes in that once you get used to it being successful you'll probably be reading a book when the override is actually needed)
  - mashmac2 14y ago
    We also don't have TSA checkpoints to get through just to get in our cars...
  - jfoutz 14y ago
    Really, it's all in the black box. Old person hits gas instead of break, crashes into robot car. What would a human do differently? teenager runs red light, gets tboned by robot car. What would a human do differently? Child runs in front of car. What would a human do differently? It might take a few years, but thousands of hours of video of humans making avoidable mistakes will probably change people's minds.
  - hughw 14y ago
    I think they will have to really play up the ability to easily override the automation. I agree. Steamships retained masts for sails into the twentieth century, and I believe horseless carriages could still be hooked up to a team, for a while after their introduction.
- CWuestefeld 14y ago
  That would be true if we were all rational. But the chicken little behavior of us Americans over the past 11 years really demonstrates that we're not able to correctly evaluate and compare risks of minuscule magnitude.
- ori_b 14y ago
  That would be the case if people are rational. However, people are not rational, and don't like not being in control, even if the chances of them dying are far lower. It may be safer to share the road with self-driving cars, but it's still scarier to rely on a machine that you don't understand. The most important barriers to adoption are social, not technological, and that means that even one major catastrophe can cause a wave of backlash, regardless of whether or not it's justified. And that's why it needs to be rock solid.
  - bgutierrez 14y ago
    I agree that people are not rational and will fear the outliers and that the biggest barriers will be social. I'm hoping that there are very few glitches along the way, since we'll be safer if this happens. Most people feel confident about their own driving, but I think they also remember a lot of the close calls they've had. I think—and hope—we'll be surprised at how quickly we acclimate to magic. Sure, we'll be completely freaked out by letting go of the steering wheel. Then we'll be irritated at how our car thought the leaves blowing across the road were an obstacle. Finally, we'll wonder how we ever survived our own driving and we'll mourn for those that didn't.
warfangle 14y ago
If all the sensors involved in the self-driving aspects are recording (a la an airplane's black box), re-creating a given automobile crash will probably aid insurance claims more than hinder them. It will allow the parties involved to accurately place fault - be it failure of the AI, unexpected circumstances (tree falls down, non-AI car sideswipes, etc) and so forth.
- moocow01 14y ago
  The sad thing is that most cars have "black boxes" but are usually never used in cases for whatever legal reason. Hopefully that will reverse some over time.
  - warfangle 14y ago
    But most of those black boxes only cover actions of the vehicle with said box installed. With the amount of data required for self-driving cars, the entire situation could be recorded - things external to the car. It would be like the airplane black box, but for all the vehicles in close proximity too.
michaelbuckbee 14y ago
Automated cars are one of those things that is slowly going to creep up on us all since it is a range of technologies working together, until one day we realize we didn't touch the wheel for a whole trip. We don't really think about it like this, but things like anti-lock brakes and automatic transmissions are all on this same continuum towards "driverless" cars. A next step might be something like adaptive cruise control: your CC is set at 60 but the car ahead of you slows rapidly and your car automatically applies the brakes.
- jberryman 14y ago
  > A next step might be something like adaptive cruise control: your CC is set at 60 but the car ahead of you slows rapidly and your car automatically applies the brakes. We already have that.
  - michaelbuckbee 14y ago
    I wasn't very clear, I was speaking more in terms of ubiquity .

bgutierrez 14y ago

It doesn't need to be 100% error-free, it just needs to be on average way better than human drivers. Even if there are occasional major catastrophes (e.g., 1000 cars drive off a collapsed bridge) it will still be better than what we have now: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in...

moocow01 14y ago
From a statistical, macro perspective you are correct. But from the perspective of a driver this could be a hard sell. I would say it is similar in essence to air travel. Even though commercial airline travel is way safer than driving, I'm pretty sure more people fear airline travel due to the element of having no control. Unfortunately when they release probably any automated car crash, as rare as it may be, will be played up as death by machine. I think they will have to really play up the ability to easily override the automation (even though I doubt it will mitigate automated car crashes in that once you get used to it being successful you'll probably be reading a book when the override is actually needed)
- mashmac2 14y ago
  We also don't have TSA checkpoints to get through just to get in our cars...
- jfoutz 14y ago
  Really, it's all in the black box. Old person hits gas instead of break, crashes into robot car. What would a human do differently? teenager runs red light, gets tboned by robot car. What would a human do differently? Child runs in front of car. What would a human do differently? It might take a few years, but thousands of hours of video of humans making avoidable mistakes will probably change people's minds.
- hughw 14y ago
  I think they will have to really play up the ability to easily override the automation. I agree. Steamships retained masts for sails into the twentieth century, and I believe horseless carriages could still be hooked up to a team, for a while after their introduction.
CWuestefeld 14y ago
That would be true if we were all rational. But the chicken little behavior of us Americans over the past 11 years really demonstrates that we're not able to correctly evaluate and compare risks of minuscule magnitude.
ori_b 14y ago
That would be the case if people are rational. However, people are not rational, and don't like not being in control, even if the chances of them dying are far lower. It may be safer to share the road with self-driving cars, but it's still scarier to rely on a machine that you don't understand. The most important barriers to adoption are social, not technological, and that means that even one major catastrophe can cause a wave of backlash, regardless of whether or not it's justified. And that's why it needs to be rock solid.
- bgutierrez 14y ago
  I agree that people are not rational and will fear the outliers and that the biggest barriers will be social. I'm hoping that there are very few glitches along the way, since we'll be safer if this happens. Most people feel confident about their own driving, but I think they also remember a lot of the close calls they've had. I think—and hope—we'll be surprised at how quickly we acclimate to magic. Sure, we'll be completely freaked out by letting go of the steering wheel. Then we'll be irritated at how our car thought the leaves blowing across the road were an obstacle. Finally, we'll wonder how we ever survived our own driving and we'll mourn for those that didn't.

warfangle 14y ago

If all the sensors involved in the self-driving aspects are recording (a la an airplane's black box), re-creating a given automobile crash will probably aid insurance claims more than hinder them. It will allow the parties involved to accurately place fault - be it failure of the AI, unexpected circumstances (tree falls down, non-AI car sideswipes, etc) and so forth.

moocow01 14y ago
The sad thing is that most cars have "black boxes" but are usually never used in cases for whatever legal reason. Hopefully that will reverse some over time.
- warfangle 14y ago
  But most of those black boxes only cover actions of the vehicle with said box installed. With the amount of data required for self-driving cars, the entire situation could be recorded - things external to the car. It would be like the airplane black box, but for all the vehicles in close proximity too.

michaelbuckbee 14y ago

Automated cars are one of those things that is slowly going to creep up on us all since it is a range of technologies working together, until one day we realize we didn't touch the wheel for a whole trip. We don't really think about it like this, but things like anti-lock brakes and automatic transmissions are all on this same continuum towards "driverless" cars. A next step might be something like adaptive cruise control: your CC is set at 60 but the car ahead of you slows rapidly and your car automatically applies the brakes.

jberryman 14y ago
> A next step might be something like adaptive cruise control: your CC is set at 60 but the car ahead of you slows rapidly and your car automatically applies the brakes. We already have that.
- michaelbuckbee 14y ago
  I wasn't very clear, I was speaking more in terms of ubiquity .