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I disagree. Seeing further and predicting more moves in advance will not help you avoid a child that suddenly runs out in front of you from behind a parked car.
by kijin 13y ago
I disagree. Seeing further and predicting more moves in advance will not help you avoid a child that suddenly runs out in front of you from behind a parked car. Autonomous cars might not have blind spots in the traditional sense, but I doubt that they can see through solid obstacles.
There just won't be enough time to deal with such a situation without hitting anything, even though there's probably more than enough time to analyze a thousand possible maneuvers. The best "seeing further" that you can do is to slow down when entering roads that are statistically more likely to have children behind obstacles, but even that is not bulletproof. The only place where "seeing further" is enough is when you're in the middle of the prairie with miles of clear visiblility in all directions.
- afternooner 13y agoWell, yea, actually it would. Because the vehicle would detect the movement long before I do. And even in that situation, hit the brakes is the right answer.
- kijin 13y ago@NPC82 claimed that the car would never need to decide to hit anything. And I disagree. Just because braking is the obvious "right answer" doesn't mean that there's nothing to decide. Modern cars have electronic stability control, which allows steering even while braking hard. In fact, it would be irresponsible for an autonomous car not to consider exercising that option in addition to braking. But as soon as it considers steering, it needs to decide what (or whom) to aim for.
- afternooner 13y agoNo, it really doesn't. Humans don't make that decision very well, hence why motor vehicle accidents are such a high rate of death. You're framing this as a false dichotomy. The car has to hit A or B. If all the sensors are working, it won't have to hit anything, it will break.