Experts Warn Lawmakers About Self-Driving Cars: 'Someone Is Going To Die'

[HardOCP News]

Experts are warning lawmakers that, when it comes to self-driving cars, "someone is going to die." This is compared to current vehicles in which no one has ever died.


The robot car revolution hit a speed bump on Tuesday as senators and tech experts sounded stern warnings about the potentially fatal risks of self-driving cars. “There is no question that someone is going to die in this technology,” said Duke University roboticist Missy Cummings in testimony before the US Senate committee on commerce, science and transportation. “The question is when and what can we do to minimize that.”

 

[the-one1]

“The question is when and what can we do to minimize that.”


They can start by removing more idiot drivers off the road.

 

[Elios]

yeah ban human drivers thats how

 

[Armenius]

yeah ban human drivers thats how

I hate to agree with this, but I believe this is the only way autonomous vehicles are going to work en masse: All or nothing.

 

[cyclone3d]

Yeah, ban human drivers, that's how.

FTFY

You would also need to ban pedestrians and bicycle riders, make sure no human that is not already in a car is allowed within 50 feet of any roadway and have every roadway is enclosed in armor plating so nobody outside could shoot, throw, launch, etc. anything at the vehicles.

But that wouldn't help either as anybody could just take weapons, rocks, whatever with them when they get in a vehicle.

Soooo, to keep that from happening, we must have mandatory strip search checkpoints at every entrance to every roadway, driveways included.

 

[TwistedAegis]

I hate to agree with this, but I believe this is the only way autonomous vehicles are going to work en masse: All or nothing.

Without a major breakthrough in AI/machine learning, I don't disagree. Although the AlphaGO stuff makes me wonder.

But so many of the advantages of automation here come in the network effects of all autos being automated - merging, traffic issues, less following distance required, etc.

 

[Quix]

I hate to agree with this, but I believe this is the only way autonomous vehicles are going to work en masse: All or nothing.

Never going to happen, for one thing automated cars won't be legal until they can operate on today's roads. Plus it wouldn't really solve anything because you'd still have pedestrians, bicycles and anything else we invent in the next 20 years.

 

[jstokes75]

It appears to me that Humans are the weakest point in the system. We should just eliminate them.

 

[ShagnWagn]

I guess this makes me an expert too since I believe someone is going to die. The nerds behind doors programming these things probably don't even know how to drive cars adequately themselves. While it's no doubt someone will die - I believe the point is someone will die because of a stupid miscalculation that would never have happened had the car been driven by a human. The first incident will probably be a Google Lexus driving off a bridge to avoid a sandbag in the gutter.

 

[pgwalsh]

“The question is when and what can we do to minimize that.”


They can start by removing more idiot drivers off the road.

They could have minimized bad drivers and deaths a long time ago if they really wanted. They could have made driver's tests much more stringent and required defensive driving courses etc. Instead, they give just about anyone a license that can check a box.

However you still have idiot's on the road that aren't driving cars, like crazy cyclists that don't obey the traffic laws. There will always be something.

 

[Briguyatx]

How many accidents happen due to drunk, distracted or otherwise impaired driving?

Somehow, I bet that number will be significantly larger than the number of accidents caused by AI driven vehicles.

 

[Chaos Machine]

I don't get it, of course people are going to die due to the inherent nature of driving itself. The pertinent question is, are they going to be safer than the average driver. If the answer is yes then by all means make it legal. The bottom line is reducing driving fatalities, even if they aren't perfect if they reduce them it still makes it a worthwhile feature.

 

[amddragonpc]

I have yet to read or see anything on how the autonomous cars operate around pedestrians, bicyclists, and motorcyclists. Do these cars operate safely around them? Curious how an autonomous car would react to a motorcyclist lane splitting (in California where it's legal).

 

[Rebel44]

It appears to me that Humans are the weakest point in the system. We should just eliminate them.

 

[DukenukemX]

I don't get it, of course people are going to die due to the inherent nature of driving itself. The pertinent question is, are they going to be safer than the average driver. If the answer is yes then by all means make it legal. The bottom line is reducing driving fatalities, even if they aren't perfect if they reduce them it still makes it a worthwhile feature.

Especially when it comes to drunk driving or falling sleep at the wheel. It won't be perfect, but it won't be such a bad idea to have an auto pilot feature that engages when it detects that you're about to crash. There's also the elderly that drive, and people who are handicap in some way.

When we made medicine we realize it might kill some people, but it doesn't mean we should stop producing medicine.

 

[Armenius]

How many accidents happen due to drunk, distracted or otherwise impaired driving?

Somehow, I bet that number will be significantly larger than the number of accidents caused by AI driven vehicles.

I think it's interesting how quick some people are to demonize the human drivers when this subject comes up. What is trying to be figured out today is how to best integrate autonomous vehicles into the current infrastructure without adding to the accidents already caused by the "horrible human drivers." The issue the news article in the OP is touching on is coming up with universal standards in testing and real world driving applications.

A couple of examples:
"Google X’s Chris Urmson, the company’s director of self-driving cars, said the company was trying to work through some difficult problems. Where to turn – toward the child playing in the road or over the side of the overpass?"

“[W]e know that people, including bicyclists, pedestrians and other drivers, could and will attempt to game self-driving cars, in effect trying to elicit or prevent various behaviors in attempts to get ahead of the cars or simply to have fun,” she said.

 

[ShagnWagn]

“[W]e know that people, including bicyclists, pedestrians and other drivers, could and will attempt to game self-driving cars, in effect trying to elicit or prevent various behaviors in attempts to get ahead of the cars or simply to have fun,” she said.

That is quite possible. I have upgraded brake systems on my truck and my car. I could get a self-driving car to rear-end, at its fault (the company who programmed it), my vehicle at my very whim.

 

[Darunion]

That is quite possible. I have upgraded brake systems on my truck and my car. I could get a self-driving car to rear-end, at its fault (the company who programmed it), my vehicle at my very whim.

It shouldn't be following you as close. You know, you really aren't supposed to drive so close that the person in front cant see the edge of your hood in the rear view. Plus a human reaction time is somewhere around 100ms, this ideally would be much faster and would already know what vehicles are around it at that exact moment to dodge out of the way versus having to look over ones shoulder.

Also remember, it will likely be recording what is going on.

 

[ShagnWagn]

It shouldn't be following you as close. You know, you really aren't supposed to drive so close that the person in front cant see the edge of your hood in the rear view. Plus a human reaction time is somewhere around 100ms, this ideally would be much faster and would already know what vehicles are around it at that exact moment to dodge out of the way versus having to look over ones shoulder.

Also remember, it will likely be recording what is going on.

In the U.S. (it could vary by state), you are supposed to be following 2 seconds behind. If you are in traffic, and you have a tailgate, you most likely won't see the edge of an import car's hood, especially something like a Corvette.

It will record itself rear-ending into me? Fine by me Even better proof against them.

 

[Darunion]

In the U.S. (it could vary by state), you are supposed to be following 2 seconds behind. If you are in traffic, and you have a tailgate, you most likely won't see the edge of an import car's hood, especially something like a Corvette.

It will record itself rear-ending into me? Fine by me Even better proof against them.

Brake checking is still illegal and has overturned some 'at fault' instances. Harder to prove but with enough video and data logging, might end up being harder than you think than it is today.

 

[ShagnWagn]

Brake checking is still illegal and has overturned some 'at fault' instances. Harder to prove but with enough video and data logging, might end up being harder than you think than it is today.

I see your point, but I can still wait until the last second approaching a stopped vehicle and hit the brakes "to avoid an accident". It can easily happen, and happens all the time, on accident. Anyway... No point in continuing.

 

[ChadD]

There is an opportunity for a startup to make some good coin off plenty of Govs in a few years. When there is a good handful of AI cars shipping. Selling scared politician to make laws to mandate AI connected "governor" chips for every car sold, and then charge them to run a Traffic Control system for AI cars. Honestly wouldn't be a bad idea anyway... the AI can only do better with more info, if the AI is told if another AI a 1/4 block up has to slam the breaks to avoid something before its really paying attention itself it would know to start slowing early.

My guess would be is that one or two AI Fleet control companies will be the next big Tech startup sometime in the next 20 years or so, its not like adding a universal cellular connected chip to every AI car by law would be expensive. The real money would come from charging Cities and States to manage AI traffic... and some day all traffic.

 

[sfsuphysics]

Auto executives and US senators clash over calls for universal standards in robotic vehicles at Senate commerce committee hearing

And this is where the auto-car project dies... because you have auto executives, who know how to run a company not how to build a car, and you have US senators that given their many perks probably don't know how to drive a car much less think about how they work.

But that's alright lets stop autonomous cars because the 35000 or so that died last year due to humans doing the driving doesn't count, and lets be honest, auto makers are against autonomous cars ... at least until they start making them.

 

[ChadD]

But that's alright lets stop autonomous cars because the 35000 or so that died last year due to humans doing the driving doesn't count, and lets be honest, auto makers are against autonomous cars ... at least until they start making them.

Not to mention all the speeding and traffic violation ticket $ they are going to loose out on.

One company needs to develop an Over Mind AI-car system. A small chip/cell system that communicates with the manufacturers AI. This way they could create the open ended software... and all the manufacturers would have to do is have their system talk to the Universal traffic control system... which the Gov Could regulate... and heck even Require and CHARGE end users to use. So anyone that has an AI car will be required to pay a tax, that will go to running the Traffic Control system and if the Gov wants they can add as much on there as they want and replace that revenue steam for driving infractions.

 

[mcravenufo]

Geezuz, people die in cars every day driven by humans. My guess is that there will be fewer deaths by self driving cars.

 

[TwistedAegis]

Not to mention all the speeding and traffic violation ticket $ they are going to loose out on.

One company needs to develop an Over Mind AI-car system. A small chip/cell system that communicates with the manufacturers AI. This way they could create the open ended software... and all the manufacturers would have to do is have their system talk to the Universal traffic control system... which the Gov Could regulate... and heck even Require and CHARGE end users to use. So anyone that has an AI car will be required to pay a tax, that will go to running the Traffic Control system and if the Gov wants they can add as much on there as they want and replace that revenue steam for driving infractions.

I like this idea; the only issue I see is the cost and time to roll it out on all roads, whereas if you go with a grid network system, anytime there are cars together, they're communicating and mapping out a large area together.

 

[Litfod]

A couple of examples:
"Google X’s Chris Urmson, the company’s director of self-driving cars, said the company was trying to work through some difficult problems. Where to turn – toward the child playing in the road or over the side of the overpass?"

Or how about "stop"? Then the human passenger can get out and beat some sense into the child, and teach it not to play on overpasses.

And I think cyclists, especially in cities, are unlicensed, uninsured, oblivious, self-righteous, dangerous vermin and should be banned from roads regardless of whether or not cars are autonomous.

 

[Jagger100]

It shouldn't be following you as close. You know, you really aren't supposed to drive so close that the person in front cant see the edge of your hood in the rear view. Plus a human reaction time is somewhere around 100ms, this ideally would be much faster and would already know what vehicles are around it at that exact moment to dodge out of the way versus having to look over ones shoulder.

Also remember, it will likely be recording what is going on.

There's a secondary problem if every car on the road followed the 1 car length per 10 mph rule, there wouldn't be enough road to hold all the cars spaced like that in even a moderately sized city at rush hour. Major road and highways would backup onto side streets. People violating that rule is how traffic keeps moving. People can get away with violating that rule because they understand the environment of the cars far enough ahead of them and can guess how they are going to react.

 

[ChadD]

There's a secondary problem if every car on the road followed the 1 car length per 10 mph rule, there wouldn't be enough road to hold all the cars spaced like that in even a moderately sized city at rush hour. Major road and highways would backup onto side streets. People violating that rule is how traffic keeps moving. People can get away with violating that rule because they understand the environment of the cars far enough ahead of them and can guess how they are going to react.

Well if that was true there wouldn't be over 30k deaths in the US every year, I would suggest a good number of that 30k didn't get away with it... not counting those that just ended up cripples of course. The truth is if people obeyed every single traffic law to the letter even during rush hours, they would get to there destinations +or- 5 min of what they do now. (again not counting those that don't come home at all)

A system where 90+% of the cars on the road are AI consulting a Hive mind style traffic control system would eliminate the idea of rush hours, the truth is outside of a handful of badly designed road systems in NA most of our roads can accommodate the traffic we have. The issue is impatience and stupidity. Two issues that don't effect our silicon overlords.

 

[Darunion]

There's a secondary problem if every car on the road followed the 1 car length per 10 mph rule, there wouldn't be enough road to hold all the cars spaced like that in even a moderately sized city at rush hour. Major road and highways would backup onto side streets. People violating that rule is how traffic keeps moving. People can get away with violating that rule because they understand the environment of the cars far enough ahead of them and can guess how they are going to react.

True, but also imagine traffic that didnt come to a screeching halt because 3 cars have waited for 10 minutes on an on ramp finally charge in and cause cars to slam on their brakes and jam up. Either way you slice it, traffic that flows with the goal of total smooth flow will always be better than traffic that flows based on every man for himself.

 

[DPI]

"Experts Warn Lawmakers About Cars: 'Someone Is Going To Die'"

Fixed

 

[Derfnofred]

There's a secondary problem if every car on the road followed the 1 car length per 10 mph rule, there wouldn't be enough road to hold all the cars spaced like that in even a moderately sized city at rush hour. Major road and highways would backup onto side streets. People violating that rule is how traffic keeps moving. People can get away with violating that rule because they understand the environment of the cars far enough ahead of them and can guess how they are going to react.

Fundamental diagram of traffic flow - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hmmmm.....

 

[THRESHIN]

so what i got out of this is that it's ok if a human has an accident and kills someone, but it's not if a computer does it even if far, far less. makes perfect sense!

 

[Revdarian]

They could have minimized bad drivers and deaths a long time ago if they really wanted. They could have made driver's tests much more stringent and required defensive driving courses etc. Instead, they give just about anyone a license that can check a box.

However you still have idiot's on the road that aren't driving cars, like crazy cyclists that don't obey the traffic laws. There will always be something.

Harder driving tests don't make driving safer, actually it is the opposite, for example you should learn about South Africa's famous almost impossible to pass driving test, it was so hard that people ended just saying "fuck it, i might as well drive without the license!".


edit:
Btw it doesn't surprise me to see here brake checkers after seeing the peeps in the other thread promoting speeding up to block someone from changing lanes, it also doesn't surprise me that they are sure that they are the awesomest drivers ever. Delusional people.

edit2:
The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which relatively unskilled persons sufferillusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability to be much higher than it really is. Dunning and Kruger attributed this bias to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their own ineptitude and evaluate their own ability accurately.

 

[jhymesba]

I see your point, but I can still wait until the last second approaching a stopped vehicle and hit the brakes "to avoid an accident". It can easily happen, and happens all the time, on accident. Anyway... No point in continuing.

Of course there is no point in continuing. You have no intention on seeing anyone else's position but your own.

 

[jiminator]

there will not be any need for terminators. one day when our internet becomes conscious it will eradicate humanity by locking car doors and have them drive off cliffs....

 

[jhymesba]

There's a secondary problem if every car on the road followed the 1 car length per 10 mph rule, there wouldn't be enough road to hold all the cars spaced like that in even a moderately sized city at rush hour. Major road and highways would backup onto side streets. People violating that rule is how traffic keeps moving. People can get away with violating that rule because they understand the environment of the cars far enough ahead of them and can guess how they are going to react.

Do you know why there's supposed to be 1 car length per 10mph? Because you're human, and it takes time for the signals to travel from your eyes to your brain, through processes in your brain, and then along your spine to your feet. Autonomous vehicles reduce that time by an order of magnitude, at least, and have far better senses than you do. Google's self-driving car has a driving record that is reflecting this fact, with accidents only caused by ... you guessed it, human drivers who are so conditioned to other drivers making bad moves that they make bad moves and hit the google car.

Are self-driving cars perfect? Of course not. Show me something that is perfect, and I'll show you something that doesn't exist in the real world. Are they better than most human drivers? That's the question up for debate. I personally say "yes", but that's only because I have seen the raw number of utter buffoons on the roads. I swear. If they were any more stupid, they'd need to be watered twice a week.

 

[jhymesba]

Having read the linked article, I can't help but ask: Why do the major automation companies keep falling for this false dichotomy. There's a child playing in the road? On an overpass? And your only option is to run the child over or go over the edge of the overpass?

How about the self-driving car, with much better attention span and senses than humans, sees the small human playing in the inappropriate place, notifies the authorities, and reroutes to the next exit? All at the same time, because, unlike 99%+ of humans, robots CAN do two things at once and do them well.

It's like the bus full of nuns example I keep hearing. Car has a choice between bus of nuns and an SUV with 6 family members in it. It must hit one of the two. Except...no it doesn't. It's not going to be surprised by this situation, because it's been paying attention to the road, rather than doing what its carbon unit passengers are doing -- rocking out to the music, putting on makeup, playing video games. Instead, it sees the situation developing long before the situation would be dangerous, and it switches lanes and lets the bus and SUV proceed past unmolested. Wonderful idea. Emphasize how much better our machine overlords actually are, and note that they're doing a service for us: Allowing us to do the stupid things we'd still do even if the cars weren't automated, and keep us from having close encounters with buses of nuns and SUVs of families.

 

[sfsuphysics]

Not to mention all the speeding and traffic violation ticket $ they are going to loose out on.

That is actually a very interesting side effect. Here in San Francisco they have street sweepers sweep the streets once a week, so that if you a parked on that side of the street on that particular day between the hours that are designated then the little meter maid car that drives in front of the street sweeper will throw a ticket on your car. Now they did a study to make some streets biweekly instead of weekly because lets be honest some neighborhoods don't have fucking slobs who think the street is a place to toss anything they like, and at the conclusion of the study they found that the city lost money as a net result. Not that "oh it is perfectly viable for some streets in the city" but they fucking lost money, so they street sweeping is obviously a net gain of cash for the city even after you account for all the street sweeper's salaries, equipment, maintenance, retirement, etc.

 

[ruffbytes]

I think there is this very binary thinking that is going on lately where everything has to be all or nothing. We cannot make a perfectly safe car. We only can make a much, much safer car. But since it is not perfectly safe, it's a terrible idea.

Same thing happens with smoking vs. e-cigs. Since e-cigs are not 100% safe and only an order of magnitude safer than smoking, screw it - regulate them the same way.