The Biggest Problem With Autonomous Cars

"G_Body_Man: Sponsored by the number 3" (gbodyman) 10/03/2016 at 00:06 • Filed to: None

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Is that nothing is infallible. And when the machines do make a mistake, who’s fault is it, who pays out, and how can we correct it? The roads are the very opposite of a controlled environment. Even with autonomous cars, you will still have jaywalkers, erratic cyclists, bus stops, breakdowns, animals, debris, and existing crashes to avoid. When one or multiple of these scenarios goes wrong, who will be blamed? Probably the manufacturer. Then, who will pay out? Do you need a driver’s license for an autonomous car? Who pays for insurance? How will you cover the cost of insurance without affecting everyone, or the owner in particular? What would the development costs be for a software patch? Would they issue a stop sale if the problem happens again while they’re developing the fix? And if humans are fallible, why are humans programming the car? What kind of hidden glitches could be present? Just things to think about.

Bman76 (no it doesn't need a WS6 hood) M. Arch > G_Body_Man: Sponsored by the number 3 10/03/2016 at 00:08

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What if Barbie had a hand grenade...

wiffleballtony > G_Body_Man: Sponsored by the number 3 10/03/2016 at 00:25

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I think we should understand what the motivation is for autonomous cars. Because I think that the big push is so the folks like Google can advertise to you more now that you have more time to waste on the Internet. Ultimately the best and easiest solution is to remove the need to travel as much to start. Telecommuting.

Urambo Tauro > G_Body_Man: Sponsored by the number 3 10/03/2016 at 00:27

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I worry about the reliability of HAVs.

It seems that the more electrical components there are in a car, the more likely it is to break down. And manufacturers are showing a disturbingly increasing willingness to let things slip at the factory, only to catch it in recalls.

And instead of these breakdowns being the loss of some fully-equipped Benz’s convenience features, these failures will be of critical components, like a driving sensor or controller. There might not even be a “limp mode”, because no manufacturer in their right mind would program a car to drive itself blindly. A failure of any autonomous system component would instantly “brick” the car.

DC3 LS, will be perpetually replacing cars until the end of time > G_Body_Man: Sponsored by the number 3 10/03/2016 at 00:38

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I’d say whoever the owner of the autonomous car is responsible for all it’s actions. No one’s putting a gun to anyone’s head to force you to buy one. If you decide to purchase one and put it on public roads all responsibilities and liabilities are on you.

As we’ve seen the tech is feasible. The two things that I think will be the most challenging are reliability and filters. Reliability as in I don’t want to be going 65 mph on the interstate when the whatever bee boo goes out. The filters is that lidar and radar can pick up a stupid amount of stuff. The problem is filtering what’s clutter and what’s important. For example with the fatal Tesla crash the radar saw the trailer, but because it was so high it ruled it out as clutter because the camera didn’t confirm it. And just in general it will be a problem. Too sensitive and you’ll get lots of false positives and to low and you’ll miss tractor trailers apparently.

Also I view driving the same way my Uncle taught me gun safety. Safety “Statistics don’t matter, if you exercise proper gun safety you have a 0% chance of shooting yourself or someone else.” Obviously with driving you have other drivers who can hit you, but even then autonomous cars won’t be much help their.

And before people say “This is why all cars need to be autonomous!” No fuck you! I’m not paying 10k for an autonomous car. I’ve never even owned a car that cost 10k and theirs lots of Americans out their like me, in that respect. Even if the price of autonomous systems comes down from the factory it’ll still fuck over the poor, because now maintaining an autonomous car is going to be much more expensive than a 20 year old Accord because the techs will require much more training and hours to diagnosis faults. So no fuck you, upper middle class white knight warriors. If you wanna make the world a better place go join the peace corp.

Just me opinion :]

PS9 > G_Body_Man: Sponsored by the number 3 10/03/2016 at 01:47

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Autonomous cars don’t have to be infallible. They just have to be better than humans, and they will be. A lot of these questions have very obvious answers and not any of them pose a serious barrier to a mostly-if not completely-driverless society.

And when the machines do make a mistake, 1)who’s fault is it, 2)who pays out, 3)and how can we correct it?

1) The manufacturer, obviously. 2) The manufacturer, obviously. 3) The same way you correct any complex system that operates in a suboptimal way; attempt to reproduce the problem, single out the malfunction, remove and replace it with something that works better. Lather, rinse and repeat until the problem is gone. Earth at this point is almost covered in complex technological systems, all of it featuring sets of non-trivial large scale problems that humans have somehow dealt with without destroying civilization in the process. Once they join the party, autonomous cars will be no different there.

The roads are the very opposite of a controlled environment. Even with autonomous cars, you will still have jaywalkers, erratic cyclists, bus stops, breakdowns, animals, debris, and existing crashes to avoid.

An autonomous car as a product ready for consumption will not require a controlled environment. You obviously have not been paying attention to the advances made in driverless technology at this point if you see these kinds of obstacles as dealbreakers. Autonomous car technology would not be possible at all, let alone imminent if they were.

When one or multiple of these scenarios goes wrong, who will be blamed?

This is simply not the untangleable conundrum you are making it out to be. Forget whos driving and consider the following scenarios;

You check your messages and hit the car in front of you.

A cyclist wanders into the road during a green light and you have no time to stop.

a dog runs past, but you have time to brake.

A car ignores a red light and you are struck in the middle of traffic.

You pull out of a 4 way intersection without checking to see if someone’s coming. Moments after this, a motorcycle hits you.

Is it really that difficult to figure out fault in these common scenarios? If not, then what changes when we switch out a human driver for a robot? Quite a bit actually, because a robot can never get tired, never get distracted, never get angry, and be integrated into the car’s systems the way a human being never could be, have a degree of granular control over a vehicle a human never could have, and react at a speed humans have no experience operating at. Multiple eyes of both light and radar always watching, the complete elimination of blind spots and ultimate visibility. A robot wouldn’t be checking messages. A robot would see the cyclist, the dog, the out of control human driven car and the motorcycle and will have already decided what to do and executed on it faster than a human could even form a thought about those things after noticing them.

1)Who pays for insurance? 2)How will you cover the cost of insurance without affecting everyone, or the owner in particular?

1) The owner/operator of the vehicle, obviously. Why would this be different for a driverless car? 2) You don’t, because the cost of insurance already affects everyone. You do know that living in an accident or theft prone area will result in higher premiums for everyone living there...right?

1)What would the development costs be for a software patch? 2)Would they issue a stop sale if the problem happens again while they’re developing the fix?

1) You’re joking here, right? At this point, the driverless car is a multi-billion dollar research project being conducted by almost every automaker. The cost of a software patch compared to the level of investment being thrown at this amounts to nothing at all. 2) Yes, obviously. Have you not ever seen an automotive recall happen before?

And if humans are fallible, why are humans programming the car?

Because correcting a line of code is much easier than keeping a drunk driver off the road. Think of all the death and tragedy that would be mitigated if we could make sure every intoxicated person had a sober ride home. That possibility alone makes driverless cars worthy of the time and development costs that have been thrown at them.

jimz > G_Body_Man: Sponsored by the number 3 10/03/2016 at 04:57

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Is that nothing is infallible. And when the machines do make a mistake, who’s fault is it, who pays out, and how can we correct it?

that’ll be hashed out by the time we get there. it’ll be better than it is today, where we just accept that 30-40,000 people die in cars every year, and if you cause someone’s death on the road you get a ticket.

if you want to kill someone, do it in a car and make it look like an “accident.” you’ll get away with it.

jimz > wiffleballtony 10/03/2016 at 05:02

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think we should understand what the motivation is for autonomous cars.

the motivation is “we suck at driving.” We drive drunk. we drive tired/sleepy. we drive enraged. we drive as though getting to work is a race. we block each other from changing lanes or merging. we drive while staring at our fucking smartphones. we drive recklessly for fun. we cause traffic jams which waste ungodly amounts of fuel. We “don’t see” motorcycles.

We kill 40,000 of us every year in these things in this country.

look, if the automobile was to be invented today, it would be very difficult for the average person to own one.

wiffleballtony > jimz 10/03/2016 at 09:41

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Those are good points. However wouldn’t it be a lot easier if you didn’t have to make the trip in the first place?

G_Body_Man: Sponsored by the number 3 > PS9 10/03/2016 at 14:02

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1: What manufacturer would accept responsibility for autonomous car deaths? That’s a corporate lawyer’s worst nightmare.

2: The point I was raising was that there are things the manufacturer probably isn’t even thinking about as potential issues. Fallen trees? Cattle? Construction where it’s down to dirt and there’s nothing concrete to read? Nobody knows until it happens.

3: Most of those scenarios aren’t relevant as we’re talking about issues that pertain to autonomous cars. Although the cyclist one could be a very real problem, as even though processing speeds are faster, who says the autonomous car would have time to stop?

4: I’m not talking about theft-related insurance, I’m talking about the liability aspect.

5: Hidden costs. Analysis, correction, testing, distribution, installation, and the stop-sale have huge time impacts. If a stop sale is issued, there could be delays of one month, six months, who knows?

6: Uber, public transit, strategically placed breathalyzer stops, etc. also bring down the rate of uncaught DUIs. And even if autonomous cars were a thing, not everyone can afford them, and not everyone would be driving an autonomous car, so I wouldn’t say every intoxicated person would have a sober ride home if autonomous cars were mass-market.

G_Body_Man: Sponsored by the number 3 > jimz 10/03/2016 at 14:03

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I really don’t think it will be hashed out by that time, as legislation moves far slower than technology.

gmporschenut also a fan of hondas > G_Body_Man: Sponsored by the number 3 10/03/2016 at 21:19

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what scares me more is the social impact driver- less cars could have. when the highways were built the suburbs exploded and cities were left only with those that couldn’t afford to buy a house. As a result, with giant 80s drug epidemic they went to shit. With driver-less cars meaning that long commutes become bearable what will be the result? Will current suburbs be abandoned as people move further out from population centers?