# Vehicle Automation: Moved from Charlie Alliston Thread



## Dan B (21 Sep 2017)

*Mod Note

This thread has been split off from the Charlie Alliston thread to allow the discussion to continue without distracting from the original thread purpose.*



AndyMack said:


> What will happen is cyclists will have to have liability insurance, bikes will have twice yearly safety checks and will be linked by tracker/licence plate to a government scheme...all bringing revenue to the coffers and a minimal percentage of said revenue will go back into making cycling safer/providing more cycle lanes.
> 
> You heard it here first kids.


More likely: lobbying by self driving car companies will lead to a Highway Code revision that says "you should wear a helmet and use cycle facilities where that have been provided" and new charging advice for the CPS will be available that says something tantamount to "the cyclist was on the carriageway, he was asking for it". No change required to any legislation


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## srw (21 Sep 2017)

Dan B said:


> More likely: lobbying by self driving car companies will lead to a Highway Code revision that says "you should wear a helmet and use cycle facilities where that have been provided" and new charging advice for the CPS will be available that says something tantamount to "the cyclist was on the carriageway, he was asking for it". No change required to any legislation


Also not a snowball's chance of hell in that happening.

In real life I'm a bit of a pessimist, but I come on here and read the hand-wringing and frankly unreal defeatism expressed on a thread like this and I begin to wonder whether I'm actually some kind of mad Pollyanna.


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## slowmotion (21 Sep 2017)

srw said:


> Also not a snowball's chance of hell in that happening.
> 
> In real life I'm a bit of a pessimist, but I come on here and read the hand-wringing and frankly unreal defeatism expressed on a thread like this and I begin to wonder whether I'm actually some kind of mad Pollyanna.


You mean Brexit?


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## Dan B (21 Sep 2017)

The HC revision very nearly happened last time,so I wish I shared your confidence


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## Dan B (21 Sep 2017)

slowmotion said:


> You mean Brexit?


I was thinking more of Trump, but yeah


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## theclaud (21 Sep 2017)

srw said:


> I begin to wonder whether I'm actually some kind of mad Pollyanna.


There might be something in that. 

The media and motoring lobby has us arguing amongst ourselves over whether 'peds' or cyclists are the greatest menace to civilization. Meanwhile, they have their sights set on getting all of us out of the way.


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## srw (21 Sep 2017)

theclaud said:


> Meanwhile, they have their sights set on getting all of us out of the way.


If anyone could produce half a shred of evidence of that I might have some sympathy. In the meantime, in the real world, we have self-driving car companies working out how best to work around pedestrians and cyclists, councils all over the country working out how best to make life easier for cyclists and pedestrians and make life more difficult for drivers - by increasing parking restrictions, reducing speed limits, introducing pedestrianised areas - and a government which shortly before it shot itself in the foot published a strategy aiming to make walking and cycling "the natural choice".

Making life easier for people who don't happen to be in a car is easy, cheap, saves money and reduces pollution. All of which even the current shower of ludicrous incompetents quite like doing. And anything that's not easy won't happen. Unless the sainted Jeremy suddenly decides he's against cycling and will whip his party to support the government? Even I don't think he's that silly.


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## Dan B (21 Sep 2017)

> self-driving car companies working out how best to work around pedestrians and cyclists,


With the memorable exception of Renault


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## srw (21 Sep 2017)

Dan B said:


> With the memorable exception of Renault


You mean the off-the-cuff and terribly worded comments by their former CEO? Not _normally_ a good indication of official policy.


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## glasgowcyclist (22 Sep 2017)

srw said:


> If anyone could produce half a shred of evidence of that I might have some sympathy. In the meantime, in the real world, we have self-driving car companies working out how best to work around pedestrians and cyclists, councils all over the country working out how best to make life easier for cyclists and pedestrians and make life more difficult for drivers - by increasing parking restrictions, reducing speed limits, introducing pedestrianised areas - and a government which shortly before it shot itself in the foot published a strategy aiming to make walking and cycling "the natural choice".
> 
> Making life easier for people who don't happen to be in a car is easy, cheap, saves money and reduces pollution. All of which even the current shower of ludicrous incompetents quite like doing. And anything that's not easy won't happen. Unless the sainted Jeremy suddenly decides he's against cycling and will whip his party to support the government? Even I don't think he's that silly.




Of course they want us out of the way, that's how it's been for nearly a century.

The dominance of our cityscapes was established early on in the life of the motorcar. In the early 1920s, manufacturers and motoring organisations had editorials published in newspapers calling for pedestrians who crossed roads in front of cars to be called jays, a term for a country bumpkin or simpleton.

They lobbied both local government and police and succeeded with the enactment of legislation in Los Angeles in 1925, criminalising pedestrians who impeded motor traffic. This invented offence was known as jaywalking, a name which is still bandied about today, even in jurisdictions (such as the UK) where no such offence exists although its pejorative intent is still clear. This spread across the country and quickly created the environment where the car was king and those on foot were sidelined.

Since then we have continued to develop and build our cities around car use, creating swathes of no-go areas for people walking. We have large radius corners and junctions so that the motorist loses as little speed as possible negotiating them. At the same time, this creates enormous divides at natural crossing points, meaning the vulnerable pedestrian is in the roadway for far longer than necessary.

Where controlled crossing are provided, they are often well away from established desire lines, corralled by lengthy fencing to force walkers into longer journeys, longer waits. The crossing time allowed is impossibly short for a great many people, favouring the throughput of motor traffic over the pedestrian.

All this has been achieved by those who had, and still have, a financial interest in dominating the roads and streets. It would be naïve to think that what went on nearly 100 years ago isn't going on today and on a far grander scale.


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## classic33 (22 Sep 2017)

glasgowcyclist said:


> Of course they want us out of the way, that's how it's been for nearly a century.
> 
> The dominance of our cityscapes was established early on in the life of the motorcar. In the early 1920s, manufacturers and motoring organisations had editorials published in newspapers calling for pedestrians who crossed roads in front of cars to be called jays, a term for a country bumpkin or simpleton.
> 
> ...


Somtimes crossings are placed so as to act as traffic calming.


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## theclaud (22 Sep 2017)

srw said:


> in the real world, we have self-driving car companies working out how best to work around pedestrians and cyclists


All self-driving car companies are working out is how to persuade everyone that they need self-driving cars. Sure - working round pedestrians and cyclists would be one approach, but the one they are aiming for is pedestrians and cyclists working around the needs of the cars - an extension of the existing power relations, in other words, rather than the radical transformation in favour of people over cars which is needed. 

As ever, Bez is on top of all this:

"Of course, any attempt to turn roads into pure domains of autonomous vehicles—a process for which I’ll coin the phrase “modal cleansing”—would have only limited success, but the underlying point is this:

To solve the problems of autonomous vehicles one must not only control the _vehicle_, one must control the _system_."


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## theclaud (22 Sep 2017)

TMN to @glasgowcyclist!


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## srw (22 Sep 2017)

theclaud said:


> As ever, Bez is on top of all this:


Bez? Who is Bez?

If I were a self-driving car company my interest, as you so correctly observe [stops and checks what TC so correctly observes] would be to persaude everyone [well, enough people, but I'll cede a point for rhetoric] that they need self-driving cars. But the _only_ way to do that is to make self-driving cars viable in the real world, in which people - poor people, eccentric Corbynistas, obnoxious middle-class anti-Corbyn lefites - decide they won't do what the self-driving car companies want. Or else real people don't do what the self-driving car companies want but expect the self-driving car companies to bend to their wills. Which is rather more in tune with the last 100 years of history than the alternative.


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## theclaud (22 Sep 2017)

srw said:


> Bez? Who is Bez?
> 
> If I were a self-driving car company my interest, as you so correctly observe [stops and checks what TC so correctly observes] would be to persaude everyone [well, enough people, but I'll cede a point for rhetoric] that they need self-driving cars. But the _only_ way to do that is to make self-driving cars viable in the real world, in which people - poor people, eccentric Corbynistas, obnoxious middle-class anti-Corbyn lefites - decide they won't do what the self-driving car companies want. Or else real people don't do what the self-driving car companies want but expect the self-driving car companies to bend to their wills. Which is rather more in tune with the last 100 years of history than the alternative.



He's an astute commentator on cycling-related issues, m'lud. He uses the new-fangled media.

What you are describing is not, as GC points out, how we got to where we are now, so why on earth do you imagine automatic cars will change this instead of doing more of what has worked for the car industry to date?


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## theclaud (22 Sep 2017)

Hahaha more snap than TMN for that one.


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## theclaud (22 Sep 2017)

I didn't mean automatic cars in that sense, but can't be arsed to edit it, before anyone points that out...


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## srw (23 Sep 2017)

theclaud said:


> What you are describing is not, as GC points out, how we got to where we are now


I think GC is wrong and wearing a tinfoil helmet. But I've got a massive hangover, so I can't be bothered to take his post apart.


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## theclaud (23 Sep 2017)

srw said:


> I think GC is wrong and wearing a tinfoil helmet. But I've got a massive hangover, so I can't be bothered to take his post apart.


 
We'll all just have to be patient then, while you recover. Then you can explain how we can learn to welcome our new self-driving overlords.


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## Wobblers (25 Sep 2017)

srw said:


> I think GC is wrong and wearing a tinfoil helmet. But I've got a massive hangover, so I can't be bothered to take his post apart.



For my sins, I used to be a software developer in a previous career. There are two things you need to know about software development, and software developers.

The first is that they actually aren't much good at edge cases. And this is a problem, because cyclists are very much an edge case. Especially so to those software developers in the US. Vulnerable road users may a more familiar concept to the German software developers writing the code for autonomous vehicles. So we could conceivablly find that the most courteously operated vehicles in our autonomous future are German, in a deliciously ironic reversal of the present perception.

But no autonomous vehicle can operate any better than its software. And if the developer decides that overtaking a cyclist with 10 cm to spare at speed is perfectly acceptable, that's exactly what will happen. It's even quite conceivable that the sensors detecting the presence of a cyclist or pedestrian will be removed as noise by some digital signal processing algorithm. The bottom line is that the software for these thiungs will written by fallible humans, so that software will in turn be fallible. And complex systems fail in surprising ways...

The second is that the path of least resistance is invariably the preferred choice. That is at least partly the reason behind why we spend so much of our time fighting recalcitrant applications - it is so much easier for the developers to force the users to adapt their ways to the software than it is for them to learn how people actually want to use it. 

Legislating vulnerable road users off the road is very much the path of least resistance: you can expect that there will be much lobbying by the motoring lobby for exactly that to happen: "for their own good", naturally. After all, it will be rather difficult to sell an autonomous vehicle if it cedes priority to every lowly pedestrian or cyclist, won't it? It is possible to make this prediction because this is exactly what happened in the US, with the passing of jaywalking laws. The motoring lobby is large and well funded - it is unwise to ignore it.


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## PK99 (26 Sep 2017)

McWobble said:


> For my sins, I used to be a software developer in a previous career. There are two things you need to know about software development, and software developers.
> 
> The first is that they actually aren't much good at edge cases. And this is a problem, because cyclists are very much an edge case. Especially so to those software developers in the US. Vulnerable road users may a more familiar concept to the German software developers writing the code for autonomous vehicles. So we could conceivablly find that the most courteously operated vehicles in our autonomous future are German, in a deliciously ironic reversal of the present perception.
> 
> ...



Way too sensible a post for here!

You do echo some of my concerns, but put them far better than I could hope to do.


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## Dan B (26 Sep 2017)

McWobble said:


> For my sins, I used to be a software developer in a previous career. There are two things you need to know about software development, and software developers.
> 
> The first is [...]
> 
> The second is [...]



And the third is they're all suckers for metacircular jokes involving off-by-one errors


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## DaveReading (26 Sep 2017)

PK99 said:


> Way too sensible a post for here!



Yes, he clearly had too much common sense to be a software developer.


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## Bollo (26 Sep 2017)

McWobble said:


> For my sins, I used to be a software developer in a previous career. There are two things you need to know about software development, and software developers.
> 
> The first is that they actually aren't much good at edge cases. And this is a problem, because cyclists are very much an edge case. Especially so to those software developers in the US. Vulnerable road users may a more familiar concept to the German software developers writing the code for autonomous vehicles. So we could conceivablly find that the most courteously operated vehicles in our autonomous future are German, in a deliciously ironic reversal of the present perception.
> 
> ...



There are higher level issues than software bugs (although based on my Qashqai there's some way to go). We're now getting into the bizarre world of machine ethics where a vehicle may be presented with scenarios where it would have to make what in human terms is a moral choice. Mercedes have popped in an out of the news with this story. I'm sure the reporting has been through several sensation-enhancing filters, but the core dilemma is still there. It's all very 'I Robot'!


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## theclaud (26 Sep 2017)

Bollo said:


> There are higher level issues than software bugs (although based on my Qashqai there's some way to go). We're now getting into the bizarre world of machine ethics where a vehicle may be presented with scenarios where it would have to make what in human terms is a moral choice. Mercedes have popped in an out of the news with this story. I'm sure the reporting has been through several sensation-enhancing filters, but the core dilemma is still there. It's all very 'I Robot'!


'Tricky moral question' my arse.


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## Bollo (26 Sep 2017)

theclaud said:


> 'Tricky moral question' my arse.


I agree with you for the car-centric question in the linked article. If these things become commonplace, I'd like to see a law that said the source of the danger - the car and it's occupants - bore the brunt of any consequences. Passing a law and then persuading the AI to follow it are another thing though.
The properly tricky questions come when you consider choices that only have consequences for non-occupants. You can stage the scenarios for yourself, but how would the vehicle determine the 'best' outcome if each choice is likely to lead to at least some death or injury? The reference to Asimov is relevant because his Robot books deal with exactly this, even if they're dated technologically. Sooner or later we're going to need robot ethicists.


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## Wobblers (26 Sep 2017)

PK99 said:


> Way too sensible a post for here!
> 
> You do echo some of my concerns, but put them far better than I could hope to do.



Sorry.

Would it help if I called you all nobbers?


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## jarlrmai (26 Sep 2017)

Bollo said:


> I agree with you for the car-centric question in the linked article. If these things become commonplace, I'd like to see a law that said the source of the danger - the car and it's occupants - bore the brunt of any consequences. Passing a law and then persuading the AI to follow it are another thing though.
> The properly tricky questions come when you consider choices that only have consequences for non-occupants. You can stage the scenarios for yourself, but how would the vehicle determine the 'best' outcome if each choice is likely to lead to at least some death or injury? The reference to Asimov is relevant because his Robot books deal with exactly this, even if they're dated technologically. Sooner or later we're going to need robot ethicists.



No-one would buy a car that doesn't save them over someone else, would someone buy a car that paralysed or seriously them over killing someone else? These are the sticky moral issues that are locked inside the self driving car design conundrum.


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## jefmcg (27 Sep 2017)

Why are we discussing self driving software on page 97 (!?!) of a thread about a collision that didn't even involve a car.

Can I suggest someone kick a new thread if they want to go into detail about this issue?


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## jarlrmai (27 Sep 2017)

jefmcg said:


> Why are we discussing self driving software on page 97 (!?!) of a thread about a collision that didn't even involve a car.
> 
> Can I suggest someone kick a new thread if they want to go into detail about this issue?



There is a suggestion that the somewhat overstated response to this incident in the media may in someway be part of a bid by a lobby group funded by the motoring industry to remove cyclists from the roads in order to smooth the way for self driving cars. This may seem like a conspiracy but it is certainly the case that jaywalking laws in the US were a direct result of a similar campaign against pedestrians (or as I like to call them, people just going about their business.)


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## jefmcg (27 Sep 2017)

jarlrmai said:


> There is a suggestion that the somewhat overstated response to this incident in the media may in someway be part of a bid by a lobby group funded by the motoring industry to remove cyclists from the roads in order to smooth the way for self driving cars. This may seem like a conspiracy but it is certainly the case that jaywalking laws in the US were a direct result of a similar campaign against pedestrians (or as I like to call them, people just going about their business.)


That's not my point It's a general discussion and it doesn't belong hidden away more than 1000 posts into a thread that isn't obviously relevant.


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## theclaud (27 Sep 2017)

jarlrmai said:


> There is a suggestion that the somewhat overstated response to this incident in the media may in someway be part of a bid by a lobby group funded by the motoring industry to remove cyclists from the roads in order to smooth the way for self driving cars. This may seem like a conspiracy but it is certainly the case that jaywalking laws in the US were a direct result of a similar campaign against pedestrians (or as I like to call them, people just going about their business.)


It's not so much that it's part of a conspiracy but that the moment of heightened consciousness and hysteria over pedestrian/cyclist conflict will inevitably be seized as an opportunity by economic and political interests for whom people in streets are a fundamental inconvenience. The same thing happens when lorry drivers kill cyclists - the operators go into overdrive trying to bully cyclists out of the way, because the alternative would be the cost and inconvenience of not killing people. The positive thing is that in foregrounding this they inevitably expose their own faultlines - for example lorry operators inadvertently demonstrating with all that blind spot and seat 'swap' cobblers that their vehicles are unfit to be on the road. Thank fark, at this moment, that we have a robust national cyclists' organisation operating in the interests of its members. Oh wait - we sold that one up the swannee...


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## srw (27 Sep 2017)

theclaud said:


> the operators go into overdrive trying to bully cyclists out of the way, because the alternative would be the cost and inconvenience of not killing people


Well - that one went well, didn't it?


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## srw (27 Sep 2017)

McWobble said:


> And if the developer decides that overtaking a cyclist with 10 cm to spare at speed is perfectly acceptable, that's exactly what will happen


You know as well as I do that no single developer is going to decide that sort of thing. For a start, that's not how corporate software development is done, and secondly the problem of dealing with unexpected and unpredictable circumstances is too big to be dealt with without significant machine learning.



Bollo said:


> Sooner or later we're going to need robot ethicists.


If only there was a profession which had thought deeply about ethics for over 2000 years and had developed a specific model for thinking about this sort of problem over 100 years ago.



User said:


> There is also the small matter of being able to trust the car manufacturers to implement the rules honestly.


There is. But it's an awful lot easier to catch them out if the rules are being flouted every single day on the open road than if the piss-taking only comes into play in specific extremely controlled circumstances. And it's not as if the car manufacturers haven't been dinged really quite hard.



jarlrmai said:


> aywalking laws in the US were a direct result of a similar campaign against pedestrians



It's worth flicking through the wikipedia article on the subject. As that article says, "Jaywalking is illegal in *over 10* countries due to the health risks" - and when you look down the actual law you realise that the US is in a minority of one in the absolute priority it actually gives to motorised traffic - and even in the US the law is often not enforced.


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## Tin Pot (27 Sep 2017)

srw said:


> You know as well as I do that no single developer is going to decide that sort of thing. For a start, that's not how corporate software development is done, and secondly the problem of dealing with unexpected and unpredictable circumstances is too big to be dealt with without significant machine learning.
> 
> 
> If only there was a profession which had thought deeply about ethics for over 2000 years and had developed a specific model for thinking about this sort of problem over 100 years ago.
> ...



Hmm, broadly I'm with you.

But as someone who examines the software development lifecycle in corporations, I'm not sure that I would agree. Whilst some decisions are made by teams, or even given to the business, a lot of application logic is determined by whatever the developer thinks they can do. Don't get me started on peer review, testing and segregation of duties.

Can a developer put in a "10cm rule" and do they? Yes, absolutely. Agile and DevOps can make this better or in most cases, much much worse.

I don't think your links to philosophy and moral dilemmas provide as many answers as they create more questions.

Our societies morality is already codified in our laws - shocking, I know, but in many ways true. Turn that lot into java, stick it in a humaniform robot, and see what happens!


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## srw (27 Sep 2017)

Tin Pot said:


> Can a developer put in a "10cm rule" and do they? Yes, absolutely. Agile and DevOps can make this better or in most cases, much much worse.


They can, and they might. But as soon as driverless cars start wibbling about all over the place as a cyclist wobbles a bit, or (more likely) a loose dog is run over because the developer has forgotten about pets, the algorithm will rapidly be changed.


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## PK99 (27 Sep 2017)

Tin Pot said:


> Can a developer put in a "10cm rule" and do they? Yes, absolutely. Agile and DevOps can make this better or in most cases, much much worse.
> 
> *I don't think your links to philosophy and moral dilemmas provide as many answers as they create more questions.*
> 
> !



/there is a whole branch of moral philosophy dealing with such questions: Trolleyology

The initial Trolley problem:

The *trolley problem* is a thought experiment in ethics. The general form of the problem is this:

There is a runaway trolley barreling down the railway tracks. Ahead, on the tracks, there are five people tied up and unable to move. The trolley is headed straight for them. You are standing some distance off in the train yard, next to a lever. If you pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a different set of tracks. However, you notice that there is one person on the side track. You have two options:


Do nothing, and the trolley kills the five people on the main track.
Pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person.
Which is the most ethical choice?

and
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04grcnd


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## jarlrmai (27 Sep 2017)

Yes it's interesting isn't it imagine a world where all vehicles were automated and had to follow the current law (because the programme told them to.) It would be a different driving environment for sure. One where certain business models might not be so viable.

In the US for instance it is 'illegal' for vehicles to park in certain places for instance say in dedicated bicycle lanes this is nominally to make them safe for bicyclists to use, however as punishment for this is just a fine the delivery companies (FedEx, UPS et al) accept it, their drivers park in the bike lane and the company adds the fine to the cost of doing business, in fact they have a bulk fine paying systems setup, the driver hands in the tickets, the company pays them and the local authority has the income stream. Not every infraction is noticed and fined as there are limited enforcement officers so this "bribe" is kept a manageable level and the companies are able to deliver 5 parcels an hour rather than 1 if they had to find a legal parking place and delivery costs are kept low. I would imagine if you asked the companies if the official direction give to the drivers was to "park wherever you can illegal or not and we'll pay the fine." they would probably deny this I'm sure it's always just the driver doing it on their own

Now imagine the company wants to get rid of those expensive to pay and insure human drivers and get a fleet of self driving vans that park up nearby, text the deliveree who opens the parcel slot on the side of the van with a one time passcode from the text. Imagine also that in the future to ensure all self driving or otherwise vehicles know what to expect from other self driving vehicles your vehicle control code has to be open source or sent to a government body or otherwise become generally available. All of a sudden you have to programme this behaviour or by not programming it in it becomes an obvious and unforgivable oversight, you essentially have to write down in an official document your intent to break the law surely this isn't allowed, treating each drivers infraction as a seperate instance for which you have paid your fine is one thing but actually programming in the intention is different.

So now your problem is that bike lanes and cyclists exist and you have declare officially your intention to ignore their safety to keep your business model viable. So maybe you start to lobby the politicians, set up a few focus groups and engage with some journalists to see what you can do about this problem.


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## theclaud (27 Sep 2017)

PK99 said:


> /there is a whole branch of moral philosophy dealing with such questions: Trolleyology
> 
> The initial Trolley problem:
> 
> ...


TMN to @srw...


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## theclaud (27 Sep 2017)

srw said:


> Well - that one went well, didn't it?


That's all jolly good, but I'm not sure that it demonstrates that there's no longer a problem with lorries killing people and various interested parties and commentators attempting to shift responsibility onto the victims.


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## srw (27 Sep 2017)

theclaud said:


> That's all jolly good, but I'm not sure that it demonstrates that there's no longer a problem with lorries killing people and various interested parties and commentators attempting to shift responsibility onto the victims.


It doesn't, but it wasn't supposed to. It was supposed to demonstrate that there isn't an inevitable link from lorries killing people to lorry-operators successfully bullying cyclists out of the way.


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## jefmcg (27 Sep 2017)

This week's Radio Lab this week is about self driving cars and the trolley problem.


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## theclaud (27 Sep 2017)

srw said:


> It doesn't, but it wasn't supposed to. It was supposed to demonstrate that there isn't an inevitable link from lorries killing people to lorry-operators successfully bullying cyclists out of the way.


Well that's alright then. Ensuring that the bullying-out-of-the-way-and-victim-blaming strategy fails will depend on actively resisting it, not on complacently assuming it just won't work and everything will be OK.


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## theclaud (27 Sep 2017)

jefmcg said:


> Why are we discussing self driving software on page 97 (!?!) of a thread about a collision that didn't even involve a car.





jefmcg said:


> This week's Radio Lab this week is about self driving cars and the trolley problem.



If you can't beat 'em...


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## Wobblers (27 Sep 2017)

srw said:


> They can, and they might. But as soon as driverless cars start wibbling about all over the place as a cyclist wobbles a bit, or (more likely) a loose dog is run over because the developer has forgotten about pets, the algorithm will rapidly be changed.



No. No it won't.

There is an enormous amount of work required to certify any safety critical bit of code. Not least that it has to be exhaustively tested, _again_, to make sure nothing undesired has been added. A large number of regulatory hurdles have to be cleared - and a very specific process followed. A rather large volume of documentation has to be produced to show that the correct process was followed.

This is not "rapid". Nor is it cheap. It is very much in the manufacturers' interest to try and deflect blame onto the cyclist. Indeed, a careful examination of a sufficient number of collisions should show that there is a fault. But... that is of little comfort to the victims - or, more likely, their friends and families. Worse, it requires an organisation with sufficient knowledge and skills in software and systems engineering to be able ask the appropriate questions, and come to the correct conclusions. At the moment, RTCs are investigated by individual police forces. None have the required technical skills - take a look a the accident reports produced by the AAIB or NTSB into air crashes to get a feel of the depth of the investigation required for these sorts of incidents. Further, unlike the air industry, there is no mecfhanism for reporting near misses or accidents. Without this, many - most in all probability - will be missed. And even when it is, belatedly, understood that there's a problem, it will require political will to release sufficient resources to conduct a proper well funded and in depth investigation that is required. (Don't forget, a careful inspection of the code will be required - proprietory and commercially sensitive information that the manufaxcturers are unlilkely to hand over without a court order or similar legal sanction.)

Which leads to the real problem: it is far easier just to blame the cyclists. After all, the autonomous car must be right - that's how it was programmed, wasn't it? Besides, cyclists are scoflaws wobbling through red lights - they're obviously a danger, it *must *be their fault. Don't believe me? Well then, just look at all the comments blaming cyclists underneath any news report of an accident involving one of them. It is far easier, and will even generate political capital from the, ahem, entitled motorist faction, to legislate against cyclists. They'll have their excuse: _it's for their own protection_. And this is exactly what I fear will happen.


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## Tin Pot (27 Sep 2017)

PK99 said:


> /there is a whole branch of moral philosophy dealing with such questions: Trolleyology
> 
> The initial Trolley problem:
> 
> ...


I'm not sure what in my post made you think that I am naive to these dilemmas and their ilk, but I can assure you that I'm not.


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## srw (27 Sep 2017)

theclaud said:


> Well that's alright then. Ensuring that the bullying-out-of-the-way-and-victim-blaming strategy fails will depend on actively resisting it, not on complacently assuming it just won't work and everything will be OK.


Of course it does. But I think you underestimate the willingness of regulators and governments - local, national and international - to support that resistance. And the recognition amongst corporate managements that the general public, rather than just their own customers, are important stakeholders. And my experience of the world is that working together to change minds usually gets you further, quicker, than absolute opposition.


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## oldstrath (28 Sep 2017)

srw said:


> Of course it does. But I think you underestimate the willingness of regulators and governments - local, national and international - to support that resistance. And the recognition amongst corporate managements that the general public, rather than just their own customers, are important stakeholders. And my experience of the world is that working together to change minds usually gets you further, quicker, than absolute opposition.


I find it difficult to share your optimism, given that VW still exists despite routinely and consistently cheating.


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## mjr (28 Sep 2017)

classic33 said:


> Somtimes crossings are placed so as to act as traffic calming.


"architects stated, without any hint of irony, that they are designing in shared space so they can use pedestrians to slow down the cyclists. Our group was shocked that this approach to designing public space was acceptable and considered ‘clever’ and reasonable. This idea that you can ‘control’ cyclists by throwing pedestrians at them really needs to die. It creates so many issues."

(but I know it happens with using walkers and cyclists as human speedbumps for cars too - I just hadn't read such a revelation for that recently.)


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## mjr (28 Sep 2017)

[QUOTE 4975120, member: 9609"]the highway code already states *"you should wear a helmet"
*
I really can't see the self driving car brigade arguing for compulsory helmets and cycle path use as it would be an omission that they may accidentally knock cyclists off, these vehicles are hopefully not going to knock anyone off.[/QUOTE]
I suspect they will present it as "these irresponsible highway-code-ignoring cyclists ride into our vehicles, injure themselves because they still won't wear even basic decades-old protection and then we get blamed - force them to take more care!"

As well as helmets, the Highway Code also basically tells you to use cycle facilities with a few caveats. Both of those, the bit implicitly blaming non-use of stab vests for encouraging knife attacks - sorry I mean the bit implicitly blaming dark clothing for motorists not looking where they're going - and the crap advice implying it's a good idea to turn right from the left lane at T-junctions and roundabouts should be simply deleted from the Highway Code.


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## Dan B (28 Sep 2017)

[QUOTE 4975120, member: 9609"]the highway code already states *"you should wear a helmet"
*
I really can't see the self driving car brigade arguing for compulsory helmets and cycle path use as it would be an omission that they may accidentally knock cyclists off, these vehicles are hopefully not going to knock anyone off.[/QUOTE]
Just as the law sees "blind spot/cyclists stay back" signs on the back of human-driven vehicles as admissions the vehicles aren't suitable for use on public roads, you mean?


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## toffee (28 Sep 2017)

jefmcg said:


> This week's Radio Lab this week is about self driving cars and the trolley problem.



From one of the comments in the linked article.

"...Just as we have educated pedestrians to stay out of railroad crossings when the gates come down, don't you think that pedestrians can be educated to stay out of the streets unless they have a walk sign? "


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## si_c (3 Oct 2017)

toffee said:


> From one of the comments in the linked article.
> 
> "...Just as we have educated pedestrians to stay out of railroad crossings when the gates come down, don't you think that pedestrians can be educated to stay out of the streets unless they have a walk sign? "


Because that worked with drivers and red lights.


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## theclaud (16 Oct 2017)

Some interesting stuff relevant to autonomous vehicle ethics on R4's Analysis at the moment.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b098ht04


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