Self-driving cars to be allowed on UK roads this year

[simongt]

On a similar note, I'm just waiting for the occasion when someone uses the 'self parking' function on their car and with hands off, their car whips the wing off a nice shiny Beemer or similar. 'Er, but I wasn't parking the car - !'

 

[SkipdiverJohn]

For automation to stand any chance of working, you would have to rip up the entire road network and start again. Everything would have to be totally standardised and consistent throught the land in every respect. Road layouts, lane widths, gradients, signage, stopping and parking control, avoiding overhanging objects like buildings and trees. All loose debris would have to be eliminated, drainage would have to prevent little rivers of rainfall run-off cascading across rural lanes in hilly areas. Cars would need to be able to identify areas likely to contain black ice. Who mounts the grassy bank and scrapes their bodywork on the bushes when faced by an oncoming car with a farmer in a tractor with a big trailer immediately behind it.? What if the only available passing place is on the "wrong" side of the road? Does the automated car just stop and refuse to move? Many a time I've squeezed into a gap on my right facing the traffic flow to allow an oncoming large vehicle to pass me with a clear lane. Technically I'm driving on the wrong side of the road and so is the HGV who wants to pass me, but sometimes doing that is the only way you can pass because the HGV can't get into the gap on his side whereas I can. In the real word these sorts of situations occur all the time which often require various rules of the road to be bent or broken to facilitate progress. Any half decent human driver can deal with these situations by making the best of the limited options available. If you employ rules-based automation that doesn't allow a self-driving car to do anything that is technically illegal, then you've got a recipe for chaos and gridlock.

 

[slowmotion]

On a similar note, I'm just waiting for the occasion when someone uses the 'self parking' function on their car and with hands off, their car whips the wing off a nice shiny Beemer or similar. 'Er, but I wasn't parking the car - !'

I'm sure there will be a simply brilliant algorithm that allows the clever vehicle to slope off quietly without leaving a note under the victim's wiper.

 

[slowmotion]

Am amazed people here don't see the massive jump in road safety that will occur if we remove the most unpredictable part of driving from the equation - emotional, easily distracted, law breaking humans.

I love cars and driving, but for me if a no brainer to hand over driving responsibilities to an automated system once the software is good enough.

The debate is still out of current AI Neural Networks are the end solution to enable ture automation is still out, the progress of AI development though is unrelenting. I have little doubt my 5 year daughter will never need to learn to drive.

Automaton cannot come quickly enough for my liking, in the future we'll look back in amazement humans were ever trusted to operate these death traps with zero monitoring or preset boundaries.

Didn't the Boeing 737 MAX have similar wizzo clever clogs technology?

 

[Drago]

Overheard two parking enforcement officers talking about these yesterday. As it stands, if they get such a vehicle parked illegally, they have to prove it was the driver not the car that parked up.

Thats why theyre minimum wage parking taliban, and not 6 figure solicitors ina warm office.

 

[icowden]

A better way of asking, since it was the same computer program in charge, would be "How many other drivers were involved in 37 crashes during the same time".
Then ask, would you let them back on the road, in charge of a vehicle?

An even better question would be - have you checked your sources and understood the data? This is what the NTSB said:-

The NTSB said between September 2016 and March 2018, there were 37 crashes of Uber vehicles in autonomous mode, including 33 that involved another vehicle striking test vehicles.

So not really 37 crashes. 4 crashes once the Driverless Uber was deemed safe enough to use on actual roads rather than during testing and development of the AI.

Then we need to look at those 4 crashes:-

In one incident, the test vehicle struck a bent bicycle lane post that partially occupied the test vehicle's lane of travel. In another incident, the operator took control to avoid a rapidly approaching vehicle that entered its lane of travel. The vehicle operator steered away and struck a parked car.

So - at least one of those crashes was not caused by the AI but by - a human being.

Of course, Uber is also at fault.

"The system design did not include a consideration for jaywalking pedestrians," NTSB said.

So the AI was hobbled, and was not given proper information in its design to safely operate. These sorts of scenarios should have been dealt with at the test stage, not with real traffic and pedestrians. Would I use a driverless Uber using a flawed AI and developed by a company that seems to have huge gaps in its knowledge and skills? Nope.

Contrast this with a company like Tesla who have millions of miles of telemetry data from real time drives, the ability to constantly train their AI from human driving and Autopilot feedback, and you can see that Uber is on a different planet technologically speaking. Event Alphabet have better data thanks to all those mobile phones driving around in cars.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Yep as we have no data on how many times self driving cars have encountered cyclists on British roads and what the cars have done, and did the cyclist have to take avoiding action.

 

[gzoom]

Tesla was in the news recently when two men died and the police 'claimed' no one was in the drivers seat suggesting the AP software was to blame. The police was '100% sure' no one was driving the car.....

https://www.theguardian.com/technol...texas-federal-safety-regulators-investigation

Some real facts of the crash is now been released and it appears this was yet another example why humans shouldn't be given any type of control of machines with so much power. Had the car been in 'autopilot' those two men would almost certainly be still alive.

As for the initial police statements.....well it appears '100% sure' has a very different meaning in Texas.

https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-releases/Pages/NR20210510.aspx

Reading some of the sad stories on this section of the forum is enough to put me off cycling to work today. The sooner humans can be banned from driving the better, for me it really cannot soon enough!!

 

[simongt]

Brings to mind the story of the man in the USA ( where else - ? ) who set the cruise control on his camper van and went into the back to make a coffee. Van crashed and apparently, he successfully sued the maker because the van's manual didn't specifically state that 'the driver must be at the wheel at all times the vehicle is in motion' etc., etc..