FTR, the average human sucks at driving, has bad vision, day or night, has terrible reaction time, sober or drunk or stoned or high, and gets sleepy past 11pm.
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I totally agree. A computer driving a car is going to be much safer. The question at hand is what will be solved first, city driving versus interstate. A computer can probably do 95% of interstate driving right now with little to no issues. A computer can probably do 75% of city driving with little to no issues. My opinion is that the 25% will be “solved” before the 5%. Primarily because I think the 5% is tougher for computers to handle than the 25% (there is probably significant overlap between the two where solving for half of one solves for half of the other as well) . Secondarily, the people who are creating these things are city dwellers who understand city driving and the issues city driving poses. They will focus more effort on fixing those problems because they see the 5% as inconsequential and easy (even though I don’t think it is). The bias is partially mine because I know from copious experience just how difficult non-city driving can be and how much it differs and from experience driving with the tech developed by these people who clearly code from a city perspective.
Interestingly enough, the human brain has developed in such a fashion that it is well suited to some driving activity. Motion detection and position prediction are a great examples. The human brain is able to both see a moving threat and predict where it is going. Until computers catch up to people, we will continue to have discussions like this one because the computer will fail in a situation that is very obvious to a human. Like almost every Tesla crash video I’ve seen. How did the car not see the overturned truck, right?
you shouldn’t compare this Eyesight to state of the art tech. If u want state of the art in your car now it would prob cost 1000 times more
I don’t see it.
Surface driving has issues with pedestrians/cyclists coming out from behind visual obstructions regularly. Crosswalk problems, intersections, right of way, + the standard people do stupid stuff issues.
Interstate driving has the stupid stuff, but very rarely do you get any of the rest.
Self-driving autos have stopped when they “see” a stop sign on a billboard. Actual drivers know not to stop for something like that.
more data will help
Related to this, i think it is a question of how likely the environment is to be novel or unique. Humans are very good at dealing with relatively unique situations as compared to machines (although they can still mess us up.)
I would guess the interstate is less likely to be novel than surface roads. Therefore I’d expect self driving cars to work there first.
At times i wonder self driving cars will work is if we alter the environment to be more predictable, or at least to be more able to be modeled.
if we had flying cars pedestrians would not be an issue.
see Minority Report
What about jet packs? Don’t we get jet packs before flying cars?
Something has gone very wrong. By now, weren’t supposed to need roads anymore.
And we were supposed to have lots and lots of fax machines. In every room in the house.
I’ll try one last time for the city mice here and then country mouse will remain quiet on the subject. Most of the use cases between city and rural driving are the same. People or animals enter the road from behind an object. Signs must be read. traffic has to be avoided. A box falls off the back of a truck. There is a muffler laying in the middle of the road. For most city driving, the majority of these use cases have been “solved”. That’s why the Google cars have been driving around for like two decades and we never hear of any issues. That’s also why an accident between a self driving test car and a pedestrian or bicyclist makes the news. Very rare events. The difference between city driving and highway driving is the speed. Moving at twice the speed means the time required to interpret and react to the above scenarios is cut in half. It also means the damage done is larger at higher speeds because of physics. So while the frequency of events is lower in a rural environment, that does not mean the issues are easier to solve.
To put it into perspective, I know exactly zero people who have hit either a pedestrian or a bicyclist. I know dozens of people who have hit deer, several who have hit moose (that’s nasty business), and one guy who had a turkey get lodged in his windshield. I personally have witnessed three tires flying down the road after coming unattached from a car, shrubs in the middle of the highway, and all manner of junk falling off the back of trucks (lumber, toolboxes, paint, etc.).
I think you may be assuming that those of us arguing the opposite don’t drive on rural roads. I do, and i suspect the others do, too. I’ve hit a raccoon. My son hit a deer. I know tons of people who have hit wild animals that ran in front of their cars. I once saw a child’s play-house fall off a truck and block a lane on an interstate.
I don’t know anyone who’s hit a bicyclist or pedestrian, either.
I don’t think the autonomous truck will avoid hitting that deer, either. The skill involved when a deer jumps in front of your car isn’t to avoid the deer, it’s to keep control of the vehicle and not hit anything else. I think autonomous vehicles will do as well at that as most drivers.
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I think I’ve heard the argument as well that often times with a deer it’s safest to hit the deer and stay going straight while you slow down, whereas the big disasters happen when someone swerves upon seeing the deer and goes into other cars, etc.
Plus I wouldn’t think it’s that hard for an autonomous car to see a deer, especially relative to a human driver. I mean at the very least you could have some infrared sensor looking for things along the side of the road that could jump out. Humans suck at avoiding deer during the night, it doesn’t seem a high bar to beat.
For those wondering, here’s a tesla avoiding a deer on a dirt road. Obviously not the same excitement you get driving 80 mph on the highway. But I’m with Lucy that cars don’t need to avoid deer, since can’t either. It would just be extra credit if they could. They just need to not do anything super stupid. I don’t know if they are at point yet-- notably in this video the car displays the deer as a pedestrian.
It’s the '80’s. Where’s my jet pack?
I’m curious what part of the “country” you’re from?
I’m grew up in the Mountains of Colorado . . . and know that there’s a very, very long time until autonomous vehicles will be capable of handling snowy/icy roads on a mountain road (interstate, highway, paved county roads, etc.). However, I anticipate that these vehicles will be ready to work on the interstate well before those back roads.
A lot of that is due to the wider roads, multiple lanes, and a wider shoulder that a car has available to facilitate navigation. More room for error (even at a higher speed).
I would agree that these vehicles will probably have little problems with some of those back roads in the fly-over states . . . and further agree that an “error” in that context would be less than a similar “error” on an interstate in the same area.
But in the mountains, the “errors” on even the main highways (non-interstate) can be just as bad, if not worse, than a similar “error” on the interstate.
I seems to me that if an autonomous vehicle can successfully navigate the interstates through the mountains, it’ll do just fine (or better) on interstates of the flat lands (including urban environments).
I personally know of one bicyclist that has been hit by a human-driven car with fatal results.
Not sure what you’re hoping to demonstrate with this particular statement. There are records of people and bicyclists getting hit by vehicles (driven by humans). There is a reason that your Uninsured coverage will also cover you (and other named persons on your policy) as a pedestrian/bicyclist getting hit by an auto.
BTW, I would also support the idea that many rural accidents occur because a human was trying to avoid hitting a deer (or some other creature) and ended up crashing and getting seriously injured.
Most collisions with wildlife that I’ve seen very rarely results in injury (other than minor ones) to the vehicle’s occupants (if they’re wearing seatbelts). AV can also make a decision to see that a collision is unavoidable and actually conduct the collision maneuver in such a way as to minimize injuries to occupants (first and primary consideration) and damage to the vehicle far faster than humans.
well, your home insurance might cover alien invasion too, it doesn’t mean…
I agree that speed is a big issue. It’s technically safer to live in a city than the country because you are more likely to die in an auto-accident in the country. Likewise I think self-driving trucks are delayed because the risk is too high.
OTOH, city driving can be absolutely nutso (see the Tesla video in Oakland), and I don’t think anybody has “solved” that yet. If Google had solved it, they would have a real business right now, instead of a handful of cars coasting around the sunny suburbs.