[Closed] Self driving cars

Am I missing something obvious here?

Tesla autopilot? It has the capacity to drive along motorways with limited driver input, some would say its in the danger area between highly effective driver aids and full autonomy where the driver trusts it too much.

And that's the problem. You want to be able to go to sleep for the long part.  I've been wondering the same, especially if you start on toll roads where you have even better control of the environment

Most journeys are short and in built up areas.

The tech for self driving on the motorway/dual carriageway is already there, just not legal to use yet - consider how much a modern car does with "assist" - lane control, adaptive cruise, emergency braking etc etc

Solving self driving in cities also solves parking in cities.

Basically most people live and do most of their driving in urban areas - so that's where it's needed. I want my self driving car to be able to go from my house to my destination, not half of it.

The thing I have which crashes most often is my computer.
I'm not sure I want one driving my van...

Lots of effort seems to be going into self driving cars in cities.

When you refer to 'effort' and 'focus' - who's effort and focus? - the manufacturers and marketers of the cars or the design and implementation of infrastructure that the cars need to operate?

In both cases theres probably simple market forces - most potential car buyers are urban, most car journeys are urban so most customers will only buy into the idea of self driving cars if the can use them on the journeys they commonly make in the place where they live. It doesnt matter if its easier to develop a car that can drive up the A9 than around Birmingham's inner ring road - theres a million more potential customers using the ring road every day. On an infrastructure basis money spent is easier to justifiy in areas of dense population  - that's why there so much investment continuing investment in infrastructure in the south east even when other areas seem better candidates for, or in greater need of, that investment  - because every pound spent lands in proximity of more people.

The tech for self driving on the motorway/dual carriageway is already there, just not legal to use yet – consider how much a modern car does with “assist” – lane control, adaptive cruise, emergency braking etc etc

No, it isn’t, and probably won’t be in any meaningful sense for another decade or so. There are still far too many variables that an autonomous AI driving system would have to deal with on a journey.

The thing I have which crashes most often is my computer.

Yep, I seem to recall a dig at Microsft/Windows about self-driving cars. And in order to "stop" a Windows-based car, you'd have to select "start" first. 🙂

No, it isn’t, and probably won’t be in any meaningful sense for another decade or so. There are still far too many variables that an autonomous AI driving system would have to deal with on a journey.

It's not perfect but Tesla's autopilot already does a very good job in motorway situations, resolving some of the remaining issues will take a lot more effort but I doubt 10 years (legislation could take that long though).

I don't understand why Tesla are removing radar from their system though, seems a step backwards to rely 100% on cameras

Cities and towns are the most toxic places in the country.l Cars wizzing by on A roads and deal carriageways and motorways are OK but in busy towns and cities with busses beltching toxic diesel fumes poor air quality is a factor in over 100k deaths a year. So anything that enables big cities and towns to improve and update their infrastructure is a big prize. Personal vehicles are being banned and in the future it will be a mix of modern electric busses and smaller pod type self drive vehicles. Bot everyone wants to take a bus so pod type taxis are more convenient. Being self drive it means traffic and congestion can be managed better as all the individual vehicles can be managed and diverted around the city to more evenly distribute vehicles on the available road space. Take out of that all the road traffic accidents that occur in big cities and towns and there is a compelling case for self driving vehicles in big towns and cities.

But also these technologies take a long time to develop...so alot of companies are working on the issue, developing the tech, the safety rules etc.

Its not a case of developing one over the other, they're both being developed. And Tesla is a good few generations of tech from what can be considered a genuine fully automatous vehicle. Its good but very simple, limited and still relies alot on the driver. I've used it when I took a Tesla for a test drive and there were a number of times an alarm sounded when the system got confused and required my intervention.

Even if the technology can be made to work there are manifold ethical, legal and regulatory issues which need to be sorted out. E.g. who has liability if the vehicle crashes? Should the vehicle mow down a group of pedestrians to save the driver or sacrifice the driver to save the pedestrians?

I'm looking forward to everyone else in self-driving cars - this way I'd never have an issue pulling out on to a road, or overtaking (anywhere) as they'd all just automatically stop for me 🙂

What I do not understand is why the main focus is not on self driving in easier environments such as motorways and dual carriageways, with urban later.

There is plenty of effort going into that as well. Arguably many of the current driving aids such as lane keeping/auto adjusting cruise control do already address this its just aside from Tesla no one else hypes them up.
Switching lanes etc though would start needing some decent brains as would watching cars joining from sliproads and random pedestrians/deer etc all of which gets into the same sort of issues with urban driving just at a higher speed.

Solving self driving in cities also solves parking in cities.

Andrew Yang discusses this in his book as does Andy Stern in his. Similar takes on AI, self driving vehicles etc and both of them pushing for UBI.

IMO we need to look at the whole personalised transport thing differently. Some of the most interesting tech is coming from countries such as China with their (potentially dangerous) tiny electric cars. People want personal transport but the worrying trend is the development of larger elctric vehicles which endagour pedestrians and waste resources. We should look at "miniaturised" personal transport appropriate to the environment. In citys tiny cars and not ego wagons and rather than simply replacing ICE cars with electric and even self driving we need to remove personal car ownership. Vehicles should be leased by the journey, self driving and parked and charging outside of the city. You call a car it arrives a few minutes later and takes you where you want to go. The same for your return. Storing itself outside of the city.

But also these technologies take a long time to develop…so alot of companies are working on the issue, developing the tech, the safety rules etc.

I agree with you but I think we need to intervene. Manufacturers will not help us on this journey and they have different motives. We need clear regulation and somebody has to be unpopular. Removing people from their cars is difficult and I know people who will drive several hundred metres rather than walk, motoring is far to cheap and too heavily subsidised.

who has liability if the vehicle crashes? Should the vehicle mow down a group of pedestrians to save the driver or sacrifice the driver to save the pedestrians?

I think self driving cars are a non starter for this very reason. I can already see the insurance fraud alone being rife.

I don't really understand why a self driving car is important to society anyway, cars are not difficult to drive and yes they're tiring sometimes but trying to get them all to drive themself seems to introduce so many more problems that are worse than just driving it yourself?

I don’t really understand why a self driving car is important to society anyway

It is important to commerce however. The cost of transporting freight is in large part the cost of the person driving. Remove that and their requirement for rest and costs reduce significantly.

The thing I have which crashes most often is my computer.
I’m not sure I want one driving my van…

And yet by and large we trust them to fly planes, manage nuclear reactors, run medical equipment. Not every bit of software and processing technology is as poorly maintained/controlled as the STW website. To be better, it only actually has to be more reliable than human beings, which in terms of maintaining concentration for prolonged periods, fast reaction times, hazard perception etc is not a particularly high bar.

Even if the technology can be made to work there are manifold ethical, legal and regulatory issues which need to be sorted out. E.g. who has liability if the vehicle crashes? Should the vehicle mow down a group of pedestrians to save the driver or sacrifice the driver to save the pedestrians?

the industry, and even government are much further on in their thinking around those issues than you realise, and many of them are red herrings anyway.

To answer the OP - how much extra would you pay for a van that drives sensibly, never breaking the speed limit, always letting other merge etc - that is permitted to do the journey from Ed City Bypass to Inverness and then requires you to take over at each end*? Is that assuming you can leave your seat and treat it like a train - or actually sit there like tesla autopilot ready to step in? If you can leave the van to it completely - what happens when at the "return to human" point you haven't taken over - presumably it parks up - so on the way home every exit from the ECB is choked with vans who weren't prepared that have pulled over for safety? There is sense to suggesting use on main roads first - but I suspect it would actually be easier to implement from both a technical and legal perspective if it was "restricted roads" only - ie. Motorways and places like the ECB where bikes, tractors, horses are not permitted; by and large (or possibly exclusively) there are 100% dual c/way, with no traffic cutting across etc - so probably actually no further north than Dunblane (or Perth at a push)... would you pay extra for a van that could drive from the outskirts of Dunblane to the outskirts of Edinburgh? what if there was a promise that if those trials were successful you could maybe be allowed to go all the way to Inverness at some undetermined point in the future, at least 2025 (when the dualling is due to finish).

*and it would probably need you to take over in poor weather as most of the systems don't like really heavy rain or snow.

I think self driving cars are a non starter for this very reason. I can already see the insurance fraud alone being rife.

I think you are probably wrong. The insurance industry might not like it because rather than fleece umpteen motorists there is potentially just some huge umbrella policies for the car makers who will self insure a lot. Fraud would likely reduce as every self driving car will be full of sensors, cameras etc that save every millisecond leading up to a crash.

I don’t really understand why a self driving car is important to society anyway, cars are not difficult to drive and yes they’re tiring sometimes but trying to get them all to drive themself seems to introduce so many more problems that are worse than just driving it yourself?

The hard part is not self-driving its self-driving amongst non-self driving cars/bikes etc. Driving is actually quite difficult. It also consumes a lot of time - but unlike the OP I suspect more people would find that time gain more useful on their commute than an occasional long journey. But there are other less obvious advantages - ultimate systems = no need to park just stop get out and the car goes off to somewhere to hide and charge till you summons it back. There is a lot of interest in this completely changing car ownership models so you only ever rent them for the time you need them. That doesn't fit with our status symbols of owning cars...

For a while the promise has been for "trains" of trucks that can drive closer together (freeing up space on roads, and increasing fuel economy) all linked by telemetry systems so the one at the back knows when the one at the front is about to brake. Its the sort of thing that an island that drives on the otherside of the road from all its neighbours, moves way too much goods by road and is hostile towards foreign hauliers should really be pursuing further.

The tech for self driving on the motorway/dual carriageway is already there, just not legal to use yet – consider how much a modern car does with “assist” – lane control, adaptive cruise, emergency braking etc etc

No, it isn’t, and probably won’t be in any meaningful sense for another decade or so. There are still far too many variables that an autonomous AI driving system would have to deal with on a journey.

It's kind of there already; Tesla, Audi A8 etc are fully autonomous; set destination on sat-nav, car does the entire journey. However, it is a legal minefield, hence the display warnings and designed in 'need' for driver input. My Volvo isn't fully autonomous but combines the adaptive cruise, lane keeping and auto brake systems to create 'Pilot Assist' which self drives the car in a single lane indefinitely. I just set the max cruise speed and it does the rest. It has been programmed to require regular steering input, presumably to check driver alertness but it would happily toodle along for hours if I didn't need to change lanes to pass trucks etc.

And yet by and large we trust them to fly planes, manage nuclear reactors, run medical equipment

All of those are built to very high standards with lots of rules and regulations around development for them. Cars manufacturers on the other hand seem determined to repeat all the mistakes of software development from the ground up.

IMHO we're still a way off fully autonomous cars, I'm sure Tesla and others will come up with good systems, but until they're as close to perfect as they can be, they're more of a hinderance than a help because you'll always have a group of dickheads who'll climb in the back for Insta likes or fall asleep just because they can.

Frankly with every new driver convivence like this, we've just created less attentive drivers, until the systems are good enough you can safely and legally, climb in the back and fall asleep drunk whilst 'James' drives you home, I'm not sure they should be allowed to be used by anyone as dangerous as the average driver.

The thing I have which crashes most often is my computer.
I’m not sure I want one driving my van…

It's not the computer that's crashing, it's the software.

They way they write safety critical software (e.g. planes, nuclear reactors, or the large amount of software that is already in your car) is completely different to the way they write Windows or the apps you use.

It’s not perfect but Tesla’s autopilot already does a very good job in motorway situations,

Roughly one entirely avoidable accident a month with autopilot if the drivers had baane driving and paying attention. You do realise two stationary police cars have been hit by Teslas on autopilot in separate incidents amongst a sorry list of crashes?

Whilst the autopilots above didn't see the stationary poilce cars a Model 3 did an unnecessay auto-emergency stop on a German autobahn getting hit by the truck behind which was hit by a Fiat behind that:

https://teslamag.de/news/autobahn-crash-phantombremsung-tesla-model-3-unfall-a3-sichergestellt-34879

Roughly one entirely avoidable accident a month with autopilot if the drivers had baane driving and paying attention

It's pointless to state this without also stating how many entirely avoidable accidents per month with traditional cars.

Well state it then.

I confidently state that no driver stood on the brakes with no warning (full emergency stop, not brake checking) on an autobahn with no harzard in front and was hit from behind by a truck and following car. Drivers just don't do that. Not even suicidal ones.

what happens when at the “return to human” point you haven’t taken over – presumably it parks up

Which is the ironic thing - thats the tricky bit coming off the motorway network to get a parking slot. It can't eaxactly just stick itself onto the hard shoulder just because you're still asleep. The minimum would be a motorway service station.

is completely different to the way they write Windows or the apps you use.

This, plus they will stop you skipping updates, installing iffy free software, visiting dodgy websites and downloading malware etc etc

The changeover period could be interesting. Self driving cars brake to avoid accidents, and also maintain adequate spacing. There are many drivers out there that will use this to their benefit and will drive manually. Jumping queues, forcing self-driving cars to stop just so they don't have to wait when turning. It's going to get worse before it gets better.

Good point, Mrdestructo. In the Paris rush hour the car wouldn't make it beyond the first Give Way unless it were programmed to play chicken on the basis of how beat up the other vehicle and how wild eyed the other driver.

Edit to add:

Try writing a programme to cope with this: no road markings, only one rule, priority to the right, should be easy enough:

All of those are built to very high standards with lots of rules and regulations around development for them. Cars manufacturers on the other hand seem determined to repeat all the mistakes of software development from the ground up.

Shitty infotainment is not representative of the safety critical software that has been running cars for years.

And as for the suggestion anyone can just pull out in front of autonomous cars because they'll stop for you - what's stopping anyone doing this now? If drivers are meant to be better than computers then surely every car on the road will stop for you even now? You might get one or two incidents of road rage but imagine how much easier it would be for the driver to focus all their rage on you when the car is driving for them - best get it out of your system now! 😉

And as for the suggestion you can just pull out in front of autonomous cars because they’ll stop for you – what’s stopping you doing this now?

Many modern cars have collision avoidance braking systems (Ford for example) - they should make it possible to just step out in front of the car and it'll stop, but how many people will volunteer be a live crash test dummy?

IMO the future for you and me is gradually more advanced ADAS and Driver Monitor Systems (DMS). Tesla Autopilot is just this and will be for the foreseeable future.
It's worth pointing out that their current DMS (steering torque) won't get level 5 Euro ENCAP safety unless they change it to something like camera / infra red eye gaze monitor when DMS becomes part of the ENCAP test. In addition by 2024 onward (might be 2026) the EU General Safety Regulation will require automakers to fit camera based DMS if the car has ADAS, so Tesla won't be able to sell cars with autopilot in the EU unless they change their DMS to camera based. So at least in the EU the dickheads who climb in the back seat will be a thing of the past.
There's a seismic leap from this to full Autonomous (level 5), which I don't think will happen in domestic cars anytime soon. Controlled localized ring fenced areas i.e. Weymo One, is nearer but different to what most people envisage when they talk AV.

Our new Ford pretty much drives itself on the motorway.

I'm looking forward to the utopia of personal transport as a service (as @surfer describes above).

We're a long way from it yet and I doubt the business model can be made to work in rural areas, but it will be awesome for us city-dwellers.

Edit to add:

Try writing a programme to cope with this: no road markings, only one rule, priority to the right, should be easy enough:

Is that Arc Du Triomphe? How on earth does a (non-UK) roundabout work with priority from the right?

I suppose if you fast forward 50-100 years and all cars are self driving and all have beacons broadcasting their position, velocity, intentions and they can then quickly resolve between themselves who has right of way to ease traffic flow (so the might stop on the major road of a T-junction to let the giving way traffic out of the minor road if on balance everyone gets to their destinations on average quicker). Then it'll all work perfectly.

It's the in-betweeny bit where they're dealing with other road users and "self driving" is perhaps better defined as "self not crashing" based on the relative effort that must be put into programing in the driving Vs not hitting stuff. The highway code is a very short set of instructions really. It's the bits that aren't in it that must be harder to deal with.

There is always the issue of "use it, or lose it". We apply that saying to second languages, but there is a factor shared with driving. If your cardoes most of the work for you, but then you're suddenly required to grab the controls, it's possible people could get confused, or low, unable to make decisions that they'd have been able to if they were totally in control.

Drivers just don’t do that. Not even suicidal ones.

No but they do other stupid stuff that self driving cars don't do, like stop paying attention or fall asleep. And they might well do it more often.

Is that Arc Du Triomphe?

Every roundabout on the Peripherique is like that - at least all the ones I went on.

Is that Arc Du Triomphe? How on earth does a (non-UK) roundabout work with priority from the right?

That's what is says on the vid. 😉 Better known as l'Etoile in terms of junctions. On a UK roundabout it's hard to get on and easy to get off. On an unmarked European roundabout it's easy to get on and hard to get off. Happily there aren't many left. Only one within 50km of me I think.

This guy posts regular video with Weymo consent

Watched half of the vid while noodling guitar but lost interest when it stopped. Not one pedestrian or cyclists encountered. I accompanied Madame on her walk to work, a few cyclists and half a dozen pedestrians in that time.

Do we really think Scumbag Steve in his 10 year old debadged asbomobile waiting to pull out from a side street isn't going to notice Johnnycab coming along the road and pull out right in front of it where he might think twice if it had an alert human driver?

Are more reasonable people not going to get impatient at a sentient driving constantly 0.5mph below the permissible speed limit on long, wide, straight roads and overtake/cut up/take advantage of its innate naivety in riskier ways than they otherwise would do, under the impression the autopilot will react immediately? Will some people deliberately brake check/antagonise these cars to provoke a reaction?

Given the poor state of general driving ability/number of actual dangerous/reckless drivers put there and the sheer power of the average car available to anyone who wants to rent one these days, cars 'driven' on autopilot are going to stick out like a sore thumb.

How good does it have to be? 100%? The USA kill ~36000 on their roads every year IIRC.

Shitty infotainment is not representative of the safety critical software that has been running cars for years.

Sadly the infotainment isnt the only stuff going wrong. The number of cars being stolen since the companies havent figured out how to write secure access methods isnt overly reassuring.
There have been several recalls due to faulty code and thats bearing in mind just how much simpler the functionality they are writing at the moment is compared to a self driving car.

Will some people deliberately brake check/antagonise these cars to provoke a reaction?

Behaving like a dick around the type of vehicle most likely to have recording and datalogging equipment wouldn't seem to be a very good move.

Who knows, it might be a thing for a short time but all it would take is a couple of clowns landing in court being convicted based on evidence provided by the autonomous vehicle for it to stop. The fact that there was a large amount of camera and sensor equipped cars might make people behave better.

@Del

How good does it have to be? 100%? The USA kill ~36000 on their roads every year IIRC.

I had this argument on a local Facebook group with someone about the M4 being upgraded to a smart motorway. The evidence shows that smart motorways are safer than normal ones (or so close the difference isn't statistically significant). Their response was:

1) A complete misunderstanding of what significance was and accusing me of flippancy that any death was insignificant.

2) A slightly better argument around identifiable and fixable risks Vs random chances, they didn't articulate it very well but it did illustrate the right principle even if they weren't aware of it.

People don't like known risks, we're hardwired to be petrified of them. You see a Lion, you run away up a tree, you don't stand there rationalizing that more people are killed by cows than Lions or that if it's not already eaten you then it's probably not hungry, you just eliminate the risk. Same with helmets on bikes, you'll never convince someone that there's a greater risk of a heart attack in the long term by not going for a bike ride than there is of dying from a head injury on it.

So smart motorways (and self-driving cars) need to be seen to be orders of magnitude safer than the alternative otherwise you're stuck with "self driving car kills ........." headlines.

With regards to the smart motorway, obviously, everyone is a driving god, so in their oppinion will never be the one to die in a crash. But they then don't like the idea of the random chance of breaking down and not making it to a refuge and dying that way. Even if it is statistically significantly safer.

@dissonance

But when was the last time you heard of an ABS, ESP, or ECU crashing?

Cloneable keys is not the same as crashing firmware. Well, perhaps unless you're an assassin. But I'm guessing they're rarer than people looking for a Golf R to joyride, or Transit to nick the tools out the back.

@edukator

That’s what is says on the vid. 😉 Better known as l’Etoile in terms of junctions. On a UK roundabout it’s hard to get on and easy to get off. On an unmarked European roundabout it’s easy to get on and hard to get off. Happily there aren’t many left. Only one within 50km of me I think.

So there are different rules for different roundabouts?

But when was the last time you heard of an ABS, ESP, or ECU crashing?

Chrysler 09 recalled
VW 09-10 cars recalled.
Prius 2010 recalled
Baleno 2019 recalled
GM 2019 recalled with a special bonus in 2020 for a subset which were made worse.

All ABS failures.

Cloneable keys is not the same as crashing firmware.

It does indicate a pisspoor approach towards security though and if the trend of rolling out fixes ota carries on I wouldnt be too happy if some ransomware gets installed halfway through the day.