Edukator wrote:

You really think a driverless will change lanes and drive on the wrong side of the road to get better visibility, Aracer?

No, because as I already pointed out it won’t need to – the available sensors will be able to “see” the cyclist the human can’t. However they will make the same reasonable decisions a good driver will, because that’s how they will be programmed – they may not do all these things yet because they’re still prototypes.

The incident at the start of this thread shows the car failed to avoid a pedestrian pushing a bike. A motorcylist was hit by a driverless car that changed its mind about a lane change. A driverless indicated a lane change through a junction which was quite rightly inteptreted as a turn signal for the junction so there was a collision. You can’t program a car to cope with every situation it’s going to meet.

An incident where human drivers would also have hit the pedestrian, a motorcyclist who hit a car by moving into the lane before the car had left it when it aborted the lane change for good reasons, a driver who had a collision with an autonomous car. I’m sure the systems will be further developed so the same incidents don’t happen in the future though, which is more than can be said for any incidents involving human drivers.

It’ll mistake a dog for a human and provoke a multiple pile up with an unnecessary swerve/brake, it’ll dismiss something important as environmental noise that is important.

No, it won’t. Eliminating environmental noise efficiently without eliminating important signal is the sort of thing which has been done with radar for decades.

Uber and Google have already proved that with cars strictly programmed to abide by the law and stay well within speed limits they foul up. Just how slowly are these things going to have to go through urban areas for people to feel safe on their streets?

Prototypes which aren’t fully developed, yet are already better than an average driver – unless you’re thinking that human drivers never foul up. You also still appear to be thinking we need to outrun the bear here – it would be totally irrational not to feel far safer with them than with human drivers and all the carnage they cause.

Put a GPS tracker and speed limiter in every car to make drivers more responsible and take away the ability to speed and you’ll do a lot to prevent collisions between vehicles without removing human care ane consideration for others

I could provide a long, long list of people being killed by drivers who aren’t speeding – the vast majority of such deaths. Speed limiters would help prevent some deaths, but not the majority.

chakaping wrote:

I don’t understand why some people are so enthusiastic about them when there are so many downsides covered in this thread alone.

Maybe because of the 1710 downsides of the current system

Edukator

I was an initial fan of the driverless idea but the more I’ve thought about it the more I’ve realised that driverless cars that are fast enough to satisfy the Jimjams will be too much of a liability for the manufacturers and their insurers so we’ll end up with the worst of both worlds. Driverless cars with manual override.

You should know you don’t have a point  and you’re just trying to win when you’re trying to ascribe views to people that they don’t hold. At no point have I said that I want AV’s to go faster than the speedlimit because I personally want to go faster. I’ve already explained that in my opinion AV’s will be allowed to go faster because market forces will create a demand for them, technology will facilitate them and governments will tax them.

When all cars are electric how do you calculate VED? Co2? Nope. You create separate tiers that allow AV’s with better tech to go faster than those without and let the people who want to avail of that tech pay more.

No, because as I already pointed out it won’t need to – the available sensors will be able to “see” the cyclist the human can’t.

Nonsense, it’ll be the other way around. A human will identify a hand appearing from behind a bus as a human. To a computer it won’t be big enough to distinguish from a falling leaf, a hand signal from the driver or a host of other possibilities and will ignore it becuase the programme won’t hit the brakes for 200cm2.

I can’t be arsed to read the rest as you’re being an arse with everyone on this t(hread. acusing them of ignorance, talking down to them, rubbishing informed coment. Not just me, I’m used to you having a go now and then, we have history.  But you’re doing it to anyone who won’t accept your blinkered view you can make infailible systems, which you can’t. Too many variables, too much environment noise, ethiical judgements to be made… .

Bye for now, you’ve closed down the thread by unjustifyably rubbishing the man bringing the most to the thread.

Because after decades of road safety work people are still being killed by drivers making bad choices.

Because we like to use evidence to assess the safety and viability of something rather than pointing and shouting witchcraft, Set tests, apply criteria, formulate safety rules and  if automated cars pass them and are safer than cars with drivers in apply the same rules to drivers.

apply the same rules to drivers.

Yes, now.

Nonsense, it’ll be the other way around. A human will identify a hand appearing from behind a bus as a human. To a computer it won’t be big enough to distinguish from a falling leaf, a hand signal from the driver or a host of other possibilities and will ignore it becuase the programme won’t hit the brakes for 200cm2.

Where do you get your information about these cars from? You are speaking with great authority on the subject.

Is this a regular hand, childs hand, ladies hand or Trumps hand? How far away would you be spotting this, what did you miss by looking for hands appearing in front of busses

There have been programes on German TV. As you asked I went looking on Youtube. There’s lots to go at.

This one doesn’t need you to understand German to help you  grasp the ethical issues. As for resolution and identification of hazards agaist backgroud noise on a windy rainy day in a world of vegetation, moving signs, swinging street furniture I’m surprised you’re surprised at my scepticism which shared by the industry itself when journos interview the people at say Mercedes. “They’ll kill less than humans” isn’t good enough in Europe, yet.

I have a good grasp on the ethical issues, I’m asking how you know that cars in the future will decide not to slow down in your made up scenario.

So apparently a computer can’t see a hand but a human can?

Do you understand how your eyes and brain work?   (btw, it’s not very well in terms of scanning a scene, hence all the SMIDSYs we get between cars and cyclists etc)

Do you understand that EVERYTHING you can do physically with your body can be done better (faster, more reliable, more repeatable etc) by a computer?

For example, do you think you could fly these drones like this computer can:

In fact an autonomous car can see in wave lengths you can’t, and can interact with other cars using over-air coms that you can’t.

Ever come round a corner and found a car stopped in the road and had to brake suddenly to avoid hitting it?  The autonomous car can know about that car BEFORE it comes round the corner, or if say it’s a sheep, not a car, then it can signal to all other cars around it to slow down before they come round the turn.

It can have sensing and learning that no human could possibly have, and it doesn’t get drunk, drugged, tired or angry.

To think that humans are in some way “the best” at controlling a car is ridiculous.  We are slow, fallible, and tend to make poor judgments under pressure.

We are so bad at learning to drive that new drivers are, frankly, lethal in their first few years.  If an autonomous car learns something, then that learning can be broadcast and every car can then know that learning.  Try teaching Mrs Miggins from No2 how to cadence brake and see how far you get.  Most drivers are frankly, totally unprepared, unskilled to spot or avoid an accident when does actually eventually occurs.

Say there is a stretch of road when two people have been run over because they run out from behind parked cars, an autonomous car can be speed limited in that area. It won’t “forget” it’s a 20 mph zone, it won’t do 30 through it because it’s late for a yoga class, it won’t tailgate the car ahead because it’s too busy arranging a date for that evening on facebook……..

They had one of those danse avec les drones things on the news recently, a few crashed. In a controlled space with no kids running around, birds flying, wind blowing dust around…

As for cars talking to each other, do you really think they do better than drivers fashing and blowing the horn in a world with Android and Iphone, four different electric car charging plugs, 80 different charge cards (for one country). Rose tinted spectacles Jimjim. It won’t look like utopia.

As for cars talking to each other, do you really think they do better than drivers fashing and blowing the horn in a world with Android and Iphone

Yes, it would tell you WTF was going on rather than coming around a corner wondering what the noise/flash was all about.

As for Rose Tinted how about waiting and seeing then using evidence to evaluate the situation rather than just saying nothing will work and it will all be rubbish.

Speaking as someone who is working on this “quite a lot”. There’s a whole lot of misinformation, misunderstanding and massively out of date information floating about.

And a good handfull of utter bovine excrement.

Ah well.

I like the bit where cars won’t be able to communicate because android and apple. Glad I’m using an apple device so can read this! Phew!

Edukator wrote:

Nonsense, it’ll be the other way around. A human will identify a hand appearing from behind a bus as a human. To a computer it won’t be big enough to distinguish from a falling leaf, a hand signal from the driver or a host of other possibilities and will ignore it becuase the programme won’t hit the brakes for 200cm2.

You appear to have ignored what I wrote – the computer will have sensors a human doesn’t. A human hand is a lot hotter than a leaf, a computer can accurately tell the range of the hand but more than that, the computer has sensors which can detect what is behind the bus.

I can’t be arsed to read the rest as you’re being an arse with everyone on this t(hread. acusing them of ignorance, talking down to them, rubbishing informed coment. Not just me, I’m used to you having a go now and then, we have history.

So now you think this is personal? 🙄 I’m suggesting people who don’t have a very good understanding of how these systems work are ignorant and that what you think is informed comment isn’t.

  But you’re doing it to anyone who won’t accept your blinkered view you can make infailible systems, which you can’t.

and there we go with the strawman. But it’s a particularly whopping strawman to ascribe me a POV which I’ve been at pains to reject. I’m not sure exactly how much more I can do to make it clear that I’m not suggesting the systems will be infallible – that’s simply the standard your side of the argument seem to want to reach before we can allow them to replace the wonderful human drivers. You don’t have to run faster than the bear (do you really need that analogy explaining to you?)

Bye for now, you’ve closed down the thread by unjustifyably rubbishing the man bringing the most to the thread.

Which would presumably be you? (If I’ve played the ball not the man, my apologies, but it appears to be you making this personal – though given your other more recent posts I’m now wondering if your’e just trolling, because you’re not this daft or ignorant).

scuzz wrote:

I like the bit where cars won’t be able to communicate because android and apple. Glad I’m using an apple device so can read this! Phew!

I have no idea how I can read what you’re writing given I’m on Android.

This place sometimes, you haven’t shut me down but have a read back, Aracer. Do some research on the sensors sbeing used on the Uber and Google cars, and Mercedes. It’s all a lot less sophisticated than you make out. In many parts of the world the human hand is the same temperature as ambient even if the cars had super accurate IR cmaeras capablle of identifying a 200cm2 surface at 30 m and differentiating well enough from the noise to hit the brakes – which they don’t.

People who know better than you (no not me) won’t even post.

People who know better than you (no not me) won’t even post.

Um, there are two posting on this thread who are actually working on the technology now.

I used to be very much against automated decision making until I actually started working with it and realised that, at a minimum, it is better than the average human operator and more often than not is better than the best human operator.

I do wonder if we are raised to believe that a human will always be better than a machine because of Hollywood.  In the movies the human always beats the machine because the human has ‘gut instinct’ or some kind of ‘X-factor’ that a machine can never have.  I think the story of the company who made the air combat control system on a $35 Raspberry Pi board that could beat the best human pilots kind of disproves that.

https://www.designnews.com/automation-motion-control/ai-beats-elite-fighter-pilots-can-run-on-raspberry-pi/142309077045092

I would be interested in what the various the posters on this thread who say they are software engineers and therefore know that driverless cars don’t work and won’t for a long time actually do.  Personally I’m not a programmer.  I come from the operations side of things (oil and gas) and I now work finding ways that digital methods can be used to replace humans or supplement human operators.

Edukator the  ig  it your point misses is what else is happening when your constantly looking for that hand? (assuming decent enough eye sight) can you spot hands on the left and right of the road at the same time, how do you evaluate the risk and assign your attention to monitor them?

Given that VW (and lets not kid ourselves that they’re the only manufacturer doing this) can happily lie about their vehicles for years, and knowing that every vehicle is built as cheaply as possible, regardless of it’s price; with components that are badly designed, and often badly looked after, I fully expect AV to have no impact on safety whatsoever. But that’s not what they’re for.

Like most things like this, they will be built initially for those that can afford them, and lanes will be created for AV use specifically to whisk them along, carefully separated from every-one else ( for y’know: safety wink wink), but my guess is that won’t do anything for safety overall, or congestion, or pollution, that cost will still be borne by others.

The Uber car was speeding: it was doing 38mph in a 35mph zone. And it made no attempt to brake.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/amp/Exclusive-Tempe-police-chief-says-early-probe-12765481.php?__twitter_impression=true

I think our utopian dream of safe, considerate automated drivers just died. They’re going to be just as awful as meat-based drivers.

I don’t really see anything in the article to support what you’re saying.

If you don’t want AVs on the road I think pretty much any incident will do if you want evidence as to why they’ll never work.

Just to add, it doesn’t say if it was 38mph on the speedometer or on the GPS.  Most cars’ speedometers I’ve had have been about 10% out which would make the actual speed at or just below 35 mph.

Google have already demonstrated a driverless car that can recognise cyclists and behave appropriately. When stopped at a junction, it waits for cyclists to clear the junction first before it moves. In my experience, human drivers can’t even stop outside the ASL boxes…

Given that VW (and lets not kid ourselves that they’re the only manufacturer doing this) can happily lie about their vehicles for years,

Mercedes are also being investigated.

The autonomous car can know about that car BEFORE it comes round the corner

It could also know about a car which doesnt exist. Once you start networking the cars you start getting into interesting security issues. Given how badly the car firms are doing currently at handling security that doesnt make me feel confident.

The speeding factor is interesting, I read that the road was recently reclassified from 45? To 35, was the car using slightly out of date data I wonder?

“You really think a driverless will change lanes and drive on the wrong side of the road to get better visibility, Aracer?”

Googles car already maneuvers itself to get a better view like this.

It actually caused a crash once, because as it edged forward to get a better view whilst in the middle of a junction waiting to turn left (in the US so equivalent to right turn here), the driver behind thought the car was proceeding and drove into the back of it. There was a report on the internet somewhere but I can’t find it.

Not all autonomous cars are equal though. The tricky part is for the government to determine who’s developed the technology sufficiently.

We need a driving test for autonomous vehicles.

Given that VW (and lets not kid ourselves that they’re the only manufacturer doing this) can happily lie about their vehicles for years, and knowing that every vehicle is built as cheaply as possible, regardless of it’s price; with components that are badly designed

Having worked in the automotive business that is one of my main worries, if you look at most car manufacturers there are parts that commonly fail due to crap materials or design. Water pumps with plastic impellers is one good example.

Imagine what will happen when the French car companies start making these things, they can barely get the electrics reliable on a normal car let alone anything that relies on a load of sensors and electrical systems to work correctly!

Imagine what will happen when

Ah the finest imagination based reasoning….

Edukator wrote:

This place sometimes, you haven’t shut me down but have a read back, Aracer. Do some research on the sensors sbeing used on the Uber and Google cars, and Mercedes. It’s all a lot less sophisticated than you make out. In many parts of the world the human hand is the same temperature as ambient even if the cars had super accurate IR cmaeras capablle of identifying a 200cm2 surface at 30 m and differentiating well enough from the noise to hit the brakes – which they don’t.

People who know better than you (no not me) won’t even post.

To some extent we’re discussing what is possible, not just what is being done now, but I stand by my assertion that even the current cars with their current sensors are better than the average human driver (and bear in mind that inevitably most of the carnage on the roads is caused by the below average drivers). You still seem to be taking a very contrary position to your normal one on the standard of human drivers here. Meanwhile even with the sensors they are using the information collecting and interpretation is far better than you suggest.

If you’re meaning who you seem to be meaning, then he went off in a huff because his arguments were robustly challenged, whilst he appeared to be unaware of the use of automated systems in trains, thinks that autonomous systems have to be perfect, has a strange lack of understanding for a software engineer of how it’s possible for AI systems to generalise and abstract, and you should note his wording on what he’s worked on carefully – I’ve actually done work on sensors and systems interpreting them, if not directly on autonomous cars. Yet because he agreed with you he was the one who knew best?

I think we’ll see the equivalent of ‘jay-cycling’ laws not too long after the jay-walking ones take effect.

________ Red Bottecchia_________

My uncle has a country place, that no-one knows about
He says it used to be a farm, before the Motor Law
Sundays I elude the ‘Eyes’, and hop the Turbo Freight
To far outside the Wire, where my white-haired uncle waits

Jump to the ground
As the Turbo slows to cross the borderline
Run like the wind
As excitement shivers up and down my spine
Down in his barn
My uncle preserved for me an old machine –
For fifty-odd years
To keep it as new has been his dearest dream
I strip away the old debris, that hides a shining bike
A brilliant-red Bottecchia, from a better, vanished time

Silent wheels, the ‘snick’ of shifters responding with a touch
Tyres spitting gravel, I commit my weekly crime…

Wind in my hair –
Shifting and drifting –
Mechanical music
Adrenalin surge –

Well-weathered leather
Cool metal and oil
The scented country air
Sunlight on chrome
The blur of the landscape
Every nerve aware
Suddenly ahead of me, across the mountainside
A gleaming alloy air-car shoots towards me, two lanes wide
I spin around with skidding tires, to run the deadly race
Go sliding through the valley as another joins the chase

Ride like the wind
Straining the limits of machine and man
Laughing out loud
With fear and hope, I’ve got a desperate plan
At the old footbridge
I leave the giants stranded
At the riverside
Race back to the farm
To dream with my uncle
At the fireside…

(adapted from ‘Red Barchetta’ by Rush/Neil Peart)

Malvern Rider

I think we’ll see the equivalent of ‘jay-cycling’ laws not too long after the jay-walking ones take effect.

Tesla’s autopilot already recognises cyclists, although it classifies them as cars. Because it’s a Level 2 partial automaton it still requires the driver to initiate the overtaking maneuver. Not sure I’d want to be the one to guinea pig it, but with level 5 automation there’s a pretty good chance the car will actually give you safe distance when overtaking. Punishment passes might actually be confined to the past.

Punishment passes

Holy shit. Let’s hope close passes become a thing of the past.  As for the desire to ‘punish’ cyclists (for what) with near/actual homicide?  Hopefully that too will go the way of the white rhino.

Did someone say ‘ASL box’?  Funnily topical as I collected some data last week.  My first junction travelling from home has traffic lights and an ASL/bike box.  It’s a dodgy junction so it affords me some level of optimism.  I counted the times it was free for my use last week.  Of the 12 instances  that I had need for it (me on bike, lights on red) the ASL space was 11 times blocked by oblivious/careless/impatient/delete as applicable drivers.  The 12th instance there was just me, no cars, so I managed to get away from the lights (without being forced to dismount, walk the bike to ped crossing and wait for those lights, cross ped crossing, then remount).  At least self-driving cars would recognise ASL boxes.

The tech is coming.  Its already safer than the average driver but still makes mistakes.  this will improve.

Cyclists the tech does have real difficulty with but again this will improve.  given how quickly the tech has got this far in 10 or 20 years how far will it get?

Personally I am all in favour of it simply for the reduction in deaths that will result

Exactly – the principle argument here is not how capable autonomous cars can be but how routinely crap most drivers are – it’s so routine that it’s normalised and we don’t even notice how low the standard the computers have to beat is. All this ethical dilemma stuff – well humans already have to make those decisions and they’re rubbish at it, you’d do just as using a PRNG in the software to make the decisions.

@tj – from what I can work out, some on this thread seem to think autonomous cars will still cause 1700 road deaths a year.

I think most people are on board with the fact that autonomous cars will be safer.
However, when a person causes an accident they can be held to account – financially or criminally or whatever.
I think the issue with this accident is it brings up the question of who is held to account when the autonomous car causes an accident (which may or may not be the case in this accident).

<div>Malvern Rider
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Punishment passes

Holy shit. Let’s hope close passes become a thing of the past.  As for the desire to ‘punish’ cyclists (for what) with near/actual homicide?  Hopefully that too will go the way of the white rhino.

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The “punishment” would be for holding the driver up for a few seconds, or for passing them in slow moving traffic, or perhaps even filtering past stationary cars. I thought it was a fairly common term among cyclists.

I think the issue with this accident is it brings up the question of who is held to account when the autonomous car causes an accident (which may or may not be the case in this accident).

Firstly there will be significant logs of the event to review, facts can be found and evidence presented. As for the liability then there needs to be a mechanism for that

It is an odd situation.,. we currently report incidents as if they are already non-human controlled eg “Car kills cyclist in London Road Accident”. The reality of the incident above is that a person on a bike died after being hit by a person driving a car and there are likely identifiable causes, if we can access accurate data. And I would imagine usually human error on one side or both is the major factor. Data reporting is poor, hence we are not able to accurately asses the causes, hence we cannot make effective changes to limit the risk in future, Hence why it gets attributed as an “accident”.

It is difficult for me to see how that system can be _significantly_ improved. Driverless cars seem to me offer a hope of a continually improving system (that’s the point of machine learning, no?), in that data should be more accurate in the main (it won’t always be of course) and hence we can learn how to mitigate risk as we move forwards. “Blame” and “negligence” become less important than learning. Perhaps no fault compensation helps those injured. Just insurance by another name really.

There will always be incidents where driverless cars are to blame. And individually it is right to dissect critically, and they will look terrible. But FFS our roads are not safe. They don’t even feel safe. Yes they are safer than X year or X country. But something like 5 deaths a day and 60-70 life changing injuries a day on UK roads alone. I’d be interested to know the data of human vs driverless inuries/deaths per million miles etc as things currently stand.

I don’t think we should accept a sudden wholesale shift. But I can see a time soon when cars (or maybe lorries) offer self driving for motorways only (initially) and hand back to the human for the rest.  And the process of data collection continues…….Is this not similar to the airline model?

The video is amazing, I’m not sure a human could have spotted her and stopped in time.  The question now has to be why didn’t the lidar system spot her.

I’m off to buy more reflective gear, she was invisible 🙁 . Modern lights are so good at being bright on the road but cutting out all spill that could hit other driver’s eyes that there was nothing visible to indicate she was there until too late