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Comment by ubersync | Hacker News Reader

I think it was more of an example of an imaginary emergency situation. You can hard program the corners, but you can't successfully predict all kinds of emergency situations that may arrive. Another example in that article is better: A rogue motorcyclist just turning blindly in front of you. Maybe, the only two choices are either you run them over, or steer your car off the road.

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Why are you so close to the motorbike that if he stops, you'll collide with him?

If he's coming out of a blind sidestreet, why are you approaching so fast and with so little lateral room that you can't dodge a surprise motorcyclist?

These are all human patience related problems. An auto should be perpetually correcting to make sure that it's current minimum collision avoidance distance is smaller than it's current visual clear zone.

So every time there's oncoming traffic (or a person on a sidewalk nearby) you'd have to stop until they were past, just in case they decide to turn/step in front of you.

As long as there are other actors in the world who may behave irrationally I don't think you have to work too hard to come up with either/or scenarios for the AI to deal with.

And even if the irrationality is removed there's still a chance of mechanical failure (e.g. tire blowout causes loss of control) which other AIs may need to make decisions on how to avoid.

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