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Comment by Lawtonfogle | Hacker News Reader

For cases such as if the car detects a malfunction, this probably won't be a big deal, but for most extreme situations where a human will need to take over, and that can't be fixed by stopping the car, will a human be able to take over in a timely enough manner to solve the issue? We are often talking split second decisions, and it will involve a human who likely wasn't paying any more attention to the road than a passenger.

Imagine a car where the passenger's side is fully set up to drive, and with the push of a single button, the driver can swap all control to the passenger. I'm having a hard time thinking of situations where this is better than just stopping the car.

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That's a great question, and my understanding is that the car simply doesn't ask humans to take over in that case.

The "handoff" technique is primarily useful in situations where the car's confidence in the situation slowly degrades, not for sudden collision avoidance. An example would be a confusing construction area, or navigating with rocks on the road after a landslide. In these areas where road lines and signs aren't as applicable, the car needs a human driver. The human driver is so people aren't abandoning cars at the start of construction zones, not so they can step in to avoid a sudden collision. Google recently did a study and determined it takes over 5 seconds for a human to take over in a scenario, the car won't be able to expect them to handle anything that is happening quicker than that.

Hmm, that's makes me wonder how driving lessons work in US. In Poland it is a legal requirement that the car used for such purpose has a second set of pedals on passenger side, where instructor sits.

When I took a driving lessons my instructor was perfectly capable of pressing the brake or overtaking the wheel on time when I was about to do something stupid. I don't see why manual override of autonomous car should be harder.

I see however, that this can easily defeat purpose of using autonomous car: if the driver must be fully concentrated all the time, be ready to react, then it is even worse than driving normal car.

It works the same way in the US. However, in that case, the instructor is normally paying attention to the road and the student's driving, to grade them if nothing else. Usually, passengers can't be relied on for that level of attention.

When I took driving lessons in the US, the instructor had a brake on the passenger side but no other controls.

One such situation: Car detects malfunction while in an intersection. If it comes to a sudden stop, then at the least it will block the intersection, and you'll have the passengers sitting in a box in the middle of the intersection struggling to get the car going.

Further, a malfunction while in the left lane of the highway would be just as dangerous.

I don't even drive that much, all my commuting is done by bike. These are just a couple things I can think of off the top of my head.

> Imagine a car where the passenger's side is fully set up to drive, and with the push of a single button, the driver can swap all control to the passenger. I'm having a hard time thinking of situations where this is better than just stopping the car.

I don't know about you, but when I'm a passenger in a car, I'm attentive to everything. I guess the fact I often have strong rapport with the driver (usually a family member) means we are in sync; I mean I'll literally do blind spot checks, and carry out many of the driver's visual rituals simultaneously.

I think this is an interesting scenario; machines assisting men in, for example, collision avoidance systems, or in this case all the way up to self driving; and men being required to help self-driving machines in unusual situations.

Drver heart attack aka computer sensor failure.

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