Saved a click: it stopped. A human controlled truck did not and grazed the SDV.
The Machine acted in a way that was not expected by the human driver.
This gets to a fundamental issue we will have in the transition to the utopian driverless future. Learning to identify and react to this new class of driver.
The article sneers that "surely this situation is not so rare that the shuttle’s designers did not allow for it?", but of course it is not that simple - there are a great many cases in everyday driving where the projected motion of the vehicles would lead to a collision if nothing was done to stop it, and so it is clearly infeasible to react to all such situations as if nothing else will be done. The passengers of the shuttle recognized the impending collision because they understood that the truck driver had probably not seen the shuttle. Approximating these applications of our theory of mind is probably the hardest part about automated driving.
I've had motorcycle lessons, one factor in those things is that their braking power is less than that of a car (less wheels, less stability, etc), so besides the emergency stop, you also learn how to do an emergency swerve - using the motorcycle's superior agility to avoid an accident. Just an anecdote. In this case, damage would've been avoided if the car had a horn and/or was more visible and/or had backed up and/or the truck had sensors.
What will a self-driving car do if for instance someone is driving in the opposite direction, towards it? Will it just continue driving, freeze, or get out of the way? Humans would likely get out of the way, even if that means "breaking the law" by going off-road or whatever. A self-driving car probably wouldn't do that, thus it would be the kind of "unexpected driving" that could really throw humans off, and may even cause more accidents than humans, in certain specific situations.
--EDIT-- it seems my comments are being misunderstood. I am simply stating the law as it exists, and the orthogonality between land and sea in regards to these laws. I know that Newtonian physics conflicts with the land aspect of these laws.
If a truck driver can complete a run in an hour and only infrequently have an accident by bending the rules, why would a “maximize profit” company give them two hours so they could follow the rules properly?
One example I saw the other morning: a trucker pulls halfway onto the road to make a left turn, where there is no traffic control other than stop sign against them. This is against the rules; they should wait for a full opening to take that turn. However, if they attempt to wait for a full opening, it could take several tens minutes for that opening to appear. For one turn.
> It also is in the companies best interest when it comes to costly collisions, insurance, disability payments, etc.
As with everything, there's a cost/benefit ratio. One minor fender-bender every year to deliver even 110% the cargo in that year? Totally worth it. Not to mention, it's usually the driver who absorbs the bigger relative share of the cost, in terms of points on their licenses or being fired for their inevitable slip-ups while under pressure.
Something I read on Reddit a few years ago that tore away the blinders of risk management forced upon truck drivers: If a driver had the opportunity to avoid a head-on by swerving into the ditch, they won't take it. By intentionally swerving into the ditch, the blame of the wreck falls on their shoulders, and if the cargo is damaged, they've likely lost their jobs. I've since confirmed it with a few questions to truck drivers I know.
The default rules of the are basically "big class of vehicle takes precedence" and "speed takes precedence within a class of vehicles".
People yield to golf carts yield to fork trucks yield for semis which yield for trains which yield to container ships.
Traffic on slow roads crossing fast roads waits until it's clear. Stop signs codify this pretty directly. Even if you removed them it's pretty obvious who has the right of way in many cases.
The rules of the road are specifically for reducing ambiguity and managing traffic flow within a class of traffic and managing interactions between those classes. For example, the procedure for a (rule following) pedestrian crossing a busy road will be very different where there's a cross walk than where there isn't. The cross walk provides a specific exception where the right of way defaults to the lighter traffic.
However, people don't crashing stuff and there's many levels of redundancy built into "the rules" so it all gets a bit fuzzy and situation dependent. (e.g. the pittsburg left or an agricultural vehicle crossing a not too busy road)
Accordingly, if you as a pedestrian or cyclist (or golf cart driver) just cross into a busy street not at a cross walk people will stop for you giving the appearance of you having the right of way.
This is why I've been saying it's not enough for a self-driving car to just be better than the "average human driver". It needs to be way better, maybe 10x better. Because these cars are likely not going to drive the way we expect a human to drive in many situations, which could end-up causing more accidents due to this conflict with how humans actually drive, even if the car is "technically" as safe as an average human driver.
Nope, the human driver was careless and did not look around, failing to notice the obstacle. If there was a human-driven car instead, we'd have never heard of it and the matter would have been resolved by regular insurance payments that happen every day in every city a thousand times. But since there's an automatic car involved now it is a philosophical conundrum. Nope, it's not, it's just some guy in a truck being careless.
Generally, not, though there are some exceptions. But that's not relevant here, because the bus stopped in an attempt to avoid/mitigate a collision with the truck, which was illegally backing into it's path, and the driver of the semi was cited for the violation.
My was a generic response to this generic comment.
> Saved a click: it stopped.