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Comment by odammit | Hacker News Reader

Ugh. This really worries me - not because I’m afraid of driverless cars but because this is the kind of “news” headline that will get anti-driverless car jerks all up in a righteous tizzy.

Title should be NO_TITLE because “doofus driving truck backs into something” isn’t news.

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Counterpoint, as technical people, we can agree that there is probably a better solution to an impending accident rather than sit still like a deer in the headlights.

In fact, this article could start a discussion on if the risks of active accident avoidance measures (e.g. running a stop light at a clear intersection if you're about to be rear-ended) might cause more problems than they solve.

Obviously there are better solutions but the technology is immature at this point and is being hyped way beyond its capabilities.

The "autonomous" cars that work are basically little trains running on digital tracks with collision avoidance systems. They are no where close to being "intelligent."

If the technology is immature - it should have a backup driver to take over in an instant. Immature technology has no business running solo.

But in practical terms, aren't human drivers basically simulating little trains running on analog tracks with collision avoidance systems?

The obvious solution in this case is to get rid of the human driver of the truck that collided with the autonomous vehicle, because he was demonstrating behavior that wasn't intelligent.

Have you seen Logan? I'd say that long and short haul trucking is a career on a fast-track to be replaced at this point.

A human paying attention would honk before trying to move, most of the time, right? But a driverless vehicle may be able to do both at the same time to avoid an accident.

Except the driver-less shuttle didn't take any evasive action, the way a human would have. Did it even honk the horn?

Clearly this company's tech isn't up to par.

Plenty of humans freeze up or react slowly when confronted with something like this.

That’s true, but theoit h for autonomous cars is that don’t freeze and they don’t react slowly. They are better drivers then humans.

Yeah I watch people freeze and let people back into them all the time in parking lots while they furiously honk. I think you may be overestimating the abilities of the average human driver.

I did this. My neighbour backed into me. And I honked before he hit me but otherwise did nothing. To an observer it may have seemed ridiculous but the reason is simple: I assumed he could see me and it wasn’t until it was too late that I realized he wasn’t paying attention and was going to hit me. By then I had no time to put the car in reverse and move, only to honk.

Yep; I'm guilty. When I was a teenager, the first time someone backed into me, I was so surprised I got confused about what to do and consequently did nothing. And by the time I found the horn button it was too late.

I was so surprised that I just sat on the horn for about 5 seconds even though it was all over at that point.

So, now the makers of this vehicle can code some better evasion technique and consequently all future versions will benefit, very much unlike my children, who have a high probability of reacting just like me the first time it happens to them. (Sure, maybe I will teach them, but then again maybe not.)

I'm curious: Did you do some kind of sports back then? Soccer, basketball etc.?

I wonder if sports or videogames may teach people to react in stressful situations instead of freezing, since both of those require you to apply problem solving in split second decisions.

Sorry for being off topic.

I rode bicycles a lot. Certainly when riding bicycles one must have split second and correctly made decisions.

My driver training involved simulated head on collisions where an instructor would get in another car and drive at me head on to train my response. So I had reasonable training. It was just that in a parking lot I never expected someone to just throw it in reverse and back into me without looking where they were going. It simply had never occurred to me that it could happen. So when it did happen I was so busy thinking about what I could do that I didn't do any of the things I could do (honk, or put it in reverse and back out of the way.)

Since then I've avoided dozens of accidents that were new and unique in their own way, but also I've been through a few situations and have now developed good instincts about what the options are in a given situation.

It's not unusual, by the way. Pilots train emergency scenarios for just this reason.

> Did it even honk the horn?

I don't disagree with what you're saying but 3/3 times I have honked my horn as someone was backing into me and they still hit me. Another time I was a passenger when it happened.

Out of all the hundreds of times I have warned someone "look out you doofus, you're about to hit me!" by honking the horn, I've had about two low-speed bruises. Most of the time a collision was averted - I drive in city traffic, mostly. #anecdata

> Except the driver-less shuttle didn't take any evasive action, the way a human would have.

Stopping was an evasive action, and since the result was a graze, it may have been moderately successful. While the people on the bus seem (from the article) to think there was time for more action, the perception of time under the adrenaline rush of an imminent collision may be misleading.

But a human facing an imminent collision, under the adrenaline rush, can often take more evasive action than there seems to be time for (if they don't freeze).

> the perception of time under the adrenaline rush of an imminent collision may be misleading.

This may be one of the more ridiculous excuses I've seen for self driving vehicle "screwups".

Is the argument actually computers can't take action instantly compared to a human? If so, then self driving cars may as well not exist.

It's well within a computer's capability to take evasive action for an accident like this far before a human driver - assuming sufficient sensor input. This is exactly the reason I want to see self driving tech rapidly accelerate - a car that has it's situational awareness 100% at all times, and thus can react instantly in a safe manner to any situation.

I understand the software is not up to that point yet - and your response is exactly what I fear the most. I see endless DoS attacks against self driving cars once they get even a remotely substantial percentage of the market.

If all programming reverts to "failsafe stop when things may be remotely potentially unsafe" we are going to see traffic problems of a proportion we have never experienced.

>> the perception of time under the adrenaline rush of an imminent collision may be misleading.

>This may be one of the more ridiculous excuses I've seen for self driving vehicle "screwups".

>Is the argument actually computers can't take action instantly compared to a human? If so, then self driving cars may as well not exist.

No, I don't think that's what the parent comment meant. It means that the people who said that it didn't take proper action (that were there) may have been mistaken in thinking there was more time to act than there was.

Not enough time for a computer to react, but enough time for people to think it could have? I seriously doubt that. Yeah, the average human driver might have also just frozen, or only honked, but the computer has excellent situational awareness (it had better if it's driving on public roads) so it knows if it can backup suddenly safely. A human would have to look over their shoulder. It should also honk the horn, I mean that's just low-hanging fruit to implement. Clearly they detected the truck and stopped, what's wrong with stop() && honk().

Nooooo....

The title needs to be changed to, "Human in truck, backs up and hits vehicle (self-driving)" ?

Because that's what happened. A human caused a wreck. Doesn't seem as scare-mongery now, eh?

A persistent vision system, like 360 radar would have been fully aware of a vehicle at any direction, and would have not hit them. A human on the other hand.....

Except they didn't back up, the bus hit the truck on its side. So the truck may have pulled out too quickly without care, but the bus should have picked it up.

https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/8/16626224/las-vegas-self-d...

It looks like the truck was backing up while turning, so the side of the truck hit the front of the bus.

The truck driver is primarily at fault in that scenario, but I would put the autonomous bus maybe 15% at fault for not backing up or honking.

The bus is 0% at fault. That's fully on the human driver. The bus have certainly done something in an attempt to prevent being hit by the human driver. That doesn't place any fault on the bus though.

There is no percentage for at fault it’s black or white, it should never be grey. If someone is going to back into you there is no law to honk or back up.

Most states require you to take reasonable steps to avoid an accident.

Stopping (which the bus did, turning what would have been a catastrophe into a graze) is a reasonable step to avoid a collision, and it's not clear from anything I've seen that a typical professional human bus driver would have been likely to do much more in the actual circumstance.

The point is that there is laws requiring you to honk and back up assuming its safe and reasonable to do so if it will avoid an accident. As with all ambiguous laws what is actually "safe and reasonable" is up to a judge should it get that far.

The bus didn't hit the truck. The truck (human driver) backed into the bus.

https://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/self-driving-bus-crash-ve...

The shuttle did what it was supposed to do, in that it’s sensors registered the truck and the shuttle stopped to avoid the accident. Unfortunately the delivery truck did not stop and grazed the front fender of the shuttle.

This is the quote from the very article you linked to. The bus picked it up. The human driver hit it anyway. Obviously the bus' fault - it should have predicted that and stayed away from streets full with crappy drivers in trucks.

Well, If the thing you're proposing isn't better than the thing you're replacing, then such products should not succeed.

A driverless car should be on par with the _BEST_ human driver, not the average driver, who as we know, gets into 6 million auto accidents per year.

How’s that? Driverless cars just need to be better than the average human driver. I’d welcome reducing auto accidents by, say, 25%.

The UK has 50% fewer deaths per mile than the US, so automated cars at 25% fewer in the US would be a bad thing in the UK

I don’t understand your argument. Presumably the driverless cars would also reduce the UK’s deaths by a similar percentage.

You suggested they could reduce the death rate from 7/bkm to 5/bkm. The uk is already at 3.5, if auto cars also changed that to 5/bkm that would be bad.

I suggested that you could reduce the death rate by some percentage.

You could do that by putting in actual driving standards - proper test procedures for example. As a society we aren't bothered.

I don't know about you but people like machines/robots predominantly because they are efficient and don't make mistakes. Nobody is going to trust a robot car to pickup their kids if you tell them there is a 25% less chance that the car might end up in an accident compared to what it would be if it were to be driven by an average driver.

To your point, improving on the average doesn't require driverless cars at all. You ca get that today with just driver assistance technology, improving safety technology on roads, etc - all far easier problems to solve.

At the same time there are issues that need to be addressed / forced. I'm still waiting for mean spirited drivers to start bullying self-driving cars. For instance commuters cutting them off knowing they will stop to avoid an accident.

Which leads to another question. Will driverless cars report bad drivers to police? Making tech companies police informants... will laws be pass forcing this behavior?

Oh. I would love it if they did.

I can only imagine...

Here's the logs of the aggressive driving, during the last 50 seconds. These logs entail a full 3d pointcloud showing that they were not responding to other drivers' potentially erratic patterns. Other driver came within 1 foot of car on multiple occasions. License plate is ABC123 and facial scan of user is $face .

User appears to have wronged our passengers with the following laws: $list

We're talking an open and shut case here. And every car with enough of these sensors could provide "dumps".

Are you sure? Sounds like a crowdsourced surveillance dystopia to me.

What if driverless cars reported every jaywalker too?

Great. Ambiguity creates accidents. "Are you walking? Should I stop!? Oh no you aren't walking I can go, oh wait you are I should stop."

How many times have you had that happen when you're driving and you see someone hesitantly about to jaywalk?

Also, as a cyclist, when a cyclist doesn't ride on the road and follow the laws it drives me nuts. Are you a vehicle or a pedestrian? Please don't be both.

> What if driverless cars reported every jaywalker too?

We'd have a high-quality signal as to where existing marked crossings were inadequate?

And if a plied to trucks there will be more cases of hijacking or for cross boarder runs illegal immigrants.

> Will driverless cars report bad drivers to police?

Human driven cars can, and their are public ad campaigns encouraging them to, and its easier for a driverless cars to do something detailed data without interfering with driving, so I'd be surprised if they didn't.

Calling people "anti-driverless car jerks" is also not helpful.

It’s more accurate than the title!

These things will need to cope with the presence of real humans, or else it's never gonna work. See how far this attitude of "the computers would be fine if it weren't for the stupid pesky humans" takes you.

The anti-driverless car “jerks” (as you have labeled them) will get into a righteous tizzy no matter if events like this happen or not. However, I characterize your response as emotional, and I feel a data-driven response is what is appropriate. So far, autonomous vehicles have a better safety record than human-driven vehicles. That’s the message here. Clouding that with emotional responses and demonizing opponents only serves to distract from that fact.

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