I have two problems with this article.
1) They make it appear that Uber is a car manufacturer.
2) Even though Uber has not been determined to be at fault, the author seems to want to make it that way anyway.
1) They make it appear that Uber is a car manufacturer.
2) Even though Uber has not been determined to be at fault, the author seems to want to make it that way anyway.
I'd be fairly surprised if there's any real appetite at Uber to continue with this now. It was never anywhere near their core competency.
Maybe not directly, but is Uber's current business model sustainable without some form of self-driving technology replacing their human drivers?
3 years ago Uber hired ~50 specialists from CMU to work on autonomous vehicles. I'd call that a core competency.
https://www.theverge.com/transportation/2015/5/19/8622831/ub...
"Indeed, it's entirely possible to imagine a self-driving car system that always follows the letter of the law—and hence never does anything that would lead to legal finding of fault—but is nevertheless way more dangerous than the average human driver. Indeed, such a system might behave a lot like Uber's cars do today."
It doesn't matter if Uber makes cars that are technically not at fault, if they're mowing over pedestrians at a rate significantly higher than human drivers then they should never be allowed on public roads. People mess up occasionally. The solution is not an instant death sentence administered by algorithm.
And whether Uber makes the entire car or not isn't germane to the discussion. They are responsible for the safety of said cars, which is what we're discussing here.
Your second paragraph emphasizes my point. You,too, are stating that Uber is a car manufacturer, in whole or in part. Does Uber manufacture any parts of this car at all? The impression the opinion piece gives is that Uber manufacturers cars.
1) The physics of driving isn't random, so it could be said that there are no accidents in autonomous driving, only oversights.
2) It would set a minimum performance level by making it prohibitively expensive to have a dangerous car. Those who test responsibly would have a low enough injury rate that they could deal with the risk by taking out suitable insurance.
3) It would provide a strong incentive to make the best car possible and not to take expedient shortcuts.
4) Over time automatically liability would become irrelevant if it asymptotically forces the injury rate to zero.
5) We have an historic opportunity to create a culture that will eliminate the danger of cars. It might have an increased short-term once off cost, but a huge long term payoff in the reduction of health costs and human misery. If we miss this opportunity we will be stuck with the long term cost of an industry that will be competitively driven towards poorer performance, potentially against the will of the majority of players, by the actions of a few.
Additionally, if we train self-driving cars to always give way to pedestrians who even look like they might cross the street, they’re going to have a heck of a time getting through cities. Kids are going to learn that they can trigger a squealing emergency stop by lunging towards the curb - great fun!
What I think WILL happen is that autonomous cars will have to buy blanket insurance policies that cover their entire fleet. High accident/fatality rates will result in high insurance premiums, which will put bad actors out of business.
Where I live in California, there are two major streets with crosswalks in regular use, with speed limits of 40 mph or higher (and travel speeds of 50+ mph), within a quarter mile of my home.
Taking into account optimal (computer driven) car stopping distances, the maximum acceleration of a person and typical pedestrian densities, I don't think getting though cities would be an issue, especially outside the CBD. Even in areas with very high pedestrian traffic cars will be able to get though. In support of this argument, I offer today's "shared" pedestrian zones, where cars and people mix. Pedestrians have right of way, cars are limited to 10km/h, but the cars manage to get though without injuring anyone. Cars would naturally do high speeds on main roads with low pedestrian density and lower speeds (with very short stopping distance) at high pedestrian density.
Why should children have a propensity to intentionally jump in front cars above and beyond anyone else? That's bias.
If anyone intentionally jumped in front of a car then it would be covered by the exemption that I proposed: that the car would not be liable if intent could be proved. Based on the car's sensor logs it would be pretty easy to prove that someone intended to get hit. If the car managed to stop and the person ran away it would then be relatively easy to track that person down based on the logs and charge them with a crime. In any case, I think that that is a hypothetical situation which is unlikely to occur. For the vast majority of people self preservation would trump the desire to cause trouble by putting oneself in a terrifying and life-threatening situation, so I think it would be negligibly rare.
Changing the average travel speed from 45 kph (the city-wide speed limit in New York) to 10 kph would be a disaster.
And what alternative do you suggest? Not braking?
If I see a kid running towards the road, I'm going to slow or stop my car. I'm not going to think "oh it's just a kid being a jerk, they'll definitely stop before the road" because I don't want to run the risk of squashing a kid.
Therefore, I behave exactly the same as a cautious AI would be expected to behave.
So, why aren't kids running to the edge of the sidewalk when I'm driving?
Solvable by reducing speed sufficiently. It's reasonable to expect the car to avoid a man travelling at 10kph from any off-road blind-spot, and a car travelling at 100kph from any on-road blind-spot.
> Additionally, if we train self-driving cars to always give way to pedestrians who even look like they might cross the street, they’re going to have a heck of a time getting through cities. Kids are going to learn that they can trigger a squealing emergency stop by lunging towards the curb - great fun!
If you sprint to the curb in front of traffic today, drivers will stop/swerve. Almost certainly illegal too.
My interpretation of the parent post is that more responsibility can be put on the car to avoid accidents, than is currently the case today. Hence greatly increasing road safety. It sounds great!
Likewise, I can be standing still with my toes on the curb, and then lunge into the street. Should a self-driving car assume that every pedestrian standing at a crosswalk could walk into traffic at any moment, and slow down accordingly? Again, that’s not what human drivers do.
There are a number of surface streets near my house with speed limits of 45 mph, and crosswalks every 1/8 mile or so. Requiring cars (autonomous or not) to avoid any possible pedestrian incident at every such intersection would be a disaster for traffic throughout and a huge step backwards.
A human should be aware that these pedestrians might enter the roadway. The human should perceive those pedestrians as a risk, and be ready to take action.
> Should a self-driving car assume that every pedestrian standing at a crosswalk could walk into traffic at any moment,
Yes.
> and slow down accordingly?
This doesn't follow. The car don't need to slow down. It does need to be ready to perform an emergency brake.
I fully agree that autonomous vehicles can and should do everything they can to avoid accidents. We are in violent agreement there. However, I also think that if we set some kind of unrealistic standard for safety, then we are going to make self-driving vehicles completely unappealing to everyone, because they are going to drive like a cross between my grandmother and a startled squirrel.
This is not a new idea of mine - the issue of the too-polite autonomous car has been extensively studied and reported on. See https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.nytimes.com/2015/09/02/t... for just one example.
That genuinely might not be a bad thing, at least in the initial phases. They should be ruled by an abundance of caution until we're sure they can actually make more aggressive decisions.
Uber seems to be defaulting to maximum aggression from the outset, which is hardly surprising from them, but seems extremely over-confident (in fairness, like most new drivers are ;)
The point of defensive driving is that you can't rely on other people not to be incompetent.
You have a green signal at a traffic light. That does not mean "go", it means "proceed with caution".
Isn't that already the case (and arguably they'd get more satisfaction out of it in some cases by seeing an annoyed driver)? Further, I'd say that's what _should_ happen -- if someone looks like they are going to enter the road, you stop.
If you enforce your right of way and kill somebody, that's manslaughter in my book.
They are on the road with conditions because what they are doing is somewhat experimental still. There is a safety driver for a reason that did not respond. A human driver may have collided but would have responded and potentially avoided a fatality (if not a collision). The benefits of autonomous driving completely failed on all counts in this case, which imply that being on a public road is far to early for Uber - suggesting some fault to lie with Uber or the regulators.
It seems unlikely that the Police will find any fault because they probably don't want to have to file a criminal charge against the driver, but that is who it would go against if there was fault.
There was a case some years ago in Boston where a subway rear-ended another one because the operator was texting. The driver was fired and probably would have been prosecuted if there had been fatalities. Taking eyes off the road for this long seems insane to me.