Comment by powercf | Hacker News Reader

Comment by powercf | Hacker News Reader

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> Your concept that there are no accidents, only oversights, is not correct. Say I’m crossing the street and I don’t see your car coming, because I look the wrong way or I’m distracted, or my view is blocked by the sun. You may not be able to avoid hitting me

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!

It’s not a blind spot I’m worried about. People frequently walk at full speed up to the edge of the sidewalk, then stop just before they would walk into traffic. Should an autonomous car assume that any pedestrian walking towards an intersection is going to continue into the roadway, even if they don’t have the right of way? That’s not what a human driver does.

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.

> That’s not what a human driver does.

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.

My bigger point, which is getting lost, is that there are rules to traffic (pedestrian, bike and auto) that we are all expected to obey. I do not agree that we can simply assume that a self-driving car assumes all liability for any accident (which is what the parent to my original comment posited). The rules of the road let us operate vehicles at tolerances that make it physically impossible to avoid every kind of collision - for example, as I’ve mentioned, a pedestrian that suddenly sprints into cross traffic traveling 40 mph.

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.

> they are going to drive like a cross between my grandmother and a startled squirrel.

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 ;)

> is that there are rules to traffic (pedestrian, bike and auto) that we are all expected to obey

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".

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