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Comment by fizx | Hacker News Reader

As a cyclist, I can't wait for self-driving cars.

I'll take a small chance of being accidentally killed as a systemic, correctable mistake over the small chance of being killed by the 5% of people who are consistently impatient, inconsiderate dangerous jerks.

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I'm not a cyclist, but I want to be. I don't bike because doing so is way too dangerous with the number of drivers who are paying extremely close attention to their phones and not to driving. And yeah, some drivers are rude too.

I think the most dangerous time to be a cyclist or pedestrian is right now. Smartphones are ubiquitous, distracted-driving enforcement is very weak (non-existent in my area), and self-driving is alpha quality.

You can always mountain bike!

There's some truth to that, particularly the point about phones, but FWIW most cities have drastically increased the number and quality of bike lanes in the last 10 years.

SF is a completely different experience for bikes than it was 5 years ago, and 10 years before that it was even more different.

Ditto for NYC. You can ride up and down Manhattan in big separate big lanes very quickly.

It's obviously a personal choice, but I think cycling is a safe choice now. When I started 10+ years ago I would sometimes get off the road when conditions/traffic looked dangerous, and you should always keep that option in your back pocket. (i.e. don't insist that 100% of the route has to be bikable.)

But I don't feel the need to do that very much now. The exception is when there's unusual traffic and no bike lane.

It's even safer now that there are more cyclists on the road. Drivers do take some time to get used to cyclists.

I think the anecdote applies for some cities committing to Vision Zero plans - for example NYC has data showing fatalities decreasing (page 13: https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/visionzero/downloads/pdf/vision-... ), though injuries might be the same or increasing ( https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2019/02/04/bloody-january-cyclis... )

But it isn't perfect - SF fwiw has had more pedestrian fatalities this year though they've had reductions in the prior couple years ( https://www.visionzerosf.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/06.2... )

Also average vehicle miles travelled in the US is up ( https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M12MTVUSM227NFWA/ ), and so are nationwide pedestrian fatalities: https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/01/23/the-bible-belt-should...

Ride-hailing usage over transit may be part of the problem: https://steps.ucdavis.edu/new-research-ride-hailing-impacts-... ) .

I agree that it's dangerous, but I love biking too much not to – usually just as a commuter. I always just assume every driver has either: 1) not seen me and is going to accidentally kill me, or 2) seen me and is going to intentionally try to kill me. Joking aside, if you learn how to assert yourself on the road, take a lane when you need to, and pay attention to what potentially threatening vehicles are up to, I think you can drastically reduce the chances that you are involved in a harmful accident. Always wear a helmet, use really bright lights at night, don't ride on sidewalks, and all that jazz, too.

On my commute, if I try to "take a lane..." I'll end up as bug splatter on the grill of a 2 ton car. The only safe way to ride to work is either using the bikepaths (which don't typically follow roads so take 3x as long, or ride on the sidewalk.

I agree that taking the lane can be difficult and I can only imagine in USA how much harder this is. Here in the UK the number of times I've had people squeeze by me at speed, rather then waiting to overtake safely - but I do find it happened far far less once I got out the gutter and into the road.

I could be wrong, but I believe the statistics show you're much more likely to be killed in that car than on a bike.

From what I've heard about the studies done, you're still liable to live longer with the extra exercise from biking to work even given the increased odds of being killed in traffic.

"Systematic, correctable mistake" is not the way to describe errors made by AI algorithms, and definitely not in the context of an engineered system containing many algorithms and sensors.

In general, AI algorithms are famously opaque and hard to debug.

It's too long to explain here, but here are some links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explainable_artificial_intelli...

https://www.wired.com/story/greedy-brittle-opaque-and-shallo...

https://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2018/05/02/companies-grapple-with-...

https://thenextweb.com/artificial-intelligence/2017/04/23/ar...

https://towardsdatascience.com/need-for-explainability-in-ai...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/cognitiveworld/2018/12/20/geoff...

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BTW I'm also a cyclist. Human drivers can be annoying, but I find that they do act predictably. I've been cycling 5+ days a week in SF for 10+ years. I find that the drivers are worse when I bike in cities where bikes aren't as prevalent. Humans do learn. When you get into a conflict, there are emotions, and emotions are mechanisms for learning :)

It seems like you think that an AI is "just" a computer program, where the errors ARE indeed systematic and correctable. But AI is fundamentally different.

It's still systemic and correctable. The fact that the ML is somewhat opaque doesn't really matter here. You correct it by generating test cases and adding more training data related to those cases. The issues are still systemic and correctable.

The likelihood you'll be misclassified as an errant shadow and run over is extremely high for the next 10+ years of self driving machines. On the plus side, the faulty parties will have deep pockets you can help yourself to if you survive.

That's a danger with any vision based system, including people, but much less of a danger if you use lidar like GM Cruise does.

Just because a sensor can see you doesn't mean the decision maker will take the appropriate action.

Oh please. You're propagating these falsehoods about autonomous vehicles that don't require much thinking to disprove.

1. The classification shouldn't happen from a single frame. In order to be misclassified as a shadow, the system would have to get the classification incorrect at various distances and you're probably moving too, so it would need to be across many frames.

2. This suggests that one sensor misclassifying will be sufficient for a deadly situation. But autonomous vehicles all use multiple sensors. They could even theoretically have multiple classification models running. One misclassification will not result in accidents.

3. Humans driving around effectively blindly is already an extremely dangerous situation.

4. This discussion is often limited to places where humans are distracted but overall trying to drive properly. In many parts of Asia (Korea, Taiwan, etc.) drivers very willingly disobey signals and are not at all deterred by the risk of hitting a pedestrian through their own impatience.

Humans are very dangerous behind the wheel. Hypothesizing about corner cases where autonomy might make a mistake is missing the forest for the trees.

This is so strange. As a cyclist, I would be very worried about self-driving cars since cyclists - to the eyes of an AI algorithm, don't look the same.

You can have road bikes, mountain bikes with similar sitting positions, or recumbents, which will need a very different training profile, or tandems, etc

Bikes are severely underrepresented in the list of things that car automation companies care about at the moment, so any self-driving car on the road today might misidentify bikes.

Bikes also often ride in positions (from the perspective of the car) that can be unexpected. Some can be as close to the side of the car that it can cover the full field of view of a side-looking camera for example. How do self-driving algorithms work when encountering such cyclists?

I sure don't want to find out myself - I would hope car companies are doing tests on closed courses with cyclist mocks or inputs.

> Bikes are severely underrepresented in the list of things that car automation companies care about at the moment

How can you possibly know that?

They don't even do testing with pedestrians ...

And you know this how?

The same logic applies to human drivers - various bike sizes and types are harder to see and adapt to. If everyone rode a Jump bike, bright red and upright with blinking lights, it'd be easier to see them all quickly. But I'm constantly seeing tiny mopeds, recumbents, kids' bikes -- it's all harder to spot than a Jump bike, even for a human driver.

So, why fall back on the status quo of a human to spot them? If SDCs are proven to do it better, then I will definitely cycle more once there are more SDCs. It's all about evidence, show me the evidence SDC's are better, then I'll be 95% on board.

As a pedestrian, I can't wait for self-driving bicycles ;-)

As a bicycle, I can’t wait for self pedestrianing drivers.

You joke, but a lot of auto-vs-bicycle collisions can be attributed to unexpected actions by the bicyclist, many of which probably couldn't have been compensated for by the automobile driver, perhaps not even by an automated one. Obviously the bicycle always loses in these, but the cause isn't automatically bad behavior by the automobile. (though undoubtedly it often is)

How long before the self driving and sentient AI cars are complaining to each other about all the stupid human cyclists, their unpredictable behavior, their inefficient mode of transport and poor decision making models?

And 80% of people who are texting and distracted while driving.

Alas, at least where I am cyclist seem to have the least amount of respect for all others on the street and for the traffic regulations.

I think you have way too much faith in self-driving cars. We’re very far off, and anyone telling you otherwise is leaving out important holes.

get a stationary, roads are for cars

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