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Comment by cameronh90 | Hacker News Reader

What's stopping people from destroying yield signs and other safety critical road infrastructure now? Sometimes common sense helps, but it you're out to cause chaos, there's a ton of things you can do today that would cause crashes - but most of the time, people don't.

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If you destroy a yield sign, maybe it will eventually cause some problems, or maybe not. We could imagine a world in which destroying smart infrastructure could pretty instantaneously and reliably cause massive traffic jams, which seems like it would appeal more to certain trolls and perhaps protestors.

We could also imagine a world in which more subtle attacks could reliably and fairly quickly cause injury/fatality accidents, which might appeal to terrorists.

I think this type of "stress testing" of destroyed or modified signage would be an obvious direction for AV development once the basics are down. With HD mapping and other technology used to augment what is gathered by their sensors, AVs are eventually overall going to be better at handling unexpected scenarios at the road compared to humans

If you destroy a yield sign, the system will immediately know because all the cars previously recorded it.

The permanent signs would already be in the database. The signs you'd worry about would be temporary, for road works or accidents, but perhaps these locations could be made electronically available.

And it will play a helpful message like "Recalculating route: 3 self-driving fatalities registered at this location."

So presumably every self-driving vehicle is going to be constantly streaming all sorts of information in their purview to a central hub?

That is a privacy nightmare without regulation on scrubbing extraneous information, done before upload: for example blocking out of pedestrian data; not just faces but clothing and gait, and probably also any data captured through windows.

It would be ideal to have a limited view of just the roads and signage, and have a retention plan that gradually keeps less and less historical data.

For accident review more of the data might be required, so vehicles should keep the last 24 hours of raw data.

Self-driving vehicles should be implemented with the same care Apple has given Touch ID and Face ID in regards to protecting sensitive data.

Having a central database capable of being scraped and process to determine where any person is at any given time is a non-starter. Care needs to be taken to scrub all extraneous data from the fleet's network.

A lot of things should be implemented in a particular way, but most aren't. Decades of practical experience show that, unless forced by regulations, auto manufacturer will pick the cheaper and more profitable option over the safe option every single time.

If I had to choose between privacy of my location or the convenience of a self driving car, I’d choose the car. Every single time.

Convenience wins out over privacy for me. It’s the same for the billions that elect to use Facebook. I don’t care if Tesla’s knows I visited the supermarket.

Tell that to guy that had smartwatch and his wife noticed he had high heart rate somewhere at night where he should be doing something else.

I don't have link for the story. But idea behind this is not that one should not cheat on his wife because he will get caught. To be really a human and be honest, one must not have an urge to cheat on his wife(husband) because he loves her. If someone has dirty thoughts and only thing that is preventing a person from fulfilling that is that "Tesla will know"...

People should be able to cheat, they also should be caught, but being good only because you are constantly watched?

This argument looks like "because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say".

This argument is about that you have to make concessions - tradeoffs.

You have a choice to not use the autonomous car, to not use the apple watch, to choose a privacy-conscious internet carrier.

Did you read the comment?

The problem is self-driving vehicles implemented with fleet data that vacuums up everything will spy on everyone, not just the driver.

They need to be implemented with on-board redaction.

Otherwise there is no choice for anyone, the companies or the ruling party can do facial or gait recognition on pedestrians and other drivers, and scrape license plates of of all parked and driving cars from the data stored in the cloud.

With just Lidar I imagine this is less of a problem, but at least pedestrians in that case will still need to be redacted for gait recognition.

My first comment wasn't about your regard to personal privacy, it was with regards to everyone's. One person's data is mostly worthless; everyone's is priceless.

Also FWIW Apple has a good track record with privacy, it's all opt-in.

Edit: Health data is also end-to-end encrypted (accessible by your devices only, Apple servers don't have keys, if you forget your passcode you lose the data); https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT202303

Real world trade offs please...

If there are only autonomous cars that track your position how are you going to make trade off?

Right now I don't have Facebook but no one in my family or friends is contacting me. Why? Because I don't have Facebook. This is my trade off. Real trade off would be if I could select different provider and still be in contact with my family and friends. Right now it is monopoly degrading my quality of life. If I would have different options that I could for example pay for but they would not use my data as tracking that would be different.

If there would be way to pick your autonomous car provider by price/privacy it can be trade off.

If it is one option that you can use or not use it is not about trade off. I am not native English speaker but trade off for me is when you have multiple options to choose. No that you have all or nothing....

I think this might be the story

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2019/12/14/fitbit-jane-s...

I wish there was a way for individuals to make that decision for themselves alone.

As a pedestrian being observed by AVs, your [valid] choice has a significant impact on my ability to choose privacy over convenience.

>> If I had to choose between privacy...

That sounds like it's taken right out of an Orwell story.

You already make this tradeoff - you have a bank account instead of hiding your money in a mattress. You're probably browsing the web from a normal internet connection, not a VPN, or some alternative?

Yes, and I have some control over that which I exercise regularly. Not enough control, but what I have I use proactively.

I'm also active in trying to wrestle more control of the data being collected on me.

And I am not willing to give up my privacy for your convenience and not happy with those who'd willingly give up theirs in a way that sweeps mine up with it.

I feel like this is almost like trying to resist the allure of drones in war. It’s too easy to do and too hard to stop. It takes almost global consensus.

Any number of parties could lawfully and unobtrusively start slurping up all sorts of data which is in a kind of plain view, and nobody would really be the wiser.

> So presumably every self-driving vehicle is going to be constantly streaming all sorts of information in their purview to a central hub?

That's a terrible design.

The obvious way is that the sign/beacon itself pings a server every 5 minutes, and when that stops you know it's broken.

> That is a privacy nightmare

I don't want to disappoint, but the future will have no privacy whatsoever.

There will be privacy until the singularity, don't worry.

Continued encroachments on privacy and personal autonomy may indeed deteriorate them, even cripple our ability to protect those rights, but simply worrying about that doesn't mean I must go gentle into that good night.

> That is a privacy nightmare without regulation on scrubbing extraneous information, done before upload: for example blocking out of pedestrian data; not just faces but clothing and gait, and probably also any data captured through windows.

If you can be photographed legally in a public place, what's going to protect your privacy in public?

So what happens when a road sign legitimately changes? Does the system use the previous values recorded or the new value?

Im also curious how situations will be handled where there are two speed signs: the regular posted speed and a temporary speed for construction. How does it know which to obey.

Ideally we get to a point where we’re at least publishing signage to a database so that cars don’t have to rely on visual cues both human and automated.

I personally don’t think it’s possible to make automated cars work well without a ton of infrastructure support.

Your car wishes to inform you that there's a sign for McDonald's where they're having a sale 2 for 1 quarter pounder with cheese.

The law doesn't require you to follow a sign that's not there. In fact I'd argue that doing so can be dangerous in some situations(and obviously advised in others). A car should only ever follow what it can actually see, which makes the whole idea almost daft, since computer image recognition is still so poor.

If there is a central database with all the signs, you don't need a physical sign on the edge on the road for AV to notice it, they already know it is "there" from that DB

Bear in mind that's not how the traffic law works anywhere right now. You are only required to obey signs and markings which are actually there. And traffic signs get removed all the time for works, I honestly can't imagine that every action like that would be recorded in some central database that all cars could query.

If it's such a busy location to cause a big jam, how did the vandals get away with destroying it? In out of the way places, it won't cause a big jam.

Few places are busy in the middle of the night.

You can cause horrible traffic jams now by throwing a few mattresses or a bunch of caltrops onto the highway at the right time of day.

Then imagine the jam flowing around the blockage without stop-starts due to the automated vehicles networking and managing traffic.

The future needs self-throwing mattresses.

>What's stopping people from destroying yield signs and other safety critical road infrastructure now?

People do destroy yield signs and other safety critical road infrastructure now. I've known more than one person with an appropriated road or safety sign as a home decoration.

People tag signs on the freeway, to the point where caltrans still has razor wire over some of the signs. It's already happening.

Nothing and it happens all the time. This is something that a human driver familiar with the road will notice and it will be unlikely to cause an accident. An out-of-towner might get into an accident. An automated vehicle would ideally not even be looking at signs and just operating from its stored data.

The obvious counterpoint to "operating from stored data" is an accident or construction causing a lane to be closed, or a child chasing a ball across the road.

In the hypothetical world in which self driving cars are the norm and not the exception detours would be in the system so that SDCs would not need to read signs. Even now a lot of traffic maps get updated to show detours, delays, and temporary closures due to accidents.

FWIW I am a near-term self-driving car skeptic and have been for a long time. I just think that these are not the kind of issues that really pose a major obstacle whereas drunk people wandering across the street are.

We will nano-tag alcohol and keep a database of all wandering drunks, for self-driving cars to either avoid them or take them home!

That's an absolutely crazy idea. You are only required by law to follow signs that are actually there, full stop, a car should never rely on some built in database of data. I cannot imagine a database of signs that would be constantly up to date and somehow distributed to all cars on the road.

I don't think that's crazy. Why shouldn't local authorities, state DOTs, and the national DOT be obligated to also update a database that self driving cars use? They already have such databases for their own records, usage, and analysis. In a world in which SDCs are normal that is how you would expect it to work.

It's a bigger expectation to suppose that the car will perceive the environment better than a person would and make correct on-the-fly decisions about traffic signs when snow obscures the sign and a little bit of ice and muck obscures its cameras ever-so-slightly, making some of the sensors go half-berserk.

>>It's a bigger expectation to suppose that the car will perceive the environment better than a person would and make correct on-the-fly decisions about traffic signs when snow obscures the sign and a little bit of ice and muck obscures its cameras ever-so-slightly, making some of the sensors go half-berserk.

Then it should do the same a person is required to do in that scenario - slow down and exhibit caution. Otherwise you will get a car that confidently drives forward because it "knows" a sign is there. If the sensors can't cope with that then the car shouldn't be on the road at all, period.

>>Why shouldn't local authorities, state DOTs, and the national DOT be obligated to also update a database that self driving cars use?

Because the same local authorities don't even have the budget, time or competency to fix the most minor issues with our roads. Potholes go unfixed for weeks, there's no budget for cleaning, for salting, for repair of missing signs, lamp posts or simply for review whether existing signage is actually appropriate after changes they make. But yet the same authorities should be tasked with real time updates to some database of signage? I'm sorry, but I'm just trying to be realistic here - we can write legislation to require authorities to do something, but in real world that's just not going to happen reliably enough to trust it. I know I wouldn't.

> I cannot imagine a database of signs that would be constantly up to date and somehow distributed to all cars on the road.

Really depends on where you are. I agree I can't imagine it in the USA, but in the Netherlands, where every square metre is documented, attributed and zoned (yes including the leftover grassy triangle bits between highway ramps, everything). We could totally do that if necessary.

I don't know if documenting all the traffic signs would be the right solution. If anything I would imagine this database to include way more virtual traffic signs than are actually there. Not for the legal traffic rules, but virtual ones that would be nice if they existed and everybody in the flock held to them.

Point is that worldwide there is a huge variety in the quality of roads, the quality of signage, driving culture and attitude, and the general predictability of the environment. Some places will lend themselves more naturally to the first forms self-driving cars will take than other places that are more "free form".

I’ve seen intersections where people have went offroad in an accident and knocked down stop signs and people know when approaching that it should be there. Would a car?

The only way I can see that working is if there is some kind of geographic location of various stops and the like, but at that point, you need consistent connectivity to obtain that kind of data, right? May work in larger towns and cities, but what about rural areas?

We’ve had offline GPS units for decades. You could easily have a database of every stop sign, and it would fit on an SD card.

The yield signs could be backed up with an an official map all cars read from as well.

And then let that ‘official map’ from Google charge $100/month subscription fee.

You have to actually go out there and physically do the act.

In a wired world the distance to everything is zero. If you can find an 'in', you can carry out this attack in any place in the world, from the comfort of your nerd cave or barracks.

They do that very often. I once drove the wrong way on a one-way street because some troll had changed the arrow's direction.

Fortunately there was almost no traffic.

Signs get vandalized or stolen all the time here in Uruguay. Mostly vandalized.

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