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Comment by abduhl | Hacker News Reader

And how will you program your car's computer to deal with situations that humans react to instinctively by thinking about context?

The most obvious one that comes to mind is the familiar question: "What follows a ball?" While you can program the answer ("A child"), can you reliably say that your car will recognize a ball? What about a soccer ball? A basketball? A golf ball? A football?

Driving is one of the activities that humans engage in that requires true cognizance and awareness. The idea that a computer is "best suited" for driving is laughable until we start using cars where situational awareness and context no longer matters (let's get to work on those flying cars).

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I can reliably say that a robotic car will stop for unexpected objects in the roadway it detects with radar, visible and infrared light 100% of the time that it is physically possible, regardless of traffic, lighting or mood. What's your hit rate on that?

You're giving "human instinct" a whole lot of undeserved credit here.

The long tail..

Your car brakes. As hard as it can. Because - you know - there's a dove on the street. Or - god forbid. I have cats, so let me take a dog as an example - a bigger animal. Or a hare. Or - whatever. It might even _be_ a kid - see below for why. let's just say you avoid to hit - something.

You agree that this

- doesn't make sense all the time (You SAVED a hedgedog. Grats!)

- only works if the cars behind you (extrapolating: ALL other cars) handle just as quick and automatic as well? No 'rollout', you need to require it for each and every car if this should make sense.

> only works if the cars behind you (extrapolating: ALL other cars) handle just as quick and automatic as well? No 'rollout', you need to require it for each and every car if this should make sense.

Better a fender bender than a dead kid.

Human reaction time hovers at about .2 seconds, last I heard. Machines have much better reaction times. I would place far more trust in a self-braking car than in a human-braking car.

Furthermore, a machine is always watching the road. What percentage of the time do you think the average driver is watching the road, scanning for dangers, taking note of other cars and obstacles in the vicinity? I would wager that it's less than 60% of the time, though I admit that I don't have numbers to back that up.

> (You SAVED a hedgedog. Grats!)

Hitting animals can inflict significant damage to a car. Just putting that out there.

.2 is way to short. Only works when you're anticipating something and have all your muscles prepped for action. The realistic figure is 1 second for an attentative driver, a bit less if there is some signal ahead to anticipate the situation, way more if distracted by something (e.g. looking in the mirror for a lane change).

And to further your point even more, machines are much better at keeping the required distance for safely stopping. Stressed-out/aggressive humans tend to tail-gate ...

Not at all. A human would brake as hard as they can; the computer could detect the object and begin braking soon enough to brake more smoothly.

A computer also wouldn't be going fast enough in the first place that its panic braking could reasonably cause a driver to hit it. Tailgating one would make it slow down. But no one ever claimed that robotic cars could save you from other drivers' errors; that's the whole point, they should be universal because drivers kill other people.

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