The moment a pedestrian puts their feet on the crossing they have absolute right of way & it’s on you to stop. If a pedestrian is waiting to cross, you’re expected to stop.
If Tesla exports this self driving code to the UK it’s going to cause accidents because people will absolutely not be expecting this behaviour from vehicles on the road in the UK.
For example, in this case, even someone standing near a crosswalk might be enough for all vehicles to refuse to enter.
How many seconds is one supposed to stop at a stop sign? The law is silent on the matter. There is so much around laws or rule systems that forms as conventions around the rules that are often just as important as the text of the rules themselves.
See also solid white lines (do not cross) in the US. People cross them for pragmatic reasons in many locations all the time, often in full view of law enforcement.
There are also road users for whom laws are rarely enforced or more frequently disobeyed, such as cyclists. In many places cyclists are bound to obey the same traffic lights as motor vehicles. This plainly doesn't happen 100 percent of the time, and again is often tolerated by law enforcement. A car with an absolutist interpretation of driving regulations would therefore still have to deal with the law enforcement and others may not share in this view.
I don't see a need for the law to specify a time. You have to stop and you proceed as soon as you have the right of way and it is safe to do so.
For a working AI, it can still stop safely if the pedestrian starts moving into the street in the few seconds the car is crossing.
Computers do exactly what they are told to do and never do what you did not tell them to do. They do not have any common sense that you did not give them. As you build more and more capable computers and give them more influence and control, you damn well better have an exhaustive, complete and comprehensive set of values for it to follow.
At first this will be due to AI's one current superhuman ability: speed; a classic is the do you drive into the old couple or the little kid car scenario. It's not really an issue for humans because the situation is over before we can make more than a reflexive response, but the AI can take its time to make a concrete decision. This isn't a thing we spend a lot of time thinking or blogging about and a societal consensus probably has not formed and wouldn't show up in the data. Presumably the AI would pick at more or less random as we are forced to do, but I can see an entity capable of superspeed choosing to perform random actions as causing other as yet unforseen problems.
The big pinch is if and when we create transformational AI. We will be presented with options we had never imagined being possible. Do you keep Mars as a memory of the old days, or do you use its crust to construct interstellar spaceships and build better lives for Earth humans? Do you allow humans to live lives as they do now, or do you modify their biology and neurology to live longer lives and never engage in antisocial behavior?
These are lazy obvious examples that I came up with but there will be many less-cosmic decisions we will be presented with that we absolutely do not have an existing moral template to guide us.
What's absolutist - the driver blew right through the crosswalk while someone was literally in it...
If the pedestrian remains still, but the driver sees no reason they shouldn't cross, eventually the driver might well gesture, honk etc.
I'm guessing the vast majority of training data is collected in countries with right-hand traffic flow. I suspect it might not be so straightforward to adapt to countries with left-hand traffic.
> Vehicles are required to stop when you are crossing their lane or when you are close to entering their lane.[1]
For California, I couldn't find an independent reference for the situation here but did find one saying a stopped driver doesn't have to wait until the pedestrian fully exits the crosswalk.[2]
[1] https://leddylaw.com/what-are-my-rights-as-a-pedestrian-in-s...
[2] https://www.karlaw.com/blog/do-drivers-have-to-wait-for-pede...
The Tesla vehicle violated this. subdivision (3) kinda implicitly confirms that a driver doesn't need to wait for a pedestrian to fully exit (what allows for that though is just the definition of and requirements around "right of way").
Also, since we’re being pedantic, the vehicle can’t violate the law because it isn’t a person. The driver would be in violation.
Sure, you could argue that. Were it true it'd be fine. But the pedestrian clearly slowed nearly to a stop (and shot the Tesla a disparaging look).
Unless we’re looking at different videos I don’t see either of those things happening. They don’t appear to change their pace at all after entering the crosswalk and they don’t seem disturbed in the slightest.