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Comment by prepend | Hacker News Reader

Would AI be better at stopping for children jumping out from a stopped school bus so it’s not as necessary to stop with human drivers?

That being said, just ticket the company and make them pay. Isn’t this how it works with all moving violations? Does Waymo get pulled over for speeding?

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The first point is exactly my thought. Self-driving cars are completely different to human drivers. We should not hold them to the same standards while simultaneously holding them to much higher standards. There are many driving violations that are just laws because they could lead to an unsafe scenario that is purely the fault of the driver.

Eg; stop signs. The only reason a full stop is required is to ensure that drivers are taking a clear observation and to give way to other stop signs. If there are no other traffic and no other drivers to give way to. Why do self-driving cars full-stop

You’re probably right in the long term. So, when the world is 100% self-driving cars, we can probably change the rules to favor the machines. In the near-term, however, it’s probably good to make the robots obey the human laws so that the humans don’t start getting the idea that they can disobey them, too.

laws of physics still apply. Car still takes time to slow down, even with perfect reaction times. Well, maybe you could get it to stop in time, but it might break the necks of everyone in the car.

At 30 miles per hour, the majority of the stopping distance is reaction time from a human. Self-driving cars have maybe 10/20 of that reaction time in the case of immanent collision. I also don't know about you, but my car can stop in significantly less than pretty much all of the stated distances by a fraction.

at 30mph breaking is about 50/50 perception time and breaking time for a total of 3-4s. Self-driving cars would an improvement for sure, they would have a max 2 second emergency break, but not quick enough as far as I understand. Even if that were enough, I would not appreciate my cab emergency breaking randomly because a kid steps out in front of a bus. Its best to slowly stop, then slowly accelerate. Maybe the optimal solution is to creep past the buss?

Given how hidden children are walking in front of the bus, if the AI instantly applied breaks upon seeing the child, would the car slowdown in time? probably not. Better yes, good enough? no.

Their license would be suspended if this were any of us. There's been at least 30 documented instances of this behavior.

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