Comment by danso | Hacker News Reader

Comment by danso | Hacker News Reader

From the FAQ:

Will Google’s self-driving cars get into accidents? Have they gotten into accidents before?

> Safety is our top priority. In the 6 years of our project, we’ve been involved in a small number of accidents in more than 1.8 million miles of autonomous and manual driving combined. Our vehicles have not caused any accidents while in self-driving mode. For more information, view our monthly reports.

So no accidents in self-driving mode; a "small number" during "manual driving"...and credit to Google, even though there is only one monthly report, it contains a listing of past accidents:

http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en/...

I skimmed over the dozen listed incidents. Several of them were during "autonomous" mode but are incidents in which another car is described as hitting the vehicle. Arguably, none of the "manual" mode accidents were egregiously the fault of Google.

However, I think the definition of "caused" will be debate here and for years to come. In one Feb. 2015 incident, the autonomous Google car is struck in the side rear by a car that rolled through a crossbound stop sign. The Google car is described as "Applying the brakes in response to its detection of the other vehicle's speed and trajectory"...since the collision ended up happening anyway, and it hit the rear of the Google car...doesn't that imply that if the Google car hadn't cautiously applied the brakes while going through the intersection, it would have cleared the intersection without getting hit? Also worth noting: the Google human driver tried to take control during the autobrake sequence...so it's possible that his/her reaction and manual braking was what led to the rear collision.

If it's debatable what a human should have done in a given situation, you can't really expect a computer to perform better.

That said, when they sell one of these things to a person, how the heck are they going to handle the insurance?

I see no issues for a robot taxi insurance, since it could be done with the same scheme, as the current testing vehicles are insured (a large deposit to the state).

Once robot taxis are everywhere, I would expect that there will be robot car rentals and robot car long-term rentals. They are also not different from the taxis; people just rent them for longer.

As for real ownership, the question is unclear. Probably, it will be so rare, that a deposit will work too.

This brings up the point I'm most looking forward to if we can get this stuff widespread: massive carpooling.

Forget Uber. Get a Google-AV subscription, find the nearest "unoccupied" AV (or call for one to come pick you up, preferably scheduled in advance to it's just waiting for you when you get out), hop in, state destination, get off. Car continues on its merry way to its next duty. Repeat when you want to go back home. Much less massive waste of space involved in all those parking lots. Much less opportunity cost waste. Less total cars in existence for the same amount of travelers.

It's like a public transit pass, but the bus stops are exactly where you want them, and the bus passes exactly when you need it, and you don't have to deal with that insane, smelly old guy who dances in the middle of the bus and then shakes peoples' shoulders so they give him pocket change.

No argument...I have no doubt that an automated driver will perform better than the average driver, statistically...and even more so if automated driving becomes the norm (reducing the irregular situations encountered on the road). However, I think it'll be a very, very long time until humans aren't fixated on the the instances in which a robot/algorithm messed up, while subconsciously ignoring/accepting the many human-caused accidents. In fact, one of the strengths of automated processes will be something that leads to increased scrutiny...the fact that it's easier to audit/reproduce automated behavior...any time something goes awry, we have the ability to pick it apart in minute detail, including all prior documentation.

This is not the same for human-caused incidents...though we do fixate on pieces of incidental data that might exist: is there a record showing that the driver sent a text right before they crashed? Are there credit car receipts for a bar? Or, in a more extreme case, the medical history of the Germanwings pilot who is believed to have downed his plane.

Insurance companies will love insuring these cars because they will be involved in far fewer accidents, and will have a complete log of exactly what happened so it will be easy to assign blame.

Not just that, but human drivers have a lot of "hidden variables" affecting their accident risk -- level of experience, state of mind, aggressiveness, familiarity with local roads, and so on. Insurance companies have to try to account for all of that when calculating premiums, based on a limited number of data points.

With autonomous vehicles, two cars of the same model running the same software should be more or less interchangeable. So even leaving aside the number of accidents that occur, the level of uncertainty should be a lot lower.

A competing viewpoint:

Insurance companies will hate insuring these cars because the first human fatality is absolutely going to court, and it'll be a complete circus. The media will go apeshit.

I know the insurance question keeps coming up, but I'm not sure I understand it. The way I see it, these cars won't be released into the wild until and if they can perform on par or better than human drivers...which will require that they be able to follow the rules of the road as well as or better than human drivers. That being the case, I don't see why the insurance would be any more of a factor for the autonomous cars than for current drivers. If they fail to follow the rules of the road and cause an accident (or negligently contribute to one), they'll be on the hook and insurance will have to cover it. If not, there's no insurance liability to consider. Am I missing something that the liability would somehow be greater in an autonomous vehicle in the case of the same accident that would otherwise be caused by a human?

I think the real question is WHO should be liable. If the car is in an accident that is for some reason deemed that car's fault. Is the passenger / owner at fault, or is the manufacturer? Will you buy a vehicle and Google be liable for the damages?

> That said, when they sell one of these things to a person, how the heck are they going to handle the insurance?

There will be a large fluctuation prices as data becomes available but its like insuring any other system ultimately. They calculate the odds, add in their needs, and come up with a figure.

I doubt it'd be significantly different than today since all of these can be switched to manual mode.

If I've correctly identified the intersection, it's a T, View street merges into El Camino Real:

http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=18/37.38487/-122.08136

Without more information about the collision, I think it's hard to say what would have happened if the system had not applied the brakes.

Even if they do cause rare accidents they ll be successful. I think in the end humans will adjust to drive more rationally when they learn how to spot autonomous cars.

Tbh, i think it will result in more frustration by drivers at large. Eg, think of on the freeway, note the people who drive the actual speed limit. They're driving perfectly, yet people constantly pass them.

It's worse on county roads (like in my local area, 50mph) without passing lanes. If you drive the speed limit you can almost guarantee to be passed by many cars, sometimes even dangerously, because it annoys people to go below the speed limit they perceive as correct.

I like to go around the speed limit (admittedly, simply to avoid tickets), usually ~3mph over, but it will annoy me to no end if i have to drive 5mph slower because of someone in front of me. On these popular county roads i speak of, i usually go faster than i want (5-10mph over), because i don't like being dangerously and needlessly passed.

Now, i'm not saying the self-driving cars are wrong in any way. I'm also aware that the roads i speak of will be among the last to get self driving cars. Nevertheless, i think humans will have to learn to drive far less aggressively. Though, when self-driving outnumber the normal drivers, it may not matter.

one day manual driving on public roads will be outlawed, as is smoking in public spaces :)

I wouldn't go so far as that. I liken it more to air travel. You'll be permitted to drive a car, but you'll require far more instruction, the environment will be much more closely monitored, and it'll be much easier to remove someone's privileges for safety infractions.

Google's driverless cars designed to exceed speed limit [http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-28851996]

I think by far the biggest danger with self-driving cars won't be how "accurate" they are at driving - I'm sure they'll be much better at that - but hacking. We'll enter an age you could view someone's location in real-time (GPS) and then be able to kill them with potentially relatively low ties back to yourself.

Granted, Google's security is about as good as it gets for most stuff, but what about companies like Audi, BMW [1], Daimler, Ford...Toyota [2]? Many people will still buy cars from them well into the future.

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8984129

[2] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9643204

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