[Closed] Self-Driving Cars

Self-shuttling? Yes please! 😉

How are they bike related?

safer innit.

safer innit.

exactly. 'not safe' being the #1 reason given by non-cyclists for being non-cyclists.

Interesting take on driverless cars from John Adams of "risk compensation" fame.

Basically saying that as these cars would need to be failsafe when interacting with cyclists and pedestrians they would be more or less halted in congested urban areas once other road users learned they no longer had to defer to cars.

http://www.john-adams.co.uk/2015/07/25/the-driverless-car-revolution-amazon-review/

that sounds disastrous....
the tech'll keep getting better.
once these things really get themselves sorted out I can see them talking to each other and forming little trains going to common destinations so you don't end up with loads of individual units all the time. safer, more efficient.

I think it's the ethical discussion that's going to delay the arrival of autonomous cars.

Consider the following situation; you are riding along in your autonomous vehicle on a busy road with pedestrians on both pavements. There's a truck coming in the opposite direction travelling at the speed limit.

Just as the truck begins to pass you a child runs out in front of your vehicle.

The 'car' has three options; swerve left and kill you (the occupant) in a collision with the truck or swerve right and kill a pedestrian on the other pavement or 'it' can carry straight on and kill the child.

Scenario's like this are giving car manufacturers and their legal teams sleepless nights - I hope 😯

Scenario's like this are giving car manufacturers and their legal teams sleepless nights - I hope

Or are you Will Smith in iRobot?

The 'car' has three options; swerve left and kill you (the occupant) in a collision with the truck or swerve right and kill a pedestrian on the other pavement or 'it' can carry straight on and kill the child.

Scenario's like this are giving car manufacturers and their legal teams sleepless nights - I hope

You'd hope it was, but if we're talking about Google here, there would presumably be some quickfire cost-benefit analysis based on the web browsing history of the car passengers vs the child?

Also, I would hope that the driverless car's collision avoidance algorithm is based around appropriate speed to avoid hazards and bringing the car to a stop in a straight line, rather than "swerve wildly while crossing your digits".

I can't wait for driverless cars. Imagine being in a queue at a traffic light and when it turns green, all the cars move off at the same time, instead of the dopey caterpillar we get now. Bliss.

They'll be brilliant when the rules are standardised and we all know where we are but can you imagine the consequences of lots of differing software being used by different manufacturers not to mention the interaction with random cyclists,pedestrians and human drivers?

There's a lot of work to be done before they can realistically be let loose on the road.

There's a lot of work to be done before they can realistically be let loose on the road.

instead of the dopey caterpillar we get now. Bliss.

Just as the truck begins to pass you a child runs out in front of your vehicle.

In the scenario above ^^^ , what does the human driver do that's so much better than whatever option the autonomous car chooses?

Any mitigating factors, such as reducing speed in advance, having recognised the potential, could be done more reliably by the autonomous car, Shirley?

torsoinalake - Member

We let humans with different standards and conflicting wetware loose on the roads every day.

with, quite frankly, catastrophic results.

Indeed, whenever the ethical "ZOMG who would the machine choose to kill?" questions come up, normally with extremely convoluted and artificially constructed scenarios, the default response should be "what would the human do?"

Trying to work out if you could improve on that is the next step, whether that be by mitigating the risk in advance, or by an alternative course of action is all part of the fun, but you're rarely end up with a situation where the machine would then choose a worse course of action, and if you do it's because you've programmed it to arrive at that conclusion, which takes you right back to "what would the human do?"

In the example above the machine has the exact same options as the human, but with the added benefit of better sensory awareness, quicker reactions, and also possibly being able to calculate an alternative course of action, and at the very worst it will have better physical control and response when breaking and manoeuvring.

I'm not saying it can't go wrong, but chances are it will go wrong less than the human would.

I also don't think the tech is quite there yet, but it is improving very rapidly indeed!

You also need to think big picture on this, for every single unavoidable accidental death that would still occur with automated vehicles, you'd have avoided hundreds, if not thousands of minor bumps, fender-benders, whiplash injuries, minor collisions, and some major collisions that would have happened on a daily basis without automation. Seems like a worthy pursuit to me.

[url= http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/26/mcity-michigan-driverless-cars-ghost-town ]M Town[/url]

So a driverless car is travelling along a mountain pass, there's a coach approaching too far over the white lines to avoid a collision without taking you and the passenger over the edge of the cliff. The collision will potentially end in a greater number of fatalities, how should it react?

how would a human react?

that's the starting point at least.

but you're missing key elements to this scenario, is it sufficiently far enough down the road (excuse the pun) that the coach is also driverless?

Are the two vehicles in communication and able to warn each other and stop both vehicles?

is there traffic behind the car? could it stop? could it reverse? how far away is the coach? how long has it been in visual/sensory range? could other steps have been taken earlier to mitigate this?

Normal concocted scenario problem of not enough information. And if you start being tighter with your definition to try and build a particular scenario you're now into the realms of describing a scenario that is specifically trying to be fatal, which means you're now designing a scenario to beat a system, not a system to deal with scenarios, and you will wind up with whatever answer you want as you're building it.

You end up back at "what would the human do?" and then "can you do better" if you've artificially fixed the parameters so that you can't then you're at worst left with "do as the human would" and at best, opening up thoughts about developments and potential improvements you could make.

Indeed, whenever the ethical "ZOMG who would the machine choose to kill?" questions come up, normally with extremely convoluted and artificially constructed scenarios, the default response should be "what would the human do?"

Not really though.

In industry it's common for numbers like 1:100,000 to be the acceptable chance of killing an individual worker on site, but the chances of killing someone off-site have to be 1:1,000,000 (i.e. 10x less). So you as a driver in the car have made your decision to be there and accept that risk, so the hypothetical situation where the choice is kill the driver or kill the pedestrian, the car would have to kill the driver unless it judged the chance of the pedestrian surviving to be 10x higher (which is unlikley given airbags etc).

So I'd expect them to always default to stuffing it in the hedge or infront of the HGV (killing the driver and injuring no one else).

For balance, that 1:100,000 isn't random, it's judged to be 10x safer than driving which is assumed to be the most dangerous day to day activity a normal person will do, hence stories like your 10x more likely to die in a car crash on the way to work than working on a oil refinery.

how should it react?

Indeed, whenever the ethical "ZOMG who would the machine choose to kill?" questions come up, normally with extremely convoluted and artificially constructed scenarios, the default response should be "what would the human do?"

Trouble is, humans tend to 'over self-preserve' at the expense of others. The classic example is overtaking a cyclist at relatively low speed, car comes the other way, the instinct is to pull left even though that is much more likely to kill the cyclist than a head-on is to kill one of the drivers.

You can argue the driverless car wouldn't have got in that pickle in the first place, of course, but there are some interesting equations about likelihood of death or serious injury to vulnerable road users vs car users where the 'better' option is accepting an injury to the car users.

@tinas and martinhutch

I get that, and those decisions and discussion will certainly be being made and had within these companies, but ultimately it's still humans programming and deciding that. The scary thought is that someone somewhere WILL have to make the decision about what to do in one of those lose-lose situations, it might be that they default to prioritise the occupant and sell that as a safety feature to owners, I hope not, but I can imagine the adverts already....

What is clear is that we're all making assumptions based on incomplete data (we have to sadly, as that's the very nature of trying to build systems like this), and concocted scenarios like the above are never complete enough.

The argument about would a driverless car have got into such a situation in the first place is not one to be treated lightly, identifying scenarios like the above is as much about developing ways of avoiding getting into them as it is about deciding what to do once they happen.

you're thinking very much with a human bias, you're assuming that it would 'stuff it into the lorry' and kill the driver, when in fact under machine control it might be able to either avoid the situation entirely in the first place, or if not, come to a more controlled stop, or steer the car more precisely than the human could. The machine might be able to make a better decision than 'stuff it into the lorry'

The obvious utopia is if all vehicles were driverless, or at least in communication with each other as a great many of these issues would disappear, the most dangerous and difficult phase will be the transition phase with both automated and manual vehicles togther.

amedias - Member

someone somewhere WILL have to make the decision about what to do in one of those lose-lose situations,

ok, here we go, the car industry can have this for free:

1) stick to the speed limit.
2) brake hard if there's an unavoidable problem.

that should see most (if not all) car/person collisions brought significantly below a survivable 20mph.

that wasn't too hard was it? but it's still WAAAAY better than humans can manage.

The driverless car would always do the safest thing and more importantly being driving at the correct speed for the condition/circumstance.

If that means slowing to an almost stop because it is not clear what is coming round a bend than that is what it would do. Unlike a human that would just carry on at 30mph and then be shocked when they crash into a coach.

You've kinda missed my point guys - in my theoretical scenario whatever the car chooses to do is based upon the way it was designed and how it's software is configured.

That means that the Vehicle Manufacturer is to blame for the outcome of the unavoidable collision. Whoever dies has died because in those circumstances the Vehicle Manufacturer decided they should die.

Vehicle Manufacturers and their Legal Teams deserve a few sleepless nights if they can figure that one out and protect themselves from the legal fall-out of that particular no-win scenario!

That means that the Vehicle Manufacturer is to blame for the outcome of the unavoidable collision

No they aren't. The child is.

It seems far too easy to get bogged down in such hypothetical situations which will occur on an extremely rare basis. It's ridiculous to let such issues delay the introduction of driverless cars given that on any reasonable cost benefit analysis even choosing the worst option in order to allow their use a day earlier would result in saving lives.

@jag

And you've kind of missed our point, that its not necessarily a no-win scenario as it's not one that driverless cars should get themselves in to.

That means that the Vehicle Manufacturer is to blame for the outcome of the unavoidable collision

The liability aspect of it is another matter entirely! How exactly do you become liable for something that is unavoidable? Would the human be to blame in the above situation if it was truly unavoidable? Not to mention that as we already said, if designed properly it would hopefully become avoidable.

The system would never make the 'choice' to kill the driver, it would make the choice to take all possible action to avoid such a situation prior to it happening, and then take all possible action to mitigate the impact if it did find itself in such a situation, any deaths wouldn't be a choice to kill, it would be a through a failure of all possible options to prevent it, and those options would be more numerous and more reliable than a human could manage. It's the exact opposite of choosing to kill, it's taking every possible step (more than a human could) to avoid a death, but failing to do so due to external influences that cannot be controlled.

+ 1 million for what aracer said.

These imagined scenarios are distractions really, they're hypothetical, incomplete, extremely rare, and overwhelmed by the massive positives on offer.

It's ridiculous to let such issues delay the introduction of driverless cars given that on any reasonable cost benefit analysis even choosing the worst option in order to allow their use a day earlier would result in saving lives.

What's even better is that we will become the most dangerous road users. 🙂

Basically saying that as these cars would need to be failsafe when interacting with cyclists and pedestrians they would be more or less halted in congested urban areas once other road users learned they no longer had to defer to cars.

Is this really an issue though?

God forbid that people moving around under their own steam are given priority over people sat on comfy seats in air-conditioned boxes that they don't even have to control.

There's a lot of work to be done before they can realistically be let loose on the road.

Self-driving cars ARE loose on the road - in California. Collating data so there's empirical data to be able to judge risk. IIRC there have been very few collisions and they have usually been human error, rather than an error in the self-driving tech.
You'll also note the amount of autonomous tech available in Volvos in the UK... today.

The reason I put up the links is to show the number of live trials already underway in the UK ie. the 'work that has to be done' is already being done... autonomous tech is not a sci-fi theoretical scenario, it's here, out on the roads...

And the whole debate about hypothetical decision scenarios misses a major point, which is that as self-driving cars will be driving within the speed limit and to the conditions, and not fiddling with their mobile phones/smoking/eating/falling asleep/not looking where they're going etc, the biggest reduction will be in the base number of situations where there's a risk of a collision in the first place.

Let's assume in the UK that of all the times something could go wrong because of poor skill on behalf of the driver, that they do go wrong 1% of the time...
Let's assume there's 1,000,000 of these potential situations every day.
That means 10,000 collisions
With self-driving tech, let's assume the lack of ability to stop the risky situation going wrong is no better than a human ie: 1% of all risky situations.
But because the car is tech-operated rather than operated by a stupid, emotional, angry, distracted human, the number of risky situations barely arise in the first place. ie: the car's not speeding. Let's assume only 1,000

1,000 risky situations x 1% = 10 collisions.

I know I'm using hypothetical figures here but the debate isn't about how the autonomous tech performs in a collision-avoidance situation, it's that it avoids the collision-avoidance situation in the first place, likely to lead to a dramatic fall in collsions and the hypothetical 'how would a self-driving car cope with the situation better than a human' question is null and void

Other aspects that often gets missed or not discussed is will there be any other health/wellbeing benefits to autonomous travel.

All that commuting and travelling time will to some extent be reclaimed. I wonder whether this will lead to any net reduction in stress and tiredness levels once people are freed from the task of having to concentrate on operating a vehicle, will it lead to more social interaction between passengers, more time to read, more time to think, or (sadly) more time to work. Will it reduce instances of road rage and driving induced stress?

Will there be any improvement in pollution and air quality if vehicles are able to operate at their most efficient? (whether powered by tiny explosions or tiny lightening bolts) And will the better traffic flows reduce congestion and travel times even further?

Will it reduce wear and tear and ultimately servicing and replacement costs and will this have any noticeable environmental impact?

It should reduce insurance bills, servicing costs, and fuel costs, will the financial burden of private* car ownership decrease?

Autonomous travel is a lot more complex than it seems at first glance and the benefits could be much broader reaching than we think.

*Private ownership I think will be here to stay for a long while, although we may see more of a shift towards shared and pooled ownership and usage as time goes on. Once the 'driving' is taken out of driving it largely becomes about whether a suitable vehicle is available and personal choice gets reduced to deciding what environment you want to sit in, as speed, handling and driving experience become irrelevancies.

This is all still very urban based, and whatever happens private (and manually controlled vehicles?) will still be in use on certain sites and in many rural locations.

Interesting and exciting times ahead....

You'll also note the amount of autonomous tech available in Volvos in the UK... today.

Is that the Volvo that couldn't have an accident and promptly ploughed stright into the demostration car in front of it?

The real worry to me is these car manufacturers do the ultimate cop-out - hand the car back to the 'driver' if it can't decide what to do in these kind of scenarios. They'd probably have to put down their latte, magazine and ipad first mind...

Is that the Volvo that couldn't have an accident and promptly ploughed stright into the demostration car in front of it?

no, read the link I put up in my OP - nine separate autonomous technologies available today.

[url= http://www.volvocars.com/uk/about/our-innovations/intellisafe ]Volvo autonomous tech[/url]

Do you think they'd be in-market if they didn't work well enough?

How many news stories have you seen recently talking about the massive increase in Volvos crashing?

Yes and the possible benefits accumulate as you get more and more autonomous cars on the road.

Once they reach a criitcal mass you can network the cars together, traffic flow then greatly improves as all the cars know what the other cars want to do.

You could make cars about half the weight too, you don't need 10 airbags, side impact protection and huge metal crumple zones if the chance of a collision is tiny

Do you think they'd be in-market if they didn't work well enough?

Adaptive crusie control will happily keep you in a lorry's blind spot for extended periods of time - it's very easy to fall into a false sense of security and lose track of your positioning. 100% driver awareness is required at all times.

However, it's fantastic in low-visibility and can see further than I can in very heavy rain. The tech has a long way to go.

They may well be in test but that's still a long way from jumping into my autopod giving "SIRI" the destination (WORK/Boyfriend/Girlfriend/Mate/Pub/FOD/OTHER) strapping in and going.

I'm sure these things are going to revolutionize the transport landscape. We could end up with tiny personal transportation pods for short journeys and 4+ seat versions for the family, they may be pooled in communities and are very likely to be fully electric with only longer journeys being undertaken by IC engines.

For all that to happen, however, human beings will need to reset their love of cars and personal transport and the car as status symbol will have to be broken down. There is some thinking that that's already happening in cities and with the kids but who knows.

it's small steps and we're at the beginning. All I know is its an opportunity for megacorp to sell us more stuff.

late to the thread but - Jag's scenario is rubbish

automated car in a town - 28mph maximum
automated car spots pedestrians - starts to slow, now to 25ish max
kid runs out - car stops quicker than human because not distracted and not speeding... kid more likely to survive.

Automated cars are not going to mount a pavement, or drive on the wrong side of the road, those are poor choices for a human and machines don't do those things

all this stuff about automated cars really feels like FUD from the motor manufacturers lobby to dissuade us from travelling in automated cars; they are the primary business threat to a company like BMW who make 'the ultimate driving machine'

Good answer ed - was thinking of writing something similar, but couldn't come up with as good a way of putting it as that. The answer is that such cars will come as close as possible to solving the issue that large lumps of metal travelling at speed introduce danger to an environment which would otherwise be safe - even if that involves travelling slower than a human might drive (there will be huge advantages to the "driver" to make up for that, even if travelling at 25 rather than 30 for short periods made a real difference to most journey times).

I average about 20mph on my commute and that is even with some dual carriageway sections so no loss of time for me.
The difference is that it is easy for me to go into auto pilot as it is the same route day in day out and I count myself as one of the more attentive drivers (I know everyone does!)

The people who can't see the benefits in removing the driver from the car are those that that just look for negatives in everything and the best way of dealing with them is ignoring them and carrying on which is what the manufacturers will be doing. No room for luddites.

From my limited experience I'd say the technology has a long way to go before it becomes viable. My Passat has automatic cruise control where it will slow down when it detects a slower vehicle ahead. You can use it in stop-start traffic to save your throttle foot so that all you have to do is steer and push "resume" to get it moving. However it is clumsy and jerky and brakes too hard and can't anticipate when the car in front has almost stopped but is about to move off again like a human can, plus it's poor when changing lanes to pass a slower vehicle, so the uses are quite limited.

Cannot ****ing wait!!

Stagger out of the pub and "home james", bloody excellent, think of all those country pubs up and down the country that would benefit.

Taxi businesses would be gone in the long term.

I'm all for it, being the lover of country pubs and few pints 😀

Taxi businesses would be gone in the long term.

It'll just change, like everything else. Not much need for stablehands these days compared to 1760's, is there?

Taxis will be Johnnycabs. Driverless taxis. Most cars will be driverless, and most driverless cars will be rented rather than bought. Need a small town car for an hour? A 4x4 for a day? A family 7 seater for a week? You'll just rent one, no need to own. No need for us all to have these stupid tin boxes littering the place doing nothing, we'll have half as many working twice as hard. Pay as you go driverless transport. I can't wait either.

Apart from the collision avoidance aspect - which driverless cars will easily be better at than humans - for me, the greatest benefit will be improved traffic flow.
No more cutting in at the last minute, no more lane hogging (mostly because lane usage will change) no more speeding, no more distracted drivers.

The ownly downside I can see is that driverless vehicles will, out of necessity, be following Sat. In the case of lorries, this will inevitibly lead to vehicles stuck down narrow roads.

On balance, things can only improve, I believe.

So a driverless car is travelling along a mountain pass, there's a coach approaching too far over the white lines to avoid a collision without taking you and the passenger over the edge of the cliff. The collision will potentially end in a greater number of fatalities, how should it react?

But why would the coach be over the white line in the first place? It's going to be driverless as well, so it will be driving within its limits on the correct side of the road.

Bring it on. I'm hoping that once this technology is adopted, it will be so much safer that human driving will simply be priced off the road by the huge insurance cost.

We are so far behind countries like the Netherlands that I don't think we will ever have effective cycling infrastructure in UK urban areas (let alone on our miles of country roads, which can be even more dangerous for cycling). Driverless cars might just leapfrog this problem by making cycling specific infrastructure unnecessary.

Think how popular cycling might become if it is the only remaining form of road travel where humans will still have full autonomy.

Not onlybselfvdrivibg cars but self driving electric cars. Cant wait. Especially if they are all made nice and boring and are no longer seen/used as status symbols. (As if that will happen)

I don't think anyone has addressed the security aspect of autonomous cars. To function properly they will have to be online and networked and so open to hacking. Its not a question of if but when autonomous vehicles are hacked. Say someone manages to hack into all the "Fiesta self drive Zetecs" and either gets them all to apply brakes or go to 100% throttle at the same time. I'm convinced this is a major barrier to acceptance of autonomous vehicle technology and it seems incredible the likes of Google or any of the car manufacturers working on this tech haven't addressed it.

[quote=globalti ]From my limited experience [b]of old technology which is in no way comparable to what we're discussing[/b] I'd say the technology has a long way to go before it becomes viable.

fixed

[quote=belugabob ]The ownly downside I can see is that driverless vehicles will, out of necessity, be following Sat.

I suspect they might manage to improve that as well.

I like your thinking, kcr. Have pretty much given up on the idea of having decent cycling infrastructure here in my lifetime, but I don't think it's particularly Tomorrow's World optimism to think that driverless cars will not only exist well within my lifetime, but they will have pretty much taken over. I was also wondering what would be the forcer behind adoption - yep insurance will be one significant thing, but they should be a lot cheaper to run in general - as others have said the culture of usage will change.

[quote=uponthedowns ]I don't think anyone has addressed the security aspect of autonomous cars. To function properly they will have to be online and networked and so open to hacking.

I'm not sure that is necessarily true. You should maybe check the definition of "autonomous" 😉

Sure, there appear to be some advantages of networking for travelling in "trains" and stuff like that, but the whole point of the first generation is that they can interact with current traffic and for that they have to be able to make their own decisions without any outside influence.

it seems incredible the likes of Google or any of the car manufacturers working on this tech haven't addressed it.

How do you know they aren't? Also I'm not convinced that even if they are networked in some way that it needs to be via a traditional comms stack - that would certainly be a good way to introduce lots of security vulnerabilities when the data exchange requirements aren't that high and are quite specific. I'd think you should be able to isolate a lot of the comms from hackable stuff and have air gaps to anything critical. Sure it's something which needs to be considered, but I don't think it's as big an issue as you make out.

In industry it's common for numbers like 1:100,000 to be the acceptable chance of killing an individual worker on site, but the chances of killing someone off-site have to be 1:1,000,000 (i.e. 10x less). So you as a driver in the car have made your decision to be there and accept that risk, so the hypothetical situation where the choice is kill the driver or kill the pedestrian, the car would have to kill the driver unless it judged the chance of the pedestrian surviving to be 10x higher (which is unlikley given airbags etc).

So I'd expect them to always default to stuffing it in the hedge or infront of the HGV (killing the driver and injuring no one else).

Numbers don't equate to ethics, if the pedestrian stepping out in to the road made a mistake why should others die for their actions? Even if they are a child, in the natural world - idiots die for their mistakes. Can the car decide whether the occupant has more utilitarian value than the child? Noooope, unless that childs mind and future life has been uploaded to some networked cloud computer.

Imagine the Daily Mail headline "Stephen Hawking Tragically Killed After 7 year Old Illiterate Pikey Runs In Front of Smart Car". Not going to happen is it? Although the power of "someone think of the children" might prove me wrong.

I mean, who is going to get into a car that might be crashed by someone putting a silicone doll in the middle of a blind corner.....

....

No one, they'll buy the car more likely to kill other people.

[url= http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-33650491 ]1.4 million Fiat-Chryslers recalled because their systems could be hacked.[/url] And another group has demonstrated hacking through digital radios. The more the car is in charge, the more hazardous hacking becomes

Just continuing to miss the point. Why would the car have to decide between a child and others and who it should kill?
It would be driving in such a way to minimise the risks to an extent people wouldn't be killed. If it was driving where there were children, parked cars etc,. it would travel at 15mph or even 10mph so risk of actually killing anyone has pretty much gone.

Recent data I saw was some speed testing performed on a road with a school on it in the afternoon when kids would be about. Average speed of 100 drivers was something like 38mph with one driver even managing over 60mph.
The electric car would be doing 15 or 20.
Which is the safer in the above example?

And don't forget it is not just speed it is the lack of awareness or concentration, impatience etc,. that majority of drivers are showing when driving.

Yes some people will still be killed but it won't be 2,000 a year and the roads will be 100 times nicer to cycle on

A lot of these 'it will fail when scenarios' are based on the assumption that every single road and situation will allow for autonomous driving, which is still a very long way off.

The Volvo project in Gothenburg set for next year/2017 has a limited set of roads that will allow for autonomous driving, and none will have pedestrians or cyclists. Once this is proven to be successful then the application of this technology can be increased to other areas/situations.

The majority of the claims made by various car manufacturers are very far fetched regarding the scope.

[quote=Tom_W1987 ]Numbers don't equate to ethics, if the pedestrian stepping out in to the road made a mistake why should others die for their actions?

Am I missing something here? Does the ped stepping into the road have a shotgun which they accidentally set off? Or is it somebody else introducing danger to the environment?

[quote=timba ]1.4 million Fiat-Chryslers recalled because their systems could be hacked. And another group has demonstrated hacking through digital radios. The more the car is in charge, the more hazardous hacking becomes

You know what I'd do to fix that (based on experience working in IT security)? I'd put an air gap between the internet connected entertainment system and the car control systems. Autonomous cars are not going to be doing critical stuff over the internet - apart from anything else as I mentioned before that would require a constant reliable internet connection, which simply isn't possible. Of course you could hack the car to car data link, but that's a completely different proposition.

The reason those things got hacked is mainly because nobody put any thought into proper security.

The car will need a connection to the Internet to receive and transmit data, which it will of course use to make decisions. However the majority of the data needed to make the decision will be provided by on car systems.

Hacking is clearly a major risk and is something that is taken every extremely seriously. There are a number of different methods used today to create a secure connection, both to/from the car and to/from the cloud based service it communicates with.

[quote=The Swedish Chef ]The car will need a connection to the Internet to receive and transmit data, which it will of course use to make decisions.

Only for sat-nav, routing type stuff, and I'd suggest that actually an autonomous car doesn't need that at all to function properly - how else would it work when it loses the signal? One very basic security step is to separate the systems, so any internet stuff like that isn't tightly integrated with the main control system as it isn't needed for instant decisions - with a very tightly controlled secure data link between the two.

In the near term not all roads will be certified for autonomous driving so the car will need to enquire if the next segment on the planned or predicted route is valid for autonomous driving or not.

Also certain segments will be dependent on weather conditions, bridges in high wind, and other segments may be turned off due to accidents, so the car will need to periodically request an ok/nok to drive autonomously.

toby1 - Member

So a driverless car is travelling along a mountain pass, there's a coach approaching too far over the white lines to avoid a collision without taking you and the passenger over the edge of the cliff. The collision will potentially end in a greater number of fatalities, how should it react?

[img] [/img]

Am I missing something here? Does the ped stepping into the road have a shotgun which they accidentally set off? Or is it somebody else introducing danger to the environment?

Well lets assume that autonomous cars follow the rules of the road exactly and drives perfectly, for one to enter a scenario where the pedestrian may be killed - then the pedestrian will have had to have made a mistake either misjudging the distance to the oncoming car or having crossed at a blind spot.

Their fault, so they should pay the price.

[quote=Tom_W1987 ]Their fault, so they should pay the price.

Wow!

I'm equally horrified by a machine attempting to make an ill informed utilitarian judgement as to who should live and who shouldn't. So IMO, the best option is to just do what a human would do....apply the brakes or maneuver in a way that doesn't endanger the occupants.

That and it would encourage irresponsibility on the part of pedestrians if they thought that cars would do their very best, to the point of killing their occupants, to avoid a collision.

We already live in a world where the Flynn effect is going into reverse, why would we want autonomous cars potentially adding to the survival of people who make poor decisions over those who haven't, albeit probably in a highly statistically insignificant way.

Should someone who is suicidal endanger the life of an occupant of a car, who is perhaps a functioning member of society?

The idea that this will reduce cars as a status symbol is very unlikely. If anything, they're likely to end up more so.

The plebs will use taxis which will be on patrol based on previous usage patterns so that you rarely have to wait long. These cars will be like public transport ie fairly basic.

The next step up will be much the same as current cars but self driven.

The real status symbols will be like self driven luxury lounges.

Nothing will really change. People will still be judged by their car.

It's still the people in the car who've brought something dangerous into the environment (excluding situations involving peds with shotguns). Who exactly has made the bad decision?

[url= http://worldif.economist.com/article/11/what-if-autonomous-vehicles-rule-the-world-from-horseless-to-driverless ]Self-driving cars[/url]

A really interesting article summarising a lot of the work that is being done towards making this a reality, and also all the (many, many) arguments for doing it...

The safety benefits alone are massively compelling

Today 94% of car accidents are due to human error, according to America’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and the three leading causes are alcohol, speeding or distraction. Accidents kill around 1.2m people a year, reports the World Health Organisation, equivalent to a 9/11 attack every day.

Google’s driverless vehicles have driven 1.8m miles (2.9m kilometres) in the past six years, and have been involved in 12 minor accidents, none of which caused injury and none of which was the car’s fault.

A study by the Eno Centre for Transportation, a non-profit group, estimates that if 90% of cars on American roads were autonomous, the number of accidents would fall from 5.5m a year to 1.3m, and road deaths from 32,400 to 11,300.

And that's not adding in the lives saved from reducing obesity from more people cycling as it will be safer

Autonomous cars are not going to be doing critical stuff over the internet - apart from anything else as I mentioned before that would require a constant reliable internet connection, which simply isn't possible. Of course you could hack the car to car data link, but that's a completely different proposition.

I also doubt there'd need to be a continuous connection to the internet but they will need to download new map data, maybe traffic info, software updates etc. and maybe upload diagnostic data so they will be connected. The map/satnav system will have to communicate with the car controls so I would have thought the opportunity for hackers is there.

but they will need to download new map data, maybe traffic info, software updates etc. and maybe upload diagnostic data so they will be connected. The map/satnav system will have to communicate with the car controls so I would have thought the opportunity for hackers is there.

All that functionality is available today, for example in Volvo on Call, amongst others.

As I said before, the need for connectivity comes from the need, legal or otherwise, to inform the car as to when and where autonomous driving is allowed or not. Whilst not requiring a fixed connection, the ability to check each road segment requires a pretty good level of connectivity.

Consider the following situation; you are riding along in your autonomous vehicle on a busy road with pedestrians on both pavements. There's a truck coming in the opposite direction travelling at the speed limit.

Just as the truck begins to pass you a child runs out in front of your vehicle.

The 'car' has three options; swerve left and kill you (the occupant) in a collision with the truck or swerve right and kill a pedestrian on the other pavement or 'it' can carry straight on and kill the child.

Scenario's like this are giving car manufacturers and their legal teams sleepless nights - I hope

I don't think this is a particularly difficult decision for the car designers to make, because it's effectively a "non-decision" for the software in the car.

It MUST be designed to see pavements (with pedestrians on) as a no-go area under any circumstances. This is, I hope, obvious... It will also see a lane with oncoming traffic as an inadmissible zone (because if you cross the lane the consequences for many people are unpredictable).

So the only option is for the computer to brake as hard as possible and mitigate the impact with the child (pedestrian airbags, for example). From 30 mph the stopping distance is small; from 20 it's pretty much a single car length.

This technology is already here - my Volvo will maintain its position in the road, track pedestrians on the pavement and intervene if it judges a collision is unavoidable.

There is no complicated programming or ethical decision making to be made (IMHO, of course!) so I suspect autonomous driving, on motorways at least, is only a few years away.

so I suspect autonomous driving, on motorways at least, is only a few years away.

Next year hopefully! 😀

It's still the people in the car who've brought something dangerous into the environment (excluding situations involving peds with shotguns). Who exactly has made the bad decision?

If they don't crash and cause accidents unless someone else makes a gross mistake, they aren't inherently dangerous.

Train companies aren't usually sued because someone committed suicide on their train tracks, they aren't responsible for those peoples deaths.

More good news

[url= http://www.cityam.com/221505/audi-bmw-and-daimler-accelerate-driverless-car-plans-28bn-nokia-here-maps-deal ]Audi, BMW, Daimler buy mapping technology for self-driving cars[/url]

European car sales have slowed right up, so investment in self-driving cars (which could replace 100% of the installed base of human-driven cars in time) is a good way to future growth and profits

xkcd.com today.
lol

[quote=Tom_W1987 ]Train companies aren't usually sued because someone committed suicide on their train tracks, they aren't responsible for those peoples deaths.

They don't put train tracks alongside pedestrian footways. There are very few places where logical walking routes involve crossing train tracks.

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