Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
The only way your logic works is if no human is allowed to control any vehicle on any road meaning total dependence on the technology. Only problem with that is how do you get there without risking lives while you gather and implement all of the possible scenarios to be accounted for?
I can live with human error. I do not however want to trust my life to an electronic gizmo that was built and programmed by an imperfect human and can and will fail and most probably at the worst possible time. Instead of adding all of this equipment looking outward how about turning or adding some of that equipment around to analyze the driver and make the vehicle respond accordingly. Then we get the best of both. The INFINITE flexibility and versatility of human intuition and reaction as well as technology to deal with external influences, which is already being implemented in our new vehicles today.
Sorry but I do not wish to live in the anti-humanist world you describe. I do agree however that the all-mighty dollar will win out in the end as it always does. We already know the upside for businesses that rely on vehicles. The wildcard will be how the liability expense plays out as you noted.
Perhaps but your children will live in that world. Many of my generation dreamed that they would be among many astronauts only to find, no robots would do everything and more for humanity in space. On the other end of the spectrum people like Ray Charles, Louis Armstrong and Benny Goodman learned music as a trade only to find most jobs for their children lost to two turntables and a microphone to quote a recording 35 years ago. The Teamsters children will be doing something besides driving a land vehicle unless a partial zombie apocalypse hits.
What happens when someone owns a self-driving car for a good number of years and one day the LIDAR stops working? Oops, the car ran over someone, it's not my fault!
Or are the auto companies going to make replacing certain equipment mandatory every few years to ensure limited deaths?
You make a very good point. A system like this should not "break" when a single element fails. There are multiple copies of individual elements that cooperate... redundancy.
The trick is how to make someone take it in for service when the car still works but one of the elements has failed. It's kind of like having one headlight out. Yes, you can still drive the car, but if that second headlight were to fail at a critical time the driver could be in real trouble.
You make a very good point. A system like this should not "break" when a single element fails. There are multiple copies of individual elements that cooperate... redundancy.
The trick is how to make someone take it in for service when the car still works but one of the elements has failed. It's kind of like having one headlight out. Yes, you can still drive the car, but if that second headlight were to fail at a critical time the driver could be in real trouble.
You do not give the rider an option. The vehicle will simply refuse to move without a safe set of components.
It may not need all to be safe but it is reasonably simple to refuse if you don't have a viable set.
If it behaves like most electro-mechanical gadgets it will likely fail at startup most of the time. And for these components the self diagnostics will be pretty good. So the repair guy comes to you with the needed part.
The big issue here is not the liability for the fatality. It is why the system missed the most obvious of targets. This is a catastrophic failure of such magnitude to cause big questions about the entire UBER program.
Yes, that's the point that some people are not grasping. This is such a fundamental failure. It's tantamount to leaving the mechanic's shop after a service and then having an accident because he forgot to refill the brake fluid. There's no learning to be had from such an incident. He's just a crappy mechanic and his shop should be closed.
You do not give the rider an option. The vehicle will simply refuse to move without a safe set of components.
That's a question that will eventually come up. Is the car simply stopped at the next ignition off? Or do you give the owner some small window of time or mileage before the car is disabled?
Highly unlikely. It is not difficult to create software systems that cannot be externally accessed. There are in fact billions of microprocessors in the world that are not externally modifiable. This is a designers choice sort of thing. There is a wide set of trade offs between security and ease of maintenance. Eventually when we get into the systems providing traffic and incident support we could end up where these systems are messed with and monumental traffic jams occur...but the basic vehicle safety software can still be protected.
The big issue here is not the liability for the fatality. It is why the system missed the most obvious of targets. This is a catastrophic failure of such magnitude to cause big questions about the entire UBER program.
It is possible that a hostile power or individual could penetrate any system that is not carefully protected. This has been shown by the number of successful access to major data bases that should have been well secured. But it is also possible to make portions of individual systems so secure that penetration without physical access is impossible.
I would hold that UBER should be shut down until such times as the failure of their system is understood and corrected. I would also suggest that a deep audit of the system should occur as they have already demonstrated and ability to launch a dangerous system.
It's 1/2 baked tech being thrust into public roads in an attempt to catch other bigger more mature players like WAYMO that's typical of Uber's strategy as always. They don't care if there are laws such as taxi driver requirements in many cities. Just pay off the government then get their service into public consumption and let people become their tools of demanding government to act to fit their needs. Uber most likely paid off a lot of government workers including the cops to tailor a response to this. This was clearly their fault putting out failed tech and you can tell the police there is on their payroll.
It doesn't matter if the video shows the woman stepped into the road in 0.5 secs, the LIDAR system can detect objects way ahead of headlight and video. What good is autonomous driving if it is blind as a bat yet bats don't hit into trees because it has it's own LIDAR.
Uber clearly did not have the maturity in their system, WAYMO is way ahead of them in that regard. Now because of this corrupt company's failed strategy this caused all autonomous tech to be shelved until further notice.
You do not give the rider an option. The vehicle will simply refuse to move without a safe set of components.
It may not need all to be safe but it is reasonably simple to refuse if you don't have a viable set.
If it behaves like most electro-mechanical gadgets it will likely fail at startup most of the time. And for these components the self diagnostics will be pretty good. So the repair guy comes to you with the needed part.
That's the way lawn mowers work. Riding lawnmowers have some sort of switch activated by an occupied seat and push mowers have a hand device of one sort or another. We override these devices at our own risk. Something goes wrong and it's on us.
A completely FALSE equivalent given how many non robocars are on the road and miles driven per year vs how many robocars are.
What equivalence is false? I think you are inferring something I didn't say. I merely said that right now there is more outrage over one driverless car pedestrian fatality than over 4000 human caused fatalities. I am making an observation about the present.
You got it flipped ultimately the liability of depending upon an unreliable biological unit as the robots improve will force the people off of the roads. Just as other industries have run out of time so will the driver industry.
The robot won't get drunk. It won't text or decide today is the day to join the Jihad. Once we find out why the sensor and decision making package on this particular robot failed then the patch will be added to the entire fleet much more rapidly and certainly than forcing a day in driver school jail for a human traffic violation. And waiting for those small individual penalties to increase the overall safety record.
Cities will just have to find some other source of keeping their taxes lower.
The robot just killed this woman. Human beings should not be guinea pigs for robots.
Good article in today's The Arizona Republic about what might have gone wrong (programming failure?), other experiences that Uber has had along Mill Avenue in Tempe especially with pedestrians jaywalking, and how the victim's family will probably receive a settlement, but not a huge payout:
An interesting comment on the article's page, where someone mentions that the video released from Uber, might not be exactly how light/dark it really was. They mention that Mill Ave is actually well lit in that area at night, and you can see for hundreds of feet ahead of you even at night. The pedestrian would have been visible to the human eye even before she stepped into the road from the very far left.
Quote:
In one instance, the driver braked and turned the wheel because he was concerned the autonomous Volvo would not avoid a car in front of it as the Volvo changed lanes to turn onto Rio Salado Parkway.
This is why their safety record is meaningless. All day long these drivers are taking over control and averting disaster, when the cars mess up. If this Uber driver had done his/her job, taken control and stopped the car before it hit the woman, we would never even have heard about this defective vehicle. It would have just been logged into Ubers data as another driver intervention.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
