Will we see a real self driving car in our life time?

nsaspook

Joined Aug 27, 2009
13,079
As you say the liable for accidents will be fairly easy to establish for self-driving cars. I think the point of the article is that in a mixed environment of human and computer driven cars absolutely programmed to the drivers ed rule book a self driving car might create a class of perfect drivers that still will cause accidents (in human driven cars) unless humans modify their driving behavior.


 

Glenn Holland

Joined Dec 26, 2014
703
Gee, I never thought of that.

Self driving cars will have the advantage that you can slap your unruly kids without being distracted from the road. :p
 

nsaspook

Joined Aug 27, 2009
13,079
https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/c...64eaa1ff/AVRegulationsSummary.pdf?MOD=AJPERES
2. Licensed Driver Required in the Vehicle Autonomous vehicle operators must be a licensed driver who possesses an autonomous vehicle operator certificate issued by the DMV. The operator will be responsible for monitoring the safe operation of the vehicle at all times, and must be capable of taking over immediate control in the event of an autonomous technology failure or other emergency. In addition, operators will be responsible for all traffic violations that occur while operating the autonomous vehicle. These operator requirements create the safeguard of a driver who is capable of taking control of the vehicle when needed.
So no drinking while not driving.
 

wayneh

Joined Sep 9, 2010
17,496
it will have disadvantages because driver will lose his job.
You've identified the single greatest advantage.

It will be disruptive to have a machine eliminate the largest source of employment in the country – drivers – but all those man-hours can be put to better use.
 

SuperWiener

Joined Sep 21, 2016
3
I skimmed through all of the posts and I don't think anyone has covered this point yet.
When an accident is unavoidable, what should the car do? This puts us in the realm of ethics. This problem is not really relatable to us humans since we don't have enough time to process everything when we know we are going to have an accident. I have never had an accident, but I've had a few near miss incidents. I feel I didn't have the time to fully assess the situation and decide the best outcome in any of those. However, assuming the car has enough processing power and time to fully assess the situation what should it do? To tell you the truth, I don't think there is a correct answer. The site http://moralmachine.mit.edu/ provides a really interesting test that puts you in very difficult situations to evaluate.

By taking the test I realize I tend to prioritize:
1. The law;
2. The safety of the vehicle (no matter how many people are inside).
Everything else can wait.

Of course this is just my opinion and since I'm not qualified enough to play god (yet), I can see a lot of arguments going both ways. Which opinion is right though? Should we kill more people? Less people? How about the driver? Is he worth more than pedestrians? That guy that used to bully you in second grade, is he worth less? If so by how much?

And of course this is only assuming the car has enough processing power and time to fully address the situation. What if it doesn't? Wow that's even worse! I thought this was an OK decision at the time but instead I killed 10 innocent people when I'm pretty sure I could have avoided the accident all together.

Long story short, I think the biggest issue is not technical, it's teaching ethics that we feel comfortable with (whatever that is) to cars. I don't think we will ever truly feel comfortable with a solution.

I know this answer is loaded enough, but here's my last thought: let's assume we magically manage to find the perfect ethics formula. How about car hacking? It will be the pimp my ride of the future! Imagine I want to make my car be a jerk to every other car and able to cut off other drivers, in order to get to my destination faster. Speeding is no issue unless you detect a speed control zone. Oh yeah and red lights? Pff forget about those if the police isn't around!

My 2 cents...
 

BelleFixer

Joined Jul 21, 2016
26
I have this mental image of frantically pressing Ctrl+Alt+Delete in an emergency ;).
There will no doubt be occasions, too, when your car grinds to a halt and refuses to budge while it updates its software :(.
LOL. imagine you are in a hurry and the car refuses to budge because it still updating the software (which takes forever), i would really be pissed.
 
A self driving car could be neat, if you could give it a personality. I would love my uncle's driving, but not my aunt's.
I think I would pick Bo Duke from the Dukes of Hazzard. I'm sure it would be a bit scary, but at least I'd get to my destination pretty fast.

 
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