Self-Driving Vehicles/Autonomous Vehicle Technology

[diminutive]

There comes an overwhelming moral scenario such as when a school bus (50 students) suddenly enters the path of a self-driving semi truck (1 truck driver sleeping in cabin). At some point, it becomes overwhelmingly more favourable to attempt to avoid the school bus, and crash into a rock median or rural forest that obviously has no humans in them.

These are unknowable things; how would the car know there are 50 children on the bus? The bus could well be empty. And yet, swerving a transport truck at high speed to avoid this empty bus could just as easily pose a serious hazard to other road traffic.

Again, decelerating to 50km/h from 100km/h is the best that can be hoped for in these situations.

Imagine a scenario where we discover a self-driving truck killed 15 children because it made a flawed moral decision, and we start to legally wrangle over it -- delaying the permission of full Level 4 freedom on all roads Canada-wide...

There's a reason the law specifically doesn't engage in this kind of speculative moral reasoning. People are judged by whether their actions are reasonable for the circumstances, not moral. It's impossible for drivers (manned or not) to instantly weigh the moral calculus of these situations. In theory there may be cases where the utilitarian response would be to execute some kind of evasive maneuver, but in practice safety will better served by maintaining safe travel distances, being alert and braking at the first sign of trouble.

The amount of situations in which immediate and aggressive breaking won't substantially reduce the likelihood of death/serious injury is probably close to 0. We can all craft thought experiments to prove our arguments ('there's a ticking time bomb...').

 

[Johnny Au]

What an interesting debate over self-driving vehicles.

I would be dead long before self-driving motor vehicles can have complete autonomy and be completely automated.

There should be safeguards to prevent curious children and/or alcoholics from sabotaging the automation systems.

Completely automated public transit systems (not just rail vehicles) would appear much sooner.

 

[rbt]

Your example is the easy one for the computer. But I read a better example in an article a month or so ago. Say a car is on a mountain road and all of a sudden a person is blocking the road. There are 2 options (and only 2). One is to hit the breaks but still hit the pedestrian and there is a 100% chance they will be killed. The other option is to steer off the cliff and kill the people in the vehicle. What would the computer be programmed to do?

The most correct answer for this issue is for the car to ensure it's stopping distance is always within sensor range including some margin to the left/right of where the car will be going.

What you're left with is a scenario where a person lands on the roadway from above (jump from cliff with parachute?) immediately infront of the car and the only answer is to stop as rapidly as possible and perhaps automatically alert emergency services there has been an incident (I hate the word accident; there are extremely few accidents).

In reality, the behaviour that will be learned* will be around a deer or moose running out into the road perpendicular to traffic at a full run with poorly visible margins.

* There is less programming of specifics than you might think; it's mostly training by example. A tremendous amount of programming time goes into making learning systems but ultimately the programmer is not making decisions on how the car should drive itself (except for a limit or tweak here and there). This is very different from Automatic Train Control where the details are very specifically coded into the system. Cars deal with too many scenarios.

 

[crs1026]

Part of the solution may be a paradigm shift legally and morally about people occupying road space. Right now the Highway traffic act gives pedestrians right of way over cars in many situations. Perhaps in the future jaywalking will be thought of more like walking onto a runway in front of an aircraft that is landing or taking off..... the person pushing that baby carriage will have to prove due diligence or be charged with criminal negligence if baby rolls in front of a vehicle.
Not many kids realise that it is already illegal to play road hockey on the street in Toronto!

- Paul

 

[crs1026]

In reality, the behaviour that will be learned* will be around a deer or moose running out into the road perpendicular to traffic at a full run with poorly visible margins.

I have wondered how long it will be before car makers offer a deer and moose alarm. The infrared signature of large animals must be fairly easy to recognise. Having hit a deer, I'm pretty skittish when driving at night....they are almost impossible to spot by eye in low light. By the time self driving cars are ready, I would expect that this is a fairly easy scenario to avoid.

- Paul

 

[BMO]

What an interesting debate over self-driving vehicles.

I would be dead long before self-driving motor vehicles can have complete autonomy and be completely automated.

There should be safeguards to prevent curious children and/or alcoholics from sabotaging the automation systems.

Completely automated public transit systems (not just rail vehicles) would appear much sooner.

Yea but you see...I don't need to go through a union to decide if I want to personally adopt an automated vehicle whereas it's much more difficult to say all buses and trains will be automated on a transit system. Case in point: Scarborough RT

 

[muller877]

I have wondered how long it will be before car makers offer a deer and moose alarm. The infrared signature of large animals must be fairly easy to recognise. Having hit a deer, I'm pretty skittish when driving at night....they are almost impossible to spot by eye in low light. By the time self driving cars are ready, I would expect that this is a fairly easy scenario to avoid.

- Paul

DONE!
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...cedes-e-class-rival-complete-with-moose-alarm

 

[BMO]

DONE!
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...cedes-e-class-rival-complete-with-moose-alarm

Wow perfect timing for the discussion

 

[Mercator]

I have wondered how long it will be before car makers offer a deer and moose alarm. The infrared signature of large animals must be fairly easy to recognise. Having hit a deer, I'm pretty skittish when driving at night....they are almost impossible to spot by eye in low light. By the time self driving cars are ready, I would expect that this is a fairly easy scenario to avoid.

- Paul

There was a Lincoln back years ago that essentially had this. Im not sure whether it was infrared or some type of night vision, but it indicated on a HUD if you were about to make venison. Also, adding deer whistles and what not to your vehicle has been around for along time. Although, i've always questioned the whistles effectiveness.

 

[Mercator]

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2...must-have-driver-behind-wheel-california.html

Here is what is in the news today about California working on implementing some draft regulations.

"Google believes the safest path is to take people out of the equation by having control limited to stop and go buttons, with the leader of Google’s project saying that humans are “the bug” in the driving task."

While I think we will see more of Tesla's autopilot type of technology in Canada in the future, I think that Google's approach on this is the best option for an efficient mass adoption of self-driving vehicles. Perhaps a pilot project with one city using slower moving vehicles (like the current Google prototype) for inner city transportation for a period of time, until the public trusts the vehicles would be a good first step.

Certainly vehicle 2 vehicle communication along with various smart infrastructure developments will eliminate most of the 'moral dilemma' and weather type arguments discussed above. i know that RIM and other tech companies have been filing various patents in recent years regarding smart roads, v2v communication etc.

Also, the smart money seems to be coalescing behind slow NTHSA Level 4 self driving vehicles as fleet vehicles. I know that Uber and several other companies are putting mountains of cash towards developing this technology.

Ultimately, I think vehicle ownership in 20 or so years will be out of reach for most of the middle class. Instead, we will pay a monthly fee to be a member of an ~uber fleet, while those that can will shell out the $500k to buy a vehicle and pay the road tolls to drive their vehicles downtown.

 

[jcam]

If California is seen as stifling it by requiring a driver, perhaps Ontario can get out and lead a little on this one....maybe being a little more progressive on the regulations will be appealing to the automakers who are all already set up shop here.

 

[rbt]

If California is seen as stifling it by requiring a driver, perhaps Ontario can get out and lead a little on this one....maybe being a little more progressive on the regulations will be appealing to the automakers who are all already set up shop here.

The driver isn't much of an issue. You want someone there for secondary environment data collection anyway; to watch for things the cars sensors aren't seeing.

Some restrictions include requiring clear weather, no highway use (huge; you can't train them for highway things like merging/passing, getting to exit ramps safely), 25mph speed limit (even on streets with a 35mph speed limit), day-time only use (drunken late-night party section of town has situations the car needs to learn to deal with), car labelling (do other drivers treat it differently/more cautiously due to the labels?), etc.

 

[Johnny Au]

Oh, and self-driving cars should be banned during the winter. It would be hard to navigate snowy streets, even under clear, sunny weather during broad daylight.

 

[Duck]

I just wanted to say I've really enjoyed reading this thread. Excellent points brought up and discussed (civilly!) on all sides. I have one concern, though:

Expecting cars to perform some moral-kamikaze is more likely just to cause automated versions of that accident were a woman caused a pileup trying to avoid hitting some ducks.

...I certainly hope with the amount of camera technology these cars will have, they will have a duck-avoidance mode. Like shut down the entire highway. Or program them to chirp the horn and do some kind of maneuver that herds them off the road.

 

[crs1026]

I'm sure they could have some sort of reusable external air bag that would deploy to flip the little guys safely back onto the shoulder of the road.

Although, in some parts of this continent, a roadkill counter next to the odometer would be a bigger selling feature....

- Paul