Autonomous vehicles

  • Mark07's Avatar
    Community Manager
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    As a general rule, I love to see innovation. The creativity of identifying solutions to challenges which impact us on a daily basis is great.

    And every year, millions of people climb aboard an aeroplane and fly across the world mostly on autopilot - the safest form of transport - so, why do I sense a greater nervousness around autonomous cars?

    Our friends over in the US may see Cybercab's on their roads as early as 2025. Are you ready to hand over the wheel to the computer?

    Thanks,
    Mark.
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  • 9 Replies

  • Drivingforfun's Avatar
    I don't think autonomous cars are comparable to autopilot at all for lots of reasons. Planes have 2 (sometimes 3) human experts ready to take over, there are far less planes etc. Maybe most crucially with planes the autopilot system is more or less "money no object" whereas on a car it needs to be affordable (i.e. not £250,000 on a family hatchback!).

    When it's handed to the accountants they will basically have to work out how many crashes are acceptable when balancing this with costs

    Having said that, I'm interested in the psychology... Human drivers cause a certain amount of fatalities every year but it's been suggested that even if a computer could cut that by 25% and it was an overall improvement, people don't like the idea of their fate not being in their own hands!
  • Mark07's Avatar
    Community Manager
    [...] Having said that, I'm interested in the psychology... Human drivers cause a certain amount of fatalities every year but it's been suggested that even if a computer could cut that by 25% and it was an overall improvement, people don't like the idea of their fate not being in their own hands!

    I agree, I suspect that any hesitation is our instinctive/cave man brain resisting a loss of control.

    In the early days of driving, flags were required to be waived in front of cars to warn others of the potential danger. These safety precautions may seem silly to us now, are we're just repeating the cycle?

    I know that an autonomous network of cars will be safer than human controlled cars, but I also know that software bugs are common (expected) in most electrical devices... but most devices don't travel at high speed with me inside it.
  • Rolebama's Avatar
    If we could build a computer, which could build a better more reliable one, and that one could build a better one ad infinitum until we reached the epitome of perfectly reliable, and perfectly safe for everyone,* autonomous cars, I still would not trust them. There would always be that last, watered-down, vestige of human error lurking in there somewhere.
    *According to manufacturers and associated bean-counters.
  • olduser's Avatar
    An autopilot just keeps an aeroplane flying on course at a set altitude, and speed, it does not look out for collisions, in turbulent conditions the pilot usually takes over
    If one aircraft is within 1000 ft (altitude) of another this is treated as highly dangerous.
    If one aircraft can see another this too is considered as highly dangerous
    In crowded spaces aircraft are under the direction of the local air traffic control.

    The most uncontrolled time is take-off and landing, autopilots could do these but pilots normally do because pilots can deal with grey areas (maybes) while automated systems can only deal with black or white (yes or no).

    But above all, the passengers don't know when the pilot is in control or the automatic system.

    As a control problem, having all cars automated would be relatively easy, if all the vehicles are to follow the rules but if this were the case journey times would increase more than I think users would tolerate.

    We may not think of it in this way but all of us gamble to a greater or lessor degree to make progress, without this city traffic would grind to a halt.

    Take turning out of a junction from a minor road into a busy major road, do we wait until the road is clear or do we we try and predict where the main road traffic is going to be while we make an entry?

    Or a cross road with four cars one in each road, waiting to move, some will be indicating, some not, some correctly positioned on the road some not.
    The road signs and road markings should help but in heavy traffic we often pass the signs without noticing because we were busy watching the traffic.
    Road markings should help but do the other drivers know the difference between stop and give way?

    What about the vehicle positioned to turn right but signalling left or vice versa or no signal, are they going straight ahead or just forgot their indicator?
    Is the indicator from the last turn they made?
    We are aware of vehicles waiting behind us so we make a judgment, a calculated guess, or we gamble.

    Why?
    Very few if any will be thinking, I am in the right, I will move and if you hit me it will be your fault.
    Most, will draw on past experience, I did this last time and it worked so...

    Wrong decisions are likely where software is involved, from badly written, bugs or simply unforeseen circumstances.
    This risk can be reduced to almost zero by having three control systems, each independent (different, hardware, and software) and only acting on the majority verdict.

    I think we are likely to go ahead with automated cars simply because it's sexy but in that case we ought to decide how many dead and injured can we accept.
    Note, we never made that decision when cars were introduced.
    Last edited by olduser; 30-10-24 at 13:21.
  • Mark07's Avatar
    Community Manager
    Lots of good points @olduser.

    Before we get to 100% autonomous vehicles, we would have a blend of human and machine decisions. Humans making decisions on predictive grey area's and machines making 'decisions' on known outcomes.
  • olduser's Avatar
    The closest I can think of, is when new drivers under instruction are mixed in with normal traffic.
    They are following the rules to the letter, and the rest are fuming!

    Then there are the manufacturers who say after a crash involving a self drive car, "it's the drivers fault they are meant to supervise and intervene if the automation is getting it wrong".
    Humans are hopeless in that situation, sitting doing nothing mile after mile but being ready to intervene should it make the wrong choice, that is much more difficult than driving!
  • Rolebama's Avatar
    Slightly off-topic, but following olduser's comment above:
    I was driving along the M40 some years ago at around 3am. It was raining heavily and I was the only vehicle. Eventually I saw another car behind me, catching up quite quickly. This was around J3. He followed me to J1 where we both came off, and he pulled up alongside me at the traffic lights, opened his passenger window, and started to berate me for driving so slowly. I had been doing 50mph, and he had two empty lanes to overtake, yet I had 'got in his way'.
  • olduser's Avatar
    Slightly off-topic, but following olduser's comment above:
    I was driving along the M40 some years ago at around 3am. It was raining heavily and I was the only vehicle. Eventually I saw another car behind me, catching up quite quickly. This was around J3. He followed me to J1 where we both came off, and he pulled up alongside me at the traffic lights, opened his passenger window, and started to berate me for driving so slowly. I had been doing 50mph, and he had two empty lanes to overtake, yet I had 'got in his way'.

    What's that saying?
    There's nout as queer as folk!
    And once they are in a car multiply by 10.
  • Rolebama's Avatar
    @olduser I have written this response so many times, but I can't find the right words to pin down exactly what I am trying to say without it turning into a full-blown novel. My main intent was that there are those who 'own the road', and everyone else should just get out of their way when they act like pillocks. I don't see them and autonomous cars being a good mix.