[Klathmon]

Perhaps the car knows it's own capabilities better than we humans do.

Maybe it knows that if the joggers were to suddenly jump out, doing what you or I would do isn't enough, so it slowed down to a near stop just in case.

Also, it's a bit of a "blind corner", so drifting out toward the middle of the lane might not be the best idea (again, even though it's probably something I as a person in that scenario would have done).

[JoeAltmaier]

I've wondered about this. Totally defensive driving would reduce a car to 5mph - somebody might jump out from behind every blind corner or mailbox.

Truth is, we all drive fairly irresponsibly, trusting in the rules of the road and human self-preservation to keep most stuff out of our way. And if we do hit somebody who dashes out on the freeway, well that's an accident or 'their fault' or 'nobody's fault' so no foul.

Will we allow automated drivers that privilege?

[ghaff]

Yeah. We do (or should) typically drive "defensively." But in practice that doesn't mean that we defend against everyone potentially pulling some utterly crazy stunt at any moment. For example, we watch for pedestrians but we don't actually worry too much that there might be someone hiding behind a tree who is going to jump into traffic. And we may be somewhat cautious at cross-streets but we still have a general expectation that a car isn't going to just randomly blow through a red light in the middle of its cycle.

[Klathmon]

I think it's going to take some societal change, but we will have to.

Computers are just an extension of ourselves. The people making these systems will make mistakes, these systems will kill people (and arguably already have), but hopefully they will kill less than we currently do by not having them.

There's this stigma around "computers" where people treat them differently than everything else. Yes, you're getting into a car whose programming could cause you to die, but you are always relying on this kind of thing. Getting in a regular car, you are relying on the engineer who designed the braking system to have been correct, you are relying on the factory worker to have been paying attention that day, and the QC robot to have been programmed correctly, etc...

We need to get away from that, we need to treat the computer in your car as you would treat it's braking system. Accidents will happen, people will get hurt, bugs will occur. If they are systemic, there will need to be changes, recalls, and fixes. But the car will never operate in 100% of conditions flawlessly, and neither will you.

[jjnoakes]

The big difference is, if I make a mistake and hurt myself, my family, or others, I have myself to blame. If my car makes a mistake though, I have someone else to blame.

Even though the statistics may point to self-driving cars being safer in the aggregate, would an individual be willing to give up control to software which might make a mistake and kill them? Even if, statistically, they might be safer?

Will people make the rational choice, or the emotional choice?

[zobzu]

just film and show a complete flight from an airliner from the cockpit. flights are fully autonomous except take off and landing, which still are computer assisted.

all crashes occur when the pilot overrides the flight system or the runway has no support for computer aided landing (ils).

thats the only reason flying is statistically safer than driving.

[JoeAltmaier]

Funny: since the 80's they've been able to take off and land too. Which could avoid most of those crashes. But the pilots (and FAA) won't allow it.

[AtheistOfFail]

The issue is really about capitalism.

A video where a car manages to stop because a drunk falls into your lane will make the stock soar.

A video where a car hits an old lady who jumps in front of your car will make the stock crash.

There are people on either side who want this technology to succeed or fail (not self-driving, i mean electric cars)

[zobzu]

seems like a dumb statement. why in hell would you think its ok to hit the lady when the car can avoid it?

getting there 30s later on average is worth killing grandmas? with automated cars you dont even have to pay attention or care. get in get out.

[sundvor]

Perhaps the AI also needs to be able to perceive the motivations of the humans ie read body language. If the joggers suddenly turned their heads to the left and twisted their bodies etc, then that would to a greater degree warrant the extreme caution. There's a lot of work cut out for the machine learning engineers.

[Klathmon]

I agree, but until then I'm guessing they are going to play it safe.

That being said, looking at that portion of the video again it looks like this may have just been the system having trouble figuring out if the people were in the road until it was closer.