[buildbot]

I don't understand how there isn't a non-ML based piece of code that looks at moving radar and lidar returns and preforms an emergency brake, light flash, horn, or dodge if that vector would intersect with any confidence. Even slowing down to 20MPH can turn a fatal accident into an injury.

[KKKKkkkk1]

What if it has nothing to do with ML? You see a point cloud that's moving toward your lane at a speed estimate of say 2 mph. If that's below the sensor noise threshold, you might classify the cloud as a stationary object on the other lane (say a stranded car). In that case, by the time you realize that this stationary object has somehow moved itself into your own lane, it is already too late.

[galdosdi]

ACTUALLY, in many US states it's not just wise, but it is the law that if a vehicle is stopped in an adjacent lane you MUST either move to a further lane (if you can do so safely in time) or else at least slow down.

This is because stopped vehicles often have people come out of them to fix the vehicle, and too many cops, tow operators, etc, were getting killed by careless motorists.

Guess this is news to you (and uber), update your driving style please for the sake of first responders!

[AlotOfReading]

You slow down anyways, because it will almost always improve the situation and reduce your liability. Secondly, if the vision is so bad that it can't identify objects in its lane or predict vectors, it's not ready for the real world.

[cmsj]

Yes! This is how a sensible driver would behave - not quite sure what's going on ahead of you? SLOW THE FUCK DOWN.

The story in the linked article about an Uber whipping through an intersection at 38mph next to two stationary lanes, seems sufficiently conclusive to me that their self-driving system is not ruled by a sense of caution.

Here in the UK, we have speed limits, but the rules of the road also call drivers to consider "appropriate speed" - you slow down in situations where you might have to react with very little warning. This ought to be extremely easy for an automated system - it can measure its braking distance with high accuracy, it can measure distances to objects around it with high accuracy, it can determine exactly which areas of the world around it it can't see, that could pose a threat with relatively low warning, so just fucking slow down.

I've long been bearish on full autonomous driving because I consider there to be so many corner cases in real world driving where ad-hoc non-verbal communication is required to solve traffic flow, that the computers would never catch up. Now I wonder if their solution is to just plough through every problem at 98% of the speed limit and then disclaim responsibility.

[sokoloff]

This will have you unexpectedly slowing for road signs, guardrails, and other stationary objects on the side of the road when they are on the inside of a curve (as they will have apparent motion towards your lane)

Set "too tightly", it will also have you slowing for every car approaching a stop sign from a side street.

Cars that randomly slow out of an excess of caution are also a hazard to other road users. Don't believe that? Go drive for a month and set a series of alarms on your phone every 5-10 minutes. Everytime the phone goes off, abruptly slow to half of your prior speed. Do you think you'd make 1,000 miles without causing a road hazard or collision?

[davidgould]

I'm not sure what side you are on here, are you saying that the autonomous cars cannot be careful as the technology to do so is not good enough? or are you saying that they should not be required to be careful?

[sokoloff]

I'm saying that a rules based system with "slow down arbitrarily whenever the hell you want" is unlikely to meld well with existing traffic and is likely to cause as well as avoid unsafe situations.

I believe that might mean that autonomous vehicles are not yet ready for road testing if that is commonly required by the current state of the art. (I last worked on autonomous vehicles in 1991; ours was entirely rules-based and we tested on public roads in addition to private tracks. Ours was bad enough that the human driver hovered over the red E-shut button and was always paying attention. It was harder work than just driving the damn thing yourself, but we had to test in order to make progress. I'm sure loads has improved since then.)

I also don't think that zero fatalities is a realistic goal nor is it the standard that should unduly inhibit progress. People have been dying in transit on foot, on horseback, on bikes, and in cars. This is a version of the trolley problem. I don't mind and in fact actively prefer a system improvement that allows 100 deaths while saving 500, even if the 100 is entirely disjoint from the counter factual 500.

In this specific case, I believe the autonomous car allowed 1 death that would have also been allowed by a human driver in the same circumstances, so it's a push.

[05]

Not how lidars work. At some point the cumulative movement of the object exceeds a threshold and you reclassify it as non-stationary. You don’t get velocities from LiDAR - only 3D point coordinates.

[oldgradstudent]

Because it would result in too many false positives, which could be just as bad as not stopping.

For example, unnecessarily stopping in a middle of a highway is extremely dangerous, especially if visibility is limited or roads are slippery.