[dreamcompiler]

It is perfectly reasonable to expect these cars to do at least as well as humans at avoiding mind-bogglingly stupid scenarios that the least experienced driver could avoid while drunk, talking on the phone, and applying makeup. This is absolutely one of those scenarios.

[alkonaut]

We hold machines to much higher standards. We accept human imperfection and human error. People killing people on the road because they are sleepy or not paying attention is a risk we are willing to accept. The reason is that people have a skin in the game themselves. Being in a accident means they risk injury, fines, jail time.

I think few are willing to accept autopilots that are only as bad as (or as good as) humans. They must be significantly better than human drivers, simply because we don't accept their errors like we do human errors.

This is completely irrational when looked at purely from a safety point of view (Who doesn't want safer roads?), but this obstacle is very real.

Worse: that autonomous cars are better in many scenarios or aspects (they don't get sleepy, they are never drunk) doesn't mean we accept that they are ever worse in any other aspect, despite the total safety being better.

That is: autonomous vehicles must not just be as good as human drivers, they must be significantly better (or at least safer) than human drivers. And not only that, they must be significatly better in every aspect of driving, for them to gain acceptance.

[a_imho]

It is not irrational because self driving cars are not interchangeable with human drivers 1-1. If autonomous cars are put on roads it is very likely net traffic increases. We put up with bad driving because we have to, this is absolutely not the case for machines. I, personally, don't want more average drivers on the roads.

[Jasper_]

The problem is that the flaws of humans tend to be random and stochastic, while the flaws of machines tend to be consistent and systematic. This is the at least the fifth example of Tesla missing stationary objects on the road.

Humans might have a judgment failure every so often, but they might realize how unsafe they are and change their behavior, or drive less, or get their license taken away. A machine consistently crashing cars has no self correction protocol, and will consistently make the same mistake over and over.

[losteric]

If there was an autopilot that nailed every scenario in any weather condition except clearly overturned trucks in good weather, should that system be approved for general public use?

[totalZero]

Considering the fact that accidents often attract bystanders and emergency personnel to help the incapacitated driver, the inability to avoid an existing wreck in clear weather is a glaring hazard to human life.

Moreover, trucks sometimes contain hazardous or flammable materials.

So the answer to your question is a resounding no, in my view.

[dodobirdlord]

Huh, on the balance of things refusing to use such a system would cost a lot of lives.

[GhostVII]

You can bring in new safety features without having full self-driving. I think the safest option is to have human drivers, with the car always monitoring to avoid any serious accidents. People will still be attentive, since they are in full control, but you avoid just as many accidents as you would if the car was driving itself.

[totalZero]

I agree. By establishing an "auto-pilot," you actually eliminate redundancy by putting the driver in a passive position. (No matter how many times you tell the driver to remain attentive)

The machine ought to be an error handler for specific failures of an active human driver (sudden braking of lead vehicle, lane straying, etc). This is the only way to get both machine and human to pay full attention. A person in a co-pilot role will struggle to react quickly enough to handle errors of the machine auto-pilot.

[LeChuck]

Yeah. This is what I always thought. If we could safe many lives with self-driving cars then we could safe many more with augmented humans.

[nicoburns]

Only if there weren't alternative systems that were just as good and also managed to avoid this problem. Which seems unlikely.

[saulrh]

> Which seems unlikely.

No kidding.

https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/2001-128/pdfs/2001-128.pdf?id...: The two most dangerous things in road work, accounting for half of all of the industry's fatalities, are industrial vehicles working on the site and passenger vehicles passing it.

So, yeah, you're right - there aren't any alternative systems that manage to avoid this problem. Even humans suck at it. And if even humans can't handle construction areas safely, how can you possibly expect computers to be perfect?

[Dylan16807]

* It depends on why the humans are failing. You can design a computer to not speed and not get distracted.

* Hitting a worker is very different from hitting a truck.

* Many of those fatalities are not in clear daylight.

[brutt]

There are. Use two or three alternative AI implementations, which will watch each other. Kind of famous "Predator" algo, but for driving. If one will fail, second will pick up. If one makes mistakes, second will teach it.

[gambiting]

Nope, it shouldn't. A system that happily plows into a massive static object that blocks 3 lanes of traffic just because the system didn't recognize it as a danger should never be allowed on the road. In fact Tesla should remotely disable autopilot on every single car out there until this is investigated, tested and patched. And even then I have my reservations about the naming, it's not an autopilot.

[gnopgnip]

From a political perspective, almost certainly not even if it would ultimately save lives

[na85]

No it should not.

[losteric]

Why not? In that hypothetical, ramming every overturned truck while avoiding all other accidents would be a massive improvement in safety. What about the truck scenario makes it so bad as to outweigh avoiding the other accidents?

[na85]

It demonstrates that the "AI" can't avoid basic obstacles that a 16 year old kid driving for their first time could avoid, of course.

[devonkim]

The other scenario is whether fully autonomous vehicles out-perform humans in sufficiently many other scenarios such that we will consider the comparatively rare scenario of an overturned truck not that big of a deal compared to the massive numbers killed due to raw human carelessness. Furthermore, autonomous vehicles will likely get better and better at driving collectively, something which I would make a heavy bet against for human drivers.

[dreamcompiler]

No. For two reasons:

1. Technology should not make mind-bogglingly stupid mistakes like this, regardless of how rare they are in the grand scheme of things.

2. Because these systems use neural nets, they're black boxes and it's impossible to conduct a proper engineering analysis on them to find out when they will fail. Fuzzing the system with live humans is not engineering; it's callous disregard for human life and anybody who practices it should lose the right to call themselves an engineer.