[quartesixte]

> It is assumed that the road is free to drive on.

Trying to remember if the opposite of this is how human drivers are taught, or if this is implicit in how we move about the world. My initial gut reaction says yes and this is a great phrasing of something that was always bothering me about automated driving.

Perhaps we should model our autopilots after horses: refusal to move against anything unfamiliar, and biased towards going back home on familiar routes.

[cameron_b]

In my high school’s Drivers Ed class I distinctly remember the one-question pop quiz: “What is the most dangerous mile of road?”

The answer was “the mile in front of you”

Additionally there was some statistic about the frequency of accidents within a very short distance of the drivers residence, which seemed to underscore the importance of being aware of just how much your brain filters out the “familiar” in contrast to a newly stimulating environment.

[jiscariot]

I had always assumed the "close to home" numbers were just bad statistics, because I never saw them control for % of driving that was done "close to home".

If I google it, I get like three pages of law firms.