Ed Self-Driving Cars: Pros, Cons, and Predictions

[acbytesla]

Actually it is relevant. Nuclear is unsafe. So is coal, gasoline, electricity, fire and water. Cars are unsafe, airplanes are unsafe, trains and ships are unsafe. Guns are unsafe, knives are unsafe, scissors are unsafe. Every year ~12,000 people in the US die from falling down stairs. We are surrounded by unsafe technologies which we continue to use despite the danger.

But there's lot we can do to make them safer. Nuclear is made safer with strict protocols, highly trained operators, regular inspections, multiple redundancies and massive containment buildings. Despite all that the government has to provide insurance because no private company can take on the risk. If we didn't do all those things to make nuclear safe then... imagine a Chernobyl every few months.

Nuclear and radiation accidents and incidents

Now compare that to the number of serious car accidents. Nuclear has the potential to kill millions in a single incident, but it doesn't because billions have been spent on making it safe. Same goes for commercial airplanes, which have the potential to kill hundreds at a time (and sometimes do). But cars are (individually) less lethal, so we don't do so much to make them safer.

There's a lot more we could do to make cars safer. Unfortunately many of the most effective measures have not been implemented due to cost and/or impinging on drivers' 'freedoms'. If cars were nuclear power plants, 90% of them would be off the road for various violations. The accident rate would drop to almost zero, but the backlash would be political suicide. Enter autonomous driving...

Previously we didn't have the technology to do it, but now we do - and with the aid of advanced AI and powerful computer chips it's improving exponentially. Most cars produced today have some level of autonomy built in, but to make them truly safe we need full autonomy to remove the human element that causes the vast majority of accidents. It also makes driving more enjoyable and less stressful, as well as saving money in insurance premiums, repairs and medical bills.

There's just one problem - the same one we've always had with cars - 'freedom'. People want to do what they want when they want, without any 'safety' features getting in the way. This is why mandatory seatbelts failed in the US, and why airbags were introduced. However eventually most of the public accepted seatbelts, as it turned out they weren't a significant restriction on their 'freedoms'. Today we have the same problem with autonomous driving. People fear change, and don't trust a machine to do their thinking for them. It will take a while for people be comfortable with it, just like it took a while for them to be comfortable wearing setbelts. Meanwhile we have to put up with 'skeptics' inventing arguments against self-driving cars to hide their fear of new technolgy.

You think it was a failure? What precisely would constitute a success? Seatbelts save lives regardless whether or not your vehicle has an airbag.

Seatbelts have been in cars since the mid 1950s. Three point seatbelts have been required on new vehicles since 1973. Still, as late as 1983, fewer than 15% of Americans said they used seat belts consistently. This is when mandatory use of seat belt laws began being passed. New York became the first state in 1984. Today every state with the exception of New Hampshire has made seatbelt use mandatory. Today, 91.6% of Americans wear seatbelts consistently.

I guess we have different definitions of success and failure.

 

[mumblethrax]

Yeah, I'm left scratching my head at the idea that mandatory seatbelt laws are a failure in the US. Even if that were true, mandatory seatbelt alarm regulation (which can be enforced against manufacturers, and which most owners are unlikely to tamper with) would have more or less mooted it.

 

[GlennB]

Yeah, I'm left scratching my head at the idea that mandatory seatbelt laws are a failure in the US. Even if that were true, mandatory seatbelt alarm regulation (which
can be enforced against manufacturers, and which most owners are unlikely to tamper with) would have more or less mooted it.

Just 'can'?

 

[acbytesla]

Yeah, I'm left scratching my head at the idea that mandatory seatbelt laws are a failure in the US. Even if that were true, mandatory seatbelt alarm regulation (which can be enforced against manufacturers, and which most owners are unlikely to tamper with) would have more or less mooted it.

I hated mentioning it. But no way have mandatory seat-belt laws been a failure.

I do agree with his primary point, which is that nothing is entirely un-safe. Even if I thought it was a nit pick. Some level of risk is a component of every endeavor. So safe or dangerous would always be relative.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

"..by the time Cybercabs are rolling off the production line..." When do you think that will be?

Isn't that an old joke by Bob Hope? "When the 1942 Fords stop rolling off the assembly line we'll start making deliveries?"

 

[mumblethrax]

Just 'can'?

Can, and are (with respect to front seats...coming soon to back seats).

 

[Orphia Nay]

Self-driving cars don't drive into dozens of people in a market.

 

[mumblethrax]

Self-driving cars don't drive into dozens of people in a market.

That's overly pessimistic. With enough time and development, I believe they can.

 

[Darat]

Self-driving cars don't drive into dozens of people in a market.

That has to be real concern, how secure is the software the cars use?

 

[Darat]

*Privacy Not Included: A Buyer’s Guide for Connected Products

All 25 car brands we researched earned our *Privacy Not Included warning label – making cars the worst category of products that we have ever reviewed

foundation.mozilla.org

Lots of basic privacy concerns with cars even before self-drive.

 

[mumblethrax]

That has to be real concern, how secure is the software the cars use?

Not terribly. The protocol used in the CAN bus is inherently insecure, and can control basically everything in modern computers-on-wheels. Remote control of Teslas has been demonstrated multiple times.

 

[HansMustermann]

Actually it is relevant. Nuclear is unsafe. So is coal, gasoline, electricity, fire and water. Cars are unsafe, airplanes are unsafe, trains and ships are unsafe. Guns are unsafe, knives are unsafe, scissors are unsafe. Every year ~12,000 people in the US die from falling down stairs. We are surrounded by unsafe technologies which we continue to use despite the danger.

But there's lot we can do to make them safer. Nuclear is made safer with strict protocols, highly trained operators, regular inspections, multiple redundancies and massive containment buildings. Despite all that the government has to provide insurance because no private company can take on the risk. If we didn't do all those things to make nuclear safe then... imagine a Chernobyl every few months.

But that's still back to Sagan's quote, right? You're just doing the equivalent of the enumeration of people they laughed at, except here it's technologies instead of people.

But here's the thing: here too the "But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown" part does apply. And I'll provide it for you.

There are also technologies which actually WERE dangerous and most western countries decided not to use any more. Chemical weapons. Biological weapons. Landmines. Nuclear powered aeroplanes. Uranium glass. Radium in watches or gun sights. High-test peroxide in torpedoes. Asbestos. Leaded gasoline. X-ray machines to fit shoes. Lawn darts.

There's also stuff we decided where or by whom can be used. Automatic weapons are the trivial example.

Or to return to the topic of automation, there are tons of things we could fully automate for the ideal case, but we still like a human there to make the judgment. Nuclear power is a trivial example. A computer can and does mostly run a nuclear plant. But when things go wrong for some unforeseen reason, we still like to have some qualified people there who can improvise. In effect, part of the REASON WHY we don't have a Chernobyl every few months is that we have some people there.

Will that change in the future? Quite possibly. WHEN that happens, sure, we can go around and fully automate them. Or cars for that matter. But as long as that didn't happen, well, we don't.

Meanwhile we have to put up with 'skeptics' inventing arguments against self-driving cars to hide their fear of new technolgy.

So basically it's still back to Sagan's quote, right?

 

[Jack by the hedge]

I thought the point about seatbelts was that it was the initial failure to persuade people in the US to use them which drove airbag development as an alternative rather than a supplement (and not that people were still not persuaded all these decades later).

The first rental car I drove in the US had these weird seatbelts where the upper anchor point ran in a track above the door and would motor forward to let you get out without unbuckling. (I can't remember how the lap belt worked) We were told it was an attempt to persuade more people to use belts because so many just didn't. This was over a decade since (front) seatbelts became mandatory in the UK and most people just went along with it.

 

[bruto]

I thought the point about seatbelts was that it was the initial failure to persuade people in the US to use them which drove airbag development as an alternative rather than a supplement (and not that people were still not persuaded all these decades later).

The first rental car I drove in the US had these weird seatbelts where the upper anchor point ran in a track above the door and would motor forward to let you get out without unbuckling. (I can't remember how the lap belt worked) We were told it was an attempt to persuade more people to use belts because so many just didn't. This was over a decade since (front) seatbelts became mandatory in the UK and most people just went along with it.

I've been a loyal seatbelt user since before they were mandated, because my dad, a statistician, actually did, on his way to a doctorate, a study on seat belts back in about 1959, which was so convincingly obvious that he had seat belts fitted to our cars in 1960, and he bought a Saab in 1961 in part because it came with shoulder belts. For quite a while that was just lap belts, but at least it was something, and I learned to drive with belts on, and just won't go without them. No person rides in a car of mine without belts on.

But that said, the implementation of automatic seat belts in the US was appallingly bad and stupid, and even habitual wearers of them were inclined to defeat them, because most such implementations, aside from making life hell for mechanics, required a sequence of operation that was inimical to the way we often drive, especially if you live in a region where you have to warm the car up and scrape the windshield, etc.

 

[jeremyp]

A video from somebody who stumbled across Waymo's last 5%

Man trapped inside driverless car as it spins in circles

Mike Johns was on his way to the airport when the Waymo robotaxi began circling a parking lot non-stop

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[zooterkin]

I recently saw a video on Facebook which appeared to be of a Tesla automatically avoiding a pedestrian falling into the road, but as result crashing into an oncoming vehicle, then rolling back to hit the pedestrian who was now on the ground behind it, at low speed.

I don't know that a person would have made an different decision, but from the point of view of driver safety, hitting the pedestrian would have been lower risk.

ETA: This video - https://www.autoevolution.com/news/...t-of-it-crashes-into-oncoming-car-241294.html

 

[Rolfe]

News to me that FSD is available in Romania.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

You think it was a failure? What precisely would constitute a success? Seatbelts save lives regardless whether or not your vehicle has an airbag.

Seatbelts have been in cars since the mid 1950s. Three point seatbelts have been required on new vehicles since 1973. Still, as late as 1983, fewer than 15% of Americans said they used seat belts consistently. This is when mandatory use of seat belt laws began being passed. New York became the first state in 1984. Today every state with the exception of New Hampshire has made seatbelt use mandatory. Today, 91.6% of Americans wear seatbelts consistently.

I guess we have different definitions of success and failure.

Seat belt laws did fail. In 1967 the Department of Transportation issued Standard 208 which required that all vehicles have seat belts. In 1975 this was revised to require passive restraints, ie. air bags, to protect people who didn't wear their seat belts. The seat belt laws were ineffective because they didn't require people to use them.

But then auto manufacturers got upset at having to install expensive airbags just because people refused to wear their seat belts, so they lobbied against them and got the law rescinded. Then insurance companies got upset and sued the government for changing the law without a good reason. The government reached a compromise whereby if 2/3rd of states passed laws mandating set belt use by 1989 then auto makers wouldn't have to install airbags.

But having a law on the books doesn't mean it will be followed. Today 15 states only apply 'secondary' enforcement, where a person can't be cited for seat belt violation unless they have committed some other offense, and one state has no set belt use laws at all.

How seat belt use has changed since the 1990s

Even as late as the 1980s, the required use of seat belts was surprisingly controversial... One 1984 survey found that 65% of Americans were against mandatory seat belts—as well as penalties for not wearing them...

Although American vehicles have been required to have seat belts since 1968, actual seat belt usage was a different story. The National Ad Council ran an extensive, decades-long campaign encouraging drivers to “Buckle Up,” but things didn’t start to change in a meaningful way until the 1980s. According to the CDC, seat belt use grew from 11% in 1980 to 49% ten years later. Much of this increase can be attributed to the enforcement of state laws requiring seat belt usage. Another driving force in this increase was the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s “70% by ’92 program.”

The actual seat belt usage achieved was ~60% in 1995, rising to 70% in 2000 and leveling off at ~90% by 2015. It's only taken 48 years to get there. Meanwhile cars today have multiple airbags, partly because some people still refuse to wear their seat belts.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

I recently saw a video on Facebook which appeared to be of a Tesla automatically avoiding a pedestrian falling into the road, but as result crashing into an oncoming vehicle, then rolling back to hit the pedestrian who was now on the ground behind it, at low speed.

I don't know that a person would have made an different decision, but from the point of view of driver safety, hitting the pedestrian would have been lower risk.

ETA: This video - https://www.autoevolution.com/news/...t-of-it-crashes-into-oncoming-car-241294.html

I would crash my car before hitting a pedestrian. Even though I have trained myself not to swerve into the incoming lane if a car pulls out, I probably still would if it was a person falling down on the road. Cars are designed to crumple when hit to protect the occupants, people aren't.

The video says:-

A Tesla might have just saved the life of a pedestrian. Footage captured by a dash cam shows the car suddenly veering to avoid the man who fell onto the roadway and crashing into an oncoming vehicle. It is, though, unclear if the driver had a super quick reaction or if it was the FSD that saved the life of the pedestrian...

The tourist walked away unharmed, and so did the driver of the Tesla, a 39-year-old woman. Witnesses offered help to the Audi driver, who had sustained injuries to his head and to an arm. He was then transported to the hospital.

I'm surprised that the Audi driver was injured. You can see that the airbag deployed, so either it didn't catch sideways movement or the bag itself injured him. Either way this was a far better outcome than running over the pedestrian.

Buit hey, never let a chance to bash Tesla go by, right?

 

[Roger Ramjets]

There are also technologies which actually WERE dangerous...

So basically it's still back to Sagan's quote, right?

Pretty much all technologies are dangerous. Motor cars especially so. It's mind boggling that we allow practically anyone to drive a car on roads with no barriers and many hazards to contend with - and no assistance apart from rear view mirrors and a sun visor. We do it because we want to drive our cars, and accidents don't happen that often (only 13 accidents every 60 seconds in the US). Unfortuantely this means that roads aren't designed with autonomous driving in mind, as we assume a human will be able to handle any situation no matter how tricky or confusing (which often doesn't happen in practice - and then the blame games start).

Sagan's quote is meaningless in this context. He wasn't talking about technology. Autonomous driving isn't based on a wacky unscientific principle. It works, and making it better is just an engineering problem (a much easier one than eg. fusion power or quantum computing). A more relevant quote would be Lord Kelvin saying in 1895 that "heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible", when all we were waiting on was a more powerful lighter weight engine. It was a particularly stupid statement to make when Clément Ader had already achieved it in 1890 with a steam-powered aircraft (the Wright brothers get credit for the first controlled heavier-than-air flight in 1903).

I watched a video of a Tesla with FSD 13.2 self-driving around New York for 2 hours including during 'rush hour' traffic, and it was flawless. It had to contend with situations such as someone loading their pickup truck from the road side, and narrow streets with parked cars making it one lane only so it had to pull over and wait for oncoming traffic. On the screen you could see the car tracking all the other vehicles and pedestrians in the area - better than a human! If it's this good now, the next major version will definitely be better than any human driver.

By the time Tesla rolls out their Cybercab there should no worries, though they will proably trial it for months or years before full scale production - by which time there won't be any argument about whether FSD is good enough.