Will the technology in the car be smart enough to distinguish a group of children over a couple of deer, a few good sized tumbleweeds, some cardboard boxes blowing around, a tree branch that has just fallen from above, or ... ?

I'd hate for my car to impale itself into an oncoming semi for the sake of Bambi and her mother.

 

These are all excellent questions, and they will, of course, need to be resolved.

At present, Google Car is capable of uniquely recognizing a bicyclist, and further capable of understanding whether the cyclist is fully stopped at rest, or about to take off. This has caused some software confusion when hipsters on fixies do track-stands at an intersection. (eg: the car can't yet understand that just because his feet are on the pedals doesn't mean he's about to launch.)

One presupposes that future generations will be capable of reading the RFID transponder tags which the World Health Organization has been secretly implanting into the necks of all children born since 1996.

 

 

Generally true except where negligence is the cause. This opens up new challenges to both the legal and moral questions and exactly what is 'negligence'.

Warning... extremely dry but relevant reading.

http://www.econ.brown.edu/fac/allan_...%20Injurer.pdf

 

Negligence in this context would imply things like "designer failed to account for relative harms to pedestrian vs. occupant" or "vehicle was unable to properly identify a group of small children hunched over chasing after a ball, and mistook them for large dogs." The implications here being that:

• A person tasked with designing such a system should reasonably be aware that a pedestrian in the street is likely to suffer more harm from being hit by a car than the occupant of the car is likely to suffer from colliding with a stationary object, and
• Less value should be placed on the life of a dog than on the life of a human (I'm sure Braineack will be along shortly to disagree with that), and, in some cases, than on the value of certain property.

What I'm wondering about isn't so much negligence per se. I'm talking about the uncomfortable but inevitable fact that in the process of designing software to drive a car, one must inherently imbue that software with certain preconceptions regarding whether one person's life is more valuable than another, and whether it owes a greater burden of care to the human who bought it than the humans around him.





It is dry, but also quite interesting. I haven't finished yet, but I like where it's going. Keep expecting to come upon the phrase "Tragedy of the commons."

 

The only winning move is not to play with automated cars.

 

My fear is that, in the not too distant future, they will become so ubiquitous that, in contrast, they make the individual that still chooses to drive manually appear to be the reckless and negligent one, seeing as how us humans are all so inherently flawed and prone to making human errors and all. It seems like it will inevitably be another technological advance shoved down our throats whether we like it or not. And yes, as I type this, it isn't lost on me that I do like having my seat belts, ABS, airbags, and TC in my 300+ hp sport sedan. I just mourn the prospect of the loss of the actual act of driving.

 

This exact comment was made by one of the characters in one of the many movies about the not-too-distant-future. (Can't recall which one.)

 

Well, if it was exact, it is just coincidence or a shared opinion, as I squeezed that one out, natural like.

 

Found it. It's from "I, Robot." During one of the extended product-placement scenes, Will Smith, while cruising through a tunnel, is attached by a bunch of robots. He takes manual control of his car, smashes up a bunch of stuff, and is later chewed out by his CO back at the department.

"What is the matter with you? Traffic Ops tells me you're driving your car manually. You ran two trucks off the road!"


In the same film, he's carrying some chica on the back of his old motorcycle. "Please tell me this doesn't run on gas! Gas explodes, you know?"


Ironically, said film opens with Asimov's Three Laws:

 

Speaking on autonomous cars.

Unless they know how to drive in pouring rain, or 8 inches of snow by themselves, they will always still have the manual feature.
I can think of many scenarios in which the car will NEED to cease self control(including the above hypothetical scenarios mentioned). It has to in order to keep everyone safe and alive, itself included.

Even if the infrastructure were to support automated cars (see guidance systems built into the roads and communicating vehicles), what happens when there is a failure? 9 times out of 10 the failsafe is human interaction.

I think the real question is, can we ever have safe reliable transportation that is completely hands free with the current infrastructure, technology, and system?

 

 

This violates 1 of the 3 stipulations. It's a different system.

We need to make it work here, and adhere to all 3 stipulations:




We need an infrastructure change in order for this to happen, I can't see any other way.

 

It won't happen on current infrastructure. Nothing short of a road system that resembles a massive luggage or mail sorting system will work perfectly, and even then, you'll still lose your luggage on the way to your honeymoon, and the electric bill will always go to the wrong address.

 

Hey, I lived in Detroit for 5 years. First snow day of the year I'd put more trust in the automated system than the other drivers....

But I see your point.

 

The guy that was able to see Star Wars before the release, died. I guess Disney didn't improve it much...

 

Didn't Demolition Man with Stallone have something about autonomous driving cars being a hindrance?

 

I don't remember it ending well for Will Smith in iRobot.

 

Taco Bell.

3 shells.

 

Maybe with the invention of car filling foam, the algorithm will swing in the direction of pedestrian avoidance.