“Sanity test” aims to make self-driving cars safer and less likely to hit cyclists

John Smith wrote:

That does not show the risks of automation, it shows how little people understand risk. Your falling for the same trap as the people who ignore the thousands of KSIs caused by drivers and go ape s**t over cyclists. 

 

Yes, there has been high profile issues with the 737 max, but commercial flight remains vastly safer than any other form of transport. A large part of this is down to automation. Light aircraft are one of the least safe forms of transport. In 2017 there were no deaths in commercial aviation.

 

Same goes for nuclear power. It is vastly safer than any of the fossil fuels.

 

Self driving cars won’t be perfect, but they will be vastly better than humans. I would guess they already are. I would love to know what the actual numbers are with self driving cars struggleing with cyclists and pedestrians. How often does it fail compared to humans. Given how shit humans are with the number of near misses and SIDSYMs we see it’s a low bar. It should be as good as possible, but let’s not reject improvement because it’s not perfection.

I think you are entirely overlooking the political complexities of the issue.  We aren't talking about the sky, here, we are talking about crowded city streets.  It is indeed, all about money.

Again, I point at the use computer technology in cars has been put to so far - providing dangerous distractions for drivers, and cunning systems to trick emissions testing.  Both putting commercial considerations about appealing to the paying customer ahead of the slightest concern for those outside the vehicles who aren't giving the car maker their cash.

I don't share your belief in the essential benevolance of the automobile industry.

ktache wrote:

Going to point out that Boeing have built an aircraft that takes over control and crashes itself into the ground.  Aircraft are very safe, very few things to to look out for, no street furniture, no pesky cyclists, only thing to really worry about is the ground.

One counterexample isn't an impressive argument. If we took road vehicle safety as seriously as we do aircraft safety, we wouldn't be expecting 1,700 road deaths this year, in the UK alone.

janusz0 wrote:

ktache wrote:

Going to point out that Boeing have built an aircraft that takes over control and crashes itself into the ground.  Aircraft are very safe, very few things to to look out for, no street furniture, no pesky cyclists, only thing to really worry about is the ground.

One counterexample isn't an impressive argument. If we took road vehicle safety as seriously as we do aircraft safety, we wouldn't be expecting 1,700 road deaths this year, in the UK alone.

It might be a single example, but that is not the point.  It is a defining moment in which the manufacturer apparently did not tell  pilots of the system's existence, and that system flew the aircraft into the ground.  Twice.  

Now read into that what you will, but the FAA and Boeing initially said that there was nothing untoward.  If they can do that in the highly regulated air environment, heaven help us on the roads.

janusz0 wrote:

ktache wrote:

Going to point out that Boeing have built an aircraft that takes over control and crashes itself into the ground.  Aircraft are very safe, very few things to to look out for, no street furniture, no pesky cyclists, only thing to really worry about is the ground.

One counterexample isn't an impressive argument. If we took road vehicle safety as seriously as we do aircraft safety, we wouldn't be expecting 1,700 road deaths this year, in the UK alone.

The danger from aircraft mostly directly affects the owners, passengers, and pilots of the aircraft.  All of whom have a direct commercial and legal relationship with the manufacturers of it.

While the risk from cars affects pretty much everyone, the vast majority of whom are not customers of the car-maker and have no direct relationship with them.

So it seems to me there's a huge question about the legal regime around the technology that needs to be clarified before you can make those sorts of comparions.  I think all the omens suggest it won't be settled in a way that makes the comparison a useful one.

janusz0 wrote:

ktache wrote:

Going to point out that Boeing have built an aircraft that takes over control and crashes itself into the ground.  Aircraft are very safe, very few things to to look out for, no street furniture, no pesky cyclists, only thing to really worry about is the ground.

One counterexample isn't an impressive argument. If we took road vehicle safety as seriously as we do aircraft safety, we wouldn't be expecting 1,700 road deaths this year, in the UK alone.

It's directly relevant. Because of the move to 'small government', Boeing were allowed to certify their own aircraft. It was an advantage for them to selll the planes by telling airlines that the pilots didn't need retraining. So they didn't tell them about the new system:
 

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/failed-certificat...

Unlike aircraft crashes, it won't be 269 people dead, it will be a steady drip-drip-drip that we'll be encouraged to ignore as we are now. The motor companies have all the money in the world and the ear of government (because 'jobs in marginal seats'). There won't be 'investigations' when AVs kill pedestrians, there won't be 'openness', there won't be 'learning', because the data will be subject to commercial confidentiality agreements and guarded by lawyers and you can be sure as hell that the police won't have time to chase that up. They'll just blame the cyclists and pedestrians, like they do now.

The motor industry isn't like the airline industry, and it has form in blaming people for being run over by their products. 

More about how jaywalking laws came about

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-76-the-modern-moloch/

Mungecrundle wrote:

A collision could be classed as an industrial accident? Even at this early stage I'd far sooner be a cyclist amongst driverless vehicles. Whilst far from infallible, there is one absolute truth in that every vehicle will be constantly gathering huge amounts of data, enabling any incident to be analyzed in great detail. The resulting lessons will for once actually be learned and more importantly updated to all vehicles in the fleet. My prediction is that by 2030, road traffic collisions involving and caused by driverless vehicles will be as rare as cyclists injuring pedestrians.

What will be the proportion of self driving to human driven, I can't see by 2030 that the numbers of AI vehicles with no human interaction will be anywhere near the majority, in fact I'm going to put a guess and say not even 5% of all vehicles on the road will be fully driverless by 2030. One of the problems is that as we see with just getting motors to have an informal speed restriction, that won't be until at least 2022 in new motors, is there's a huge reluctance to change/restriction of motorists, even by the so called friendly face of organisations like the EU road safety commission to name just one.

To take that next jump to significant numbers of AI driven motors (with zero human input) is going to take another 10 years on top of that at least, into the 2040s ... maybe.

IF within the UK we can get total motorvehicle serious injuries to that of 40 per year and 0.6 annual (at fault) deaths then that would be simply incredible. I honestly can't see that in my lifetime/next 50 years, but maybe I'll be wrong and we have a cycling/walking utopia where people on bikes don't need to be cordoned off, where people on bikes don't feel the need to cycle on the 'pavement'.

Maybe in the next 50 years we can see a drastic cut in motoring and god forbid an increase in cycle based travel, such that the need for AI motorvehicles won't be as high in physical numbers and that the programming again will have to be modified. And that's one of the main cruxes re safety, It's still all based on those that are programming and their understanding as well as governments who set the criteria (speeds, priorities etc etc)

Will the programming have enough leaway in it for vulnerable road users, for road users that are human and sometimes unpreictable? There's a heck of a lot of nuance that even the very best of the best advanced drivers don't pick up on. As far as I'm concerned as someone who has done advanced driving, has done the daily grind into and through one of the busiest cities and congested motorway systems in Europe for far too long (thank god in the past) but has more years cycling on the road amongst heavy traffic than I've been a motorist overall, I see how advanced drivers and the instruction itself fails time and again to meet the standard that would be, IMHO safe and not induce fear, alarm or distress to people on bikes particularly but also to those on foot/people just off the road.

That fear/alarm/distress IS the singular biggest factor that puts people off cycling, curently the programming thinking is based on not striking a person, that doesn't automatically mean that the vehicles presence doesn't induce those feelings which is an assault in its own right.

As i've said before, 1.5metres frm centre of wheel on a standard cycle for most people is not enough space even at a passing speed of 30mph to feel safe, it's not even enough for leeway for all types, particularly children and that will never, ever be programmed into motors because it would slow down the progress too much or require road to be widened even more. Thus even AI controlled vehicles will not be good enough to be used amongst (on the same bit of tarmac) as any vulnerable road users types at any given time. 

If we truly want children of all ages and indeed adults of all ages and abilities to cycle as a means of transport then we need to banish motors from certain segments of the highway completely, I would have 2m wide single direction lanes (on either side) or 3.5m bi-directional lane with priority at all junctions along all major routes and stop up the most direct roads within urban environments or at least take one side of the highway away from motors and again have priority for cycles along with light systems at major junctions.

Segregating motors away from vulnerable road users, on say something like a 'motor-way' would be far more preferable to having AI vehicles in the near vicinity which will still present a risk and will still make people feel fear of harm even if that harm is far far less than human driven vehicles. it's a far better ultimate solution than segregating the vulnerable as we have been trying to push through. even in the 'best' country in the world, cycling is still only at 26% (significantly less than the UK in the past without any segregation) and has over 200 cycling deaths annually despite all that segregation.

TedBarnes wrote:

I would be staggered if Google and others weren't already doing this, and in far more detail. Sanity checking both incoming data and output is fairly basic stuff in principle.

There was a major report by UCL for the government, that found out of 50,000 research papers on self-driving cars, only slightly more than a dozen papers each were concerned with interaction with pedestrians and interactions with cyclists.

So you may well be staggered, but they are NOT doing the research that will make them safe to use in anything like a typical congested UK High Street. There's an avalanche of money going into this - and making us want them, in advance - but there isn't the research we need going into making them safe around people walking and on bikes.

The research is here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/fil...

This is the key diagram showing how much research is being done on which topics:

You'll find 'interaction with cyclists' and 'interaction with pedestrians' are right near the bottom of the pile. That's evidently what they think of us.

The motor industry has form here: they got rid of pedestrians in the 1920s with the 'jaywalking'* myth and they'll get rid of cyclists and pedestrians again if we get crushed by self-driving cars.

*For jaywalking, see https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26073797