Public Skeptical of Self-Driving Cars Despite Race to Perfect Technology

[LovingTeddy]

You're right, but I highly doubt that it will hold a candle to the 1.3 million deaths and additional 20-50 million injuries + disabilities caused every single year on our planet by human-driven automobiles.

We won't know until self-driving cars becomes popular. When self-driving car becomes mainstream, then we can look st the data.

For now, I will have my doubts about self-driving cars.

There are things that will cause self-driving cars fails:

1. Program bugs. There is no software that is perfect unless the software written by Jesus.

2. Self-driving car uses censors and camera to detect objective. What if the censor failed, became dirty, camera did not work, when red lights no longer works?

3. How do you make sure the self-driving car works on all weather condition and road conditions? Like icy, snowy, ice with snow etc. When the visibility is extremely low, how does censors and camera works?

 

[BurgDog]

It'll all work great if the weather is perfect, the roads freshly lined, all the cars talk with each other and nobody but cars are on the road. Add bicycles, random wetware controlled pedestrians, normally maintained roads, thunderstorms or blizzards, thrown treads, fallen trees, loose cargo from the truck ahead and it all stops working. A problem is keeping drivers alert if in monitor mode. For full computer control will need a lot better AI and infrastructure then what we have now.

 

[saudade]

Public is absolutely ignorant and stupid to things that are new to them. People with vision are unfortunately rare.

Yeah im with u amigo most ppl i know is stupido and wanna drive rapido 2 impress females cause they'll like noise n carros 4 speed like loco and amor en asciento know what i mean? These apple cars will be 2 expensive? I wanna buy one 2 c what can i do with free hands
[doublepost=1475085877][/doublepost]

I love driving cars,no way i gonna buy a car which i can't drive myself

Yeah same here dud

 

[notjustjay]

I think I'd like a car that I can drive myself but can take over for me with a fully autonomous autopilot for situations like multi-hour monotonous interstate drives, or being stuck in rush hour traffic. For that matter, maybe rush hour wouldn't be as bad if we all had cars that we could just let take over as they reach congested areas, so the cars could coordinate between themselves how to drive at optimal distance and speeds on the highway. Just let me catch up on emails while you're navigating the worst of it.

It would be nice to get to a point where we could trust the autopilot enough to sleep while the car drives through the night, but that is a huge amount of trust.

 

[cube]

It does not seem a move to perfect technology, but a race to market technology.

 

[doelcm82]

The quantum leap is when the driver is safely able to let go of the steering wheel and start updating their Facebook page. A "quantum leap" means there is no intermediate step. Here, the intermediate step, where the driver lets go of the wheel but stands ready to intervene, is simply impractical because drivers won't pay attention. Also, driving along a freeway, staying in lane and keeping the correct distance is the simplest and safest mode of driving - navigating around a town will be much, much harder.

But there WILL be an intermediate step. First of all, it's not 100% safe for a human driver to rest his or her hands on the steering wheel. So an automatic driver would only need to be AS safe as a human driver or safer. When we get to the point where this is true, it will be met with a collective yawn. That's because by the time it happens, we'll already be accustomed to low-speed driverless taxis ferrying us from place to place and with high-speed glorified cruise control systems like Tesla's autopilot (which will continue to get more glorified and more capable as time goes on). Also computer-driven cars will make better decisions than human drivers in some situations and the percentage of situations in which computers are better will increase over time. It may not even be possible to know when the milestone is reached.

There won't be a day when all the newspapers of the world proclaim that self-driving cars suddenly leapt into the lead against human-driven cars.

Until recently, the paperless office was about as practical as the paperless lavatory.
Took about 35 years by my reckoning, and not everybody is there yet. People still keep handing me pieces of paper...

The change has happened, even if everybody is not there yet. Seven years ago I was at a large manufacturing plant in Hereford, UK. Several buildings that used to be part of the campus were now leased out to other companies. When I asked why this was, I was told that those buildings were once dedicated to maintaining the paperwork that the company used to generate in the testing and sale of large amounts of nickel-based alloys.

Yes, it took decades for this to happen. Car automation will also take decades, but some of those decades are already in the past. We no longer have to manually crank our cars to start them. We don't need to manually shift gears. Some recent electric cars don't even have gears. Cruise control has been around a long time. A lot of the pieces are already in place.

 

[macs4nw]

Will be an interesting thing to watch. How do companies and governments deal with safety and at-fault legal issues. It's going to be unfortunate when the first autonomous car carrying a family plows through a guard rail and off a bridge. Who gets sued (assume this is America where everyone will be) and is it fair that the same cars elsewhere saved hundreds of lives by not letting humans make stupid mistakes. The incalculable lives saved vs the tangible firey death of another.....

I think the biggest hurdle by far will be for us to give up control and blindly trust in others and or technology. That's a huge step. Ask anyone who has ever parachute jumped or even dived blindly into a crowd, and crowd-surfed.

And yes, of course all the legal ramifications of autonomous tech vs liability need to be worked out and tested at Scotus.

 

[dogslobber]

People want to be in control. Being not in control of something is daunting at times.

People are smart.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KARR_(Knight_Rider)

"Unlike KITT, whose primary directive is to protect human life, KARR was programmed for self-preservation, making him a ruthless and unpredictable threat."

 

[BvizioN]

Yeah im with u amigo most ppl i know is stupido and wanna drive rapido 2 impress females cause they'll like noise n carros 4 speed like loco and amor en asciento know what i mean? These apple cars will be 2 expensive? I wanna buy one 2 c what can i do with free hands

My point proved right here, lol
Didn't understand a single word of this bizarre language you used here!!

 

[Analog Kid]

Huh, people closer to death are less likely to believe they'll see something in their lifetime? I don't see how the data presented suggests that 12 year olds are "more optimistic about the future"...

Seems to me that with data with that clear of a trend it would have been possible to determine a consensus estimate on when fully autonomous will happen...

 

[KiwiAdventure]

The public is stupid.

I don't think most people truly realize the dangers of having millions of slow-response-time, error-prone, likely distracted, potentially intoxicated, potentially angry or upset, potentially aroused, horrible at multitasking human creatures sticking their foot on a pedal to make a several ton weapon rocket forward at 60-70 miles per hour, all just feet or even inches away from a bunch of other idiots in weapons doing the same thing, with everybody HOPING that we all stay inside of the little white lines of paint that we call lanes.

Anybody even a little open-minded and even a little knowledgable about how dangerous automobiles are when humans are at the wheel should be able to put their fears of not being in total control behind them and should be very excited for a self-driving future.

What a load of rubbish you write.
The amount of cars on the road verses accidents is nothing only a very very small percentage. Look at all the cars on freeways and how may accidents you notice.

 

[filmantopia]

"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."

- Henry Ford

Which is why Apple needs to quit this car bologna and go back to improving their horse lineup.
[doublepost=1475090555][/doublepost]

What a load of rubbish you write.
The amount of cars on the road verses accidents is nothing only a very very small percentage. Look at all the cars on freeways and how may accidents you notice.

The amount of people who were killed in automobile accidents in 2015 is 38,000. That's enough people to fill an arena. 1/10th of that amount of people died on 9/11.

 

[macduke]

I would love a self-driving car, but I won't buy a car that doesn't also have manual controls. Often I drive out of necessity. Long, boring drives on the interstate that are ripe for automation. But when I drive past my house, down that winding 55mph road through the country hills, I'm driving for fun. I've got the sunroof open, my music pumping, and I'm free. Don't take that away from me and don't pass laws that make driving illegal. I've always looked forward to when I got older and could afford a nice car to get away with my wife. I recently replaced my junker car from the 90s and I'm finally getting to experience how much fun driving can be!
[doublepost=1475092097][/doublepost]

What a load of rubbish you write.
The amount of cars on the road verses accidents is nothing only a very very small percentage. Look at all the cars on freeways and how may accidents you notice.

Yeah. I think the best way forward is probably full automation + manual controls. My idea of how it will work is that when running in manual mode, your car doesn't suddenly become dumb. All those sensors are still put to work to maintain a level of safety much higher than we have now. If the car senses someone coming over into you, it will know every option it has to avoid the accident in every direction. It can also automatically apply braking, etc. My grandparents just bought a new car that has radar in several locations and it helps keep them in their lane, automatically does cruise control with braking, and prevents them from backing into things. I hope the future allows a mix of manual and automated driving, with manual driving protected by additional safety systems running in the background.

 

[subjonas]

The public is stupid.

I don't think most people truly realize the dangers of having millions of slow-response-time, error-prone, likely distracted, potentially intoxicated, potentially angry or upset, potentially aroused, horrible at multitasking human creatures sticking their foot on a pedal to make a several ton weapon rocket forward at 60-70 miles per hour, all just feet or even inches away from a bunch of other idiots in weapons doing the same thing, with everybody HOPING that we all stay inside of the little white lines of paint that we call lanes.

Anybody even a little open-minded and even a little knowledgable about how dangerous automobiles are when humans are at the wheel should be able to put their fears of not being in total control behind them and should be very excited for a self-driving future.

I'm all for auto-assisted driving. Yes, people are very fallible. That's why I can't entrust my life to their software on an open road where anything can and does happen. I'll gladly take the help, but because of the infinite variables, whoever is ultimately responsible for my life needs to meet the bare minimum requirement of having common sense, whether it's me or another human I deem trustworthy. However, a completely automated cars-on-track system, where cars can only go one way and no one drives manually (a la Minority Report and a la trains, tolleys, rollercoasters, etc), thereby taking away the most probable and therefore dangerous variables, assuming plenty of safeguards are in place, and monitored by a team of highly-trained humans--that could be enough to make me feel reasonably safe.

 

[CarlJ]

I don't think most people truly realize the dangers of having millions of slow-response-time, error-prone, likely distracted, potentially intoxicated, potentially angry or upset, potentially aroused, horrible at multitasking human creatures sticking their foot on a pedal to make a several ton weapon rocket forward at 60-70 miles per hour, all just feet or even inches away from a bunch of other idiots in weapons doing the same thing, with everybody HOPING that we all stay inside of the little white lines of paint that we call lanes.

Sadly, the public has a strong tendency to severely underestimate the actual risk of activities that are familiar to them and severely overestimate the risk of activities that they don't understand. Thus they calmly drive to the airport while worrying that their flight will crash or be hijacked.

(If people evaluated risks rationally we'd have the majority of our electricity coming from nuclear power plants and we'd have no coal or oil-fired plants in operation and constantly screwing up the environment - yes, solar is now reaching usable efficiency levels, but it wasn't anywhere near useful 30-40 years ago, and nuclear was.)
[doublepost=1475092694][/doublepost]The end of the chart says, "Fully Automated (no human)", but then qualifies "no option for human driving". I'm waiting for them to get the pesky humans entirely out of the picture. Let the cars have the roads entirely to themselves!

 

[saudade]

What a load of rubbish you write.
The amount of cars on the road verses accidents is nothing only a very very small percentage. Look at all the cars on freeways and how may accidents you notice.

Only 1 human life worth the change dud
[doublepost=1475094489][/doublepost]

My point proved right here, lol
Didn't understand a single word of this bizarre language you used here!!

What he said? U need glasses ?

 

[theluggage]

The amount of people who were killed in automobile accidents in 2015 is 38,000.

Or, according to this article about Tesla, 1.12 deaths per 100 million miles (wikipedia has 7.1 per billion km, which is in the same ballpark).

Is that 1.12 per 100 million too many? Of course! Would it be good to reduce it? Of course! Will self-driving cars reduce it? Er...

The only data we have is (from the article linked above) Tesla's 0.78 autopilot fatalities per 100 million miles. There are two problems with that: (a) its based on 1 fatality, so its not statistically significant and (b) even if it were, autopilot is mainly used as super-cruise-control on freeways - probably the safest form of driving & tending to long distances, which will skew the fatalities-per-mile downward. So far, though, its the only data point we have and, for what its worth, its in the same ballpark as human drivers.

Bottom line: don't underestimate the difficulty of getting computers to match the safety of human drivers. Oh, and don't expect huge reductions as long as self-driving cars are sharing the road with human drivers. Oh, and to repeat what I said in an earlier post: much of the extra safety will come from autonomous cars driving in goody-two-shoes mode - if the fallible human gets frustrated, it'll be Johnny Cab all over again - another good reason for not rolling out the tech until its OK to leave out the steering wheel.

 

[SBlue1]

Before there is fully automated self driving cars there need to be decisions made. Not technical but ethical.

When there is no chance to avoid a collision and there are only two options which incoming car to hit, who will code what decision my car will make?

- Should my car hit the big expensive SUV because they have the best chance to survive? This is rewarding people with money.
- Should my car hit the one driven by the old lady instead the one where the baby is sitting in the back because the lady is already old? Selection by gender, race, age and so on??
- Should my car hit the weak old junk car because that increases my own chances to survive? Why penalise poor people?
- Should my car hit the one that is driven by one person only instead of hitting the car with 5 people in it? This is penalising car pools.
- Should my car hit the concrete pole instead of the incoming car with a family sitting in there? I would never buy a car that is programmed to give up my life to save other four lives.

Now who is gonna make those decisions? Programmers? The Ford CEO? A political commission? Lawyers? And based on what?

 

[JeffyTheQuik]

Before there is fully automated self driving cars there need to be decisions made. Not technical but ethical.

When there is no chance to avoid a collision and there are only two options which incoming car to hit, who will code what decision my car will make?

- Should my car hit the big expensive SUV because they have the best chance to survive? This is rewarding people with money.
- Should my car hit the one driven by the old lady instead the one where the baby is sitting in the back because the lady is already old? Selection by gender, race, age and so on??
- Should my car hit the weak old junk car because that increases my own chances to survive? Why penalise poor people?
- Should my car hit the one that is driven by one person only instead of hitting the car with 5 people in it? This is penalising car pools.
- Should my car hit the concrete pole instead of the incoming car with a family sitting in there? I would never buy a car that is programmed to give up my life to save other four lives.

Now who is gonna make those decisions? Programmers? The Ford CEO? A political commission? Lawyers? And based on what?

I agree wholeheartedly with what you're questioning, and the values that someone else places on our lives, and it reminded me of a discussion I had with my uncle...
"I don't like flying in airplanes, because I'm not in control, like I am with driving," Said I.
"You really think you're in control when you're in a car?" He responded.
"Yes. I can pull over, I can dodge things, I can avoid accidents. In an airplane, I'm totally at the mercy of the pilot" I said, confidently rebuking him
"That is true," he responded, "but what about all of the other drivers? Do you have control over their fight with their spouse, how much they had to eat, drink, sleep, in the last 24 hours, and there are at least 10,000 people you are on the road with on the way to work. You have control over them too?"
His wisdom made me re-think what I was thinking, and now flying doesn't bother me so much.
And I stay out of the "wolf packs" on the roads. I'm that guy that drives between them.

As for your points, those are all true (the carpool one may need to be reversed to "penalizing one driver cars" - heck, they could be the last one to drive home from the car pool...), and there is one caveat to these points:

It's a risk management situation. If all of those points are true, and it is an emergency case, where the car's software must make a choice, then it has to. However, if the chance of getting into an accident with a random consequence (as we have now) is 1.12:100,000,000 miles driven (as cited by others on this discussion), and it goes to 0.112:100,000,000 (a 10x increase in safety), then these cars are "safer", and the social issues can be mitigated by the reduced risk.

As I write that, I look at how cold that is, and there is something gnawing at me that it isn't right, but it's the facts of the matter. At some point, with self-driving cars, someone has to make that choice, and as long as there is a choice of whether we go out into the world, that risk has to be taken into account.

 

[BvizioN]

What he said? U need glasses ?

No, but if you have an Alien to English translator I will take it.

 

[PortableLover]

A good reason to avoid planes, trains and buses.

Hehe.

 

[jonnysods]

So drive it off-road where you can risk your own life, not everyone else's

Not necessary, my wife is quite happy to drive for a spell while I get a kip.

 

[SBlue1]

I agree wholeheartedly with what you're questioning, and the values that someone else places on our lives, and it reminded me of a discussion I had with my uncle...
"I don't like flying in airplanes, because I'm not in control, like I am with driving," Said I.
"You really think you're in control when you're in a car?" He responded.
"Yes. I can pull over, I can dodge things, I can avoid accidents. In an airplane, I'm totally at the mercy of the pilot" I said, confidently rebuking him
"That is true," he responded, "but what about all of the other drivers? Do you have control over their fight with their spouse, how much they had to eat, drink, sleep, in the last 24 hours, and there are at least 10,000 people you are on the road with on the way to work. You have control over them too?"
His wisdom made me re-think what I was thinking, and now flying doesn't bother me so much.
And I stay out of the "wolf packs" on the roads. I'm that guy that drives between them.

As for your points, those are all true (the carpool one may need to be reversed to "penalizing one driver cars" - heck, they could be the last one to drive home from the car pool...), and there is one caveat to these points:

It's a risk management situation. If all of those points are true, and it is an emergency case, where the car's software must make a choice, then it has to. However, if the chance of getting into an accident with a random consequence (as we have now) is 1.12:100,000,000 miles driven (as cited by others on this discussion), and it goes to 0.112:100,000,000 (a 10x increase in safety), then these cars are "safer", and the social issues can be mitigated by the reduced risk.

As I write that, I look at how cold that is, and there is something gnawing at me that it isn't right, but it's the facts of the matter. At some point, with self-driving cars, someone has to make that choice, and as long as there is a choice of whether we go out into the world, that risk has to be taken into account.

I am aware that driving by myself is more dangerous than being driven by an automated car. However I would like to know before bying a car if it is programmed to drive me off the cliff if it can't avoid a little girl on a bike that has fallen and is sitting there in the middle of the lane.

I know that decisions have to be made. The question is who is gonna decide? By what algorithms? By what values? How can those decisions get justified? Will they be public or secret?

If Ford sets its algorithm to hit a SUV instead of a Vespa scooter and it leaks to the public is Ford gonna sell a single SUV again? And is every SUV owner gonna sue Ford? What if Ford sets a secret key into the code to hit GM cars?

And what if someone finds out he has been hit by purpose because it was set so in the code? People will sue like crazy.

 

[saudade]

No, but if you have an Alien to English translator I will take it.

Excuse me?? So u r a racist now? R u using the alien eufemism cause im different 2 u uh?

 

[BvizioN]

Excuse me?? So u r a racist now? R u using the alien eufemism cause im different 2 u uh?

Yeah, your ignorance is excused. I did not mention any race on my comment. I was referring to a comment that as an English speaker you would agree it wasn't English. I just wanted to know what it means and that's all? Is that really a race issue?