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Poll & Prediction: Autonomous Car Equipment at 5k by 2019


Mallette

Autonomous Vehicles: Good or Bad  

49 members have voted

  1. 1. Are autonomous vehicles a good witch, or a bad witch?

    • Good
      20
    • Bad
      28


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6 hours ago, Mallette said:

May I remind you Gilbert that these cars already have safer records than human drivers. Two deaths, both people that ignored the rules. Millions ignore the rules against DUI every year and the slaughter is horrendous.

 

Dave

 

Considering the ratio between the two, is there anyone who's surprised? When I'm unable to drive or get tired of driving, I'll hire a chauffeur like Steve McQueen.

 

 

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21 minutes ago, Mallette said:

Nobody says they can do no wrong. But it is definitely the occupant's fault if they ignore warnings. Who else can be blamed? 

If they were in a non AV car I'm certain they'd have been paying more attention to their surroundings.   No question. 

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1 minute ago, CECAA850 said:

If they were in a non AV car I'm certain they'd have been paying more attention to their surroundings.   No question. 

Yes, there is a question. Anyone so stupid as to ignore warnings that amount to "Bridge Out" are on their own. I believe in this tech...but I'll not be one of those fatalities as I am also a skeptic. In my case and at my age, I'll likely never nap under AV control even when the numbers are overwhelming. But my son will and will be safe.

 

Dave

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1 hour ago, Mallette said:

Questionable. Those who ignore warnings don't appear to be candidates for survival, IMHO. I've not heard of any lawsuits being filed in those cases. 

 

Between Google cars, which have been around for years now, and others, there are several million miles of road tests available and the data suggests the tech is very reliable already. The most important parts, like collision avoidance braking, are in untold numbers of cars right now and the data suggests they are already having a positive effect on accidents. 

 

This whole thing is science, and science evolves more rapidly every day and with every bit of data. You don't have to be under autonomous control to have automated assistance, and from that assistance comes critical data that only has to be applied once. 

 

Dave

 

Maybe I should file one.  I was driving my daughters Subaru Outback in med. traffic a few months ago. The road was narrowing (due to construction) from 3, to 2, to 1 lane. While I was attempting to move the left lane the fk'ing Subaru braked on me, causing the guy behind me to slam on his brakes, and the guy behind him hit his rear bumper. Traffic was steadily flowing, and the sensor in my front bumper thought I was moving too fast (about 15 mph) for the traffic ahead. Said traffic was some kid sneaking his Toyota between the road construction barrels so he could go to the shopping center (best buy, and other stores).  The clearance was tight between our vehicles, I'm guessing 18 to 24 inches,  but I knew I could make it without skipping a beat..... but the Subaru thought otherwise, and braked. 

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5 minutes ago, Gilbert said:

causing the guy behind me to slam on his brakes, and the guy behind him hit his rear bumper.

I'll put this to our lawyers. To my knowledge, any rear ender is the fault of the person behind for being too close. Odds are, if they had the same tools you did, all would have been fine. I cannot judge your actions as I was not there, but I suspect the computer had the best judgment. They don't guess or bet. 

 

Dave

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On ‎5‎/‎22‎/‎2018 at 7:10 PM, Gilbert said:

 

Maybe I should file one.  I was driving my daughters Subaru Outback in med. traffic a few months ago. The road was narrowing (due to construction) from 3, to 2, to 1 lane. While I was attempting to move the left lane the fk'ing Subaru braked on me, causing the guy behind me to slam on his brakes, and the guy behind him hit his rear bumper. Traffic was steadily flowing, and the sensor in my front bumper thought I was moving too fast (about 15 mph) for the traffic ahead. Said traffic was some kid sneaking his Toyota between the road construction barrels so he could go to the shopping center (best buy, and other stores).  The clearance was tight between our vehicles, I'm guessing 18 to 24 inches,  but I knew I could make it without skipping a beat..... but the Subaru thought otherwise, and braked. 

 

This is exactly the sort of thing one can expect when immature technology is released to the public without sufficient testing. All so that a company can say, "I'm first to do this".👎

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5 hours ago, Don Richard said:

This is exactly the sort of thing one can expect when immature technology is released to the public without sufficient testing

Story of the airlines illustrates your point. It takes millions and millions of miles to prove airline travel is safe with only a tiny number of things that have not yet been experienced and dealt with remaining. As you say, it's precisely what one can expect and also what must happen to provide the data and experience to have sufficient testing.  

When I was a kid, every airport had vending machines for flight insurance. Crashes were frequent enough never to be a big surprise. Today, few would put even a quarter into such a machine even for a million dollar policy. 

 

Dave

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On 5/22/2018 at 7:14 PM, Mallette said:

I suspect the computer had the best judgment. They don't guess or bet. 

You "suspect" because you want to believe in a fantasy.

 

The guessing/betting was happening with the brain dead engineer that designed the system. It's all built on false principals / false assumptions.

 

All this talk about things in the name of safety, and yet you believe in crap like airbags and automatic braking, yada yada yada.....and yet today we already have real solutions to the safety problem that don't require any of these finicky gadgets. But far be it for the luddites to entertain real safety.....they're too busy chasing a fantasy.

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On 5/26/2018 at 9:34 AM, Don Richard said:

This is exactly the sort of thing one can expect when immature technology is released to the public without sufficient testing. All so that a company can say, "I'm first to do this".👎

Exactly - profits at the expense of life. That reasoning was supposed to have died off after the industrial revolution, but apparently it's okay today if you fabricate a rockstar persona around the bad ideas.

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On 5/22/2018 at 7:10 PM, Gilbert said:

 

Maybe I should file one.  I was driving my daughters Subaru Outback in med. traffic a few months ago. The road was narrowing (due to construction) from 3, to 2, to 1 lane. While I was attempting to move the left lane the fk'ing Subaru braked on me, causing the guy behind me to slam on his brakes, and the guy behind him hit his rear bumper. Traffic was steadily flowing, and the sensor in my front bumper thought I was moving too fast (about 15 mph) for the traffic ahead. Said traffic was some kid sneaking his Toyota between the road construction barrels so he could go to the shopping center (best buy, and other stores).  The clearance was tight between our vehicles, I'm guessing 18 to 24 inches,  but I knew I could make it without skipping a beat..... but the Subaru thought otherwise, and braked. 

The annoying part about your scenario is that the statistics won't capture events like this because you weren't involved in the accident. That brain dead automatic braking system that will gloat about prevented fender benders won't accurately depict the fender benders it caused.

 

I can't even begin to count the number of times an automatic braking system would have caused me an accident. The only people that believe in such systems are those that don't understand how to control a vehicle (and many of them aren't even aware that they don't understand).

 

Maybe we should start making guns that have automatic aim and trigger pulling ability. This way the users of the gun don't have any responsibility to learn how to control their gun, and we can solve all violence that way!

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19 minutes ago, DrWho said:

Exactly - profits at the expense of life.

Precisely the airline analogy. Millions and millions in lawsuits over half a century before they were safe. I do not know why some of you think automobiles are different somehow. At least automated tech as well as autonomous tech is FAR superior to the early aircraft and much, much safer.

 

And you'd need to explain to me how you get a software to 100% reliable without real world testing on a massive scale. If that had been the rule with aircraft, we would have no airlines. Perhaps you forget the 19th century railroads and steamboats, which took a terrible toll on lives until the development of boiler safeguards, airbrakes, and such late in the century. 

 

Regardless of feelings, my take on this is the prevailing attitude and that expressed here does not appear to be at all realistic. 

 

Dave

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On 5/29/2018 at 11:44 AM, Mallette said:

And you'd need to explain to me how you get a software to 100% reliable without real world testing on a massive scale.

Happens more often than you'd think, although that's not the point I'm trying to make.

 

My emphasis is that it is possible to differentiate between the known and unknown:

There are problems known about ahead of time

Or there are problems due to ignorance (unanticipated variables).

 

I take great issue when known problems are ignored - especially when human life is involved. And that is precisely what is happening here.

 

There is also due diligence in trying to uncover as many unanticipated variables as possible, but that's detracting from my point. It's one thing to forgive someone of honest ignorance, but it's totally different to forgive someone of "willful blindness" or "cognizant recklessness".

 

If someone like myself, with no official involvement with autonomy, is able to be informed well enough of the dangers of Class III autonomy, then how is it that Tesla and Uber are completely unaware? If they aren't reading this research, then they're not doing their due diligence to understand their design well enough....which is immoral. And if they are doing this research, then they're completely ignoring it, which is also immoral.

 

Class III autonomy isn't a stepping stone. We don't need cars running around killing people to prove what we already know before a single car hits the road.

 

If the airline industry engaged in the same willful blindness, then that was an unnecessary cost and absolutely should not be cited as an example of how we should expect these things to evolve.

 

Give me one good reason why we shouldn't set the bar for our expectations higher?

 

It has been my experience that when we set the design bar higher, that designs actually get completed faster.....and better. And then cost reductions follow very quickly because the designs are actually fully understood. Faster, better, cheaper....this has been my reputation for the last 10 years of official engineering, and has also been the reputation of those smarter engineers that I've been trying to learn from. Despite all the naysayers and low bar setters and lazy engineers, ignorant managers, etc.... There is a design philosophy better than this 'million of miles' nonsense that you're trying to tout.

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I disagree, Mike.  I see no evidence of reckless disregard of known risks.  Taking a known risk is not always reckless.  That's why I drive every day without being reckless.

 

There is a known risk that you could stroke-out while driving down a busy road and kill a bunch of people... yet, you still get behind the wheel.  That's not immoral according to my understanding of commonly-accepted values.

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I haven't read every page of this discussion, so this may have been covered, but has anyone mentioned Volvo's aim to have zero fatalities in their cars within a very few years?  When someone commented to a Volvo engineer that that seemed to be a very ambitious goal, and asked him how they arrived at that number, the engineer replied, "Zero is the only acceptable number."

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One might also point out that "reckless disregard" on the part of an OEM usually results in massive class action lawsuits. When a table saw OEM states one should never operate the saw without a pusher and someone loses a finger, that is not reckless disregard.

 

Dave

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1 hour ago, Mallette said:

When a table saw OEM states one should never operate the saw without a pusher and someone loses a finger, that is not reckless disregard.

 

Dave

Maybe not in those terms.  However, when it comes to product liability law, it gets a bit nuanced sometimes.  For example, an OEM can be liable for injuries caused by foreseeable misuse.  https://www.brienrochelaw.com/attorney-practice/product-liability/product-misuse/

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Seems that would cover a table saw. Nearly lost a finger myself doing something I'd never dreamed would get my fingers close to the sawblade. However, after the fact, I see that it was foreseeable misuse. Fact is, I did not follow instructions written in red bold. Now I do! 

Dave

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