Why Self-Driving Cars Are Still a Long Way Down the Road 352
moon_unit2 writes "Technology Review has a piece on the reality behind all the hype surrounding self-driving, or driverless, cars. From the article: 'Vehicle automation is being developed at a blistering pace, and it should make driving safer, more fuel-efficient, and less tiring. But despite such progress and the attention surrounding Google's "self-driving" cars, full autonomy remains a distant destination. A truly autonomous car, one capable of dealing with any real-world situation, would require much smarter artificial intelligence than Google or anyone else has developed. The problem is that until the moment our cars can completely take over, we will need automotive technologies to strike a tricky balance: they will have to extend our abilities without doing too much for the driver.'"
What's wrong with Google cars (Score:2, Interesting)
[Google] says its cars have traveled more than 300,000 miles without a single accident while under computer control. Last year it produced a video in which a blind man takes a trip behind the wheel of one of these cars, stopping at a Taco Bell and a dry cleaner.
Impressive and touching as this demonstration is, it is also deceptive. Google’s cars follow a route that has already been driven at least once by a human, and a driver always sits behind the wheel, or in the passenger seat, in case of mishap. This isn’t purely to reassure pedestrians and other motorists. No system can yet match a human driver’s ability to respond to the unexpected, and sudden failure could be catastrophic at high speed.
Re:Don't have to be perfect, just better (Score:4, Interesting)
This is why we get so incensed about drunk drivers that kill others. A person doing everything right is still dead because of the actions of another. But if you drive under that railroad train by yourself, people regard it as "your own damn fault".
Ah but see here, the driverless cars have full 360 degree vision, and they already stop for trolleys and erroneous pedestrians crossing the road illegally. They do so without honking and swearing at the git too. So, as you say, if your ignore the copious warnings the driverless car's self diagnostic gives you that its optics are fucked, and manage to override the fail-safe then wind up under a train, they yes, people will still regard it as "your own damn fault". Not only that, but YOUR insurance is paying to clean up the mess.
Re:Don't have to be perfect, just better (Score:5, Interesting)
Having self driving cars would eliminate the "drunk driving" cause of traffic fatalities, as well as all of the "distracted driving" fatalities as well. That is, according to your own numbers, 47% of all driving fatalities.
Also, according to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] The speed that someone was driving was listed as the cause for 5% of fatal crashes, and "driving to fast for the road conditions" was listed as another 11% of fatal crashes. A self driving car would also, probably eliminate almost all of these crashes...so there is another 16% of all fatal crashes.
In fact, there was a study done in 1985 [wikipedia.org] that concluded that the human factor was SOLELY responsible for 57% of all fatal car crashes. It also found that the human factor was entirely or partly responsible for 93% of all fatal crashes...these are the situations where there may have been bad road conditions or other outside factors, but the driver didn't react in the best way to avoid an accident. These numbers are almost 20 years old, but they are probably still representative of the current stats.
A self driving car should eliminate nearly all of the 57% of crashes where the human factor contributed solely. It should also eliminate a healthy portion of the remaining 36% of fatal crashes where the human factor was a contributor as the car can be programmed to respond in the best possible way to a huge number of road conditions.
Based on these numbers, I believe it is reasonable to say that self driving cars should eliminate about 75% of all fatal crashes. Technology and machinery is also, when compared to the human factor, extremely reliable...particularly when it is designed correctly. I have no problems saying that self-driving cars will eliminate 75-90% of all fatal crashes.
I am also certain that there will be some outlier situations where, if the driver had been in control the entire time, that a fatal accident would have been avoided...The technology failed and the car drove over a cliff, or the signal sent to cars about a railroad crossing didn't activate, etc, etc... but those incidents would be offset by a HUGE margin with the number of incidents that the self driving cars prevented. These same arguments were made against seat belts! There have probably been several examples where someone who was wearing there seat belt drove in to a lake and drowned because they couldn't get free of the car because of the seatbelt. But it is proven that seat belts save FAR many more lives than they cost.
Compare to airlines (Score:3, Interesting)
Airlines are liable for around $175000 for each passenger death, set by IATA. A similar figure could and should be set by law for autonomous vehichles. So you do the math and find that per car, with a reasonably safe driving system, that's no big deal, whether it's covered by your car insurance or the manufacturer's liability.