Self-Driving Cars In California: 4 Out of 48 Have Accidents, None Their Fault 408
An anonymous reader writes: The Associated Press reports that 48 self-driving cars have been navigating the roads of California since the state began issuing permits last year. Of those, only four have been in accidents, and none of the accidents were the fault of the autonomous driving technology. Seven different companies have tested autonomous cars on California's roads, but Google, which is responsible for almost half of them, was involved in three of the four accidents — the other one happened to a car from Delphi Automotive. All four of the accidents happened at speeds of under 10 mph, and human drivers were in control during two of them. The Delphi accident happened when another car broadsided it while its human driver was waiting to make a left turn.
The AP pieced together its report from the DMV and people who saw the accident reports. But critics note that there aren't direct channels to find this information. Since one of the chief selling points of autonomous cars is their relative safety over cars piloted by humans, the lack of official transparency is troubling. "Google, which has 23 Lexus SUVs, would not discuss its three accidents in detail." Instead, the company affirmed its cars' accidents were "a handful of minor fender-benders, light damage, no injuries, so far caused by human error and inattention."
The AP pieced together its report from the DMV and people who saw the accident reports. But critics note that there aren't direct channels to find this information. Since one of the chief selling points of autonomous cars is their relative safety over cars piloted by humans, the lack of official transparency is troubling. "Google, which has 23 Lexus SUVs, would not discuss its three accidents in detail." Instead, the company affirmed its cars' accidents were "a handful of minor fender-benders, light damage, no injuries, so far caused by human error and inattention."
Not yet statistically significant (Score:5, Insightful)
I expect the number haven't been publicized, because they are still to limited to have any significance, and also because the cars have been running under fairly tightly controlled conditions.
When there are a few hundred cars, running in all kinds of weather and traffic conditions, with millions of miles - if the numbers are still good, you can bet that they will be plastered all over the internet
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Re:Not yet statistically significant (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, the data set is way to small to draw any conclusions,
Not necessarily. Pick a pool of 48 cars at random and compare the accident rates. You also have to compare them by the accident rate per hour behind the wheel.
This gets at the whole idea that self-driving cars have to meet some lofty standard of perfection to become the optimum choice. To replace people behind the wheel self-driving cars only need to be +1 better than human drivers.
Self driving cars can't drive in the rain. Oh, really? Take a drive around Seattle in the rain, you'll discover human drivers suck in the rain, too. And that's in the rain capitol of the world where you'd expect people to be used to driving in the rain and they still suck (I lived there for 10 years so don't bother trying to deny it).
The biggest obstacle to self-driving cars isn't rain or snow, it's something called Illusory Superiority. The vanity of humans who think they're better drivers than they really are.
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There's also: "Since one of the chief selling points of autonomous cars is their relative safety over cars piloted by humans, the lack of official transparency is troubling."
No it is NOT a selling point, because NO ONE is selling these cars yet. It is EXPECTED to be a selling point once development is complete - WHICH IT IS NOT.
That said, it would be interesting to hear the details of Google's two autonomous accidents.
Also, the headline is misleading... While a car may be capable of self-driving, if a hum
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. While a car may be capable of self-driving, if a human is in control when an accident occurs, then the car was not a self-driving one as far as the accident goes.
Well it is interesting in so far as knowing when the companies think they need to have human operators still. Not really so much the crash, just the portion of the time that is human versus autonomous.
Re:Not yet statistically significant (Score:4, Interesting)
No it is NOT a selling point, because NO ONE is selling these cars yet.
You may not be able to buy them yet, but they're certainly already selling you on the concept of it.
The fact that we're talking about it here demonstrates that the marketing department for these cars is already in full swing.
Re:Not yet statistically significant (Score:5, Funny)
They say inattentiveness was the problem. I expect the drivers were wearing Google Glass at the time.
Fault may not be the right measure. (Score:5, Funny)
One can be "in the right" and still not have done the right thing. For example, if the light is green I'm in the right not to slow down for the intersection. But that doesn't mean I shouldn't take precautions to check if someone is coming the other way. If I had I might have avoided the accident that was not assigned to my "fault".
On the other hand it's also possible that google cars will be better drivers than the average person. One might hope they use different CPUs for the texting and the driving.
Re:Fault may not be the right measure. (Score:5, Insightful)
One can be "in the right" and still not have done the right thing.
Pretty much what I was thinking. Back when the Earth was a molten mass and I was taking Driver Education in high school, there was a lot of emphasis on "defensive driving"; in other words, expect the other guy to do the wrong thing, and be ready for it. When you have a mix of self-driving and human-operated cars on the road, the self-driving ones better have some extremely conservative defensive driving skills.
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Depending on where you are, even if you had the green, you can be assigned partial fault if you hit the idiot running the red (turning right on red, while legal, is technically ru
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I expect the number haven't been publicized, because they are still to limited to have any significance, and also because the cars have been running under fairly tightly controlled conditions.
So, under controlled conditions, they were still involved in accidents. I wonder what's going to happen when they let them loose. You know, under normal conditions.
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I suspect that "none are at fault" is probably true. But what is often left unsaid, the cars, while being legal, were doing something unexpected.
My Great Aunt, had four car accidents in two years. None were her fault, yet they all kind of were. She was doing things in unexpected ways, that were completely legal, but not ordinary. People expect certain patterns, and when someone is outside of those patterns, it causes accidents. Not the fault, but rather the cause.
Compares well (Score:5, Funny)
4 Out of 48 Have Accidents, None Their Fault
I think that compares well to the average Californian.
Re: Compares well (Score:2, Funny)
California is a "no fault" state -- so every accident is always nobody's fault.
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No-fault is about taking money away from lawyers, who used to litigate each and every auto accident as a lawsuit in court before the insurers would pay. Eventually the insurers decided that they spent more on lawyers than accident payments, and they had no reason to do so.
If you want to go back to the way things were, you are welcome to spend lots of time and money in court for trivial things, and see how you like it. I will provide you with expert witness testimony for $7.50/minute plus expenses. The lawye
Very high accident rates (Score:2)
Or is it normal that one out of twelve cars that is involved in an accident each year? And by calling it "only" the submitter suggests that the regular accident rate is much higher than that.
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To be fair, 2 of the accidents happened while under human control. That suggests that yes, the computers are at least as good as the humans... That said, the sample size is tiny, and critical info like miles driven is missing, so who knows.
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It also means that the cars aren't driving autonomously at all times.
To me this implies that there simply isn't any comparable data yet.
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To be fair, 2 of the accidents happened while under human control. That suggests that yes, the computers are at least as good as the humans... That said, the sample size is tiny, and critical info like miles driven is missing, so who knows.
And maybe the humans are required to take over in crowded parking lots and other places where these kind of fender benders take place.
So maybe this is telling us that Google should consider hiring older, more experienced drivers for these cars......
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You are not considering the mileage driven. These cars are on the road for 100k miles + a year, so consider that 4 out of 720 cars were in an accident.
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You are not considering the mileage driven. These cars are on the road for 100k miles + a year, so consider that 4 out of 720 cars were in an accident.
I don't find these stats promising.
Being from a family of 50k miles per year per driver, I can tell you that we all take vehicle safety highly seriously. We do not get into accidents, we do not get broadsided or hit pedestrians or bicyclists or even stop signs.
The two incidents I can recall in over 10 years are once my uncle got hit from behind at a full stop at a red light, and the other time some loony attacked my mother's van with a baseball bat while she was driving down a street in broad daylight. Bo
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You are not considering the speed they're going at and which roads they are going on. It's easy to avoid accidents when going sub-25 speeds on a predefines subset of roads. Whether you're human or not.
Until we see some data on how autonomous cars do on all kinds of roads and driving speeds and conditions, I don't think we should extol their safety. Going 55 mph over a hilltop on a country road, or avoiding a deer is a bit different. Or a busy bumper-to-bumper city street where no-one will let you over
Non-Paywalled Link (Score:5, Informative)
Perhaps you would like to read the story somewhere other than the NYT [seattletimes.com] because paywalling is stupid and offensive, even if you know how to bypass it. Thanks, Seattle Times [seattletimes.com], for just showing me the flipping article.
Here's a news flash: You can get the same AP newswire article anywhere. Yet people still link the NYT. That's poor internet etiquette given that they paywall.
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Yes, paywalling is stupid and offensive, ads are also stupid and offensive. Everyone should give me content for free because gimme!
I give content away for free because I want to. Why should I pay for content?
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If you can legally get content for free, you'd be stupid to pay.
If you can't, you'd be a asshole to take it for free anyway.
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I give content away for free because I want to.
Irrelevant to the discussion, but congratulations! Would you like a medal?
Why should I pay for content?
In this particular case, I agree with you that there's no point in linking to a paywalled site when the story is available elsewhere for free.
But to answer your question in general...
Because good quality content often takes resources (including money) to create or assemble. I don't pay for the NYT because I frankly find enough interesting sources online and my interests are broad enough that I can do without. But I have friends
Editorializing... (Score:3, Insightful)
'48 self-driving cars have been navigating the roads... Of those, only four have been in accidents'
I know that the bigger point is that zero (known) incidents can be traced to the software making a 'mistake' (though even if the other driver is 'at fault', hard to say if a human would have done better at avoidance). The thing that strikes me though is the editorial bias here. *Only* 4 out of 48.. that's nearly 10%. That's far far above the percentage for the general population. It's perfectly likely that is simply a fluke of the small sample size, but implying that 4 out of 48 is a very promising rate of incident is pretty silly.
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Everything depends on where you are. There are places, even in the U.S., where incident rates are a couple times over the national average.
Re:Editorializing... (Score:4, Informative)
The fact that of the 4 accidents that happened, none of them were the car's fault is more significant than the 10% rat.
When any specific humans has 4 accident driving cars, on average exactly 50% of them were caused by that specific human. If I drove long enough to have 4 accidents and none of them were my fault that would be significant evidence that I am a far superior driver than the average human
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I mostly agree. The question I have where the accidents that the car was in control over easily avoidable by a human but not by a program. The end result may be more fender benders but fewer lives lost. Still a good trade off.
In the end the sample is too small to jump for joy or shriek in horror.
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You missed a rather significant point in the article. Two of those accidents happened when a human WAS in control of the car (which was how they know it wasn't the car's fault), so NO, a human would not have done better at avoidance. The fact that of the 4 accidents that happened, none of them were the car's fault is more significant than the 10% rat.
I don't see how two of them should be meaningfully counted under any circumstances. They could just have it drive itself out of the parking lot and let a human do the rest, the autonomous system would never be at fault. If the car's not driving, it's just a plain old ordinary human-operated car. You don't count the miles, you don't count the accidents.
When any specific humans has 4 accident driving cars, on average exactly 50% of them were caused by that specific human.
Actually only about 90% of accidents are attributed to driver error, the rest is mechanical failure like a tire blowing out or environmental like a tree falli
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You missed a rather significant point in the article. Two of those accidents happened when a human WAS in control of the car (which was how they know it wasn't the car's fault)
Yes, but what precisely do they mean by "a human was in control"? Do they mean the human was actually driving at that point normally? Or do they mean that some sort of situation occurred while the AI was driving, the human driver took over rather quickly to resolve the situation (either because the AI alerted the human, the human knew he/she needed to take over in such a situation, or the human overrode the AI because of an impending problem), and the human driver wasn't able to correct things before an a
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When you have test cars that are being tested as much as possible and on the road as much as possible, the average incident rate will be several times higher than the rate of an average car that sits in the driveway most of the day.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
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Or the car refuses to leave the driveway because it detects an unaccompanied minor. Or it drives straight to the police. Or it phones the police when it becomes stranded.
I'm pretty sure that they're accounting for human stupidity. You pretty much have to these days. ...'
'Car cannot drive, trunk is open'
'Car cannot drive, human sticking out of window'
'Car cannot drive,
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I used to walk to school when I was a kid. What is sadder, not allowing your kids to walk to school or fearing not being able to stick them in a car and send them a mile or two.
Not at fault, but was it avoidable? (Score:2)
magenta line (Score:4, Insightful)
"a handful of minor fender-benders, light damage, no injuries, so far caused by human error and inattention"
In case any of those were done by human co-drivers in automated vehicles, this does not exonerate the automation from some share of responsibility. For example, if the presence or habitual use of the automation makes it more likely for the co-driver to become inattentive, it's partly to blame.
Maybe not technically their fault... (Score:2)
But would a human driver have been able to avoid the accident? On more than one occasion I've escaped a fender bender that would not have been my fault.
Avoidable? (Score:3)
The autonomous may not have been at fault, but one wonders whether some of the accidents would have been avoidable by a fleshy driver.
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The autonomous may not have been at fault, but one wonders whether some of the accidents would have been avoidable by a fleshy driver.
In theory or as in a representative sample of the driving population? I'm guessing it's pretty hard to get a good answer to what we would do. At any rate, my prediction is that we'd do better with one less fleshy driver instead of one more.
Simple conclusion (Score:5, Funny)
Asian drivers (Score:3, Funny)
American components, Russian components, they're all made in Taiwan.
Eye contact (Score:2, Interesting)
How does one make eye contact with an autonomous vehicle at an intersection, or when merging lanes? Human drivers will have to learn a separate protocol.
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AI is not predictable to humans (Score:3, Interesting)
For example, huge puddle on the road, most humans would unwisely drive through it. What would AI do? No idea, and I wouldn't want to be driving behind it when that happens. What about a hobo at the end of the offramp begging for change? Would AI freak out about pedestrian on the road? No idea, and I wouldn't want to be driving behind it to see what happens.
Re:AI is not predictable to humans (Score:4, Insightful)
Not at fault vs a human couldn't have avoided (Score:2)
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Computers are still too stupid.
One of the analogies I've seen at a speech on the subject went something like, "A computer can detect an object in the roadway, but it can't yet tell if it's a paper bag that can be safely run over or a rock that's apt to damage the car."
This was a few years ago, so I don't know if it's still true or not, but it does demonstrate the programming challenge in processing something exceedingly simple that even the most inexperienced human driver would be able.
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What if it's a crumpled paper bag? The question then becomes "is this a paper rock or a rock rock?"
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And what's with scissors?
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If it's scissors then the car will come to a stop because of the 4th law of robotics: "Don't run with scissors".
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Or even harder, the difference between a running child and a running dog. While I'd much prefer not to hit either, the value judgement leans only one way.
Another sticking point: A traffic cop in the street directing traffic, vs some dude walking across the street.
do nee
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How about choosing whether to run over a toddler or a baby?
You really can't blame cars for not being able to make value judgements like that as no sane human could.
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And please describe how a 'baby' is running across the street? Yeah, yeah...runaway stroller, slightly older brother chasing after it.
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Another sticking point: A traffic cop in the street directing traffic,
Are these cars able to deal with traffic cops? I kinda doubt it.
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But see the thing is that it doesn't have to be perfect (though people have the unreasonable expectation that it should be.)
Autonomous cars just have to be safer than people driving cars... which is a pretty low standard.
And it's not like people can't take over driving the car for edge cases. They're supposed to be paying attention the whole time they're driving anyway (even though humans suck at focused attention.)
Planes have autopilot but pilots are still responsible for staying in the cockpit and monitor
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Paper bags being full of nails is not a normal thing and so is a risk that can be ignored.
Bags, cardboard boxes etc move differently in the wind depending on the weight of their contents, a human can judge the weight of an object by how it gets pushed by wind, a computer can't necessarily do that.
What about a road covered in leaves, should the car just stop and wait for the leaves to go away? And slight flooding?
It's a shame that these autonomous car systems are so propriety and that companies are keeping q
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You may consider it a lot, but when you consider NONE were the fault of the driver or the car itself then it is nothing at all. We cannot always get out of the way of a driver who is not paying attention. Why do you seem to be blaming the autonomous cars and not the people who caused those accidents?
Re:Not convinced (Score:5, Funny)
It's still better than letting computers drive. I've heard the damn things even sleep on the job. I've also heard they have a dog watching while they're asleep but that doesn't make any sense.
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You may consider it a lot, but when you consider NONE were the fault of the driver or the car itself then it is nothing at all. We cannot always get out of the way of a driver who is not paying attention. Why do you seem to be blaming the autonomous cars and not the people who caused those accidents?
People in cars do stupid things all day long. Driving is more than going from point A to point B. The autonomous cars so far have gotten sufficiently intelligent to not crash into things on their way from point A to point B. However, they have not yet got to the point of avoiding the stupid idiots on the road. 4 out of 48 to me represents the number of accidents that the autonomous system failed to avoid. The average human driver can expect an accident once every 17.9 years, so basically about 2.68 out of
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However, they have not yet got to the point of avoiding the stupid idiots on the road. 4 out of 48 to me represents the number of accidents that the autonomous system failed to avoid.
Exactly. And this is while going under 10 mph.
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The giveaway with autonomous cars is the need for centimeter precision in their navigation maps.
So, you're making shit up. At least we know who you're paid by.
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So, you're generalizing from one system to all self-driving cars?
That some of those cars (Google) rely more on external maps than others (BMW iirc, or whatever was driving at the last DARPA-Challange) isn't even imaginable?
Of course none of them is driving blindly without checking that their path isn't obstructed by pedestrians or other cars, but I heard too that the Google car is the most advanced system, but also the one depending most on exact maps for speed limits, traffic lights and so on.
Re:that's fine (Score:4, Insightful)
Self-driving cars need to be banned.
Why - it wasn't their fault?
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Honestly, you can say it wasn't their fault, but nearly 10% of them in 6 months have been involved in accidents. Even if it wasn't the fault of the technology itself, why is the accident rate so high?
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You realise that humans were driving them in 50% of the 4 cases, right?
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Honestly, you can say it wasn't their fault, but nearly 10% of them in 6 months have been involved in accidents. Even if it wasn't the fault of the technology itself, why is the accident rate so high?
Because they are constantly on the road, for testing and data collection. I would imagine that they drove more in these 6 months than many cars do in 6 years.
Re:that's fine (Score:5, Insightful)
The major part of safely driving is anticipating another driver breaking the law. Doesn't look like computers can do that yet.
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That's a good start, but there's a lot more to it than that. An experienced driver can tell when a car in the next lane wants over (even though it isn't bothering to signal), and can even guage its desperation based on how bad the "body" language is getting, and proximity to things like intersections, exits, etc. An experienced driver knows when the driver behind them in traffic is an accident waiting to happen (is that dude reading a copy of Ivanhoe or something?), and get into another lane. An experienced
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Way to not demonstrate any understanding of that axiom. If self-driving cars are highly correlated with an increased number of accidents, is that not something to be concerned about?
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I'm not trying to say that's huge, but that sample size of 48 is far too small to draw conclusions from statistics that contain millions of samples. The error bars are massive.
It *IS* their fault (Score:2, Insightful)
From the story:
2 out of 48 have crashed by computer.
1 out of 48 have crashed with human driver.
1 out of 48 had someone crash into them at a junction
Denial doesn't fix bugs here.
It's likely they just miss a lot of the subtlety of driving, the "I think person X will do Y so I'm going to adjust my driving by Z" that goes on in peoples minds.
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Re:that's fine (Score:4, Insightful)
Liability is nothing new and ToS cannot waive rights that are not waive able.....
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They've managed it with software on your devices, what makes your car different than any other device?
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Re:that's fine (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually theres a historical precedent for legislation concerning semi autonomous non human traffic. Horses.
It's not entirely as ridiculous an analogy as it initially sounds.
No fault insurance, done (Score:4, Interesting)
This is why "no fault" insurance was invented. Even with people, the liability in traffic accidents is often complex. Require no-fault insurance, you insurance is responsible for you, mine is responsible for me, and you are basically done - at least as far as car insurance is concerned.
What may be left is civil liability. If a manufacturer produces a genuinely faulty product, they can be sued in a completely separate action. The laws are already in place for that. The problem I see is the exact opposite of what you are worried about: People will sue, regardless of the quality of the product. Because bad things aren't supposed to happen, and if they do, someone must be to blame.
So someone without insurance t-bones my autonomous car, and I want compensated. The other driver is broke, so I sue my car manufacturer. Stupid, but entirely possible under US law. Loser pays would be the simplest solution: if you file a stupid lawsuit, you'll be paying the other side's legal costs. In the case of class action suits, the attorneys for the class should be liable for the loser's legal costs if they lose.
Before any company brings autonomous cars to market, the US tort system has got to be fixed.
Re:that's fine (Score:5, Insightful)
Because someone being blamable for accidents is much more important than having fewer accidents in the first place, right?
Re:that's fine (Score:5, Interesting)
Accident rate in general: 4-5%
Accident rate so far with only 48 vehicles: 8-9%
Without details I'm not going to accept "someone else's" fault as fact.
Re:that's fine (Score:5, Informative)
Accident rate in general: 4-5% Accident rate so far with only 48 vehicles: 8-9%
Ah, no, the meaningful rate is accidents per miles driven, not per car. These cars are driven constantly (for testing, data collection, etc), surely way more that twice the average.
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I believe the summary said that that humans were in control of the cars during at least 2 of the 4 incidents. You can't blame the self-driving car if the self-driving feature is disabled and the human takes over. That would be like blaming Google Maps for bad directions if you turn it off, take a left turn when Google had said to turn right, and wind up lost.
With a 2 out of 48 accident rate, that's 4%. Of course, that's a very small sample size. It would be interesting to see how the accident rate chang
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16 is the first statistically significant sample size.
Statistics do not work that way! Goodnight!
Re:that's fine (Score:5, Insightful)
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if someone is shooting at car, how does the car react?
As long as it's driveable, it should keep on driving - precisely the opposite of what most people would do. So yeah, I'd go with autonomous any day in such a situation - I can duck and cover and don't have to pay attention to the road.
what does it do at four-way stop if it was the second car there but the human in the first car is waving it on?
I hate these people, just so you know.
has it been tested on drivethru fastfood?
Has your laptop been tested to work under water? I mean, shit, I like to sit and read in the bathtub, it'd be nice if I could, well, rest it on my lap, with the bottom half submerged you know. If I'm not coming across clear: the goal of a
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what does it do at four-way stop if it was the second car there but the human in the first car is waving it on?
I hate these people, just so you know.
Same here. And by the time everyone is done waving at each other, everyone could have had their lawful turn.
I usually just ignore those people and wait my turn. It's a bit anti-social, but I not going to do that anymore than I will drive past the speed limit just because someone is tailgating me.
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if someone is shooting at car, how does the car react?
As long as it's driveable, it should keep on driving - precisely the opposite of what most people would do.
Really? I'm pretty sure, if somebody started shooting at my car, it would be pedal to the metal until I was sure they were a long way behind me.
Re:questions (Score:4, Insightful)
Not important. In the future, you'll order food online and a drone will deliver it to your moving car. After all, if you're not driving you'll be able to eat while you're in the car.
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what does it do at four-way stop if it was the second car there but the human in the first car is waving it on?
has it been tested on drivethru fastfood?
if someone is shooting at car, how does the car react?
does it get up to speed on onramps or does it merge into highway traffic going 45mph?
Humans drive the car in the city. Basically the autonomous cars have proven they can take over the easy highway driving and humans will still have to do all of the pain in the butt inner city driving.
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what does it do at four-way stop if it was the second car there but the human in the first car is waving it on?
Wave at the guy in the 3rd car.
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>> I don't want to drive a car, I might break a nail!
Yep, that's me. It won't surprise you how I travel around the world either: I've never actually flown a Boeing or an Airbus.
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How safe autonomous vehicles will be when most of the vehicles on the road are autonomous. There will then be wars about which companies system is safest.
I think the war will be how fast and reliable they are. A system that's safer but takes longer to get people from A to B, or gives up and stops for any little thing in order to increase safety won't be too popular.
My life has only so many minutes. I don't want to spend more of them than I have to being slow cargo.