Michigan Lets Autonomous Cars On Roads Without Human Driver (go.com) 166
Companies can now test self-driving cars on Michigan public roads without a driver or steering wheel under new laws that could push the state to the forefront of autonomous vehicle development. From a report on ABC: The package of bills signed into law Friday comes with few specific state regulations and leaves many decisions up to automakers and companies like Google and Uber. It also allows automakers and tech companies to run autonomous taxi services and permits test parades of self-driving tractor-trailers as long as humans are in each truck. And they allow the sale of self-driving vehicles to the public once they are tested and certified, according to the state. The bills allow testing without burdensome regulations so the industry can move forward with potential life-saving technology, said Gov. Rick Snyder, who was to sign the bills. "It makes Michigan a place where particularly for the auto industry it's a good place to do work," he said.
Bitch texting on her phone (Score:5, Informative)
With the rising number of idiots texting on their phones while behind the wheel, I have already seen hundreds of driverless cars on the road.
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Cite your evidence that a self driving car is safer than the aggregate of all people who choose to text while driving?
Knock down your own straw men - he made no such claim.
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Duh - what's good for Ford is good for Michigan (Score:2)
Well duh - Michigan's economy IS the auto industry. Just happy there's a governor in place to clear the red tape for this.
>> allows automakers and tech companies to...permits test parades of self-driving tractor-trailers
Remember when the Teamsters were a force in elections? No? Guess I'm old...
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Hmm....letting driverless cars go free in a State that seems to have frozen stuff on roads for 3/4 of the year....yeah, *BRILLIANT*.
As opposed to idiot drivers... Tough call.
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Also in a northern state. No computer could be as bad as the idiots here who try to drive their usual 5-10mph over the speed limit on slick hardpack snow...
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Amen to that.
I was once overtaken while driving 30 km/h on frigging ICE when a car blazed past because duh, 4-wheel drive bro. After 5 minutes I saw him face first in the siding with just two wheels still on it.
Physics. If you don't get it, it *will* get you.
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Yeah, I've thought about the difference as well, but all-wheel-drive vehicles with vehicle stability assist do really seem to make snow- and ice-covered roads seem like pavement on a dry, sunny day a lot of the time.
..until you really have to hit the brakes.
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Yeah, I've thought about the difference as well, but all-wheel-drive vehicles with vehicle stability assist do really seem to make snow- and ice-covered roads seem like pavement on a dry, sunny day a lot of the time.
So.... you're saying that cars work better when a computer is controlling the brakes and power delivery instead of a human?
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Very likely. They can easily detect temperature and moisture in the air, detect wheelspin etc. and determine sensible max speeds and power from there. As opposed to many drivers.
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As someone who lives in a state that gets frozen roads (and has to deal with StackOverflow-quality code from west coast "tech" companies on a daily basis), yeah, I want something that's battletested in real conditions before I buy it. If they can make this work in icy and foggy Michigan, I'll trust it a whole lot more than something cobbled together in sunny and dry California.
Band aid fixes (Score:4, Insightful)
"It makes Michigan a place where particularly for the auto industry it's a good place to do work,"
Yeah except for the shitty roads, expensive labor, unsupportive government, hostile unions, etc. Other than that it's awesome. I find it hilarious that the state most closely associated with the auto industry has some of the worst roads in the country [mlive.com]. Good place to test handling and suspensions I guess. Anyway this doesn't really matter much unless they can keep the companies that own the technology doing it in Michigan. Who cares if Google develops self driving tech in Michigan if Michigan doesn't see any of the financial benefit from that.
The thing that Michigan (particularly SE Michigan) has going for it is that the auto industry has a lot of residual talent left in the area. There is a ton of engineering and production capability. Michigan can be a great place to work on some really interesting technology. Seriously, it's hugely underrated as a tech hub but Michigan is one of the best places to be for high tech jobs. Too bad the state has dropped the ball in so many other areas. It's a beautiful place to live and work (outside of Detroit City proper anyway) and it's kind of a shame what has happened to the state in the last several decades.
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And MI is a great state for automated driving systems to test again bad weather road conditions and construction re-routing....
What benefit to Michigan? (Score:2)
And MI is a great state for automated driving systems to test again bad weather road conditions and construction re-routing....
Which is fine but does little for the economy of Michigan by itself. Employs a few engineers and support personnel but what else is the benefit to Michigan? Hope a few businesses take root as a result but I'm not holding my breath.
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Well, less people driving means fewer jobs... again. MI can't really afford to rest all it's eggs in the Automotive basket...
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I'm sure the car's accelerometers are more accurate than your inner ear. Faster reaction times, too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Anybody who drives north of the Mason/Dixon line knows that.
Maybe come May. But they for get it all by November. We had a 40 car pileup yesterday.
Good for everyone. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is actually good news for everyone, not just people in Michigan. If self-driving vehicles can deal with the weather conditions there, they should be able to deal with them in the rest of the country, and most other countries as well. Sunny days in California don't expose the hazards posed by rain, snow, slush, and black ice.
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People are already dying every day in automobile accidents. But that's ok because we already allowed those vehicles....
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People are dying every day from a lot of things.
Most of us only die one day, from one thing.
Excluding all the things people might be dying for won't stop them from dying. We learn to live with risks, and weigh them as acceptable and unacceptable. But we always willingly take many risks, every day. Otherwise we would not be alive.
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So it's ok if we kill people now for us to gamble that enough people might one day be able to afford these cars for it to make a statistical difference?
So stop using electricity, considering the number of people killed in coal mining accidents?
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using coal from a nation sending children down with hand shovels, pickaxes and a candle.
Thank god our country never did that.
Re:Good for everyone. (Score:5, Insightful)
Your entire existence and life is built on previous generations making the exact same gamble. If you don't like it go live in a hut in the woods.
Unless you think that Steam boilers were the pinnacle of human safety systems.
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I think he meant that these boilers did kill people in the real world and because of that, better systems were designed. But unfortunately, not before people lost their lives.
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The family of 35,000 people will probably disagree.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Yes. We called them trains.
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Where did you get the idea that we're going to kill people?
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Everyone but professional drivers (Score:2)
The human should be ready to take over (Score:2)
permits test parades of self-driving tractor-trailers as long as humans are in each truck.
Hopefully, the human will be required to be at the wheel, ready to take over immediately if there's a system glitch.
In the recent self-driving truck demonstration in Colorado, the system developer (Otto [ot.to]) bragged that "Our professional driver was out of the driver's seat for the entire 120-mile journey down I-25, monitoring the self-driving system from the sleeper berth in the back." http://www.latimes.com/busines... [latimes.com]
Does anyone else feel that was quite unwise and cocky? It take a while to get from the sle
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If self-driving vehicles can deal with the weather conditions there, they should be able to deal with them in the rest of the country, and most other countries as well. Sunny days in California don't expose the hazards posed by rain, snow, slush, and black ice.
Do you have any idea how many lines of latitude California crosses, or what range of elevations we have in this state? We have all of that stuff. I've literally dealt with all of it within fifteen minutes of Santa Cruz. You know nothing about California. Do you know anything about cars?
Re:Good for everyone. (Score:5, Insightful)
As opposed to the barely tested teen drivers learning how to drive in hazardous conditions while playing Pokemon Go?
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The people are still dead.
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untested
Where do the detractors continually get the idea that this is all 'untested'?
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How many humans went the wrong way down a one way street in the same amount of time?
Re: Good for everyone. (Score:2)
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You've clearly never driven with some of the people I know.
Yes, some people shut down just like that. The thing with AIs is once one of them sees it, is trained how to fix it the next software update fixes everyone.
With humans you have to continually train them around 16 on how to drive.
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We all know how confusing sandbags are when they are in the road.
Agreed, people hit things in the road all the time. They should be removed from driving.
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If history is to be any indication it doesn't have to have a 'high bar' it just has to be slightly better than the previous version.
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Nope. This is just further automation of what already exists. At its root it's just a fancy flyball governor [wikipedia.org]. This is just another place we shoehorned in PID controllers. They've been driving your cruise control, stability control and everything else for decades. All the technology in this is at least 50 years old, even the neural nets. It's just at a sufficient enough level to put in a car.
Steam engines just had to be slightly better than mule trains. The automobile just had to be slightly better than hors
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They've been driving for around 10 years and can already drive better than humans have learned to in the last 100. I'd say that's damn good.
Self driving cars and software is cumulative knowledge. You can't just hand off the knowledge of the best driver in the world when they turn 16. By 2020 it'll be no question of who is a better driver. Our 2016 Subaru is already automating "80% of the boring stuff" of driving. It'll keep lanes and come to a full stop when the human behind the wheel fails to. Germans have
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But you feel perfectly safe having the 16 yo human learning to drive on the same roads?
Driving is one of the most dangerous activities that any of us do on a daily basis. It is not anywhere near safe. People die every day from car crashes. The only reason you may have not been affected is simply statistics working in your favor. Adding some overly cautious computers to the road doesn't sound like it increases the danger factor by any appreciable amount.
I could be wrong of course but we are heading in this d
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In my area they have a solution for that, it's call graduated licensing.
Perfect, we now have the solution for getting self-driving cars on the road, thank you.
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Not quite sure why you're so smug. You can't give a graduated license to a self driving car so it doesn't even make sense. Plus I know of no self driving care that can even pass a standard driving test yet, like a 16 year old can.
I was being a little smug, but actually what I was going for was withering sarcasm.... missed it by that much...
Seriously though, if the solution for a human is a graduated license, I am not sure why the same wouldn't work for a computer. Nevermind the pedantic "you can't give a license to a computer"... that is obviously not the point. Nor is passing any kind of test.
The point of a graduated license system is to restrict when, where and how a person that is still learning can drive.
Aaaaaaand, I am sure tha
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I know that I feel safer with untested 2 ton equipment 'learning' how to drive in hazardous condition around my wife and kids.
I'm sure your wife and kids are frightful, but if they harm the 2 ton vehicle, I'm sure the engineers will learn from the failure.
Trumpworld (Score:2)
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Nope, I believe they are all programmed with the "kill all humans" directive. Also, I believe they are putting spiked cow catchers on the front of every vehicle as well as those razor blade hub caps...
Regulatory Track Record (Score:2)
With Michigan's exemplary track record [wikipedia.org] implementing minimal regulations, what could possibly go wrong?
Seriously though, I'm glad their beta(alpha?)-testing this for the rest of us. I think we all agree self-driving cars have great potential once we get it right, but someone has to go first to get there. Way to take one for the team, Michigan!
How to Feel? (Score:2)
I just don't know how to feel about this. On one hand, "Yay, government getting out of the way of innovation!" On the other hand, "Snyder is a Republican so this is obviously a gift to Big Auto in the name of trickle-down economics. Or something."
Accident rate to increase... (Score:2)
With this new law expect the accident rate to go up, as people trying to post a picture or video of the driverless car on facebook, twitter, youtube, etc. lose control and drive into trees, other cars, buildings, off bridges, etc.
Can't wait (Score:2)
Step 1: Step in front of car.
Step 2: Box the car in and then hook up to tow truck
Step 3: Profit!
Great! (Score:2)
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If it's the fault of the manufacturer then sure, sue them. If however it's just a freak accident - and I know this may be a hard pill to swallow - perhaps you sue no one. It sort of saddens me a great deal when new tech is always confronted with "But who do I sue if something goes wrong!?!?!".
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Considering the stupid things people do, it will be harder to prove than you think....
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That happened because the Tesla "autopilot" is a joke. It is not Autonomous and requires driver attention at all times... which, of course the driver does not give because most of the time it is good enough.
These cars are going to have to do a lot better than that... laws or no... because the companies making them are going to have to have insurance to cover these scenarios and they are going to have to be good enough that that insurance is attainable.
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No, you just haven;t seen some of the really stupid things humans do :)
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Oh, you mean like when someone mistakes the gas pedal for the brake pedal and then blames it on the car because electronics?
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I think people need to look through death statistics of steam engines and all 'early' tech back through the stone ages.
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I'm sure there are equally large groups of lawyers trying to simplify that equation to either "act of god" or "the auto manufacturer" right now. And it will surely take a few court cases to get this hammered out, and then hammered out again. In the meantime, what people like the local governor are trying to do is make it clear that "it's OK to experiment here without having all the bureaucratic/legal answers (you want) in place" by sweeping some regulations to the side. Yeah, his cal
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Re:Who is responsible when (Score:5, Interesting)
Guilt when it comes to corporate entities is already severely murky and depressing, and getting worse.
How many people went to jail for all the mortgage fraud, forged notary signatures, and crap sandwich CDO's from the 2008 bust? Still waiting for all the pending investigations by Eric Placeholder are you? Yep, lies, delay tactics, and no actual justice.
So yes, companies will get sued. They have lawyers by the bushel on staff who will drain the resources of the victims, draw out lawsuits for years, if not decades, and eventually wear down the victims until they settle or go away. If there is sufficient outrage the Justice Department (sort of like calling your propoganda department the Ministry of Information)will launch a very public investigation that mostly just fades away, maybe nailing a token peon or two in case anyone pays attention long enough.
In other words, the victims will get "American Justice" at its finest. How satisfied was anybody over the Toyota "unintended acceleration" debacle? No real guilt was admitted, and no proper post-mortem was divulged, just denial and smoke screens. We got new floor mats and a software update along with some payouts to shut people up. Only outside independent investigation confirmed their software was horrendous. Nobody went to jail for killing and maiming a few of their customers.
No CEO or high ranking person will ever go to jail simply because their policies pressured underlings to release dangerous products onto the street. At best we might get a recall and a settlement, maybe an empty public apology or resignation with golden parachute if absolutely necessary. We little people are not important, protecting CEO's careers is a higher priority than protecting our miserable lives.
a criminal case will be needed to set things right (Score:2)
a criminal case will be needed to set things right say a really bad accident. Even better if you get a judge like the one in My Cousin Vinny.
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And who do I sue if it's my mother that was killed
If your mother was killed, you would think of who to sue?
Let me guess your nationality...
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That's a mapping issue and you've hit on a weak spot with self driving cars. However, that spot is only weak initially. Once lawmakers realize that they can pass laws that force metadata to be made to maps or hell create standard maps for each state that the car has to accept, lawmakers will jump on it like flies on shit. We need to create a "no pickup" tag, we need to create a "5 MPH between 6am and 8am" tag, we need a "no taxis in this area between 3am and 5am" tag, and you can only imagine how "creati
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Actually I think he was kidding.
Isn't hitchhiking illegal in most states?
Hitchhiking is (mostly) legal (Score:2)
Isn't hitchhiking illegal in most states?
No, actually hitchhiking is perfectly legal in most places. A few states ban it but in most places it's just illegal to actually stand on the road when soliciting a ride. Stand to the side of the road and you are not breaking any laws. And even in places where it is illegal the police mostly don't care all that much.
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Ah, that's cool.
Buy why would an automated car/truck stop to pick up a hitchhiker? That sounds like a liability suit waiting to happen...
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Ah, that's cool.
Buy why would an automated car/truck stop to pick up a hitchhiker? That sounds like a liability suit waiting to happen...
The most likely reason is because the hitchhiker managed to flash some robot leg.
RC-RG-RA, bro...
(Robot Cash, Robot Grass, Robot Ass)
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Right.............
First Law: Robots will make the corporation the most profit at the least cost
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there are also no taxi pickup areas not the same as no taxis.
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The same thing that happens when a person is killed by a non-autonomous vehicle. A large insurance payout.