[HN Gopher] U.S. eliminates human controls requirement for fully...
___________________________________________________________________
U.S. eliminates human controls requirement for fully automated
vehicles
Author : ra7
Score : 262 points
Date : 2022-03-11 15:20 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| fn1 wrote:
| I wonder if many of the problems with automatic driving could be
| solved using platooning
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpuwG4A56r0,
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Re__KRr4NU).
|
| There could be dedicated lanes assigned to the autonomous cars
| and platooning-protocols that ensure that the cars use their
| automatic capabilities only on relatively safe highways, only
| queued between other autonomic vehicles.
|
| Should be a more predictable environment and thereby safer
| nixass wrote:
| This will never fly in Europe. So the cars will have both system
| regardless
| xwdv wrote:
| They could just not sell those cars in Europe
| notyourday wrote:
| ... And with that women said "eff that!" nailing the coffin of
| the FAV
| renewiltord wrote:
| Do women specifically want steering wheels or something? I'm
| not sure I understand.
| notyourday wrote:
| Women specifically do not want to be in cars which they
| cannot even theoretically control.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Is this a thing somewhere or am I in a bubble? I know lots
| of women and no one has articulated this fear about a self-
| driving car.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Women specifically do not want to be in cars which they
| cannot even theoretically control.
|
| I suspect women have a greater relative comfort with
| automated vehicles versus those controlled by a stranger
| than men, though I'm not aware of any solid data for that
| (certainly haven't seen any for your claim, either.)
| 999900000999 wrote:
| This is a great step forward, autonomous driving only needs to be
| better than the average human.
|
| The average human is often too busy texting, or eating to pay
| attention.
|
| Humans do very stupid things in cars, it's a part of why I won't
| really consider living anywhere where I have to own one. Holy
| crap, you'll see people literally just rear-end each other at
| stoplights because you want to keep itching closer.
|
| One of the most common complaints about automated cars is they go
| The speed limit, I recall once I was literally at the exact speed
| limit for the highway and I flicked on the cruise control.
| Immediately a driver behind me started honking and flicking me
| off.
|
| Like holy shit I'm not from around here. I'm not going to risk
| getting pulled over because you're 5 minutes late to brunch or
| something.
|
| The average human is such a horrible driver. I don't think Tesla
| bots can do much worse. The times the Tesla AI fails are very
| rare and far between, the times some idiot human decides they're
| going to rear end someone, or change lanes to late are very
| common.
|
| All hell the robocar overlords
| dmix wrote:
| I could imagine a bus on a fixed route not having controls. This
| doesn't have to apply universally...
|
| There could definitely be a number of use-cases beyond
| taxis/individual cars. This is why top-tier regulations like this
| need to be broad. You can refine it at the vehicle category
| level.
| lmilcin wrote:
| Send them to Poland and require to pass Polish driving license
| exam.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Look, I'm generally on the bull-ish side of autonomous driving,
| but this is almost akin to the feds passing laws on science
| fiction. Section 180.99 part alpha: "Minimum size of a Ringworld
| is mercury orbit around a red dwarf"
|
| I guess we can always drive with a USB-plugin gamepad if there's
| a glitch or a central system outage?
|
| This would actually represent progress if they eliminated the
| requirement for side mirrors, which from what I've read of good
| aerodynamic designs is responsible for as much drag as the body
| of the car.
| TillE wrote:
| > if they eliminated the requirement for side mirrors
|
| Of course fully automated vehicles will look nothing like
| typical cars. There's this really common tendency to think way
| too small, to confuse the current prototypes with a final
| product.
|
| The mid-term future for SDVs looks more or less like a train
| compartment on wheels.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| >a train compartment on wheels. //
|
| A bus?
|
| Yes, autonomous public vehicles seem likely - like a Flexi-
| bus - but people like to travel without random members of the
| public, private hire of small vehicles will definitely be a
| thing unless the public get priced out of it.
| myrmidon wrote:
| > which from what I've read of good aerodynamic designs is
| responsible for as much drag as the body of the car.
|
| This seems way too high to me.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile_drag_coefficient says
| side mirrors contribute 2-7% drag.
|
| Still worth removing them of course, I'm just correcting you to
| prevent people from picking up wrong numbers.
| shkkmo wrote:
| There are currently self-driving vehicles operating on public
| roads with no safety driver. That tech exists now. It may have
| many severe limitations (precision mapping, weather,
| construction areas, etc), but it does exist. Reducing those
| limitations may be a long term project but it is already clear
| that self driving vehicles could be deployed today without
| human controls as long as the scope of deployment matches those
| limitations.
|
| This rules allows car manufacturers to work on new fully
| automous cars without controls that are designed to function as
| campus shuttles or taxis in a limited scope. There is still a
| lot of work to be done regulating the use self driving
| vehicles, but this removes a safety regulation hurdle that is
| stopping states and car makers from experimenting with
| different approaches.
| pizza wrote:
| Reading between the lines here this just makes me think that the
| regulator has become captured by the industry.
|
| This is like removing human control on an autonomous Russian
| roulette revolver that shoots to the side if it detects a person
| in front of the barrel, then praying for the best.
| trainedforthis wrote:
| I find it rather fascinating that we require a human-in-the-
| loop for a train but not for a car.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| New train lines don't require human drivers, but legacy ones
| do for socio-political reasons rather than logistical or
| technological ones.
|
| This Wikipedia article kind of shows the mishmash of
| automated/half-measures/full measures situation:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automation_of_the_London_Under.
| ..
| goodpoint wrote:
| It's the same for airplanes. Why is it fascinating?
| ttmb wrote:
| This regulation is saying that if you did build an autonomous
| Russian roulette revolver, there's no requirement to outfit it
| with a pistol grip and a trigger.
|
| If there is a fully driverless (not driving itself with a human
| still in it) truck - as companies tell us is their goal - it
| does not increase or decrease safety to have or not have a seat
| and a steering wheel in it.
|
| The argument here is that building an autonomous Russian
| roulette revolver is a stupid thing to do, which is orthogonal.
| lordfrito wrote:
| This.
|
| I have some experience in navigating NHTSA when bringing new
| automotive tech to market. The following reflects my
| experience.
|
| When working on cutting edge tech that have associated
| hazards (cars hurt people) what companies want is a clear set
| of standards to meet, as this goes a long way to showing due-
| diligence when things go wrong and lawsuits start showing up.
| But with new tech there are no standards, no generally
| accepted way of doing things. So how do you know if the
| system is capable/safe-enough to deploy in volume on our
| roads? How do you know you've done enough due diligence to
| confidently launch new tech without putting your company at
| financial risk? Let's face it, a big enough software bug (and
| associated liability) could potentially put Tesla completely
| out of business. When dealing with hazardous new tech, the
| threat of recalls and lawsuits weighs heavily on a company's
| decision making process.
|
| When it comes to new tech, NHTSA is in no position to answer
| these questions. And they know it. If they knew better then
| they'd be the ones driving innovation. As it stands under
| capitalism the innovators are all working for private
| companies hoping for the big pay out. Knowing this, it would
| be counterproductive for NHTSA to say "we know better than to
| let a self driving car on the road". They don't know better
| and they don't want to get in the way of innovation.
|
| So instead NHTSAs job is to setup a regulatory framework and
| set of rules to help these companies bring tech to market,
| while helping identify/limit bad actors. When lessons are
| learned (ex. ABS systems provide a clear benefit, and should
| generally do X Y and Z) these lessons get integrated back
| into the regulations as a guide to all players in the space.
| The regulations and standards improve over time as more-and-
| more millions-of-miles are driven and the tech/algorithms
| mature.
|
| In my experience, NHTSAs attitude seems to be best summarized
| as: Innovation is good for America and the last thing we want
| to do is stop you from developing cool new things. But we
| have no idea what your new tech should/shouldn't do. The risk
| is all on you, your company ultimately bears the legal
| responsibility for your products. You'll have to determine if
| your product is ready for market all on your own -- and
| failure carries a high price tag. Now... if/when the tech
| matures, and the industry seems to generally agree that "new
| tech X" should include "X Y and Z" as part of the safety/risk
| equation, then we'll add that to the regulatory framework.
| But until the tech matures and the clear path forward is
| known we don't want to stifle innovation.
|
| This is about the best you can do in this situation. ADAS is
| new, and no one knows where we'll end up. No one, including
| you and me, knows if these systems can be deployed safely.
| Personally I don't trust ADAS systems, and believe the
| financial risk would be too high to risk my company. But what
| do I know?
|
| It seems that the message being sent here is: "We're ready to
| start dealing with cars that don't have human controls. Best
| of luck to all those who dare play in the space."
| [deleted]
| ravenstine wrote:
| I get what you're saying, but the Russian roulette analogy is a
| kind of straw man. Do you agree? Or is it that you think that
| we shouldn't allow potentially dangerous technologies to
| perform without human supervision?
| cinquemb wrote:
| It's always been like this, I've seen enough industry insiders
| write their own laws at the local government level, just a
| bigger game at the national level :P
| walkhour wrote:
| Driving is already a Russian roulette right? If autonomous
| vehicles are safer than human drivers as advertised the barrel
| would just have more capacity.
| pydry wrote:
| Self driving cars will be as safe as the level of criminal
| liability faced by the makers.
|
| Regulatory capture means it wont be high and the potential
| profits to be realized from first mover advantage here means
| there will be a _significant_ incentive to "move fast and
| break things".
|
| So to speak.
|
| I'd feel safe if an executive who OKs a software update that
| kills someone risks significant jail time. If that means no
| self driving cars for 20 more years then I am totally fine
| with that. That would simply mean that they _werent_ safer as
| promised.
| snarf21 wrote:
| I agree that there is a significant monetary incentive to
| "move fast and kill people". In the end, paying out a few
| $MM to random families is financially minimal compared to
| the $BBB that are up for grabs. We will never _really_ have
| executives going to jail for things like this. We 've built
| a system of profits > anything else.
| goodpoint wrote:
| This has been the status quo for the whole car industry
| for decades.
|
| If executives were jailed for car accidents people we
| would have trains and trams in every corner.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| ... and if makers of kitchen implements were jailed for
| knife accidents/crime then we'd be eating soup with
| plastic spoons for every meal.
|
| It doesn't make sense to have universal product liability
| in that way: there are too many creative idiots.
| eeZah7Ux wrote:
| In terms of complexity and security features a car is
| much closer to an airplane than a knife.
|
| It's very disingenuous to compare it to a knife.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| Not really; the fact is that sharp objects and heavy
| objects moving at speed are both inherently hazardous
| because of the basic nature of the physical world, but
| those same attributes make them extremely useful.
|
| I don't object at all to holding manufacturers
| accountable for defective products; but it makes no sense
| to say "if your product is involved in an accident, you
| go to jail", which was the premise of the comment to
| which I responded.
| eeZah7Ux wrote:
| > Not really
|
| Citation needed.
|
| > was the premise of the comment to which I responded.
|
| It clearly wasn't.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Ordinary cars are testable, we understands quality of
| merials, corrosion, etc.
|
| When it comes to AI droving, noone has a fucking clue
| what it will do in next 50 milliseconds. Teslas literally
| mis-classified a semi trailer for an underpass
|
| The opportunity for shenanighans is endless
| moduspol wrote:
| > I'd feel safe if an executive who OKs a software update
| that kills someone risks significant jail time. If that
| means no self driving cars for 20 more years then I am
| totally fine with that.
|
| The status quo is 139 people dying every day in the US in
| traffic accidents.
|
| If we replaced all cars with self-driving ones, an
| executive could approve a software update every single day
| that kills only 100 and it could very well still be a net
| benefit to society.
|
| These discussions always seem to implicitly presume that
| we're currently at zero deaths. We're not--we just don't
| hear about them. Every year we delay self driving cars is
| more people dying, not fewer.
| pydry wrote:
| >These discussions always seem to implicitly presume that
| we're currently at zero deaths.
|
| I never presumed that and never would.
|
| I _do_ presume that if we watered down criminal liability
| for reckless driving then we 'd get way, way more than
| 139.
|
| The current regulatory framework surrounding self driving
| cars is rather like making drink driving subject to a $30
| fine. I would be surprised if it starts out safer than
| humans.
| notriddle wrote:
| As if automakers haven't found plenty of ways to make
| human-piloted cars less safe in exchange for profit.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Car accidents kill someone every 100 million miles driven in
| the US.
|
| Anyone claiming they're safer _now_ is either selling
| something or doesn 't know what they're talking about.
| darepublic wrote:
| Anyone claiming they are safer now.. vs what? Getting into
| a Tesla, turning on fsd and taking a snooze? Wonder how
| many millions of miles that would last without a fatality
| or car wreck. A lot less than 1 million I wager.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Depends a lot on what kind of road you're on.
|
| Interstate highway? I'd absolutely trust it to cross the
| country while I napped.
|
| Downtown urban cores where I can expect bicyclists in the
| road and delivery trucks parked in a lane? Not a chance.
|
| Anywhere that involves making an unprotected left turn?
| Gambling with your life, there.
| nindalf wrote:
| Could you share how many _accidents_ happen, rather than
| deaths? With a source as well, if you happen to be looking
| it up.
| bushbaba wrote:
| Would you use an autonomous car if the death rate
| increases but accident rate decreases?
|
| I figure deaths per million miles is a good stat
| telchior wrote:
| Not sure if you were asking seriously, but: personally,
| yes.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Most people choose to use cars despite that increasing
| both death rate and accident rate.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >Most people choose to use cars despite that increasing
| both death rate and accident rate.
|
| In most of the US (not where I live, thankfully) the
| "choice" is use a car or stay home.
|
| Not much of a choice.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Sure, the fact that people choose the more appealing
| option doesn't mean there wasn't a choice. That's just
| what people do when they have multiple options: they
| choose the one that's best according to whatever their
| criteria are. And many people might make a similar choice
| to reclaim multiple hours per day of driving time to do
| other things (like sleep, work, relax, etc.) while their
| car drives itself.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| Absolutely.
|
| Go and move to West Memphis, TN (or, as I said, with most
| places in the US) and try to live without a car.
|
| Not really a choice. Which is why I live in a place with
| halfway-decent (well, the best in the US anyway) public
| transport.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Again, it is a choice, and the fact that you choose the
| better option doesn't mean it's not a choice.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >Again, it is a choice, and the fact that you choose the
| better option doesn't mean it's not a choice.
|
| What's the choice? I don't have any idea what you mean
| tshaddox wrote:
| The choice is to stay at home, where you are very
| unlikely to get in a car accident, or to drive a car,
| which greatly increased the risk of accident and death.
| magikaram wrote:
| Yet for many people, where they live isnt a choice, or
| their method of transport. Most of the US undeniably has
| poor public transport, and the only realistic means of
| travel for a day to day work schedule is via automobile.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| This isn't that hard. Let's say loss of quality-adjusted
| life years due to accidents or something.
| abecedarius wrote:
| Being safer now is not a necessary claim to support the
| above (whether or not it's true). We don't ban student
| drivers from the roads.
| verisimi wrote:
| Define 'safer'.
|
| If you have not paid your taxes, get in to your car, and it
| drives you to the local court-house or police station, this
| is a new risk, no?
| vkou wrote:
| It would be actually be better for the car to drive itself
| to the repo man, if you miss payments on it / are refusing
| to pay your debts to the government.
| bmicraft wrote:
| Considering the people least likely to pay their taxes are
| those who could afford them easiest I would be all for
| that.
| walkhour wrote:
| I was thinking in terms of casualties per miles driven.
| Agreed that this definition doesn't capture all the danger.
| frgtpsswrdlame wrote:
| Casualties per miles driven is a terrible stat for
| current self-driving technology because as it stands, it
| forces drivers to take over in the most dangerous
| situations. And you can't generalize for all miles in
| cars capable of self-driving because the population who
| own cars like that are not representative of the average.
| It's a very tricky thing to accurately measure whether
| it's safer for an individual to drive themselves or let
| the car do it for them.
| bottled_poe wrote:
| Statistical equivalence is one thing, but the risk will shift
| within the population. Let's set the bar a bit higher than
| _above average_? The average driver is a dumbass. autonomous
| vehicles should be expected to consistently make better
| decisions than the _best_ drivers, not just the average ones.
| jeffreygoesto wrote:
| You wrote correctly "should". Today they can't even compete
| with the average driver, regardless of what the companies
| tell us that try to benefit from them.
| dekhn wrote:
| I would be perfectly happy if we had automatic drivers that
| were as good as the average human driver, since I already
| integrated and accepted that risk and accept it every time
| I drive. Why raise the bar for a new technology if that
| risks preventing it from being widely deployed and
| relentlessly improved?
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| I would probably accept technology that's as good as the
| _median_ driver.
| dekhn wrote:
| how about one standard deviation about the mean? (sorry,
| I'm an unrepentant mean over median person)
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| It was a bit tongue-in-cheek - the median driver has
| precisely zero accidents in any given year.
|
| I don't really know how to think about it. Accident rate,
| on a per-mile basis, falls out of some combination of
| "hardness of the driving problem" (freeways have many
| fewer accidents than city streets, I think) as well as
| propensity to take risks (driving at night; in bad
| weather; at higher speeds; while distracted) as well as
| driving skill.
|
| What, by definition, people will accept is an accident
| rate similar to that for professional drivers; e.g.
| taxi/rideshare/livery. According to a report by Uber,
| that's about half the number of fatal accidents on a VMT
| basis versus the general population in their case.
| dekhn wrote:
| I believe the median driver has N/M accidents a year,
| where N is the number of accidents, and M is the number
| of people, right? Well, no, I that's true of the mean,
| but not the median.
| anonporridge wrote:
| This is bullshit.
|
| Reduction of average statistical risk is what really
| matters and will be what is primarily responsible for
| driving down real world fatalities and life altering
| injuries.
|
| I for one am not going to stand back and let fear of new
| technology and unfounded preference for human driven action
| over automation stand in the way of making a statistical
| impact on reducing the 1.35 million auto fatalities that
| happen globally every year. To propose that possibly
| reducing that number to 1.30 million is not good enough and
| we have to hold back rollout until the tech is better than
| the "best driver" is disgustingly sociopathic.
| cannaceo wrote:
| Why is beating the existing standard not enough?
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| Presumably, if a specific person is a very good driver,
| entering an automated vehicle that is merely better than
| average driver, with no controls to interject, results in
| a net reduction of safety for this individual.
|
| More specifically, what IF or rather WHEN there is an
| incident that could've been prevented by human
| interjection, but wasn't?
|
| Other aspect is, why are we only ever discussing these
| separately? What is the safety of a automation-assisted
| human? Can we get to the point where safety is better
| than either system alone?
| john_minsk wrote:
| We will. For consumers like you there will be a $100k
| option to increase safety by adding sensors/compute power
| or something else on top of a base model. But the
| ultimate game here is to free people from the need to
| drive cars for a living or pay someone to do so. This
| will also open a lot of other optimisations to human
| life, which exist now due to cost of human labor. If
| human stays in the car - this mission is failed. + It's
| not like if you are the most careful driver you are safe
| - if a drunk no-licensed jerk aims for your car - you are
| dead due to his lack of driving ability, not yours.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > Presumably, if a specific person is a very good driver,
| entering an automated vehicle that is merely better than
| average driver, with no controls to interject, results in
| a net reduction of safety for this individual.
|
| But for far more individuals there will be a net increase
| in safety, moreover, since traffic accidents don't only
| imperil drivers, pedestrians and safe drivers will also
| experience an increase in safety due to average drivers
| using just-above-average automation.
|
| > What is the safety of a automation-assisted human?
|
| That's where we're at today with systems like Tesla's
| Autopilot.
| rhacker wrote:
| It doesn't beat the existing standard.
| [deleted]
| briantakita wrote:
| This was part of the plan for the market. Remove human drivers
| & owner operators to have tighter control over the markets. The
| appearance of safety using coarse statistical samples (is is
| really safer?) is pretense for the real reasons.
| twblalock wrote:
| At least the government isn't standing in the way of innovation
| this time.
|
| The market will still decide if these vehicles sell. I wouldn't
| buy one, would you?
|
| Plus, it's never too late to crack down. If there are a lot of
| accidents, you can bet members of Congress will thrive on the
| outrage.
|
| So, there's really nothing to see here. Just the government
| getting out of the way, a little bit, for now.
| jedberg wrote:
| > I wouldn't buy one, would you?
|
| Absolutely! In a heartbeat. Because I know it's a tool to
| enhance my driving, not replace me, and I still need to pay
| attention.
|
| I already have an add-on for my car that gives me level 3 on
| the freeway (no hands on the wheel needed). I still keep my
| hand on the wheel though and I still pay attention, but it
| definitely helps because I don't have to use brain power
| staying in the lane or maintaining speed. I can give 100% of
| my brain power to looking for danger.
| twblalock wrote:
| What I meant was, would you buy a car without controls?
| Without a steering wheel?
| jedberg wrote:
| Ah, today, probably not. But if it was proven safe enough
| to not need one, sure. I'd look at the safety data and
| decide.
|
| But the point is, no manufacturer would sell one without
| a wheel either because they know it wouldn't sell. This
| is just a change to not require one to pass safety tests.
| The car still has to actually pass the safety tests
| though.
| mnd999 wrote:
| This is akin to removing the requirement for unicorns to wear
| horseshoes on the public road.
| verisimi wrote:
| No.
|
| Unicorns can't, won't ever exist.
|
| The idea of the existence of self-driving cars is definitely on
| the cards. This is en route.
| finnh wrote:
| I have no doubt we could work some DNA magic between a
| narwhal and a horse...
| bnralt wrote:
| It reminds me of 7 years ago when Amazon was claiming that FAA
| regulations were holding back its drone deliveries[1].
|
| [1] https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/faa-drone-regulations-
| blow...
| telotortium wrote:
| This comment is as indicative of where we are in the Gartner
| Hype Cycle as anything I've seen.
| hackernewds wrote:
| How so?
| pyhtel wrote:
| I'm guessing because fully automated vehicles don't exist
| (yet).
| rascul wrote:
| Isn't Waymo doing this already?
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| See anyone riding unicorns around recently?
|
| Exactly.
|
| Legacy regulations governing the occupant compartment are not
| yet a practical impediment for self driving cars because they
| haven't got that far yet.
|
| Realistically what the removal of this regulation means is
| that some hypothetical future company with an autonomous yard
| spotter can drive the thing 500yd down the public way from
| warehouse B to warehouse C without the legal department
| getting antsy.
| pfortuny wrote:
| This is so much so... It looks silly (your comment) but it is
| spot on.
| dpweb wrote:
| Granted there's a lot of hype and the tech is not there yet,
| but seems the tech absolutely can be developed.
|
| As far as the safety, these things can be indemnified and that
| will pave the way. Don't see any problem insurers can price
| accidents and injuries from autonomous cars. Also certainly
| plausible they will be able to be made safer than human driven.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Cool. So strap a horn on your horse and free hoof it.
| walkhour wrote:
| Doesn't the analogy fail given autonomous vehicles are
| eventually possible and pursued and unicorns not?
| simion314 wrote:
| >Doesn't the analogy fail given autonomous vehicles are
| eventually possible
|
| Only if there is a mathematical proof that eventually it will
| happen, someone might proof the reverse that current type of
| tech will never be good enough for general purpose driving
| and will work only in some specific conditions.
| yazaddaruvala wrote:
| https://nitishpuri.github.io/posts/books/a-visual-proof-
| that...
|
| This is a rather intuitive mathematical proof that neural
| nets can emulate all functions in many dimensions. Knowing
| integrals (Calc 102) would help.
|
| With this information it's either that self-driving is
| eventually possible or human brains are not mathematically
| representable (i.e. something akin to a soul).
|
| Meanwhile, the data collection/storage is getting better
| (all Teslas are continually testing FSD and reporting
| failure cases, synthetic generation of "good and unique"
| perfectly labeled data[0] is only a year or two "old").
| Sensors/cameras are improving (and have a lot more room to
| improve). The compute hardware is getting better and
| cheaper (analog computers[1], TSMC 2nm and beyond,
| Apple/Google/Teslas neural cores, etc).
|
| Additionally, given Waymo is already in production without
| humans in PHX it's arguable that we already have
| "autonomous vehicles". We now just need them to improve
| slightly and for Waymo or similar to test in the top 25
| cities in the US. Which is mostly a matter of capital and
| time not technology limits. Maybe weather will be an issue
| for a few more years/decades - but even if Waymo only
| operated in Summer, I'd be happy to reduce my Lyft costs -
| and with enough data and maybe better sensors the neural
| nets will be able to handle weather too. Especially if the
| car just goes slow.
|
| [0] https://youtu.be/j0z4FweCy4M
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/GVsUOuSjvcg
|
| [2] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/08/heres-what-it-was-like-
| to-ri...
| simion314 wrote:
| >This is a rather intuitive mathematical proof that
| neural nets can emulate all functions in many dimensions.
|
| Yes, but the problem is we don't know what function we
| want to approximate. So it is like interpolation you give
| it some points and you get an approximation that is good
| enough around those points but probably very wrong if you
| are far away of the points.
|
| We don't even know how many layers and neurons are needed
| so it seems to be a brute force approach, throw more data
| and more hardware and when stuff goes wrong maybe throw
| more data. But one day a Tesla might go on a different
| environment and maybe people have different hats and goes
| to shit because those hats were not in the training data,
| we don't have like in other sciences bounded errors.
| ben_w wrote:
| The only way it's impossible in principle is if human
| intelligence (and a lot of non human animal intelligence)
| is due to some potent non-physical substance of thought
| which can never be made by any work of artifice on the
| physical plane, AKA a soul.
|
| Absent souls, human drivers are existence proof that minds
| made of matter can drive cars.
|
| That doesn't stop being true even if the current preferred
| architecture is all wrong, as we can and do change those
| with ease.
| simion314 wrote:
| >The only way it's impossible in principle is if human
| intelligence (and a lot of non human animal intelligence)
| is due to some potent non-physical substance of thought
| which can never be made by any work of artifice on the
| physical plane, AKA a soul.
|
| So I was thinking "eventually" as somewhat in next 100
| years, otherwise even if you need a soul you could say
| shit like "eventually we will evolve to the next plane
| and become gods and we could create brains".
|
| Could it be impossible that we hit a tech limit for AI? I
| mean there is no sure what that we will invent something
| better then digital, silicon based computers. I am not
| that pessimist though, but is possible we get smart and
| realize that we could just put tracks and have self
| driving little trains on them to travel around: 100% safe
| (we could have actual scientist/engineers code the
| software for them) and much more green.
| paulcole wrote:
| > given autonomous vehicles are eventually possible
|
| I think of this as an unproven assumption, not a given.
| walkhour wrote:
| Agreed! My point is not so much as whether it's possible,
| it's as whether the analogy holds, which I think it
| doesn't, since no companies are trying to create unicorns.
| natch wrote:
| It may be an assumption, but I think of it as akin to the
| assumption that Wilbur and Orville Wright had that heavier
| than air flying craft could become practical. Unproven, but
| one would be a fool to bet money against it happening on
| the OP's "eventually" timeline.
| paulcole wrote:
| > but one would be a fool to bet money against it
| happening on the OP's "eventually" timeline.
|
| Well, I mean, duh. You'd be a fool to bet against seeing
| a unicorn on an "eventually" timeline. Try to collect and
| I say it's not eventually yet.
| natch wrote:
| and yet...
| jacobr1 wrote:
| I don't get why people think this is theoretical. We have
| autonomous vehicles driving on the road _today_. They've
| logged millions of miles. The question is one of fidelity.
| Can they drive "safe enough?" Can they drive in a blizzard?
| These are important questions and are needed to answer a
| question like, are autonomous vehicles "sufficiently
| advanced" enough to fully replace human drivers in most
| scenarios? But even if they never advanced beyond what we
| have today, they still would have use cases that demand
| clear regulation.
| paulcole wrote:
| I think that the autonomous vehicles on the road today
| are the equivalent of duct taping a traffic cone to a
| horse's forehead and saying, "See, I told you unicorns
| _aren't_ theoretical."
| dahfizz wrote:
| If genetically engineering a unicorn was given the level of
| resources that self driving has, then I think we would have
| unicorns by now.
| xbar wrote:
| I'm considering a graphene horseshoe startup for unicorns.
| rmbyrro wrote:
| Make it run in a Blockchain, relying on last-gen AI-
| powered Oracles.
| amcoastal wrote:
| gkop wrote:
| That's part of the point: Whether or not they are eventually
| possible is an open question. The standard argument for
| agnosticism as to the possibility is "The problem reduces to
| artificial general intelligence, the possibility of which is
| an open question."
| walkhour wrote:
| Is whether unicorns are possible an open question? Even if
| it is, does anyone care about it? Are any companies
| actively trying to create unicorns?
| mysterydip wrote:
| They would certainly have a market for my 6yo daughter's
| demographic.
| dmm wrote:
| > Whether or not they are eventually possible is an open
| question.
|
| They're probably not possible with the road system we have
| but we redesigned our road system to accommodate
| cars(arguably with terrible results for non-cars) and we
| could probably redesign it again for autonomous cars. For
| example by requiring pedestrians and cyclists to wear radio
| transponders.
| rmbyrro wrote:
| I never thought driving a vehicle is that _general_ of an
| activity to require AGI.
|
| Which parts of driving would require AGI?
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| > Which parts of driving would require AGI?
|
| Being able to read the intent of other cars and
| preemptively act if necessary. For instance, being able
| to predict that the harried mom on her phone toting 3
| screaming kids in her beat up minivan is likely to change
| lanes without looking (I passed her preemptively), or
| that the car with out-of-state plates is likely to miss a
| confusingly signed exit and try and cut over at the last
| minute without looking (I slowed down preemptively, to
| let the car abruptly veer across three lanes of traffic
| ahead of me).
|
| Both of these examples require an understanding of the
| world that goes far beyond mere driving skills.
| yazaddaruvala wrote:
| Or, the AV can calculate the worst from every car and go
| a little slower i.e. safer. Leave more room between the
| car in front and move out of the way for cars too close
| behind.
|
| An average 20 min ride increased by 10% would be 22 mins.
| I'd gladly trade an extra few mins in the car to 1. Be
| safer. 2. Get back 20 mins to check the news or play
| chess or worst case work.
|
| Self driving cars aren't just going to be a reality, in
| PHX they kinda are a reality. It doesn't seem far fetched
| to think 5 years (high estimate - 10 years) from now
| Waymo will be scaled to the top 25 cities in the US.
| rmbyrro wrote:
| These are indeed examples that are far ahead of the tech
| we have today, but I'd bet a single-digit percentage of
| drivers actually perform these tasks, and most do it only
| occasionally. There are areas where AI drivers win over
| human drivers. Maybe it's already net positive?
|
| I have the opinion we don't need AI to be _perfect_ ,
| just on par or better than humans from an aggregate
| perspective.
| swayvil wrote:
| It massively promotes development. Simplifies the machinery.
| Makes it cheaper.
| throw7 wrote:
| You always want a physical failsafe control (i.e. big red button
| for emergency stop)... it's not clear if nhtsa requires that or
| not.
|
| The practicality of manually driving is not going away. Just this
| week my neighbor was driving up and down his driveway to
| transport some heavy packages received.
| dghughes wrote:
| What if the autonomous vehicle is on a curve next to a cliff and
| loses power?
|
| Maybe ejection seats requirement should be an added clause.
| mellavora wrote:
| I like the submarine feature, also.
|
| Why doesn't Bond get cool cars anymore?
| mojomark wrote:
| Vehicles == Automobiles (in this case).
|
| There are other vehicles besides autos (aircraft, boats, ships,
| tanks). Need to be more specific.
| jedberg wrote:
| I think a lot of people are misreading this. Right now one of the
| rules to pass a crash test is that there is a steering wheel.
| This didn't used to be controversial, but now it is. The rules
| were written in the 70s and just assumed there would always be a
| drivers seat.
|
| The only thing here is that the government rewrote the rules to
| no longer assume those things. It's not saying those things
| aren't necessary, just not required. If the car can meet all the
| safety standards without it, then that's fine.
|
| It would be like saying today that you can't have a computer
| without an on/off switch because in the 70s every computer had a
| physical switch.
| christophilus wrote:
| > It would be like saying today that you can't have a computer
| without an on/off switch because in the 70s every computer had
| a physical switch.
|
| As aside, that'd be great.
| polygloty wrote:
| Think about having a switch on a laptop. And if the switch
| doesn't just kill power (which it shouldn't to safely shut
| down), then it shouldn't be a switch it might be better as a
| button.
| vocram wrote:
| You want a switch that also kills power without software or
| firmware.
|
| I had a Dell that once got stuck and the usual long press
| of the power button was not switching it off (probably it
| was sw/fw controlled). I had to take it apart and
| disconnect the battery, otherwise I would have lost my
| working day waiting for it to die.
| lkxijlewlf wrote:
| I would prefer it to Windows saying, "Hey, I see you want
| to turn off this, ahem mobile, computer of yours. I'd like
| to comply, but you see, I have all these updates I'm 'bout
| to install for you so... yeah... Oh and don't even think of
| putting it in your bag because it's a Dell and they void
| your warranty if'n you do that. Mmmkay?
|
| P.S. Yer 'bout to miss your flight."
| octoberfranklin wrote:
| "Turns off when I tell it to and does not disobey me" is
| part of "safe".
| NoSorryCannot wrote:
| I've never seen a machine disobey the long-press, though
| it's probably happened before to someone.
|
| Anyway, I'd rather avoid accidents.
| cameronh90 wrote:
| We have some Lenovo ThinkPad X1 laptops that disobey the
| long-press. They get stuck in a state where they are
| turned on but appear off and nothing works. The only way
| to get them out of that state is the reset hole.
| Supposedly it's a motherboard fault, but they've replaced
| the motherboards repeatedly and it still happens.
| _trampeltier wrote:
| My HP ZBook once crashed also somehow and I had to remove
| the battery. I was not the only guy in the office with
| this problem.
| jeffwask wrote:
| Since my cat learned to press the red button to get my
| attention, it would be fabulous.
| jedberg wrote:
| As soon as I typed that I knew someone would reply with this.
| :). I agree it would be nice and I sometimes miss physical
| switches, but imagine how clunky a Raspberry Pi would be with
| a physical switch.
|
| And besides, I almost never used the switch on the computer
| anyway. I was always told to put it into a power strip and
| use that, because it was a lot cheaper to replace the power
| strip than the broken power switch on the PC!
| cameronh90 wrote:
| I recently disconnected the capacitive power button on my
| desktop thanks to my stupid cat repeatedly turning off my
| computer.
|
| Instead, I've turned on the feature in the BIOS to boot up
| when power is applied. Now, to turn on my desktop, I just
| flip the power switch on the back. Feels satisfyingly
| retro.
| drusepth wrote:
| If you're on Windows: one habit I've developed is to
| always keep an unsaved notepad.exe open. When my cat hits
| the power button (not if), Windows will always stall and
| ask if I want to save the notepad first; at that point,
| you can press cancel to cancel the whole shutdown
| process. :)
| flancian wrote:
| As an aside, that sounds like a smart cat, not a stupid
| one. Perhaps your cat enjoys seeing you react to its
| shenanigans? :)
| oblak wrote:
| That would be my guess. Must be fun watching cameronh90
| getting punished for not emitting enough attention
| particles
| infogulch wrote:
| Single use instant off capacitive power buttons is the
| stupidest design for a power switch I've ever seen. It's
| on the Xbox One (I think?) as well. A cat walking past or
| someone messing around with unrelated AV equipment
| accidentally brushing up against it are NOT valid use
| modes for a device that is running live with a lot of
| state that evaporates when you turn it off and takes more
| than 1s to restart. Dumb.
| newbie789 wrote:
| snowwrestler wrote:
| It's not 100% clear in the article, but it reads like this
| change is scoped to crash safety. The scope of those regs is
| the physical protection of the passengers in a crash, not all
| aspects of safety related to self-driving cars. So, not a big
| deal.
|
| Actually, removing the steering wheel is probably a crash
| safety gain. Manufacturers had to invent a way to retract the
| steering wheel in crashes since it caused so many torso
| injuries. Steering wheel injuries were also the spur to invent
| and deploy the first airbags.
| yxwvut wrote:
| What's going to be the rate of 'acceptable loss'? There's an
| obvious point on the cost curve where companies will begin
| pushing for driverless tech before the problem is fully solved.
| Without some standardized 'miles between intervention'
| requirement that accounts for the externality on innocent
| bystanders, the emergent behavior will be to remove the human in
| the loop before the societally optimal point. If I save $100M in
| staffing costs by firing all my human monitors and only incur
| $10M in payouts to the people my cars run over, the capitalist
| choice is clear.
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| Elon's way ahead of the curve on this one. Unfortunately.
| superkuh wrote:
| Well, the USA has decided that 1000 deaths/day is acceptable
| and ignorable as background mortality for sars-cov-2.
|
| I don't believe that autonomous cars are actually feasible in
| environments that aren't arid/flat Arizona that doesn't have
| winter so it's kind of a moot point. There isn't and will not
| be an autonomous car that can drive on winter, snow covered
| roads with emergent (incorrect) paths that humans flock and
| follow. If the car does the right thing it'll kill people. But
| 1000/day? I think they can probably come in under that.
| readams wrote:
| The US department of transportation values a human life at
| around $10M. So they're willing to spend that amount to
| statistically save one person.
|
| You do need a number though. People don't like to think about
| it but you can't value a life at infinity.
| awb wrote:
| > What's going to be the rate of 'acceptable loss'?
|
| You might think anything less than the current incident rate.
| But that's looking at it from a group perspective. From an
| individual perspective, I've never been in an accident in ~25
| years of driving, so my requirements might be higher than
| others to feel like autonomous control is safer.
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| Set the value of the human life at 125% of the total pay,
| including stock grants and such, that the CEO of the company
| selling the car makes.
| spacemanmatt wrote:
| Cyberpunk future, here we come.
| Communitivity wrote:
| This is problematic for a number of reasons. The most important
| in my mind is that the risk of the vehicle being hacked and
| carjacked remotely is always present.
|
| With the presence of an automation kill-switch and manual human
| controls the driver can always take back control.
|
| Without those, the driver is at the mercy of the hacker.
|
| Vehicle automation falls under the SCADA sub-domain of cyber-
| security. SCADA stands for Supervisory Control and Data
| Acquisition, and the cyber-security in SCADA systems is light-
| years behind. Pro-tip: going into cyber and want a good
| certification (if such a thing exists)..then get CISSP-SCADA.
|
| Some relevant articles:
|
| [1] https://physicsworld.com/a/how-to-hack-a-self-driving-car/
|
| [2] https://hackernoon.com/how-to-hack-self-driving-cars-
| vulnera...
|
| [3] https://blog.tesu.edu/should-we-be-worried-about-the-
| hacking...
| reedjosh wrote:
| Not to mention the use of a hacked autonomous vehicle as a
| weapon.
| aiisjustanif wrote:
| Not a counterpoint but supplemental. Waymo and Cruise have been
| pouring a lot more initial effort into cybersecurity and they
| are just barely in production.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >This is problematic for a number of reasons. The most
| important in my mind is that the risk of the vehicle being
| hacked and carjacked remotely is always present.
|
| Which raises the question: "Why would we engineer vehicles to
| accept external network connections?"
|
| Any communication to/from a vehicle should _only_ be initiated
| by the vehicle itself. There 's no _reasonable_ criteria under
| which a vehicle should have its systems available to external
| sources.
|
| Or am I missing something important?
| ssklash wrote:
| Think of all the attention you could monetize with a captive
| audience in a self-driving car. I fully expect it to be
| exploited by ad companies. And subsequently by hackers.
| [deleted]
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Not accepting connections is not enough to be protected on
| the internet. A connection is just a special case of an
| incoming packet, any incoming packet is potentially
| malicious, even if the source IP:Port are ones you initiated
| a connection with. For example, most web-based malware is
| downloaded from connections you initiated.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >Not accepting connections is not enough to be protected on
| the internet.
|
| Where is the _requirement_ (or even a good reason) that a
| vehicle be connected to the _internet_?
|
| Which is the same question to be asked about ovens, toilets
| and a raft of other stuff too.
|
| I'd say "none."
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Oh, don't get me wrong, I agree with that! I was just
| pointing out that not accepting connections is not some
| one weird trick to connect to the internet without
| risking security!
| cf141q5325 wrote:
| The answer is patches. The more complex and "smart"
| something gets the more patches you need. And since you
| dont want to go to the mechanic every time, firmware over
| the air it is.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >The answer is patches. The more complex and "smart"
| something gets the more patches you need. And since you
| dont want to go to the mechanic every time, firmware over
| the air it is.
|
| Maybe in _your_ vehicle. But certainly never in mine.
|
| Any vehicle whose software can be _remotely_ modified is
| one I 'll never buy.
|
| As I said, that's a disaster waiting to happen.
| signatoremo wrote:
| A bug that affects your car that don't get patched timely
| is also a disaster waiting to happen. Clearly it's a risk
| model that you are willing to accept. I am not.
| [deleted]
| cf141q5325 wrote:
| I absolutely agree, however that likely means no self
| driving car for either of us for the given reason. Unless
| you are planing on weekly trips to the mechanic?
| cameronh90 wrote:
| Clearly there is no requirement because plenty of cars
| don't connect to the internet.
|
| There are plenty of reasons. Whether or not they are good
| depends on your opinion, but for me at least good reasons
| include:
|
| * Triggering my home alarm if someone interferes with the
| car while it's parked in my driveway.
|
| * Remote tracking/disabling if stolen. Not actually that
| useful directly but if most cars have this then fewer
| people will steal them.
|
| * Automatically notifying emergency services in the event
| of an accident (you could argue this doesn't need
| internet, but 5G is IP based).
|
| * Being able to get OTA software updates.
|
| * Being able to listen to Spotify and use Google Maps for
| navigation.
|
| * "Smart insurance". Not everyone's cup of tea, but
| regular insurance for me is PS100+/month, so being able
| to cut this by 50% by remotely verifying that I drive
| like an old lady is a pretty good deal to me.
|
| My car is old enough not to have an internet uplink, so
| instead I have an aftermarket head unit and an OBS-II 4G
| dongle thing. Obviously it doesn't do all of the above,
| but it's useful nonetheless.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >* Triggering my home alarm if someone interferes with
| the car while it's parked in my driveway.
|
| Why should that require the Internet? An analog radio can
| do exactly that.
|
| >* Remote tracking/disabling if stolen. Not actually that
| useful directly but if most cars have this then fewer
| people will steal them.
|
| This is the worst reason. As we've seen, this has led to
| disabling of cars on the highway by auto finance
| companies.
|
| What's more, no software that actually controls the
| _operation_ of a vehicle should be remotely accessible --
| to anyone.
|
| >* Automatically notifying emergency services in the
| event of an accident (you could argue this doesn't need
| internet, but 5G is IP based).
|
| That's not a bad idea. But why should something like that
| be _linked_ to the driving /operation software?
|
| >* Being able to get OTA software updates.
|
| That's the worst idea. No software in a vehicle should
| allow remote updates. That's a disaster waitiing to
| happen.
|
| >* Being able to listen to Spotify and use Google Maps
| for navigation.
|
| Why should such functionality even be linked to the
| operational software of a vehicle (self-driving or
| otherwise)?
| cameronh90 wrote:
| Well like I said, you could disagree whether they are
| good reasons but to me they are good reasons.
|
| > An analog radio can do exactly that.
|
| An analogue radio can do anything that an internet
| connection or digital radio does, but it's sort of
| redundant to reimplement all the functionality that
| modern IP gives you just because you don't like the
| internet.
|
| In particular, my alarm doesn't have any programmable
| analogue radio, so I'd presumably need some sort of
| module to interface with my alarm or to change my alarm
| for one that supports the analogue radio that the car
| alarm uses. With the internet-based approach, I have a
| little script that reads my car's API and triggers my
| home's alarm with its API.
|
| I can also do things like sending me a push notification
| on my phone if something happens to my car when it's
| parked in a public car park.
|
| Also, analogue radios aren't necessarily safe either. In
| most cases, digital technology has better encryption as
| it's easier to implement. In the UK, signal amplification
| attacks are becoming an increasingly common way to steal
| cars, which obviously wouldn't be possible using an
| internet-backhaul. Digital also tends to use less power
| and is less prone to interference.
|
| > no software that actually controls the operation of a
| vehicle should be remotely accessible -- to anyone.
|
| Remote disabling of cars in operation is obviously not
| good. However, MOST cars implement lockouts by having it
| so if you turn them off they can't be turned on again,
| which is a lot safer - and works more like an immobiliser
| which is a well proven technology. Both this and
| immobilisers sometimes have faults, but it's probably one
| of the least likely things to cause a fatal accident on a
| car.
|
| > But why should something like that be linked to the
| driving/operation software?
|
| Well I wasn't arguing strictly for linking to driving
| software, just reasons to connect a car to the internet.
| But I think the reason these systems have a connection to
| the operational software is to detect what's actually
| happened to the car - has the airbag gone off, what was
| the speed of the impact, what do the sensors say, etc. I
| don't believe there is any intent that they can control
| the car, but as soon as you link anything digitally
| there's always the possibility.
|
| > That's the worst idea.
|
| For most people, it's a great thing. I'm not sure there's
| ever been an attack caused by a remote update system in a
| car, but at least in computers, remote auto-update has
| been one of the best things for security and stability in
| the last few decades. There are a ton of theoretical
| issues with it, but in practice the benefits outweigh
| them.
|
| Imagine your car's fly-by-wire software is discovered to
| have an unintentional acceleration bug. Remote updates
| means everyone's car is patched immediately. Traditional
| updates mean maybe if you bother taking it in for your
| annual service to an official dealer, it might get
| patched if they remember. You might be one of the 0.001%
| who would put it on a USB pen and patch it yourself or
| obey a recall, but almost nobody else would bother.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >An analogue radio can do anything that an internet
| connection or digital radio does, but it's sort of
| redundant to reimplement all the functionality that
| modern IP gives you just because you don't like the
| internet.
|
| Who says I don't like the Internet?
|
| Quite the opposite, in fact. But not all communication
| should be done via that network of inter-connected
| networks.
|
| No wireless (and in some cases, even wired) communication
| can _ever_ be completely secure.
|
| When there's a device (in this case a vehicle) that can
| cause injury, death, destruction and/or other mayhem,
| taking steps to ensure that it can't be controlled
| remotely, as long as humans are in the mix, is a
| necessity not a burden.
|
| You may be happy to put your life in the hands of a
| script kiddie maliciously updating your vehicle's
| operating software, but I'm not.
|
| Sure, there are many conveniences associated with
| allowing remote access to vehicles. But when I get behind
| the wheel (or potentially in a passenger seat of a self-
| driving vehicle), my top priority is not to die.
|
| Allowing arbitrary connections to a device that can kill
| me contradicts that priority.
| moate wrote:
| None of the things you described have to be connected to
| the car (which is to say, the engine, wheels, and parts
| that prevent it from going into a ditch). The
| infotainment system is not "the car", lojack is not "the
| car" GPS, spotify, smart insurance: not the car. There's
| nothing requiring those things to interface with the car,
| even if they are housed in the car.
|
| My cell phone can do most of those things in my current
| car, and also has 0 ability to steer me off a cliff.
| belval wrote:
| > Or am I missing something important?
|
| We absolutely want to remotely control cars at some point,
| how else will you send a self-driving taxi to a customers or
| "ask" a car to comeback to the garage for a recall on the
| underlying hardware or for general maintenance?
| danuker wrote:
| That can be implemented by the vehicle initiating a
| connection and asking "where should I go now?".
|
| But any connection poses vulnerability - for example,
| security certificates to be sure you're talking to the
| right person become obsolete over time as processing power
| gets cheaper, and an update can fail and brick the car.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >But any connection poses vulnerability - for example,
| security certificates to be sure you're talking to the
| right person become obsolete over time as processing
| power gets cheaper, and an update can fail and brick the
| car.
|
| Exactly. Which is why vehicles (like most other IOT
| devices) shouldn't connect to the Internet _at all_.
|
| Please define a scenario where internet access would be
| _required_ (i.e., not replaceable with other, less
| vulnerable communications mechanisms) for a self-driving
| vehicle.
|
| I can't think of any.
| jedberg wrote:
| Have it poll once a minute and ask for instructions with a
| display in the car that says "instructed to go to X,
| accept?" and then have it auto accept after another minute.
|
| Sure that means maybe waiting two minutes for the car to
| move, but that's not a huge deal, especially if you know
| that happens and request it two minutes in advance, but it
| gives anyone in the car the chance to cancel the request if
| it's invalid.
| Communitivity wrote:
| Something controls the software that would ask for
| instructions, and that could be hacked. I'd also suggest
| a default of auto-reject after a minute, not auto-accept.
|
| When people think about attack surfaces in devices they
| often think about the things making repeated connections
| out. The thing is, every piece of reachable mutable code
| in the device is an attack surface, not just the software
| making connections.
|
| You may have heard of ATM car collectors that attach to
| real ATMs, or people that have hacked an ATM to collect
| cards. Your smart car connects to a number of systems
| throughout its life: your dealer's diagnostics, every
| time you charge, every time you play music through the
| bluetooth connection on your phone. Each one of these is
| a potential attack vector.
|
| Let's say one of these things is using JAVA, and somehow
| does not have an updated log4j [1]. Now that thing can be
| used to compromise other subsystems of your car. And
| these attack vectors do not have the antivirus and other
| protections your desktop computer or laptop do.
|
| As bizarre and backward as it sounds, I think the best
| bet is burned immutable firmware on a physical module
| that can be easily swapped out by an authorized dealer
| (or with a key of some sort to allow people to service
| their own cars). This would reduce the vulnerability
| quite a bit, though not eliminate it. It also would
| eliminate over the air firmware updates, which are insane
| in my opinion. It's kind of how if you want a more secure
| computer you burn a live CD with a minimal hardened
| distro of linux, rip out the hard drive, make sure you
| have a fast CD, and have the computer boot to CD. This is
| part of what I used to do for a DMZ PC. There's always a
| risk your firmware will be hacked, but that is harder,
| and can be checked on startup depending on what you have
| on the system [2].
|
| [1]
| https://www.trendmicro.com/en_us/research/21/l/examining-
| log...
|
| [2] https://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/59965/tpm-
| and-rem...
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > I'd also suggest a default of auto-reject after a
| minute, not auto-accept.
|
| You're suggesting that if a self-driving car has a
| feature to remotely summon it, such a feature should need
| a passenger inside to click "accept"?
| iamthirsty wrote:
| What if you're asleep and the car is in the drive-way?
| How would you be able to accept/decline in 60 seconds?
| jedberg wrote:
| Make it beep loudly for 60 seconds? Add a function that
| puts the car into auto-deny mode that you can turn on
| when you sleep (or whenever you're in the car). There are
| many ways to solve this problem.
|
| The point is that the car won't just take remote
| instructions but will gather them and allow the occupants
| the chance to override them.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Replacing accept-incoming-connections with polling just
| changes the threat story from "An outside attacker can
| compromise the machine" to "An outside attacker can
| compromise the machine every sixty seconds."
| jedberg wrote:
| Not really, because the server where the request is
| pulled from would have to be compromised, and it's a lot
| easier to secure a single remote server than every
| individual car. It's also a lot easier to monitor a
| single server for intrusions.
|
| Sure, that single server becomes a juicy target, but
| that's where the defense in depth comes in, where the car
| still doesn't execute the command until the user accepts
| it.
| TillE wrote:
| This is a weird, awkward solution to a problem which is
| far better solved cryptographically (eg, by paired SSL
| certs).
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >We absolutely want to remotely control cars at some point,
| how else will you send a self-driving taxi to a customers
| or "ask" a car to comeback to the garage for a recall on
| the underlying hardware or for general maintenance?
|
| Who is this "we"? You might, but I don't.
|
| That's a disaster waiting to happen.
|
| What's more, under the circumstances you describe, there's
| no reason such vehicles need to be _internet_ accessible.
| Or have we forgotten that communication doesn 't require
| the internet?
| akoster wrote:
| While I agree with you, so many new cars offer remote
| start/remote engine heating block initiation or even the
| ability to summon your vehicle from a parking garage and have
| it drive toward the exit. Many consumers will not purchase
| cars without these new features, all of which require an
| external server to issue commands to a vehicle. Definitely a
| huge security risk, especially with lack of manual controls.
|
| Where are the "low-chip-count" new cars with VFD radio
| displays, dials, traditional keys, no screens and especially
| no cellular modem?
| OmahaBoy69 wrote:
| Agreed on all but remote start. Maybe it's different on
| fancier vehicles (I have a '13 Mustang), but it's usually
| just a radio that starts the engine and nothing more.
| Hardly a security risk.
| a_t48 wrote:
| My 2021 jetta can be started from the VW app, over 4G.
| thinkmassive wrote:
| Remote start has been available for nearly 40 years. Pre-
| heating engines has been going on for nearly a century.
| Neither of these requires a computer, let alone contacting
| a remote server.
|
| You state the security risks of connected vehicles, so I'm
| not sure why you lead with these incorrect statements.
| balabaster wrote:
| Having spent half a decade working in Oil & Gas flow control
| systems directly, I can confirm that 10 years ago when I left
| that industry, cyber security was still not even a
| consideration. Light years behind wasn't an accurate statement
| - non-existent was more accurate.
|
| Admittedly computer systems have come a long way in ten years,
| but given the attitudes and technical expertise of a lot of the
| people I worked alongside, I would say there's a reasonable
| chance the needle hasn't moved very far.
|
| They're excruciatingly good at getting oil out of the ground
| and getting it to market, but they're not going to be winning
| capture the flag at Defcon or Blackhat any time soon...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _With the presence of an automation kill-switch and manual
| human controls the driver can always take back control_
|
| Isn't this envisioning a car with no passengers who can drive?
| Agree there needs to be a physical fallback. But fallback to a
| parallel system running on ROM might be the safer option.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| The vehicle this article is talking about is already designed
| this way. Most systems operate entirely read-only after boot
| and there are independent fallback systems for critical
| components.
| _trampeltier wrote:
| And how to drive in exotic places or after a disaster?
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| I would go further - if the vehicle is autonomous, it should be
| illegal for it to have a steering wheel.
|
| The idea that you can make a deadly self-driving car, and then
| jail the driver because he could not react in 0.2 seconds when
| your car suddenly swerved is the greatest handover of money and
| power to corporations since the times of slavery.
|
| So make the choice clear - either tha car has controls, or it
| doesn't. And if it doesn't, there will be no temptation to blame
| the passenger
| nanidin wrote:
| I am tempted to agree about the steering wheel, but then I
| think of all of the situations where being able to take manual
| control would be really nice - like when towing a camper, or
| backing a boat down a ramp, or handing over to valet parking.
|
| I think this is forcing a false dichotomy between having a
| steering wheel and driver liability for failures in the
| autonomous driving system. I think we can have a world with
| steering wheels and manufacturer responsibility... we just
| might not get there for a while.
| phire wrote:
| You don't need to remove the steering wheel completely.
|
| You just need to make it impossible for the driver to take
| control of the vehicle unless it's fully stopped and in a
| safe state.
| ghaff wrote:
| Even with very good automation, it seems an incredibly high
| bar that you can automate literally _everything_. I guess you
| can maybe imagine voice control as a replacement but...
|
| But to the parent comment, it seems insane to me that a
| consumer would accept full liability for some company's
| software as they would for their own driving. It seems
| obvious to me that the manufacturer is liable. If my taxi
| driver gets in an accident I'm certainly not at fault.
| young_unixer wrote:
| The driver should know the capabilities of the car. If he
| doesn't, then he shouldn't drive it. If he isn't 100% sure that
| autonomous driving system will work as expected, then he should
| never enable that system.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| How does the driver know reliability of closed-source, ai
| based autonomous system is the manufacturer himself doesn't?
| young_unixer wrote:
| They don't, so they shouldn't use it.
| cinntaile wrote:
| According to your criterium that means never. There is no way
| to be 100% sure how an autonomous driving system will work as
| expected.
| young_unixer wrote:
| Yes.
| datavirtue wrote:
| If it doesn't have a steering wheel then no one will buy it.
| It's too weird and different and will be a major obstacle to
| adoption. So yeah, corporate wants it to have a steering wheel
| for numerous reasons...including the one you cite.
| btilly wrote:
| Not noone.
|
| If there was a low-end car that could drive my kids to/from
| school without a licensed driver present, I'd buy it in a
| heartbeat.
|
| So would any other parent who has the money, and regularly
| has a conflict between where work would like them to be, and
| where they need to be for their children's school. (Yes, I'm
| familiar with and have used rideshare. Uber's liability won't
| cover taking kids, HopSkipDrive will, but they cost a lot
| more and every so often you get the situation where they
| don't find a driver. The convenience of, "Don't have to worry
| about it" would be worth a lot to me, and would give the
| children a lot of freedom.
| danuker wrote:
| You are speculating. A self-driving taxi, bus or truck
| service might not find having controls important.
| loeg wrote:
| This is silly. I want a self-driving car that drives me 95% of
| the way to the mountains, but allows me to take control on the
| dirt road that is the last 1-3 miles to the trailhead.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| That may be available in the end.
|
| This change to the law makes it so that if someone else wants
| one that can't do that last 5%, it's not literally illegal to
| sell them that car.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| The owner is going to be liable, regardless of who is in
| control. Just like if someone else is driving your car and
| causes an accident, you (the owner) are the one who will pay.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "Just like if someone else is driving your car and causes an
| accident, you (the owner) are the one who will pay."
|
| What? Do you go to jail If someone kills a pedestrian with
| your car? Do you have to pay compensation for injuries?
|
| I don't know what jurisdiction you are in, but here the one
| who cuased damage is the one who pays.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| You will not be criminally liable for what another driver
| does in your car (unless perhaps you agreed to let him
| drive knowing he was drunk or something like that) but you
| (as owner of the vehicle that caused the damage or injury)
| will be financially liable. You will be sued. Your
| insurance will pay.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| > unless perhaps you agreed to let him drive knowing he
| was drunk or something like that
|
| To provide some extra context, it's also possible to be
| criminally liable for what another driver does _after
| leaving your car_ if they commit a crime that you had
| foreknowledge of. Here is one tragic example of a case
| where this happened:
|
| https://truecrimedaily.com/2017/06/08/exclusive-ryan-
| holle-c...
| HideousKojima wrote:
| That's an overreaction, the simpler solution is to outlaw
| anything less than level 4 self-driving (or at least ban level
| 3 and only allow level 1 and 2 stuff until 4 is achieved), and
| make the liability on the auto manufacturer clear in the law.
| danuker wrote:
| But clearly people are appreciating levels 1-3, because they
| buy current cars offering them.
|
| These levels still provide improvement in quality of life,
| but for a cheaper price (because it's easier to implement).
| danuker wrote:
| I'd counter with a physical switch, which can not be toggled by
| the car, and which locks during a crash.
|
| That way, the state of the switch lets you know who caused the
| crash.
| flint wrote:
| Who's going to underwrite the insurance?
| yazaddaruvala wrote:
| Very likely large fleets like Waymo / Cruise / Tesla will be
| self insured.
| vmception wrote:
| I was at a crosswalk and saw a car with the big cameras on top
| coming
|
| Normally I walk and have confidence the human will stop and not
| want the consequences, or I at least make eye contact with the
| human driver for reassurance they will stop
|
| This time I ran, mumbling "self driving car fuck that"
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| I was thinking about that recently, that there needs to be some
| kind of "I see you" system. Maybe an external light that tracks
| you or something. Anything that can help me as a pedestrian
| understand what its internal state is.
| Kinrany wrote:
| How hard would it be for all vehicles to broadcast an ID, a
| location and a velocity and reply with confirmations when one
| vehicle sees and "hears" another one?
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| I was specifically thinking as a pedestrian, which that
| wouldn't suffice for.
| mmcconnell1618 wrote:
| There are standards under consideration for just this
| purpose. See this RFC: https://www.transportation.gov/v2x
| forgot_old_user wrote:
| Folks are workin on it
| https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-autonomous-car-is-
| co...
| banana_giraffe wrote:
| Reminds me of a mail delivery robot at an office that had a
| feature like that. They had to tweak it because it was
| freaking out visitors by staring at them during elevator
| rides.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| We need a machine vision version of looking in the eyes. Maybe
| red lasers that point at your heart to signal that it has
| compassion for your heart.
| coolspot wrote:
| Just stick googly eyes onto headrest.
| john_minsk wrote:
| Cars will project to your Apple glasses if they see you or not)
| reedjosh wrote:
| You won't need to interact with vehicles in your Metaverse
| pod. What were you outside for anyway!?
| kfarr wrote:
| Agreed in theory, however in practice in SF with all the self
| driving cars I've had the opposite experience IRL. The self-
| driving cars provide more buffer (slowing down earlier) for
| pedestrians than human drivers and I trust them more already.
| forbiddenvoid wrote:
| This is obviously the real biggest issue facing AV companies.
| Technology will get there; social acceptance is a bigger
| hurdle. You have to trust that the machine is at least as
| likely to stop for you as a human, and that will take a long
| time for everyone.
| vmception wrote:
| I _had_ been beyond the "acceptance" idea, before the cars
| actually were rolled out, because I _believed_ they would
| they would be better than humans. I was pretty excited about
| Lidar. I liked the idea that environmental mix up or
| collision would be autoupdated to other cars so that they
| would perform better in the condition, crowd fixing edge
| cases extremely quickly. But pretty much none of that has
| happened and the current implementation is a total wtf.
|
| Many cars with self-driving capability do not use Lidar, I
| can't tell which ones do, the very prominent Teslas do not,
| and they've have hit people in obviously avoidable
| circumstances that have nothing to do with "being too
| predictable in a human world", just total fuckups, and I've
| seen videos of what the Tesla cars see compared to what they
| do, and I'm not satisfied with them.
|
| So for most they may have to build trust, for me they have to
| _re_ build trust, because all the companies have pretty much
| gone the nightmare route making us all cannon fodder.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Tesla self-deiving reminds me of Elon's personal life. Stay
| clear of it.
| cj wrote:
| Eye contact is also a major component of driving a motorcycle
| safely.
|
| When at an intersection, you know another car sees you by
| looking through their windshield and judging whether the person
| is distracted or if they're aware of your presence.
|
| It would really benefit motorcyclists, pedestrians, and other
| drivers if there were some mechanism for self-driving cars to
| visually and outwardly acknowledge your presence.
|
| How often do you wave or signal other drivers with your hands
| when you both arrive at a stop sign at the same time? What's
| the replacement for this in a world where half of cars don't
| have a driver?
| bathMarm0t wrote:
| I was taught never to trust eye contact either. They could be
| looking past you and motorcycle profiles are very low. I'm
| looking for a stationary front wheel hub. Any movement merits
| a reaction.
|
| Having an indicator that the car "sees" you would be very
| interesting.
| amelius wrote:
| But motorcyclists are playing unfairly here, since bicyclists
| and pedestrians can't see through their visors.
| spicybright wrote:
| What does unfair even mean here? You can tell where the
| motorcyclist's helmet is facing, and the wearer of it can
| still look at the eyes of a driver.
|
| Are sunglasses on a car driver unfair too?
| downut wrote:
| Avid bicyclist here. If I'm approaching an intersection with
| the possibility of conflicting with a motor vehicle even
| though I have clear right of way I stare at the driver's
| eyes. If he's not looking at me, I prepare for evasive action
| or possible emergency braking. Same for me going along my way
| and an oncoming MV turning left in front of/into me. I get a
| close call every year or two. I am very rude and they always
| are surprised I am angry...
|
| No eyes no trust. Full automation is going to elevate the
| precedence of fallible motor vehicles over people with every
| right to the road even more. Great.
| rukuu001 wrote:
| During my 20 years of bike commuting I remember the three
| times someone looked me in the eye and pulled out in front
| of me.
| admiral33 wrote:
| Jaguar experimented with putting eyes on the vehicle itself:
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/jaguar-land-rover-eyes-on-
| ca...
| dmix wrote:
| I was expecting Googly eyes and wasn't disappointed.
| Antipode wrote:
| I'm sure this is location specific, but I don't trust human
| drivers to stop until they're already hitting the brake, even
| if I make eye contact with them. I'd feel a lot more confident
| stepping out in front of a self-driving car.
| ASinclair wrote:
| I took my first self-driving ride last night. One of the wildest
| parts was watching the steering wheel and hearing the pedals move
| on their own.
| ape4 wrote:
| I wonder if something makes the wheel turn which actually turns
| the car. Or is the wheel just a visual indicator.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Most cars still have some aspect of mechanical coupling
| between the steering wheel and the front wheels in case of
| electrical failure. There are _some_ cars that have had
| "steer by wire", but it's still very uncommon:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive_by_wire#Steer_by_wire
| numpad0 wrote:
| I think it's notable that Steer by Wire on Infiniti Q50 was
| a reverted change: users apparently wanted anti-torques and
| vibrations from steering as a cue/driving input.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| I would not own a car that was steer-by-wire because of the
| risk of electrical failure.
|
| I've _had_ electrical failure in a car before. The
| alternator died and wouldn 't produce enough power at under
| 2000 rpm. My stereo and lights were flickering and engine
| was sputtering. In a steer-by-wire system, I'd have lost my
| steering. I'm just glad I was driving a stick shift, giving
| me more control over engine speeds so I was able to make it
| home and not have to get a tow.
| juancn wrote:
| It should open up the possibility of facing backwards, assuming
| you don't have motion sickness, it's a much safer position to be
| in to dissipate energy in case of a crash.
| biophysboy wrote:
| Is this because the seat would distribute the force?
| sumo89 wrote:
| Where's that video of the guy's dash cam showing what full
| autonomous driving in a Tesla is currently like, the one where it
| keeps trying to drive him head first in to other vehicles. I'm
| hoping this is just intended for on-campus shuttles or something.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Tesla is not representative of the state-of-the-art in the
| industry.
|
| In fact, many of the other companies in the space are looking
| down their nose at Tesla's experiment because Musk thinks he
| can do the trick without LIDAR. He _might_ not be wrong (humans
| do it without LIDAR), but it 's a hell of a gamble that results
| in a sensor bundle quite different from the sensory tapestry
| other self-driving vehicles can take advantage of.
| anthropodie wrote:
| > I'm hoping this is just intended for on-campus shuttles or
| something.
|
| Or those Jurassic park like vehicles
| api wrote:
| If we think we have class antagonism and rural vs. urban
| antagonism now, wait until self-driving trucks decimate trucking
| as an industry. It's one of the largest well-paying employers of
| "blue collar" people. We are still a ways off but it's definitely
| coming.
|
| We have to do something about inequality or we _will_ have
| totalitarianism. It will either be in the form of a totalitarian
| fascist or communist revolution, or a totalitarian police state
| to prevent such a revolution.
| piyh wrote:
| One of my favorite youtubers did an hour long video on the
| trucker convoy from California to DC and it was a peak into
| another world. The thing I thought about after watching it was
| wondering what it looks like when that group has mass
| unemployment in 10 years.
|
| Truck driving employs 1% of the US population and if those jobs
| are lost to automation, there's no chance of them coming back
| like they did throughout other recessions. It won't just be the
| drivers, it'll be their friends, families and children that
| will be unemployed, unhappy, and very motivated.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKcJrBRVZn4
| api wrote:
| I'm going to submit that some of these COVID protests are not
| COVID protests. They are inequality protests, but seriously
| talking about inequality has been pushed out of the Overton
| window across much of the American political landscape. As a
| result the anger "sublimates" out about other issues.
|
| The right does a good job guiding the anger of the working
| class toward issues that have nothing to do with inequality
| like COVID, race, immigrants, trans people, etc. Meanwhile
| the left offers up a totally out of touch message that
| doesn't resonate at all, or offers them welfare without
| understanding that these people consider welfare to be
| something to be ashamed about. They want productive work.
|
| You know... we have a housing crisis in this country. A lot
| of these people could find work building adequate housing for
| the US population, but that would threaten high real estate
| valuations...
|
| We also have a lot of infrastructure that needs building, but
| we may have to wait for the generation that was brainwashed
| to believe that infrastructure (except more roads) is
| communism to retire.
|
| There are plenty of jobs but we won't create them. We'd
| better get on it.
| finnh wrote:
| Such a good point about housing. Also, green new deal jobs
| upgrading the energy efficiency of our housing stock. Lots
| of work to be done.
| ben_w wrote:
| I have a suspicion that housing will stop being a crisis
| due to a combination of:
|
| 1) the main expense is the land, the houses themselves are
| cheap, so anything that causes existing-but-undesirable
| houses to now be in a commuter zone increases useful supply
|
| 2) self-driving vehicles will allow people to commute while
| asleep or doing their hobbies (this is a terrible idea with
| current tech, people already get in trouble for doing both
| in existing self-driving cars)
|
| 3) remote working (we already have a lot of digital
| entertainment and socialising)
|
| If I'm wrong, I expect it to be because all this makes
| meatspace location into an even bigger status symbol than
| it is already.
| shkkmo wrote:
| > self-driving vehicles will allow people to commute
| while asleep or doing their hobbies
|
| This doesn't eliminate the traffic issues and energy
| consumption associated with long commutes. Self-driving
| cars are a substitute for the efficiency benefits of
| density.
|
| If anything, the expansion of remote work has just pushed
| the housing crisis into more housing markets.
| yazaddaruvala wrote:
| > pushed the housing crisis into more housing markets.
|
| FWIW I prefer density but isn't this good? The reality of
| yesterday was too few zip codes with too much demand and
| not enough good will to increase supply.
|
| Instead we now have a lot more zip codes that can make
| decentralized decisions about building more housing.
| Hopefully they vote for more development and use it as a
| way to stimulate jobs in their local construction
| industry.
|
| How can this be a bad thing?
| ben_w wrote:
| > This doesn't eliminate the traffic issues and energy
| consumption associated with long commutes.
|
| How are traffic issues relevant to housing costs when no
| person is wasting time in the driver seat?
| visarga wrote:
| People will run out of jobs only when they run out of needs
| and desires.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Human psychology is, unfortunately, more complicated than
| that.
|
| There was an attempt in 2016 to prepare a program to
| retrain coal miners in center Pennsylvania and other
| traditional mining regions, as the general market,
| automation, and decrease in available coal from mining had
| made that a high-unemployment space. Job retraining was on
| the table.
|
| People handily rejected it. They didn't want to do
| something else; they wanted to mine.
|
| The children of professional drivers may find something
| else to do, but professional drivers are going to, on
| average, be most comfortable driving, and if there's no
| driving to be done we're on our way to system shock.
| willcipriano wrote:
| What if I told you to quit your job and I'll get you
| training for another role. If you trusted me you might go
| with it, but it you knew from previous experience that I
| was an incompetent buffoon you would likely say no.
|
| It's like a guy in a clown outfit saying the nobody wants
| open heart surgery beacuse everyone turns him down when
| he asks.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I think your assessment is good. Unfortunately, none of
| the clowns have taken off their clownsuits so the system
| shock is still the most probable outcome.
| zaps wrote:
| Those men know what it means to turn the keys, and some are just
| not up to it!
|
| Now, it's as simple as that!
|
| I think we oughta take the men out of the loop.
| mindcrime wrote:
| We've had men in those cars since before any of you guys were
| watching "Howdy Doody"! Now I myself sleep pretty well knowing
| those boys are driving.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Looks like the point of the change is that all-passenger hardware
| configuration is now allowed, just like there is no reason you
| can't make a tablet PC with no keyboard. Slightly different from
| "self driving cars are now allowed on the road".
| KaoruAoiShiho wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30560349
| zekrioca wrote:
| The first sentence of this article has an interesting reading:
|
| "U.S. regulators on Thursday issued final rules eliminating the
| need for automated vehicle manufacturers to equip fully
| autonomous vehicles with manual driving controls to meet crash
| standards."
|
| It does sound like "U.S. regulators are removing regulations.",
| which does look like they are acting against themselves..
| knubie wrote:
| Are programmers removing code acting against themselves?
| imajoredinecon wrote:
| Regulators are responsible for maintaining sets of rules that
| are just as comprehensive as they need to be and no more. Part
| of the job description is updating or removing old rules, just
| like part of it is creating new ones.
| zekrioca wrote:
| Maybe you misread it, and/or maybe I miswrote it, and/or
| maybe both. But I meant about the phrasing and my
| understanding of it, not about the actual job of a regulator.
| giantg2 wrote:
| This is like the least important area of this topic, and like 100
| steps ahead of where we are now.
| t_h_r_o_w_away wrote:
| But government!
| giantg2 wrote:
| It's a great example of how companies with money can lobby to
| get things that don't matter changed, while ordinary citizens
| can't get the government to fix broken regulations that are
| having an actual impact on our lives.
| beardyw wrote:
| If your vehicle is heading relentlessly toward a group of
| schoolchildren it would be nice to have a way to override it.
| Either that or no windows so you won't be haunted by it every
| night of your life.
| coffeeblack wrote:
| "Self driving" means that it is far more likely for a human
| driver to override the car in panic and hit the children than
| it is for the car to hit the children autonomously.
| warmwaffles wrote:
| IF the car does hit the children even while driving
| autonomously the driver will be held responsible regardless
| of overrides. If someone dies, someone is going to jail until
| the justice system works through it.
| dahfizz wrote:
| Did you read the article? There is literally no steering
| wheel in an autonomous car. There is no "driver", only
| passengers. Even then, the car could drive itself without
| any passengers.
| goodpoint wrote:
| No steering wheel does not imply no responsibility.
| yazaddaruvala wrote:
| I mean, it kind of does.
|
| I do agree tho, "no steering wheel, no responsibility"
| should be explicit in law.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| Presumably you mean "no responsibility for the owner",
| and the responsibility should be borne by the
| manufacturer. I'm not sure if that's the right set of
| incentives for society, though.
|
| If the owner is responsible for any deaths caused by
| their car, the owner will have an incentive to choose a
| car that has a good safety record, and to keep that car
| in proper working order.
|
| Conversely, if a corporation is responsible, they can
| only be punished with fines for causing a fatal accident,
| and those fines will be considered a cost of doing
| business. Also, the corporation will have a lot more
| money to invest in lobbying for laws (and judges) to make
| those fines as small as possible.
|
| Let us not forget the infamous "Pinto Memo":
|
| https://www.spokesman.com/blogs/autos/2008/oct/17/pinto-
| memo...
| warmwaffles wrote:
| I was responding to the parent above me. Not the article.
| TillE wrote:
| There is no "driver" in this scenario, aside from the
| software.
| pluc wrote:
| We have the technology to replace schoolchildren at a much
| lower cost than cars
| visarga wrote:
| Would that include the piano and karate lessons for the
| replacement kids?
| datavirtue wrote:
| Coding bootcamp and Krav Maga these days.
| roamerz wrote:
| Comment of the day. Thanks for the laugh.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Not all of us laugh. My first grandchild is going to be
| named for a childhood friend of my daughter, who was killed
| by a car. My daughter still hurts, 15 years later.
| renewiltord wrote:
| That is indeed sad and it's true there's always someone
| carrying trauma about something. That's life. But it goes
| on. That's why sometimes I say "kill all the apaches" and
| don't even think twice about the fact that many Native
| American tribesmen were killed in the conquest of this
| nation.
|
| I think it's sensible not to optimize to the person with
| the most trauma.
| robbrown451 wrote:
| Sad story.
|
| I hope she reconsiders naming her daughter for the girl
| who died tragically.
|
| My sister was named for a cousin that, as a baby, fell
| out a window to her death, a decade or so before my
| sister was born. When my sister was a couple weeks old,
| my parents realized that they didn't want to think of
| that tragic story every time they said my sister's name.
| So they changed her name to one without the emotional
| baggage.
|
| There are other ways to honor someone's memory, that
| don't affect your relationship with your new child.
| gruez wrote:
| What kind of cars are we talking about? A second grader is
| aged 7-8. Let's round that up to 8 years to include 9 months
| of gestation. A model Y starts at $55k. For them to be equal
| in cost to "replace", the child would need to cost more than
| $6,875/year to raise. Can you hire a full time nanny for that
| price? My guess is that the amount of resources/money
| invested into a child at that age is in the hundreds of
| thousands.
| lupire wrote:
| We don't have inexpensive cloning and rapid growth
| technology.
| xwdv wrote:
| Children are pretty much fungible before a certain age.
| Xorlev wrote:
| I realize you're probably joking, but life isn't
| fungible.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| Don't worry, they meant "before birth", when children
| aren't really alive. /s
| nhumrich wrote:
| > much lower cost than cars
|
| Spoken like someone who has never been a parent.
| digbybk wrote:
| I'm not sure if I'm optimistic about autonomous vehicles or
| just very pessimistic about human drivers. I have no confidence
| that the next driver making a left turn while I'm crossing the
| road won't kill me. I'm much more comfortable with a computer
| that is programmed to avoid killing me, even if the software
| may have the occasional bug, than with a human who may or may
| not prioritize my life over whatever else it is they have going
| on that day.
| datavirtue wrote:
| I'm wondering why pedestrian accident prevention isn't
| standard equipment already. We have sensors all over,
| adaptive cruise...everything is in place except the junior-
| developer grade software routine to stop instead of hitting
| shit. Shows where the priorities are.
| robbrown451 wrote:
| Are you saying that they don't work hard to avoid having
| their cars hit pedestrians? Really?
|
| And no, this isn't "junior-developer grade software
| routine." They also don't want the car slamming on its
| brakes in the middle of traffic because a plastic bag blew
| by in front of the car.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| The nice thing about self-driving cars is that when fatal
| errors are found, the software can be updated so the car will
| never make that mistake again.
|
| We can't do that with humans; instead, we have probabilities
| and known badly-designed roads that incentivize (or don't
| disincentivize) driving in a way likelier to cause death. The
| only way to fix those issues at scale is redesign the roads,
| often for less efficient traffic throughput.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| > I'm much more comfortable with a computer that is
| programmed to avoid killing me
|
| I think the real concern that the car is actually programmed
| explicitly to kill you if it has to, to ensure it's own
| safety or the safety of it's riders or something.
| sweetbitter wrote:
| Humans do this as well. Many bus drivers may be told to not
| stop even if a car gets directly in their way, so as to
| avoid killing all of the children inside - especially so
| when at heights.
| robbrown451 wrote:
| I think a human is far more likely than a car to have a
| self-protection tendency.
|
| If a car is programmed that way, how does that benefit the
| car company (or the programmer)? It's just a different
| family that sues them if someone dies that didn't have to
| die. Are you thinking they could advertise it as
| "prioritizes your life more than random other people!"
| That's just begging for a lawsuit.
|
| And they especially wouldn't program the car to protect
| _itself_ above a human life. Why would you think it would?
| The car is not nearly valuable enough to outweigh the cost
| of a lawsuit.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| A human is less likely to mistake a garbage can for an
| oncoming car and then make the choice to run me over out
| of self preservation, though.
|
| Comparing a car programmed for self preservation versus a
| human seeking their self preservation only really makes
| sense if the car and human are both equally capable of
| assessing threats.
|
| At the moment I don't think cars are at the same level.
| Maybe I'm wrong. Humans are fallible too of course.
| robbrown451 wrote:
| You are mixing competence with agenda. Which is it? If
| you are concerned it is not as competent as a human,
| fine, that's defensible.
|
| But that's not what you said. You said you were concerned
| about its _agenda_ , that it would be intentionally
| prioritize the lives of its passengers over other lives
| (and even suggested it would prioritize the preservation
| of the vehicle itself more highly)
|
| you said....
|
| >I think the real concern that the car is _actually
| programmed explicitly to kill you_ if it has to, _to
| ensure it 's own safety_ or the safety of it's riders or
| something.
|
| My comment was about that....the "agenda" issue, which is
| 100% what your comment was about.
|
| To be clear (if I wasn't in a previous message)
|
| There is NO incentive for it to be explicitly programmed
| to do that, since the company could be equally sued by
| pedestrians as it could by passengers.
|
| There IS incentive for a human to behave that way, since
| natural selection built a self protection motivation
| deeply into the human brain.
|
| There is also very strong incentive AGAINST prioritizing
| protection of the vehicle itself over any human --
| passenger or not. For both human drivers and driving
| software programmers.
|
| Anyway, you seem to be changing your argument to one of
| competence, which to me is a completely different
| discussion. (I think self driving cars are better at some
| things and humans are better at other things, but
| eventually cars will be better -- or at least equal --
| for the vast majority)
| forbiddenvoid wrote:
| Literally, when my dad taught me to drive, the first thing he
| told me was: 'Every other driver on the road is an idiot and
| a murderer. Act accordingly.'
| [deleted]
| robbrown451 wrote:
| So, don't go onto public roads at all?
| bluGill wrote:
| Today I'm not sure which I have more confidence in. However
| long term I'm confident that we can eliminate enough bugs
| that the autonomous vehicle is better. Once statistics start
| to come out (real ones that account for all factors, not
| potentially biases ones from the company making the cars)
| I'll be looking for the time when we ban non-autonomous cars.
| aejnsn wrote:
| The first person to get hit (in their non-automated vehicle) with
| the automated vehicle being at fault will have a field day with
| this in court.
| firstSpeaker wrote:
| No steering wheels or brake pedals! Feels scary but we are giving
| technology way more control over our lives already :-).
| laurent92 wrote:
| The usecase of minibuses with a joystick for command and a red
| emergency button is legit. We have this in France, not only for
| airports.
| schleck8 wrote:
| After removing the steering wheel and making the car fully
| autonomous, I bet you'll have to pay a subscription for it to
| drive. And a subscription for a cellular service.
| baseballdork wrote:
| I absolutely understand the distaste, but you'll have to
| compare that against your current "subscription" of insurance
| fees. Hopefully they either go down or go away.
| reedjosh wrote:
| Why own anything?
|
| https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/youll-own-nothing-and-be-
| happ...
|
| The WEF thinks you shouldn't anyway.
| jdlshore wrote:
| It's unlikely autonomous cars will be privately owned.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Looking forward to the future of having to leave 40 mins
| earlier so I can mark multiple vehicles as "need cleaning"
| before having one arrive that won't give me hepatitis.
| ear7h wrote:
| And then they could optimize the model for efficiency by
| picking up multiple people that share similar routes. It
| could even become a public service!
| signatoremo wrote:
| this sounds like a snarky remark, but a hybrid public
| transportation mode where an autonomous van can pick up
| people at their convenience is exactly desirable, more than
| the public bus or train today. Less walking, less waiting,
| on demand connection.
| dopylitty wrote:
| This feels like getting the cart before the horse. As far as I'm
| aware (and as has been proven by car companies' continuing
| inability to produce a safely self driving vehicle) there's no
| standard test for what counts as an "automated driving system
| (ADS) vehicle" capable of safely navigating public roads.
|
| Regulators shouldn't just take for profit companies' word that a
| vehicle is automated. There should be a standard battery of tests
| which a vehicle must pass to be considered automated.
|
| Allowing companies to get rid of controls just because they pinky
| swear the vehicle can handle driving safely in all foreseeable
| conditions is a sure way to end up with needless death and injury
| due to the same dynamics that were written in the book Unsafe at
| any Speed.
|
| The safety and regulatory framework should exist before the
| activity is allowed rather than waiting until the inevitable
| deaths and injuries and relying on the families of the deceased
| to petition congress.
| HPsquared wrote:
| I think any automated vehicle, no matter how advanced, should
| always have a big red button to make it stop whatever it's doing.
| Kind of like the emergency brake on a passenger train.
| natch wrote:
| So if it was already in the midst of slowing down to pull over
| safely, pushing this big red button would do what, stop it
| suddenly in the middle of the road?
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Yeah, in case the "safe pull over" spot is made of lava, or
| something.
| quest88 wrote:
| Makes sense. This is what we have in planes. We can also pull
| the autopilot circuit breaker.
| awb wrote:
| Maybe a "stop gracefully" mode?
|
| If you hit the big red button going 65mph on the center lane of
| a crowded highway, it could be bad. Especially if the tech
| starts to feel safe enough that cars can travel close enough to
| use the draft from cars ahead.
|
| I think an emergency brake works for trains because they're
| isolated.
| ra7 wrote:
| They do have a "pull over" physical button. You can see them
| on Waymo vehicles. The car finds a safe spot to pull over
| when you hit it.
| hackernewds wrote:
| Could be an absurd idea, but could require a licensed driver
| with experience taking over the wheel instead to steer the
| car with human logic, instead of trusting the failing AI to
| park it
|
| Oh wait..
| a9h74j wrote:
| Some high-power industrial systems have both a "controlled
| shutdown" emergency button and a "remove all power" emergency
| button, by whatever names.
| mLuby wrote:
| I'd like to imagine we'd have "manual override" controls like
| I, Robot (2004) showed: https://youtube.com/shorts/46-EGyn7rwc
| As implied in the clip, after a few years of self-driving cars,
| most passengers won't know how to drive well enough for it to
| be safe and other autonomous vehicles might not coordinate well
| with a manual driver.
|
| A "pull over" button could work, but still relies on the
| automated driving capabilities.
|
| A third option would be to dial an "expert driver" who takes
| remote control of the car to get you to safety, bypassing both
| the automated driver and the passengers' inability to drive.
| Lack of connectivity could be an issue, and it opens the door
| wider for hackers (already an issue though). However I have to
| imagine that in-transit connectivity will be increasing
| _dramatically_ once people want to work or watch Netflix during
| their commute.
| visarga wrote:
| Pull overs are much easier to automate than driving, their
| automated version will probably be much safer than regular
| automated driving.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Logically there needs to be a way to control the car at all
| times, otherwise you could be locked into a long trip you don't
| want to take.
|
| The difference is just that it's higher level controls than a
| steering wheel.
| cj wrote:
| I'm pretty sure this was an episode on HBO's Silicon Valley.
| The character's Tesla drove itself onto a container ship with
| the driver stuck inside, unable to get out of the car.
| phoe18 wrote:
| Yes, source for anyone interested in (re)watching:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-trd_f6j3eI
| peteradio wrote:
| A sufficiently autonomous vehicle might just ignore you. Are
| pedal brakes in passenger driven vehicles reliant on computer
| at all, what about electrical transmission?
| hef19898 wrote:
| You mean like machinery in factories? Sounds like a
| revolutionary idea!
| asah wrote:
| that would be two hands on the wheel and pulled them away
| stops the device.
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=machinery+two+hand+control
| [deleted]
| FpUser wrote:
| I'm just thinking about legal shitstorm that will happen when
| completely autonomous vehicle would kill a pedestrian for
| example.
| amelius wrote:
| And so the slippery slope becomes more slippery.
| hadlock wrote:
| It's unlikely that antique/classic cars will ever be banned,
| although getting gas may start becoming harder to come by in
| 2050.
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