[HN Gopher] Firefighters forced to smash window of driverless Cr...
___________________________________________________________________
Firefighters forced to smash window of driverless Cruise taxi to
stop it
Author : cma
Score : 111 points
Date : 2023-01-30 20:53 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.businessinsider.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.businessinsider.com)
| cma wrote:
| Aren't they supposed to respond to gestures? What do they do if
| someone is directing traffic? And I guess the question if they do
| respond to traffic directing gestures: how do they avoid obvious
| pranks from drunk people?
| arp242 wrote:
| I'd be more concerned about mistaking regular gestures from
| instruction gestures. I might be waving at someone, either to
| say "hello" or to signal "you go ahead". All of this is very
| context-sensitive and subtle.
| __s wrote:
| Throw on a reflective vest & you'll have no problem pranking
| human drivers with your traffic signals
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| A surprising number of humans have no problem with doing
| things to faceless computers and public or corporate
| infrastructure that they would never do to another human
| being with whom they were making eye contact.
|
| Few are willing to don the reflective vest and ruin someone's
| day by lying to their face and directing them down a bad
| detour, but I have no problem believing that a lot of people
| would laugh at a stupid self-driving car wasting its time and
| energy following their hand signals.
| cj wrote:
| Isn't the idea that there would be humans in the self-
| driving car? At least 90% of the time, I would hope.
| jtagen wrote:
| I doubt it. That's a _really_ hard problem. Ignoring the
| machine vision component, if someone on the side of the road
| waves at their friend, should cars going by stop?
|
| Since there's no way to take control of these vehicles, I
| imagine they fall back to a service center with remote drivers
| when they come across the unexpected. Anything involving flashy
| lights should fall into this category.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Obviously autonomous vehicles need to be able to respond to
| officials directing traffic for any reason -- making way for
| ambulances, stopping for firefighters, being pulled over for a
| faulty headlight.
|
| Surely Cruise and Waymo have thought about this. Curious how it's
| supposed to work normally, and whether something about it failed
| in this case?
|
| How is an official supposed to get a moving autonomous vehicle to
| stop or obey non-standard directions (back up to make room for a
| fire truck)? Is it supposed to require any special training on
| the part of officials, or are remote operators supposed to always
| be watching for it? And what happens if the regular
| communications channel to remote operators fails?
| danparsonson wrote:
| > Surely Cruise and Waymo have thought about this
|
| No worries, I bet they've factored the cost of the resulting
| fines neatly into their pricing model!
| onion2k wrote:
| _Obviously autonomous vehicles need to be able to respond to
| officials directing traffic for any reason._
|
| In that case it would also need to tell the difference between
| a cop and someone impersonating a cop, or it's going to be
| really easy to mess with self-driving cars.
| jcoder wrote:
| That sounds like a them problem--society won't change any
| practices to accommodate these toys that are demonstrating
| how little value they bring every day.
| cowmoo728 wrote:
| Doesn't seem fair to expect self driving vehicles to perform
| a task that humans can't. It's easy to impersonate a cop and
| interfere with traffic, and human drivers would be tricked
| too.
| klyrs wrote:
| > Doesn't seem fair to expect self driving vehicles to
| perform a task that humans can't.
|
| That is literally the sales pitch. They're supposed to be
| _better at driving_ than humans. And that actually means
| all of it, not just lane-keeping on well marked brightly
| lit highways.
| uses wrote:
| I mean you could just stand in front of a self-driving car
| and it'll probably stop rather than swerve around you, I
| imagine. There was an episode of revisionist history that
| discussed this a bit
| https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-
| history/i-love-y...
| guardiangod wrote:
| Cant the driver-less car, when it sees a fire truck,
| automatically stop the car at a safe location? Then if the fire
| truck did not move after 3 minutes, re-route to get away from the
| fire truck?
| robocat wrote:
| Next headlines:
|
| Driverless cars cause traffic jam at accident scene.
|
| Driverless cars cause traffic jam while tenders waiting at
| traffic lights.
| readonthegoapp wrote:
| should firefighters wear cameras so we can see wtf is going on
| out there?
|
| i guess it would cost a lot of money, and prob be very wasteful,
| wreck privacy even more, etc.
|
| but... i wouldn't mind knowing a bit more of what's going on out
| there. now that our streets are even-more deadly beta robot
| playgrounds.
|
| and, with all the new tech, maybe we can learn some things.
| malfist wrote:
| This is victim blaming. Why should firefighters wear cameras so
| a autonomous taxi company can avoid accountability?
| btbuildem wrote:
| I can see how this kind of thing would not be in the self-driving
| training sets.
|
| But a person standing in the way should cause the vehicle to
| stop, right? Pedestrian of any kind, including a firefighter in
| full gear.
|
| It's hard to speculate what happened without knowing the details,
| but I'm imagining a scenario where someone stood there to block
| the car's progress, and once they realized it's a dumb robot that
| will proceed as soon as the path is "clear", they did the next
| logical thing (which was to smash the robot).
| mindcrime wrote:
| Less anybody think "this is no big deal", let me assure you as a
| former firefighter, cars driving over fire hoses is a MAJOR deal.
| Whether the car is driven by a human or AI. And sadly, humans do
| this all too often anyway.
|
| FWIW, the reason(s) this is bad - if not obvious - include:
|
| - The hose can (and does) get snagged on the car's under-
| carriage, which can rip it away from a hydrant, or engine, or
| yank an attack line right out of the hands of the crew manning
| it.
|
| - Hoses snagged by cars can, as they're being unexpectedly pulled
| somewhere they were never expected to be, catch firefighters in
| the legs and cause them to fall. I'm aware of at least one case
| where a firefighter suffered a pretty severe head injury in one
| of these scenarios.
|
| - Even if the hose isn't snagged, damage from the vehicle driving
| over the hose can cause the hose to rupture. Hopefully I don't
| have to say any more about why that would be a Bad Thing.
|
| - Even if the hose isn't snagged, or doesn't burst at the moment
| the vehicle runs over it, the damage from this kind of thing is
| cumulative with all the other damage fire hoses suffer, which can
| lead to the need to replace it prematurely. And let me assure
| you, this stuff is _not_ cheap.
|
| - Probably more that I'm forgetting right now.
| btbuildem wrote:
| Wouldn't even the sudden drop in pressure be dangerous to the
| crew manning the hose?
| mindcrime wrote:
| Under the right circumstances, yes. Basically there are many,
| many bad things that can happen if a car drives over a hose,
| and not very many good things.
| retrac wrote:
| I'm slightly alarmed by the general scenario of a driverless
| vehicle approaching an emergency situation. A human-driven
| vehicle will respond to gestures from firefighters to go
| around, etc. And even most dull humans will have more
| situational awareness and flexibility than an AI is likely to,
| particularly as these sorts of scenarios are edge cases by
| definition. E.g. depending on your jurisdiction and the
| situation, it may be proper to run a red light to make way for
| an emergency vehicle. The insistence of the driver waving
| frantically at you is part of that judgement call. Software is
| not ready for that yet, I think.
| colechristensen wrote:
| > Software is not ready for that yet, I think.
|
| It will never happen. Robots will never have the intelligence
| to manage dangerous situations in the open world, only in
| controlled environments. After a series of accidents passes
| the unforgivable threshold, certain levels of autonomous
| driving will be banned completely.
| cowmoo728 wrote:
| Maybe I'm too optimistic about self driving but it seems
| that a fail-safe default of "upon encountering an active
| emergency situation, stop at a reasonable distance away" is
| good enough and better than what a significant minority of
| human drivers do.
| redtriumph wrote:
| Sounds like having support for interpreting human gestures
| will solve some of the problems. But how do we distinguish
| real emergency scenario from fake one?
|
| Such kinds of problems will only scale up as we apply L5 cars
| take on more public roads, but I wonder how long or what
| changes will have to be done in current road signs, critical
| city infra to support them.
| neuralRiot wrote:
| One thing that is often overlooked is that software can
| only understand what it was trained to understand.
| [deleted]
| jxf wrote:
| > But how do we distinguish real emergency scenario from
| fake one?
|
| A car shouldn't make that call. It should err on the side
| of safety and assuming the emergency is real.
|
| When you see flashing lights on the highway coming up
| behind you, do you think "I bet that ambulance is faking it
| so they can get home faster", or do you just move over?
| kube-system wrote:
| I think the point is that humans _do_ make this judgement
| call. We know what a real emergency vehicle and what real
| emergency personnel looks like, and we know what a crazy
| person waving their arms looks like.
|
| When some idiot in the opposing lanes is waving for me to
| take a left across multiple lanes of moving traffic, I
| know that I should ignore their idiotic traffic
| direction. I know that when there's an emergency
| situation with a fire fighter telling me to continue
| through a red light, I know that I should follow the
| directions.
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| But then you have essentially enabled everyone to wave
| your car to a stop, which could be very convenient for
| certain types of people.
|
| I think the simple truth is that we are still a long long
| long time away from fully autonomous cars to be safely
| deployed anywhere except on very specific paths that are
| mostly closed off to everyone else.
|
| But they could be tremendously useful there, for instance
| driving buses or airport shuttles and that kind of thing.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| So this is currently possible today: I can walk out on
| any street today and redirect traffic. With or without my
| reflective vest, drivers will generally listen to me. And
| self-driving vehicles must as well.
|
| Note that when I am doing traffic direction with
| appropriate authority, most drivers will never have heard
| of the organization I'm a part of (a local CERT team),
| nor have any real way to vet the authority I have. The
| authority they can determine I have is mostly that I'm
| doing it and no police officer has come by to tell me to
| stop doing it.
|
| (Note that CERT members do not and should not self-
| deploy, mind you, and if you choose not to heed our
| directions, we almost certainly _can_ find a cop car to
| come let you know you screwed up.)
|
| Also bear in mind, many people directing traffic aren't
| public safety personnel at all. Construction workers are
| private employees, events have their own staff which
| direct traffic in various contexts, including public
| roads.
|
| There's no definitive way to determine that someone is
| authorized to direct traffic, cars just need to obey
| them.
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| >There's no definitive way to determine that someone is
| authorized to direct traffic, cars just need to obey
| them.
|
| Exactly! But there still is a way. You don't obey anyone
| in any circumstances because that would be dangerous.
| People have a feeling for it, computers don't yet.
| LarryMullins wrote:
| I'd obey such traffic commands from just about anybody in
| plain street clothes, unless they looked obviously crazy
| or if I was in part of the world where car jacking is
| common. At the very least I'd stop and ask them what was
| up. Maybe there is some dangerous condition ahead and
| they're trying to warn me.
|
| Does the computerized car understand the meaning of the
| words _" Turn back because the bridge is out"_?
| kube-system wrote:
| Human drivers are smart, and will generally judge your
| appearance, confidence, and context to determine whether
| or not your actions are legitimate. And you likely always
| pass these tests.
|
| Imagine a teenager, dressed in street wear, who jumps
| into the middle of a street to stop traffic in a way that
| has no explanation given the scene, while their friends
| laugh on the sidewalk as they observe.
|
| Or a group of men in masks stopping a car in an alley as
| their accomplices surround the vehicle.
|
| Any human driver will recognize these scenarios as
| illegitimate. It isn't just the act of directing traffic
| that is judged in isolation.
| ecnahc515 wrote:
| In basically every example you gave, you still have to
| stop until people move though. The result is the same,
| despite everything else. The only one that's a bit iffy
| is if you're being carjacked, is a bit of an exception.
|
| Legitimacy isn't really the problem, it's the
| circumstance of a human being in front of your car that
| prevents you from moving forward, and beyond getting out
| of your car and talking to them, or just waiting, you
| don't have much of a choice in what options you have.
|
| I agree with the intent of your point, but what's the
| alternative? You can't just keep driving if someone is
| standing in the middle of the road.
| kube-system wrote:
| Those were two examples, but they're not exhaustive.
| Traffic direction can (and often does) happen without
| someone blocking the vehicle.
|
| In the case of an illegitimate request, a human driver
| might question the request and take a different action
| instead.
|
| Are you being directed to run a red light? If you judge
| that someone is maliciously asking you to do so, you
| probably will choose to remain still instead.
|
| Are you being directed to stop? If you judge that someone
| is maliciously asking you to do so, you may choose to
| turn around, reverse, turn into a parking lot or
| otherwise remove your vehicle from the situation. You
| don't have to run people over to refuse a command to
| stop.
|
| And if you were completely blocked from moving, you'd
| probably call the police.
|
| My point is that "always follow hand signals" is
| trivially problematic. I would expect that if self-
| driving cars followed any hand signal they saw, you'd see
| kids doing it for the lulz on the sidewalk in front of
| their school. ..."traffic jam challenge"
| upwardbound wrote:
| Agreed - faking an emergency is highly frowned upon and
| I'm betting it's a crime in most places. There's even a
| similarity with the following aspect of the Geneva
| Convention, which is that _pretending to surrender_ is so
| harmful to norms that it is literally a war crime.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfidy
|
| "In the context of war, perfidy is a form of deception in
| which one side promises to act in good faith (such as by
| raising a flag of truce) with the intention of breaking
| that promise ... Perfidy constitutes a breach of the laws
| of war and so is a war crime, as it degrades the
| protections and mutual restraints developed in the
| interest of all parties, combatants and civilians. "
|
| Pretending to surrender is something that's shown a lot
| in Star Trek and similar shows, and Pirates of the
| Carribean, but in our real-life world of 2023 it's a UN
| war crime to pretend to surrender, and it's really not a
| nice thing to do because if some people sometimes pretend
| to surrender, then pretty soon no one will trust
| surrender attempts and people who wanted to stop fighting
| will needlessly be lost.
|
| The idea of criminals faking a medical emergency is
| similar imho. If I were in a position of determining how
| much time robbers should serve in prison, I would
| personally recommend a much much longer sentence if they
| faked a medical emergency, for exactly this reason.
| jacquesm wrote:
| The number of criminals faking medical emergencies to
| avoid having to appear in court is pretty high. And of
| course three days after they're right as rain. It's hard
| to act against because of the risk of punishing someone
| that really needs it.
| LarryMullins wrote:
| I saw a video showing perfidy committed by a Russian
| soldier in Ukraine. Several Russians were coming out of a
| building surrendering to some Ukrainian soldiers, when
| one of them came out with a gun and started shooting. All
| the Russians were killed in the subsequent firefight,
| because one of them ruined it for the rest. It may seem
| like a clever ruse in movies, but in real life it gets
| people killed.
| sofixa wrote:
| It'd be funny if it wasn't so terrible. At this point it
| would be easier to list the war crimes _not_ committed by
| the Russian army, they seem to be well intent on speed
| running the Geneva convention. One can only hope one day
| there 's trials in e.g. The Hague to bring all war
| criminals to justice.
| kelnos wrote:
| I think the potential issue is that the driver of a _non_
| -emergency vehicle could start gesturing in particular
| ways that could trigger the autonomous car to think it
| was an emergency vehicle.
|
| So then you have to teach the car what all the various
| kinds of emergency vehicles look like, in every
| jurisdiction. That's hard enough, but then what happens
| if it's an unmarked police car, for example?
| Bilal_io wrote:
| No need for human gesture, just put a stop sign or a road
| closed sign. These were likely taught to the model as its
| ABCs
| kelnos wrote:
| It kinda sucks, though, to put the responsibility for
| this on the first responders, who already have enough to
| do dealing with the emergency.
| ghaff wrote:
| As a general principle, one can imagine special signals
| relevant to autonomous vehicles. But there's probably
| something of a chicken and egg sort of thing and I have
| problems with a lot of processes being required to deal
| with early adopters of this sort of technology.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| There's a connected vehicle protocol (DSRC) which
| broadcasts all kinds of metadata about your vehicle. There
| was stuff like "transaxle temperature" and "steering angle"
| in there, if I recall, so I'd be surprised if there wasn't
| also "emergency flashers engaged".
|
| Perhaps autonomous vehicles should be be sensitive to that
| field, signaling for manual control when they're too near a
| vehicle which has it enabled. That way any vehicle--not
| just the fire department--can create a "human control only"
| field by activating their emergency flashers. Perhaps
| emergency vehicles could be recognized such that they
| create a much larger field.
| krisoft wrote:
| > But how do we distinguish real emergency scenario from
| fake one?
|
| You don't. Bad actors can already pretend to be fireman
| doing fireman things and direct traffic. Human drivers will
| also be mislead by that.
|
| What is more, if you have a high viz vest, a hard hat, and
| more confidence than a garden slug you can also direct
| trafic. Not legally mind you, but more often than not
| people will follow your directions. If there is a whole
| gaggle of fake construction people and they have cones too
| they can probably re-route a highway.
|
| Whatever is stopping people from causing misschief (too
| often) by these "powers" doesn't seem to be different in
| the case of self driving cars than with human driven cars.
| In fact the self-driving car is more likely to retain a
| perfect photographic evidence of the mischief maker's face
| than a regular human driver.
| cuteboy19 wrote:
| So what is the solution? Let emergency services have a remote
| control STOP button? But it would have many implications for
| passengers too
| 7952 wrote:
| The problem of chaotic vehicle interactions exist irrespective
| of self driving cars. What stops progress is the glacial pace
| of legacy car companies and the libertarian nature of car
| culture.
| bakugo wrote:
| The solution is to have a person inside the car controlling it.
| A revolutionary idea indeed.
| hyperpape wrote:
| Sounds like a good question to ask Cruise and Waymo--it's their
| responsibility to do something about the issue.
| [deleted]
| mkl wrote:
| Maybe emergency services should have the ability to block
| autonomous vehicles from particular areas in real time.
| Certainly the companies should collaborate with them to produce
| a lot more training data for this kind of scenario.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Seems like this would be super useful for allowing emergency
| services access in the kind of scenarios where human drivers
| are expected to pull over and let them through. I'm kinda
| surprised this kind of integration wasn't a condition on the
| permit to run them.
| [deleted]
| Veen wrote:
| Perhaps some sort of beacon emergency services can deploy which
| would tell self-driving vehicles to avoid an area.
| a4isms wrote:
| The solution is recognizing that we are nowhere near ready for
| driverless cars. With "ordinary" software, you can look at all
| of the use cases and if you solve 5% of them in a really good
| way, you can be successful, users will self-select whether
| those 5% of the use cases are valuable for them, and then not
| use your software for anything else.
|
| With driverless self-driving vehicles, you have no such
| comfort. Even if your software correctly handles 99.9% of the
| use cases, the remaining .1% will get someone injured or
| killed, and people climbing into taxis cannot self-select
| whether their route will pass by a fire, in which case "take a
| cab with a human driver."
|
| Driverless cars have a huge moral hazard here. Their incentives
| are all around serving their passengers, but the downsides are
| offloaded onto pedestrians, cyclists, other automobile users,
| and now firefighters and the citizens they are protecting.
|
| No "solution" should "beg the question" by taking it as
| axiomatic that driverless cars at the current level of
| capability are necessary. They are not.
|
| We are not curing cancer or feeding the world here, we are
| trying to make people get rich by eliminating the cost of
| labour for a human driver. No way this calculus should
| prioritize investors over human lives in any sane society.
| buzzert wrote:
| I really believe that with that attitude, we'll never be
| "ready" for driverless cars.
|
| > We are not curing cancer or feeding the world here, we are
| trying to make people get rich by eliminating the cost of
| labour for a human driver. No way this calculus should
| prioritize investors over human lives in any sane society.
|
| How about, we're trying to make transportation cheaper for
| everyone by eliminating the most expensive part of taxi cabs
| (human labor)? Transportation being cheaper means people can
| get better jobs further away from where they live, see family
| more often, etc.
|
| Before you mention public transportation, realize that it
| would benefit from driverless technologies as well (aka, not
| zero sum).
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > Before you mention public transportation, realize that it
| would benefit from driverless technologies as well
|
| Which has been in place for years in some places (ie
| Docklands Light Railway).
|
| > we're trying to make transportation cheaper for everyone
|
| Call me an old cynic but I'll believe it when I see it -
| I'm old enough to have seen many, many events where the
| supply cost of something has gone down but the consumer
| cost has not (or even gone up in some cases.) Why will
| driverless taxis be any different?
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| Not just years--decades. The Victoria Line in London has
| had automatic train operation since it opened in 1968
| (unlike the DRL, there's still someone in the driver's
| seat, but they do little more than shut the doors).
| chordalkeyboard wrote:
| > I really believe that with that attitude, we'll never be
| "ready" for driverless cars.
|
| no great loss there.
| a4isms wrote:
| > I really believe that with that attitude, we'll never be
| "ready" for driverless cars.
|
| Is that a problem?
|
| And if it is, are you implying that we cannot one day have
| driverless cars without imposing life-threatening
| externalities on citizens who did not give informed consent
| to participate in the testing of driverless cars?
| bmitc wrote:
| It's not an attitude. It's reality. Self-driving cars, if
| even attainable (which is questionable), don't solve any
| real problems besides bolstering the want for cars and thus
| more roads and highways, which are primary contributors to
| greenhouse gas emissions. That is, other than creating
| "cool" jobs and supporting get rich schemes and startups.
|
| If we cared about transportation and climate change, we'd
| be investing into buses, trams, trains, biking and walking
| paths, and other such solutions.
|
| The attitude designation belongs with self-driving car
| enthusiasts, who are perfectly happy throwing out decades
| of safety research and progress.
| psychomugs wrote:
| I'm of this attitude as well, that the Jevon's paradox
| would kick in for cars _again_ and lead to more use, like
| how ride-hailing apps worsened congestion.
| zinekeller wrote:
| > Before you mention public transportation, realize that it
| would benefit from driverless technologies as well (aka,
| not zero sum).
|
| The problems from autonomously operating trains are limited
| _owing to them being a separate, nearly-independent
| system_. Anyways, some parts of the world has fully-
| autonomous trains with centrally-located operators on bay
| for overriding if anything unexpected (usually someone
| jumped into the rails) happens. Airplanes have significant
| automation built-in (and in theory can even land without
| input) but at the end of the day we have pilots that can
| override just in case that an engine became unexpectedly
| loose or someone on board suffered a heart attack.
|
| The problem with autonomous _cars_ is that a) it 's
| specifically on a mixed-used location and b) often most of
| the developers want to _fully_ abdicate any control, unlike
| on other systems where how operators are in standby just
| something unexpected happens. If both Waymo and Cruise are
| willing to have an operator-standby system a) might be
| mitigated. Until I hear that these vehicles are supervised
| just in case they have encountered something unexpected you
| will see a lot of similar nuisance issues.
| gambiting wrote:
| >>How about, we're trying to make transportation cheaper
| for everyone by eliminating the most expensive part of taxi
| cabs (human labor)?
|
| Does anyone _really_ believe that? Right now I could
| commute to work by taking an Uber - it costs about PS10 for
| a one way trip.
|
| Now you're telling me that a company somewhere, would send
| a state of the art car equipped with incredibly advanced
| computers and sensors, car which they need to insure, which
| needs constant communication and backup emergency controls
| ready on standby, for which they need to cover maintenance,
| depreciation and other costs, and would charge me less than
| PS10 for the priviledge? How little exactly?
|
| It's nonsense, that's what it is. Human taxis have pretty
| much reached the bottom of pricing through gig economy -
| you are hardly paying for maintenance and fuel at this
| point with the way rides are structured. What sort of
| possible margin is there for self driving taxis, which will
| inevitably end up being incredibly expensive assets until
| the technology becomes common place and cheaper?
| ctoth wrote:
| Just a quick note, as a blind person waiting impatiently for
| the driverless future, there are other uses for driverless
| vehicles than just making some random person money.
| [deleted]
| a4isms wrote:
| Absolutely. Also aged people who no longer qualify to drive
| their own vehicles, people with disabilities that prevent
| them from driving under any circumstance, people who have
| disabilities that permit them to drive with specially
| modified vehicles but would like to be driven or cannot
| afford the extra expense...
|
| Yes, there are a lot of very good use cases. And honestly,
| I have a far less important use case of my own: If I take a
| taxi (usually when travelling) I just want transportation,
| I do not want someone chatting me up in an effort to earn a
| good review/tip because they don't earn enough from driving
| the route silently to get by.
|
| I just don't want progress lubricated by the blood of
| people who did not give informed consent to assume the
| risks.
| stingrae wrote:
| As a pedestrian and cyclist in San Francisco, I find
| driverless cars to be much safer than the average car driver.
| They follow the rules and are always paying attention.
| mnd999 wrote:
| That's great, but it apparently wasn't the case here and
| that's the whole point of the article
| consumer451 wrote:
| > The solution is recognizing that we are nowhere near ready
| for driverless cars.
|
| I agree. If we both happen to be correct, I wonder in what
| other areas of automation we may be greatly over the tips of
| our skis.
| notch898a wrote:
| Put a human being inside the car
| JohnFen wrote:
| The solution is to not allow these cars on the road
| until/unless they can behave properly.
| nonfamous wrote:
| Escalators have big red "Emergency Stop" buttons anyone can
| press when things go wrong. Why not one for autonomous
| vehicles, too?
| drdaeman wrote:
| Passenger safety concerns? If anyone would be able to stop an
| autonomous vehicle, it may be not always in the passenger's
| best interest. Could be OK if the passenger has an override,
| though - if they decide to tell the car to not comply with a
| legitimate stop request, it should be treated as if they'd be
| driving themselves and refused to stop.
|
| And, obviously, emergency stop should initiate stopping, but
| the vehicle should do so only when it's safe. It's not an
| escalator that's safe to halt immediately and at any moment.
|
| For an completely unmanned vehicle (driving to pick up or to
| recharge/park for the night) - probably no big deal.
| lalopalota wrote:
| Even while unmanned it could be exploited. A robo-taxi's
| competitor could hit the emergency stop on any vehicles
| they see driving empty.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Trains too. There are abusers but not many.
| epicureanideal wrote:
| Carjackings and other crimes where people could press the
| button in a bad part of town and pull the riders out.
| mmcconnell1618 wrote:
| Or just jump in front of the car which is supposed to stop
| and then your companions handle carjacking the immobilized
| vehicle. There are many ways to normally stop or trick an
| autonomous vehicle without needing a big red button to stop
| it. Spike strips are used by police to stop human driven
| vehicles all the time.
| defen wrote:
| What about if someone triggers it when you're traveling
| 75 mph on the highway?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I.e. what if someone pulls in front of you on the highway
| and then stands on the brakes?
| defen wrote:
| Because it would take about 5 minutes for people to figure
| out how to use that for nefarious purposes.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| This is not a serious solution but it would probably work:
| place a fake traffic light in the road in front of the hose.
| cuteboy19 wrote:
| Shadows would also work in that case
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I didn't see it mentioned in the article, but given they had
| time to break the window, my guess is that's more or less
| what they did -- without the light. Might take a little
| courage, but standing in front of the car should make it
| stop, yes? You'd have to stick around until another solution
| is found, of course.
| fernly wrote:
| Parallel case with a standardized solution: override controls in
| elevators for emergency responders.
| mattlondon wrote:
| To be honest, as a human driver I'd not give a second thought to
| driving over a hose.
|
| Not saying that is right or not, just surprised this is
| apparently an issue worth smashing a car up for. I have no
| recollection of this being in the highway code for instance
| ghaff wrote:
| Seriously? You'd just drive over a firehose because it was in
| your way?
| mattlondon wrote:
| Yeah I would.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| That is unintentionally the best argument for autonomous
| vehicles I've seen in a while.
| ykl wrote:
| You will at a minimum get a ticket and very likely you will
| get your car smashed by some very angry firefighters /
| police. If you rupture the hose, you will also get an
| extremely expensive bill to replace the hose.
|
| California Vehicle Code SS 21708: "No person shall drive or
| propel any vehicle or conveyance upon, over, or across, or
| in any manner damage any fire hose or chemical hose used by
| or under the supervision and control of any organized fire
| department."
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Have you ever seen a firehose in action? It is commonly 2.5
| inches in diameter, and my first reaction on seeing one is
| "that does not look like something I want to drive over."
| Completely separate from the fact that it is a _firehose_ , if
| you put down a 2.5 inch diameter pipe on the road, I'd feel the
| same way about not driving over it.
| mnd999 wrote:
| The article makes it clear driving over a fire hose violates
| California's vehicle code.
| LarryMullins wrote:
| Firefighters don't care about your car windows if you get in
| their way. Do an image search for "fire hose through car" if
| you want a good laugh. Park in front of a hydrant and
| firefighters will smash your windows and put the hose straight
| through it.
| alexfromapex wrote:
| This is going to slowly evolve into "law enforcement needs a
| killswitch" which is a scary thought
| tenpies wrote:
| The really scary part is when the kill switch is in reference
| to your life rather than the car's movement. Like the theories
| about the death of Michael Hastings in 2013.
|
| Hacks of cars were demonstrated in 2015 and documents from the
| CIA released by Wikileaks showed they have explored the idea as
| early as 2014[1], but at the time it was still presumed that
| killing someone by hacking their vehicle would be quite
| resource-extensive.
|
| ---
|
| [1]
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2017/03/0...
| wwweston wrote:
| Eh, of all the threats I can think of, law enforcement being
| able to killswitch autopilot on my car is not even gonna make
| the top 100. Whether on the run for crimes or being pursued by
| sinister oppressors the automotive autopilot is not gonna be a
| key margin of liberty. And being able to HERF _any_ vehicle
| dead is probably coming no matter what:
|
| https://boingboing.net/2018/04/30/zapguns-r-us.html
|
| On the other hand, I can actually see a lot of merit in
| autopilot killswitches for _anybody_ , including law
| enforcement.
| thangalin wrote:
| > On the other hand, I can actually see a lot of merit in
| autopilot killswitches for anybody, including law
| enforcement.
|
| Including thieves?
| tpmx wrote:
| The human driver could still take command (I presume), so I
| don't see that as a relevant attack vector.
| [deleted]
| palijer wrote:
| Don't they already have a kill switch in the fact that they
| have the authority to stop vehicles?
|
| Or us the scary thought that it would be software/hardware and
| therefore insecure?
| kube-system wrote:
| This is factory equipment on many cars for over a decade. (GM,
| Toyota, Mercedes, BMW)
|
| e.g.: https://www.onstar.com/public-safety/emergency-situations
| rdedev wrote:
| A probably better idea would be giving law enforcement/
| emergency services the capability to enforce a no autonomous
| driving zone. Autonomous cars should either find another route
| or give up control to the driver while in the zone
| freitzkriesler wrote:
| [flagged]
| thereisnospork wrote:
| >other things that can cause bodily harm.
|
| So everything? I, for instance, recall a certain style of
| sketchers that had to be recalled because they caused bodily
| injury. Do you likewise demand (e.g.) independent and peer-
| reviewed studies before new footwear can be put on the market?
| Animats wrote:
| The letter from various SF agencies to the state CPUC has more
| info.[1] Cruise vehicles stopping for some reason and tying up
| traffic is a headache. This happens reasonably often. Sometimes
| on streetcar tracks and in bus lanes, which has the MUNI people
| annoyed.
|
| Apparently Waymo doesn't do this as much.
|
| [1] https://www.sfmta.com/sites/default/files/reports-and-
| docume...
| charcircuit wrote:
| Did the city pay for the damages?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I was thinking more along the lines of 'who at Cruise got the
| ticket for running over a hose?' We need good answers for this
| question, because these days going after a big corporation is
| easier said than done. The laws need to be clear, the penalties
| appropriate, the recourse straightforward.
| arp242 wrote:
| Why should it? I don't see how the firefighters did anything
| wrong.
| lflux wrote:
| Firefighters practically salivate at the possibility of
| smashing the windows of a car parked in front of a hydrant
| they need to access for supply. This isn't much different.
| JohnFen wrote:
| So? In both cases, the cars are impeding their urgent work.
| It's not like firefighters are just going around smashing
| windows on cars that aren't doing something very, very
| wrong.
| lflux wrote:
| I agree that it's 100% justified in both cases and that
| Cruise definitely needs to fix their shit.
| kderbyma wrote:
| 'Need to access'.....yes.....and your point? they salivate
| over saving lives! Stfu
| LarryMullins wrote:
| I've talked to some that said it was one of the job
| perks. I don't blame them at all, it seems necessary
| _and_ fun. It 's one of those "instant justice" kind of
| things.
| cma wrote:
| They have to do that to avoid a kink in the hose I think.
| lflux wrote:
| Correct, the supply hoses don't like bending much.
| lolc wrote:
| I sure hope so! If firefighters keep smashing them, these cars
| might get deployed to states where regulators are more
| accommodating enacting some protection. Would be a shame if San
| Francisco didn't have these manslaughter machines around
| anymore.
| [deleted]
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