I, For One, Welcome Our New Self-Driving Overlords

Remember those scary science fiction stories we once read or viewed where some mad genius screwed around and caused a tear in the fabric of time; cars entering intersections at the wrong point in time and all manner of sh_t hitting the fan.
Citizens your science fiction nightmare has arrived.

I love a good headline but the police have already ruled out the car responsible.

If we, as humans, don't know the entirety of why we have automobile crashes, then how are programmers supposed to know the entirety of how to avoid crashes?

The arrogance is that we humans will be able to know the entirety of why things go wrong in driving a vehicle.

We think "Well, we have autopilots in aircraft, do we not? They're used reliably, no?"

What's not acknowledged is that, in the air, the density of "traffic" is far, far less than on the road and tightly controlled by all players (i.e. pilots in all the aircraft, air control towers), but, in contrast, the road is far, far less predictable and controlled - e.g., pedestrians coming out of nowhere.

Moreover, much of the behaviour of traffic is dependent upon the aggressiveness of the people who are driving. For example, morning rush hour is far and away more aggressive than, say, at around lunch-time. What level of aggressiveness will be built into self-driving cars? That of a 20-year old male or a 60-year old female?

40,000 humans were killed by humans driving cars in the US in 2016. It would be interesting to see the casualty rate on a per mile driven bases of human driven cars vs robot driven cars.

I'm afraid I'm going to have to drive over you, Dave.

Neither the victim or the back-up driver showed signs of impairment.
What about the Ubermobile, was it tested!!? What was the alcohol content of its ethanol and how much had it imbibed?

The simplest case I can think of for self driving cars, would be a parking lot. Everything is permanently fixed; parking spots don't move, nothing moves except the cars.

Put up a fence and signs saying no humans allowed.
Cars drop people at the mall door.
Cars park themselves.
Cars get phone call from owner to come back to door.
End of self drive.

Once that is working perfectly, move to phase two. Seems that all the self driving car cultists immediately skipped ahead to phase twenty.

I am loathe to make serious comment on the story itself, so little info is given.

I did have an experience many moons ago in Calgary that this reminded me of. Driving a company van through a green light at dusk, a 'drunken native lady' ran out in front of me. I swerved hard, heard a bang echo through the van, got it under control and got it stopped about a quarter block down.... to the sight in my side mirror of a figure laying still in the street with traffic bearing down on it. I was able to alert traffic in time and to my great relief a nurse hopped out of the very first car that stopped.

The drunk soon came to and started ranting someone was trying to kill her, then she tried to bolt into traffic AGAIN, and would have succeeded too if two of us had not grabbed her. Ultimately, turns out she had only bruises and a bloodied nose and earned a trip to the drunk tank. As the cops thankfully got from an eye-witness, she literally ran into me, connecting somewhere behind the driver's door. Ha, a cop with a keen sense for levity who inspected the van for signs of impact with his flashlight later commented... "Well, I didn't see any lip marks"

I guess the reason this comes to mind for me is thoughts of the 'back-up' driver, especially if it turns out he is blameless. The drunk native was damned lucky, but sometimes I ponder what demons would have haunted me as a young person, faultlessness aside, if that crazy bitch had died.

...then how are programmers supposed to know the entirety of how to avoid crashes?

Indeed, particularly given that the programmers are likely city dwelling millennial gits who don't know how to drive to begin with.

Time to ban assault cars.

A driver has some bit of intuition and foresight that a computer lacks. Look ahead, a person near the edge of the road, be wary. Can you program that into a computer, perhaps, but it needs to "see" the person to be aware.

As mentioned above, a lot of details missing as of yet.

Driver in vehicle should be charged with vehicular manslaughter and Uber held criminally responsible. What autonomous driving vehicles are missing is the key to safe driving. Intuition.

It's worth noting (even the CBC story comments flame warred over it) that there is disagreement in the media (after the fact) about what the speed limit on that road currently is (and whether or not the car was exceeding it).

As northernont said, what is missing in machines is intuition. The human brain is the greatest computer ever built. It can process brand new information and come to a rational decision. (Well, most brains can.) In contrast, the computer is led down a previously programmed algorithmic path which only considers as many variables as can be handled in the allotted time. (And thought of by the programmers.)

This particular incident may or may not be the fault of the car, but I think lawyers will have a fun time with it anyway. Ultimately there will be an incident found by a jury to be the fault of the car, and its manufacturer will have very deep pockets. And criminals being what they are, there will be staged entrapment of the cars, exploiting known defects in the algorithm. It will be a bloody mess.

In any case, I have worked with computers most of my life, and with algorithms in jet fighters, and I would still much better trust my own judgement. I would not of course object to such features as collision warnings, but I would not want to cede control of the car.

There ought to be several computer savvy engineers available from Florida that could come and help them out with their programming. At least they will be prone to re-routing the cars away from new pedestrian bridge installations.

I'll just leave this here.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5524031/PICTURED-Felon-wheel-killer-self-driving-Uber-car.html

The slaughter begins.
How soon can the programmed instruments of Ram-O-Van catch up with the drivers of today?

I am extremely sceptical of the "self driving" car succeeding on the open road.
Once your,yet to be built, A.I. has enough learning capacity to anticipate the things an experienced professional driver does..it will have enough "learning capacity" to recognize the danger.
Either this robot is to be programmed to kill or it must refuse to leave the compound, as the hazard of our highways is such that an intelligent creature might reasonably refuse to participate.

With no way to rationally anticipate the behaviour of Humans both in vehicle and afoot, what level of risk is acceptable to the people promoting these missiles?
Imagine playing chicken with an A.I..guided car
Will androids play Russian Roulette?