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from the how-long-could-they-last-in-Boston? dept.
A little while back, I saw the following tweet:
I can print mostly. My wifi works often. The Xbox usually recognises me. Siri sometimes works. But my self driving car will be *perfect*.
The tweet has since been deleted, so I won't name the author, but it's a thought-provoking idea. At first, I agreed with it. I'm a programmer and know full well just how shoddy is 99.9% of the code we all write. The idea that I would put my life in the hands of a coder like myself is a bit worrying.
[...] The reality is that self-driving cars don't need to be perfect. They just need to be better than the alternative: human-driven cars. And that is a much lower bar, as human beings are remarkably bad at driving.
[...] Self-driving cars don't get tired. They don't get drunk. They don't get distracted by friends or a crying baby. They don't look away from the road to send a text message. They don't speed, tailgate, brake too late, forget to show a blinker, drive too fast in bad weather, run red lights, race other cars at red lights, or miss exits. Self-driving cars aren't going to be perfect, but they will be a hell of a lot better than you and me.
Related: The High-Stakes Race to Rid the World of Human Drivers
(Score: 3, Interesting) by vux984 on Monday January 04 2016, @09:31PM
How would a computer handle this
How would a human handle it?
They can't see in front of the car in front of them. So there first glimpse of the ladder will be after the other car ran over it and sent it skittering at you. So what does a human do?
Slam on the brakes? Just ram it full speed? Swerve into other lanes and hope they are empty?
Move over just enough so the ladder goes directly under car? Because humans are so practiced at lining up to run over moving debris at highspeeds? Seriously... a truck in front of me once sent a rock the size of a melon bouncing along the road at me at highway speeds, I slammed on the brakes, but a 'collision' was inevitable, I tried to line up so that it would at least go under the car, but i still hit it with one of the wheels and blew out a tire anyway. Suffice it to say, succeeding at that would have been more luck than brains. For man or machine.
Really, the best a human is going to do is slam on the brakes and try to minimize the speed of the impact with the object; and if there is time to check mirrors etc perhaps try and change lanes around it (while still braking in case hitting it is inevitable). The car really isn't going to do any worse than a human here, and may be better equipped to deal with the blowout / skidding post impact if it comes to that.
If the automated car comes to a safe stop great. That's no worse than a human would do.
The real challenge is for the automated car BEHIND the big rig that just hit the ladder, blew out, and spun to a stop. Because what is it going to do AFTER it comes to its safe stop? The rig in front of it is sideways, blocking both lanes and its going to be there for an hour or three until a tow truck arrives.
OR does it and the other automated cars just sit there for hours until the tow truck comes to remove the obstacle in front of it?
While the human drivers all drove into shoulder / ditch to get around it. Or maybe the police closed one of the oncoming lanes, and is directing traffic trough some service crossings to detour traffic. Of course your automatic car needs to drive in reverse 1/2 mile (on a freeway) to get to the service entrance which it would normally be illegal to even use, where it would cross to an oncoming traffic lane... on a freeway. (Sure its closed... and the police are directing traffic...and its a proper detour route... but can the automated car figure that out though??)