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from the don't-forget-the-kill-switch dept.
Self-driving cars on Michigan's roads may not need human chaperones much longer. Or at least, there will be (tele)operators instead of drivers:
Michigan's Senate is considering a bill that would allow self-driving cars to be tested on public roads without a human driver inside the vehicle. However, a human would still be required to "promptly" take control of the vehicles movements.
Michigan is already a driving force when it comes to driver-less car technology and now the senate may green light a law taking it a step further. The state senate is expected act quickly on a package of bills to loosen rules governing autonomous vehicles. One would no longer require someone actually be inside a self-driving car while testing it on public roads. Right now, Michigan is home to 375 automotive research centers and houses the world's first controlled environment specifically designed to test the potential of the vehicles.
From Senate Bill 0995 (2016):
(4) Subsections (1), (2), and (3) do not apply to an individual who is using a device described in subsection (1) or (3) to do any of the following:
[...] (e) Operate or program the operation of an automated motor vehicle while testing OR OPERATING the automated motor vehicle
in compliance with section 665, if that automated motor vehicle displays a special plate issued under section 224(3) in the manner required under section 225.WITHOUT A HUMAN OPERATOR.[...] (b) An individual
is present in the vehicle while it is being operated on a highway or street of this state and that individualDESCRIBED IN SUBDIVISION (A) has the ability to monitor the vehicle's performance WHILE IT IS BEING OPERATED ON A HIGHWAY OR STREET IN THIS STATE and, if necessary, immediately take control of the vehicle's movements. IF THE INDIVIDUAL DOES NOT, OR IS UNABLE TO, TAKE CONTROL OF THE VEHICLE, THE VEHICLE SHALL BE CAPABLE OF ACHIEVING A MINIMAL RISK CONDITION.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday September 08 2016, @01:24PM
I've seen how Michigan people drive. I'd rather have potentially buggy self-driving software without anyone at the controls!
But seriously, this is exactly what we should be trying out, because it's safe to assume that once cars are smart enough that they can drive themselves, any person in a position to do the driving will stop paying attention and instead take a nap or text with their friend or try to recover from the 10 shots of whiskey they had before getting in the car.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday September 08 2016, @02:15PM
takyon
may not need human chaperones much longer
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 08 2016, @02:33PM
Michiganders drive like stoners weaving back and forth in their lanes, driving in two lanes at once, too cheap to fill up their blinker fluid! Everybody is a stoner who just sits at home on disability getting high all day long. Then they vote for Republicans that cock block voter initiatives to legalize weed because "I've got mine, fuck you!" and "Anybody who wants it already has it!" Bullshit.
(Score: 1) by LVDOVICVS on Thursday September 08 2016, @02:35PM
As a Michigan driver, I've been looking forward with excited anticipation to the day of self-driving cars. I'm hoping several future coronary incidents I could have had will be averted by their arrival.
Also, if they can come up with systems that withstand being bounced off the road by the terrible condition of ours, they'll work anywhere.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 08 2016, @02:38PM
They should take these things to the Upper Peninsula. If they do that, they'll only need to deal with:
- Deer. I think they would be further ahead just redesigning the front of the car so that it deflects fleshy obstacles or by giving it autoturrets (the car AI probably has enough spare power to run these). If that's not allowed, that's still OK - hitting deer is a foregone conclusion when driving in the region. As long as the car still drives it doesn't really matter how it looks.
- Orange barrels. Fortunately these don't actually mean anything - they're just native flora - so you could deflect these too.
- Snow, I guess, unless you drive during the three months of summer.
- The occasional Cheese Head, FIB (Fucking Illinois Bastard), and Troll going up to their camps. These guys are even worse drivers than people from the U.P., but they're rare enough if you avoid certain holidays and deer season.
The rest is easy. It's not like there's traffic (a yooper will give you about 7 or 8 car lengths), pedestrians, traffic lights, or intersections. If your car can't go straight for 100 miles it's probably not ready anyway.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday September 09 2016, @01:32PM
I'm actually more familiar with Da UP, eh, than the Giant Mitten, because I dated a girl born and raised in Ishpeming for a couple of years, y'know.
As for the deer, shouldn't there be an automated mechanism for picking up the carcass so you don't waste perfectly good venison? I mean, it's just hunting with your car instead of a rifle, right?
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 08 2016, @01:47PM
You know why you don't have a tech economy, Michigan? You know why you have brain drain? Because Michigan is an authoritarian hell hole! Who wants to live in a state full of white supremacists and cannabis haters? Sorry, Michigan, fuck you. You could have had legal weed, but no. You fucked us voters over. Anybody who can get out has gotten out.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 08 2016, @01:52PM
And Jim Harbaugh, the Michigan coach is kind of an asshole.
(Score: 2) by t-3 on Thursday September 08 2016, @03:52PM
Michigan is full of lovely high quality quasi-legal weed. Medical cards are basically handed out to anyone, and if you're ideologically opposed to putting your name on a list, everyone and their mother is selling weed anyway. As for white supremacists, stay out of Howell?? I'm near Detroit and have a lot of black friends so I never meet those...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 08 2016, @05:25PM
I suffer depression. I thought I was out of the woods, but the suicidal urges are coming back. It is specifically against the law to treat depression with weed. It's a flat-out lie that it's handed out to anyone. Also good luck getting any even with a medical card, since all that does is allow you to grow your own. I've thought about going out and getting AIDS. Even then I also don't have $500 to buy a medical card. $50 every now and then, maybe once every few months, that I can handle.
(Score: 2) by t-3 on Thursday September 15 2016, @10:57AM
Nononono you've got it all wrong. You say you have back pain and get a card. I've been to jail for weed possession. The judge, cops, prosecutor, other inmates, (literally!!) all asked why I didn't have my card. I told them because I was perfectly healthy and they laughed at me. The system is set up how it is not to distribute medicine, but to get everybody's name on lists and make a lot of money regulating/taxing things while still pandering to the anti-drug people by being ostensibly "medical use only".
(Score: 4, Insightful) by lentilla on Thursday September 08 2016, @02:42PM
The popular insistence that a human can take over "in an emergency" ignores reality - but allowing remote control of experimental vehicles is far more foolish.
How many of us; as passengers; have applied the phantom foot-brake when our driver attempts a questionable manoeuvre? The same dynamic can be applied to autonomous cars. If the car does something stupid, the co-operator hits the "STOP" button. Passengers and driving-instructors the world over have been doing this for a century. It's not perfect but it does work.
Expecting a surrogate driver to take control at a moment's notice won't work because it's human nature that a secondary driver "offlines" quickly. Expecting a remote control operator to do so is even worse - expecting them to respond adequately is a fantasy concocted only by those who place legal and insurance fictions over hard reality.
Reality and road experience suggests that if you foresee problems (as expected in early-era autonomous vehicles), you must:
None of this is markedly difference from teaching someone to drive. At least where I live, a dual-control feature is more-or-less limited to a second brake pedal - and if we suffer an occasional scratched bummer, we certainly don't experience continued fatalities.
Furthermore, humans (males, especially) have always engaged in risky behaviours for little pay. What not let people hoon around in autonomous cars for a salary equivalent to that of a taxi driver? Somebody will get paid for useful work - and that salary won't go to an insurance company. The risk; at least in historical terms; is almost negligible. It's a cheap, easy and rather risk-free opportunity to allow people the opportunity to progress our society.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Thursday September 08 2016, @05:52PM
Automatic cars need a big display and two big physical buttons:
- A big display to show you what the car thinks the environment is: boxes showings other cars and distances in all direction, representations of identified signs and road hazards. make it a touchscreen so the user can draw a route manually if needed.
- A big physical orange button that says "watch out" when the user thinks the situation is dangerous and he is scared the car may not figure it out, or something important is missing on the big display (kids running between cars). Hit the button, the car enters an emergency awareness mode (and slows down) until the user agrees the warning.
- A Big Red STOP button, which will make the car stop ASAP in the safest way/place it can find.
(Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Friday September 09 2016, @01:39AM
People don't pay attention to their driving as it is.
This would just add another display to ignore. You can't fix stupidity with a graphic display or panic button.
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
(Score: 2) by Bobs on Thursday September 08 2016, @03:57PM
So the vehicle will immediately, safely pull over and auto stop if remote data connection signal is degraded or missing? When traveling at highway speeds? Or in congested traffic?
The signal drops while traveling at highway speeds, cars starts to pull over, then signal is back, then quality dropped 80%, and there is an intermittent 1-second lag round-trip? I am sure that everything will be just fine if a remote operator has to jump in and take over when signal quality is poor.
Seems ripe for error and accidents if you are requiring a high quality, uninterrupted signal to handle emergency conditions.
Also, the way things work there will not be a 1 remote operator for every car, right? You have like 1 emergency operator for every 10 or hundred or thousand vehicles. So what happens in a widespread event where you need to take over a bunch of cars at once, more than you have operators for?
Say, a large earthquake in the San Francisco Bay area, affecting thousands of cars at once? What happens?