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Tonight, drivers in the US will kill more pedestrians than any other night of the year. An increase in people walking in low-light conditions makes Halloween the most dangerous night of the year for pedestrians.
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In "bad intervention" scenarios, the main driver (either human or machine) makes a driving decision that would avoid hitting the pedestrian, but the secondary driver intervenes with the wrong call, resulting in a collision. In bad interventions, it makes sense that the secondary driver is really the one to blame, since they overrode the correct actions of the primary driver.This expectation matches how people reacted. When participants saw this scenario and rated how blameworthy each driver was and how much they caused the death, on a scale of 1 to 100, the secondary driver came out bearing most of the blame. This was true whether or not the secondary driver was a human or machine.
In "missed intervention" scenarios, though, things looked a little different. In these scenarios, the main driver is the one who makes the wrong call, but the secondary driver doesn't intervene to rescue the situation. In these scenarios, both drivers made an error.
Participants did apportion some blame to both drivers in these scenarios—but the human took more blame than the car.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/10/humans-take-more-blame-than-cars-for-killing-pedestrians/
Nature Human Behaviour, 2018. DOI: 10.1038/s41562-019-0762-8 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41562-019-0762-8
(Score: 2, Interesting) by webnut77 on Friday November 01 2019, @10:18AM (9 children)
Where I live, the interstate highway has a lot of roughly patched pot holes. I hug the white dashed lane separator line to avoid the bumpy ride. I check my left side mirror to make sure it's safe to do so. Sometimes my 2018 "smart" car thinks I'm falling asleep and flashes a warning on the console ("Lane departure") and jiggles the steering wheel. It's annoying.
I've seen advertisements recently from a auto insurance company about how my car can report back to them to show if I'm a "safe driver". You can get a lower insurance premium. But how will the AI that's monitoring my driving know why I get close the the lane divider? Exceed the speed limit to avoid a collision? Repeatedly tap my brakes to get a tailgater to back off!?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 01 2019, @11:53AM (2 children)
> from a auto insurance company
Please contact that insurance company with your nicely worded comment, it will be interesting to hear their response--and if it gets to the right people it could be an eye opener. This stuff is complex and the simple solutions (like "safe driver monitoring") aren't one-size-fits-all.
(Score: 2) by aiwarrior on Friday November 01 2019, @12:35PM
Definitely. This sounds like an ultra specific problem. I guess if the penalty gets too big, maybe a less technologically advanced insurer becomes viable.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday November 01 2019, @02:49PM
That's because the 'safe driver' programs aren't meant to be individualized at all. They are designed to attract more customers to that company and thus by offering the 'discount' the insurance company makes more profit. As usual, it's all about the company's bottom line, not yours, so no they won't care at all why you have to straddle lines or drive above the speed limit.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by NateMich on Friday November 01 2019, @12:07PM (1 child)
This vaguely reminds me of my car emailing me once a month with the hundreds of "hard takeoffs" I was apparently making. I do anything but take off hard in my car, and pride myself on shifting as carefully as possible. I haven't had to change a clutch in about twenty five years and countless cars. Amazing that I was both taking off like a maniac, and getting ridiculously good mileage doing it.
It didn't take me long to realize that their system somehow couldn't comprehend that my car had a manual transmission, even though they built the damn car.
I also noticed a few "hard stops". I soon realized those were me avoiding opossums, deer, and raccoons on the nightly trip to work (third shift).
The option to "share this information with your insurance company" is there, but has never been checked.
I'm not looking forward to the day where you have no choice, because I'm sure this will all be used as an excuse to raise the insurance costs for people like me that are very careful, drive a lot of miles, and have never caused an accident.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Friday November 01 2019, @06:58PM
I agree, whatever this system is in your car probably wasn't programmed for manual trans. I forget the stats, but I think maybe less than 5% of new cars are manual. It sounds like a warranty problem.
This stuff strengthens my resolve to never buy a newer car that has all of these "features".
My only suggestion is buy a dashcam and storage media. Some insurance companies will offer a discount for dashcam usage.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Saturday November 02 2019, @02:06AM (2 children)
Brake checking is unsafe and also illegal. It sounds like you really do need higher insurance premiums.
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(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 02 2019, @10:32AM
The vast majority of American drivers are pure assholes for tail gating as a normal part of driving. In a safe world, brake checking would cause nothing because people are following with a safe crash avoidance space.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 03 2019, @12:54AM
> Brake checking is unsafe and also illegal
Not sure how the law might read, but to me there is a difference between tapping the brake pedal to flash the brake lights (no deceleration) and "brake checking" which engages the brakes (car slows down). In every car I'm familiar with, the brake light switch turns on the lights with a very slight brake pedal movement, lights go on before the brakes are activated.
* The former is some times effective in shaking off a tailgater (but not always).
* The later is pretty dumb, unless you don't care if your car is rear ended.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 02 2019, @08:12AM
The correct action is to decide your windscreen needs a clean and to engage the washers. I knew a guy who had one that basically squirted straight over the roof. I was riding with him when he drove a tailgator insane by tapping the washer button every 30 seconds or so. Nutcase eventually managed pull alongside shaking his fist and screaming about the washer fluid. We pissed ourselves laughing at him.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Immerman on Friday November 01 2019, @01:36PM
And humans *should* take more blame. *You* are operating the car - if you weren't involved, the car would be safely parked, that makes its operation your responsibility. If you choose to hand that responsibility over to a machine... it's ultimately still your responsibility because the machine *can't* take responsibility. (especially if it's inadequate to the job - and I haven't yet heard of any auto-drive systems that makes a credible claim as to being adequate as the primary driver on residential streets)
Now, if the machine intervenes in a way that prevents you from doing the right thing - then yes, it's the machine's (which is to say the manufacturer's) fault - they sold it as being suitable to be driven safely when it obviously wasn't. But if you then continue to drive the car, knowing it can't be reliably driven safely, then the moral responsibility is back on you. (legal responsibility should probably remain with the manufacturer, barring a recall)