Oh Dear Another Dead Road User Killed By Computer

[ToraToraTora]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-43459156
When are we going to accept that our current software ability is insufficient for this application? at least Uber has the sense to halt their tests.

[ToraToraTora]

ZM: if you want to discuss another subject start your own thread.

[ToraToraTora]

why do people keep quoting RTA stats on here? I'm discussing autonomous vehicles. If there are ever a comparable amount of autonomous vehicles on our roads then relevant stats should become available. At the moment quoting such stats has no relevance.

[ToraToraTora]

"So, who's liable? " - indeed, another question that no one seems to have the answer to. In this case probably Uber have assumed liability in order to get approval for their trial but in the future?? who knows? I suspect the legal/insurance challenges will be every bit as difficult as the tech ones.

[Zacs-Master]

Your childish ‘start another thread’ replies when you clearly don’t know the answer are tiresome.

What thinking is, is pretty central to your argument that AI doesn’t exist. You boil AI down to being ‘just better and better hardware being able to execute more and more instructions’.

Isnt that largely how our brains work? If not, why?

[bhg481]

Are we certain that the death would not have occurred if a person had been driving the car? It seems the pedestrian crossed at a place other than a pedestrian crossing, so the death may have occurred anyway.

[ToraToraTora]

I do know the answer, do not derail my thread start your own and I will answer.

[ToraToraTora]

"It seems the pedestrian crossed at a place other than a pedestrian crossing" - you mean a road user did not obey the rules? well that never happens in real life does it! PMSL! The tesla car the other week complained that another car did not give way when it should! Noooo! A lot more programming needed!

[Zacs-Master]

It’s not derailing. It’s discussing the basic tenet of your argument as to why autonomous cars should be banned which some people seem to have objections to.

I’m not sure your completely au-fait with AI and I believe your prejudices are therefore flawed.

[Zacs-Master]

You’re. Sorry.

[ToraToraTora]

ZM: I have worked all my life in IT and software, believe me I know about AI. Now thinking is a fascinating subject and I'll join in when you raise it. Probably tomorrow now as I'm off to bed soon, got an early start.

[Hymie]

Now you are claiming that you know about things that don’t exist!

[Spicerack]

For all you know the pedestrian could have been on a suicide mission.
There's little a car, driverless or driven, can do to counter that.

[Gromit]

The car wasn’t driverless.
There was someone behind the wheel, and with their feet on the peddles.
The human is supposed to be the fail safe, the person in overall controll of the vehicle, in charge. The automation failed, but unfotunately the human did worse.

[bhg481]

Spicerack - that's the point I was trying to make when I first brought up the fact that the pedestrian was jaywalking.

[fiction-factory]

Whilst there are some doubts about whethe r the technology is currently as good as it needs to be be for driverless cars, it seems this particular case in America does not seem to tell us anything new based on what we know so far about it. As others have said the accident would probably have happened anyway even if there had been a driver. (In fact there was a driver-but I can see an argument that as they were in a sort of standby mode maybe they weren't as focused as they might have been if they had they been driving.

These trials should continue in my opinion. I am confident that in time they will be safer, quicker and less polluting than cars with drivers (a fair proportion of whom now are not safe to drive- eg use phones, drive over the limit, drive without passing a test, speed unsafely, drive too close...).

We are not ready yet of course- these are just trials. Important problems to overcome at the moment are the inability to detect pedestrians and small objects in the road, and the interaction between driverless cars and human driver cars. It may be 10-20 years before we are ready but it already works for trains and planes so it may become a reality on the roads..