Andy33gmail wrote: ↑Wed Oct 02, 2019 01:16
Something occurred to me recently. There may become a time when a self driving car is expected to actively disobey the driver
1. If the driver is drunk, presumably they’re not legally entitled to legally over-ride, even in a life and death emergency?
2. Speed limits, obviously.
3. If it finds itself in a moral dilemma, and the “ethically optimal” solution is to drive into a telegraph pole instead of kill two kids that ran out
4. If the instruction is otherwise illegal - e.g. instructing a vehicle to stop when it’s on a motorway
These are not nice problems to have, but they stand between us and “Andy wants a car he can drive to work, except when he wants a lie in en-route, and wants to come back via the pub”
1) In the USA the courts in some states can already require people who have been convicted of DUI to have a device that immobilises a car unless a driver provides a sample of breath that is below the legal limit. Indeed some safety campaigners have already suggested it should be fitted to all cars. The problem is of course is its trivially easy to rig up a bellows to give the clean sample,
2) Many cars including my own already read speed limit signs and display them on the dash, they can however become confused. I was recently following an HGV with a sign on the back proclaiming it was limited to 50 mph and my dash immediately informed me the speed limit was 50 - it was actually 30.
3) I would expect the system here to do what most humans do and slam the anchors on, modern collision avoidance systems already do this. This does not prevent a driver steering at the same time. The bigger problem is that the sensors we currently have would have a hard time telling the difference between a large piece of paper and a child. All they see is a moving object intersecting with the path of the vehicle.
4) There are times when you absolutely do have to stop on a motorway, I had to do so once when the tail gate of a pickup opened and dumped a car engine on the road.
Truly self driving cars are not at the point where they can let looses on the ordinary highways without a competent human around to take over. My 2017 C-Max has pretty much the full fit, Lane Keeping system, active city stop, collision avoidance system, adaptive cruise control, reads speed limit signs etc etc
I would no more trust the Lane Keeping System than let a 5 year old drive, the collision avoidance systems are prone to false alerts which I can override, the adaptive cruise control is very good as it lets me set the spacing. The default however is much to short and is well under the 2 second spacing I regard as a minimum. I have already mentioned the speed limit issues. There is the salutary tale of the American driver who trusted his Tesla Autopilot, it killed him when it became confused on the freeway and drove him at full cruising speed into the back of a trailer.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-48308852
The bottom line is that right now the buck stops with the human in charge and I don't see that changing any time soon.