Self-driving car accidents: Robot drivers are ‘odd, and that’s why they get hit’

Re:Self-driving car accidents: Robot drivers are ‘odd, and t... by zolthrowaway on Monday October 16, 2017 @10:01AM (#15483235)

To add to this, there is literally a term "the Pittsburgh Left"[1]. Informal etiquette does really help prevent things like a lane getting blocked for three lights when someone needs to make a left at a busy intersection. However, humans definitely aren't perfect and they likely add a lot of congestion on their own from stuff like following to closely, not maintaining speed, etc.

I feel like this is going to be a huge problem if we have mixed human operated and self-driving vehicles on the road at the same time. If we ever move to entirely self driving cars we could move to some sort of protocol for cars to communicate about ambiguous self driving actions.

It's really common to see the Uber Volvo's driving around, but it definitely causes me to tense up when driving around them. I have no idea why, I realize there is significant risk when around any other car on the road. It's new. Hopefully these issues get worked out in a reasonable time frame, but it is software.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_left

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Self-driving car accidents: Robot drivers are ‘odd, and t... by ynniv on Monday October 16, 2017 @02:48PM (#15485670)

Let's not overlook that once a single self driving car understands these local, informal rules, ALL self driving cars will. That's about a million times better than the current situation where every new human driver has to learn them. I was going to use a number smaller than a million, but 10k or 100k doesn't seem to properly describe the situation. Literally, these systems will be hazards until the day they aren't, and then they will, for all cars, forevermore, be better than every local.

[ Parent | on HN ]