Two things:

1) neither are people; far from it. (you already knew this though, so...)

2) I wholly agree... as long as other people are driving. Get rid of people's irrationality / drunken behavior on the road, and automated car driving becomes a much easier problem. A computer can take more into account than a human, and decide faster.

The transition is almost guaranteed to occur at some point, unless we reach mass transit for everyone prior to that (and who drives those?). It has to start somewhere, and that start will probably be harder than at any other point along the road.

Even if you have near perfect data about where the other cars are there's always uncertainty about other objects on the road: tree branches, deer, a child running after her puppy. I'd speculate that it's better to rely on a vision system that can recognize those as well as cars well enough to be safe instead of treating different classes of objects differently.

A tree falling on a car while it's driving: relatively unavoidable. Cars hitting that car: far less likely with computers. They don't get "shocked", or hit the wrong pedal, and have faster reaction times. And pile-ups due to an accident are often far more deadly than the accident itself, especially in busy areas where automated driving could make its biggest improvement in safety.

Deer / kids / unexpected obstacles: can be detected prior to them even entering the road by cars ahead, and flagged for caution for cars behind. IR cameras will spot living things for you, motion / blockage detection will spot things near / in the road. Once such a thing is flagged, it's reasonable to assume that other cars would leave more room between each other and around the obstacle, and probably slow down. All things which people should do, but only actually do rarely, and never collaboratively except at extreme cost and increased risk over something organized.

Yes they do. You could perhaps argue they do so less.

Unless they're using a random number generator seeded with outside data, all computer operation can be called deterministic and 100% predictable. Because it's 100% repeatable given identical preconditions. People? Not so / not currently doable.

If the wrong operation for a situation were performed, it'd be due to a higher-level decision going wrong, not the command. Meanwhile, people can "hit the brakes" (high-level command) and instead slam the accelerator (command not carried out). And fully believe they hit the brakes, and that the car accelerated uncontrollably.

I work on autonomous driving robots. Teams I have been on in the past won extremely competitive autonomous vehicle competitions. Our robots crashed all the time. ALL THE TIME!

There is nothing deterministic about how autonomous systems work. In fact our algorithms were by definition random number generators! We randomly generated "hypotheses" and then had heuristic tests that figured out which was the most likely trail and then chose it. It worked well, 99% of the time. But that 1% was a killer.

Mind you, since we were winning we were doing better than the other solutions which tried to be more deterministic and use maps or things like that. We were basically stateless which reduces some of the feedback associated with getting messed up in some of your estimations.

The problem is all at the low level, not the high level.

Give a robot a perfect map and it is easy to find a way around safely. The problem comes determining what the hell the camera is seeing (lasers are a lot easier, but not as flexible and more expensive). That is why the bulk of the effort is focused on computer vision not path finding, path finding algorithms are simple.

Sure actuating the pedals is fairly trivial, but to call autonomous systems "deterministic" is scary to someone who knows how fickle they are. I'm a huge advocate of self-driving cars, but we are not there yet, and when we get there we need to do a pile of peer review on the code (which better be open source). You never know what race conditions will blow it all up.

That's essentially the definition of deterministic. If your machine is powerful enough, you can even do it before the real one completes its operations. Anything deterministic is predictable in this manner.

That you can't predict it, or that you don't have a computer powerful enough to predict it has nothing to do with something not being deterministic, nor predictable. Even a massive, PRNG-influenced neural network is deterministic.

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On an aside for people who are thinking of quoting the halting problem at me:

The halting problem requires that the detector returns an answer, and it must be true or false and accurate, or the proof through paradox fails. Therefore, it cannot simulate the operation of what it's detecting, because there could be an infinite loop which would cause it to run without end. You also cannot merely abort it after a while, as that would be either a 3rd return state ("unknown") or an inaccurate response.

But in the field, even if it is stationary the pictures are never the same from frame to frame and everything relies on a lot a randomness, and random noise.

Simulators are almost a waste of time because the real challenge is handling that noise, NOT dealing with the information extracted after the noise. Once you have a clear view of the world, everything it is easy, it is getting the eyes to actually understand anything that is hard.

If you're suggesting that we know what a computer will do on every single given input, we don't. That's in a class of unsolvable problems, as it requires the halting problem to be solved.

[Added the following section after being down-voted]

A "shock", in the deterministic computer world, could be an incorrect classification resulting in an incorrect action. The results are similar to when a human is shocked and doesn't act correctly.

Is the scenario I've painted limited to neural nets? No, any trained classifier, even any program at all may have "minor" slips like this. (When dealing with an analogue world, there's a ridiculously large number of situations that may exist). But you know what? Humans don't perform perfectly; and a computer that's been shown to perform the correct final* response 100% of the experimental time, and 99.9997% of the real time is competent at the activity, and trustworthy.

Disclaimer: I love machine learning, I love neural networks, and I see great usefulness for them in this world; however, I also believe that the perfect combination of variables could yield unusual results. Is it unlikely? Incredibly. Possible? yes.

* Consider a situation where a child is playing with a ball. The computer may not recognize that anomaly on the side of the road as the child and the ball, or even as something to be avoided. If the computer recognizes the anomaly as something that needs more information; then tells the car to slow down until it can acquire that information, then recognizes it as something that needs to be avoided and does so, successfully, safely, and with sufficient space for the conceivable outcomes that may have resulted with this child; then, while the computer couldn't discern the object at first, it did in the end and adapted to the situation appropriately. The "final response" was correct.

[edit: rather than simply down-vote me, please tell me where I'm wrong so I can learn.]

I could go for "fully computerised traffic would be significantly safer than human traffic", but absolutes about the former being unfailing are just silly.

And of course, there will be the Android app the pedestrian can use as a last resort to avoid beng run over that stops any cars heading for the phone. :-)

I have made no claims that computers can make flawless decisions. I make no claims they can detect / avoid everything avoidable. I don't know where you're getting the idea that I've said this, unless you're dragging in past battles with other people - everywhere I've claimed computers would do better I've included qualifiers like "likely".

The point I was trying to make is that the instructions of a computer, barring external phenomena which cannot be accounted for, are fully deterministic and accurate. If the high-level decisions are made incorrectly, then the end result will be incorrect, but all down the path everything will be accurately performed.

Not so with humans (just look at someone with epilepsy, or at your own memory), or at least not in the minds of some people, which is the only reason I include it. And, if nothing else, we're far further from accurately simulating an entire human body / neural net than from simulating another computer.

Not only does the technology have to become better in the aggregate than humans, it has to become so much better there's aren't any crash situations where human drivers perform better. There also can't be many crash situations when the computer doesn't significantly outperform a human. Otherwise both public sentiment against the cars, and legal liability will be too great.

Imagine: whenever there's a software bug and an automated car crashes in any situation where a human might not have, the GoogleCar manufacturer will get sued, the local paper will write an article about how Google killed someone, etc. And then, once a year, there will be another story about how crashes are down 2%... that's a lot of lives saved, but which article do you think will get more attention? And do you think "our cars usually make driving safer, just not the night of October 10th when John was killed" will be a winning defense?

I can't wait for this technology, I think it really will deliver all the benefits the article mentions long-term. But it's a long way off (I hope I'm wrong). I give a lot of credit to Google for investing in it now--this is one of the things I read and think "don't be evil" is more than just marketing-speak.

If there was a automation feature that prevented accidents in 90% of the situations where a human would crash but caused an accident in a situation that was 10% as likely to occur as a human crash, the result would still huge liability since the manufacturer would "definitely" be at fault in the latter case.

Normally, the programmer is in the clear but obviously there would be exceptions - if you could prove they intentionally introduced code that make the car do something bad, they would be liable. Now introduce a plaintiff's lawyer to muddy-up the definition of these terms.

Let me point out that determining liability/culability/etc in a messy accident is difficult task when you've got just two human decision makes involved. It's decided by jurors who aren't necessary geniuses but probably think they understand human reactions and decision. Introduce two or three more decision makers into the discussion and you've got a messy process indeed.

We saw how far the faulty Toyota accelerator pedal charge went. A big factor in the reactions to evidence was the spookiness of "drive by wire" (I think we've gone over how the actual cause was driver fault but consider how the complexity of the system made a lot of people less likely to believe this).

I mean, it's terribly ironic. Driving in general is one of the most dangerous activities a modern person can engage in. If robots drove our cars the way we drive our cars, the protests would be huge. In a sense, the way we've socially normalized driving is through the huge insurance and liability complex. This assures people that when someone drives wrong, they will be punished somehow. A similar or even significantly small number of accidents without person to punish would be unsatisfying socially.

Besides. I never said nor implied "perfect". Merely better, and being better is easier without other human drivers, who can far more quickly take a bad (or good) situation and make it worse. Bikes don't go 60+ mph and weigh over a ton. Neither do pedestrians. And very few of either of those carry large quantities of gasoline.

Crosswalks are a problem because you can't predict car behaviour: some will stop. Some will completely ignore them (for reasons unknown). If there were no crosswalk you know exactly what cars will do. That's much safer for both parties.

The "illusion of safety" is most dangerous at traffic lights. 2-3 times I've had cars just sail through, completely oblivious. Note: they're sailing through on RED lights. Not amber going red. It's not one of those borderline cases.

Once I had a cop have a chat to me about jaywalking but I've never been fined. I would be pissed if I ever was. In a fight between a car and a pedestrian the pedestrian loses (big time) so pedestrians have a higher vested interest in their own safety. I know what the light changes are at intersections I cross a lot. Where are these cops when cars sail through red lights or nearly run over pedestrians when turning when the pedestrians have right of way?

I get the distinct impression these skills will come in handy when I move to New York next month!

Anyway, back to the self-driving cars: this I believe will be a painful transition that will take many, many years. It's nice to see Google working on this.

Look at how many people drive off cliffs, into trees, or into other cars when a deer runs across the road. Vested interests in safety aside, it's always dangerous to do something unexpected in traffic.

So pedestrians can do whatever they want because its more dangerous for them? Did you know that a flashing red hand means "don't walk"? You can be ticketed by entering the crosswalk when it is flashing. How many of your close calls would that eliminate?

As a driver, what is your first instinct when you see someone in the middle of your path on the road? I also hate people who jaywalk onto medians - how do I know they're going to stop when they get there? Especially if they're running at full speed. I've also had several pedestrians almost jaywalk right out infront of my car before, some not noticing me until I honked at them (too close to stop).

We would all be safer if we all followed the rules. Not just cars.

Besides, humans are really lousy drivers. They should not be trusted to operate such vehicles at all. Machines will makes mistakes too, but I bet we'll see a lot less of them compared to the era of human pilots.

I was struck by this comment, because I do this every day...by riding the train. Automated cars, flying cars, double-decker highways, etc. are fantastic innovations, but I sometimes wonder if we couldn't do better than the car, at least in terms of our regular commuting. I ride my bike and take the train because I have that option where I live and I love it.

In a car, you can choose your own route, which makes a lot more routes feasible to do in a reasonable amount of time. Plus, in an automated car, you can spend your entire trip reading and drinking coffee, instead of having the walk to and from the train, trying to juggle your coffee and umbrella and laptop all while trying to hurry to catch the train.

Many people seem to neglect or completely fail to understand the risk of increased perception of safety leading to an overall decreased safety in these systems. We can't have the best of both worlds – a machine's constant attention and reaction time coupled with a human driver's intuition – because the moment you give him an autopilot that he thinks will keep him out of trouble, the human sits back and stops paying attention to the road.

These automated systems may eventually become all-around better than any human driver, but it will be take many iterations to get there, and the first versions will certainly lack a human's ability to anticipate trouble before it arises. It will be a long while before an autopilot can say "hey, that car ahead is weaving unnervingly, the driver might be drunk so I should keep my distance" or "the cars ahead of me are curving slightly to the left, there might be a cyclist riding on the shoulder so I should slow down a bit and do likewise." And until we have that level of automation, I'm afraid our roads are about to become a lot more dangerous.

What makes me feel unsafe are the drivers who break the law (you don't know who you are) and the drivers who hate cyclists and pass us as closely as possible, throw bottles at us, etc (you do know who you are).

What makes me feel unsafe is the unpredictability. I would expect a computer would just follow the rules exactly and be very easy to bike around.

Anecdotal evidence is this blog, the link is to the first of a growing number of entries. http://www.101wankers.com/?paged=2

My gut tells me that drivers in unpopulated areas are less aware and less able to 'share the road'.

There might be a startup in there somewhere.

They can, at least 1000 times more perfect that humans are. A computer could have and exact model of the road, and compare it to what it sees, could report bugs in an objective way, the same way computers on airplanes work, having made flying way more secure.

You mean speaking, right? ;)

I go food shopping every week at about the same time. I email trip plans between friends and schedule them. I don't drive to work but certainly if I did that's an obviously predictable event.

Between synergy among the various google properties and good pattern-recognition in the google cars (or whatever) system itself I'd be surprised if predicted trips didn't hugely overwhelm explicitly-ordered ones.

One thing I read said the human driver had to take control because of a cyclist. Obviously there's more work to do.

But eventually these systems will get there. And they'll probably be able to share information with other vehicles too. So robotic vehicles will be able to see around corners. And tell each other exactly what they'll do before they start doing it.

Safety could wind up being 6 sigma instead whatever is currently. And we'll actually have the ability to measure it because collecting such statistics will be more feasible.

Right now, most of our screw ups don't end causing accidents and they never get recorded. And we prefer it that way! But we'll be able to do data mining on every little thing robotic cars do.

Which is not saying this effort shouldn't continue. Human drivers don't always handle cyclists well either.

My biggest fear is that there will be a manual override.

It seems to me, at some point, computers will easily out drive humans.

unfortunately, I think a lot of Americans are already doing this, or something close to it, today -- but without an AI driving the car. I've lost track of the number of times I've seen women driving huge SUV's with kids in the back, and the woman is yapping on a cellphone while checking her makeup in the mirror, etc. Oh and, while driving.