FWIW, if you've ever done car/bike track days, this is a huge reason why it's so safe. People are split into groups according to skill level, with restrictions on passing (normally "only on the straights") for the lower groups. Much of the "skill level" here is actually just being predictable, not being outright fast. Someone can be in a Miata getting passed with a 50mph speed differential on a straight _because everyone is being predictable_. That same Miata might pass the same car with a huge speed differential at 90 mph in a turn, and it works because everyone is predictable.
And I'm pretty sure, in most jurisdictions, slamming on the breaks unexpectedly and for no good reason, will get you at least a portion of the liability for an accident. The person who rear-ends you will get some too, but its not always true that you can't be at fault when you get rear-ended.
As you imply, no safety system should rely on others doing their job perfectly. That is an inherently unsafe system.
It feels to me like whoever has written their braking algorithm is using bang bang control.
1000% sure Google will end up writing a check if someone dies because they rear-ended a google car that suddenly hit the breaks.
Just like enforcing drug laws doesn't seem to increase public safety (I welcome data one way or the other, but my understanding is it actually is a significant contributor to decreasing public safety), maybe we should be honest with ourselves about human behavior and write our laws to actually cater to that.
If humans reject self-driving cars, making laws protecting them isn't going to make people accept them. Make the self-driving cars actually acceptable to humans and then you don't even have a problem you try to solve with regulation.
I know you're putting a gradual transition into context, but I see you say this ^, and my reaction is to suggest that we take human drivers off the road who recklessly endanger others instead of giving them a pass with the vehicular equivalent of "boys will be boys".
Drivers that adhere to the letter of the laws and totally disregarding the unwritten rules make terrible drivers because they do not follow the full set of rules that the majority of human drivers follow. All current autonomous cars drive like this. A small but infuriating subset of human drivers behave like this too. Generally it's expected that you pass these obstructions when possible and safe enough to do so (legal or not, though what's safe is usually legal too).
What people consider safe varies somewhat between people. Anyone will pass a tractor on a country two lane. Only the most bold will pass a Cruise in traffic. Of course there's a danger zone around it.
The current system is designed for humans and if we're ever going to automate it the autonomous cars need to be able to coexist with the human cars without causing problems. Boys will be boys isn't an excuse because it doesn't need to be. One of the engineering requirements is to get along with the boys.
I think the engineers know the software drives un-humanly but they can't change it because driving like a dick within the letter of the law results in far less legal liability than driving like a human and breaking the law.
This is wishful thinking and clearly false. If it were true, there wouldn't be any at-fault crashes. The only accurate claim you can make is "human traffic sometimes follows rules, and the rules that it sometimes follows change regularly from person to person and moment to moment". That's not a defensible state.
Implicit in your mistaken description is a pretense that humans are psychic and that we can predict what other people will do, but we aren't and, despite believing otherwise, we can't. That's why defensive driving is so important.
No it's not, but you'll likely never see it that way let alone admit you're wrong on the internet.
>If it were true, there wouldn't be any at-fault crashes.
Computers follow rules perfectly 100% of the time yet we still have software bugs.
>The only accurate claim you can make is "human traffic sometimes follows rules, and the rules that it sometimes follows change regularly from person to person and moment to moment".
You understand rules to be flexible and subject to some interpretation (like laws, not like a firewall config). Context is important. The rules that govern human interaction are complex.
>That's not a defensible state
This comment proves otherwise.
>Implicit in your mistaken description is a pretense that humans are psychic and that we can predict what other people will do, but we aren't and, despite believing otherwise, we can't
Humans don't need to be psychics to accurately predict what other drives will do. Humans are really good at pattern identification and picking up on subtle cues.
>That's why defensive driving is so important.
Being able to make accurate predictions of the future state of what is around you based on the current and past state of what is around you is far more helpful than defensiveness for any amount of defensiveness.
The behavior by AI vehicles fielded by Cruise and similar is a glaring example of that while defensiveness is great at avoiding liability it does not necessarily make the road around you safer (maybe even worse, as many comments anecdotally point out). This is the main gripe people have with AI and human driven vehicles that practice defensive driving to the point of absurdity. Defensive driving without human level ability to predict what other traffic will do is not sufficient for the kinds of situations that are regularly encountered in urban areas.
Most people will never get in a car crash in their entire lives (bumping into an object in a parking lot notwithstanding). I think that speaks for itself.
At-fault crashes are not analogous to software bugs. The computer didn't look at its phone when your code has bugs. Your off-by-one error didn't happen because the computer changed lanes suddenly without signaling.
Computers also don't follow predictable rules perfectly 100% of the time. That's why we have things like ECC memory and other single event upset detection.
You're working from an ideal model of the way you think things ought to work while ignoring the reality of what actually happens.
Driving is strange in that there are upper bounds, but rarely lower bounds. i.e. a minimum speed is a rarity (and even more rarely enforced).
If I made the rules then we would have speed targets (not limits) and people would be penalized for driving outside of a +/- 10% range. After all, it's not speed itself that kills. It's a large and sudden speed delta.
Ideally, the speed targets would also be variable and data driven.
Also, crash your car off the road or into walls all you want. Just don't crash into someone else please.
...drives dangerously and therefore illegally?
That's an indictment of human drivers, not self-driving vehicles.
So start aggressively ticketing all of the reckless humans and maybe that behavior will stop.
If you have to swerve, then you're not following at a safe distance. If you swerve without having to, that's also recklessly dangerous. Both behaviors _should_ be penalized.