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.
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".