Re:Are self-driving cars already safer than human drivers?
by rented_mule on Friday September 01, 2023 @11:23AM
(#37352000)
Where I live, the sharing is done at a meta level. I live in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California and we often get experienced snow drivers who get stuck immediately because they aren't used to driving on 25% grades that experience frequent freeze / thaw cycles (and therefore generate ice). The issues here are predictable and don't even require real-time sharing.
When someone new moves into town, someone will typically explain to them to watch for where the sun hits the ground in winter. Where that happens on a steep slope, avoid driving there when there is snow. Before they know to do this, a human will attempt to climb that hill, not make progress because of the ice, back down, and try another route. This is a rural area without much traffic, so conditions might change significantly between "real-time" updates.
So, we have human drivers "zooming out" in a couple of ways... in time/context (observing conditions that lead to certain routes becoming high risk) and in problem resolution (try another route). This is quite different from what is currently being tried algorithmically.
I think weather conditions can also predict road conditions pretty well. And the combine that with historical data on where things were slippery, I bet you can create a pretty good model of what conditions to expect across a driving environment.
Although in Canada, sometimes all roads in a city are just horrid - dozens of cars in ditches or hitting each other because no one can stop. And maybe in those cases, autonomous vehicles should refuse to drive until it is improved.