Driverless cars promise to reduce accidents, revolutionise transport

Re:Driverless cars promise to reduce accidents, revolutionis... by EliRivers on Saturday September 01, 2012 @04:57PM (#4465107)

"there are still going to be extraordinary driving situations in which the obvious thing to do would be clear to any reasonable human but not an autonomous car without serious general purpose AI"

I believe that any such situation that could not be dealt with by simply coming to a safe halt is currently very badly handled by humans. I believe that they could be better handled with the _current_ state of the art, let alone advances we see over the next few decades.

I'm not arguing that they could be perfectly handled; just that the machines can do better than the average meat-bag.

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Re:Driverless cars promise to reduce accidents, revolutionis... by georgemcbay on Saturday September 01, 2012 @05:09PM (#4465143)

Even simply coming to a safe halt is problematic. What if some troll traps a self-driving car with a few empty cardboard boxes?

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Re:Driverless cars promise to reduce accidents, revolutionis... by Retric on Saturday September 01, 2012 @05:57PM (#4465275)

It stays still until someone removes them. If it's a cab it's more than likely to simply call for help.

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Re:Driverless cars promise to reduce accidents, revolutionis... by georgemcbay on Saturday September 01, 2012 @06:01PM (#4465285)

And while it is still, it is now an obstacle for other empty self driving cars. Soon the troll has blocked an entire intersection or freeway using a combination of empty boxes and other trapped self-driving cars.

You underestimate the effort a good troll would be willing to put into this.

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Re:Driverless cars promise to reduce accidents, revolutionis... by rictic on Saturday September 01, 2012 @06:48PM (#4465409)

There are lots of simple things that one could do to a roadway to impede or endanger traffic. Consider, for example, the danger of leaving something sharp or slick on a tight turn where people often speed.

I've thought about this for a few years, and as near as I can tell it's either much harder than it seems, or there are fewer vandals than I'd have expected.

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Re:Driverless cars promise to reduce accidents, revolutionis... by nazgulnarsil on Saturday September 01, 2012 @06:03PM (#4465288)

the real test of driverless cars comes shortly after they start to become widely used. A driverless car will be forced into a trolley problem situation. That is, it will have to choose between hitting two things without the option to hit neither. Expect extreme scrutiny in the ensuing legal case.

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Re:Driverless cars promise to reduce accidents, revolutionis... by mike-cardwell on Sunday September 02, 2012 @07:07AM (#4466745)

At least we'll be able to reliably determine the reason, and fix it if necessary, rather than relying on human testimony.

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