Thread: Autonomous Vehicles

Originally Posted by Homestar

There are heaps of rail systems in the world already automated, if you've travelled overseas, you've probably already been on one without knowing it. Even the bulk of the London underground is autonomous now - driver is only there for customer service mostly now and so people like you don't freak out that there's no driver, but they don't have anything to do with making the trains go or stop now - and the trains travel a couple hundred metres apart during peak times. Since automation, near misses and accidents have reduced dramatically.

That autonomous trains exist and are used by tens of thousands of people every day is undisputed.

Comparing autonomous rail and autonomous cars for nearly any purpose fails hard because the differences in operating environment completely overpower any similarities (autonomous cars and autonomous trains both being vehicles and autonomous)
for example:
- trains run on tracks. They can’t roam willy-nilly across lanes like cars can and need to do.
- the tracks trains run on are pretty much entirely NOT shared space. Cars operate in an environment shared with an array of other perils including cyclists and pedestrians.
- if something or someone finds its way into the path of a moving train, no sane person expects the train to take (effective) evasive action. At best the train may try emergency braking but would mostly be expected (!) to hit the obstacle regardless its a truck or a toddler.
- trains on tracks do not have to deal with thousands on thousands of entry and exit points to the rail line like cars do (driveways into properties and intersections and roundabouts etc).
- at most trains only “traffic” problems that may result in a collision are: running up the arse of another train, and head-on collisions. Compare to the endless possibilities for possible collisions facing cars on roads.

Autonomous trains. So what. No big deal.

Autonomous cars. So vastly different as to defy comparison to autonomous trains.

Automated is entirely different from autonomous.

I don't understand why the car didn't sense the presence of the cyclist and brake. Autonomous braking is a common option now.

Originally Posted by DiscoMick

I don't understand why the car didn't sense the presence of the cyclist and brake. Autonomous braking is a common option now.

Perhaps as per my previous post and those abc articles, the cyclist was seen by the autonomous vehicle as the better low value option.😳 ...swerving to miss the cyclist and hitting a tree instead for example would cause more damage to the vehicle.

do we really want autonomous machines making these decisions?

...How about a remap to enhance the vehicles low value targeting ability, in order to protect your asset?

Can’t believe the amount of technophobes on here. Complaining about it won’t change what’s coming to a car yard near you in the next decade or so.

Complaining may not change things, but it's quite possible the insurance industry might!
What sort of Chain of Responsibility will be involved in the first few lawsuits?
I think there's definitely a future for autonomous vehicles in certain situations, where traffic flows are controlled (minesites, transit corridors, etc) but normal public access roads are a different kettle of fish.

We've been driving automobiles for well over a century, and still manage to kill each other in huge numbers in so-called "accidents"

Whether or not human intelligence should be viewed as an oxymoron or not, we mostly have the ability to perceive a potential result from our current actions. AI currently can only do this to a limited degree, given a specific set of scenarios.

Driving a vehicle in public, in close proximity to other vehicles, all manner of unpredictable life forms, and rapidly developing situations, requires many anticipatory and reactionary thought processes based on assumptions, predictions, previous experiences and, sometimes something as esoteric as a previous knowledge of animal behaviour under certain circumstances.

I think the wholesale adoption of this stuff is a way off, yet

Originally Posted by Zeros

Perhaps as per my previous post and those abc articles, the cyclist was seen by the autonomous vehicle as the better low value option. ...swerving to miss the cyclist and hitting a tree instead for example would cause more damage to the vehicle.

do we really want autonomous machines making these decisions?

...How about a remap to enhance the vehicles low value targeting ability, in order to protect your asset?

Could be wrong but from the pics I've seen it was a straight street and the woman was walking her bicycle across it, so the choices were simply to brake or not to brake.
She shouldn't have been walking there of course, but I expect a driver would brake.
That raises the question of why the human person behind the wheel didn't override the system and brake. Maybe neither the person nor the vehicle sensors saw her? Was it dark? No street lights?
The result of the investigation should be interesting.

As for road safety generally, we Aussies only managed to kill about 1300 of us last year, so that's not bad for a population of about 25 million.

Originally Posted by Homestar

Can’t believe the amount of technophobes on here. Complaining about it won’t change what’s coming to a car yard near you in the next decade or so.

I heard an old saying many moons ago along the lines of:

"Someone who says something is bad, simply because it is new, is just as wrong as the person who says it is good, for the same reason"