Some people are just too stupid to be let out on their own:
tinyurl.com/y9vglhpc
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Press report concerns a man who put his Tesla into 'self drive' mode and then sat in passenger seat.
It was only a matter of time before someone did that.....
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I imagine he's not the first to do it, he won't be the last either.
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In few years time people will be driving cars from back seat using a phone as seen on James Bond movies in 1990s.
If Tesla autopilot were any good it would not cause any accident. If there is no such confidence, then don’t allow this technology.
Either we accept autopilot or not.
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Somewhere on the attention spectrum between sitting back with your feet up up and having a nap, and full attention as when driving manually, comes the degree of driving attention that this device is designed to provide. Presumably surrendering just that amount of awareness would be fully acceptable and would not lead to a charge of dangerous driving?
So what is that point? Is it like dosing off momentarily and then waking with a jolt as you cross the rumble strips? More attention? Less attention? Is it like supervising a learner - you watch the road like a hawk, on nervous tenterhooks less something goes wrong and you have to intervene? How relaxing is that?
And having mastered the exact amount of attention required, next year's model will be a little bit better, so you need to be a little bit less aware? Will all cars so-equipped progress from year to year at the same rate, so people swapping between cars can assume they are all the same? Seems unlikely.
it seems like a minefield ahead to me.
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The problem is that you are either concentrating or you are not. There is no half way between when you are engaged in something complicated like driving a car. Unless cars really do become fully self driving to the point where you can safely fall asleep while they get you from A to B I think there will be real problems when human intervention is necessary because the auto pilot has been beaten by the unexpected.
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Did it cause an accident? No.
Cliff is right there is a minefield ahead, and it centres around legal definition blame and attention. With a highly autonomous car is there even an offence "driving without due care and attention"? If he wasn't driving how could he be convicted of dangerous driving?
Last edited by: Zero on Sat 28 Apr 18 at 17:04
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>> Cliff is right there is a minefield ahead, and it centres around legal definition blame
>> and attention. With a highly autonomous car is there even an offence "driving without due
>> care and attention"? If he wasn't driving how could he be convicted of dangerous driving?
For some while yet these autonomous cars will require somebody on board to monitor the automated stuff. Airliners can fly automatically from take off to landing roll out but there's still are still pilots there ready to take over.
Dangerous driving occurs when:
a person's standard of driving falls far below what would be expected of a competent and careful driver and it would be obvious to a competent and careful driver that driving in that way would be dangerous.
Sitting in the passenger seat with hands behind head is a standard of driving far below etc. He accepted that and pleaded guilty.
It's an either way offence so he could have put it to a jury but presumably his lawyers said he'd not a snowball's.
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The idea that a driver can "mind" the controls and intervene if the automatics get it wrong is unrealistic.
Take the Uber driver whose self-driving Volvo killed a woman pushing a bike across the road.
Even supposing the 'driver' had been successful in maintaining a high level of concentration and, staring ahead, she had seen the woman with the bike, what would she have done? Expected the car to deal with it, that's what. Otherwise the driver would constantly be competing with the car to act first.
It's nothing like the systems in aircraft. They don't have to negotiate roundabouts, swerve round obstacles and emergency-brake for example.
I don't mean to say that self-driving cars can't work or won't become more common. But the idea that a driver can successfully second-guess them before it's too late is mistaken.
Last edited by: Manatee on Sat 28 Apr 18 at 18:52
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>> >>
>>
>> Sitting in the passenger seat with hands behind head is a standard of driving far
>> below etc.
It is with the present level of automation, and he was rightly convicted.
But if the degree of automation is to have any point at all then it must be to lower, slightly, the degree of attention required of the driver? The question is, how much?
I obviously know nothing about aeroplane auto-pilots, but I'd have thought the situation isn't really comparable. Surely planes travel hundreds of miles just cruising at a constant speed, with very little risk of anything happening suddenly?
But a car on a motorway is driving only feet away from other vehicles, and any one of their drivers might make a sudden movement, brake sharply, change lane, suffer a tyre blowout, etc. There might be debris on the road, things falling off a lorry, any of them requiring quick thinking and instant action.
So if one day cars become so autonomous that they don't even need drivers at all, then sitting in the passenger seat with hands behind head will be perfectly acceptable. It won't be any more "driving" than sitting in a bus .
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The only acceptable autonomous vehicle must surely be one in which human intervention is not necessary and I would suggest not possible. If intervention is possible then it would be potentially possible to override a safe driving mode by the vehicleand perform an illegal manoeuvre such as a dangerous overtake.
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There are currently no self driving cars that you can purchase at the moment - i.e. level 5 autonomous.
Tesla's Auto Pilot is merely a better form of cruise control and active lane guidance. So a bit better than my Skoda which can keep itself in it's lane if I want it to. It will work at motorway speeds but can be set to 'traffic jam assist' and keep moving in stop start traffic on it's own and steer.
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>> The only acceptable autonomous vehicle must surely be one in which human intervention is not
>> necessary and I would suggest not possible.
Quite. The "minder" is a fudge and a sop to public and politicians. The engineers must have worked out that "minding" wouldn't work - in terms of seizing control in an emergency, although they would have wanted observers on board for trials.
Truly autonomous vehicles would be very liberating for those who can't, aren't permitted to, or don't like driving; they could also make personal transport massively more efficient by not having to remain where the driver is when the destination is reached.
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I remember listening to an interesting piece on R4 not long ago on driverless cars and the possible future law in the UK.
Link below to iPlayer - Driverless Cars and the Law (Law in Action)
"The government wants fully self-driving cars on UK roads by 2021 but which will be ready first - the technology or the law? Who is responsible in an accident - the owner or the manufacturer?"
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09v3fdt
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There is a very good test of when a car is autonomous or not. Its not lane keeping, its keeping the right lane. Currently if you drive on the wrong side of the road, and switch on lane keeping, the majority of cars will keep in you in the WRONG lane.
Autonomous cars have no proper decision making. merely parameters. they are not the same.
Until your autonomous car can pull away from parked on the wrong side of the road, safely, and drive you all the way to another destination and park on your drive, the correct drive, its not autonomous
As for Government want fully self driving cars on the road by 2021 they will come but not in three years to meet the above standards.
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It's almost impossible for an alert, competent human to pilot a car safely along many of the UK's potholed, dilapidated roads without incurring damage to their vehicle, and that's nothing to do with other road users and pedestrians.
Potholes alone will be a massive challenge for self driving cars. I can name several roads within a mile radius of my house on which I could almost guarantee wheel, tyre or suspension damage if one simply drove along them from start to end in the 'correct' road position. In the UK, any self driving car's logic simply cannot assume that the entire road surface within its lane, or safe, legal road position is suitable to be driven on.
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Good point. TWICE today I have actually stopped rather than drive into large potholes, once in Herts and once in Sussex, when oncoming traffic prevented me driving round them. That in addition to.several I swerved around.
MX5 today, which makes me especially wary as it has no spare wheel.
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>> In the UK, any self driving car's logic simply cannot assume
>> that the entire road surface within its lane, or safe, legal road position is suitable
>> to be driven on.
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It will also have to make a judgement whether water on the road is simply wet from rain, a harmless puddle, or deduce from comparing the water level with the road camber, kerb edge or other indicators that is likely to be a foot deep.
It will have to recognize stop/go boards waved by council workmen, and not to drive on hot tar.
To regulate speed on gravel or loose stones by the noise under the wheel arches.
Once you start thinking about it, the list of things a human driver instinctively responds to is endless.
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I read a report from a psychologist on AutoNewsEurope about the time taken for a human to "pick up" on whats going on in a car, going from zero attention to getting a full picture of what is going on and what is then required intervention wise. It said it was far longer than the time needed to react, and no matter how clever these systems become, that will always be the case.
He pointed out the difference in auto pilot of airliners saying they have minutes, not seconds to act.
The answer as said above is complete autonomy. Without this I can't really see the advantages, just confusion
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>> He pointed out the difference in auto pilot of airliners saying they have minutes, not
>> seconds to act.
Not if they have to take control for a fault or an ATC instruction for 'avoiding action'.
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Tesla - You couldn't make it up, could you? - Bromptonaut
