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Thread: Self driving autos

  1. #1
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    Default Self driving autos

    I've been doing a little reading on the subject and have come across several interesting aspects involved with making driverless cares work. To make a self driving auto work, engineers and programmers have to consider and think thru millions of scenarios that can occur on the roadway and program accordingly. During my reading I came across quite a few fascinating aspects regards to the topic and found this one interesting enough to share-



    The Trolley Problem
    Philosophers have been thinking about ethics for thousands of years, and we can apply that experience to robot cars. One classical dilemma, proposed by philosophers Philippa Foot and Judith Jarvis Thomson, is called the Trolley Problem: Imagine a runaway trolley (train) is about to run over and kill five people standing on the tracks. Watching the scene from the outside, you stand next to a switch that can shunt the train to a sidetrack, on which only one person stands. Should you throw the switch, killing the one person on the sidetrack (who otherwise would live if you did nothing), in order to save five others in harm’s way?














    A simple analysis would look only at the numbers: Of course it’s better that five persons should live than only one person, everything else being equal. But a more thoughtful response would consider other factors too, including whether there’s a moral distinction between killing and letting die: It seems worse to do something that causes someone to die (the one person on the sidetrack) than to allow someone to die (the five persons on the main track) as a result of events you did not initiate or had no responsibility for.

    To hammer home the point that numbers alone don’t tell the whole story, consider a common variation of the problem: Imagine that you’re again watching a runaway train about to run over five people. But you could push or drop a very large gentleman onto the tracks, whose body would derail the train in the ensuing collision, thus saving the five people farther down the track. Would you still kill one person to save five?

    If your conscience starts to bother you here, it may be that you recognize a moral distinction between intending someone’s death and merely foreseeing it. In the first scenario, you don’t intend for the lone person on the sidetrack to die; in fact, you hope that he escapes in time. But in the second scenario, you do intend for the large gentleman to die; you need him to be struck by the train in order for your plan to work. And intending death seems worse than just foreseeing it.



    This dilemma isn’t just a theoretical problem. Driverless trains today operate in many cities worldwide, including London, Paris, Tokyo, San Francisco, Chicago, New York City, and dozens more. As situational awareness improves with more advanced sensors, networking, and other technologies, a robot train might someday need to make such a decision.

    Autonomous cars may face similar no-win scenarios too, and we would hope their operating programs would choose the lesser evil. But it would be an unreasonable act of faith to think that programming issues will sort themselves out without a deliberate discussion about ethics, such as which choices are better or worse than others. Is it better to save an adult or child? What about saving two (or three or ten) adults versus one child? We don’t like thinking about these uncomfortable and difficult choices, but programmers may have to do exactly that. Again, ethics by numbers alone seems naïve and incomplete; rights, duties, conflicting values, and other factors often come into play.



    If you complain here that robot cars would probably never be in the Trolley scenario—that the odds of having to make such a decision are minuscule and not worth discussing—then you’re missing the point. Programmers still will need to instruct an automated car on how to act for the entire range of foreseeable scenarios, as well as lay down guiding principles for unforeseen scenarios. So programmers will need to confront this decision, even if we human drivers never have to in the real world. And it matters to the issue of responsibility and ethics whether an act was premeditated (as in the case of programming a robot car) or reflexively without any deliberation (as may be the case with human drivers in sudden crashes).












    Anyway, there are many examples of car accidents every day that involve difficult choices, and robot cars will encounter at least those. For instance, if an animal darts in front of our moving car, we need to decide: whether it would be prudent to brake; if so, how hard to brake; whether to continue straight or swerve to the left of right; and so on. These decisions are influenced by environmental conditions (e.g., slippery road), obstacles on and off the road (e.g., other cars to the left and trees to the right), size of an obstacle (e.g., hitting a cow diminishes your survivability, compared to hitting a raccoon), second-order effects (e.g., crash with the car behind us, if we brake too hard), lives at risk in and outside the car (e.g., a baby passenger might mean the robot car should give greater weight to protecting its occupants), and so on.



    Human drivers may be forgiven for making an instinctive but nonetheless bad split-second decision, such as swerving into incoming traffic rather than the other way into a field. But programmers and designers of automated cars don’t have that luxury, since they do have the time to get it right and therefore bear more responsibility for bad outcomes.

  2. #2
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    For the record, I'm in favor of pushing the fat guy onto the track. If he's big enough to derail a train the sunuvabitch is probably on government assistance and gonna die of a heart attack anyway.
    Last edited by scatter shot; 07-12-2018 at 05:57 AM.

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    Interesting read for sure. It's a slippery slope to have the computer try to pick the lesser of two evils because they might not always have all the information. Say there are actually 12 people on the sidewalk because 11 are obstructed from view in a bus stop. Or coming out of a shop.

    As for the automated car scenarios what about the driver behind the automated car? How does that affect them if the automated car does something completely unexpected. That could lead to a multi car pile up and a scenario that the computer never considered. Because the human doesn't compute things the same way.

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    With the amount of texting and driving going on, I’d contend that we already have about 25% of cars on the road that are driverless.
    Them that don't know him won't like him, and them that do sometimes won't know how to take him

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    They should not be on the track or should be aware of their surroundings. Darwinisim. Let’em die.


    If a man is alone in the woods, says something, and a woman does not hear, is he still wrong?

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    my jeep has "adaptive cruise control". basically there is a small radar on the front. it looks to see whats ahead of me and adjusts the cars speed accordingly. I can set my cruise on 80 while driving down a busy interstate. It keeps me at 80mph until i get close to a slower car. it sees the slower car coming and keeps me at a set (adjustable) distance from the car at what ever speed they are going. Its the single greatest feature that i have EVER used on a vehicle. It completely changes the stress level associated with interstate driving. You no longer have to cuss and slap the steering wheel everytime someone pulls out infront of you going 5mph slower just as you set your cruise and get comfortable. you can literally get on the interstate, set the cruise for 80, and never touch the brakes for hours. hell sometimes ill get so comfortable, or get into a conversation with a passenger, that ill ride for 20 minutes behind a car going 63mph just because i didnt realize it. if i was in a car with regular cruise control, i would have been flashing my lights, passing in the right lane, etc because that stupid car was going 63 in a 70.

    self driving cars are coming, and I'm all for it.

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    Quote Originally Posted by dixiedeerslaya View Post
    my jeep has "adaptive cruise control". basically there is a small radar on the front. it looks to see whats ahead of me and adjusts the cars speed accordingly. I can set my cruise on 80 while driving down a busy interstate. It keeps me at 80mph until i get close to a slower car. it sees the slower car coming and keeps me at a set (adjustable) distance from the car at what ever speed they are going. Its the single greatest feature that i have EVER used on a vehicle. It completely changes the stress level associated with interstate driving. You no longer have to cuss and slap the steering wheel everytime someone pulls out infront of you going 5mph slower just as you set your cruise and get comfortable. you can literally get on the interstate, set the cruise for 80, and never touch the brakes for hours. hell sometimes ill get so comfortable, or get into a conversation with a passenger, that ill ride for 20 minutes behind a car going 63mph just because i didnt realize it. if i was in a car with regular cruise control, i would have been flashing my lights, passing in the right lane, etc because that stupid car was going 63 in a 70.

    self driving cars are coming, and I'm all for it.
    Please stay in the right hand lane- anybody paying that little attention to traffic needs to stay to the right.

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    Quote Originally Posted by dixiedeerslaya View Post
    my jeep has "adaptive cruise control". basically there is a small radar on the front. it looks to see whats ahead of me and adjusts the cars speed accordingly. I can set my cruise on 80 while driving down a busy interstate. It keeps me at 80mph until i get close to a slower car. it sees the slower car coming and keeps me at a set (adjustable) distance from the car at what ever speed they are going. Its the single greatest feature that i have EVER used on a vehicle. It completely changes the stress level associated with interstate driving. You no longer have to cuss and slap the steering wheel everytime someone pulls out infront of you going 5mph slower just as you set your cruise and get comfortable. you can literally get on the interstate, set the cruise for 80, and never touch the brakes for hours. hell sometimes ill get so comfortable, or get into a conversation with a passenger, that ill ride for 20 minutes behind a car going 63mph just because i didnt realize it. if i was in a car with regular cruise control, i would have been flashing my lights, passing in the right lane, etc because that stupid car was going 63 in a 70.

    self driving cars are coming, and I'm all for it.
    So you become complacent and dependent on technology...

    Right up until that part breaks, loses calibration or just plain stops working and you slam into someone going 80.

    Who do we sue? You or the manufacturer?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Bad Habit View Post
    Please stay in the right hand lane- anybody paying that little attention to traffic needs to stay to the right.
    very few people pay attention to traffic as much as they should. NOT having to worry about your speed is one less thing to distract you from TRAFFIC. What ive noticed is im more focused on the cars in front of me, more focused on my surroundings and less focused on my speed. i predetermine my maximum speed when i set the cruise control. Thats the last time i really have to worry about my speed. that makes for MUCH more stress free driving, which in my opinion is a good thing. guess you missed my point.


    i saw an article a few weeks ago that FORD is researching automated cruise control now as well. there was a video on how if everybody on the road had automated cruise control, those "mystery" traffic jams would end. tis true

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    Quote Originally Posted by Glenn View Post
    So you become complacent and dependent on technology...

    Right up until that part breaks, loses calibration or just plain stops working and you slam into someone going 80.

    Who do we sue? You or the manufacturer?
    exactly the reactions i expected from that post. "Oh no, technology is scary, them damn robot cars are gonna kill us"

    no, just no. YOU are still driving the car. ONE simple tap of the break, or tap of the "cancel" button on the steering wheel cancels this feature just like any other cruise control on any other vehicle on the road.

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    It's not like autonomous vehicles have ever killed anyone...

    Oh wait.

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    A quick search reveals more than enough incidences of cruise controls failing to disengage.

    So again, since you've admitted to becoming complacent while driving, who gets sued when it fails and breaks, you aren't paying attention and the wreck happens?

    You can choose to take this personal but it's not. It's a serious question about our dependence on technology and where that leads us.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Glenn View Post
    A quick search reveals more than enough incidences of cruise controls failing to disengage.

    So again, since you've admitted to becoming complacent while driving, who gets sued when it fails and breaks, you aren't paying attention and the wreck happens?

    You can choose to take this personal but it's not. It's a serious question about our dependence on technology and where that leads us.
    haha. nothing personal here, and your question is valid for sure, however ill continue to have stress free interstate driving with the assistance of technology, and maybe while doing so, ill have extra time to research the dangerous cases of "how often lightening strikes" and "what to do if you are ever in a meteor shower" so ill know that im not completely complacent in every aspect of life.

    "I'm just sayin" its a really cool feature that works. In my opinion, after almost 2 years of using it (and getting use to it), is that it is a feature that has improved the way i drive, makes me a safer, more comfortable, less aggressive driver. AND, i think its the wave of the future whether we are scared of it or not.

    i'm sure back in the 1950s when regular cruise control was first being invented, people were having these same conversations. OH NO, what if that button breaks, or gets stuck, or what if it goes haywire while im driving down 301 and crashes me into the lake at 50mph.... But today, 90% of vehicles have cruise control..... a feature that drives the car for you...and everybody uses it.... which is ok.... but as soon as the vehicle goes from just "maintaining a speed" to "maintaining a speed while monitoring whats coming up ahead and adjusting said speed" it all of a sudden becomes dangerous because it could fail? ill risk the .0025% chance of the cars computer failing in exchange for the advantages in which i have already discussed. Ill accept that risk

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    Why are you so worried about your speed anyhow?
    cut\'em

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    Wait you answered my next question already. You are an aggressive driver.
    Last edited by Southernduck; 07-12-2018 at 09:18 AM.
    cut\'em

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    Quote Originally Posted by Southernduck View Post
    Wait you answered my next question already. You are an aggressive driver.
    sumbitch got a hemi in it bo. gotta be aggressive when ya sittin on all dem ponies

  17. #17
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    That's worthwhile reading, Scattershot. Machine Learning combined with the explosion in capacity to collect and process data is going to have major ramifications on about everything.
    "hunting should be a challenge and a passion not a way of making a living or a road to fame"

    Rubberhead

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    Some folks within the involved industries( auto manufacturers, auto insurance, etc.) are postulating that private auto insurance will be diminished to the point of non existence since the cars are self driving thereby making the manufacturers and programmers liable for accidents.

  19. #19
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    Y'all can keep that skynet shit i don't want it on my truck

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