Now it's happened: First accident caused by an autonomous car.

Ironically enough, it was a Volvo, which plowed into some journalists' legs:

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/selfparking-volvo-plows-into-journalists-after-owner-neglects-to-pay-for-extra-feature-that-stops-cars-crashing-into-people-10277203.html

Not because of any kind of bug, but more because of a design problem, or you might even call it a marketing problem: You can buy the car with autonomous parking but not pedestrian detection. A car with this feature configuration will auto-park but cannot detect if there are people around, so if people happen to get in the way it will just plow over them as if they weren't there. This is the feature set this car had. Real smart, Volvo.

HAHHAHHHAAAAAHAHHAH!

Volvo's essentially set an industrial robot loose on the streets by offering this setup. If this car is already on sale, I assume everyone who ordered this feature configuration will have their cars recalled for a free pedestrian detection package upgrade.

The way I read it was that the car was missing the package needed to not hit people, or the function was turned off.

Volvo's spokesperson says that even if the car had the package it could be overridden by the driver staying on the gas...what's the use of having that system then? That sounds like another design problem to me. It's debatable whether a car that can prevent you from hitting someone should allow you hit them at all, but it certainly shouldn't happen while any kind of autonomous driving system is enabled.

Well, that's a relief. Now hopefully they'll realize their folly, and go back to making cars with manual transmissions.

Not seeing the problem - journalists probably shouldn't be standing in parking spots. Every once in a while a journalist needs to get run over when they're in the way. Then the others can learn what not to do (stay safe Leslie)... yada yada yada, personal responsibility, yada, yada.

GameboyRMH wrote: Volvo's essentially set an industrial robot loose on the streets by offering this setup. If this car is already on sale, I assume everyone who ordered this feature configuration will have their cars recalled for a free pedestrian detection package upgrade.

Nobody walks in LA.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0x9npV3IO8Q

GameboyRMH wrote: Volvo's spokesperson says that even if the car had the package it could be overridden by the driver staying on the gas...what's the use of having that system then? That sounds like another design problem to me. It's debatable whether a car that can prevent you from hitting someone should allow you hit them at all, but it certainly shouldn't happen while any kind of autonomous driving system is enabled.

Imagine the uproar on GRM if the various autonomous devices could NOT be overriden by the driver.

I lived in the DR.

People getting their legs run over is normal. Probably part of the programming.

Appleseed wrote: HAHHAHHHAAAAAHAHHAH!

Pedestrians are 2 points.
However, Journalists' are 10 points.

And sometimes they need a car to fall off a jack on them...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TU8ZwtVkbGc

if the driver is hitting the gas then is it really an autonomous car?? or is just a standard nomous car?

This is absolutely BRILLIANT marketing.

"The accident may have happened because owners have to pay for a special feature known as “pedestrian detection functionality”, which costs extra. The cars do have auto-braking features as standard, but only for avoiding other cars — if they are to avoid crashing into pedestrians, too, then owners must pay extra."

So, if you don't want your car to run amok and kill people, you better not be a cheapskate and pony up the extra bucks!

Would that be manualnonous? Honestly once the first person gets killed by one of these cars and the manufacture gets sued and held liable the whole silly idea will be toss into the bin with flying cars.

It obviously does not have the 1st law of robotics programed in it.

Sultan wrote: Honestly once the first person gets killed by one of these cars and the manufacture gets sued and held liable the whole silly idea will be toss into the bin with flying cars.

Hahaha no. Autonomous cars will not only save hundreds of thousands of lives (and to the manufacturers, that means many potential lawsuits) by making crashes extremely rare, but they'll be valuable to other industries too, like the trucking and taxi industries who will be able to lay off drivers en masse. I think autonomous cars would have to kill at least as many people as human drivers before any manufacturer might think it's a bad idea.

BBsGarage wrote: It obviously does not have the 1st law of robotics programed in it.

It can't see or feel people, so maybe it does Maybe a people-blind autonomous car with Asimov's 1st law would simply refuse to move?

In reply to GameboyRMH:

So, you are saying they will kill hundreds of thousands of jobs, and therefore starve people to death, right?

BtW, you are wrong.

This is not a math problem to manufacturers that ends with death toll by autonomous car vs death toll by humans. No way, no how.

It is a a math problem that involves public perception and acceptance of their product.

If people ever see on the news an unmanned product with a Ford emblem on it running over a child and perhaps dragging her for half a mile, the death toll will not matter. The damage to the brand will be huge.

See, for example, Ebola. No one died in the US, but the fear level and public reaction was enormous.

Manufacturers don't give a rat's azz about the litigation. That's simply an expense, a cost to doing business. They care about the profits, which is what you get when you subtract the expenses from the revenue.

A damaged brand or image destroys the revenue side of the equation (and therefore the profits) much more than any expense ever will.

In reply to SVreX:

I got told elsewhere that a single anecdote is useless except as a data point.

The story does prove that there are a bunch of pitfalls to autonomous cars far and above what we humans 'think' there are. It's not as simple as covering a car with sensors then plugging in a computer and telling it what to do. A computer is nothing more than a fancy high speed electronic filing cabinet; at the present time they aren't able to 'think', which is defined as being indistinguishable from a human, which would include the ability to make deductions from limited input and knowledge. Think of it a bit like this (greatly simplified): a computer is only able to pull its possible decisions from its selection of possible outcomes pre-programmed into it. At this point, a computer can't make a deduction based on incomplete information. (Think of it as intuition or a leap of faith, if you like.) That's what AI intends to do, I personally don't see it as possible due to the limited number of memory connections currently possible.

Anyone remember Volvo's "lol worthy" autonomous braking system?

Pepperidge Farm Remembers.....

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=W_bm1z3aJTc

Curmudgeon wrote: The story does prove that there are a bunch of pitfalls to autonomous cars far and above what we humans 'think' there are.

This isn't some exotic new problem, this is a dunce move that should have been obvious to anyone with two brain cells to rub together. You can order the car with the capability to park itself but WITHOUT the capability to see people? What could possibly go wrong?

Also a car doesn't need to be as smart as a person to drive - it has to be about as smart as a computer-controlled competitor in a racing game. An early '90s PC could run several of them at once. The sensors are what need to catch up, in the game the "AI" gets neatly formatted information about everything around it, while the real world is a mess that needs to be made sense of first.

In reply to GameboyRMH:

So, you're saying manufacturers won't be making "dunce moves"?

Volvo just proved you wrong. ;-)