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#1559212
I was driving around doing the things that one has to do at the weekend when I got to a part of a road where there was traffic parked on both sides of the road and the remaining carriage way was not wide enough for 2 cars to pass.

It got me wondering that unless "autononomous" vehicles were not really autonomous but actually communicated with each other, then situations like that may be difficult.

Also I wondered how autonomous vehicles would learn where to park at people's houses? I know there is an argument that people won't own cars and they all be driverless Ubers, but unless that happens they'll have to park somewhere, which may be "down the alley and round the back".

Finally, returning the the narrow street situation above. If cars actually do communicate, will some have priority over others (emergency vehicles, BMWs & Audis being obvious examples of vehicles that should be given priority)?

Interesting times, ahead.....
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By GrahamB
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1559223
There will be a new regulatory agency called ERSA who will spend twenty years dreaming up Basic Regulations, Implementing Rules, Acceptable Means of Compliance and Guidance Material. This stuff will be written in code rather than English, as it will be have to be downloaded to the autobots, so will be incomprehensible to the user and readily misunderstood by the national regulators who will face having to apply all this.

There will be years of delays, alleviations, local overrides to rules, u-turns and re-thinks, and most autobots will have operated at some point illegally, as not one of the operators will ever really understand what all the rules are at any one point in time.

But of course that would not be allowed to happen, would it?
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#1559586
GrahamB wrote:There will be a new regulatory agency called ERSA who will spend twenty years dreaming up Basic Regulations, Implementing Rules, Acceptable Means of Compliance and Guidance Material. This stuff will be written in code rather than English, as it will be have to be downloaded to the autobots, so will be incomprehensible to the user and readily misunderstood by the national regulators who will face having to apply all this.

There will be years of delays, alleviations, local overrides to rules, u-turns and re-thinks, and most autobots will have operated at some point illegally, as not one of the operators will ever really understand what all the rules are at any one point in time.

But of course that would not be allowed to happen, would it?

You forgot the bit where all other drivers are forced to fit expensive electronic boxes to their vehicles with no gain to themselves so that the driverless vehicles can go about their business unhindered.
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By zlhglp
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1559588
If cars actually do communicate, will some have priority over others (emergency vehicles, BMWs & Audis being obvious examples of vehicles that should be given priority)?


That function will be geofenced. My sister is an ambulance technician and she says that people only get out of her way in some towns; in others you can flash your blue lights and sound your sirens all you like and they pay no notice.
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By skydriller
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1559606
zlhglp wrote: My sister is an ambulance technician and she says that people only get out of her way in some towns; in others you can flash your blue lights and sound your sirens all you like and they pay no notice.


I find that incredulous!! I could of course understand in some specific areas there might be an issue of how exactly would traffic be able get out of the way considering the road design, traffic density & space available?
#1559656
malcolmfrost wrote:There are some actually very difficult ethical decisions that autonomous vehicles will have to make, for example if it has a choice of missing one of two pedestrians, does it hit a child, or mother?


In my childhood in Switzerland, '50s-'60s, IIRC there was an officially published 'tariff' of penalties for killing (pedestrians or occupants of same/other vehicle) while driving. It was based on reasonable life expectancy ie age of victim; grandparents were cheaper (fines*/prison/ban) than children .. :roll:

I don't know whether this was Cantonal or Federal, nor whether these were guidelines or mandatory.

[* and ISTR all court-imposed fines were based not on absolute amounts but on days' income, determined after a thorough tax audit .. a check on the 'irresponsible rich idiot' :thumright: Also, some prison sentences were 'weekend and holiday season' detention, enabling the offender to continue to earn a living, with fines being sequestered directly from wages; Sweden had a similar system]
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#1559917
Kanga - already mentioned this before, I lived for a while in the Confederation Helvetica about 10 years ago. Things hadn't changed much.

That Calvinist "logic" still runs deep.

Fines based on global income are the norm. It's not unheard of for someone doing silly-speed in their ferrari (in a built up area etc) to be fined 6 figures.

Civic responsibility extends to all.

A local bus stop in Lausanne was a bit of a nightmare for pedestrians and drivers alike, it was on a bend, just after a very low bridge and at the start of a hill with another intersection a few yards up.

When I was there a 6 or 7 yr old schoolgirl ran out from behind a school bus, she was hit by a car who was (legally) overtaking the stopped bus.

He sued the mother for damage to his car and emotional distress.

Some might think it crass, but he was "right" - and got a decent payout.

As for autonomous vehicles - it's not the vehicle that will make the decision, but those who programme it. I think Isaac Asimov, Arthur C Clarke, Carl Sagan, Philip K Dick etc had been tinkering in that area since..oh..the 1940s :)

I used to work in a humungous factory, and was involved in a project to swap out "dumb" roller lines with "smart" lines where the material trays couldn't smash into each other and flip trays full of kit into the air - which I had seen more than once, and trust me it's not a pretty sight seeing a few hundred thousand pounds worth of computer bits ejected like confetti all over the factory floor.

Talking with my line engineer colleagues - and this was in the mid 90s - we couldn't think of a single reason why we wouldn't implement the same on the roads. Not necessarily everywhere and always, but certainly on "easy win" places such as large bridges, pitch-point junctions and notorious death-trap areas.
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#1560511
malcolmfrost wrote:There are some actually very difficult ethical decisions that autonomous vehicles will have to make, for example if it has a choice of missing one of two pedestrians, does it hit a child, or mother?

I'm not in that industry myself, but a colleague of mine is. The way he explained it to me, the vehicle can't take such a decision. It will have to be random. "Decision" in this context means using machine learning and AI. Everything that happens must be part of a predefined algorithm.
#1560524
Pre-defined algorithm doesn't sit easily with random....

There's quite a bit about this ethical dilemma on t'Internet.

#1560538
PaulB wrote:Pre-defined algorithm doesn't sit easily with random....

True. So if there's a choice that's not pre-defined by the algorithm , the vehicle can't make its own decision and must choose randomly what to hit. The choice between hitting a person or a lamp post can be pre-defined. The choice between, say, a man and a woman probably isn't.
#1560544
Will the systems be able to work out what is a bollard and what is a child standing still (if such a thing exists)?