Self driving cars are a pipe-dream

It seems that now even the Daily Telegraph is of the view – as I suggest Progressive Pulse has long been – that driverless cars are an illusion. Not imminent – and unlikely to happen in the lifetimes of even the youngest possible person reading this!

At last the American car safety regulator, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced an investigation into Tesla Motors’ Autopilot feature.

Its cars have only managed to crash into emergency vehicles eleven times! Still – at least only two of them were parked…

The article continues:

When the obituary is finally written for the autonomous car, we should ask not why it failed, but why people ever thought it would succeed. 

I agree – I think cars are eventually likely to disappear in favour of more climate friendly public transport…

There is an interesting scale from SAE International, the engineering standards body, which defines six levels of vehicle autonomy:

These are used to evaluate the technological ‘sophistication’ of any driving automation system, based on the amount of human interaction required:

Level 0: A standard vehicle that can issue warnings to the driver but has no control.

Level 1: Includes commonplace technologies such as Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC), Parking Assistance with automated steering, and Lane Keeping Assistance (LKA) Type II. The driver must be ready to take control at any point.

Level 2: The driver must keep track of objects and events, in case the automated system fails to respond properly. However, the car can accelerate, brake and steer by itself.

Level 3: The car is capable of monitoring its surroundings and within relatively predictable contexts, such as motorway driving, the driver can safely do other things – although must still be ready to take back control if needed.

Level 4: The vehicle can drive by itself in all but the most unpredictable environments. The driver does not normally need to pay attention once the autonomous system is activated.

Level 5: No human intervention is required, other than setting the destination. The vehicle is capable of driving safely by itself and making appropriate decisions.

Source: SAE International

Allegedly the UK government thinks, quite remarkably, that we are at level two….

Yet Uber and Google have pulled out of driverless car research, and even Apple appears to be no longer interested. Tesla’s Musk has long made all kinds of predictions that seem not to be achievable. Including for example, the incredible idea that sophisticated Tesla cars when parked for the evening, would go driverless to the nearest town or city where they would act as taxis earning money for the owner as they slept.

Earning money as you sleep was the classic John Stewart Mill description of landlordism.

Musk follows the vibe of rent extraction from someone other than us – when you buy one of his cars….

Indeed, as the article suggests, Musk may have been successful in orienting other car manufacturers down his own blind alley.

Nor, in my view, should we be pursuing (as the government is wont to suggest) any sort of autonomous goods vehicles either – that is what railways are for...

Comments

  1. Andrew -

    How many non-autonomous vehicles have crashed into emergency vehicles in the same period? How many of them were parked? And then can we have percentages of vehicles or journeys or miles travelled. Were the so-called autonomous vehicles safer or less safe than non-autonomous ones?

    I doubt it is imminent (this year or next year) but I’d be surprised if we don’t have functionally autonomous vehicles on the roads within a decade or two. (Although, like viable nuclear fusion power stations, perhaps it will always be a few more decades away… )

    1. Peter May -

      Fair point.
      But self driving vehicles are surely supposed to be better than humans – isn’t that their whole raison d’etre?

      1. Andrew -

        That depends on what you mean by “better”, surely.

        Is it “better” to give more people access to cheap on-demand transport, without requiring them to buy or lease their own vehicle that then spends most of its time idle outside their house?

        We accept a quite extraordinary number of road traffic accidents caused by people every year, yet somehow expect autonomous vehicles to be perfect, and throw our hands up in horror when anything goes wrong.

        Perhaps we need to have more realistic expectations.

  2. Peter May -

    On demand car based transport could be satisfied by car clubs.

    We do accept lots of road accidents, I agree.

    But even if we accepted that ‘self driving’ vehicles were to give us a no better accident rate,.what happens when the self driving car knocks you for six in your car or worse drives into a party of schoolchildren?

    I’d be much more confident in the achievements of the self driving car merchants if they said ‘insurance included’.

    So far they haven’t mentioned it, because I think they’d be running a mile.

    1. Andrew -

      Yes, like human drivers, they will need mandatory insurance. Fortunately they tend to be equipped with many sensors: perhaps we should also demand a black box so perhaps we have a better chance to work out what went wrong than putting it all down to “human error”.

      The hope has to be that they will end up being substantially better than human drivers (not distracted by the radio or their phone, not emotional or drunk, not so prone to errors of judgement, and so safer) but from time to time they’ll inevitably get things wrong.

      Perhaps even hacked by a malign operator to crash into a crowd. Just like some people are.

      Is it better to be knocked for six by a person than a robot?

      1. Peter May -

        An unusual take – it seems to me you are suggesting something automated that does not ‘fail safe’.
        I’m not sure I can go with that…

  3. Graham -

    We need to start planning to bring about the quiet euthanasia of the private car owner and to develop a radical transport strategy that is cheap, or free, covers the whole country, runs on time, is comfortable, is on demand and zero carbon.

    Electric or hydrogen powered personal transport in the form of cars will never combat the many afflictions that they have brought about – ranging from accidents, to out of town shopping and the demise of the “High Street”, to congestion and pollution from tyres & brakes .

    We will still need personal transport but in the form of walking and cycling. Enclosed battery powered velomobiles could supply most needs for commuting, shopping and other short journeys.

    If we developed public transport properly and reduced the number of commercial vehicles on the roads by using the railways and developing road trains – and why do we need all these courier vans? – we could modify (and repair!!) the existing road network to prioritise cycling and walking over motorised vehicles.

    Self-driving cars are just an extension of the 20thC paradigm of a car for everyone and is not only a blind alley but ignores the imperatives of the coming climate catastrophe which will likely curtail how far and how often we travel.

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