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Humans are slamming into driverless cars and exposing a key flaw

SOUTHFIELD, Michigan The self-driving car, that cutting-edge creation that's supposed to lead to a world without accidents, is achieving the exact opposite right now: The vehicles have racked up a crash rate double that of those with human drivers.

The glitch? They obey the law all the time, without exception. This may sound like the right way to program a robot to drive a car, but good luck trying to merge onto a chaotic, jam-packed highway with traffic flying along well above the speed limit.

As the accidents have piled up – all minor scrape-ups for now – the arguments among programmers at places like Google and Carnegie Mellon University are heating up: should they teach the cars how to commit infractions from time to time to stay out of trouble?

"It's a constant debate inside our group," says Raj Rajkumar, co-director of the General Motors-Carnegie Mellon Autonomous Driving Collaborative Research Lab in Pittsburgh.

"And we have basically decided to stick to the speed limit. But when you go out and drive the speed limit on the highway, pretty much everybody on the road is just zipping past you. And I would be one of those people."

Last year, Rajkumar offered test drives to members of Congress in his lab's self-driving Cadillac SRX sport utility vehicle. The Caddy performed perfectly, except when it had to merge onto I-395 South and swing across three lanes of traffic in 150 yards (137 metres) to head toward the Pentagon.

The car's cameras and laser sensors detected traffic in a 360-degree view but didn't know how to trust that drivers would make room in the ceaseless flow, so the human minder had to take control to complete the manoeuvre.

"We end up being cautious," Rajkumar said. "We don't want to get into an accident because that would be front-page news. People expect more of autonomous cars."

Turns out, though, their accident rates are twice as high as for regular cars, according to a study by the University of Michigan's Transportation Research Institute. Driverless vehicles have never been at fault, the study found: they're usually hit from behind in slow-speed crashes by inattentive or aggressive humans unaccustomed to machine motorists that always follow the rules and proceed with caution.

"It's a dilemma that needs to be addressed," Rajkumar says.

It's similar to the thorny ethical issues driverless car creators are wrestling with over how to program them to make life-or-death decisions in an accident. For example, should an autonomous vehicle sacrifice its occupant by swerving off a cliff to avoid killing a school bus full of children?

California is urging caution in the deployment of driverless cars. It published proposed rules this week that would require a human always to be ready to take the wheel and also compel companies creating the cars to file monthly reports on their behaviour.

Google – which developed a model with no steering wheel or gas pedal – says it is "gravely disappointed" in the proposed rules, which could set the standard for autonomous-car regulations nationwide.

Google cars have been in 17 minor crashes in 2 million miles (3.2 million kilometres) of testing and account for most of the reported accidents, according to the Michigan study. That's partly because the company is testing mainly in California, where accidents involving driverless cars must be reported.

The most recent reported incident was occurred on November 2 in Mountain View, California, Google's headquarters, when a self-driving Google Lexus SUV attempted to turn right on a red light.

It came to a full stop, activated its turn signal and began creeping slowly into the intersection to get a better look, according to a report the company posted online. Another car stopped behind it and also began rolling forward, rear-ending the SUV at 4 mph. There were no injuries and only minor damage to both vehicles.

Ten days later, a Mountain View motorcycle cop noticed traffic stacking up behind a Google car going 24 mph in a busy 35 mph zone. He zoomed over and became the first officer to stop a robot car. He didn't issue a ticket – who would he give it to? –but he warned the two engineers on board about creating a hazard.

While Google rejects the notion that its careful cars cause crashes, "we err on the conservative side," says Dmitri Dolgov, principal engineer of the program. "They're a little bit like a cautious student driver or a grandma."

Google is working to make the vehicles more "aggressive" like humans – law-abiding, safe humans – so they "can naturally fit into the traffic flow, and other people understand what we're doing and why we're doing it," Dolgov says. "Driving is a social game."

Google has already programmed its cars to behave in more familiar ways, such as inching forward at a four-way stop to signal they're going next. But autonomous models still surprise human drivers with their quick reflexes, coming to an abrupt halt, for example, when they sense a pedestrian near the edge of a sidewalk who might step into traffic.
"These vehicles are either stopping in a situation or slowing down when a human driver might not," says Brandon Schoettle, co-author of the Michigan study. "They're a little faster to react, taking drivers behind them off guard."
That could account for the prevalence of slow-speed, rear-end crashes, he adds..

"They do behave differently," says Egil Juliussen, senior director at consultant IHS Technology and author of a study on how Google leads development of autonomous technology. "It's a problem that I'm sure Google is working on, but how to solve it is not clear."

One approach is to teach the vehicles when it's OK to break the rules, such as crossing a double yellow line to avoid a bicyclist or road workers.

"It's a sticky area," Schoettle says. "If you program them to not follow the law, how much do you let them break the law?"
Initially, crashes may rise as more robot autos share the road, but injuries should diminish because most accidents will be minor, Schoettle says.


Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/humans-are-slamming-into-driverless-cars-and-exposing-a-key-flaw-20151222-gltebr.html#ixzz3wG5HjS8N
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suddenly become expert at computers coding

Telsa driver already have this...the report are the Car get smarter as the driver does more Km

Do not disagree with your first point. That doesn't stop it needing to be a completely finished product for it to be released. The current technology for car autonomy has been in development since the early 90's. There are so many factors that have to have to built in correctly. The fact that at least initially the roads going are going to be shared with unreliable humans makes it even more critical.

I think the slow introduction of autonomy, through parking and lane change assistance and the like, is the right method to ease us in to full autonomy. Most people would lack the courage to immediately sit in a car that drives itself at 100km/h. When we can't see or understand how its being done we become unsure.

The lack of autonomy in cars is putting lives at risk.
Unfortunately, unsubstantiated fear mongering will stall autonomous technology.
The IT industry needs to come out with graphic advertising like the old TAC ads, with narration along the lines of "1,372 people died today, as a result of fallible human beings behind the wheel of a car. Help make cars autonomous, now. An autonomous car may one day be the reason for you being alive"....

The lack of autonomy in cars is putting lives at risk.
Unfortunately, unsubstantiated fear mongering will stall autonomous technology.
The IT industry needs to come out with graphic advertising like the old TAC ads, with narration along the lines of "1,372 people died today, as a result of fallible human beings behind the wheel of a car. Help make cars autonomous, now. An autonomous car may one day be the reason for you being alive"....

Edited by Murdoch Rags Ltd: 4/1/2016 12:01:32 AM

This is not acceptable practice for the car industry where lives are at risk.

This is not acceptable practice for the car industry where lives are at risk.

computers not the same as software ,,,billions of line of software code is going to go into cars soon

Cars already require many computers to run. Switching from an combustion engine to an electric engine would not vastly change the amount of control systems that are required. It most probably simplify your control as you only need a control points for how much energy your drawing through the electric motor to replace the many control points for a combustion engine: combustion heat and pressure, injection pressure, air intake, spark timing, etc.

they do? i can see the job dilemma now for software developers..Google, Apple, Telsa or Ford

the company that does the best software, will be the biggest sellers of cars

Computers don't do anything without software. I'm not sure what your point is? The big car manufacturers already hire software developers (or contract others to provide it for them), what exactly is going to be different?

computers not the same as software ,,,billions of line of software code is going to go into cars soon

Cars already require many computers to run. Switching from an combustion engine to an electric engine would not vastly change the amount of control systems that are required. It most probably simplify your control as you only need a control points for how much energy your drawing through the electric motor to replace the many control points for a combustion engine: combustion heat and pressure, injection pressure, air intake, spark timing, etc.