Crashes and Carnage on M27 & A27

[Cyril Haearn]

Crashes are inevitable as long as we rely on humans to do the driving. Give it ten years, when presumably cars will have safety features that prevent them driving too close together, and things may well improve.

Then the law of unintended consequences will apply.

[Cyril Haearn]

Returning to the OP, what really gets me: reports of drivers killing their own relatives in "accidents". Recently a driver asked his wife to direct him backwards out of a parking space. He ran over and killed her. Or a farmer who took his great-granddaughter out on the tractor. She slipped off the seat, landed under the wheel and died. Or the driver maneuvering his van, reversing, felt a bit of resistance, drove over it (he thought it was a stone). It was his infant daughter and she died. The newspaper reported that howls of misery could be heard for many hours afterwards.

I imagine those who killed their loved ones will never never get over it.

Or the death notice in the newspaper: "our second and only remaining son died in an accident just like his brother a few years before".

This is the sort of thing that should be publicised. About 1970 there was a TV programme with shocking pictures of people who had been blinded when playing with fireworks, it put the fear of God into us.

[rmurphy195]

Crashes are inevitable as long as we rely on humans to do the driving. Give it ten years, when presumably cars will have safety features that prevent them driving too close together, and things may well improve.

And who designs the software and systems - non-human entities?

[kwackers]

Crashes are inevitable as long as we rely on humans to do the driving. Give it ten years, when presumably cars will have safety features that prevent them driving too close together, and things may well improve.

And who designs the software and systems - non-human entities?

The implication being that because humans are crap drivers they'll write crap driving software?

If we can write the highway code we can write software that obeys it. We *know* how things should work, but out there on the road when your chips are going cold and you've had a bad day we don't always do what we know we should.
Fortunately, when writing the software to handle those situations we've years to get it right and make sure it works - even if our chips are going cold.

[Cyril Haearn]

Crap drivers are already creating software, it's called sport mode in an automatic gearbox. Will one be able to tell a self-driving car to get there as fast as possible? One reads that self-driving cars will be unable to break the law. Right now cars can be prevented from exceeding the maximum speed limits, why is this not compulsory? Am I the only one here who is not a software developer?

[BakfietsUK]

No Cyril Haearn you are not the only one, I am not a software developer either. Interesting how the thread has developed. It started with a question about what seemed to be denial and a lack of discussion about what could be seen as bad driving. It has since developed into a kind of denial by default. As if to say why don't we develop software that can relieve us of the duty of care toward others and shove the responsibility onto technology. Thereby allowing us to be in denial all over again so we don't have to face the stark reality of changing our behaviour. Oh, actually I think I get it. We invent a tech solution so we can blame the technology when it all goes belly up, hey presto more denial, but more importantly, someone or something else takes the blame. Job done.

[eileithyia]

Back to crashes; are there really more or are we hearing more reports. For the past 20 years have I lived further north than my 'home' town, it has meant (at times) a lot of travelling on the highway to hell, sorry M6, noticeable over those years is the almost constant number of accidents on the Cheshire stretch. Is it because there are more or is it because it is of local interest and therefore more noticeable when it is reported.
Likewise I used to spend several weekends of the summer beating my brains out on the A12 or E72 to the time trial world. Not quite so often now, but there was a period of time when i was very conscious that Sal Traffic, frequently reported accidents on this road. Is it because there was a lot, the names were familiar memories so were more noticeable in the 'noise' of other traffic reports, or is it just that accidents are phoned in to radio stations more regularly (because we all have the phones / ability to phone reports)?

[Vorpal]

Crashes are inevitable as long as we rely on humans to do the driving. Give it ten years, when presumably cars will have safety features that prevent them driving too close together, and things may well improve.

And what about older cars? Cars built now will still be in service in 10 years. Look at what is on the roads today. The majority are 6+ years old and the average age is going up, as reliability increases, and the economy slows.

Maybe in 20 years, there will be significant numbers of cars on the roads that have the kinds of safety features you are talking about it. By then, other changes will, hopefully have as much or more impact.

[rmurphy195]

It isn't a question of getting the software to obey rules - that's the easy bit. It's all the stuff around it, what for a human counts as observation and intelligence.

Such as the sensors - what do they pick up, how good is the information, how good is it when the sensors get mucky/old/degraded, how does it fit in with the rules etc.

How good are the people who design the software that evaluates the situation, how good are the people who design and position the sensors, how robust are the sensors, are they subject to giving false signals when its too hot, too cold, too sunny, too wet, too snowy, too icy?

Are the sensors going to look at the driver of a vehicle ahead on the motorway and recognise that he/she isn't really paying attention so maybe keep clear/don't overtake yet?

Is the software going to recognise a vehicle that it saw being driven erratically a few minutes earlier and keep clear just in case?

Is it going to recognise situations that are developing, or might develop (=anticipation) and act accordingly? In every situation even if it has not had the information fed into its memory?

What moral decision will it make if push comes to shove - avoid a child running into the road even at the risk of it's occupants? How many occupants will affect the decision - driver only, 2 people, 3 people?

Will it differentiate between a child, a dog, a cat (either of which might be pursued by a child), a rat? How will that affect it's moral decision?

Will the sensors pick up an object appearing in the road ahead and what decision will it take - a ball rolling into the road is followed by a child often enough.

Will it "see" a pair of feet under the far end of a parked vehicle and anticipate someone may walk out from behind it without looking?

Or have we been conned into believing that real AI does not exist, when it does?

Or is everyone going to have to swop hier existing vehicle to a self-driving one all at the same instant?

And are we going to have to have self-driving bikes to remove uncertainty?

Driving too close together - PWA have you actually see the proposals for highway code changes to cater for self driving vehicles - particularly the section on "Platooning"?

[kwackers]

No Cyril Haearn you are not the only one, I am not a software developer either. Interesting how the thread has developed. It started with a question about what seemed to be denial and a lack of discussion about what could be seen as bad driving. It has since developed into a kind of denial by default. As if to say why don't we develop software that can relieve us of the duty of care toward others and shove the responsibility onto technology. Thereby allowing us to be in denial all over again so we don't have to face the stark reality of changing our behaviour. Oh, actually I think I get it. We invent a tech solution so we can blame the technology when it all goes belly up, hey presto more denial, but more importantly, someone or something else takes the blame. Job done.

Actually I'd say it's about accepting the fact that people just simply don't make good drivers. There's no aspect of the discussion about autonomous cars that doesn't apply to people but when it does we brush it under the carpet and excuse it.

We can go on and on about how people should have a duty of care but the problem is they think they do, they think they drive properly but the statistics show they're wrong.
Deaths on the roads go down not because people are getting better but because cars are safer, more people use them and congestion limits average speeds.
Ignoring self driving automation if nothing else the offshoots of it; braking, hazard detection etc will continue to make the roads safer - I'd even suggest that crashes on motorways and trunk roads will be almost unheard of in 10 years time.

I know Vorpal mentions old cars but the average car on uk roads is only around 7 years old. I'd also imagine that insurance premiums for cars with advanced safety features will be significantly lower once their benefits start to be seen and that too will drive the change towards replacement of the current fleet.

People are in denial, but the trouble is they'll always be in denial. Technology doesn't provide an excuse for them, it removes the weak link in the chain or at least strengthens it.

[Vorpal]

At least with software, when there is an error, we can change the program, and that error is very unlikely to be made again.

[pwa]

Crashes are inevitable as long as we rely on humans to do the driving. Give it ten years, when presumably cars will have safety features that prevent them driving too close together, and things may well improve.

Absolute rubbish, I'm a software developer. No code is completely bug-free and no security is hack-proof. Disaster waiting to happen.

So you don't think that technology can make driving safer by taking over some of the driver's duties?

[BakfietsUK]

Technology is invented by humans and humans as we know are not perfect. When will someone realise that cars are a mistake and correct that error.

[tykeboy2003]

So you don't think that technology can make driving safer by taking over some of the driver's duties?

I have grave doubts, have you seen "I, Robot"?

If it was ever going to happen, it would have already happened on a much simpler and more controllable transport system; the railways. To be fair there has been a lot of automation on the railways, but you still have to have a man sitting there in supervisory control.

For such automation to work with freely steered vehicles, they would have to be ALL networked together so that they can negotiate over who should move into which lane and when etc. The presence of vehicles without such automation immediately brings in a "random" factor which can only be resolved by some probability based logic. Further to that, networking all the vehicles together will allow hackers a way in, so they can override the software and cause mayhem.

[pwa]

Technology is invented by humans and humans as we know are not perfect. When will someone realise that cars are a mistake and correct that error.

When we tear down all our housing and our places of work and rebuild them so that they are close together. When we ban people living a long way from where they work. When people agree to all live in densely populated cities where a dense network of public transport can be provided, going in all directions. When extended families stop dispersing and all agree to live close together and never marry anyone from too far away.

Personal motorised transport is here to stay. We could use it less. We could make it cleaner. We could make it safer for other road users. But we will not be getting rid of it.