RE: PH Blog: blind faith

[renrut]

ploz said:

If you ended up in court for causing the death of someone else by dangerouse driving, the Court's job would be to determine if you caused that death on purpose, through willful neglect, or through some other cause that you were not in control of. If it were an autimated system driving the car, a Court may have to establish if the controlor or manufacturer was willfully neglegent, but it could be established in fact as to whether the system operated as designed or not. In that sense, it is, legally, a clearer cut case than had you been driving, but it suits the legal system to be able to introduce doubt into the deliberations. Presuming there was no willfull neglect or actual intent discovered on the part of the controllor or manufacturer, there may be a case for a charge of Corporate Manslaughter - but that charge has yet to stand up in court yet, so the situation is unlikely to change.

On a more philosophical level, if an electronic system were found to be at fault for causing a death, other examples of that system can be altered to prevent the occurence happening again (potentially saving many lives). If a person is found responsible, all that can be done is punishing that person (OK, you can take away his driving licence, which he probably never had in the first place - and tell him he can't apply for another one when he does it again!). Retribution doesn't really solve the problem (except, may be legally) - redesigning the system does.

Pushing the boundary on this a little more - how would such a system deal with poor and unexpected driving conditions? E.g. extreme fog, black ice, snow, oil on the road, etc. Who is at fault then? The computer for driving recklessly given the conditions? Or just taken as an accident? Or would it limit itself automatically to pre-empt such conditions and switch off and give the human the option to drive themselves?

[ploz]

Renrut - you seem to give the computers the ability to spontaneously act in a reckless manner. In actuallity, all they can do is follow a set af pre-determined rules and make decisions within that rule set. Humans, on the ohter hand, tend to routinely bend the rules - "I'm late - therefore I'll drive a little faster through this fog erroding my safety margins, but I'll be OK". Bearing in mind that the sorts of sensors likely to be used by autonomous vehicles will operate in different spectra to our eyes, driving autonomously through fog is likely to be quicker and safer than driving manually.

You could create a set of rules where the system refuses to continue in a set of circumstances where it determines that safety is erroded beyond a certain limit and then 'offers' control to a more gung-ho human driver, but may be this situation is not so different to the driver today who decides he would rather drive in slippery conditions with all ESP etc turned off. How does that situation play out in Court if he causes death by dangerouse drivibng having turned all aids of that might have prevented that accident?

Good argument by the way - we should do this more often!

[Blown2CV]

renrut said:

Blown2CV said:

renrut said:

Scuffers said:

renrut said:

Toyota wrecked their perfect reliability record in the last few years due to software problems.

??

what software problem?

they had a quality issue with the drive-by-wire throttle pedal assemblies (Made in China along with a load of other OEM's ones), nothing to do with software (although they have also now changed the DBW SW to include throttle drop on brake application)

I had heard there was a software element to it, I must have been mistaken. Regardless the point still stands - the cars didn't work as intended. Could that happen again? Very likely. Would you want that on cars that are driving themselves?

If it is drive by wire then there will be a software element to it

Likely but not necessarily - could be dodgy potentiometer or something like that.

sorry what i meant was, there would be a software component to the architecture of the accelerator, not that it was part of the fault.

[pagani1]

Having just read the Air France Flight 447 story-this is the same scenario that crashed Concord-a flight deck of uncoordinated idiots-Motto to myself NEVER fly Air France

[ploz]

pagani1 said:

Having just read the Air France Flight 447 story-this is the same scenario that crashed Concord-a flight deck of uncoordinated idiots-Motto to myself NEVER fly Air France

I'm afraid the Concord crash was a very different bouilloire des poissons. The flight was doomed from the point that the tyre burst. They had a very experienced flight crew who did well in the circumstances.

[Rich_W]

I've just read the report on popular mechanics.

How could that young (32) co-pilot be such a retard! His stupidity is directly responsible for those deaths!

Granted I can't fly at all. But surely pulling back for ages and ages. And the place screaming 75 times "STALL!" makes you wonder what the fk he was playing at. Surely basic flight lessons tell you if you keep climbing eventually the thing stops flying!