There is a fatal virus in the US that claims 3,000 people every month. And it's a nasty one. It's the #1 cause of death for teenagers. That virus is called a car accident, and the fact we're complacent with that is what scares me.
We understand the delicate balance you describe and it's our top priority to make sure our product actually does improve drivers' safety. That's why we're using independent third party testing by the same companies who test products for the major automakers, even though there is no law or regulation requiring us to do so.
I appreciate your comment and what you're trying to do. I guess I still can't picture how Cruise will achieve the balance between convenience and awareness.
Let's say you're a teenager using Cruise to keep your car within the white lines on a 5-hour, highway road trip. The device is capable of steering the car this way on your behalf.
In that situation, do you stare at the white lines for 5 hours without touching the steering wheel? Or do you text and talk to your friends? What compels you to be just as vigilant about steering and being aware of your surroundings?
I'd say even if you're trying to be a good driver in this situation, your eyes are going to "glaze over" after 1 hour of staring at lines and occasional other cars without using the wheel or pedals. If this is true (and I'll grant it's a fairly big "if"), then this product would effectively impair the driver even more! Are we really that confident that the technology is good enough to lower crash/injury rates, even with zoned-out drivers? Perhaps it's trading one type of crash, for other crashes that are less harmful overall, but do we know?
I'd heard of this kind of fatigue before, and just now pulled up an article abstract[0] in search results. It says "analytical results indicated that 80 min was the safe limit for monotonous highway driving." Highway driving would be even more monotonous with this product. I'l grant that this may not be very solid scientific citation and reasoning here, but it seems like nearly common sense, that a driver can't remain alert for hours on end with a computer doing all his work.
I have a three-hour drive I make twice a week. I can second the motion of "glazed-over" eyes.
But let me tell you: When the "collision avoidance alarm" fired mistakenly once, I was VERY AWAKE for the next half hour.
Assuming the sensors are good, and that they include failsafes that will let you know right away when they AREN'T working, it absolutely would be a net positive to have something else watch during the "boring" times and then let out a loud "Red Alert!" buzz as soon as something unexpected came along.
So no, I don't think the driver would be "impaired even more," at least not if the sensors worked well enough to throw an alarm if something unexpected happened. A set of sensors on top of a car should have a better view of the surroundings than a human, and wouldn't suffer from that kind of fatigue at all.
More, the human is not going to be hypnotized by the road if they aren't actively driving. As a passenger my eyes frequently check out the scenery; as a driver you're forced to watch the road nearly 100% of the time.
P.S. in my drive, I tend to pull over at the halfway point, so after about 90 minutes. And last night that did feel like about 10-15 minutes too long.
What about an AI that asked you questions (especially about your surroundings and the environment ahead of you) and generally engaged you to stay awake?
Even an audio-only version of Duolingo that taught and tested you so you felt productive rather than as though you were wasting time with a prattling AI?
You have to be sure that whatever it is doesn't engage any "spacial" thinking, however. I remember reading about studies that demonstrated that giving people visual descriptions or 3d puzzles was more distracting than other kinds of thinking while driving.
While I sometimes just want to relax, there are times when I'm feeling I COULD be productive if there were something I could do that didn't involve my hands or eyes. :) One thing I've done is to talk into a voice recorder. But there is only so long I can talk about an idea in a useful manner.
Yes, interjecting with questions about the road, traffic in the area, terrain ahead and so on could be helpful if it wasn't too repetitive. I think it would have to be personable and engaging ("Her"-style) to be really effective.
> I'l grant that this may not be very solid scientific citation and reasoning here, but it seems like nearly common sense, that a driver can't remain alert for hours on end with a computer doing all his work.
There may be lessons to learn from pilots here. There are countless reports of pilots falling asleep in the cockpit while the autopilot is in control of the plane.
> Highway driving would be even more monotonous with this product
I suspect it would actually be the opposite. If you can take your eyes off the road for say 15-20s every 15 minutes or so, the drive is much less monotonous, and likely safer.
Yeah, others have had some good counterpoints on this too. Maybe another argument with the same point, is that you can't be ready to drive at any moment if you're gawking at the scenery, etc.? (Or is the system actually going to be able to drive certain routes with a "driver" who can allow themselves to not think about driving at all?)
It seems like at some point there would be a qualitative change in the mental processes, where you're effectively not alert to driving, even if you think "I'm only looking away every few minutes." At least if you have been driving for years, where "driving" = "re-evaluating road and vehicle conditions every 3-5 seconds and reacting appropriately." Maybe it should be thought of as learning a new skill, passive driving.
So you'd rather his car automatically keep him in between the lines, so that he feels even more safe and complacent about reading his magazine, and rear-ends you later when you end up in front of him and have to brake suddenly?
I don't think I would. I think that's the point of the naysayers in this sub-thread. Doing X% of driving for bad drivers, might just make them even worse at the remaining (100-X)% of driving.
But the sensors and actuators that are keeping him in his lane would surely fire the brakes far faster and harder than he would while reading his magazine. If all the tech does is keep you in your lane, it's certainly dangerous, but I seriously doubt that's what they are building.
But the sensors and actuators that are keeping him in his lane would surely fire the brakes far faster and harder than he would while reading his magazine.
In fact, since human reaction time is on the order of 200ms, the car could likely see what's going on, double-check, and then hit the brakes before he noticed what was going on, even if he were paying rapt attention and expecting you to slam on the brakes.
What is the reaction time of these systems? There are papers on the Internet but they are behind paywalls (that I could probably get through if I were an automotive engineer).
Fair enough; I believe they do include this, or maybe it comes standard with the car. Still, should we be "enabling" bad driving? Are these systems actually capable of letting people safely read while they "drive"? Does a driver have a right to do that? Is it prudent? Who is morally/legally responsible when something goes wrong and damage is done?
I guess as always, we'll figure it out as we go, but I'm not the only one who's a bit nervous.
Playing with phones, shaving, applying makeup, dozing off, etc., are all common. I ride a motorcycle. I'm dreaming of the day when technology makes those thing immaterial to the safety profile of a ton of metal moving at 70mph.
The way to improve drivers safety is by insisting on better schooling. Compared to the kind of testing I had to go through to get a driving license in NL the American (and the Canadian, for that matter) license test is way too simple.
If you lower the bar to entry then you get more accidents, technology alone will not help with that unless you cut the driver out of the loop completely.
I'd upvote this 10 times if I could. It's amazing how much Americans rely on driving while being abysmally bad at it. The amount of driving errors, almost accidents and accidents you can see during half an hour driving on 101 on the peninsula is more than what you'd see in an entire day on the Autobahn.
I didn't compare Germany and the USA, I compare the German Autobahn to a specific stretch of 101 in California (for the Autobahn I was thinking of the A9 here but save for the north east most Autobahns are pretty similar).
Comparing on a miles driven basis for the entire country doesn't show the full picture because the miles driven per road type are likely vastly different, traffic density varies extremely in the US but not so much in Germany, and there are 50 different sets of traffic laws and educational requirements across the US.
Given what I've seen here vs. in European countries with good driving test standards, I'm surprised it's not much higher. Maybe the distances in the US are larger? Or perhaps our roads are wider and so have more wiggle room, which compensates for the stunningly bad driver behavior I see every time I drive.
Which seems like a potentially reasonable policy tradeoff: make it easier for more people to get their licenses, then make it harder for them to kill each other. (NB I would prefer more stringent licensing standards).
I live in Slovenia, where it takes at a minimum 30 hrs of driving with instructor (but usually around 40) until he lets you take the test.
Additionally young drivers need(i think its mandatory now, used to only be recomended) to go to school for safe driving (slippery road etc.).
And jet most foreigners from USA, who come here say we are one of the worst drivers they have seen. (guess they haven't been to south of Italy or Turkey)
We used to have high accident rate. The only thing that helped is expensive ticekts.
Its easy to get 500+ EUR ticekt if you are not careful.
I agree that there is a remarkable difference between the quality of driving in Slovenia, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and say United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain, Scandinavian countries and so on.
But I suspect that your average Romanian or Slovenian driver would have a hard time passing a Dutch license test.
Quality of the education is just as important as quantity and should be paired with suitably stringent examinations.
Expensive tickets are just a way for rich assholes to do whatever they want to because they can afford it. (There are interesting schemes where the tickets get progressively more expensive as you earn more, those are more effective).
I disagree in part. Tougher tests have to be combined with mandatory retests to renew a license every 5-10 years, it's not just the young who drive badly.
I think the biggest immediate payback from this technology is for trucks. A trucking company with a large fleet can more easily afford the cost if it cuts full consumption and reduces accidents.
So are you saying we should suspend our skepticism, and think of the children?
I'm kidding but also serious. This seems like it'd be incredibly difficult to test, and also like that testing would make an incredibly interesting series of articles/blog posts.
Well done for having a go at this. Given the global rate of car deaths at over 1m/yr you can definitely make an argument for developing cheap, slightly hackish systems now in rather than just the Google approach of developing very good but unavailable $100k systems. If this kind of approach can bring development forward a year or two that's a lot of lives saved.
And in what way, exactly, is that a virus? Epidemic, at a stretch.
(I'm not typically this pedantic... I just think viruses have particularly interesting information dynamics and it's really weird to me when applied as a metaphor outside of where that would make sense.)
I think "disease" would be a decent description. "Virus" carries way too many implications about things like communicability and origination that clearly don't apply.
I'd say it's more like cancer: lots of stuff influences it, and you can make yourself a lot safer, but it's ultimately fairly random and anybody can fall victim to it. You can't catch it from other people, you can't get vaccinated against it, surviving it doesn't give you any immunity for the next time, better surgical and other medical techniques are making it more survivable.... One big difference, of course, is the age factor.
You might catch memes (drunk driving, reckless driving, street racing) that significantly increase the likelihood that you suffer from it. Still not quite the same thing, of course.
"you can't get vaccinated against it"
The opposite memes from the above would seem to serve a role not too far from inoculation.
"surviving it doesn't give you any immunity for the next time"
Except to the degree that it changes your behavior.
All of that said, I agree. "Disease" is a much better term.
Agreed. Was simply trying to demonstrate that we're far too comfortable with the consequences of unsafe driving. In any other circumstance we'd all be up in arms.
>There is a fatal virus in the US that claims 3,000 people every month. And it's a nasty one. It's the #1 cause of death for teenagers. That virus is called a car accident, and the fact we're complacent with that is what scares me.
I don't think you understand the word "virus".
So you want me to pay you $10,000 to loose my freedom to drive my own car? Not a chance in hell. Look, I am sorry that 3,000 people die everyone month, but I would rather live in a world where 3,000 die in car accidents and people have the freedom to drive then live in world where computers drive everyone around.
We do not make cars, and very few of the NHTSA regulations or FMVSS apply to this kind of product (at least for now). My point is that we recognize our own testing, regardless of its thoroughness, is not enough.
We understand the delicate balance you describe and it's our top priority to make sure our product actually does improve drivers' safety. That's why we're using independent third party testing by the same companies who test products for the major automakers, even though there is no law or regulation requiring us to do so.