
Humans 'will bully robot cars', Mercedes chief warns - jessaustin
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/11/17/humans-will-bully-robot-cars-mercedes-chief-warns/
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bazizbaziz
I think in many ways this could be considered a feature and not a problem. Why
does it matter if someone butts in front of you? The passengers in the car can
relax and let the computer handle the task. Yes it's important to avoid
deadlock while merging during congestion but aggressive drivers will always
try to butt in front of likely looking candidates, autonomous or not, and this
usually doesn't stop progress of the line in general, just maybe frustrates
the non-driver?

~~~
maxander
The issue then is, again, humans- the rider of an autonomous car will feel
slighted and helpless seeing the cars around them take advantage of their nice
and polite driver-AI, and this will make owning driverless cars less appealing
to a wide swath of the customer base.

You and I might still enjoy passively riding an altruistic vehicle, but an
astonishing amount of the public id is absorbed in these sort of anonymous
dominance games.

~~~
jessaustin
I thought the point of "autonomy" was being able to ignore the whole mess? If
I'm constantly worried about how the car is driving, I might as well be a
child with my mother driving. How would that be less silly than worrying about
the performance of e.g. train engineers and airline pilots?

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RandomOpinion
I would think that an integrated dash camera and the ability for the driver to
automatically upload video for reporting to law enforcement would prevent this
from ever becoming an issue.

This has parallels to the situation in Russia where dashcams are more or less
considered a necessity for every vehicle. See
[https://www.wired.com/2013/02/russian-dash-
cams/](https://www.wired.com/2013/02/russian-dash-cams/)

~~~
mc32
One way to manage this behavior is by having the automated car report the
misbehaving cars to both DMV and insurance, have it affect registered drivers
points (with some "give") as well as insurance so overly aggressive behavior
results in insurance penalties.

So except for a few chronic offenders, most people would learn how to behave
while driving.

~~~
samBergeron
We actually have insurance like that already [0], you get a generally low
starting monthly rate, and it adjusts if you speed, start and stop suddenly,
are shifting lanes fast, etc. You install a little chip in your car and you
can see monthly feedback. If you drive "safe" you actually save a decent
amount of cash.

0 - [https://www.mobiliz.ca/en/](https://www.mobiliz.ca/en/)

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jonahrd
If you just make self-driving cars look like normal cars instead of weird
marshmallows than this isn't a very big problem.

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visarga
They have to train self driving cars to deal with human instincts as bad as
they are. It's part of the deal, when you're driving, even if you're human.
Humans get bullied every day in traffic.

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heisenbit
Many years back a songwriter in the area around Stuttgart wrote a song in
local dialect about Mercedes drivers:

    
    
        I fahr Daimler, Stroß gehört meer, wer net Platz macht den nehm i aufs Korn und ins Visir....
    

I drive Mercedes, Street belongs to me, anyone not yielding, that one is going
to be taken into my cross-hairs.

E.g.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3nMUm4iy8Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3nMUm4iy8Q)

At the end it becomes clear the bully behind the 500SE Mercedes is just the
chauffeur.

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xyzzy123
That's until they cut off their first car with networked reputation.

Suddenly, say, no cars of the same brand will let you into lanes. Once a
particular brand of autonomous vehicle pegs you as an asshole, watch out.

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marcell
I agree with this sentiment. I live in Mt View and we regularly have Google
cars on our roads. The cars drive either slowly, or very slowly, and I always
try to pass them. I've seen other drivers do the same. If / when the cars
become more common, I expect people to do more advanced tactics like cutting
the cars off for merging into lanes.

~~~
visarga
In some countries this happens so often with regular driver that it would be
business as usual, not abuse, when a self driving car was cut in front.

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squozzer
It might even be worse than that -- some people will try to engineer lawsuits
using auto-cars as marks.

