
Should cars be fully driverless? No, says an MIT engineer and historian - rajathagasthya
http://news.mit.edu/2015/no-driverless-cars-1013
======
zhanwei
He is comparing situations where human decision makers are highly trained
professionals such as astronauts and passenger plane pilot to daily driving
situations where the average human decision maker is more likely to be an
idiot(people switch off while driving) distracted by his smartphone.

~~~
snowwrestler
Even a "switched off" human is benefiting from the supervision of a brain that
is far more complex than any computer yet constructed, and has, on average,
been trained in driving by decades of experience, and in recognizing patterns
of movement by millions of years of evolution.

Meanwhile, computers in cars today cannot even reliably translate human
throttle inputs into throttle actuations (see: Toyota).

~~~
icebraining
A human brain is also more complex than a computer that can play chess, does
that mean the average chess player can generally beat a good chess-playing
software? More general complexity does not necessarily imply being better at a
specific task - in fact, it can be detrimental.

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quanticle
The thing that worries me about semi-autonomous cars is that we might end up
in the same place we've ended up with aircraft. Aircraft are sufficiently
autonomous in nominal conditions that pilot skills atrophy, and then when the
plane encounters adverse conditions, these de-skilled pilots simply do not
respond correctly to the problem, crashing the plane. Specifically, I'm
thinking of something like Air France Flight 447, where it turned out that the
pilot and co-pilot had lost familiarity with how the Airbus A330 behaved while
at cruising altitude.

Similarly, I'm worried that auto-drive and smart cruise control systems will
take care of highway driving in the normal case, but when things go wrong and
the auto-driver disengages, the human at the wheel will have forgotten that a
car traveling at 60mph behaves differently than one traveling at 25mph. With
aircraft, we can mitigate this risk by forcing pilots to spend extra time in
the simulator, keeing their feel for the aircraft from decaying too badly. I'm
not sure what the solution is for drivers. Maybe we can force everyone to play
a racing sim for a few hours every month ;)

~~~
jessaustin
This danger will be avoided in automobiles by making human control
_impossible_ as soon as that makes any sense. There will be no steering wheel,
the front seat will face backwards to facilitate conversation, and accident
rates will plummet. The thing that robocars can do, which roboplanes cannot,
is slow down or stop completely when faced with vexing situations.

~~~
hguant
Pulling over to the side of the road and putting your blinkers on is (almost)
always an acceptable solution to an automotive error. Much harder to pull that
off at 35,000 feet.

~~~
Animats
If you have a problem at cruising altitude, there's usually time to deal with
it. Transport planes can glide 100-200 miles from that altitude if they have
to. Most aircraft accidents happen during takeoff, approach, or landing. See
NTSB reports.[1] High-altitude accidents are mostly in-flight fires, including
two events involving lithium batteries.

There is, however, one commercial aircraft crash from problems at altitude (no
passengers, ferry flight) worthy of a Darwin Award.[2]

[1]
[http://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Pages/avi...](http://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Pages/aviation.aspx)
[2]
[http://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/A...](http://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/AAR0701.pdf)

~~~
jessaustin
That second report is fascinating. One might hope that even amateur pilots
would know power curve characteristics at high altitude, and the flight team's
"gosh we're saving a lot of fuel" comments on the CVR inspire a sort of grim
amusement, but I wonder whether the incident might actually have saved lives
in the long run.

If we're going to fly budget carriers like Pinnacle, those carriers are going
to employ inexperienced flight crews and attempt to make up it up with
training, simulation, and rules. This misadventure identified numerous
shortfalls in those. I doubt anyone flying today's Endeavor Air ignores so
many stick shakes, uses the same stall procedure at all altitudes, ignores
airspeed, hasn't heard of "core lock", or lies so blatantly to ATC in
potential emergency situations. I can understand why the report soft-pedaled
the training gaps, because after all they didn't need to give the aircrew's
survivors any more leverage in the inevitable lawsuit, but I'd expect training
to improve anyway.

Is it common practice for pilots at budget airlines to read accident reports
like this?

IANAPilot, but I'd like to be!

------
Zikes
I must be missing something, because it seems like Mr. Mindell is saying cars
_shouldn 't_ be fully driverless because they _can 't_ be. He cites numerous
examples of other promised automation technologies that seem to have become a
pipe dream over the past several decades.

Except, Google's driverless cars have now logged over a million fully
automated miles. It is a proven technology. These aren't exploratory machines
going where no human has gone before, they're out there on the road doing what
we've all been doing for a hundred years already.

I get the impression this article is just a shill for his book.

~~~
Anechoic
_Google 's driverless cars have now logged over a million fully automated
miles. It is a proven technology._

Not even Google engineers go that far - see this Tech Review article [0] from
last years that talks about how Google's driverless cars can't handle snow,
heavy rain, or its sensors being blinded by the sun.

Driverless cars may be coming, but it's still along way off.

[0] [http://www.technologyreview.com/news/530276/hidden-
obstacles...](http://www.technologyreview.com/news/530276/hidden-obstacles-
for-googles-self-driving-cars/)

~~~
Houshalter
That's just a matter of improving sensors. The point is that cars already
exist that can drive just fine without getting into accidents.

------
jessaustin
The Apollo program is hardly as convincing an example as TFA seems to think.
That was early days for computing power. Humans have landed scores of other
craft on various other bodies in the solar system, and that landing has been
fully automated in every other case. If a manned moon mission were planned
today it would probably be completely automated.

~~~
Animats
The first moon landings (Surveyor, Lunokhod) were robotic and were completely
automated. The boost phase has been completely automated all the way back to
the first manned space flights. After all, a monkey made the first flight.
Other than lunar landing and some older docking operations, just about
everything in space flight has been automated.

~~~
chii
automated can mean 'pre-programmed' automated, instead of dynamic automation,
where the actions required aren't known ahead of time, and the machine(s) have
a split second to make a choice out of the hundreds of different options
available.

------
thadjo
Mindel isn't saying full automation can't or shouldn't happen for cars. His
point is empirical and cautionary: usually when we get excited about
automating X, it turns out that X is better with some human supervision. It's
not really a contentious claim. I think many proponents of self-driving cars
would be ok with some human input – steering wheels, changing routes, feedback
on driving performance, etc

~~~
userbinator
_I think many proponents of self-driving cars would be ok with some human
input – steering wheels, changing routes, feedback on driving performance,
etc_

AKA "cruise control"...?

------
highfreq
40 years of history showing failure, of course for most of that time they have
had between a millionth and half the computing power we have today, and most
of those years had now where near the capability of image sensors and other
sensors. So how much weight should we really give history on something like
this?

~~~
simonh
I don't think they're arguing against automation, just that completely
driverless vehicles won't be the optimum path. I think there will be some
applications for which fully driverless vehicles will be fine, such as trucks
transporting goods between loading bays and taxis collecting and dropping off
at street addresses, and many others where some level of driver control will
be useful.

Take their example of submarines. Fully autonomous submarines are completely
possible, but what they point out is that some level of human control is more
useful. They don't say why, but my guess is that this is because if the sub
comes across something unusual that merits further investigation, humans are
better at making that judgement call than a robot would. The same principle
applies to the Mars rovers. But it also applies to plenty of routine uses of
vehicles. Most of the time I'm driving from my house to a car park or street
parking space and such journeys are probably completely automatable. But
sometimes I arrive at e.g. a country fair and the parking is in a field and I
know I want to park over there in a place which will soon be shaded by that
tree, and not in a different place where it looks a bit muddy. At times like
that I would want much more direct control over the vehicle and an automated
system would not be able to make such decisions for me.

So while the article does a poor job saying so, I think the point is that 100%
full driverless automation isn't the best answer in every situation. It might
be a fine solution for many purposes, but not all. They're arguing against a
(perhaps imagined and possibly straw man) maximalist automation position such
as 'in 20 years time no cars will have manual controls'.

------
burkemw3
In most of the given examples, humans have little control of the environment.
We are, in fact, trying to use autonomous vehicles to explore.

In the case of cars, humans can change the physical environment to meet the
needs of the car. Additionally, the car may be able to avoid a situation that
it knows it doesn't handle well (e.g. avoid complicated intersections).

In the one case of an environment where we have some controls (air travel), it
is more difficult to "pull over" as compared to a car (as other commenters
have noted).

------
rebootthesystem
> “That’s just proven to be a loser of an approach in a lot of other domains,”
> Mindell says. “I’m not arguing this from first principles. There are 40
> years’ worth of examples.”

Well, that's the problem. Everything the author says is supported by the last
N decades in engineering. That argument is so flawed it is astounding that it
is coming out of someone from MIT. In looking at his bio it seems he has
dedicated quite a bit of time to teaching and researching the history of
engineering. It might just be the case that he isn't fully up to date on
topics relevant to automation. Does he have an up-to-date CS/AI background?
How about computing or chip design?

Saying that automation has failed to deliver in the past N decades is like the
Wright Brothers saying "let's not bother because powered flight has failed to
be developed in the past N decades". That is not how engineering works.

Today hundreds of millions of people have phones in their pockets that are
orders of magnitude more powerful than the computers decades ago. We have
better, smaller, cheaper sensors of all kinds. We have accumulated knowledge
in relevant CS and AI fields. Today we have cars that can actually drive
themselves to various degrees under their own computing power (without having
to communicate with a supercomputer in a building). And this is just the
beginning.

Fully auto-drive cars will happen. Of course, they will retain the ability to
be human driven as well for some time, probably decades. There are many reason
for which that makes sense. I am fairly confident we will get to the point
where the average self-driver will be safer than the average human driver. All
you have to do is point at a teenager behind the wheel. Commutes will be
shorter (due to driving efficiently using data) and safer and, with electric
cars, healthier (you won't have to breathe the crap coming out of all those
exhaust pipes).

Besides, think of the wasted potential of millions of people staring at a road
for hours rather than doing something more useful. If you commute one hour per
day you'll get back 250 hours per year.

------
aclissold
On the topic of boredom and attention lapses while driving, I wonder if it
would actually be made safer by being made _more_ difficult, in contrast to
the never-ending search for ease of use. Something that's difficult, mentally
stimulating, and requires actual skill like a video game or musical
instrument. Would there be more or less mistakes (collisions) if people were
forced to be engaged 100% of the time in order to operate the vehicle?

I'm not saying it's a good idea, because only a subset of people would be
capable of it, but it's interesting to think about!

~~~
sgibat
this is why many people prefer driving a manual.

~~~
burkemw3
Including me, so I tried to find some statistics to see if a manual was enough
to focus on. I didn't find much.

I found one Swedish study that looked at automatic and manual transmissions
affect on young and old drivers' ability to turn left across traffic [1]. It
found a manual had little impact on the young driver, and older drivers
performed worse.

I'm not sure turning left across traffic is a large enough sample of driving
for me to be satisfied.

[1]
[http://acrs.org.au/files/arsrpe/Why%20drive%20manual%20-%20a...](http://acrs.org.au/files/arsrpe/Why%20drive%20manual%20-%20automatic%20transmission%20improves%20driving.pdf)

------
pgodzin
I think the difference between self-driving cars and Apollo program/subs
examples is that the cars can be tested much more thoroughly. No matter how
good your simulators are for space conditions, you're never going to really
know how it's going to work in actual conditions. Self-driving cars can and
are logging millions of miles in a variety of conditions, and every common and
almost every remote case will be dealt with before launched to the general
public.

------
paulsutter
While the article doesn't actually use the word "never", neither does it hedge
and say "anytime soon".

The central logic seems to be that humanity is starting from scratch building
self driving cars, versus all the years of experience decades ago trying to
automate spacecraft and submersibles.

Oddly, I reach entirely the opposite conclusion. The article reminds us that
even decades ago, with rudimentary computers, engineers developed systems that
landed men on the moon and returned them to earth.

This article has made it even easier for me to imagine a car taking a fully
autonomous trip to a McDonald's drive through, given the state of deep/machine
learning, low cost computers a million times faster, and big advances in
sensors, Yes there will be a person supervising the car for a while, of course
that's true. But it's only a matter of time before our children are surprised
that humans were allowed to drive cars, causing millions of deaths.

~~~
agumonkey
Landing on the moon is to physics what car traffic is to chaos theory.

~~~
paulsutter
True, but cars can already navigate traffic autonomously. And there is much
more to landing men on the moon than physics.

Check out Tesla's live shipping code:

[http://jalopnik.com/teslas-autopilot-system-is-awesome-
and-c...](http://jalopnik.com/teslas-autopilot-system-is-awesome-and-creepy-
and-a-sig-1736573089)

Are you predicting that cars will never be fully autonomous?

~~~
agumonkey
As a website commenter I'm not sure I should predict anything. To explain a
bit more my previous message, as complex as going to the moon was, it seems a
problem scientists knew how to define. One vehicle, 2 planets, the system is
describable.

Traffic with lots of agents potentially interacting with every other agent,
hence my chaos analogy, lots and lots of variable, ... is blurry.

There's successful research to describe multi agents collision avoidance but
I've never seen it used on the field yet.

ps: reminds me airplanes vs car accident rates. Even if flying is inherently
complex in itself, there's almost no traffic and almost no obstacle in air.
Nobody would crash a car alone in the desert.

~~~
kqr
> Even if flying is inherently complex in itself, there's almost no traffic
> and almost no obstacle in air.

Different aircraft are by and large keeping to the same standard routes,
altitudes and holding patterns, which is why mid-air collisions are a thing.
(The reason they keep to standards is to make air traffic control easier.)

~~~
agumonkey
Aight, I pushed it, but how is air density ? and direction, I'm sure routes
are designed to avoid blending traffics (incoming) as much as possible.

------
sklogic
His 40 years of experience obviously did not include the only recently
available GPUs and ASIC deep neural networks which are at the heart of the
current self-driving robotics research. There is a game changer, and any
previous experience is irrelevant.

------
andrewray
Cars seem fundamentally different than his other examples: Spacecraft,
underwater vehicles, and airplanes. The importance difference is cars have a
clear, visual grid of where they can travel and where they cannot travel.
Painted lines on the road and navigational signs provide a construct of the
environment around them.

Maybe the closest comparison is subway / metro rails. There are already many
fully automated subway systems:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automated_urban_metro_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automated_urban_metro_subway_systems#Grade_of_Automation_4_Systems)

~~~
zhanwei
There are still some elements of uncertainty in car driving. For e.g.
driverless cars are confused by cyclist doing track stand[1]. Hopefully with
enough data driverless car could overcome these difficulties.

[1] [http://road.cc/content/news/162468-cyclist-doing-
trackstand-...](http://road.cc/content/news/162468-cyclist-doing-trackstand-
leaves-googles-self-driving-car-confused)

~~~
icc97
Interesting story. There's a later article [1] that describes the problems
that the Google car has with assertiveness at junctions.

[1]:
[http://www.roboticstrends.com/article/a_cyclists_encounter_w...](http://www.roboticstrends.com/article/a_cyclists_encounter_with_an_indecisive_google_self_driving_car)

------
arikrak
I think it may take decades before cars are 100% autonomous in all situations.
But if the AI can handle almost everything, it could take over and let the
humans read a book, and alert them in the rare case their input is needed.
Fleets of autonomous taxis and trucks could have remote controlled operators
monitoring them.

------
meesterdude
Here's the thing: we can do anything we want. And there is a huge demand for
fully driverless cars that nobody is going to be able to stop, despite
whatever sound and reasoned advice they may have. It's coming, like it or not.

------
spullara
They are going to be interviewing him in a driverless car in 10 years and
asking where he got it wrong.

------
namuol
> “That’s just proven to be a loser of an approach in a lot of other domains,”
> Mindell says. “I’m not arguing this from first principles. There are 40
> years’ worth of examples.”

Yeah, and I have several millennia worth of examples suggesting that organized
society at large is a worthless endeavor...

------
ekianjo
Erm... the main point he makes is like "oh, we could not do it before no
matter how hard we tried, so let's give up and keep humans in charge"
basically.

I'm sure no one believe we would send rockets into space if you look back long
enough in time, yet we did it. Driverless cars are not a concept anymore, many
prototypes are very close to being fully operational - it would be very
disappointing to stop at this stage.

~~~
Turing_Machine
"I'm sure no one believe we would send rockets into space if you look back
long enough in time"

Not even all that long ago, actually.

[http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-amp-
space/article/20...](http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-amp-
space/article/2009-07/new-york-times-nasa-youre-right-rockets-do-work-space)

