this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2023
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Yes. A human brain can handle edge cases it’s never encountered before. Can a self driving car?
Ever stop at a red light only to have a police officer wave you through?
Ever encounter a car driving the wrong way down a one way street?
Ever come across a flooded out stretch of road? (if the road has no lines and the water is still it can be very deceptive looking)
These are a tiny number of things I’ve encountered over the past few years. I’m sure plenty of other drivers can provide other good examples. I’d want to know how a self driving car would handle itself in situations like these.
Those are pretty basic conditions that I hope are already in the training data.
What about a wildfire evacuation? Police might have people driving on the wrong side of the highway to make use of all the lanes. Smoke might be obscuring everything. A human driver would know not to pay attention to any of the road signs in that situation without ever having been trained on it, but would a self-driving car?
Or, how about any situation where a police officer has to have a driver roll down the window to give them instructions for dealing with some unusual situation, like a chemical spill or a landslide.
Or, what about highway signs that have been shot by a shotgun so that it's hard to read? Or, what about novelty highway signs that a business might put up as a joke?
Self-driving cars definitely need to be tested against a much bigger range of situations than a human driver. Much as we might be baffled by their lack of common sense, the common sense of an average 16-year-old is still off the charts compared to an AI. Having said that, I know how bad many drivers are, and I wouldn't be surprised if the competent self-driving car organizations (Cruize, Waymo, etc.) are already better than an average driver under 99.9% of common scenarios.
How will the bot car handle itself out in the country? Dirt roads? Deer? Roadblock checkpoints full of bored, mean spirited cops.
They don't go there. They have their limits. Simple as that.
But when the police has ordered them there (for example, the good road must be emptied because of an emergency) then the trouble starts... now imagine not just one or two, but hundreds of them.