Another highlight this week in the world of automated vehicles is, yet again, the question of ethics.
Computers don't know what an ethic is, and even if they did it would still be irrelevant.
Think tanks love to get involved in moral dilemmas. What if? .. it doesn't matter what, can a computer handle it in a way acceptable to people?
Really, it is irrelevant for the simple fact that people react differently to computers and much, much slower.
If you are presented with a moral dilemma when driving, the human will usually hit the brakes as an instinctive reaction and go into brain freeze as they try to sort out what's happening and by the time they formulate a reaction, it's all over one way or another.
A computer will see the danger long before a human would, start to brake, tell other vehicles about the problem and then react to the circumstance. Ethics don't come into it at all.
The outcome, regardless of the action taken will in the vast majority of situations, always be far better from an autonomous vehicle than by a human as the detection and response time is far faster. So yes, automated vehicles in extreme circumstances may still result in death or injury , but the estimated 90% reduction in traffic incidents far outweighs any moral dilemma.
Ethics, nice to talk about but totally irrelevant to the new world of automated vehicles.
Having said that, we come back to the real world and new dilemma that we will face increasingly as time goes on.
That is the fact that a person has died in a car under computer control.
Was this an autonomous vehicle, no. It is a Tesla which has beta software running on driver assist technology. Unfortunately it appears that people are relying more and more on it as fully autonomous system which it isn't. In this situation all the facts are not yet available as a full enquiry will be conducted to establish what really happened. Was the driver attentive and ready to take back control? What sensors were in use in that particular vehicle and what were the exact circumstances of the collision?
All of this will be discussed ad nausium in days to come but it does highlight a whole raft of issues to be sorted before fully automated vehicles hit the road.
For instance Volvo wants to have fully autonomous vehicles on the road in New South Wales by 2021. (NSW is the most densely populated state in Australia with Sydney as the capital).
Most, if not all states in Australia have a rule that states a licensed driver must be in control of a vehicle with a least one hand on the steering wheel at all times.
Until that law is changed a car can't drive itself without a "human" driver in control.
Change to this law is essential but it's really only the tip of the iceberg.
Firstly what defines an autonomous vehicle?
- What sensors does it need to be considered safe? Does it have radar and Lidar in addition to a camera?
- What is the range of the sensors?
- What tests have they been put through to satisfy the authorities enough to allow them on the road?
These are a few of the simpler questions that need to be answered before laws can be changed to permit these vehicle on the road in fully autonomous mode.
Australia has some of the toughest vehicle standards in the world and this is rigorously enforced and if vehicles don't comply they are not permitted on the road in Australia.
As I have said in earlier blogs, the governments need to start addressing these issues now before the technology use becomes more widespread in defiance of the laws.
If standards are not applied then this unfortunate death may be the first of many resulting from the use of technology not really designed for the way it's being used and a lot of the work done in improving road safety standards will be bypassed for the sake of expediency.
If that happens there may be many more deaths even with the technology as the technology is just what it says on the label, driver assist.
Interesting concept in the brave new world of electric vehicles.
Imagine a world with all of theses batteries on wheels running around. What if you can share the power? Charge during the day with cheap power and sell it back to the grid at night?
An interesting article here that postulates that you could substantially offset a large part of the car cost using this method.
Link this with the concept of power sharing on the road between vehicles and the whole concept changes.
Electric cars can easily become a power source in their own right. Power charging could come from the road itself, from parking bays or stand alone charging systems that a car can park at, then move from autonomously when charged.
There are limitless possibilities but using it as a storage bank has definite appeal.
Tesla could incorporate their cars into the "Tesla Power Wall".
All very interesting possibilities.
May you live in interesting times.
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