How do you train a driver not to drive? That’s a question officials in California are wrestling with. The U.S. state furthest along the road to self-driving vehicles is drawing up regulations for the operation of autonomous vehicles by the general public—and it may require motorists to undergo additional instruction or evaluation before they can be chauffeured by robots.
Self-driving cars promise a future where you can watch television, sip cocktails, or snooze all the way home. But what happens when something goes wrong? Today’s drivers have not been taught how to cope with runaway acceleration, unexpected braking, or a car that wants to steer into a wall. (...)
One problem is that regulators do not know whether self-driving technologies will arrive in production vehicles as optional features in luxury cars or as the master control of fully autonomous robo-taxis. Ryan Calo, who teaches a robotics law and policy class at the University of Washington, believes the distinction is crucial. “For an autonomous vehicle without a steering wheel, I’m not sure you need any more training than you’d get for a dishwasher,” he says. “But for a vehicle primarily meant to be driven by a human driver and that has an autonomous mode, I could imagine some additional degree of certification.”
Today’s experimental autonomous cars occasionally need to hand control back to their human operators, either because of a bug in the system or for something as innocuous as the car leaving a well-mapped area. These “disengagements” may require the driver to take action quickly. California takes disengagements so seriously that it requires manufacturers testing self-driving cars to log each one. “Today, drivers are not trained or tested for that change in control,” says Patrick Lin, director of the ethics and emerging sciences group at California Polytechnic State University. “Humans aren’t hardwired to sit and monitor a system for long periods of time and then quickly react properly when an emergency happens.”
Self-driving cars promise a future where you can watch television, sip cocktails, or snooze all the way home. But what happens when something goes wrong? Today’s drivers have not been taught how to cope with runaway acceleration, unexpected braking, or a car that wants to steer into a wall. (...)One problem is that regulators do not know whether self-driving technologies will arrive in production vehicles as optional features in luxury cars or as the master control of fully autonomous robo-taxis. Ryan Calo, who teaches a robotics law and policy class at the University of Washington, believes the distinction is crucial. “For an autonomous vehicle without a steering wheel, I’m not sure you need any more training than you’d get for a dishwasher,” he says. “But for a vehicle primarily meant to be driven by a human driver and that has an autonomous mode, I could imagine some additional degree of certification.”
Today’s experimental autonomous cars occasionally need to hand control back to their human operators, either because of a bug in the system or for something as innocuous as the car leaving a well-mapped area. These “disengagements” may require the driver to take action quickly. California takes disengagements so seriously that it requires manufacturers testing self-driving cars to log each one. “Today, drivers are not trained or tested for that change in control,” says Patrick Lin, director of the ethics and emerging sciences group at California Polytechnic State University. “Humans aren’t hardwired to sit and monitor a system for long periods of time and then quickly react properly when an emergency happens.”
by Mark Harris, IEEE | Read more:
Image: Randi Klett
