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5 Legitimate concerns about self-driving cars

Posted by Staff Writers on Jan 28, 2012

The idea of self driving cars isn’t a new one and the concerns about them aren’t either.  And with Google now testing its new fleet of self-driving Google maps vehicles, these concerns are coming back in flux and literally being put to the test.  So what are the concerns?  We’ve been told that these cars will be much safer than their manually piloted counter-parts, accidents will decrease and as a result, so will injuries.  The problem is: with this technological solution comes a completely new set of problems.  Potential (or very real) issues that need to be answered before the public trusts the very idea of a ton of steel driving itself at high speeds.

1. Human error

   The first and most important issue with the very idea of self-driving vehicles is that they must share the road with us.  We tend to be aggressive, emotional, and unpredictable when behind the wheel of a car.  While it will be nice to have more cars on the road that don’t share these flaws, the challenge for them becomes how well they deal with OUR flaws.

   Not all accidents are preventable, and when one of these cars gets put into this kind of situation, how will it respond?  Will the computer do everything it can to minimize the accident? or will the decision algorithm designed to avoid an accident at all cost simply make matters worse?  The troubling part is we probably won’t know the answer to that question until there is an accident involving a self-driven vehicle.  And God forbid someone is seriously hurt (or worse)…

2. Human nature

   Perhaps a more realistic scenario than the (worst case) one above deals with human nature.  One (obviously necessary) design flaw of these vehicles is that they are to err on the side of caution.  Like a defensive driver, they will tend to yield to other drivers even if it isn’t their “right of way” simply to avoid an accident.  One such scenario has been outlined in a quote by Sven A. Beiker, executive director of the Center for Automotive Research at Stanford University:

   “Everybody might be bending the rules a little bit. This is what the researchers are telling me – because the car is so polite it might be sitting at a four-way intersection forever, because no one else is coming to a stop.”

   As a result, these overly conservative vehicles may wind up being the inadvertent cause of (albeit minor) accidents.  Yielding to cars that do not have the right of way doesn’t just slow traffic, it can completely throw off other drivers who are expecting all cars to follow the rules of the road.

3. Design error

   Rigorous testing will certainly minimize errors caused by faulty design and engineering.  But not until these machines are put in the field does the true test of the unpredictability of the road takes full effect.  Once one of these vehicles is put into a situation that engineers didn’t account for there could be a problem.  And once again, the worst case scenario is that of dire consequences.

   Perhaps even more troubling (from a design point of view) is what happens when even a single vital system fails?  Breaks fail, a tire blows out, and at least a dozen more scenarios that humans are able to improvise, computers may not.  And not only that, but because of the tremendous complexity of a system that drives itself, the number of potential system failure scenarios expands.  Even with fail safes, it could be a potentially dangerous situation…like a car stopped in the middle of a lane on a highway.

4. Input failure

   One of the more important systems for a self-driving car is input of information.  Input like space, speed, obstructions, road signs, crosswalks, pedestrians, the list goes on…  What happens in a situation where this system fails to do it’s job.  A stop sign covered by overgrown trees, traffic lights out due to power failures, crosswalks difficult to see due to snow or simple fading.  This list is as long as at least as long as the list of variables that these cars must take into account.  And it only takes one miscalculation for something bad to happen.  I find it difficult to imagine that self-driving cars will be perfect to that end.

5. Policing

   Finally, what happens when a police officer wants to pull over a self-driving car?  Not that they’ll be speeding (unless the speed limit isn’t properly posted) but sometimes being too conservative can be cause for a ticket.  Are these cars designed to pull over?  Who is responsible for the ticket?  This and a number of other liability issues need to be worked out before these cars become commonplace.