Massive Robots Save Earth From Humans!
Last month, BikePGH-Pittsburgh’s main cycling advocacy group-conducted a survey of cyclists’ attitudes toward self-driving autonomous vehicles (AVs).
That action wasn’t arbitrary. Carnegie-Mellon University has developed their own AVs and tested them locally on the open roads. Ford’s AV unit employs a couple hundred people locally, mostly software engineers. And two years ago Uber deployed a score of robotic vehicles, using Pittsburgh as a development center and testbed for their own fleet. On any given trip through the city, you’re more likely to see an AV than not.
With so many of them on the road, BikePGH wanted to know how cyclists felt about sharing the public streets with two-ton robots driving around at speed, and whether they, as an advocacy group, should oppose AV deployment or support it. So they conducted a survey.
You can read the survey results here. Although the survey questions were formulated with an obvious bias toward opposing autonomous vehicles, both BikePGH members and the general public responded that they overwhelmingly support the idea.
Naturally, I provided my own experiences. I’ve had many interactions with AVs while cycling; as I said, I’ve been seeing them all over town since moving here 18 months ago. All those interactions have been positive, with no issues whatsoever.
I suppose it’s human nature to mistrust automation. We find it difficult to believe that a machine can be put into a complex environment and make decisions that are better than-or even equal to-those made by a human.
The shibboleth that machines cannot handle the complexity of real-world situations has been addressed by recent advances in sensors, big data, and machine learning.
In fact, given proper programming and training, a robot will process more sensory data and consider more decisionmaking criteria than humanly possible in order to arrive at an optimal response, and do it in a fraction the time it would take you or I.
Does that mean I trust them enough to put my life in their hands? As with GPS navigation and routing, there are bound to be bugs and other challenges which will only be discovered with mass deployment. So far, all those AVs have had attentive “Safety Engineers” in the front seat, supervising their decisions and ready to intervene if anything goes amiss.
I do think it’s important that the government get involved to establish standard behavior and decisionmaking protocols and verify compliance with rigorous testing. I wouldn’t trust private enterprise to willingly bear the expense of testing and putting out a truly safe product. And someone needs to figure out liability concerns and how to insure them.
So I might not fully trust them, but I don’t fully trust any human operator on the road, either. While AVs might suffer from shortsighted programming, I know they won’t be intoxicated, fatigued, distracted, or aggressive. Taking those factors into account, I trust them more than I trust human operators, and I said as much in my survey response.
Amusingly, BikePGH chose to (anonymously) quote one of my comments in their survey’s summary. Here’s their writeup: In general, people’s disdain for rude and aggressive human drivers overshadowed any negative perception, if not even welcomed autonomous vehicles. “Their novelty should not obscure the fact that they are neither distracted, intoxicated, nor aggressive, unlike the far more numerous human operators I encounter on the roads.” This commenter followed with “if [BikePGH] truly cares about cyclists’ safety, you would work to minimize the latter, rather than the former.”
That quote also got picked up as the closing kicker in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s article that covered the survey: The general attitude toward self-driving cars in the survey could be summed up in one respondent’s comment: “Their novelty should not obscure the fact that they are neither distracted, intoxicated, nor aggressive, unlike the far more numerous human operators I encounter on the roads.”
Although I’m amused that I was quoted, I very much stand by those words. In my years of experience on the road, humans have conclusively proven themselves unable to operate motor vehicles without killing one another. Although autonomous vehicles might not be perfect, they’re unquestionably better than the self-important, homicidal monkeys I see on the roads every day.