uk-make-self-driving-car-makers-liable

[vexorg]

I would say aircraft are vastly simpler in terms of self piloting. Other aircraft are the only worry and all have transponders, and radar for planes and weather.

You are not comparing like for like.

 

[AndyRKett]

Not just the 737 max...

There's all sorts over the history of time.

Unfortunately I've picked these up over the years so can't quote flight numbers and incidents...but there was for example the A330.

In the event of a go around, the most famous crash of which was in front of the fans at an airshow in France. But it had a "ghost in the machine" the pilots were unaware of that in the event of a missed approach and go around the automation would adopt a severe nose high attitude and throttle up.

Pilots would attempt to correct this with the side stick and push the nose down, it would push it back up, they would push back harder slowly getting more and more nose high..until it stalled. This happened multiple times on some flights most cases didn't result in a crash but some did.

There's also cases like I think it was the one on San Francisco where they appeared to just crash onto the runway. All 3 crew members were apparently relying on something that wasn't active on the day...and due to a no hand flying policy didn't realise until they smeared a 777 across the tarmac.

you may have to cite a reference for this as the only such incident I can find is a plane that crashed in 1988 when at an airshow it went down to 30ft instead of 30 metres when doing a low fly passed, then clipped trees at the end of the runway that were not marked on maps.

I can't find any information due to "ghost in the machine" problems on the A330, there was this incident listed on wikipedia

The A330's first fatal accident occurred on 30 June 1994 near Toulouse on a test flight when an Airbus-owned A330-300 crashed while simulating an engine failure on climbout, killing all seven on board.[39] Airbus subsequently advised A330 operators to disconnect the autopilot and limit pitch attitude in the event of an engine failure at low speed.[181]

But that related to limiting the attitude of the plane in the event of an engine failure and the need to disengage the autopilot, presumably because back in 1994 systems were not super clever and probably would not know the engine had failed and try to climb out on "full" power that wasn't there with the failed engine.

In all honesty it's not worth any tit for tat argument I dare say you could track down some examples where automatic systems contributed to an accident. But they are very much not the norm and actually quite rare when you look at all the accidents that do occur.

In small aircraft where automatic systems are no or rarely present, if they are present still rarely used, they still have quite a high portion of accidents, There significantly more accidents involving General Aviation (GA) aircraft than there are commercial aircraft with all their gadgets, and GA aircraft make up only a fraction of the flights undertaken every day, when you consider the hundreds if not thousands of flights moving in and out of major airports every day.

 

[The Panda Nut]

This is fun...

"You sold me a self driving car"

"No sir, you bought an aspiration that we had?"

Tesla owners demand refunds after £5,800 ‘driverless’ technology was never delivered

Unhappy customers take action as ‘self-driving’ feature is plagued with repeated delays

www.telegraph.co.uk

Although watching their bullshit come home to land is probably only funny if you don't have shares in them.

Or were'nt run flat by one while mowing the grass in your front garden

 

[StevenRB45]

you may have to cite a reference for this as the only such incident I can find is a plane that crashed in 1988 when at an airshow it went down to 30ft instead of 30 metres when doing a low fly passed, then clipped trees at the end of the runway that were not marked on maps.

I can't find any information due to "ghost in the machine" problems on the A330, there was this incident listed on wikipedia


But that related to limiting the attitude of the plane in the event of an engine failure and the need to disengage the autopilot, presumably because back in 1994 systems were not super clever and probably would not know the engine had failed and try to climb out on "full" power that wasn't there with the failed engine.

In all honesty it's not worth any tit for tat argument I dare say you could track down some examples where automatic systems contributed to an accident. But they are very much not the norm and actually quite rare when you look at all the accidents that do occur.

In small aircraft where automatic systems are no or rarely present, if they are present still rarely used, they still have quite a high portion of accidents, There significantly more accidents involving General Aviation (GA) aircraft than there are commercial aircraft with all their gadgets, and GA aircraft make up only a fraction of the flights undertaken every day, when you consider the hundreds if not thousands of flights moving in and out of major airports every day.

I may have missed the edit deadline then realised it was the A320...

However it's more the principle that extremely well trained professionals can lose situational awareness while using automation and they can also fail to understand what it's doing and how to operate it to the point they crash.

So expecting it not to have exactly the same effect on Derek from accounts who passed his test with 9 minors and hasn't seen a copy of the highway code since is somewhat naive. If anything he's looking forward to spending more time on Betfair on his way to work. Might as well stand him next to a robotic brain surgeon for all the good him monitoring it is gonna do.

 

[AndyRKett]

While i get every point you’re making here, this is largely made irrelevant by the same people who will have an accident in a non self driving car because they were watching the new marvel trailer on YouTube while drinking a coffee at 70mph in rush hour traffic

Self driving technology is not present in the big majority of accidents that happen today because people so the stupid stuff with or without it.

A quick break down of air accidents is 50% of them are caused by pilot error 20% mechanical failure 10% are caused by weather, 10% are caused by sabotage (which is terrifying) so autopilot causing the plane to crash doesn’t even figure in the massive majority of cases.

And as I said before the majority of aircraft accidents are in GA aircraft whos total technological installation consists of a radio and a cigarette lighter so you can smoke while you fly your Cessna.

The accident mentioned above was during testing of a new plane, with only 7 people onboard and test pilots flying it. It was arguably caused by the pilots forcing the aircraft into a dangerous state. How many Airbus A330s have crashed because of the same reason since that aircraft went into serial production?

Aside from it being said above that you’re not really comparing like for like, but also the argument being made that self piloting technologies cause all these accidents just isn’t true

 

[vexorg]

Again, none of this is relevant. If cars and roads were run like aircraft and air routes then there would be no real issue of self driving cars.

Or a reverse perspective, imagine we all had planes, and drive them and treated them like cars - chaos in the skies.

 

[Greasytrucker]

While i get every point you’re making here, this is largely made irrelevant by the same people who will have an accident in a non self driving car because they were watching the new marvel trailer on YouTube while drinking a coffee at 70mph in rush hour traffic

Self driving technology is not present in the big majority of accidents that happen today because people so the stupid stuff with or without it.

A quick break down of air accidents is 50% of them are caused by pilot error 20% mechanical failure 10% are caused by weather, 10% are caused by sabotage (which is terrifying) so autopilot causing the plane to crash doesn’t even figure in the massive majority of cases.

And as I said before the majority of aircraft accidents are in GA aircraft whos total technological installation consists of a radio and a cigarette lighter so you can smoke while you fly your Cessna.

The accident mentioned above was during testing of a new plane, with only 7 people onboard and test pilots flying it. It was arguably caused by the pilots forcing the aircraft into a dangerous state. How many Airbus A330s have crashed because of the same reason since that aircraft went into serial production?

Aside from it being said above that you’re not really comparing like for like, but also the argument being made that self piloting technologies cause all these accidents just isn’t true

Self driving technology is not present in the big majority of accidents that happen today because people so the stupid stuff with or without it

The reason it’s not present in the majority of accidents is because they only represent a small amount of the vehicles on the road currently. I’d imagine as the number of these vehicles increase, so will the amount of accidents involving them

 

[StevenRB45]

Forget the systems for a moment and look at the behaviour of people who will be using them.

To all intents and purposes these cars will be driverless...as no one is going to pay attention to them until they crash. At which point the standard form is to say "yes we marketed it as self-driving but not like that you need to pay attention".

No additional training in how to use it will be provided... You're just meant to keep an eye on it.

So as stated you want to give these idiots self driving cars...then you as company need to take responsibility for what you're enabling.

 

[AndyRKett]

So as stated you want to give these idiots self driving cars...then you as company need to take responsibility for what you're enabling.

No one is disagreeing with you, but… there has to be a cause for the failure in the whole system that leads to an accident and no system will ever be fool proof, there will always be accidents the whole point is to minimise the frequency and severity of accidents. Any technology that prevents a more serious accident is a good thing.

In the event that a car has prompted the driver 200 times and the driver has kept going, and got in the car drunk. You cannot put any part of the blame for that accident on the company who made the car.

 

[StevenRB45]

In the event that a car has prompted the driver 200 times and the driver has kept going, and got in the car drunk. You cannot put any part of the blame for that accident on the company who made the car.

Why did the car continue to proceed? If the driver has been prompted 200 times and failed to respond then clearly the driver is incapitated. Your system should recognise that surely if it needs human overwatch.... otherwise you're just leaving the door open for idiots.

It's going to be amusing watching automakers attempting to idiot proof the things.

The quality of idiot is likely to improve immeasurably.

 

[vexorg]

I’d imagine as the number of these vehicles increase, so will the amount of accidents involving them

Well that's obvious given the low numbers of self driving cars. And there are none in the uk yet that are fully automated.

My feeling is that that number of accidents would drop, I'd trust a car system over the average driver right now. I think the way drivers are taught right now and limitations on what they can do means they are not good drivers when things start to go bad.

In the olden days when we were allowed to be a bit more (or a lot more) reckless then you found the limits of the car quickly. I think skid pans and wet safe racing tracks should be part of the learning experience.