Re: Descisions
All of this kind of misses the point - in the event of a pedestrian/child/etc stepping in front of the car it will almost certainly out-break a human and probably not swerve if that endangers other on-coming traffic. So far so good, and +1 for the driverless car.
The bigger problem for automated cars is anticipating what a child/pedestrian might do. Now a lot of drivers don't really pay enough attention, and I'm as guilty as others, but often you see something like a drunk, or a child chasing a ball down the pavement, that rings alarm bells in your head and you slow down just in case and are primed for an emergency. Getting that automated will be far trickier than the Newtonian motion of driving.
Also going back to Tim's article, I really wonder if mapping the roads in minute detail and assuming connections to this vast database is a viable (or very valuable) option. How will it deal with downed trees, flash floods, other drivers, communication problems in rural areas, etc? A proper driverless car has to be fully autonomous and to react sensibly to what it finds, when it finds it. Sure knowing there is a crash or delay up ahead will make things a bit better, but whatever the unexpected situation turns out to be, the car MUST react at least as well as as the average human to be acceptable.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
