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The head of Google's X division has explained why the company chose to abandon the steering wheel in its self-driving cars, claiming that humans are “not a reliable backup”, particularly in emergency situations, during a talk at SXSW this week.
Astro Teller said that during the company's tests, they found that motorists had learned to trust the on-board systems in the self-driving cars and as a result, lost focus during journeys and would be less prepared to take control in the event of a system failure or some form of emergency.
Speaking at SXSW (via Engadget), Teller said that drivers already took part in distracting activities, like texting, while fully operating a vehicle but once control was handed over to a computer system, drivers had even less reason to pay attention to the road. The result of Google's extended test apparently “wasn't pretty”.
So it seems that people are too quick to trust the computer controlled systems inside of the self-driving car, which resulted in “questionable behavior” from the driver.
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KitGuru Says: I imagine it would be easy to get distracted if the car was doing all of the driving for you. Do you guys think Google was right to drop steering wheels from its driverless cars?
Kind of stupid IMO. Just because people won’t tend to concentrate on the road of a car they’renot riving doesn’t mean you should completely take all control away from them if something goes wrong. It’s nice to have the backup even if its a futile one but this is just saying “if something goes wrong, give up”
you missed the entire point of the post…..
People weren’t paying attention to the road at all, just texting away allowing the car to do ALL the work, which essentially is the point of a driver-less car….. With that, if something bad did happen, it would take to long reaction time wise for that person to perform the emergency manoeuvre etc. and thus it makes human control of the car pointless. It gives Google chance to find an alternative in emergency’s but because people didn’t pay attention (which is no surprise) it means bye bye to user control on the car
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The justification they gave is retared. “In case of system failure” means the car suddenly can not drive itself anymore and could crash into a wall. Having a steernig wheel to take over in such instances is critical!!!
The vast majority of people would not look at the road when the car is driving, so how would a steering wheel help in any way? It would just be another object to bump into when the car crashes.
Everyone assumed that the car is working as intended and therefore they didn’t pay any attention to what is actually happening on the road, in case of system failure when the car could not drive itself, they would be too busy posting how they’re driving in a driver-less car on facebook.
Having a steering wheel to take over in such situations may be critical, so is having a passenger that is paying attention to the road and is ready to take over in case that something bad happens.
I can ASSURE you that even if I was texting or looking at a movie, my peripheral vision would notice the change of scenerery going off road, my center of gravitiy would notice the car abruptly of even subtle change in direction, my sense of touch would scene the much intense bumps of not being on the road anymore and with the combination of all that and other inputs, I would, in a fucking flash, grab the steering wheel to AT LEAST attempt to save my life…
Also, the car would certainly emit an alarm to warn me it is not in control anymore, unless a catastrophic system wide crash occurs. The ponit is, I want that ace in the hole, just in case.
I can assure you that you will notice the problem too late and do the exact thing which will make problems much worse. Well, maybe not you, but for 99% of people a computerised backup system will do a much better job. Even for you, you will jump and look at the road the first time the car travels over a speed bump. You will look the second time. The hundredth time you will think “speed bump” and continue doing your stuff as the car drives you off road.
Like it’s often the case on the Internet, we will just have to agree to disagree and leave it there. Have a nice day.
I think in the end it will come down to this: people who trust their driverless car will let it drive and pay not attention whatsoever to the road; people who don’t trust driverless cars will drive normal cars.
On the newest high end luxury cars today there are lots of collision avoidance warning systems which have the same effect. Drivers feel safer and so are more likely to allow themselves to be distracted. So this is not a future issue with self-driving cars, but cars on the road today. The real question is does it help or hurt accident rates? We should be able to collect that data, but are we?
As for the self-driving car: 1) If a passenger sees an imminent hazard there should be a ‘panic’ button that would not only notify the guidance system to be on high alert, possibly slow the car down, but also notify all the surrounding cars. 2) If the guidance system fails the occupants should be able control the vehicle using a small joystick, rather than traditional controls, which is only accessible in a compartment that when opened forces the car into failsafe mode, which also notifies the surrounding vehicles and calls for assistance.
Picture this:
The fabulous potato google computer says it cant figure out a parking space…