Cars can do Anything You Can Do Better.

(Kind of)

The concept of replacing people with machines is always met with skepticism as to whether or not it is feasible. And with any change comes resistance to that change. There are many "What if's?" when it comes to autonomous cars, and this blog will explore the what if the "what if's" are warranted.

There are many things that modern AI can do better than people, and many things that they cannot.

What if it breaks down?

Just wanted to make sure I got this out of the way first. The answer is the same thing you would do if a human-driven vehicle breaks down. You'd call AAA to come fix it or to get it towed. Cars that don't have a passenger that are remotely controlled will likely have sensors for gas and engine problems, or at least a GPS tracking system to determine whether or not it is moving.

What if autonomous cars cause more accidents that people?

To put it shortly- they won't. They have already been tested and they causes substantially lesser accidents than people, and studies show that virtually all accidents are from some form of error in the driver's judgement.

What if an autonomous car crashes into another human-driven car? What if an anonymous car crashes into another autonomous car?

There's currently legislation on this. A driver is determined who is "at fault" by testimony of driver and by the angle of the accident and the location/degree of damages where a driver at fault can't be determined. And with the autonomous car's rate of being accident-free so far, it will likely be the fault of the human driver almost always.

Despite in the insurmountable adds that an autonomous car would crash into another autonomous car, the above can still be used to determine which car had a fault in its algorithm and made the mistake of hitting another car.

The worst case scenario is that manufacturers will be blamed for what went wrong, according to an article from The Insurance Information institute, a high authority on the subject.

What if it's wet or icy? Would they be able to compensate for that?

No. There are limitations on autonomous cars. Though they are little in number, they may be big in size. Driving on wet or icy envirionments is not the capability of any current autonomous car being developed. The conditions are too random and hard to account for for engineers to make good-enough artificial intelligence to combat.

There is hope, however, as there are "smart tires" being made that can analyze the exact content (iciness or wetness) of the road and send that information to an autonomous driver.

What if it's an unmarked road, or a dirt road?

An autonomous car relies on GPS for navigation, so an unmarked road will be innavigable. A dirt road, since also unmarked by the GPS will be unnavigable.

What if there's a pedestrian in the road, or other obstacle not designated by a map?

They are programmed SPECIFICALLY to avoid pedestrians and road hazards. The 360 degree camera locator and lightning-fast response (I could only find an article on the Mercedes from The Energy Collective on this source, but you can see from any autonomous car they have a 360 degree sensor on the top) time allows them to avoid road hazards and pedestrians, being able to locate them on camera, and even designate them as a "vehicle", "pedestrian", etc. to anticipate their movements.

What if there's a car in its blind spot?

There are no blind spots! The 360 degree camera allows them to see all around them at the same time, as opposed to humans who can only see about 150 degrees in front of us. Their GPS and ability to recognize street signs can allow them (to a certain extent) see around corners as well.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/img/RadarEyes2-1405948712599.jpg

This picture doesn't really do it justice, but you can see that there are

 two identical cameras at the front and rear of the car, showing that the

vision cones in front of the car can do the same thing behind the car,

What if there's an anonymous car interacting with another anonymous car?

They can work together! There's currently engineers working on having fleets of autonomous cars navigate traffic and to communicate with each other to avoid each other and travel at a constant speed (rather than to stop and start over and over again in gridlock traffic), which Government Technology has predicted can reduce traffic by over 80%!.

What if it gets stopped by police?

With the ability to recognize speed limit signs and avoid accidents, they will not need to be stopped by police (and there would be no one's license to take and no one to arrest). But in the case that they are, autonomous vehicles with a passenger can be commanded to stop and pull over, and they already have programming to pull over for such vehicles as ambulances, as to not get in their way.

-

All of these "What if"s have answers, and while there are some shortcomings, the answers to the "what if"s are much more comforting than the unknown.