Self Driving Vehicles Dirty Little Secret - How To Know If A Driver Should Take Over

A high-profile fatality in a Tesla Model S operated in Autopilot mode reveals that the push toward self-driving cars still has many unsolved problems.

The biggest issue: Automakers and researchers are grappling with the human aspect of self-driving cars. When should drivers take over? Will they have enough time to react if they aren’t paying attention to the road? Or should the car do all the driving, all the time?

“How does the driver know what is their responsibility and what is the vehicle’s responsibility?” said Jim Sayer, director of the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute. If a car’s computer system can’t detect that there’s a problem ahead on the road, it wouldn’t even know to alert the driver, he said.

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TheSteve - 7/18/2016 11:16:08 AM

+2 Boost

We must always be mindful that when we talk about "self-driving" cars, do we mean fully-autonomous systems, like Google's vehicles, or do we mean cars with some form of driver-assist, like Tesla's "AutoPilot" feature? They are completely different, and the media does a grand disservice to all by speaking of them as though both were the same, or similar.

In a true autonomous system, you don't even need any driver controls, like a steering wheel, brake, or accelerator. These systems must be nearly fail safe, or in the very least, be considerably safer than good human drivers as measured by the number of incidents per 100,000 miles operated.

At this time, Tesla's "AutoPilot" feature is merely a driver-assist system, like cruise-control on steroids, and it must be treated as such with a fully participating, fully engaged driver. Tesla even tell you that, as you would expect! In the incidents that have happened (so far) in a Tesla under "AutoPilot" control, the driver was not in that state. In one specific incident, he was watching a DVD movie on his laptop while "driving", either doing an exceedingly stupid thing, or mistakenly believing that Tesla's driver-assist feature was fully autonomous.