Originally Posted by
wolfchild
Over-cautious can be as dangerous as reckless...I can just imagine a self-driving car slamming on brakes and coming to a stop in the middle of a busy road and causing a chain reaction accident, all because of a squirrel or a skunk ran in front of it... After all, self driving cars are supposed to be programmed to save lives of both human and animal, right ??
What you are describing represents a perfect example of how human thinking is flawed.
People think it's the fault of a car stopping in front of them or not getting out of the way that causes a crash. In reality, the crash is usually caused by inadequate following distance. Humans take risks that AVs don't where precautionary measures are concerned. When a self-driving vehicle is supposed to drive slower because of conditions or prospective dangers, it will unlike humans who will minimize the risks in their minds because they're biased in favor of speed.
As for squirrels running out in front of the vehicle, it is free to slam on the brakes because whatever vehicle, human-driven or self-driven, should have sufficient following distance to deal with sudden stops, tire blowouts, or any other emergency that could happen in front of them/it on the road.
If progress on self-driving vehicles stalls or slows below what is achievable, it will probably be taken over by the military. It is too critical to not be under control. They will need to iron out all the potential hacks and everything else that could either be used by terrorists to take control of the vehicles on public roads, or to use the vehicles for military operations in various ways. There will also be 'battlefield' vying for control over the OS, though they have probably already dealt with that for drone bombers and the like.
I suspect we'll be seeing a lot of AV applications on military bases, as well as there being many applications we don't see because they are kept secret.