5 Things That Give Self-Driving Cars Headaches

New York Times

Fully automated cars don’t drink and drive, fall asleep at the wheel, text, talk on the phone or put on makeup while driving. With their sensors and processors, they navigate roads without any of these human failings that can result in accidents.

But there is something self-driving cars do not yet deal with very well – the unexpected. The human brain is still better than any computer at making decisions in the face of sudden, unforeseen events on the road – a child running into the street, a swerving cyclist or a fallen tree limb.

Here are five situations that, for now at least, often confound self-driving cars and the engineers working on them.

• Unpredictable Humans

Computer algorithms can ensure that self-driving cars obey the rules of the road — making them turn, stop, slow down when a light turns yellow and resume when a light turns to green from red. But this technology can’t control the behavior of other drivers. Autonomous vehicles will have to deal with drivers who speed, pass even when there’s a double yellow line and drive the wrong way on a one-way street.

• Where Did the Lines on the Road Go?

Snow, rain, fog and other types of weather make driving difficult for humans, and it’s no different for driverless cars, which stay in their lanes by using cameras that track lines on the pavement. But they can’t do that if the road has a coating of snow.

• Detours and Rerouted Roads

Google’s bubble-shaped self-driving cars rely heavily on highly detailed three-dimensional maps — far more detailed than those in Google Maps — that communicate the location of intersections, stop signs, on-ramps and buildings with the cars’ computer systems. Self-driving cars combine these maps with readings from their sensors to find their way around.

• It Might Be a Puddle. Or Not.

Self-driving cars use radar, lasers and high-definition cameras to scan roads for obstacles, and the images they generate are assessed by high-powered processors to identify pedestrians, cyclists and other vehicles. But potholes are tough. They lie below the road surface, not above it. A dark patch in the road ahead could be a pothole. Or an oil spot. Or a puddle. Or even a filled-in pothole.

• Having to Make Tough Decisions

In the midst of busy traffic, a ball bounces into the road, pursued by two running children. If a self-driving car’s only options are to hit the children or veer right and strike a telephone pole, potentially injuring or killing the car’s occupants, what does it do? Should its computer give priority to the pedestrians or the passengers?

Read more of the original article in The New York Times.

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