Self-Driving Cars Still Have a Lot to Learn - CityLab

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What if AVs end up being much safer than human-driven vehicles overall—but most of the victims turn out to be pedestrians rather than drivers? “I didn’t say that will happen,” he said. “But if deaths go down by a factor of two, you could say we cut deaths in half. The fatalities would shift in demographics. Or what if it’s only kids, because they’re harder to detect? When people say ‘safer,’ it’s an important question: What do you mean by ‘safer’?”...

His suggestions include adding safety support such as camera monitoring for drivers, requiring more rigorous driver training, and adding an override button independent of the self-driving system. He says companies need to be upfront about what they’re doing to ensure safety—and that the public has a right to know these specific details.

“At some point you have to put the vehicle on the road, and there’s no way it’s going to be perfect. That’s why we test,” Koopman said. “But you should be doing some upfront engineering. Once you believe the car is engineered extremely well, then you should be on the road to test whether you’ve got it right. That’s different from saying, ‘Let’s see what happens.’ That’s not testing to ensure safety—it’s debugging.”

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Self-Driving Cars Still Have a Lot to Learn - CityLab