Hacker News Reader

Comment by modeless | Hacker News Reader

It's not complicated. Traffic laws are not perfectly aligned with safety. Plenty of legal things are unsafe and plenty of things that are illegal are not always dangerous.

This isn't surprising either. The process of making laws is political and politics are clearly not an ideal way to decide on a perfect and exhaustive and precisely detailed set of rules for anything. The laws do not constitute an algorithm for driving. They are necessarily simplified. And yes, a self driving car is going to need a set of driving rules that are much more detailed than anything humans have written down before.

View on HN

Pragmatic rulemaking for large numbers of people also needs to take into account the fact that the rule will naturally be viewed as a loose guideline by some people, and even as a thing to be defied for its own sake by others. Setting the limit stricter than the actual desired behavior can push average behavior closer to the target.

> Setting the limit stricter than the actual desired behavior can push average behavior closer to the target.

Absolutely not, at least in the context of speed limits. Where I live, most of the speed limits are at least 15mph lower than they should be (why is a 6 lane road 30mph???), so you get:

* people who follow the speed limit exactly: 30mph

* people who follow the speed limit the road was designed for: 45mph

* people who see the limit as a "limit:" 25mph

It's a mess. Roads need to be designed to the desired speed limit. Don't make a 6-lane straight road 30mph; people unfamiliar with the area will assume the speed limit's 50% higher than it is, and people from the area will feel like they're going incredibly slow.

In short, it should be uncomfortable to go >= 20mph over by design if you want people to follow your speed limits.

> Setting the limit stricter than the actual desired behavior can push average behavior closer to the target

I hate this so much. Selective enforcement only serves to enable overzealous enforcement against unpopular and disenfranchised groups.

One does one small thing wrong and they can then tack a large handful of other charges that would never otherwise be enforced. It's disgusting.

Make the rules things that should actually be rules. Enforce them as written. The end.

Yes, that's a great reason why laws made for humans may not be perfect when applied strictly to machines.

It actually is incredibly complicated. You can tell, because every individual person you speak to will have a different interpretation of which rules are there for safety and which ones can be ignored.

The fact that you start your post about how an AI can make such a determination with the words "it's not complicated" discredits you.

Obviously rules for self driving cars are very complicated. What's not complicated are the reasons why the road laws made for humans are not directly suitable as unbreakable principles for self driving cars to always follow.

No actually that's incredibly complication. It differs by culture, regional attitudes, quality of infrastructure and hundreds of other variables.

The way it's different is incredibly complicated.

The assertion that a significant difference exists is not complicated and is easy to prove.

That seems like an appropriate generalized take on "laws" but in the specific case of ignoring a stop sign, I don't think it applies. Stop signs are a traffic control device that other drivers rely on to predict the intent of a vehicle approaching the stop sign.

Stop signs are anything but "ignored". The actual behavior only applies when the car recognizes a stop sign and also assesses good visibility to ensure that no other cars are around, and the car still slows regardless. It's not just blowing through stop signs at top speed whenever it feels like it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com