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recognising and reacting to risk in our almost infinitely variable streets
Are most accidents caused because people exceeded their capacity to do this? Or because they were well within their capacity to recognise risk but were distracted/impatient/tired/not looking/dazzled by the low sun that no-one could possibly have forseen?
There are lots of situations robots might be rubbish at navigating, but the default failure mode should be to slow down, give way, and if necessary stop and let the human figure it out. They don't suffer from fatigue, impatience or distraction, and almost literally have eyes looking in every direction simultaneously.
Robots are brilliant at the bits of driving humans are bad at, and frankly lots of humans aren't very good at the bits where they should notionally have the advantage.
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useless
I can't see how they can do this. I don't buy the line that they will reduce the risk.
Computers can never be as good as a human at recognising and reacting to risk in our almost infinitely variable streets. Robots only work in strictly controlled environments and they are only as good as their programming and processing and can only work to the scenarios they have. They are shit at pattern recognition, language ability, abstraction, creative thought, 3d processing, anticipation, imagination and so many of the other thought processes that make up the main part of driving safely.
Robots are brilliant at making the car work, but that's only 10% of driving. They can't be brilliant at reading the road and conditions, anticipating what might happen, recognising developing hazards and all the rest of it. If driverless cars are to become a safe everyday reality it will have to be on strictly controlled roads away from pedestrians, cyclists, etc. That basically means banning cycling on the road, introducing jaywalking laws, etc.