Slow Humans Raise Seriously Ironic Safety Concerns Over Autonomous Cars

A fresh study is reporting incredibly slow human reactions when it comes to taking control back from autonomous cars, posing big questions about whether we can be trusted with the technology

Matt Kimberley

30 Jan 2017

Slow Humans Raise Seriously Ironic Safety Concerns Over Autonomous Cars

The surprising length of time it takes the average human to re-take control from an autonomous car has blown the subject of the new technology’s safety wide open.

Autonomous cars can’t yet handle all situations, and sometimes have to ask the human behind the wheel to take charge for a while, sounding and/or flashing a warning that the vehicle is about to relinquish control.

Researchers at the University of Southampton have completed a study that found the median length of time between a test car’s prompt and the human taking over, even when the person in question was focused only on driving, was 4.56 seconds. Ouch.

The study, which used 26 male and female subjects aged between 20 and 52, saw each driver placed in an autonomous vehicle simulator set at 70mph. On the first run the driver focused only on the drive, but then on the second attempt read a newspaper instead.

Clearly, 4.56 seconds is more than enough time, if the situation turns critical, to have had a colossal accident before the human ever gets to grips with the situation.

And when the human was absorbed in a newspaper instead of focusing on the road, that median time figure rose to 6.06 seconds. If it was an emergency, the driver could be in trouble before even taking their reading glasses off.

What’s worse, the lowest recorded reaction times in the study were 21 and 26 seconds, and when you translate that into a car stomping completely unguided down the motorway, an accident could be inevitable.

Considering that 70mph is 102 feet per second, even the lowest median reaction time would mean 465ft being covered before any human intervention. Scary? We think so.

The conclusion of the research is that 4.5 seconds, or even six seconds, isn’t enough notice to give drivers in order to be fully safe. But how can drivers or passengers possibly expect to be given more advance notice than that before being asked to take the wheel?

It should be interesting to see where this goes, and how the law reflects personal responsibility. If humans in autonomous cars can’t relax and do other things without fearing for their lives, what’s the point at all?

Source: Autoblog

Comments

Whats next? Outlawing driving? Because in the future no people will be able to actually drive because we are constantly driven by future cars. And the reason for it is that “human driving is not as accurate as a computer”. I know it is true but it opens up an entirely new danger. You could just hack it and control the car remotely. It could be really dangerous especially if that person has bad intent. And if a system update containing a glitch or a mistake gets released, it could risk potentially everyone driving that car model or perhaps even the people who own cars from that brand. Id prefer us individuals controlling our individual cars instead of some system having control of possibly every car from that brand and eventually in existence.

This is why I am pessimistic about the future of the automobile.

Hacking is a concern, yes, but is it really that huge of a deal? Your cellphone has the ability to be hacked into and release your personal information, but for 99% of people, it doesn’t happen. Simply put, yes it exists, but its not like its a huge concern.

Also, autonomous driving programs are only getting better. People thought EFI and electronics in cars would be end of tuning, but they actually made many things easier. Even now, they are still in their infancy but still statistically safer that human drivers (look at Google’s self-driving cars statistics). A glitch could happen, but so does human driver error. And I guarantee you human error is MUCH more common and dangerous.

Autonomous cars may bore car enthusiast, but its a God’s gift for those without the ability to drive: elderly, drunk, too young, disabled, etc. With this kind of tech, its not IF they perfect it, its WHEN.

I totally agree. Autonomous cars may overall yield better stats but thats only cause lots of careless stupid people now get bunched into the same one group of “all autonomous cars” .. but maybe for careful drivers it would actually worsen the situation? I´d like assistance systems to be normal instead of autonomous driving. I want them to detect when a human falls asleep, looks away from the road too long, texts while driving, is drunk, has attention issues/sleepiness etc. also automatic stopping and radar to check around corners or intersections ahead, doing things that humans cant do and supporting with heat vision features to aid with auto braking even in situations where the human couldnt possibly see anything at all. Also add a system to detect grip level and adjust max speed, fx on snow or rain.. because if you do all of those, the driver still has a lot of control, the car does not need to be connected to the internet and be in danger of getting hacked, the car will still have manual controls that could be made to have a function where its easy to cut control from the autopilot if its faulty or being manipulated. And finally i want to add that my dad has been accident free for 31 years and my mom nearly just as much but shes younger, her only accident was when her parents were driving and the car lost grip in harsh conditions.

Did they actually have to complete a study to realise this? Isn’t it obvious?

Yes they did, because that’s how science works.

I’d like to compare this to airplane evacuations, these usually go faster/smoother during trials because people are calm and relaxed, in a true emergency people actually really do trample eachother and ironically slow everyone down by fighting to get out as fast as possible.
Same thing with retaking control on autonomous vehicles: This was a simulation, everyone was expecting to have to retake control, knowing how to do so. An average driver caught off-guard would panick and in the worst case crash the car trying to retake control in a frenzy.

We all need the reactions like Takumi and Ryosuke!

[DELETED]

I’m not surprised, from my experience most drivers on UK road take over 4 seconds to realise that the car in front is braking and so they also need to do so
There isnt even a need for autopilots to prove that most drivers are stupidly slow to react to changing road conditions
Even if they are driving themselves with no autopilot involves

Humans are smart enough to create a self driving car but also dumb enough to forget how to use it.

THIS.

Yes the issues would only grow if someone who has not driven for 5 years on his own suddenly has to drive again or what if you let someone drive without any years of experience and then his Robot car Ai has a problem… how would that turn out..