Quote:
Originally Posted by polak
I am curious as to what the plan would be if there was some sort of catastrophic failure with the computer and sensors that drive the car?
Say we replace all of deerfoot traffic with self-driving cars. It only takes one failure in one car to cause a big accident. Are we going to expect people to be paying attention at all times and take over? That's not going to happen. Hell first thing I do with my self driving car is go pub hopping!
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Why would it take one failure in one car to cause a big accident?
Assuming all the other cars are still working fine, they can avoid the rogue car with much better reflexes and much better control than a human driver.
So you'll have a single car accident. Let's assume that at least SOME of the sensors work, and the car begins to figure out something is wrong, and there are redundant emergency systems. (eg. In a plane, even though your airspeed sensor fails, leading to your autopilot failing, you still have other independent sensors that can tell you you're about to crash and to correct for it.) The car might even be able to sort out its own emergency.
Even if it happens to be an accident - and it happens once a month. It sounds like a drastic improvement over what Deerfoot is like right now.