<story><title>An autonomous car in SF blocked a fire truck responding to an emergency</title><url>https://www.wired.com/story/cruise-fire-truck-block-san-francisco-autonomous-vehicles/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gojomo</author><text>Given that often human-driven, or human-parked, cars create similar temporary obstacles, the most important question here is: does this happen more-often, or for longer-periods, with autonomous cars?&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t see the article, or quoted sources, even trying to make that comparison - so this is really only a half-story, compared to what&amp;#x27;s relevant.&lt;p&gt;Further, given the remote-guidance possibilities with autonomous cars, it&amp;#x27;s plausible to think they&amp;#x27;ll eventually be far, far &lt;i&gt;better&lt;/i&gt; than human-driven cars at making-way for higher-priority traffic.&lt;p&gt;Human drivers sometimes fail-to-notice sirens or other high-priority demands on road capacity. But, an automated system could broadcast the planned-routes of dispatched priority vehicles to &lt;i&gt;every autonomous car in the city&lt;/i&gt;, allowing the autonomous cars to preemptively clear paths, before it even becomes an issue of local-reasoning about an exceptional-situation.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>anyfoo</author><text>The problem is that there are literally uncountably many situations that a human with &amp;quot;general intelligence&amp;quot; will understand and react to accordingly. Sometimes smoothly, sometimes less so. But a non-conscious automatic entity needs to have the required behavior programmed in explicitly.&lt;p&gt;So yes, you might argue that for this particular situation, you &amp;quot;just&amp;quot; need to put in the proper programming and AI&amp;#x2F;ML training and then &amp;quot;maybe the car will notice more often than a human&amp;quot; as long as the situation is within very specific bounds. At least now that somebody made an article about it.&lt;p&gt;But it does not change that the autonomous machine does not &lt;i&gt;understand&lt;/i&gt; the complex world it is driving in in the slightest, and that, for example, swerving into an unmanned fruit stand without being able to brake is much better than swerving into an unmanned gas pump.</text></comment>
<story><title>An autonomous car in SF blocked a fire truck responding to an emergency</title><url>https://www.wired.com/story/cruise-fire-truck-block-san-francisco-autonomous-vehicles/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gojomo</author><text>Given that often human-driven, or human-parked, cars create similar temporary obstacles, the most important question here is: does this happen more-often, or for longer-periods, with autonomous cars?&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t see the article, or quoted sources, even trying to make that comparison - so this is really only a half-story, compared to what&amp;#x27;s relevant.&lt;p&gt;Further, given the remote-guidance possibilities with autonomous cars, it&amp;#x27;s plausible to think they&amp;#x27;ll eventually be far, far &lt;i&gt;better&lt;/i&gt; than human-driven cars at making-way for higher-priority traffic.&lt;p&gt;Human drivers sometimes fail-to-notice sirens or other high-priority demands on road capacity. But, an automated system could broadcast the planned-routes of dispatched priority vehicles to &lt;i&gt;every autonomous car in the city&lt;/i&gt;, allowing the autonomous cars to preemptively clear paths, before it even becomes an issue of local-reasoning about an exceptional-situation.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>flutas</author><text>&amp;gt; Given that often human-driven, or human-parked, cars create similar temporary obstacles, the most important question here is: does this happen more-often, or for longer-periods, with autonomous cars?&lt;p&gt;Honestly the article is pure tech-scare bait. It blames a car that stopped (while it was driving) when a truck was driving at it head on, but tries to glance over the fact that a (human driven) garbage truck is the reason the fire truck had to go into oncoming traffic in the first place.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; a San Francisco Fire Department truck responding to a fire tried to pass a doubled-parked garbage truck by using the opposing lane.</text></comment>