[LINK] itN: Reckless MPs okay Driverless Cars

[Jim Birch]

Here's a Rand Corp analysis of the problem of autonomous vehicle safety.
Exec summary:

Autonomous vehicles would have to be driven hundreds of millions of miles
and sometimes hundreds of billions of miles to demonstrate their
reliability in terms of fatalities and injuries.

Under even aggressive testing assumptions, existing fleets would take tens
and sometimes hundreds of years to drive these miles — an impossible
proposition if the aim is to demonstrate their performance prior to
releasing them on the roads for consumer use.

Therefore, at least for fatalities and injuries, test-driving alone cannot
provide sufficient evidence for demonstrating autonomous vehicle safety.

Developers of this technology and third-party testers will need to develop
innovative methods of demonstrating safety and reliability.

Even with these methods, it may not be possible to establish with certainty
the safety of autonomous vehicles. Uncertainty will remain.

In parallel to developing new testing methods, it is imperative to develop
adaptive regulations that are designed from the outset to evolve with the
technology so that society can better harness the benefits and manage the
risks of these rapidly evolving and potentially transformative technologies.

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pdf:
http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR1400/RR1478/RAND_RR1478.pdf
  (Alert: contains maths :)

Interesting point of the problem of testing through outcomes, though I'm
not totally convinced by their argument.

Aren't Google etc already using methods that are innovative in the area of
driving?  A human driver gets a chunk of instruction, typically in pretty
sedate conditions, then is let loose on the roads.  They should
self-monitor and adjust their driving styles but the QA is poor.  In
contrast, the activity of autonomous cars and their surrounding traffic is
continuously logged for analysis, then scrutinized by teams and the
resulting analysis is then used to update code which is verified in
multiple simulations before making it into production systems.

I have a feeling that half of us would be thrown off the roads for
retraining in a matter of hours if subjected to the same level of scrutiny,
and probably only half of them would ever make it through the reprogramming
and testing cycles.

Jim