So presumably every self-driving vehicle is going to be constantly streaming all sorts of information in their purview to a central hub?
That is a privacy nightmare without regulation on scrubbing extraneous information, done before upload: for example blocking out of pedestrian data; not just faces but clothing and gait, and probably also any data captured through windows.
It would be ideal to have a limited view of just the roads and signage, and have a retention plan that gradually keeps less and less historical data.
For accident review more of the data might be required, so vehicles should keep the last 24 hours of raw data.
I don't think that's crazy. Why shouldn't local authorities, state DOTs, and the national DOT be obligated to also update a database that self driving cars use? They already have such databases for their own records, usage, and analysis. In a world in which SDCs are normal that is how you would expect it to work.
It's a bigger expectation to suppose that the car will perceive the environment better than a person would and make correct on-the-fly decisions about traffic signs when snow obscures the sign and a little bit of ice and muck obscures its cameras ever-so-slightly, making some of the sensors go half-berserk.
This seems a bit short sighted to me at least for the foreseeable future, because the data aquired while self driving will also be valuable. So it would make sense to encourage drivers to use the feature as much as possible, in order to improve accuracy and stay ahead of tightened regulations that will surely come over time. (E.g. disengagements per km).
In theory that's a huge problem. In practice we have 1.X billion miles of data and it does not seem to be such a huge deal. Either the systems are already fairly good, or people mostly pay attention.
Granted, I am approaching this from the perspective of a more relaxing driving experience not necessarily from a pure safety standpoint. People spend 20,000+ hours driving in a lifetime making that less stressful is a huge benefit even if they are still stuck in their cars and can't get work done.
Early warnings of dementia or even eyesight problems - both of those are likely to lead to a change in driving style with more pronounced braking as the driver reacts slower to events.
It would make sense to anonymise the data before sending it to the government and the point of the data is to identify road congestion and problematic junctions. It could also feed into better tracking of traffic lights timings etc. None of those uses have a requirement to know whether it's Mr Jones in his red Corsa or Mrs Malaprop in her SUV.
I get the concern about surveillence. But I can see some amazing benefits of treating cars and the road as a single connected system. You could hold vehicles at the journey start point until space on the road opens up. Or adjust speed limits in real time depending on conditions. And maybe even remove traffic calming by modifying user speeds. The free-for-all we have now is hopelessly disfunctional and drivers suffer from that.
Making sure mistakes only happen once is why I think all companies working on self driving cars should have to supply their sensor data for a fixed time before any collision or successful crash avoidance publicly. The changes they make to their code remain their own trade secret, but building up an extensive library of test cases means everyone's software will get safer faster.
So far NHTSA has encouraged such data sharing but they haven't outright mandated it.
Operating a motor vehicle on public roads is just about the most compelling reason one should have to sacrifice privacy like this.
People have, on the whole, emphatically demonstrated their complete inability to drive responsibly. ~40k deaths, hundreds of thousands of serious injuries, and nearly a trillion dollars in costs every year. Overwhelmingly due to driver error and negligence.
There needs to be more data released than gross number of disengagements, but video isn't particularly useful for agencies.
There needs to be some kind of common public protocol and infrastructure that allows the government to audit potential crashes and then test other self driving car systems to see how they'd react in the same situation. That'd also likely help with giving visibility into why a particular system acted the way it did, and give the public a better view into how the companies are performing. E.g. how well would Waymo handle the areas that Cruise is currently focusing on?
It's currently an opt-in choice by drivers. I fear the day all cars are connected, and it's no longer a choice, but a mandate by insurance companies. Cars are already being required to include "black boxes" to record data for use in accidents. I absolutely anticipate more insurance companies to push for access this type of data as part of the terms of covering drivers.
The next step is to have cars always log their position in the cloud, so the government will know where you are, that you are driving within legal limits, how often you drive (and it won't be long until insurance companies will have access to it). I think this is going to be introduced EU wide.
Many modern cars have an "event data recorder" that holds information about pretty much everything when you're driving. Admittedly they only hold about 30 seconds worth of information (in case you crash) but the point here is that tracking what you do isn't a new thing and expanding the period the data is held for would be trivial.
Another thought: because all this data is collected and analyzed it will be easier to automatically report this as a problem intersection to the city planners.
Granted this can happen now with people calling in but they will forget to do so, won't have images to show for backup, etc. Roads can be made safer this way.
In the future, road work should go into a database for self driving cars to access in real time. The police and government should have the ability to put in place speed limiting blocks on public roads for various reasons. A good example would be school zone at specific times.
I think it may be theoretically possible, but I don't think it will be implemented in a way that will work when it's mandated by law. Betting against regulations fulfilling their advertised purpose is usually a good bet. I think the most likely outcome of this is that it will make no difference to any driver, but that cars will be a little more expensive and collect more data that can be used for harmful purposes. Regardless, if we shouldn't assume that it will be harmful, we also shouldn't assume that it will be helpful.
EDIT: I have now read the article and would like to retract my guess that it will make no difference. It says that this will "require that the system be 'open' to remote access by 'authorized' third parties at any time". That's absolutely catastrophic and will almost certainly kill people.
Depends if it's recording general indiscretions or driving indiscretions. Once all/most driving is automated, I don't think we'll have many driving indiscretions, and you could potentially put them back on the manufacturer in some cases rather than the occupant.
Especially so when the majority of people do not own the car in which they're travelling but are hiring it for the journey like they do a taxi or plane.
That is a privacy nightmare without regulation on scrubbing extraneous information, done before upload: for example blocking out of pedestrian data; not just faces but clothing and gait, and probably also any data captured through windows.
It would be ideal to have a limited view of just the roads and signage, and have a retention plan that gradually keeps less and less historical data.
For accident review more of the data might be required, so vehicles should keep the last 24 hours of raw data.
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