Driverless Cars Face Real-World Roadblocks: Advertisements and Pedestrian Behaviour Cause Confusion
The advent of driverless cars, hailed as a revolutionary leap in transportation, is encountering significant real-world challenges, particularly concerning their ability to accurately interpret their surroundings. Recent incidents highlight how these advanced AI-driven vehicles can be easily disoriented by unexpected visual cues and unpredictable human behaviour, raising pertinent questions about their safety and readiness for widespread deployment.
As London gears up for a trial of self-driving taxis in April, and with testing already underway in various British locations such as York, the technology is being progressively introduced. However, despite the increasing presence of these computer-controlled vehicles on our roads, public apprehension regarding their safety mechanisms remains a significant concern.
Professor John McDermid, a leading expert in software and an advisor on government self-driving vehicles, based at York University, has voiced these concerns. Speaking to journalists at London’s Science Media Centre, Professor McDermid explained that the vehicles continue to be easily confused. He elaborated on a specific instance where a driverless car misinterpreted a life-size advertisement for the 2015 film The Man from U.N.C.L.E., displayed on the side of a bus, as a group of actual pedestrians in the road.
This misinterpretation led the vehicle’s Artificial Intelligence to initiate an emergency stop. Such abrupt manoeuvres, while intended for safety, could pose a significant risk to other vehicles following closely behind, potentially causing accidents. Professor McDermid recounted the incident to The Daily Telegraph, stating, “One of the automated vehicle companies I work with had a situation where their vehicle did a sudden emergency stop because it’s all pedestrians in the road, except they weren’t. It was a life-size advert on the side of a bus, but to an AI, it was human beings. That seems very obvious [to us], but actually, to the AI, it’s not.”
Further compounding these issues, Professor McDermid noted that during trials in his home city of York, driverless cars have been flustered by the unpredictable actions of pedestrians. This includes instances where individuals choose to cross the road even when the traffic signal has turned green, and the “no crossing” signal is still illuminated.
In contrast, in the United States, where self-driving car technology is being actively pioneered, “jaywalking” is a criminal offence with potentially severe repercussions. This legal framework may encourage pedestrians to adhere more strictly to crossing signals. However, in Britain, the pedestrian often holds sway, and it appears that these nascent robotic vehicles are struggling to comprehend this dynamic.
Professor McDermid elaborated on the confusion observed in York concerning pedestrian crossings: “It’s seen that there’s a traffic light, so identified the hazard, because the light is red. It changes to green, the vehicle is about to move off. But this is York, so the tourists – although the lights change to green – still walk across the road. Computer vision doesn’t understand what it doesn’t have models for in the world. It doesn’t know what a roundabout is.”
Meanwhile, American self-driving car company Waymo is preparing to launch its driverless taxi trials in London from Easter. The company has plans for Uber to integrate with this scheme, eventually offering robotaxis to the general public. However, this rollout follows reports from San Francisco, where Waymo vehicles were involved in numerous near-miss incidents with school crossing guards, or “lollypop ladies,” approximately two years ago.
A survey conducted among 30 of these crossing attendants revealed that around a quarter had experienced a “close call” with an autonomous vehicle, with some individuals forced to quickly move out of the way to avoid collision.
Veteran lollipop lady Theresa Dorn shared her experiences, recounting three near-misses involving driverless cars within a single year. In one particularly alarming incident, a parent had to intervene swiftly to protect a child. Ms. Dorn described the event: “The parent grabbed the child, looked at the car – and there was nobody driving it. Why do they have these driverless cars? I think somebody should be driving them.”
Current government guidance in Britain mandates that “self-driving vehicles should be held to the same high standard behaviour as that expected of human drivers.” However, a significant portion of the public surveyed expresses a desire for even higher safety standards, reflecting a palpable fear of an increase in road fatalities, which already claim approximately 1,600 lives annually on UK roads.
Professor McDermid has issued a stark warning, urging that pedestrians should not be relegated to a “moral crumple zone” for the advancement of robocars, underscoring the urgent need for robust safety solutions before these vehicles become commonplace.
