Paramedics told to watch out for driverless cars driving off after accidents

Guidance for emergency workers says they should keep a door open when working on a driverless vehicle because this will stop it self-driving away. The document, released by Waymo, the self-driving car project spun out of Google, advises them to open a door of the vehicle “to prevent the vehicle from self driving” when responding to an accident.

The car will also not drive away if an airbag is deployed, it is in “park” mode, or the handbrake is on.

Emergency workers are then advised to call a special hotline set up by the company to disable the self-drive and convert the car into manual mode.

Workers may also have to cut a power supply cable in order to disable the car’s battery, which involves working at the front of the vehicle.

“Keep at least one door open while in front of vehicle to prevent vehicle from self driving. Also use standard precautions including wheel chocks,” the guidance says.

If a car is pulled over by police, the technology means it will behave like a law-abiding human driver, the company said.

The cars are programmed to detect sirens on police cars or other emergency vehicles and give way to them, the document says.

They can also tell if a police car is behind them flashing its lights and are designed to pull over and stop when this happens.

The car can then unlock its own doors and roll down windows so that a remote team from Waymo can speak to the police officer.

A self-driving car can automatically tell if it has been involved in a crash and will stop, and alert the company, which can call 911 if necessary.


https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2018/10/25/paramedics-told-watch-driverless-cars-driving-accidents/

No good can come of robots.

this just makes sense.

the car is told to drive to location, if you don't tell it to stop(open door, park or hand brake) it will attempt to drive to the location 


it does seem like some sort of kill switch should exist for Emergency services to easily and quickly stop any 'current' driving instructions

Total waste of money , After the first flush of excitement and the novelty of it, people will realise, after all that money they'v spent they might just as well hired a Taxi !

another step down the path of humans becomming totally unskilled useless drones

one question I DO have though is this

given that it appears most of these self driving cars will NOT have a "manual" mode what happens if your destination is not available on google earth....

like for instance our wood is 1 mile off the road down a farm track that is not on any google map and only inaccurately exists on even ordanance survey maps...... so how would one get from road side to wood?

also give the susceptibility of corporations and govt depts to hacking leaks and corruption, how long will it be till we darent use these vehicles as they will be reporting your whereabouts to "base" all the time and base will be selling this data to the "theives guild" so they know when you are out and your home unoccupied.

Too true !

Lord Foul wrote:another step down the path of humans becomming totally unskilled useless drones

one question I DO have though is this

given that it appears most of these self driving cars will NOT have a "manual" mode what happens if your destination is not available on google earth....

like for instance our wood is 1 mile off the road down a farm track that is not on any google map and only inaccurately exists on even ordanance survey maps......  so how would one get from road side to wood?

also give the susceptibility of corporations and govt depts to hacking leaks and corruption, how long will it be till we darent use these vehicles as they will be reporting your whereabouts to "base" all the time and base will be selling this data to the "theives guild"  so they know when you are out and your home unoccupied.

All that are actually for sale do have a manual driving mode, pretty much all of them require you to keep your hands on the wheel even when in 'self driving' mode.

While it is true about the drones part
people want zero fatalities on the roads
and currently the weakest link is the human driver
so the logical thing is to replace the weakest link

there is 4wd prototypes, with the ability to get to a location based on GPS co-ordinates
but i don't think any of them are near 'ready for market', they will definitely come because there is demand from the military for that capability
obviously it requires more advanced collision and terrain detection than a on road car, eventually i can see the both incorporated in the same vehicle
because superior sensors for collision and terrain detection is desirable in any vehicle.

and meh,
Your mobile phone already gives google/apple that information

Would you like to drive on the road with a 40 ton driverless lorry up your arse ?

nicko wrote:Would you like to drive on the road with a 40 ton driverless lorry up your arse ?

I don't see it as any worse than with a human drivers, which are definitely quite fail-able hence why we have fatalities on the road

and really by the time it gets reliable enough for heavy vehicles most people wont be driving, their cars will be

When all cars are driver-less is when traffic and everything will really improve, like no need for traffic lights