Driverless Cars Will Kill Cyclists, Warns Nature Magazine

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Moral psychologist Azim Shariff believes that autonomous cars will be programmed to redistribute risk away from some people and towards others. “Consider an autonomous car that is deciding where to position itself in a lane – closer to a truck to its right, or a bicycle lane on its left,” said Shariff, an associate professor at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

“If cars were always programmed to be slightly closer to the bicycle lane, they may slightly reduce the likelihood of hitting other cars, while slightly increasing the likelihood of hitting cyclists.”

Shariff is a co-author of a major new report on the ethical judgments that may have to be programmed into autonomous vehicles. The Moral Machine Experiment was published in Nature last week. The study features the results from an online game played by nearly 40 million volunteers from around the world. The volunteers had to decide whether a driverless car should hit a pregnant woman or swerve into a wall and kill its four passengers.

Other decisions from the game, which went viral when it went online in 2016, included whether to save an athlete over an overweight person or a child over a senior. The results led to regional variations, with some cultures preferring to protect old people over young, and women over men. In some countries, so-called “jaywalkers” were saved less often than people who crossed at designated crossings.

Overweight people were about 20% more likely to be chosen to die than athletes, and homeless people had a roughly 40% greater chance of dying than executives.

The moral dilemma at the heart of the game is the so-called “trolley problem” dating from 1967 and created by British philosopher Philippa Foot. She imagined a runaway train where you had the choice to divert on to either a track where one victim would be hit and killed or another where five would.

The Moral Machine did not feature cyclists as part of the experiment, but Shariff told Inside Science that autonomous cars would have to interact with them on the roads of the future.

“Over millions or billions [passing maneuvers with cars having to decide whether to drive close to another motor vehicle or to a cyclist] either more cyclists will die, or more passengers will die.”

A report on the paper in Nature said:

“A driver who veers away from cyclists riding on a curvy mountain road increases her chance of hitting an oncoming vehicle. If the number of driverless cars on the road increases, so too will the likelihood that they will be involved in such accidents.”

Free spirits

Driverless cars are not yet able to cope to with the unpredictability of cyclists. In 2015, a cyclist in Austin, Texas, confused a Google driverless car when he did a near-motionless “track-stand” at an intersection. The Google car was so bamboozled by the behavior of the balancing cyclist it would not budge.

Google has since improved its algorithms to recognize such bicyclist behavior. A Google statement said: “Through observing cyclists on the roads and private test track, we’ve taught our software to recognize some common riding behaviors, helping our car better predict a cyclist’s course.”

In 2016, Google’s Chris Urmson said its cars would “try hardest to avoid hitting unprotected road users: cyclists and pedestrians.” In the same year, a Mercedes driverless car technician told a motoring blog that his cars would always save the lives of passengers in a crash, although the parent company later denied this.

Daimler said in a statement that “neither programmers nor automated systems are entitled to weigh the value of human lives.

“There is no instance in which we’ve made a decision in favor of vehicle occupants. We continue to adhere to the principle of providing the highest possible level of safety for all road users.”

However, at some point carmakers might have to prioritize passengers over non-passengers – it would be quite the salesperson who could convince a car buyer that this was not the case.

And some carmakers seem to be heading down that road. Last year a French journalist inadvertently captured video footage of a Nissan driverless car failing to give sufficient room when overtaking a cyclist. The console on the Nissan driverless car alerted the “driver” – Tetsuya Iijima of Nissan – that a cyclist was ahead on the Royal Albert Way dual carriageway in Newham, London, but the car did not move over into the empty overtaking lane, and nor did Iijima over-ride the car as it squeezed past the cyclist. (Iijima is Nissan’s global head of autonomous drive development.)

Rule 163 of the U.K.’s Highway Code states that motorists should give cyclists (and pedestrians and equestrians) as much space as they would give a motor vehicle when overtaking.

The Nissan Intelligent Mobility driverless car was a Nissan LEAF guided by five radars, four lasers and 12 cameras. It was being used to show journalists how Nissan’s ProPILOT technology could integrate with existing traffic. One of the French journalists in the car with the Nissan “driver” laughed nervously when the car skimmed the cyclist. “I was a little scared for him,” he was heard saying. (“J’ai un peu flippé pour lui quand même.”)

Introducing a driverless concept car Renault chief executive, Carlos Ghosn, told CBNC in 2016 that pesky cyclists could delay the arrival of the technology.

“One of the biggest problems is people with bicycles,” he said. “The car is confused by [cyclists] because from time-to-time they behave like pedestrians and from time-to-time they behave like cars.”

Ghosn complained that cyclists were free-spirits: “They don’t respect any rules usually.”

(Nissan and Renault are part of the Renault–Nissan–Mitsubishi Alliance, founded in 1999 – Ghosn is chair of both Nissan and Renault.)

Marjan Hagenzieker, professor of road safety at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, told a Dutch news site in 2015 that the unpredictability of cyclists “throws a spanner in the work of technology optimists" because “robots are not good at dealing with inconsistent behavior.”

Off the road

Cycling organizations such as the European Cyclists’ Federation keep a beady eye on legislation likely to affect cyclists across the EU, and to date, there’s no evidence that proponents of autonomous vehicles (AVs) are actively pushing for restrictive measures against cyclists.

However, British cyclists might have perhaps the most to fear. Brexit might result in a new and potentially scary legislative landscape where the needs of special interests will hold more sway. The U.K. Government already seems very keen on encouraging driverless car technology because it’s likely to be an economy-saving money-spinner, and it’s entirely possible that the first laws to prevent cyclists and pedestrians from riding and walking in front of driverless cars will be enacted in motor-centric Britain. The first widespread UK trials of driverless cars are taking place in Milton Keynes, not on the roads but the sidewalks and cycleways – it’s far easier to place autonomous vehicles on such relatively benign networks compared to busy streets. With thousands, and then perhaps millions, of AVs dotting about on the infrastructure designed for non-motorised users where will be the space for pedestrians and cyclists?

If the driverless cars of the future kill cyclists, cynics might argue that such vehicles won’t be that different from many of the drivers they replaced. But the net number of cyclists killed would reduce, argues Shariff. The moral psychologist told Forbes.com:

“Autonomous cars likely won’t be let on the roads in large numbers until they are significantly safer than current drivers. So, while the ratios of cyclist deaths compared to pedestrian or passenger deaths might not improve (and could potentially get worse), the total numbers of cyclist deaths will hopefully fall.”

 

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Moral psychologist Azim Shariff believes that autonomous cars will be programmed to redistribute risk away from some people and towards others. “Consider an autonomous car that is deciding where to position itself in a lane – closer to a truck to its right, or a bicycle lane on its left,” said Shariff, an associate professor at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

“If cars were always programmed to be slightly closer to the bicycle lane, they may slightly reduce the likelihood of hitting other cars, while slightly increasing the likelihood of hitting cyclists.”

Shariff is a co-author of a major new report on the ethical judgments that may have to be programmed into autonomous vehicles. The Moral Machine Experiment was published in Nature last week. The study features the results from an online game played by nearly 40 million volunteers from around the world. The volunteers had to decide whether a driverless car should hit a pregnant woman or swerve into a wall and kill its four passengers.

Other decisions from the game, which went viral when it went online in 2016, included whether to save an athlete over an overweight person or a child over a senior. The results led to regional variations, with some cultures preferring to protect old people over young, and women over men. In some countries, so-called “jaywalkers” were saved less often than people who crossed at designated crossings.

Overweight people were about 20% more likely to be chosen to die than athletes, and homeless people had a roughly 40% greater chance of dying than executives.

The moral dilemma at the heart of the game is the so-called “trolley problem” dating from 1967 and created by British philosopher Philippa Foot. She imagined a runaway train where you had the choice to divert on to either a track where one victim would be hit and killed or another where five would.

The Moral Machine did not feature cyclists as part of the experiment, but Shariff told Inside Science that autonomous cars would have to interact with them on the roads of the future.

“Over millions or billions [passing maneuvers with cars having to decide whether to drive close to another motor vehicle or to a cyclist] either more cyclists will die, or more passengers will die.”

A report on the paper in Nature said:

“A driver who veers away from cyclists riding on a curvy mountain road increases her chance of hitting an oncoming vehicle. If the number of driverless cars on the road increases, so too will the likelihood that they will be involved in such accidents.”

Free spirits

Driverless cars are not yet able to cope to with the unpredictability of cyclists. In 2015, a cyclist in Austin, Texas, confused a Google driverless car when he did a near-motionless “track-stand” at an intersection. The Google car was so bamboozled by the behavior of the balancing cyclist it would not budge.

Google has since improved its algorithms to recognize such bicyclist behavior. A Google statement said: “Through observing cyclists on the roads and private test track, we’ve taught our software to recognize some common riding behaviors, helping our car better predict a cyclist’s course.”

In 2016, Google’s Chris Urmson said its cars would “try hardest to avoid hitting unprotected road users: cyclists and pedestrians.” In the same year, a Mercedes driverless car technician told a motoring blog that his cars would always save the lives of passengers in a crash, although the parent company later denied this.

Daimler said in a statement that “neither programmers nor automated systems are entitled to weigh the value of human lives.

“There is no instance in which we’ve made a decision in favor of vehicle occupants. We continue to adhere to the principle of providing the highest possible level of safety for all road users.”

However, at some point carmakers might have to prioritize passengers over non-passengers – it would be quite the salesperson who could convince a car buyer that this was not the case.

And some carmakers seem to be heading down that road. Last year a French journalist inadvertently captured video footage of a Nissan driverless car failing to give sufficient room when overtaking a cyclist. The console on the Nissan driverless car alerted the “driver” – Tetsuya Iijima of Nissan – that a cyclist was ahead on the Royal Albert Way dual carriageway in Newham, London, but the car did not move over into the empty overtaking lane, and nor did Iijima over-ride the car as it squeezed past the cyclist. (Iijima is Nissan’s global head of autonomous drive development.)

Rule 163 of the U.K.’s Highway Code states that motorists should give cyclists (and pedestrians and equestrians) as much space as they would give a motor vehicle when overtaking.

The Nissan Intelligent Mobility driverless car was a Nissan LEAF guided by five radars, four lasers and 12 cameras. It was being used to show journalists how Nissan’s ProPILOT technology could integrate with existing traffic. One of the French journalists in the car with the Nissan “driver” laughed nervously when the car skimmed the cyclist. “I was a little scared for him,” he was heard saying. (“J’ai un peu flippé pour lui quand même.”)

Introducing a driverless concept car Renault chief executive, Carlos Ghosn, told CBNC in 2016 that pesky cyclists could delay the arrival of the technology.

“One of the biggest problems is people with bicycles,” he said. “The car is confused by [cyclists] because from time-to-time they behave like pedestrians and from time-to-time they behave like cars.”

Ghosn complained that cyclists were free-spirits: “They don’t respect any rules usually.”

(Nissan and Renault are part of the Renault–Nissan–Mitsubishi Alliance, founded in 1999 – Ghosn is chair of both Nissan and Renault.)

Marjan Hagenzieker, professor of road safety at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, told a Dutch news site in 2015 that the unpredictability of cyclists “throws a spanner in the work of technology optimists” because “robots are not good at dealing with inconsistent behavior.”

Off the road

Cycling organizations such as the European Cyclists’ Federation keep a beady eye on legislation likely to affect cyclists across the EU, and to date, there’s no evidence that proponents of autonomous vehicles (AVs) are actively pushing for restrictive measures against cyclists.

However, British cyclists might have perhaps the most to fear. Brexit might result in a new and potentially scary legislative landscape where the needs of special interests will hold more sway. The U.K. Government already seems very keen on encouraging driverless car technology because it’s likely to be an economy-saving money-spinner, and it’s entirely possible that the first laws to prevent cyclists and pedestrians from riding and walking in front of driverless cars will be enacted in motor-centric Britain. The first widespread UK trials of driverless cars are taking place in Milton Keynes, not on the roads but the sidewalks and cycleways – it’s far easier to place autonomous vehicles on such relatively benign networks compared to busy streets. With thousands, and then perhaps millions, of AVs dotting about on the infrastructure designed for non-motorised users where will be the space for pedestrians and cyclists?

If the driverless cars of the future kill cyclists, cynics might argue that such vehicles won’t be that different from many of the drivers they replaced. But the net number of cyclists killed would reduce, argues Shariff. The moral psychologist told Forbes.com:

“Autonomous cars likely won’t be let on the roads in large numbers until they are significantly safer than current drivers. So, while the ratios of cyclist deaths compared to pedestrian or passenger deaths might not improve (and could potentially get worse), the total numbers of cyclist deaths will hopefully fall.”