How Autonomous Vehicles Will Ultimately Save Society From Itself
By: Mo Kaiser
Tags: Artificial Intelligence, Human Factors, Limitations, Society, Self Driving Cars

What is Autonomy?

Photo by Iewek Gnos on Unsplash

My initial interest in the subject started when I completed the Drones and Autonomous Systems specialization, a joint offering by University System of Maryland and University of Maryland Global Campus. The 2-course sequence teaches you the multifaceted nature of drones, from commercial and research capabilities to war zone inspection to humanitarian missions to aerial cinematography. The diversity in drone use is quite beautiful, really.

Anyway, it lead me to view autonomy as being independent. I think of it as somewhat synonymous to self-control, which is what a decent bit of humans do not have. This is absolutely critical, though, in anything to do with operating motorized vehicles. The disadvantages of humans driving is in the millions, yet we still did it.

“And without the fear, we are all as good as dead.” — Forrest Bondurant (Lawless movie)

This means that with fear comes uncomfortable feelings, however, growth does not happen without both. A society who wishes to remain stagnant will have no place in the future. If you read any history books, you’d know this to be true more often than not.

Limited Memory

The human brain is amazing, but not as amazing as everyone claims — when placed next to technology.

Drs. Nelson Cowan, Jeff Rouder, and Richard Morey, psychologists from the University of Missouri-Columbia, published a study suggesting that the average person can only remember 4 things at once. Note that average does not include people with traumatic brain injury (TBI), or those under the influence (DUI).

Both TBIs and DUIs are known to cause temporary memory lapses and, most importantly, impaired judgement. In particular, I view DUIs as a multi-fold issue:

Drinking and/or drugs — illicit or prescribed

Intoxicated driver(s) and/or intoxicated pedestrian(s)

Example:

A 100% sober driver was driving on the main drag through a city when an intoxicated pedestrian ran out into the street, resulting in a fatality.

Now, both parties have been affected in varying degrees. The intoxicated pedestrian is viewed as the main victim in this example, for crystal clear reasons, but most would fail to see the sober driver as the secondary victim. The law tries to tell us that the world is black and white (i.e. the law was or was not broken, the driver did or did not commit vehicular manslaughter, they are guilty or not guilty). This party is referred to as the defendant while the other is referred to as the plaintiff or state.

The driver would probably be diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) later on due to committing unintentional death. It’s important to note that PTSD isn’t “being dramatic”, varies between individuals, and affects everyday life.

Self-driving vehicles would have a higher chance to keep parties from being involved in any combination above. I’m an advocate for putting as large of a barrier between human drivers and potential victims as possible to lower the risk of fatalities, injuries, or developing some form of disorder in the aftermath. Each incident is unique and can be confusing to recount everything that happened.

The probability of incidents such as the one I came up with above, although I’m sure it has happened, could be drastically minimized with sensors. Sensors on autonomous vehicles are able to pick up movement and understand the environment more than the human eye and brain ever could. You can read about Bosch’s LiDAR sensors for autonomous vehicles here.

First note: If you’re curious as to how a person’s ability to drive may be affected post-TBI, read this and this.

Second note: My view of PTSD/PTSS stems from my time when I volunteered as a victim advocate for the District Attorney, a crisis counselor for Crisis Text Line, and as a research assistant for CBT and anxiety studies. Read about a real account here and the psychology behind unintentional injury here and here.

Experiential Learning

This type of learning is well-known, however, I don’t think it’s emphasized enough in practice. We learn by doing. Our experiences are what makes us who we are. With that said, though, we cannot fully comprehend each experience (the conceptualization section of the cycle), let alone experience every possible scenario in every possible combination. Our lifespan does not allow us to do so.

Example:

A college student at West Virginia University in Morgantown, WV is from Florida and has never driven in snow. A flash snowstorm happens. They decide to drive anyway because they have no experience with how dangerous black ice can be. The hills in Morgantown can be impossible to get up on a normal day, depending on the vehicle, and the student hits ice while speeding and loses control.

Reading about how to drive in snow is not the same as driving in it. This unfortunately happens often, and you can read a short piece about how that can affect a community here. A self-driving vehicle would’ve likely had extensive experience driving in all weather conditions, thus being able to apply what it learned from previous experiences. This would further minimize the likelihood of accidents, fatalities, property damage, and increased insurance rates.

Emotional Intelligence (or EI)

As humans, we are destined to feel. Logic should always trump emotions, but that’s not always the case. They can cloud our judgement but that’s also part of being a human. What further separates us from each other is the level of emotional intelligence. In other words, are you able to express and to control the emotions you are aware of?

Some people can only express, not control, emotions when it comes to driving. This is what you would call “road rage”. It’s normal for everyone to feel anger — thanks to the almond-shaped part of the brain called the amygdala — but not to the extremes. Aggressive behavior inhibits our ability to think systematically, whereas an autonomous vehicle will likely never be able to exhibit such hostility.

If you’d like to know more about my reasoning behind this section, read this study for the evolution of human emotion.

Fatigue

Photo by Christian Erfurt on Unsplash

One of the best examples I can think of is the medical community. I have the privilege of being close to numerous top-notch medical professionals, from nurses to neurosurgeons. The downside is that I see second-hand the turmoil they’re put through daily. The insanely long working hours is just one enormous caveat.

Dr. Itzhak Fried, a professor at UCLA, found that lack of sleep causes neurons to respond less quickly to visual information. Driving is all about the visual cues and time-to-action is critical. If a dog gets loose from a yard and runs into the street, you need to be able to identify what it is and to press your foot on the brakes quickly.

Now, I’m not saying medical professionals shouldn’t be driving. I’m saying that longer working hours invite riskier maneuvers to the table, thus increasing the likelihood of a fatal crash. Our medical teams fight to save us on-shift, therefore, we need to fight to protect them off-shift.

Note: My thoughts on sleep prioritization have been heavily influenced after taking the Psychobiology of Sleep course, taught by Dr. Hawley Montgomery-Downs, during my last semester at West Virginia University. If interested, you can find a list of her innovative research publications here.

Disabilities — Medical Focus

A person was diagnosed with narcolepsy with cataplexy. Another person was “fine” their whole life until they were diagnosed with epilepsy in their mid 20’s, subsequently stripping them of their driving license. These are just two examples where a medical disability causes a person to be partially or fully dependent on others to get around.

People who suggest they order an Uber/Lyft don’t understand the ramifications or expenses that would pile up by doing so. If they opened their eyes to the surrounding environment, they would see that disabilities are everywhere and exist in different forms. It’s time that society should try to do whatever it can to make somebody’s life easier (with or without disabilities). Just because something doesn’t affect you directly doesn’t mean you should do nothing.

Autonomous vehicles would provide people with certain disabilities a way to move more independently and safely. Independence is something we don’t truly feel or appreciate until we no longer have it.

Conclusion

Autonomy is independence and based off being self-controlled. We’ve talked about how humans face (1) limited memory, (2) learning by doing, (3) emotions, (4) fatigue, and (5) disabilities. We could talk forever about the possible driving limitations, but I wanted to highlight which ones I believe to be more crucial at this time.

Deployment of autonomous vehicles could be one way to decrease such limitations while simultaneously attempting to increase safety in the complex driving equation. As with anything, though, there will always be pros and cons. It’s simply a matter of how the pros will outweigh the cons in this increasingly probable futuristic world.