{"id":9811,"date":"2017-08-20T23:36:49","date_gmt":"2017-08-20T23:36:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=9811"},"modified":"2017-08-20T23:36:49","modified_gmt":"2017-08-20T23:36:49","slug":"making-driverless-cars-safe-for-people-on-foot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/making-driverless-cars-safe-for-people-on-foot\/","title":{"rendered":"Making driverless cars safe for people on foot"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span><a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/profiles\/michael-clamann-399753\">Michael Clamann<\/a>, <em><a href=\"http:\/\/theconversation.com\/institutions\/duke-university-1286\">Duke University<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Right now, there are two ways to be safe crossing a road: Wait until no cars are close by, so there\u2019s enough time to make it to the other side of the street \u2013 or communicate with oncoming drivers. As the number of pedestrian deaths on U.S. roads <a href=\"https:\/\/crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov\/Api\/Public\/ViewPublication\/812375\">climbs<\/a>, up 25 percent since 2010 to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nhtsa.gov\/road-safety\/pedestrian-safety\">more than 5,000 people in 2015<\/a>, the dawn of driverless cars offers the promise of improving that sad safety record.<\/p>\n<p>Whether we\u2019re at a crosswalk, a traffic light or just walking out in the middle of the road, we\u2019ve learned since we were young that it\u2019s important to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.safekids.org\/walkingsafelytips\">make eye contact<\/a> with the drivers of approaching cars. But that\u2019s not going to be possible with autonomous cars. Even if there\u2019s someone sitting in what would be the driver\u2019s seat, that person will be a passenger, with little \u2013 or perhaps no \u2013 control over how the car behaves. And that passenger may also be catching up on work, watching a movie or dozing off, paying no attention to what\u2019s up ahead.<\/p>\n<p>People and cars will need to communicate in some other way. With no universally agreed on method for doing this, my own research, and that of a number of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/innovations\/wp\/2015\/11\/27\/google-patent-reveals-how-its-self-driving-cars-may-communicate-with-pedestrians\/\">tech companies<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=h-TLo86K7Ck\">automobile manufacturers<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2016\/8\/30\/12700290\/drive-ai-autonomous-car-human-robot-interface\">startups<\/a>, is exploring using different types of visual signals \u2013 akin, perhaps, to a driver waving a person across the street or flashing the car\u2019s headlights to signal their yielding the right of way. Doing that turns out to be quite complicated. <\/p>\n<figure>\n            <iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"440\" height=\"260\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/h-TLo86K7Ck?wmode=transparent&amp;start=144\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Nissan is developing a system to communicate with pedestrians.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h2>Driverless car<\/h2>\n<p>Part of the problem depends on how people respond when they realize an autonomous car is approaching: Scholars at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vtti.vt.edu\/featured\/?p=907\">Virginia Tech Transportation Institute<\/a> and the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sandiegouniontribune.com\/news\/science\/sd-me-ghostdriver-ucsd-20170403-story.html\">University of California at San Diego<\/a> recently made news by operating vehicles on public roads with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/virginia-self-driving-car-seat-disguise-van\/\">drivers carefully disguised<\/a> so the cars \u2013 actually human-driven \u2013 appear to be driverless. A team I\u2019m part of at Duke University\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/hal.pratt.duke.edu\/\">Humans and Autonomy Lab<\/a>, is also investigating how driverless cars will communicate with pedestrians.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"align-right zoomable\">\n            <a href=\"https:\/\/cdn.theconversation.com\/files\/182005\/area14mp\/file-20170814-11257-10tc0yk.jpg\"><img alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.theconversation.com\/files\/182005\/width237\/file-20170814-11257-10tc0yk.jpg\"><\/a><figcaption>\n              <span class=\"caption\">A standard U.S. \u2018Don\u2019t Walk\u2019 signal.<\/span><br \/>\n              <span class=\"attribution\"><a class=\"source\" href=\"https:\/\/www.shutterstock.com\/image-photo\/dont-walk-cross-sign-634258751\">S Rock\/Shutterstock.com<\/a><\/span><br \/>\n            <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Despite <a href=\"https:\/\/mutcd.fhwa.dot.gov\/\">federal guidelines on stationary pedestrian traffic signals<\/a> in today\u2019s transportation world, there are no standards for vehicle-to-pedestrian communications at the moment. Establishing them will be important: Common crossing signals at intersections around the country make both pedestrians and drivers safer. But we don\u2019t yet know what methods are most effective.<\/p>\n<p>A sign on the roof or the front bumper \u2013 or somewhere in between \u2013 could light up, but what would it say? Would it need to communicate in multiple languages, or should people agree on a standard nontext symbol, like those in airports, so anyone could understand? What about playing a sound \u2013 would the car speak, or play a musical code? Whatever the signal, it has to be understandable across different age groups, education levels and locations.<\/p>\n<h2>What should signs look like?<\/h2>\n<p>Presenting a text-based phrase like \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.technologyreview.com\/s\/602267\/new-self-driving-car-tells-pedestrians-when-its-safe-to-cross-the-street\/\">safe to cross<\/a>\u201d may work for a single pedestrian crossing in front of a single car on a two-lane road. But there are many more complicated scenarios: When crossing a four-lane road, does \u201csafe to cross\u201d mean a car isn\u2019t approaching in the next lane? When multiple pedestrians are crossing from opposite sides of the street, to which of them is the car\u2019s \u201csafe to cross\u201d message directed? <\/p>\n<p>The appearance of these signs is also important. If a message like \u201csafe to cross\u201d is to be read clearly at 100 feet \u2013 the standard for our current stationary crossing signals \u2013 the letters will need to be at least six inches high. That would require putting them on a <a href=\"http:\/\/hal.pratt.duke.edu\/sites\/hal.pratt.duke.edu\/files\/u10\/Clamann_etal_TRB2016.pdf#page=4\">screen nearly four feet wide<\/a>. If they\u2019re on moving vehicles, the messages would likely need to be even larger.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, a sign is useless if nobody looks at it. That\u2019s a concern raised by a study we completed last year, in which we <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/technology\/archive\/2016\/08\/designing-a-driverless-car-with-pedestrians-in-mind\/497801\/\">compared different types of displays<\/a> on the front of a van that we disguised to look as if it had no human driver. We found that <a href=\"https:\/\/trid.trb.org\/view.aspx?id=1437891\">only 12 percent of pedestrians<\/a> used the displays to help them decide when to cross. Most people relied on their old crossing strategies, like evaluating the speed and distance of oncoming vehicles to make sure they would have time to cross.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/counter.theconversation.edu.au\/content\/82411\/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic\" alt=\"The Conversation\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" \/>As human-driven cars become less common, labs like ours \u2013 and those in Virginia and California \u2013 will continue studying how pedestrians respond, so we can better ensure everyone\u2019s safety. Those efforts are likely to mean more people encounter a car driven by a scientist dressed as a car seat.<\/p>\n<p><span><a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/profiles\/michael-clamann-399753\">Michael Clamann<\/a>, Senior Research Scientist, Humans and Autonomy Lab, <em><a href=\"http:\/\/theconversation.com\/institutions\/duke-university-1286\">Duke University<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>This article was originally published on <a href=\"http:\/\/theconversation.com\">The Conversation<\/a>. Read the <a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/making-driverless-cars-safe-for-people-on-foot-82411\">original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Michael Clamann, Duke University Right now, there are two ways to be safe crossing a road: Wait until no cars are close by, so there\u2019s enough time to make it to the other side of the street \u2013 or communicate with oncoming drivers. As the number of pedestrian deaths on U.S. roads climbs, up 25 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":9812,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9811"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9811"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9811\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9813,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9811\/revisions\/9813"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}