Autonomous Vehicle Safety — Finding a Proper Balance
Researchers at UCI's Department of Computer Science investigate the overly cautious designs of driverless vehicles and how they may actually have a negative impact on road safety.
“The vehicle’s planning module is designed with an abundance of caution, logically, because you don’t want driverless vehicles rolling around, out of control,” said lead author Ziwen Wan , UCI Ph.D. student in computer science. “But our testing has found that the software can err on the side of being overly conservative, and this can lead to a car becoming a traffic obstruction, or worse.”