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Human Driving Limitations

Comparisons between human senses and autonomous vehicle sensors, debate over whether humans use only vision to drive, discussion of hearing, touch, and inner ear in driving

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While some argue that humans primarily drive using vision, many commenters emphasize that auxiliary senses like hearing for sirens and tactile feedback for road conditions provide vital situational awareness. This debate extends to autonomous technology, where specialized audio receivers and motion sensors often technically outperform human biological counterparts, even as the complex human brain remains a vastly superior processor of that data. Ultimately, the discussion balances the legal reality that hearing is not strictly necessary for a license against the ambitious goal of creating "super-human" autonomous systems that leverage every possible sensor to exceed imperfect human safety records.

16 comments tagged with this topic

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"the Waymo Driver has long utilized several external audio receivers, or EARs" Nice abbreviation.
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I mean, humans have only their eyes. And most of them intentionally distract themselves while driving by listening to music, podcasts, playing with their phones, or eating.
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I get your point about camera vs lidar. Humans do have other senses in play while driving though. We have touch/vibration (feeling the road surface texture), hearing, proprioception / acceleration sense, etc. These are all involved for me when I drive a car.
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To be fair, humans are fairly poor drivers and generally can't be trusted to drive millions of miles safely.
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Actually humans are fairly good drivers. The average US driver goes almost 2 million miles between causing injury collisions. Take the drunks and drug users out and the numbers for humans look even better.
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Incorrect. Humans are fairly good engineers, so cars are pretty safe nowadays. If you include minor fender-benders and unreported incidents, estimates drop to around 100,000–200,000 miles between any collision event. This is cataclysmically bad for a designed system, which is why targets are super-human, not human.
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And to some extent, I also drive with my ears, not only with 2 eyes. I often can ear a car driving on the blind spot. Not saying that I do need to ear in order to drive, but the extra sensor is welcome when it can helps. There is an argument for sure, about how many sensors is enough / too much. And maybe 8 cameras around the car is enough to surpass human driving ability. I guess it depends on how far/secure we want the self-driving to be. If only we had a comprehensive driving test that all (humans and robots) could take and be ranked... each country lawmakers could set the bar based on the test.
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The other day I slammed the brakes at a green light, because I could hear sirens approaching -- even though the buildings on the corner prevented any view of the approaching fire trucks or their flashing lights. Do Teslas not have this ability?
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I don‘t know whether Tesla‘s self-driving mode could do that. However, notice that deaf people are allowed to drive, ie. you are not expected to be able to have full hearing to be allowed on the road.
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> humans only use vision to drive I love this argument because it is so obviously wrong: how could any self aware person seriously argue that hearing, touch, and the inner ear aren't involved in their driving? As an adult I can actually afford a reliable car, so I will concede that smell is less relevant than it used to be, at least for me personally :)
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> hearing, touch, and the inner ear aren't involved Not to mention possibly the most complex structure in the known universe, the human brain: 86 billion neurons, 100 trillion connections.
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Human inner ear is worse than a $3 IMU in your average smartphone in literally every way. And that IMU also has a magnetometer in it. Beating human sensors wasn't hard for over a decade now. The problem is that sensors are worthless. Self-driving lives and dies by AI - all the sensors need to be is "good enough".
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Human hearing is excellent. Good directional perception and sensitivity. Eyesight is the weakest sense. Poor color sensitivity, low light sensitivity, blindspot. The terrible natural design flaws are compensated by natural nystagmas and the brain filling in the blanks.
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1. in US you can get a driver's license if you're deaf so as a society we think you can drive without hearing 2. since this is in context of Tesla: tesla cars do have microphones and FSD does use it for responding to sirens etc.
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(1) is true, but actually driving is definitely harder without hearing or with diminished hearing. And Several US states, including CA, prohibit inhibiting hearing while driving, e.g., by wearing a headset, earbuds, or earplugs.
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Involved? Yes. Necessary? Pretty sure no. If it makes you happy, you can read "only vision" as "no lidar or radar." Cars already have microphones and IMUs.