Its the hardest problem in technology and one that could change everything. This week were in arizona, the self driving capital of the world, to ride in the latest robotic vehicles, meet the people who are not happy to see them. What am i going to do then . Stand in line for food . And to find out what happens when the tech goes wrong. When california told uber that there were going to be some new regulations that they needed to adhere to, governor ducey, in a public announcement, said. California may not want you, we want you to know that arizona does. We are a state that is open for business. We are a state that welcomes business and new people and technology. Our governor, governor ducey, had basically opened wide the arms of our state to welcome them there and it was a no brainer. Chandler is a hub where Autonomous Vehicles are growing and having more miles mapped on our roads than any place else in the galaxy. Its kind of great to be the centre of that. Well, chandler, i believe, was chosen because it has very wide streets, very clean streets, theyre on a grid, and the people would be very accepting of this kind of technology. And so it was that the technology that will one day change our society, our landscape, and our lives found a home in arizona. The makers of self driving cars have flocked to the town of chandler, which has fast become the industrys testbed. Today, im taking a ride in one of the living types of self driving here, made by google subsidiary waymo. Now, self driving cars come kitted with loads of sensors so they can see in every direction and sometimes in ways that we cant with our eyes. On top weve got loads of normal cameras looking in every direction. And the fact that theres loads of them means that they can judge distances by seeing how different objects move in relation to each other. Now, theres also radar, four of those, one on each corner, and these spinning things, these are the interesting things, they are lidar sensors. There are five round and a big one in the black bump on the top, which can see three football pitches ahead and behind. Right, lets go for a ride. Ooh, we have our safety driver. 0k. And away we go. Computer please remember to buckle your seatbelt. Weve just pulled out in front of quite a fast moving car there. We made it. I call that quite a human manoeuvre. Companies like waymo are experimenting whether their technology can avoid hitting you. I mean, thats the experiment. When you go out on the streets, when you cross on the crosstalk, and theres the waymo, waymo is actively testing whether or not its cars can avoid an accident, and avoid an accident with you if you happen to be on the roads. And some people also are clearly offended by that notion. In fact, some residents have reacted very strongly indeed. Check out this video we found on youtube showing a man attacking a self driving car. You know, theres hundreds of thousands of people that see these cars on the road every day but there have been some folks who really dont like them and have tried to run them off the road with their own cars, throw rocks at them, one man drew a gun and aimed it at the safety driver as the car passed by his driveway. So some people really have a problem with this amount of Technology Sharing the roads with them and kind of cruising through their neighbourhoods at all hours of the day. But a lot of these incidents are not when the car cuts someone off in traffic or the things that would maybe make another driver mad at me, its just their presence, it is just the fact that theyre there that seems to really set people off and, you know, in some instances its not even people who are driving, its people who are riding their bike or walking that throw a rock at them or run out and slash a tyre while ones stopped at a stop sign, so. Frankly, i cant tell you whats going on in their minds. Because i would never run out and slash someones tyre, you know, for no reason. Bu there is just something deeply offensive about this technology and how ubiquitous it is in this part of arizona. Some of the last three years we have responded to about two dozen incidents where people have taken some kind of action against the vehicle or the vehicle and driver, whether it could have been, like we classify, a road rage where someone may confront the vehicle and yell at the driver. Weve had incidents of criminal damage where people have thrown rocks at the vehicles. Weve had one particular incident where a person in the neighbourhood actually pointed a gun, pointed a pistol at the vehicle. Probably the number one frustration is that waymo vehicle is being safe, being prudent, and following the law. And there are people who get frustrated by that. So there are plenty of people in a hurry or go above the speed limit or make improper turns or whatever the violation is and sometimes people get annoyed at the vehicle actually going the speed limit and driving correctly. In chandler, there is the same mix of excitement and concern about self driving cars that weve seen everywhere. The difference is, these people, its happening right in front of them, right now. Its big money saying, hey, listen, this is cool, this is new, im sure youll like it because you see it. And its fascinating. But at the same time youre costing people theirjobs and people who are taking care of theirfamilies. But youd rather see something cool and be in this new age, rather than still care about the people that actually this effects. And were lost if you think like that, man, you are lost. I absolutely would go into a self driving vehicle. I mean, i think that its such a cool experience. This is something youd see on tv when youre a kid in like old 90s movies of self driving cars and the fact that its actually here and at our fingerprints, i think its incredible. Ah, lyft drivers are going to lose theirjobs, cab drivers will lose theirjobs, and not only will they lose theirjobs, i promise you they will figure out a way to make machines create these cars. So theyre not even going to let humans create the cars. Like, do i trust a machine with my childrens lives . I. I dont know. I dont know if i could do that or not. And, last year, the fears of the community became a reality. The self driving uber vehicle failed to detect her crossing an empty road at night and the safety driver failed to hit the brakes. It was the first case of a pedestrian being killed by a self driving car. The uber was, the vehicle was a volvo again. It was a self driving vehicle. It was in the autonomous made at the time. And our investigation did not show at this time that there were significant signs of the vehicle slowing down. The uber vehicle hit Elaine Herzberg at 30 mph. This was a huge moment for the burgeoning industry, which led to uber having to immediately halt their self driving programme. So what exactly happened and whose fault was it . We went to the site of the crash in tempe, arizona, with the news editor of the phoenix new times, ray stern, to find out more about the incident. Ok, its on the other side. She took her bike from this area, walked it across this lane, and then entered this lane. The uber vehicle was in this lane. And itjust kept staying in this lane even though the pedestrian is here. It should have swerved. It had time and place to swerve, but it didnt. So before she made it to the sidewalk it impacted her. I absolutely would have seen elaine as she started to cross the road. And i would have braked for her. Most reasonable drivers would have. And, in fact, any driver who was paying attention would not have hit Elaine Herzberg. In order to entice uber and other companies into arizona, governor ducey relaxed regulations, which meant companies faced no requirement to disclose anything about their programmes, including crashes. Basically the governor invited uber in. That was one problem. They were operating here without any Real Transparency in terms of what they were actually doing, when the vehicles were in autonomous mode, what their criteria were for it. And so the vehicles were doing whatever they wanted. And uber had free reign. Tempe Police Called the crash entirely avoidable after investigations found that the safety driver was watching television on her phone at the time of the fatal incident. Ms vasquez could still face charges of vehicular manslaughter. She looked down, they estimate, 160 times during the circuit that she was doing. The evidence showed that she was streaming the view, which is a tv show, on her phone at the exact time of the impact. So what exactly went wrong with ubers Self Driving Technology on that night . It cant really be to do with poor visibility, can it . One of the messed up things about the whole incident has been the video released by uber after the accident. And if youve seen this video, it looks like this street is very dark and then at last second the woman on the bike suddenly pops out of the darkness right before the impact. In fact, this area is not as dark as this video shows. This drive through at night follows the same route as the uber vehicle. It shows that the Street Lighting makes the road clearly visible far into the distance. The New York Times reported that uber were not living up to expectations before the crash. As of march 2018 uber was struggling to meet the targets of 13 miles per intervention in arizona. As a comparison, gm owned cruise reported to california regulators that they went more than 1200 miles per intervention and waymo said that their california test cars went an average of nearly 5600 miles before drive intervention. Reports said that the uber vehicle actually detect did Elaine Herzberg six seconds before the crash, but the perception system got confused, classifying her as first an unknown object, then as a vehicle, and finally as a bicycle. Those volvos came from the factory with an accident avoidance system, one of these new semiautonomous systems that a lot of the new cars have. 1. 3 seconds before impact, the self driving system realised emergency braking was needed. However, uber had disabled the emergency braking system on the volvo to prevent conflict with the self driving system. Nevertheless, prosecutors have determined that uber were not criminally liable in the death. If uber hadnt disabled the technology that potentially the vehicle would have detected the pedestrian even without the uber autonomous technology, just with the Volvo Technology and stopped the vehicle. But uber disconnected that because apparently the vehicle was being a little too jerky in its motions and it didntjibe correctly with the Autonomous Vehicle system that uber had in there. The safety driver supervising an imperfect system should ensure its overall safety. However, that only works if theyre paying attention. With self driving cars being tested live on busy streets, accidents are inevitable. So this may not be the last incident that we see on the road to a driverless future. But the number of accidents involving self driving cars is very low for the millions of miles of testing that have taken place. If theres an opportunity to help keep our roadways safe, thats certainly our responsibility and our mission to keep our communities safe and obviously our roads. So if we can reduce the number of collisions and people being injured and killed by leveraging new technology, thats certainly something we want to explore and support as were moving forward, because we know that an overwhelming majority of collisions are preventable theyre caused by humans. Were just not able to share in the way that these vehicles are, i dont have access to 10 billion driven miles, which in the future these vehicles will have. Every oddity that happened to be disseminated across a fleet i want a world where a fender bender in copenhagen improves someones safety in a mine in cape town that afternoon, in a way that we just dont as humans. So in 2017, National Statistics show that over 10,000 people were killed because of impaired drivers. Over 300,000 people nationally are affected every single day because of impaired driving. Two out of three people are going to be affected at some point in their lifetime across this country. And when we think about Self Driving Technology, the reason why we are so excited about this is because if we can take that number of 10,000 people and drop it by one 9,999, because of this technology, that is what we want, and that is what we strive for. And its notjust the added safety. There are many people who will be empowered and mobilised by self driving cars. The biggest challenges, for people when they think about giving up their keys and getting rid of the car and not driving any more, is that loss of independence. So self driving car technology, for people to be able to maintain their dignity and independence to go where they want to go is tremendous, to not have to rely on somebody else. When you Start Talking about the senior population, that sense of pride and independence is very, very strong. So to try and take that away from somebody is a really difficult situation. We have large communities here where people have come to retire, and at some point they are going to need to turn in those keys, and be off our roads, so thats certainly is a force. Other people with impairments, whether blindness or things that would keep them from being able to drive. If you have a hysterectomy or a c section, you know, im sorry, you cant drive. There are just nuts things that are out there, because we havent changed how we drive in 100 years. Its going to change, its not ok. Let alone the safety stuff. The dignity of people, the aged, the young, the ill, they want to stay mobile. Autonomous cars certainly have the power to change lives and save lives when the technology eventually becomes reliable and when it becomes socially acceptable. Butjust over the horizon, there are other vehicles which may be driving themselves about even sooner. Trucks are highway vehicles, and when they do stray towards populated areas, its usually on the outskirts, moving from depot to depot. So unlike autonomous cars, lidar sensors arent the key to these robo rigs, it is these long range cameras. You might recognise we have two lidars on the system, but most importantly for our vehicle we have a camera array, our primary sensors are cameras because this is a large truck, we need to see a great distance. This vehicle can perceive objects 1000 metres away, well over half a mile from the vehicle. We also have side facing cameras which are used for, on surface streets, conducting unpredicted left and right turns as a primary sensor. Further back we have cameras that are giving us close surveillance of the lanes around us, that enhances what the lidar is also seeing, and we have cameras that are looking behind the vehicle and at the trailer. All of these sensors combined create a long range vision system for the truck that helps it to detect the objects speed, trajectory, and even can work out its intent. At 1000 metres an autonomous truck could have up to 35 seconds of reaction time. And if you are expecting some high tech controls in the cab well, you may be surprised. This is probably the most important button in the vehicle. This enables autonomous mode. So when we reach a point where the vehicle is ready to go autonomous, the button is pressed, and off we go. Now, these trucks arent the largest Autonomous Vehicles being driven in arizona. They have some big competition. Mind bogglingly huge mining vehicles from the likes of cat and komatsu are driving themselves through huge quarries. An autonomous truck needs three systems to drive. Perception system consists of radars, lidar up top, and then a positioning system which is an inertial measuring unit, a gps, tied together by the Planning System to drive the truck. The best way to avoid an obstacle is to Never Get Close enough to actually come in contact with it at speed, so pick it up at a very long range, and verify and correct it at mid range, well within stopping distance of the truck. So how fast can we go in this thing . This truck is capable of going a0 mph. Oh my word. We are really wanging it round the corners as well. It is not shy about cornering. Once we are loaded its a whole different truck. Now you have 400 tonnes you are carrying around. Right, and is the vehicle aware is loaded, so it drives differently . But the trucking and Mining Industries are huge employers, so Self Driving Technology will inevitably lead to significant job losses. Autonomous trucks are safer than human operators. Couple of reasons why they dont fatigue, they do exactly what we tell them to do, and they do it the same way over and over. People is actually a pretty big cost in the economics, when you think about one truck running continuously for 2h hours needs 11. 5 operators, it is actually quite a large cost, you have food costs, camp costs, travel costs, so you are flying in hundreds of thousands of people every single week, that starts to add up. Nobody wants to eliminate a job, we want to find a different role for that person. We just completed a run with the us postal service, its a 2100 mile round trip that we executed autonomously. Self driving trucks are not bound by a human drivers hours of service regulations. A human driver can only drive so many hours per day and they must take a rest break. Self driving vehicles will be safer than human drivers, they dont sleep, they dont drink, they dont get distracted. This is a crucial element of autonomy. Since there is such a shortage of drivers now, we believe that this technology will be applied first to address the shortage. We think there will be plenty of opportunities for human drivers for the foreseeable future. So how do truckers feel about theirjobs being threatened by self driving rigs . You ask any truck driver, they dont want to be behind a 9 to 5 desk, somebody telling them what to do, pick up that, do this, do that. If youre in a truck, eight hours a day, youre driving, youre by yourself, listening to music in your rig, you have peace. There was an accident in town with a self driving car, so how catastrophic it would be with a truck if something went wrong . What am i going to do then . Stand in line for food . Thats what its coming to. And you know it is. Im kind of sceptical, to see how is the safety rating is going to be. But i know they have already been testing it, and so far so good. Its not gonna happen completely and get people out ofjobs, no. Theres always going to be human beings driving the trucks. Have you ever known a machine that can go down the highway or function right . They dont always work, its true. No, it doesnt work. Look at the accidents that have happened already. Need i say more . But lets not get ahead of ourselves here. These drivers almost certainly have a while yet before theirjobs disappear. While the advancements weve seen in the last few years are more than impressive, getting a computer to fully understand the real world, and drive safely through it, will be a monumental achievement. Theyre not saying its done, because its not. This not a solved problem, it is a hard problem, it is many years before you can buy a car that has no Steering Wheel and you can say, ill have the car with no windscreen, and it has the same functionality as your car now. They will always have subhuman capacity and superhuman capacity in other things. Subhuman in their ability to reason, about all the extraordinary things that can happen on a road that has nothing to do with driving. Superhuman in their ability to concentrate and never ever, ever get distracted. To see in ways that humans dont see with radar and laser, to sense distance, extraordinary things and above all, the ability for these vehicles to share and acquire competencies, not because of their own experience but because of the experience of all the other vehicles everywhere else in the world, thats an extraordinary thing and that is the compelling reason why these vehicles are coming. They will be better than us, because there is nothing in our evolutionary history that makes us good at controlling 1. 5 tons of metal at 70 miles an hour. Here in arizona, ive seen the benefits of and the resistance to the idea of the machines taking over another part of our lives. So i think the question is not if or when this will happen, but will we let it . Hello. In the last couple of days, some of the showers that weve seen breaking out across the uk have been nothing short of vicious, leading to disruption to transport and localised flooding. In the next few days, not an entirely dry story, but far fewer showers, and they should also be less aggressive. The reason being the culprit for all of the showers in the last few days, this area of low pressure, pulling out into the north sea. Still close enough by, though, on thursday to exert some influence. Quite gusty winds along the north sea coasts, thicker cloud piling in here at times too. And there will be some showers on the outer periphery of the low, if you like, stretching probably in a line, most likely from the north west of scotland down into east anglia. Plenty of sunny spells, however. The sunshine itself, though, could produce a few homegrown showers, for example across the north east of scotland. One or two of the showers, again, could be heavier. I cant rule out thunder and lightning entirely, but it should be nowhere near as extensive as it has been in the last couple of days. Just a chance of a few showers developing across dorset, devon and cornwall come the afternoon. Up to 25 in what should be a sunny london. Theres a slim chance of one or two showers breaking out across the midlands through the afternoon. We may see some evidence of those for day one of the ashes at edgbaston, but i think hopefully were going to get away with it here, with some sunny spells and highs about 20 21 degrees. Through the evening and overnight, many of the showers clear as the low Pressure Centre whirls across towards the netherlands. Were left with quite a bit of cloud, though, and in some spots, with just light winds, it could turn misty and murky. Overnight lows in the mid teens. As for friday, well, the lows away to the east. Not a bad day, i think, in the making, again with a little bit of help from the sun, though we could see one or two showers just brewing up, probably somewhere across Northern England through into the midlands. But for the majority of the uk, light winds, sunny spells, and temperatures in the low to mid 20s. For the weekend, that little bit of ridging that calms things down for friday hangs on in there on saturday. But by sunday, it looks like well see a weather front starting to approach, so that will bring an increasing chance of rain into Western Areas through the course of the day on sunday. Just how far east that rain makes it is somewhat uncertain at the moment, but it does look like once those fronts start to push in on sunday, they will really work their way through across the uk as we go into the following week. Plenty more showers, unfortunately, in our longer term forecast. This is bbc news. Welcome if youre watching here in the uk, on pbs in america or around the globe. 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