【中英文】IIHS对自动驾驶的灵魂拷问，比人更安全吗？

近期，一份来自于IIHS（美国高速公路安全保险协会）的一份关于自动驾驶的研究报告，引发热议。里面提到，如果自动驾驶系统与人的驾驶方式相似，那么可能只能避免大约三分之一的交通事故。这与很多人眼中，自动驾驶能避免绝大多数事故，有点不太相符。此前，麦肯锡发布了一份报告，称自动驾驶的全面普及可以减少90%的交通事故，每年减少1900亿美元损害赔偿和医疗费用。

其实，这份报告主要是提醒自动驾驶技术对于安全性的关注，提到的一些数据都是有前提的。为了避免一些片面解读，本文对IIHS的研究文章进行中英文对照翻译，供大家参考！

标题：

Self-driving vehicles could struggle to eliminate most crashes

自动驾驶汽车很难规避大部分撞车事故

Will autonomous vehicles be better than humans at predicting, planning and execution?

自动驾驶汽车在判断、决策和执行方面能比人类做得更好吗？

Driver mistakes play a role in virtually all crashes. That’s why automation has been held up as a potential game changer for safety. But autonomous vehicles might prevent only around a third of all crashes if automated systems drive too much like people, according to a new study from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

几乎所有的车祸都有人为失误的影响。这就是为什么大家认为，在安全方面自动化有可能改变这一局面。但是，IIHS的一项最新研究表明，如果自动驾驶系统与人的驾驶方式相似，那么可能只能避免大约三分之一的交通事故。

“It’s likely that fully self-driving cars will eventually identify hazards better than people, but we found that this alone would not prevent the bulk of crashes,” says Jessica Cicchino, IIHS vice president for research and a coauthor of the study.

“自动驾驶汽车能比人更快识别出危险，但我们发现，仅凭这一点能避免的撞车事故有限。”IIHS副总裁同时也是该研究的参与者Jessica Ciccino说。

Conventional thinking has it that self-driving vehicles could one day make crashes a thing of the past. The reality is not that simple. According to a national survey of police-reported crashes, driver error is the final failure in the chain of events leading to more than 9 out of 10 crashes.

传统观念认为，总有一天，自动驾驶汽车会使撞车事故成为过去式。现实并非如此简单。根据一项针对交通事故的全国性调查，10起交通事故中至少有9起是因为驾驶员的失误。

But the Institute’s analysis suggests that only about a third of those crashes were the result of mistakes that automated vehicles would be expected to avoid simply because they have more accurate perception than human drivers and aren’t vulnerable to incapacitation. To avoid the other two-thirds, they would need to be specifically programmed to prioritize safety over speed and convenience.

但该研究所的分析表明，通过自动驾驶可以避免的事故，只占1/3。原因很简单，因为它们比人类驾驶员的感知能力更准确，而且不会轻易丧失驾驶能力。只有自动驾驶车的程序认为安全优先于速度和便利性，才能够规避更多撞车事故。

“Building self-driving cars that drive as well as people do is a big challenge in itself,” says IIHS Research Scientist Alexandra Mueller, lead author of the study. “But they’d actually need to be better than that to deliver on the promises we’ve all heard.”

IIHS研究专家，同时也是该项研究的主要作者Alexandra Mueller说：“自动驾驶想达到人类驾驶水平本身就是巨大的挑战。”“实际上需要超越人类，才能达到减少事故的目标。”

To estimate how many crashes might continue to occur if self-driving cars are designed to make the same decisions about risk that humans do, IIHS researchers examined more than 5,000 police-reported crashes from the National Motor Vehicle Crash Causation Survey. Collected by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, this sample is representative of crashes across the U.S. in which at least one vehicle was towed away, and emergency medical services were called to the scene.

如果自动驾驶汽车能像人类一样对风险做出预判，还会发生多少起事故呢？为了估算这一数值，IIHS的研究人员对全国机动车事故原因调查中5000多起警方报告的事故进行了调查。该样本由NHTSA（美国公路交通安全管理局）收集，针对的是美国各地发生的至少一辆车被拖走，并且紧急医疗服务人员被派往现场的车祸事故。

The IIHS team reviewed the case files and separated the driver-related factors that contributed to the crashes into five categories:

IIHS小组审查了案件档案，并将导致车祸的驾驶员相关因素分为五类：

“Sensing and perceiving” errors included things like driver distraction, impeded visibility and failing to recognize hazards before it was too late.

“Predicting” errors occurred when drivers misjudged a gap in traffic, incorrectly estimated how fast another vehicle was going or made an incorrect assumption about what another road user was going to do.

“Planning and deciding” errors included driving too fast or too slow for the road conditions, driving aggressively or leaving too little following distance from the vehicle ahead.

“Execution and performance” errors included inadequate or incorrect evasive maneuvers, overcompensation and other mistakes in controlling the vehicle.

“Incapacitation” involved impairment due to alcohol or drug use, medical problems or falling asleep at the wheel.

“感知”错误：驾驶员分心、视线受阻和未及时发现危险等。

“判断”错误：错估另外一辆车的速度、方向变化和行车间隙。

“决策”错误：车速太快或太慢、驾驶情绪过激或与前方车辆跟车距离太小。

“执行”错误：规避不充分或不正确、过度补偿和其他驾驶操作层面的错误。

“丧失驾驶能力”：因酒精、毒品、药物等导致驾驶员能力受损的情况。

The researchers also determined that some crashes were unavoidable, such as those caused by a vehicle failure like a blowout or broken axle.

研究人员还表明，有些事故是不可避免的，比如那些由于车辆故障造成的（如爆胎或车轴断裂）。

For the study, the researchers imagined a future in which all the vehicles on the road are self-driving. They assumed these future vehicles would prevent those crashes that were caused exclusively by perception errors or involved an incapacitated driver. That’s because cameras and sensors of fully autonomous vehicles could be expected to monitor the roadway and identify potential hazards better than a human driver and be incapable of distraction or incapacitation.

在这项研究中，研究人员设想，在未来，路上所有车辆都是自动驾驶的。他们认为这能规避掉由感知错误和驾驶能力丧失导致的事故。这是因为全自动汽车的摄像头和传感器在监控道路和识别潜在危险方面比人类驾驶员做得更好，而且它们不会分散注意力或丧失驾驶能力。

Crashes due to only sensing and perceiving errors accounted for 24 percent of the total, and incapacitation accounted for 10 percent. Those crashes might be avoided if all vehicles on the road were self-driving — though it would require sensors that worked perfectly and systems that never malfunctioned. The remaining two-thirds might still occur unless autonomous vehicles are also specifically programmed to avoid other types of predicting, decision-making and performance errors.

因感知错误造成的事故占24%，而因驾驶员丧失能力造成的占10%。如果路上的所有车辆都实现自动驾驶，这些事故是可以避免的——但这需要车辆传感器工作正常和系统运转良好。剩下的三分之二的事故仍然可能会发生，除非自动驾驶车辆的程序也能避免其他几种类型的错误。

Consider the crash of an Uber test vehicle that killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona, in March 2018. Its automated driving system initially struggled to correctly identify 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg on the side of the road. But once it did, it still was not able to predict that she would cross in front of the vehicle, and it failed to execute the correct evasive maneuver to avoid striking her when she did so.

以2018年3月发生在亚利桑那州坦佩市，一辆Uber测试车撞死一名行人的事故为例。车辆的自动驾驶系统很难正确识别路边的行人。就算它能识别出，它仍然无法预测行人是否会从车前穿过，而且它也无法执行正确的规避动作来避免撞到行人。

Planning and deciding errors, such as speeding and illegal maneuvers, were contributing factors in about 40 percent of crashes in the study sample. The fact that deliberate decisions made by drivers can lead to crashes indicates that rider preferences might sometimes conflict with the safety priorities of autonomous vehicles. For self-driving vehicles to live up to their promise of eliminating most crashes, they will have to be designed to focus on safety rather than rider preference when those two are at odds.

在研究样本中，约40%的事故是由决策失误（如超速和非法操作）造成的。驾驶员经过深思熟虑做出的决定可能导致撞车事故，这一事实表明，驾驶员的决策和偏好有时可能与自动驾驶车辆的安全优先级相冲突。自动驾驶汽车要想实现消除大多数事故的承诺，就必须在设计时重视车辆安全，而不是在两者发生冲突时关注驾驶者的偏好。

Self-driving vehicles will need not only to obey traffic laws but also to adapt to road conditions and implement driving strategies that account for uncertainty about what other road users will do, such as driving more slowly than a human driver would in areas with high pedestrian traffic or in low-visibility conditions.

自动驾驶车辆不仅需要遵守交通法规，还需要考虑路况，考虑到其他道路使用者的不确定性，并采取相应驾驶策略。例如在行人流量大或能见度低的地方，要开得比人更慢。

“Our analysis shows that it will be crucial for designers to prioritize safety over rider preferences if autonomous vehicles are to live up to their promise to be safer than human drivers,” Mueller says.

Mueller说：“我们的分析表明，如果自动驾驶汽车要实现比人类驾驶汽车更安全的承诺，那么设计师就必须将安全性放在优先于驾驶者偏好的位置。”

关于自动驾驶，你是不是有很多疑问呢？一场年度自动驾驶技术盛宴即将到来！