双语科普故事 | “自动驾驶出租车接管潮” 遇阻

Current Situation: The Implementation of Driverless Taxis and Emerging Issues

现状：无人驾驶出租车的实施与新出现的问题

Self-driving cars are hitting city streets like never before. In August the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) granted two companies, Cruise and Waymo, permits to run fleets of driverless robo taxis 24/7 in San Francisco and to charge passengers fares for those rides. This was just the latest in a series of green lights that have allowed progressively more leeway for autonomous vehicles (AVs) in the city in recent years.

自动驾驶汽车正以前所未有的态势涌入城市街道。8月，加州公共事业委员会（CPUC）批准Cruise和Waymo两家公司，允许它们在旧金山全天24小时、每周7天运营无人驾驶出租车车队，并向乘客收取车费。这仅仅是近年来允许该市自动驾驶汽车（AVs）拥有更多行动空间的一系列批准信号中的最新一个。

Almost immediately, widely publicized accounts emerged of Cruise vehicles behaving erratically. One blocked the road outside a large music festival, another got stuck in wet concrete and another even collided with a fire truck. These incidents have brought renewed attention to the potential difficulties of integrating self-driving cars into the urban environment. Fewer than 10 days after CPUC's 24/7 approval, the California Department of Motor Vehicles requested that Cruise halve the size of its operating fleet in San Francisco while the regulator investigates the fire-truck collision.

然而，加州公共事业委员会批准24小时运营许可后不久，Cruise自动驾驶汽车行为异常的消息便被广泛报道。其中一辆在大型音乐节场外堵住道路，另一辆陷进未干的混凝土里，甚至有一辆与消防车发生相撞事件。这些事件让人们再次关注自动驾驶汽车融入城市环境可能面临的难题。加州公共事业委员会批准24小时运营许可不到10天，加州车辆管理局便要求Cruise将其在旧金山的运营车队规模缩减一半，同时加州车辆管理局将对消防车相撞事件展开调查。

Yet despite these hiccups and some ongoing opposition, self-driving car companies have continued to expand testing and operations to more U.S. cities. Many proponents say these vehicles could offer a safer alternative to human drivers, make transportation accessible to more people, improve traffic flows around cities and decrease the environmental impact of cars. So far, though, most of those promised benefits remain squarely in a possible future. Meanwhile, here in the present, complications have become plainly apparent. Scientific American asked experts in the field what's important to understand about the current state of the robo-taxi rollout.

尽管面临这些小插曲以及部分持续的反对意见，自动驾驶汽车公司仍在继续将测试和运营范围扩大到美国更多城市。许多支持者表示相比人类驾驶员，自动驾驶汽车更安全，能让更多人获得出行服务，改善城市交通流量，并降低汽车对环境的影响。但到目前为止，这些承诺的好处大多显然还只是未来可能实现的愿景。与此同时，当下的现实中，各种复杂情况已清晰显现。《美国科学人》就此采访了该领域的专家，探讨当前自动驾驶出租车推广过程中值得关注的关键问题。

The Technical Positioning of Autonomous Vehicles

自动驾驶汽车的技术定位

AVs, such as those operated by Cruise and Waymo, shouldn't be confused with commercially available cars, such as Teslas, that come with some driver-assistance features. Unlike those vehicles, which require a human driver to oversee control at all times, robo taxis demonstrate what's often called “Level 4” autonomy: they can navigate a predetermined area without a person monitoring and managing each movement from behind a steering wheel. This is made possible via a very detailed internal map, says Ramanarayan Vasudevan, an engineer who researches autonomous vehicles at the University of Michigan.

Cruise和Waymo运营的这类自动驾驶汽车，不应与特斯拉等具备驾驶辅助功能的商用汽车混淆。这些车需要人类驾驶员全程监督驾驶操作，而自动驾驶出租车则实现了常被称为“L4级”自动驾驶能力：它们能在预先设定的区域内行驶，无需人类坐在方向盘后监控和操控每一个动作。密歇根大学自动驾驶汽车研究工程师拉马纳拉扬・瓦苏德文表示，这种能力的实现依赖于一张极为精细的内部地图。

That satellite-linked map covers a limited area within which these vehicles are “geofenced,”meaning they can't operate beyond their designated bounds. “The map is like a cheat code,” Vasudevan explains. With it, the cars can tackle complex environments. They also rely on an extensive network of sensors, including cameras, sound detectors and laser-based lidar, all of which help place a vehicle inside the map's lanes and provide real-time information on weather, passing pedestrians, construction and other road conditions.

这套连接卫星的地图覆盖范围有限，自动驾驶汽车被“地理围栏”限制，无法超出指定区域。瓦苏德文解释道：“这份地图就像‘作弊码’，有了它，车辆可以应对复杂的环境。”同时，车辆还依赖庞大的传感器网络，包括摄像头、声音探测器和激光雷达，这些设备能帮助车辆在地图车道中定位，还能提供天气、行人通行、道路施工及其他路况的实时信息。

From there, machine-learning algorithms—trained on big sets of both modeled and real-world driving data—translate a vehicle’s map and sensor information into projections about what nearby cars, people or cyclists are likely to do, Vasudevan says. Additional artificial intelligence programming tells the AV how to move, while preset guidelines ensure it follows traffic laws. And if it gets stuck in a difficult situation, says Waymo software engineer Josh Herbach, a human operator can remotely guide it to perform the appropriate action from a desk in a control center.

瓦苏德文指出，此后，经过海量模拟与真实驾驶数据训练的机器学习算法，会将车辆地图和传感器信息转化为对周边车辆、行人或骑行者可能行为的预测。额外的人工智能程序会指引自动驾驶汽车行驶，而预设准则则确保车辆遵守交通规则。Waymo软件工程师乔希・赫巴赫表示，若车辆陷入难以处理的状况，人类操作员可远程指导车辆采取适当行动。

The Controversy Over the Safety of Self-driving Cars

自动驾驶汽车安全性引发的争议

Waymo and Cruise maintain that their AVs are safer than human drivers. Both companies have released data that they claim support this, and some outside researchers agree. Yet the truth may not be as cut-and-dried as company stats make it seem, says Steven Shladover, an engineer at the University of California, Berkeley, who has been studying vehicle automation for 50 years.

Waymo 和 Cruise 都声称其自动驾驶汽车比人类驾驶员更安全。两家公司都发布了声称能证明这一点的数据，部分外部研究人员也对此表示认同。但研究车辆自动化已有50年的加州大学伯克利分校工程师史蒂文・施拉多弗认为，实际情况可能并不像公司数据所呈现的那样一目了然。

“I actually think there is not yet enough data available to the public, including researchers like me, to be able to judge” relative safety, Shladover says. AV companies do not share all the data they collect. Often negative incidents only come to light if they're recorded or posted on social media. Even the data on human drivers are incomplete because they only include major collisions, Shladover adds.

“事实上，目前向公众（包括我这样的研究人员）提供的数据还不足以让我们对自动驾驶汽车与人类驾驶的相对安全性做出准确判断，”施拉多弗表示，“自动驾驶汽车公司没有公布其收集的全部数据，通常只有被记录或发布到社交媒体上，负面事故才会曝光。他补充道，即便是人类驾驶员的数据也并不完整，因为这些数据只包含重大碰撞事故。”

The released data could easily be flawed because in order to accurately compare robo taxis with humans, it's necessary to account for how many miles are being driven and under what conditions—data that simply do not exist. People have many more accidents than AVs do, but more than 100 million humans are estimated to drive on U.S. roads every day, compared with just hundreds of driverless taxis. Looking at estimates of how many driving hours people log nationwide, “crashes with human drivers are actually extremely rare events” relative to the total amount of time humans spend on the road, Shladover says. Data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration seem to back this up.

已发布的数据或许存在缺陷，因为要准确比较自动驾驶出租车和人类驾驶的安全性，需要考虑行驶里程数以及行驶时的环境条件 —— 而这些关键数据目前根本不存在。人类驾驶发生事故确实比自动驾驶汽车多，但据估计，美国每天有超过1亿人驾车出行，相比之下，自动驾驶出租车仅有数百辆。施拉多弗指出，若结合全国范围内人类驾驶的总时长估算，“相对于人类总的驾驶时长，人类驾驶碰撞事故的概率其实极低”。美国国家公路交通安全管理局的数据似乎也印证了这一点。

Though a perfect automated system would undoubtedly be a better driver than a person, Vasudevan notes that such a system simply doesn't exist. “Our ability as humans to build millions and millions of lines of code in a way that is 100 percent correct is nearly impossible for the same reason that humans are imperfect at driving,” he says. Asked if he thinks AVs are safer drivers than people, Vasudevan generally agrees with Shladover. “I don't think that story is as clear as self-driving car enthusiasts would like us to believe,” Vasudevan says.

瓦苏德文指出，尽管若能实现的完美自动化系统无疑会比人类驾驶员更安全，但这样的系统目前根本不存在。他表示：“人类编写数百万行代码而要保证100%无差错，这几乎是不可能的，就像人类驾驶也无法做到完美无缺一样。” 当被问及是否认为自动驾驶汽车比人类驾驶员更安全时，瓦苏德文的观点与施拉多弗基本一致：“我认为实际情况并不像自动驾驶汽车支持者想让我们相信的那样明确。”

The Potential Impacts and Regulatory Issues of Autonomous Vehicles

自动驾驶汽车的潜在影响与监管挑战

Beyond safety, one commonly touted AV advantage is that driverless cars will boost transportation accessibility and affordability while also reducing the need for car ownership. Another is that more AVs on the road might lessen traffic congestion and ease city planning by enabling vehicles to communicate with each other and ensuring that they correctly follow the best routes at the right times. Yet neither of these possibilities has become reality yet—and getting there isn't a guarantee, says Dan Chatman, an urban planning and transit researcher at U.C. Berkeley.

除安全性外，自动驾驶汽车常被提及的另一个优势是：无人驾驶能提高出行的可及性和经济性，同时减少人们对私家车的需求。随着道路上自动驾驶汽车数量增多，车辆间实现互联，能确保其在正确时间选择最优路线行驶，从而缓解交通拥堵，让城市规划更轻松。但加州大学伯克利分校城市规划与交通研究员丹・查特曼表示，这些可能性目前均未成为现实，且未来能否实现也无法保证。

Although he's optimistic about AVs and excited by their potential in San Francisco, Chatman acknowledges there's a version of the future in which robo taxis cause more problems than they fix. They could exacerbate urban sprawl, clog up roads instead of relieving traffic and dissuade people from the most sustainable forms of transportation: biking, walking and public transit. 

尽管查特曼对自动驾驶汽车持乐观态度，并对其在旧金山的发展潜力感到兴奋，但他也承认，未来可能出现一种情况：自动驾驶出租车引发的问题比解决的问题更多。它们可能加剧城市无序扩张，非但无法缓解交通压力，还会让道路更加拥堵，还可能让人们放弃自行车、步行和公共交通等最可持续的出行方式。

“A lot depends on the extent to which they are regulated,” he says. There are policies that could encourage people to ditch cars, such as road pricing, which would ensure that the true environmental and social cost of running a vehicle—whether human- or robot-driven—is paid by its operator. “We haven't done a great job of regulating automobility in general. And so this is a chance for us to recalibrate how we deal with” cars, Chatman says.

他表示：“这在很大程度上取决于对自动驾驶汽车的监管力度。”目前已有一些政策能鼓励人们弃用私家车，例如道路收费政策，该政策能确保车辆运营者（无论是人类驾驶还是机器人驾驶）承担车辆运营真实的环境成本和社会成本。查特曼说：“总体而言，我们在机动车监管方面做得并不理想。因此，这为我们重新调整机动车管理方式提供了契机。”

leeway  n.余地，灵活性

hiccup  n.小问题，暂时的困难

proponent  n.支持者，拥护者

congestion  n.拥堵

sprawl  n.（城市的）无序扩张

grant  v.授予，批准

collide  v.碰撞，相撞

dissuade  v.劝阻，劝止

erratic  adj.不稳定的，无规律的

cut-and-dried adj.明确的，一目了然的