Dogs will relish chasing self-driving cars.
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Dogs relish chasing after all kinds of objects such as weathered tennis balls and worn-out frisbees.
Unfortunately, dogs also delight in chasing after passing cars, which is a really bad idea.
If you’ve ever witnessed first-hand as a brazen dog wildly ran to catch a car coming swiftly down your neighborhood street, it is a quite scary affair and will undoubtedly make your heartbeat uncontrollably. One possibility is that the driver decides to swerve or hit the brakes, any of which might end up with the dog getting hit by the car. More likely, and usually with a more adverse outcome, some other upcoming car will not see the dog that is running in the street and will accidentally ram smackdab into or entirely run over the canine.
We know that these pell-mell pursuits of a moving car are fraught with grave danger.
Dogs might not realize the peril and instead perceive the car as a shiny object that is well-worth chasing. In some ways, it seems like a fun game for the dog to be playing, at least that’s what the dog is possibly thinking. Those brash dogs that undertake this form of a daredevil sporting endeavor are usually trying to catch up with the moving vehicle, and at least are not running face-forward into the path of the car per se.
If the car keeps going on its existing traversal, ostensibly away from the pursuing pooch, the odds are that the dog won’t reach the vehicle and will by happenstance escape the particular danger of getting entangled with the car. Still, there is the frightening aspect that the animal is likely now stranded in the middle of the street and other cars could fail to spy the beloved hound.
Some believe that dogs chase after cars as part of a herding instinct. Maybe in the minds-eye of a dog, the car is akin to a ferocious wolf and the dog is saving all the rest of us from the wickedness of a vicious wolf-pack style attack. Another theory is that the dog is merely utilizing its innate ability to stalk after prey. This seems somewhat questionable since the dog is typically making all sorts of howling noises and not slinking quietly up upon the passing car, but it nonetheless could be a strategy used for capturing quarry that potentially works in the wild and therefore might work on everyday streets.
It is hard to know what the dog is thinking.
Perhaps there is fear involved. The dog might be intrinsically fearful of this large-sized unknown object that is steadily moving along. A reaction to the fear could be to lash out at the massive thing and try to stop it or maybe damage it. Some say this shows how gutsy dogs can sometimes be. This same possibility relates to the dog as a heroic figure, trying to save the pedestrians and other humans walking around from the mysterious contraption that seemingly endangers everyone in the vicinity.
Trying to make somewhat lighter remarks, some jokingly suggest the dog wants to catch and keep the car as a prized possession. Imagine how impressed the other dogs in the community would be if the capturing dog was able to showcase that they had wrangled a car to the ground and dragged it back to their private doghouse. One supposes that the proud winning dog might even dig a large hole and try to bury the car, as though the vehicle was the largest bone that the dog had ever managed to collect.
You might go so far as to suggest that the dog wants to drive the car (see my analysis about dogs being trained to drive, at this link here).
Some say the real reason a dog chases after a car is because it can.
Let’s dig into that remark a bit more so.
Assuming that a human owner is responsible for the dog, that person is allowing the pooch to do something it shouldn’t be doing. In essence, it is the fault of the human and not particularly the fault of the dog. People ought to take care of their dogs and either keep their pets from being freely able to chase after a car or as a minimum train their dogs to decidedly not partake in such a hazardous practice, goes this logic.
Sure, it can be challenging to teach a dog to not chase after cars. The arduous task can involve hours upon hours of careful and conscientious effort with your treasured pet. There isn’t much argument about the difficulties involved. That being said, the time is well spent and necessary for the well-being of all parties.
The other obvious point to be made is that if a dog is routinely kept on a leash, for which most locales have pointed leash laws, there is not much chance that a dog can indeed chase after a car. Unless the human relinquishes the leash or allows their dog out of a fenced area, presumably the opportunity to actively give chase after a car is nearly nonexistent.
Of course, slipups can occur. The most faithful of owners could inadvertently let the leash escape from their grasp while walking their dog, especially if the enthused animal suddenly and surprisingly darts away without any warning. Or perhaps a fenced area has a gate that wasn’t properly locked, and the dog shoved at the potential opening while fiercely intent on watching that car travel down the street. For those myriads of reasons, training a dog to not chase a car has added merits.
Why all this talk about dogs chasing cars?
Consider that the future of cars consists of self-driving cars. In the case of true self-driving cars, there won’t be a human driver at the wheel. An AI driving system will be in charge of the driving controls and determining how the car will be driven (for more details about self-driving cars, see my discussion at this link here).
Tying together these two topics, it will be important for AI driving systems and thus self-driving cars to be able to contend with dogs that opt to chase cars. Yes, it would seem just as likely that a dog might chase a self-driving car as they would a human-driven car.
Today’s intriguing question is this: How will an AI-based true self-driving car contend with dogs that chase cars and can we rest easy knowing that those self-driving cars will do the right thing?
Let’s unpack the matter and see.
Understanding The Levels Of Self-Driving Cars
As a clarification, true self-driving cars are ones that the AI drives the car entirely on its own and there isn’t any human assistance during the driving task.
These driverless vehicles are considered Level 4 and Level 5 (see my explanation at this link here), while a car that requires a human driver to co-share the driving effort is usually considered at Level 2 or Level 3. The cars that co-share the driving task are described as being semi-autonomous, and typically contain a variety of automated add-on’s that are referred to as ADAS (Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems).
There is not yet a true self-driving car at Level 5, which we don’t yet even know if this will be possible to achieve, and nor how long it will take to get there.
Meanwhile, the Level 4 efforts are gradually trying to get some traction by undergoing very narrow and selective public roadway trials, though there is controversy over whether this testing should be allowed per se (we are all life-or-death guinea pigs in an experiment taking place on our highways and byways, some contend, see my coverage at this link here).
Since semi-autonomous cars require a human driver, the adoption of those types of cars won’t be markedly different than driving conventional vehicles, so there’s not much new per se to cover about them on this topic (though, as you’ll see in a moment, the points next made are generally applicable).
For semi-autonomous cars, it is important that the public needs to be forewarned about a disturbing aspect that’s been arising lately, namely that despite those human drivers that keep posting videos of themselves falling asleep at the wheel of a Level 2 or Level 3 car, we all need to avoid being misled into believing that the driver can take away their attention from the driving task while driving a semi-autonomous car.
You are the responsible party for the driving actions of the vehicle, regardless of how much automation might be tossed into a Level 2 or Level 3.
Self-Driving Cars And Those Dogs That Chase Cars
For Level 4 and Level 5 true self-driving vehicles, there won’t be a human driver involved in the driving task.
All occupants will be passengers.
The AI is doing the driving.
One aspect to immediately discuss entails the fact that today’s AI is not sentient. In other words, the AI is altogether a collective of computer-based programming and algorithms, and most assuredly not able to reason in the same manner that humans can. For example, current AI lacks any semblance of common sense and nor has any kind of common-sense reasoning (for further background, see the link here).
This is important to keep in mind when considering the matter of a dog that chases after a self-driving car.
A human driver would realize the significance of a chasing dog. The driver would comprehend that a dog is, well, a dog. It can scamper and run. It can do things that aren’t wise to do. It can veer this way and that way, nearly erratically. The dog might pursue the chasing car and abruptly decide it has had enough and come to a halt. Or the dog might run up onto lawns and across homes to try and reach the car, thus not taking a straight path toward reaching the in-motion vehicle.
None of that is “understood” within an AI driving system, and even if the AI driving system is programmed to cope with the act of dogs that chase cars, keep in mind that the programming is only programming and does not have the robustness of human thinking intertwined.
Consider this weighty facet in a somewhat different light.
Suppose you had a teenage novice driver that was just initially in the throes of learning to drive. The neophyte is barely able to use the pedals and the steering wheel, in the sense that they are unsure of how to perform the driving task.
If that teenager was driving in a local neighborhood and all of a sudden a dog started to give chase, there is no question that the young adult would indubitably comprehend the significance of what a dog is, how a dog acts, and the qualms associated with having a dog chasing their car. Unless the teenager has been living in a cave their whole life, they would inarguably know what dogs are and what they can do.
I’m not suggesting that the novice driver would know what to do in such a driving circumstance and simply emphasizing that the human driver would realize the nature of dogs. This goes into the earlier exhortation about a semblance of common sense. Despite those that might chortle about ascribing common sense to teenagers, you must admit that a teenager is quite likely to have rather extensive knowledge and awareness about dogs.
An AI driving system of today is unlikely to have anything at all that provides background about dogs. There is no overarching reason to go to the trouble to infuse this kind of information into an AI driving system at this time (exceptions do apply). The developers have enough on their hands in terms of getting a self-driving car to be able to safely go from point A to point B, and thus the so-called edge case or corner case involving a chasing dog is very low on the priority list.
In essence, the AI driving system might do something like this.
First, realize that the sensors of the self-driving car usually include video cameras, radar, LIDAR, ultrasonic units, and the like. These are akin to being the eyes and ears of the AI driving system. Via those sensors, the AI driving system interprets the data being collected and attempts to discern the driving scene. Aspects include notable particulars such as where is the roadway, are there are other cars nearby, are there pedestrians nearby, and so on.
Trying to detect a dog is not particularly easy.
Dogs tend to be relatively low to the ground. Their movement can be quite quick. With pedestrians, you can oftentimes examine a visual image to figure out which way a pedestrian is possibly going to turn, or whether they have got their arms out and maybe are going to run into the street. Trying to do a similar analysis about dogs is relatively hard to do.
So, you’ve got a dog, as an object, which is low to the ground, moving fast, and difficult to predict in terms of what the object might do.
On top of those complexities, let’s assume the dog is coming up toward the self-driving car, doing so from behind the vehicle. By-and-large, the focus of the sensors and the AI driving system has to do with what’s ahead of the car, not especially what is behind the car (obviously, another car that is coming up fast from behind and that might ram the self-driving car is a vital consideration, though realize that another vehicle is a relatively larger object, more commonly expected, and generally easier to detect and predict).
All in all, the bad news for the dogs that chase cars are that few if any self-driving cars of today are prepared to cope with the specifics of a dog that is chasing the car. There are (at this time) not many AI driving systems that have a pre-programmed response to deal with a chasing dog. And, as mentioned, even trying to detect the dog is problematic, to begin with.
In the discussion earlier it was pointed out that the car being chased is perhaps less likely to end-up striking a dog and it might be more likely that other nearby cars might do so, assuming that there is other traffic. In that use case, the odds are a little better about the AI-based self-driving cars because they are perhaps diligently scanning the area and trying to continually ferret out what is going on in the driving scene.
Human drivers oftentimes will drive while distracted, ironically watching cat videos just when a dog happens to be in the middle of the street. The hope is that AI driving systems will be as safe or possibly safer than human drivers, partially due to the lack of distractions and also since the AI won’t be drinking and driving.
In short, one can be somewhat hopeful that if a self-driving car comes upon a situation wherein a dog is chasing after a car that is ahead of the self-driving car, there is some semblance of a chance that the AI driving system might detect the dog. Though the AI might not be able to classify what the object is, nonetheless, there is an object that has been detected and is presumably in the roadway, thus, it becomes an object to be given due consideration.
Most AI driving systems would interpret the object as something to be tracked and monitored, waiting to ascertain what the detected object is going to do. From the AI programming viewpoint, the object might just as well be a tumbleweed that has come onto the street and is weaving to and fro. Of course, a car can ram into a tumbleweed if needed, but ramming into a dog or other living creature is a different matter (see my discussion about roadway intervening animals and self-driving cars at this link here).
We can add a variety of twists to this dilemma.
A human driver is driving along, and a dog starts to chase after the moving car. A self-driving car is behind the car that is being chased by the dog. One concern involves the dog. Another concern involves the potential actions of the human driver.
Envision that the human driver in this scenario decides to “freak out” and slams on their brakes. Maybe the person believes that the best course of action is to come to a sudden halt. The dog will then be able to catch-up with the car. The human driver doesn’t have to worry about running over the dog since the car is now at a standstill.
Seems like impeccable logic.
Don’t though forget that there is another car immersed in this driving scenario, namely the self-driving car that is behind the human-driven car. It is conceivable that the abrupt act of the human driver might lead to the self-driving car rear-ending the human-driven car. This could certainly happen too if the car that was behind the stopped car was being driven by a person, and thus you cannot somehow ascribe that this would only happen to an AI-based self-driving car.
The crux of this twist is that the AI driving system has to be programmed to anticipate the reactions of other objects in the driving scene, including what the human-driven cars are going to do or react in response to the bolting dog.
Another object that might get involved in this expanding scenario could be a pedestrian or perhaps a slew of pedestrians, all of whom suddenly decide they will come into the street to try and save the dog. You can easily imagine this kind of reaction. People that see a dog in danger are likely to take dangerous actions themselves, doing so in hopes of saving the dog and without necessarily giving due thought to their own safety, and nor the safety of the passengers in the cars entangled in the entire affair.
The point is that a dog chasing a car can be an entangling web of activities that rapidly unfold or evolve while the driving action is underway. If you only construe the matter as one dog and one car, you have demonstrably understated the nature of the problem and the life-or-death consequences that can arise.
Conclusion
Some believe that dogs won’t chase after a self-driving car.
Here’s why they say this.
Dogs are aware today that a human is at the wheel, presumably being able to see the person, and therefore they are chasing not merely a car, they are also chasing the person. Since an AI-based true self-driving car does not have a human driver at the wheel, dogs will no longer feel any need or incentive to chase after cars.
Sorry, but as they say, that logic won’t hunt.
First, it seems questionable to assume that dogs can connect the notion that a car is being driven by a human with the aspect that this big shiny object is coming down the street. In many cases, the human driver is not readily seen anyway. All in all, the odds are higher than the dog is chasing the car, and not somehow trying to chase the human driver (to clarify, sure, there are rarer instances of the dog spying their owner driving a car and wanting to follow their owner, that kind of situation).
Secondly, there are going to be passengers inside self-driving cars. Not all of the time, since it is abundantly possible for self-driving cars to be roaming around without passengers, or possibly doing a delivery chore and there is no need for any riders inside. In any case, for likely much of the time, there are going to be people riding inside self-driving cars.
Can the dog distinguish between humans that are driving a car versus humans merely residing in a car?
Look, I am the first to say that dogs are darned smart, and we ought to give them immense credit, but it seems rather farfetched to claim that dogs principally choose to chase cars due to there being a human driver at the wheel, and furthermore that these savvy pooches would ergo also mentally calculate that human riders inside a self-driving car are not serving as human drivers.
Since my dog does the balancing of my checkbook each month for me, I’ll bring this up during the time that we have together for doing my accounting and see what the dog says. Probably will cost me some of his favored dog biscuits, but it will be worth it to find out exactly why dogs do indeed chase cars.
I’ll let you know.
