Tire Blowouts Could Cause Self-Driving Cars To Go Astray

Have you ever had a tire go bad on you?

Sometimes, a tire can seemingly obliterate and become a tangled mess of rubber and threads.

If this happens, a driver is likely to be taken by utter surprise, oftentimes reacting instinctively by doing the wrong things. For example, jamming on the brakes is not necessarily the wisest course of action in such a situation. Usually, taking firm control of the car and gradually bringing the vehicle to a stop is the more prudent approach. There is also the question of directional movement, such that you normally would remain in a straight-ahead driving motion overall, and slowly angle over to get out of the way of other cars. Sudden moves such as a radical turn are not apt to provide the desired results.

With today’s tires, fortunately, there is a lessened chance of those wild blowouts than used to be relatively commonplace. The types of materials that tires are made of and how they are constructed has advanced dramatically over the years. Specialized tires that are built to remain self-supporting when there is a tire issue have also become more widely available.

You might be tempted to think that run-flat tires (RFT’s) are prevalent these days and somehow found on all cars, but industry figures show that just 14% of new cars are outfitted with RFT’s. The preponderance of cars on the roadways do not yet have run-flats on them.

Speaking of run-flat tires, there are several myths worth exploring. First, it is possible to have a blowout of an RFT, though it would be unusual and tend to occur due to a driver that was exceedingly foolhardy. Here’s how that can happen. The driver realizes they have a flat, but figure that since they have run-flat tires it is no big deal. For RFT’s, the typical recommendation is to drive at reduced speeds once a flat occurs and aim to put on no more than a few dozen miles while it is punctured, limiting to less than a hundred miles all told. Despite these recommendations, an aggressive driver that decides to drive all out and disregard the tire malady can end-up pummeling the run-flat into mulch.

Another frequent assumption is that everyone wants run-flat tires more so than conventional tires. Turns out that some people prefer a conventional tire, though not necessarily for the reason that you might expect. One of the primary reasons given is to then have a spare tire available. In short, with conventional tires, usually, there is a spare tire provided in the trunk or somewhere attached to the vehicle, while with run-flat tires there is rarely a spare provided. Some people seem to like the idea of having a spare as a handy precaution, rather than betting on using the run-flat and getting to someplace where the tire can be either repaired or replaced.

Of course, we also know that sometimes people do not keep their spare in good shape. As such, when they find themselves in a bind and need to use the spare, it is not ready for primetime. There is also the concern that when people do have a spare, they might be tempted to change their tires amid a busy highway or byway. With the run-flat tires, you aren’t likely to be changing one on your own and thus no temptation to pull to the side of the road to do so.

The other twist is that your car might have conventional tires and yet lack a spare tire altogether. Assuming that the spare wasn’t somehow lost or stolen, it turns out that some cars these days are provided with a tire repair or inflator kit, in lieu of an actual spare tire. Some drivers are shocked to realize they did not have a spare and just assumed there must be one that is hidden inside the trunk of the vehicle. There seems no worse a feeling than going to get your spare out of the trunk, and then realizing that you are supposed to contend with a repair kit and an inflator. The Auto Club has pointed out that this is a double-whammy for car drivers in that they are apt to find it harder to use those kits than changing a tire (which already was hard enough) and might find themselves taking longer to cope with a kit and possibly being more endangered if doing so on the edge of a roadway (they suggest you call for service instead).

Well, life certainly has its tradeoffs, including when it comes to tires.

According to one set of statistics, nearly one-quarter of all roadside emergencies are due to a tire issue. It is further claimed that about 220 million flat tires are occurring each year in the United States alone, though the numbers on this facet are not entirely accurate and should be considered an approximation.  There is also the astounding assertion that the average U.S. driver will experience about five flat tires throughout their driving lifetime.

How many flat tires have you had?

Presumably, if less than five such occurrences to-date, better prepare yourself for the chances of ultimately arriving at five or more, unless you decide to stop driving cars.

Whoa, that brings up a related point.

Once there are true self-driving cars, will there be any tire blowouts or flat tires?

Some that believe in magic and shopworn myths are apt to say that the incredible nature of true self-driving cars will mean that they will never experience a flat tire. To make abundantly clear, that’s pure nonsense. A tire is a tire, regardless of one on a conventional human-driven car or one that is mounted on a true self-driving car.

Flat tires will occur with true self-driving cars. That’s a fact.

Here’s the more interesting and open-ended question to consider: Will the AI-based driving systems of true self-driving cars be able to cope with situations involving flat tires and tire blowouts?

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 a 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 a 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 point out, see my indication at this link here).

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.

Flat Tires and Tire Blowouts With Self-Driving 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.

Will the AI know how to handle a flat tire or a tire blowout?

Maybe, maybe not.

It all depends on what the automaker and the self-driving tech firm have done to ready the AI for such a situation. Some developers are so busy with the fundamental aspects of getting the AI to drive a car that they have put the chore of handling a tire issue as a secondary matter. Such secondary conditions or issues are usually referred to as edge or corner cases, relegated to a lower priority, and will be dealt with at some later time. This means that there isn’t any special provision in the AI to deal with a tire predicament in those self-driving cars. At a later date, when the developers can get around to it, they will craft such a provision and then proceed to do an update or upgrade of the AI accordingly (via the OTA or Over-The-Air electronic connection, if feasible).

This might seem rather shocking that the top priority of an AI driving system does not encompass what to do about a blown tire. The assumption generally by the developers is that if the AI “realizes” that something about the car is amiss, it has been programmed to try and safely bring the car to a halt. As such, whether the matter is a fouled tire or any myriad of mechanical problems, those are all lumped together into a contingency component of the AI that attempts to get the vehicle out of traffic and into a safe posture. The hope is that this catchall can sufficiently deal with a wide variety of untoward conditions, serving as a backstop before advancing the AI programming for specific handling of particular situations.

Some believe that this overarching mitigation is not adequate and that the allowance for how to deal with a tire issue ought to be higher on the priority list.

In any case, let’s consider what has to happen for the AI to undertake a flat tire scenario.

First, the AI has to become aware that a flat tire or its equivalent has taken place.

This is not as easy as it might seem.

A human driver would likely feel the car becoming unstable and potentially hear the dreaded thudding of the tire. The vehicle would tend to pull in the direction of the marred tire. Attempts to steer the car would possibly become more forced and less seamless. Noises coming from the tire as it flops along on the roadway would become apparent and the roughness of the ride would be felt as rattling in your bones.

The AI is not a human and not even a robot driver (note: some researchers are devising robots that are intended to drive, but this is unlikely to be achieved in the near-term). As such, there is no immediate way for the AI to experience the same ramifications or sensations that a human driver would feel. That being said, the AI would potentially detect that the steering is not being as responsive as it had been. When the AI sends commands to the steering mechanism and it is not producing the expected result, the AI would be able to detect that something is amiss.

Unless the self-driving car is equipped with special listening sensors, the odds of the AI hearing the tire sounds are pretty low (there are emerging advances aimed at using the sounds that a car makes as a means to inform the AI, a topic that I’ve discussed in several prior columns). The IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit) of the car might be useful to some degree for the detection of a blown tire, but whether it is going to properly register the bumpy ride and be translated into the possibility of a flat tire is something that would need to be explicitly programmed as function of the overall system.

You might scoff somewhat at this next point. One possibility for the AI to become aware of a flat tire would be if there is a passenger inside the self-driving car and the person invokes the AI’s Natural Language Processing (NLP) to tell the AI that there seems to be a flat tire. This is somewhat ironic or off-putting because the human is telling the AI, whereas you would likely think that the AI, being the driver, ought to be alerting the human passenger that a tire has gone flat.

Even this aspect of using the NLP to report a flat tire is yet another example of something that needs to be programmed into the AI capabilities. In other words, the AI systems of today do not have any common-sense reasoning or other generalized intelligence, thus, the passenger seeking to warn the AI about a flat tire could fall on deaf ears, as it were. The AI might merely respond that it does not know what the person is trying to convey.

Another angle then is potentially to have the passenger invoke access to a remote agent (a human). Most of the self-driving cars are being equipped with an OnStar-like facility that allows a rider to call up a remote agent. The passenger might explain that there is a flat tire and the remote agent would then potentially be able to take some action. It could be that the remote agent can send signals to the AI to inform it to pull over or might tell the passenger what to say to the AI system about the situation, perhaps using special commands.

Now that you’ve seen that it is not necessarily straightforward for the AI to realize that a tire is having troubles, there is a simpler solution that might end-up overcoming the detection difficulties. As you likely already know, tires are increasingly becoming “smart tires” in that they contain various electronics. The easiest path toward informing the AI would be if the tire itself told the AI that the tire had gone bad. This is the most likely scenario of how this will ultimately play out, namely, the tire would transmit an electronic signal to the on-board computer running the AI and then the AI would become aware of a tire issue.

In that sense, the tire is akin to having cameras, radar, LIDAR, and other sensors attached or associated with the self-driving car. The tires are not just tires, they are also sensors. They sense the status of the tire and can report that status to the AI that’s driving the vehicle. One concern is the possibility of false positives, whereby the tire misreports a tire issue when the tire is actually fine. Another qualm is the chances of a false negative, whereby the tire does not report that the tire is having troubles and yet the tire has indeed gotten into trouble. Those problems need to be considered as part of the AI programming to cope with the tire aspects.

All of that touches on the topic of the detection of a flat tire.

What will the AI do once a flat tire or its equivalent has been detected?

Other than the classic pull-over safety regimen, the AI could be explicitly programmed to drive with the same kind of skill that a human driver might have, though only to the degree that the automation can do so (i.e., it is not a human and lacks human thinking). This includes the earlier mentioned recommendations of not taking any sudden action as a driver, no quick turns, etc.

If the tires are run-flats, the AI would need to adjust its route planning to go at slower speeds and figure out where to go. This would potentially involve interacting with the passengers. Why so? If you are a passenger and a driver just suddenly starts slowing down and taking you to a different destination than originally specified, you’d likely freak out, deservedly so. The AI would need to explain the situation to the passenger and then figure out what might be done to accommodate the passenger and meanwhile deal with the tire difficulties.

In the near-term of what today’s AI can accomplish, it is unlikely that the NLP would be good enough to carry on such a conversation entirely via just between the AI and the human passenger. A remote agent would be invoked and brought into the discussion.

Conclusion

Perhaps an obvious point that I haven’t brought up is that the AI is not going to be able to change the tire. If the driver was a human, we might expect that the human driver could get out of the vehicle, and proceed to change the tire, assuming too that a spare existed and was viable. The odds are that self-driving cars are all going to be outfitted with run-flats, which makes sense given the aspect that the AI cannot change the tire. Also, with the run-flat tires, the notion is that the self-driving car will be able to proceed for a while and thus not unduly inconvenience the passengers.

This does not obviate the chances of having a roadside emergency service that gets alerted to come and tend to a self-driving car.

Yes, there are going to be self-driving cars that are sitting on the side of the road, waiting to get towed or have some roadside service performed.

It will be startling to see this, at first. You don’t witness this happening today due to the self-driving car tryouts having dedicated service teams that keep those vehicles in top shape. That will not be the same white-glove service that will occur once self-driving cars are prevalent in the millions upon millions of such vehicles (keep in mind that there are about 250 million conventional cars today, and in theory, there will be some equal number of self-driving cars that will ultimately replace those).

Tires, love them, or hate them.

They always seem to become troubling at the worst of times, as though having a mind of their own and wanting to turn a modestly unpleasant situation into a torrent of bad.

For the AI that drives self-driving cars, all I can say is welcome to the club. Eventually, the AI will find itself as troubled about flat tires like the rest of us, and perhaps relish the moments when the tires are working soundly, and be “exasperated” when they are not (or that might be a bit much on the anthropomorphizing of the AI).

May your ride be smooth and your tires ever round.