Experimenting with Autonomous Vehicles: The Science Behind Getting Hit by a Self-Driving Car

In some municipalities, self-driving car testing is permitted even though it increases the danger of crossing the street. However, in London, where such testing isn’t always an option, locals have turned avoiding detection by self-driving cars into a game. The game “How (Not) To Get Hit By A Self-Driving Car” challenges players to cross a mocked-up crosswalk without being detected by a person-sensing camera. The game’s creators aim to make winning increasingly difficult by modeling various unpredictable scenarios that could happen in real life to train self-driving car systems. Despite their uncertainty about whether self-driving firms use similar pedestrian detection methods, the anonymized footage collected during the game could still be valuable for research or provide a chuckle for engineers.