Google Says It’s Not the Driverless Car’s Fault. It’s Other Drivers’ • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Says It’s Not the Driverless Car’s Fault. It’s Other Drivers’

#61

Post by 3pt14159 » Tue, Sep 01, 2015, 5:45 PM UTC

rlpb wrote: post #22

civilian wrote: post #13

Heh, google is training cars to drive like grandmas. > But the technology, like Google’s car, drives by the book. It leaves what is considered the safe distance between itself and the car ahead. This also happens to be enough space for a car in an adjoining lane to squeeze into, and, Mr. Windsor said, they often tried. Yeah. We just don't have the infrastructure in major cities for all of us to drive safely. We've be…

I'm not convinced that leaving shorter gaps between cars increases volume. Instead it creates waves of drivers slamming on the brakes because they are unable to react gradually, creating congestion instead. If we all left bigger gaps, we'd all be able to drive faster, increasing throughput (on highways, at least). > Now I wonder if google-driven cars would actually be less efficient for LA. Sure there wouldn't be any…

This has actually been studied, and it depends on many factors like time of day + sun location, the weather, pavement conditions, and rigour during driver licensing. Optimal flow on a highway during sunshine is around 80km/h, where the gap between the cars is around a car and a half length. Under that and we would be better off having parking lot queues before onramps.

So why don't we do this? Because usually people want to travel to the city from the suburbs. The only place that has room to build these parking lots are the suburbs, but then the city couldn't take the excess flow (since it all needs to empty out into city streets and parking lots anyway).

Re: Google Says It’s Not the Driverless Car’s Fault. It’s Other Drivers’

#62

Post by kevinnk » Tue, Sep 01, 2015, 5:46 PM UTC

pdq wrote: post #55

What happens with these driverless cars at four way stop signs? With humans, generally someone waves to the other driver signaling either to take right of way or that they will go first. I presume the car doesn't understand hand gestures, so does it just start nudging into the intersection and stop if another car goes ahead?

Actually, it can already understand some hand gestures [1]. Compared to all the other things an autonomous car has to deal with, gesture recognition doesn't seem like such a stretch.

[1] http://road.cc/content/news/150448-google-patent-reveals-how...

Re: Google Says It’s Not the Driverless Car’s Fault. It’s Other Drivers’

#63

Post by vezzy-fnord » Tue, Sep 01, 2015, 5:46 PM UTC

Retra wrote: post #43

tclark225 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely agree with this, but how could you specifically change the laws in this case such that they are still, by some measure, "fair" and "just"? Most people would probably agree that there is no reason to adhere to the letter of driving laws all the time. Speeding on an empty highway to get somewhere more quickly is mostly harmless. Running a red light in a dangerous neighborhood might be safer than waiting. T…

You'll want to encode enforcement rules in the laws themselves. Fundamentally, our laws really aren't constraints on what you can do, but guidelines for what you can enforce. You need to take it a step further and write down what you will enforce.

But execution and legislation are two separate branches, why are you creating a tightly coupled relationship between them? Writing down explicit paths of enforcement sounds almost guaranteed to be incomplete, and would result in having a high degree of agency being removed from enforcement, because they would now have to follow literal conditions no matter what. Conditions which will almost certainly account for an insufficient number of variables than the ones that will be encountered in reality.

Re: Google Says It’s Not the Driverless Car’s Fault. It’s Other Drivers’

#64

Post by Retra » Tue, Sep 01, 2015, 5:50 PM UTC

krapp wrote: post #58

olalonde wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm playing the devil's advocate here but another alternative would be to write laws that are meant to be literal and enforced 100% of the time.

That's basically a form of authoritarianism. Also, this is essentially the underlying premise behind no-tolerance policies and three-strike drug laws with mandatory sentences, which view interpreting the law based on context as an impediment to enforcement, the solution for which is removing the ability of judges to do so. You can't have a just legal framework in which the only role of humans is to be punished or to…

Your conclusions don't necessarily follow. Your interpretation of that post is exactly the kind of problem being addressed here; your idea of how laws currently work is preventing you from seeing how to change them.

Basically, what you have to do is codify human discretion. If a judge wants to say "no, this really isn't a problem," he should be able to directly add that exception to the written law, and then enforce it as written. It's basically a kind of open source law. The question becomes of how to distribute authority.

Re: Google Says It’s Not the Driverless Car’s Fault. It’s Other Drivers’

#65

Post by tcdent » Tue, Sep 01, 2015, 5:50 PM UTC

duaneb wrote: post #53

tcdent wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, including such prestigiously congested roadways as the 405, 101 and the 10, it has a lot to do with behavior (ie. the 'caterpillar' effect) than route. Rather, it's not physical space, but delays in processing speed adjustments. Distracted drivers accelerate and brake late, causing complete stops and quick acceleration to catch up.

Well, I can't speak for LA, but you have to acknowledge the role of having all those drivers on the road in the first place. Distributed better, jitter in driver behavior should tend towards having no effect with the distance between cars.

Yeah, you're right, physical density does have a role.

There's a sort of critical mass that happens; traffic flows well even though everyone is being dumb vs. traffic stopping when everyone is being dumb...

Re: Google Says It’s Not the Driverless Car’s Fault. It’s Other Drivers’

#66

Post by bholzer » Tue, Sep 01, 2015, 5:51 PM UTC

scrabble wrote: post #45

dman wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think happens in this situation currently with human drivers? Are we holding machines to different standards than we hold each other?

Yes. Not too long ago I had the opportunity to have a surgery performed by a robot controlled by a human surgeon. My wife was adamantly against it since there had been accidents previously with the robot other places in the world. Overall, the rate of incident was lower than the rate of incident for human surgeons, but to her that was not the important point. There are people who will definitely hold machines to high…

Surgical robots do not perform as well as traditional instruments.

I've talked to a few hospital executives and all have said that in most cases, these robots only cost them money and decrease the quality of the surgical procedures.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2526934/Surge...

Re: Google Says It’s Not the Driverless Car’s Fault. It’s Other Drivers’

#67

Post by lumberjack » Tue, Sep 01, 2015, 5:57 PM UTC

sea2summit wrote: post #60

Step 1. Release autonomous cars to market with lower incidence rate than humans. Step 2. Sit back and watch humans cause accidents; insurance for human drivers goes thru the roof. Step 3. ??? Step 4. Skynet.

Serious question.

Is computer vision so advanced that it is already so obvious that self-driving cars will definitely be safer?

Yes it's a computer which is more reliable at always outputting the same answer than a human but it's not a simple application this one.

As far as I know most robots get confused at times just as humans do.

I think eventually they will be, because they can learn and share their knowledge and keep learning about all the real world exceptions without limitation unlike humans.

But right now or when they are deployed en mass. I'm not sure they will DEFINITELY without exception be safer.

And I know there exists statistics about accident rates per kilometre driven but aren't those only a few cars driving previously selected and well documented routes?

Re: Google Says It’s Not the Driverless Car’s Fault. It’s Other Drivers’

#68

Post by Retra » Tue, Sep 01, 2015, 5:58 PM UTC

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #63

Retra wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll want to encode enforcement rules in the laws themselves. Fundamentally, our laws really aren't constraints on what you can do, but guidelines for what you can enforce. You need to take it a step further and write down what you will enforce.

But execution and legislation are two separate branches, why are you creating a tightly coupled relationship between them? Writing down explicit paths of enforcement sounds almost guaranteed to be incomplete, and would result in having a high degree of agency being removed from enforcement, because they would now have to follow literal conditions no matter what. Conditions which will almost certainly account for an i…

>But execution and legislation are two separate branches,

And cars don't drive themselves. So I guess that solves our problem.

You can read my post below (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10154344) to see how I'd start addressing your other concerns. Basically, if an enforcement officer recognizes some new variables, they can write them down in the law and then enforce it.

Re: Google Says It’s Not the Driverless Car’s Fault. It’s Other Drivers’

#69

Post by krapp » Tue, Sep 01, 2015, 5:58 PM UTC

Retra wrote: post #64

krapp wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's basically a form of authoritarianism. Also, this is essentially the underlying premise behind no-tolerance policies and three-strike drug laws with mandatory sentences, which view interpreting the law based on context as an impediment to enforcement, the solution for which is removing the ability of judges to do so. You can't have a just legal framework in which the only role of humans is to be punished or to…

Your conclusions don't necessarily follow. Your interpretation of that post is exactly the kind of problem being addressed here; your idea of how laws currently work is preventing you from seeing how to change them. Basically, what you have to do is codify human discretion. If a judge wants to say "no, this really isn't a problem," he should be able to directly add that exception to the written law, and then enforce…

> he should be able to directly add that exception to the written law, and then enforce it as written. It's basically a kind of open source law. The question becomes of how to distribute authority.

So basically, more or less what happens now, only with more bureaucracy and complexity? I'm sorry, but I don't see the benefit in that case.

Re: Google Says It’s Not the Driverless Car’s Fault. It’s Other Drivers’

#70

Post by Retra » Tue, Sep 01, 2015, 6:00 PM UTC

krapp wrote: post #69

Retra wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your conclusions don't necessarily follow. Your interpretation of that post is exactly the kind of problem being addressed here; your idea of how laws currently work is preventing you from seeing how to change them. Basically, what you have to do is codify human discretion. If a judge wants to say "no, this really isn't a problem," he should be able to directly add that exception to the written law, and then enforce…

> he should be able to directly add that exception to the written law, and then enforce it as written. It's basically a kind of open source law. The question becomes of how to distribute authority. So basically, more or less what happens now, only with more bureaucracy and complexity? I'm sorry, but I don't see the benefit in that case.

The benefit is that you can better automate it.

But if that line of reasoning were good enough, then the US made a mistake by rejecting the rule of a monarch. Democracy is rife with managerial issues.