Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

#111

Post by cletus » Sun, Oct 10, 2010, 1:23 AM UTC

dandelany wrote: post #13

Very cool, but I sometimes worry that the illusion of safety is more dangerous than the original danger itself. In Boulder, where I live, several crosswalks were identified as being particularly dangerous for pedestrians, and pedestrian crossing signs with big flashing lights were installed at these locations over the past 5 years. This spring, a report was released[1] that showed accidents at many of these crosswalk…

I walk a lot and the times where I've been nearly hit by a car have ALWAYS been at crosswalks and traffic lights (where the pedestrian light is green and cars should be stopping).

Crosswalks are a problem because you can't predict car behaviour: some will stop. Some will completely ignore them (for reasons unknown). If there were no crosswalk you know exactly what cars will do. That's much safer for both parties.

The "illusion of safety" is most dangerous at traffic lights. 2-3 times I've had cars just sail through, completely oblivious. Note: they're sailing through on RED lights. Not amber going red. It's not one of those borderline cases.

Once I had a cop have a chat to me about jaywalking but I've never been fined. I would be pissed if I ever was. In a fight between a car and a pedestrian the pedestrian loses (big time) so pedestrians have a higher vested interest in their own safety. I know what the light changes are at intersections I cross a lot. Where are these cops when cars sail through red lights or nearly run over pedestrians when turning when the pedestrians have right of way?

I get the distinct impression these skills will come in handy when I move to New York next month!

Anyway, back to the self-driving cars: this I believe will be a painful transition that will take many, many years. It's nice to see Google working on this.

Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

#112

Post by tbrownaw » Sun, Oct 10, 2010, 1:31 AM UTC

alextgordon wrote: post #96

tbrownaw wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that criminal liability almost always requires either intent negligence. If the automated system is less error-prone than a human, the driver can't reasonably be negligent for doing nothing ("it would be incredibly foolish and arrogant for me to think I could handle that situation better than a computer designed by 10 Phds, especially when the insurance company agrees that the computer drives bett…

This is surely the rational way to handle it. But I'm not convinced a judge and jury would see it the same way. The prosecution would likely argue that no computer program can be a match for a human's ability handle new and surprising situations: the "driver" must still pay full attention to the road, whether a computer is driving or not. It would not be enough for a computer to be statistically better at driving, it…

> argue that no computer program can be a match for a human's ability handle new and surprising situations

I suspect that this ability is due to our having more awareness of context. I imagine it wouldn't be terribly hard to dump a larger amount of contextual knowledge into a car, probably just attach an expert system and pay a few tens of millions of dollars to have people fill it with data. I'm not sure what the state of machine learning is, but they could perhaps pay owners to upload logs (maybe especially after any accident / close call, or maybe that would give a skewed perception) and then crunch those to find new rules.

> Also, we don't have information on how error-prone this system actually is. All we know is that a car it was driving had one accident. We don't know how many times the human driver had to take control because it would have otherwise crashed.

Yup, that the humans ever took control at all says it probably isn't quite ready yet. But it looks very promising. If I ever have kids I might not need to deal with them learning to drive, and maybe my next car could let me browse the internet on the way in to socialize (well, why else won't they let me telecommute?) at work.

Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

#113

Post by msg » Sun, Oct 10, 2010, 1:53 AM UTC

Where they'll get their foot in the door is closed campuses. I bet the military could run this on the base and keep the liability issues in the family. Similarly, perhaps a large corporation would license it. Or even better, airports.

Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

#114

Post by palish » Sun, Oct 10, 2010, 1:57 AM UTC

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned one of the biggest issues with general acceptance of this system:

Police will be able to force anyone to pull over anywhere, at any time, and for any or no reason.

Even though they can do that now, people still decide to pull over. They are not forced to.

And what if there becomes a database that police forces compile, showing the history of movements of everyone? That database could potentially be leaked.

I think the privacy implications of this should get at least some thought.

Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

#115

Post by stcredzero » Sun, Oct 10, 2010, 2:22 AM UTC

jfager wrote: post #88

stcredzero wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's the case, then people will just end up using the roadways even more . "Hey, traffic's not as bad as it used to be since the Google auto-drivers smoothed out the traffic. Let's go to the store at 5:00 today!" Congestion will again increase to the same point of suckage as before, but then, only non-human drivers will be qualified to be on freeways.

Like I said, you'd have to do the math. It's very possible that's true. But it's not a certainty. People have a limit on how much they want to drive regardless of how easy it is. After all, the store itself will still suck when everyone decides to go at 5. I'm in NYC, I could hop on the subway any time I want without any hassle at all, but it's not like I do just because the option's there. Transportation is a means…

Like I said, you'd have to do the math.

Uh, maybe you'd have to look at the history of urban planning for the past 50 years? In densely populated urban areas, just about every time people add more roads, the capacity gets used up by increased development in the outlying areas served by those roads.

Network bandwidth and CPU capacity are subject to the same phenomenon. Do end-user desktops really have more functionality than 10 years ago? Besides things like increased 3D graphics capability and more things to do with a web browser and an internet connection, not so much. As bandwidth has increased, the amount of data in a webpage has increased, and it becomes practical to use a web browser for more.

But don't take my word for it:

http://www.assmotax.org/Releases/AMCT%20release:%20building%...

http://www.walkablestreets.com/widen2.htm

http://bicycleuniverse.info/transpo/roadbuilding-futility.ht...

Basically, there can be a certain amount of pent-up "latent demand" which is there but which can't manifest until the roads are built and such travel becomes practical.

Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

#116

Post by bluesnowmonkey » Sun, Oct 10, 2010, 2:23 AM UTC

gojomo wrote: post #29

Finally! A giant step towards 'packet-switched' personal transport, using dynamically-routed, market-dispatched autonomous cars on standard roads. Cancel the bullet train, and instead plow all that money into rapidly deploying this.

Cancel the bullet train, and instead plow all that money into rapidly deploying this.

There was a period before cars where trains were the most efficient form of long distance travel, so cities were built around this fact. Then cars got popular, so we built cities for those. Then they pushed light rail to combat suburban sprawl. It would be funny if automation made cars the ideal mode of travel again.

Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

#117

Post by philwelch » Sun, Oct 10, 2010, 2:26 AM UTC

gojomo wrote: post #29

Finally! A giant step towards 'packet-switched' personal transport, using dynamically-routed, market-dispatched autonomous cars on standard roads. Cancel the bullet train, and instead plow all that money into rapidly deploying this.

Packet-switched? Hmm. A Mini Cooper weighs about 2500 pounds, so with four people per Mini Cooper your packet header is still going to put at least twice as much load on the network as the packet data.

Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

#118

Post by philwelch » Sun, Oct 10, 2010, 2:33 AM UTC

palish wrote: post #114

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned one of the biggest issues with general acceptance of this system: Police will be able to force anyone to pull over anywhere, at any time, and for any or no reason. Even though they can do that now, people still decide to pull over. They are not forced to. And what if there becomes a database that police forces compile, showing the history of movements of everyone? That database coul…

I don't know how many episodes of World's Wildest Police Videos you've seen, but police can already force you to pull over anywhere, at any time, and for any or no reason. Spike strips, PIT maneuvers, etc. Letting them pull you over with a remote command would be a huge improvement--high speed chases are unsafe for all involved and (due to frustration and adrenalin) increase the risk of police brutality.

Of course, with computer-controlled cars, you can eliminate traffic infractions and hence most if any need for police to pull you over anyway.

Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

#119

Post by InfinityX0 » Sun, Oct 10, 2010, 2:45 AM UTC

forgottenpaswrd wrote: post #87

dandelany wrote: post #13

Very cool, but I sometimes worry that the illusion of safety is more dangerous than the original danger itself. In Boulder, where I live, several crosswalks were identified as being particularly dangerous for pedestrians, and pedestrian crossing signs with big flashing lights were installed at these locations over the past 5 years. This spring, a report was released[1] that showed accidents at many of these crosswalk…

"The prospect of automated cars scares me because, obviously, they cannot be perfect." They can, at least 1000 times more perfect that humans are. A computer could have and exact model of the road, and compare it to what it sees, could report bugs in an objective way, the same way computers on airplanes work, having made flying way more secure.

This is true, but the fear that could prevent implementation is that you want that fear in your own hands, not the hands of something else. It's like trusting someone to catch you when you fall - statistically you know it's pretty likely, but there's something unsettling knowing you're relying on an extraneous factor, not YOU, to prevent harm.

Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

#120

Post by ph0rque » Sun, Oct 10, 2010, 2:46 AM UTC

andreyf wrote: post #65

reader5000 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the computer driver is correct 99% of the time and the human driver 98%, then it is a vast improvement. I imagine that ultimately this technology would result in almost 0 human input other than e.g. typing in a destination.

typing in a destination You mean speaking, right? ;)

You mean thinking it, right? ;~)