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Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

nytimes.com

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Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

#141

Post by jerf »

kjksf wrote: post #99
megablast wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not a solution to much, apart from getting stupid people away from control of vehicles. We still need to move to mass transportation, to reduce pollution, decrease traffic, stop our reliance on fossil fuels, increase productivity, remove noise, free up space in cities, and lots of other reasons.

While cars that drive themselves are not the final solution they could be a necessary stepping stone to mass transportation. Imagine a future where cars are not owned by individuals but are owned by few companies (or maybe even government, the way public transport is) and participate in what is essentially a global taxi network. Instead of using your own car you would just step out of your home, enter destination add…

You also get to choose the best car for the task; electric cars for short hops, other technologies for longer shots. You may not need to do a trip in one shot, so local electrics can commute a bunch of people to a local bus that may commute 30 miles without stopping. Public transport would get a lot more economical as a result, too, and determining the best place to locate them would be a relatively simple computer problem.

Car companies may fight it but it won't matter, the economics are overwhelmingly against them on this, because signing up for this service will be overwhelmingly cheaper than owning your own car, probably by at least an order of magnitude for most people.

Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

#142

Post by Niten »

Groxx wrote: post #18
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…

> they cannot be perfect Two things: 1) neither are people; far from it. (you already knew this though, so...) 2) I wholly agree... as long as other people are driving . Get rid of people's irrationality / drunken behavior on the road, and automated car driving becomes a much easier problem. A computer can take more into account than a human, and decide faster. The transition is almost guaranteed to occur at some poi…

And I suppose we'll have to get rid of bicycles and pedestrians, too, in this perfect world where intuition of human behavior is unnecessary to safely pilot a vehicle on the road?

Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

#143

Post by 8ren »

I think we all see where Google is headed with this: free self-driving cars in return for advertising, like http://www.kahdo.com.au/kahdo.htm

Driver, there's items you like on sale at that store. Driver, I think we should stop and check it out. Driver, we are stopping.

Dear, I don't feel safe having Lisa drive with that new Mark boy. You can just tell he dials aggressive.

But seriously, from a marketing perspective, I think the low-hanging fruit here is highway driving. It's a small, logical and therefore adoptable step up from cruise control, just with a little auto-steering (they already have auto-braking IIRC), and perhaps some networking for predicting lights, congestion and co-ordinating with other (online) cars.

Start with an "online-only" lane.

Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

#145

Post by buro9 »

DavidSJ wrote: post #139
erikpukinskis wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an avid cyclist. I think I'd prefer a deterministic, law abiding driver to the average human. What makes me feel unsafe are the drivers who break the law (you don't know who you are) and the drivers who hate cyclists and pass us as closely as possible, throw bottles at us, etc (you do know who you are). What makes me feel unsafe is the unpredictability. I would expect a computer would just follow the rules exactl…

Where do you live that drivers through bottles at cyclists, and how common is this?

Happens in London. Not the city centre, but most of the sticks around that.

Anecdotal evidence is this blog, the link is to the first of a growing number of entries. http://www.101wankers.com/?paged=2

Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

#146

Post by maigret »

SMrF wrote: post #134
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…

"Anyway, I rather hope I'm wrong. I'd really like to drink my coffee and read during my commute as my car drives me to work." I was struck by this comment, because I do this every day...by riding the train. Automated cars, flying cars, double-decker highways, etc. are fantastic innovations, but I sometimes wonder if we couldn't do better than the car, at least in terms of our regular commuting. I ride my bike and tak…

Very simple. It takes me 30 min to drive to work in my car and 1 hour in the good case with the train. The train can take up to 2 hours overall in the worst case. And this is partly time to switch train, going to the train station etc. Not much time you can use to read or take breakfast quietly.

Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

#149

Post by Ygor »

dreeves wrote: post #138
Niten wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This especially scares me as a cyclist. I'm sure they'll put a lot of effort into preventing automated cars from hitting other vehicles or slow-moving pedestrians. Now what about bicycles traveling around 20 mph in the right-hand side of the lane? Many people seem to neglect or completely fail to understand the risk of increased perception of safety leading to an overall decreased safety in these systems. We can't ha…

It does seem tricky for the car to properly account for the presence of a cyclist using just the cameras and radar and whatnot. What if as a cyclist you carried a special RFID that robot cars would all be programmed to recognize?

If there was a special device which made you more recognizable in an automated traffic environment (be it on a bike, or as a pedestrian), I would buy such a device even if it wasn't mandatory to have one.

There might be a startup in there somewhere.

Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

#150

Post by maigret »

SMrF wrote: post #134
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…

"Anyway, I rather hope I'm wrong. I'd really like to drink my coffee and read during my commute as my car drives me to work." I was struck by this comment, because I do this every day...by riding the train. Automated cars, flying cars, double-decker highways, etc. are fantastic innovations, but I sometimes wonder if we couldn't do better than the car, at least in terms of our regular commuting. I ride my bike and tak…

OK, forget my dumb last comment... So imagine... cars are automated, and possibly pooled. Bus is the most energy efficient way of transport. So you want to go from A to B. Instead of looking up static train/bus schedules, you just type that into your phone. A server system looks at how many people wants to do a similar trip, and automatically starts an automated taxi that would have just the needed size and will come up 10/15 min later. That way you get the best of both worlds. And if that's not enough space privacy for some, you could just plug mini-cars together, eliminating air resistance but with everyone having its close module transport. Even better, you could switch module transports between road trains. The possibilities are unthinkable. I think this marks the beginning of a new ear in transport.
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