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Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

nytimes.com

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Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

#151

Post by jacquesm »

Timely, I wrote about some German research project that has a car doing a trip in normal traffic in a big city:

http://jacquesmattheij.com/Autonomous+driving+cars+one+big+s...

The google car seems very much reliant on its gps data, in the article there is this passage: "He did [interrupt auto mode] so twice, once when a bicyclist ran a red light and again when a car in front stopped and began to back into a parking space. But the car seemed likely to have prevented an accident itself."

Seemed likely is not really good enough though, you have to be sure enough not to interrupt the auto-driving at all for this to be usable.

The biggest problem with auto-driving cars that have a human supervisor is that there is nothing more dangerous than having to be alert for a long time when nothing happens. Invariably you will be distracted when something does over the course of tens of thousands of miles.

Regular traffic is one thing on mapped streets is one thing, but that 100's of thousands of emergency situations that a normal career on the road throws at you over a lifetime contains quite a few where I really wonder how a 'robot' driver would deal with them.

I'm all for 'automated drivers', but I'd like the researchers to be sitting in the passenger seat and to have their kids playing around the car (or come out on their tri-cycle from between two parked cars) while they drive it to prove that it is safe. Overrode but the car would have probably done it is not good enough yet, even though the achievement is very impressive this is not as close as it seems.

Computer programs are great at dealing with everything that you can think of beforehand, it's the exceptions and the response to those exceptions that matters in an application like this.

I also wonder how they'd deal with liability issues if their driver was not actually paying attention to traffic and the software made a mistake and caused an accident.

Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

#152

Post by scotty79 »

cletus wrote: post #111
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…

That http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_turn_on_red is the source of almost all dangerous situations I had on the roads as pedestrian. The one single time when cause was different that I can remember was when somebody drove in one way street in wrong direction and I was crossing the road assuming that this was impossible.

Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

#153

Post by mike-cardwell »

I'd expect a situation to arise where cars are allowed to go into automatic driving mode on motorways/freeways but not in cities. Gradually more and more roads would become available for automatic driving as more and more cars get the automatic driving capability. I don't think people will ever be ready for an instant complete switch over. I'd expect it to be a gradual switchover which takes years.

Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

#154

Post by asr »

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…

I agree computers will be able to drive much better than humans, and this transition will occur at some point--the question is, when? Is the 8 years mentioned in the article anywhere close to realistic? I don't think so.

Not only does the technology have to become better in the aggregate than humans, it has to become so much better there's aren't any crash situations where human drivers perform better. There also can't be many crash situations when the computer doesn't significantly outperform a human. Otherwise both public sentiment against the cars, and legal liability will be too great.

Imagine: whenever there's a software bug and an automated car crashes in any situation where a human might not have, the GoogleCar manufacturer will get sued, the local paper will write an article about how Google killed someone, etc. And then, once a year, there will be another story about how crashes are down 2%... that's a lot of lives saved, but which article do you think will get more attention? And do you think "our cars usually make driving safer, just not the night of October 10th when John was killed" will be a winning defense?

I can't wait for this technology, I think it really will deliver all the benefits the article mentions long-term. But it's a long way off (I hope I'm wrong). I give a lot of credit to Google for investing in it now--this is one of the things I read and think "don't be evil" is more than just marketing-speak.

Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

#155

Post by EricBurnett »

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…

>and given global knowledge of where people are and where they want to go, it could plan the absolutely most efficient route.

Random digression, but I think you will find this is an NP-hard problem - I'm quite sure you can encode the Travelling salesman problem[1] within it. So the absolutely most efficient route is probably not feasible, although the system could certainly do a good job optimizing over what we have now.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelling_salesman_problem

Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

#156

Post by YogSothoth »

Niten wrote: post #130
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…

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…

Yep, when I ride my bike in the early morning, I purposefully do not wear light-colored or reflective clothing. I don't want to ever believe for a nanosecond that my safety is anyone's job but mine so I prefer to view the cars as actively trying to hit me and work to make it impossible for them to do so. The relationship (cars and bikes) is fundamentally adversarial in nature, best to act like it.

Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

#157

Post by siculars »

scotty79 wrote: post #152
cletus wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_turn_on_red is the source of almost all dangerous situations I had on the roads as pedestrian. The one single time when cause was different that I can remember was when somebody drove in one way street in wrong direction and I was crossing the road assuming that this was impossible.

There is no right turn on red in NYC.

Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

#158

Post by siculars »

Niten wrote: post #130
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…

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…

I am a cyclist who was run off the road by an suv while training for the Westchester half ironman. Was fortunate to walk (ride) away with only one broken bone (4th metacarpal). I've been riding my entire life in NYC without ever having an incident (thankfully) and the one time I go ride in the 'country' I get my ass handed to me.

My gut tells me that drivers in unpopulated areas are less aware and less able to 'share the road'.

Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

#159

Post by bapadna »

zacharypinter wrote: post #9

In the short term, I could easily see the value in a souped up cruise control for driving on interstates. combined with infrared/night vision, this could easily make nighttime driving safer. Also, this has great potential (though would probably generate a lot of controversy) for drunk driving. Imagine if your car had a safety mode that could watch out for potential accidents and prevent them even with a human driver.…

My car automatically throws on the brakes if it thinks I'm about to hit something (tested accidentally, once, and it stopped me with about one car length to spare.), and my cruise control watches for cars in front of me, so it will go the speed I set, unless there's a slower car in front of me, in which case it leaves a safe distance.

The future is now, man :-)

Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

#160

Post by Goosey »

mjfern wrote: post #25

The key question is why would Google produce this technology and enter the autonomous driving market? I think one of the key issues for Google, from a corporate strategy standpoint, is "freeing up people's time." Driving is one of last places where we spend significant time awake without being able to use the Internet and hence any of Google's services (except if you use a smartphone, which is now illegal in some sta…

One possible reason is what you just pointed out: If you have a 20 minute commute and you could trust your robotic driver to take care of it, that is 20 minutes you could be on your smart phone interacting with google advertising.

(personally I think the other comments about google doing it mostly because it is a hard, cool, worthwhile challenge are most on the money though)

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