they need a 'better safe than sorry' rear tag
Locals reportedly frustrated with Waymo's self-driving cars
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Re: Locals reportedly frustrated with Waymo's self-driving cars
#62US desperately needs self-driving cars. Desperately. I don't think most people realize how much. Because they've never seen a city with good public transport where most people don't own or care about cars. But achieving good public transport in US is impossible for cultural reasons. So there's no public transport so most expensive areas will fight to the death to keep population density low. Because more people means…
This is why I'm only willing to live in US cities with functional subways, but of course that's a luxury I get as a software engineer.
Re: Locals reportedly frustrated with Waymo's self-driving cars
#63Once self driving cars come to Boston, locals will just figure out how to go around them. If you honk and ride an AV’s tail close and it pulls over, everyone will do that. It’s a guarantee
As a Bostonian, I'm very curious to see how self-driving cars will play out here. Our roads are much more narrow and "unpredictable" than the west coast, and jaywalking is a given on most streets.
Re: Locals reportedly frustrated with Waymo's self-driving cars
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
>And of course, nobody ever says "you're going 80, the speed limit is 55! slow down!" incorrect
Yeah. Totally incorrect: I say it all the time when I am driving my kids around -- or when idiot teenagers rip through my neighborhood where my kids are playing at 35-45 mph (1).. before kids? - Maybe not. (1) - It's official: I am now a crotchety old man.
I'm not sure if you're crotchety. I had a grandma frantically signal me to slow down when she was out walking with her grandchildren. I was doing 12 mph in a 25mph zone. The road is sketchy in spots, but this stretch is perfectly straight and fairly wide and I gave them about 15 feet of clearance by essentially driving as far as I could on the opposite side of the road. She's definitely crotchety.
That said, I think people are terrible at judging speeds. I keep my car in a low gear on the hills around here for control. As a result the revs are sometimes on the higher end and my car is generally pretty loud and looks fast. So people assume I'm going some great speed when I'm actually going relatively slow.
Re: Locals reportedly frustrated with Waymo's self-driving cars
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
> As a result, traffic accidents are the leading cause of death for people from 8-24. "As a result" is a pretty big stretch. Traffic accidents result from unexpected situations. People who drive a lot learn to read the environment and the drivers around them and anticipate what will happen next. When those anticipations are violated, it runs the risk of creating a surprise that can't be managed. That is just as true…
> That is just as true for a violation in the conservative direction as in the aggressive direction. I've been caught by surprise before when a conservative driver slammed on their brakes when the light turned yellow even though there was ample time for both of us to coast through the light. Instead, I nearly rear-ended them.
I've been caught by surprise before when I've been following too closely...
There, FTFY. I tend to follow too closely, too, but let's call it what it is and not blame the driver in front of us.
Re: Locals reportedly frustrated with Waymo's self-driving cars
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
As someone who attempts to follow the letter of the law, I experience quite a few incidents of aggressive driving. The complaints here are really just demonstrating how bad humans are at driving - the frustration probably arises due to the fact that they are unable to intimidate the driver in front of them with aggressive behavior. > One woman said that she almost hit one of the company's minivans because it suddenly…
This is the truth here. I also try to follow the letter of the law. I always assume that a brick wall may suddenly shoot up in front of the car in front of me, stopping it instantly and killing everyone in it. So following closer than the recommended distance, is idiotic. How often will a brick wall shoot up in front of a car like life is a video game? Probably a really low percentage, but cats, deer, blown tires, tr…
You're a minority because following the letter of the law isn't always the safe decision. It's illegal to cross the double yellow lines, but if a car is pulled over on the shoulder then I'll cross the lines to give them more space. It's illegal but it increases safety for me and them.
Re: Locals reportedly frustrated with Waymo's self-driving cars
#67I think the degree to which driving is a social behavior is underappreciated.
By social behavior, I mean we learn to read the "body language" of the drivers (cars) around us, pedestrians, bikers, etc. Have you ever thought to yourself, "that dumbass is just about to pull into my lane" or something like that? That's you being a social animal, making a social judgment about a fellow animal.
This is ancient stuff. Nature is full of animals who have no spoken language, and even no verbalization at all, who nonetheless operate together physically to great effect.
Think of a herd of buffalo, or a school of fish, or a murmuration of swallows. Now, you want to put a robot in there, and have it keep up with the animals? That's a hard problem.
I would argue that we work the same way when driving. So a robot trying to operate in human traffic is going to face the same hard problem.
Instead of tackling that problem, self-driving cars fall back on the written rules of the road. But it's crucial to understand that the rules were written by humans for interpretation by humans. They are not a fool-proof algorithm for safe robot driving, and they were never intended to be that.
Sure, you can argue that conservative driving is safer. I'd argue that that is a cop-out that simply delegates the argument to how we define "conservative." It's conservative to drive 5mph in a 25mph zone; it's also totally legal. But is it good driving?
We can design a conservative robot to put into a school of fish. The real fish will avoid it and leave it behind. The robot fish is safe, in that there are no collisions. But is it fulfilling the mission of being a good fish?
Re: Locals reportedly frustrated with Waymo's self-driving cars
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every single time someone honks at me for this, I'm tempted to stay in place longer than necessary. Fortunately--most of the time--I think better of being this petty and passive aggressive.
If people are honking at you, are you sure you're being safe and not just being annoying ?
Doesn't matter, if there isn't a dedicated arrow for the turn, I'll go when I damned well feel like it. Your definition of "yield" might differ from mine, but that is just too bad, according to the law.
And I say this is the kind of driver cuts my left turns closer than most. You know the driver that's already started their left turn before you've cleared the intersection, and it looks like they're going to hit you (but won't)? That's me; keep it movin' folks. But if the driver in front of me is less aggressive (to a point), that's cool.
Re: Locals reportedly frustrated with Waymo's self-driving cars
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That is just as true for a violation in the conservative direction as in the aggressive direction. I've been caught by surprise before when a conservative driver slammed on their brakes when the light turned yellow even though there was ample time for both of us to coast through the light. Instead, I nearly rear-ended them.
Yellow doesn't mean "you can go through if you can beat the red". It means "stop if it is safe to do so". If it's just firm braking and not actual tires-squealing stop? The driver probably did the right thing.
Safe is relative. If he almost got rear ended, it probably wasn't safe.
Of course, the other driver should have given ample distance himself and have been paying attention, but people often don't do that.
At the margin, I think it is safer to err on the side of running a yellow then stopping abrubtly. I have never seen someone run a yellow and think they were being unsafe (even when the yellow turned red), but have seen people stop on yellow in a way that seemed unsafe.
Re: Locals reportedly frustrated with Waymo's self-driving cars
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the truth here. I also try to follow the letter of the law. I always assume that a brick wall may suddenly shoot up in front of the car in front of me, stopping it instantly and killing everyone in it. So following closer than the recommended distance, is idiotic. How often will a brick wall shoot up in front of a car like life is a video game? Probably a really low percentage, but cats, deer, blown tires, tr…
You're a minority because following the letter of the law isn't always the safe decision. It's illegal to cross the double yellow lines, but if a car is pulled over on the shoulder then I'll cross the lines to give them more space. It's illegal but it increases safety for me and them.
I do safe, illegal things too, so good point in mentioning this. I should have clarified that I was mostly talking about speed limits, tailgaiting etc.. I was just picking up the above poster's phrase. I don't think I could accurately sum up my driving style in a phrase, but that's probably the best short way to do it.