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Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

economist.com

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Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#471

Post by maxsilver »

bluGill wrote: post #470
maxsilver wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Consider cities... like London and New York. (snip) Note that I'm only asking about city travel Generally speaking, I don't see any future where people no longer drive, because the cost of not-driving is so exorbitantly expensive that very few people will ever be able to afford it. EVs are cheap, and get cheaper every day. Dense urban "car-free" housing is already unaffordable for almost everyone, and only gets mor…

High density being expensive and getting those rents shows there is demand: we should be building more of it to fill demand, and in turn bring prices down. In less dense areas the car shines above anything else. However in those dense areas where people have shown they want to live cars are too big and we need something else.

> we should be building more of it to fill demand, and in turn bring prices down.

That's not really how construction works in the US. All construction generates higher prices than existed before (this is explicit intentional policy, at both the local, state, and federal level).

There is no such thing as new housing in the US that lowers property values, therefore there is no such thing as a new building that lowers "prices". No one does this (except perhaps, non-profits and such). And even if you wanted to anyway, no bank would ever finance it.

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#472

Post by bluGill »

criddell wrote: post #338
astrodust wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lots of people don’t live in urban cores. That's what has to change. Both the location of people, and the definition of "urban core".

> That's what has to change. Good luck with that. People like living in the suburbs. It's where I live and when self-driving cars are available I'll move further out of the city.

Where people live is always a compromise. I want my mansion on 100 acres within a few meters of New York's subway (any station), and no more than 20 minutes from my job (in the midwest - I'd have to average 3x the speed of sound to make that trip time). The above of course is impossible, even if you are the richest person in the world.

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#473

Post by bluGill »

ivanhoe wrote: post #245
bogle wrote: post #133

If we expect driverless cars to be further delayed and we continue building our cities to encourage micromobility (bikes, electric scooters, segregated lanes, car free streets, etc.) then at which point does the value of the driverless car become moot because we no longer drive? Does this sound unlikely? Consider European cities like Copenhagen and Amsterdam which have encouraged cycling over the last two decades and…

What you're saying is taking into account only big cities and young population, but in small places and suburbs you depend on cars to do anything, get anywhere. Old people can't be expected to walk far or drive scooters and bikes everyday. And population is mostly getting older, plus with the rise of remote work I presume that more and more people will move outside the big urban centers looking for slower pace and ch…

For the vast majority of old people their doctor would disagree: they need to get out and walk more. Yes slowing down is important, but their health would overall be improved by walking more. For those not yet old walking more is more a mental barrier than a physical one.

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#474

Post by GhettoMaestro »

bllguo wrote: post #465
jandrese wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fact at least one company is looking into this, having the car self-navigate as much as possible, but when confronted with a difficult situation like construction or debris in the road it would call back to a remote operator who would take over until you are past the difficult situation. They also saved the operators response so when the next car hits the same obstacle and calls back the next operator can just rep…

interesting, but what a terrifying job that would be. dealing with life-or-death scenarios all day long. and the liability questions would become even more complex

I think it really becomes a question of what to do when the computer senses it is getting into a scenario that it can not handle with a reasonable confidence %.

You wouldn't flash hand-off the car from auto-drive to the operator without some basic safety measures also occurring. One of those will be slowing (or stopping if possible) the car until the remote operator takes over. You won't hand the human "the bag" (responsibility) after the computer gets you totally up shit creek and you have no chance to effect a positive outcome. It will hand over "the bag" when the "we are getting up shit creek incrementally" value crosses some accepted safe threshold.

(Didn't mean to ramble.)

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#475

Post by rayiner »

_ea1k wrote: post #322
rayiner wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That article describes a systematic design defect of Tesla’s system. (It’s a defect that all camera based systems have. They are designed to ignore stationary objects because they can’t adequately distinguish background objects from obstacles.) Car and Driver tested this last year, and the Tesla ran into the stationary dummy nearly every time. This is something humans have almost no problem dealing with.

It has been a problem, but it is definitely not an intrinsic defect of camera based solutions. The stopped truck example has been examined in depth with rooted Tesla's. The Tesla actually detects the truck, but fails to fully recognize the scenario and attempts to drive under it! See also, greentheonly's work on Twitter on researching this. Ignoring some stopped objects is only a temporary limitation.

I said it was a systematic defect camera based systems share, not that it was intrinsic to camera based systems. Camera based systems have much less information about object positioning than LIDAR based systems. They filter out non-moving objects because the vision processing algorithms are not sophisticated enough to distinguish between the background and obstacles. If they stopped for stationary objects in the road, they’d routinely stop because they mistook the background for a stationary object.

That may or may not be a temporary limitation. It depends on whether vision processing becomes reliable enough where you can almost always distinguish an object in the road from an object in the background.

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#476

Post by bluGill »

trenning wrote: post #230
PanMan wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean places like... Amsterdam? Plenty of rain here. That won't stop people from biking. If the majority of people own a bike, but not a car, biking becomes the default. Even with rain.

No places like Wisconsin and Minnesota where there's week spans of high temps that barley get above 0F and wind chills that will give you frost bite if you're exposed for too long. I live in Seattle, rain sucks to ride in and most people don't have facilities to change or shower at work. That's a luxury not a standard. It's all a moot point anyways because all this assumes everyone lives within biking distance of wor…

I went to school in MN, and regularly did 1 mile walks in all weather including highs of -25F. You learn to dress for it.

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#477

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

jaxn wrote: post #179
danboarder wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why you state this. I've used autopilot in a Model 3 on city streets and suburbs, it works pretty great.

Similarly, I have used autopilot in rain so bad that I was scared to drive. It performed perfectly and was much less stressful for me. I was fully engaged and ready to take over, but never needed to.

I'll echo that. Heavy rain, I could barely see the lines, but the car seemed to find them just fine and was driving straight and smooth.

Until traffic on the other side of the median barrier hit a big deep puddle, absolutely covering my car with a thick sheet of water. Autopilot immediately started screaming at me to take control. I already had my hands on the wheel, but it still scared me because I couldn't see either! After the water washed a way in a couple seconds, I was able to re-enable AP and keep going.

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#478

Post by mrec »

mcv wrote: post #337
bogle wrote: post #133

If we expect driverless cars to be further delayed and we continue building our cities to encourage micromobility (bikes, electric scooters, segregated lanes, car free streets, etc.) then at which point does the value of the driverless car become moot because we no longer drive? Does this sound unlikely? Consider European cities like Copenhagen and Amsterdam which have encouraged cycling over the last two decades and…

> "If you don't need to drive why would you buy a driverless car?" Not everybody lives in a city, and even people who do live in a city want to leave the city sometimes. I use my bike whenever I can, but we still own a car. That said, the less you drive, the more interesting a driverless car might become: we won't be used to driving, so a self-driving car might be safer for us. And the main reason I prefer to take th…

> we won't be used to driving, so a self-driving car might be safer for us

Very much this. I've lived in London for nearly 20 years. I haven't driven in nearly 20 years. I've barely set foot in a car in nearly 20 years.

If I ever needed to drive I'd essentially have to learn all over again (ethically, anyway; not sure about the legal situation). A driverless option for those rare occasions would be great.

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#479

Post by rayiner »

kiba wrote: post #239
DickingAround wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is kind of silly. It's nice to imagine a world where people don't need cars. But most/all european cities, many of which we laid out before cars, still have cars. We all have cars because cars are incredibly useful; Got 4 young kids and you need to get groceries for the week? You're not going to bicycle them to the store and all that food home again in the mountains. Live in the city and want to go hiking 20 mil…

We all have cars because cars are incredibly useful; Got 4 young kids and you need to get groceries for the week? This only work that way because that's how your life is structured, not that it is a law of nature. If you live near a grocery store, you wouldn't have to buy enough grocery to last you a week. You can just buy what you need.

How do you find a place within easy transit distance of your work, your spouse’s work, a grocery store, your kids’ school or daycare, your kids’ activities, and your kids’ friends’ houses? How do middle class people do all that in a country where cities have made it illegal to build new housing?

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#480

Post by the_watcher »

bogle wrote: post #133

If we expect driverless cars to be further delayed and we continue building our cities to encourage micromobility (bikes, electric scooters, segregated lanes, car free streets, etc.) then at which point does the value of the driverless car become moot because we no longer drive? Does this sound unlikely? Consider European cities like Copenhagen and Amsterdam which have encouraged cycling over the last two decades and…

[Speaking about the US, specifically] Micromobility in major cities doesn't really change the realities for the vast number of Americans who don't live in a place where this is realistic.

I grew up outside Palm Springs (so not just talking about the very rural part of the country, which is vast and still populated). It would have taken me almost an hour to bike to my high school from my house, but only took ~20 minutes in a car, and for two of the years, the route included dropping off two younger siblings. Skipping past the safety concerns, I think that two daily hour long bike rides is pretty unrealistic for kids under a certain age. This also ignores that, in high school, I literally didn't have a spare 1.5 hours with varsity sports, AP/IB classes, and all the other "necessary" extra-curricular stuff for college prep (which is a separate issue, but still exists).

"No longer driving at all" is really only for single and/or childless people, and mainly those living in a large city where the retailers and service providers you need to see in person are within a realistic biking range.

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