Important detail: "It’s not clear how many of these 300,000 miles were driven on Google’s secret racecourse, by the way."
Google's Autonomous cars complete 300,000 miles without an accident
51–60 of 269 posts
Re: Google's Autonomous cars complete 300,000 miles without an accident
#52The cars still need to learn how to handle snow-covered roads That is going to be hard to pull off. For places that get a lot of snow, often you can't even be sure if you're on the road or not.
In theory autonomous care would be able to include a number of other factor to decide if they are on the road or not. Including, GPS, wifi signals, the grade of the road, the texture of the road, etc.
Re: Google's Autonomous cars complete 300,000 miles without an accident
#53Too bad it doesn't mention if this is better than a human or not. So, I decided to figure it out... 2.9 trillion miles driven in 2009 http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/tvtw/09dectvt/09dectvt.pdf 10.8 million traffic accidents in 2009 http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s1103.p... If my math is correct the average american can expect to get in an accident every ~250,000 miles driven, (NYC to LA 90 times) s…
What I’m interested in is whether they counted hypothetical accidents. As far as I know, there always has to be someone in the driver’s seat, ready to step in at any time. How often did that person have to step in? Now that would be an interesting metric, especially when plotted over time.
As is, it should be pretty unlikely for the autonomous cars to cause accidents, even if they were much less reliable than human drivers (since there is always a human ready to step in).
I think autonomous cars are awesome and very clearly the future, but I find it hard to believe that humans never had to step in, especially not in the beginning. I mean, that’s why they do those extensive test drives, right? To find bugs that they can squash.
Re: Google's Autonomous cars complete 300,000 miles without an accident
#54Too bad it doesn't mention if this is better than a human or not. So, I decided to figure it out... 2.9 trillion miles driven in 2009 http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/tvtw/09dectvt/09dectvt.pdf 10.8 million traffic accidents in 2009 http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s1103.p... If my math is correct the average american can expect to get in an accident every ~250,000 miles driven, (NYC to LA 90 times) s…
What type of accidents though? Do people get in a number of fender benders over their lives? or head on at 65mph?
What sort of accidents will GoogleCar be prone to? Fender benders, or a head on at 65mph every 500K?
I'm very hopeful about this. Most people don't want to drive most of the time. As long as I can still drive my V12 Aston martin manually when I want to, this is awesome.
Re: Google's Autonomous cars complete 300,000 miles without an accident
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would be nice, but I can see the reaction from truckers who become out of work already...
Aren't autonomous cars required to have a human "driver" while on the road? I can definitely see truckers lobbying to have some sort of law of that nature - they sit behind the wheel "in case something goes wrong", but would be allowed to drive longer hours with fewer mandated breaks. Sounds like a win for the profession in general... setting aside that longer drive times mean that at least some will be out of work.
Even if the truck's "supervisor" is paid as much as drivers are today, trucking companies are very hungry to get more miles driven in fewer days. These will let trucks drive for more than 11 hours, thus I believe we'll see these as soon as they're approved.
Re: Google's Autonomous cars complete 300,000 miles without an accident
#56I kind of wonder how Google's driverless car handles the situation in extremely populous cities such as Shanghai or HongKong.
I'd love to see it handle the 17th century layout of central london as well.
Re: Google's Autonomous cars complete 300,000 miles without an accident
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
So will susceptibility to car sickness become a federally-protected disability?
I wonder how much of car sickness is thanks to the driver. And if a good enough software could drive without causing car sickness?
Maybe if you had some sort of AR setup that projected what you were interested in onto the environment. E.g., passengers would be able to read a book as if it was on a billboard floating on the horizon. Would that be enough to combat the effect?
Re: Google's Autonomous cars complete 300,000 miles without an accident
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know much about this google project. Can autonomous cars (i) drive on the highway (ii) drive at night (iii) drive in snow or rain?
I thought they were limited to driving on the highway in the empty parts of nevada?
that is for a car with no human in it, afaik. the google cars drive on normal roads with other cars present
Re: Google's Autonomous cars complete 300,000 miles without an accident
#59Autonomous cars are the next big tech that changes the world - I put them up there with computer, Internet, and smart phone. When economists think about technology, they look at it as a productivity booster. From that angle, robot cars will have a huge impact - so many commute hours will be transformed to work, or even leisure, which also boosts productivity. So many smart people are about to be given a 10% or better…
> Autonomous cars are the next big tech that changes the world - I put them up there with computer, Internet, and smart phone.
I wouldn't be so sure. Yeah, it might prove to be a very good thing for the United States, but for the rest of world there's first Europe's public transport networks (I'm 31, don't have a driver's license, I live in Europe, I'm doing perfectly fine, thank you), and short of us reaching the Singularity I honestly don't see any of these cars driving in the crazy traffic of Cairo, Istanbul, or any other metropolis from the rest of Asia or Africa.
Re: Google's Autonomous cars complete 300,000 miles without an accident
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are suggesting human's will run into it more often right? I sincerely doubt we will see too many autonomous-car-at-fault crashes. The blacked out Lexus SUV's I saw at a Google event a few weeks ago were very discrete minus the velodyne sensor. If it adds an credibility I was on a team at the Victorville final in 2007. :) As an aside, I've been waiting to buy my Google car for 5 long years. During this time I've b…
Will you be OK with google tracking everywhere you go and serving you ads for every shop you pass?
I'll take that over feeling like I'm about to die while a careless driver is at the wheel any day.