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Google's Autonomous cars complete 300,000 miles without an accident

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Re: Google's Autonomous cars complete 300,000 miles without an accident

#191

Post by mchusma »

enraged_camel wrote: post #169
danparsonson wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been driving for over 10 years and I still enjoy almost every journey - I think autonomous cars are a fantastic idea but I would miss driving if I couldn't ever do it.

I don't think the automation would ever be mandatory. It would be more like auto-pilot, where it would do most of the mundane driving, but let you take over when you want.

Do you think once the automated car gets to the point where it causes 1000x less fatalities, that people would still allow the freedom to drive a 3 ton missile around public? I personally think not.

Re: Google's Autonomous cars complete 300,000 miles without an accident

#192

Post by icebraining »

clarky07 wrote: post #121
Goronmon wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem for me isn't commuting, it's having to invest so much money into a huge pile of metal and plastic that someone distracted by someone or something in their own pile of metal and plastic can destroy in an instance, possibly killing me and anyone with me. Or maybe I get distracted and the result is similar. I just don't see the few cases where it's enjoyable to be worth the other costs. I'd consider it simil…

Comparing to smoking seems to be a huge stretch to me. One thing virtually guarantees cancer and an eventual unpleasant death while providing no measurable benefits at all, and the other allows you to easily travel all over the place cheaply with a relatively small chance of a major accident.

virtually guarantees cancer

That's not true at all, the incidence rate of lung cancer in smokers is less than 20%. That's still much higher than for non-smokers (0.4% - 2%), but hardly a "virtual guarantee".

Re: Google's Autonomous cars complete 300,000 miles without an accident

#193

Post by icebraining »

uncoder0 wrote: post #16
ams6110 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will you be OK with google tracking everywhere you go and serving you ads for every shop you pass?

Hopefully I'll be wearing my google glass too! So, I guess so. True privacy is very hard. You could set up a camera to read plates at some choice points and know the whereabouts of most of the people in your city. If you want to do something privately you have to act deliberately in this day and age.

Setting up those cameras would be illegal where I live.

Re: Google's Autonomous cars complete 300,000 miles without an accident

#194

Post by duaneb »

Tycho wrote: post #96
ShabbyDoo wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. Did humans step-in when they noted conditions which they believed the car unable to handle and perhaps prevent the majority of likely accidents?

My suspicion is that the figures quoted around these Google cars and their safety record, if you take them at face value, lead to a ludicrous level of optimism.

I don't think that Google would say otherwise. This is just a status report in the beginning of the program.

Re: Google's Autonomous cars complete 300,000 miles without an accident

#195

Post by VBprogrammer »

joshschreuder wrote: post #190
VBprogrammer wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not if all of the cars can do it just as easily.

How would a full switch to automated cars work anyway? Would they require different roads? If their functionality included stopping on a dime at a duck on the road, and human reaction speed isn't equivalent, it isn't safe to human drivers. But cost and manufacturing has to factor in before we can just replace every car on the road. People still drive 20 year old cars.

I expect it will be a mixture of carrot and stick like any good phased replacement. Dedicated lanes (since they can drive 2ft from the car in front) and higher speeds because they are able to cut the reaction time down so much lower.

Eventually making it mandatory for some classes of roads (motorways / highways).

At some point in the very distant future your classic car will only be good for showing off on track days or classic car meets.

Re: Google's Autonomous cars complete 300,000 miles without an accident

#196

Post by duaneb »

mike-cardwell wrote: post #137
spitfire wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I imagine, once automated cars are safe and popular enough, they will mandate that all new cars must have it and set a date after which only automated cars are allowed on the road. It will become an offence to take over and drive manually unless the circumstance demands it. You'll be fine driving your Aston Martin, but your kids, or their kids might not be.

You're not factoring in the Media, which will raise a big fuss about taking away their rights and robots not being safe... you get the idea. I can't imagine how people will react once there's an actual possibility a car could be driving on the road with no human controlling it.

Re: Google's Autonomous cars complete 300,000 miles without an accident

#197

Post by modernshoggoth »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #180
Tycho wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My suspicion is that the figures quoted around these Google cars and their safety record, if you take them at face value, lead to a ludicrous level of optimism.

I think that Google have simply done a better job of creating a self-driving car than you are willing to let yourself believe. They have done this by attacking the problem from the 'Big Data' mindset which Google are intimately familiar with. Instead of trying to crack hard AI problems (computer vision being the most obvious) they are simply counting on being able to record and use enough information both before and…

Indeed. The whole self-driven car isn't a new idea - various individuals and university disciplines have been trying the idea for the last decade over in Europe - it's legal to test these ideas on the road in some countries over there.

If you make the assumption that all cars will be AI, then traffic-handling becomes very, very simple. It's not obstacles or accidents that cause serious problems for traffic, it's the fact that you can't know what all other drivers are thinking.

If all vehicles behaved to a certain rule set then all vehicles actions could be predicted, and as a result designing logic to accommodate that is made much easier.

Re: Google's Autonomous cars complete 300,000 miles without an accident

#198

Post by StavrosK »

tzs wrote: post #189
mike-cardwell wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine, once automated cars are safe and popular enough, they will mandate that all new cars must have it and set a date after which only automated cars are allowed on the road. It will become an offence to take over and drive manually unless the circumstance demands it. You'll be fine driving your Aston Martin, but your kids, or their kids might not be.

I expect that as the automated cars get sophisticated enough that they no longer act individually, but rather each car is in constant communication with the cars in the area so that they can coordinate maneuvers and engage in global planning, a semi-manual option might be added to the system so people can drive for fun. They way that would work is that when you car is in semi-manual mode, it tells the others cars tha…

Most of these things will not be possible merely because they give you an unfair advantage. What you call "racing" I call "being at my destination much sooner", and, yes please, I would like every other car to step aside so I can get home faster. Which, of course, only means that everybody will try to abuse this.
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