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The latest chapter for the self-driving car: mastering city street driving

googleblog.blogspot.com

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Re: The latest chapter for the self-driving car: mastering city street driving

#91

Post by maxerickson »

seren wrote: post #78
maxerickson wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are several million truckers in the U.S., so it's somewhere around 1% (but it's probably less than 2%). I guess there are probably lots of delivery drivers, but those vehicles will still need tenders (at least until robots can do the last 100 feet of the delivery).

The "issue" is probably not for the general workforce, but it will significantly reduce the number of not-so-qualified jobs. According to a quick googling "1 in 15 worker in a long truck driver according to the ATA" [1]. But this is expected that automation tend to reduce these kind of jobs first. [1] http://truck-driver-salary.org/how-many-truck-drivers-are-th...

Your link says that 1 in 15 workers is employed in the trucking industry. It says there are 3.5 million truck drivers, which is consistent enough with my 1%.

I'm sure it will create lots of turmoil if truckers are put out of work. But there is already an enormous amount of turmoil in the employment market (for lots of reasons). Especially in the part of the employment market that truckers participate in.

Re: The latest chapter for the self-driving car: mastering city street driving

#92

Post by masklinn »

maxerickson wrote: post #56
masklinn wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> very little regard to any regulations. That's an important point, I never expected lanes count and lane direction to be interpreted as suggestions until I saw people going through a roundabout on both sides at the same time.

Your other comment in this thread got killed, probably because of the url shortener. Edit: I think comments killed for some reasons can't be recovered by editing them.

Thanks, I replaced it with the huge ugly full URL, does it work now?

edit: well, removed the link entirely, better?

edit 2: welp, I can't delete it either so whatever. Thanks for the notice and help.

Re: The latest chapter for the self-driving car: mastering city street driving

#94

Post by skrause »

dalke wrote: post #84
shekhar101 wrote: post #11

I saw an interesting comment on the blog post. Is anyone keeping tab on the project knows if Google in working on some sort of communication between vehicles on road. That will make the self driving cars much more accurate. Lot of 'sudden' circumstances will be predictable by the car.

What fun it will be when someone figures out how to fake the signals and, for example, force other cars to slow down or stop.

You can do that now already, e.g. pretend to quickly step on a road while a car is approaching and watch the human drives hit their brakes. Yet I don't see that happening because the majority of people aren't jerks.

Re: The latest chapter for the self-driving car: mastering city street driving

#95

Post by anon4 »

josephlord wrote: post #73
Zigurd wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even before we get self-driving cars, autonomous braking should be mandated so that cars and trucks are literally incapable of coming too close to a cyclist.

I'm a cyclist as well as a driver and I give a lot of space to cyclists when overtaking them but I don't see that working too well. When cyclists/pedestrians get used to the system they will start to abuse it and rely on the systems to force the vehicles to avoid them/stop. Also what defines too close? If you stray 1mm inside that zone do the brakes come on hard regardless of other traffic? What happens when the cycl…

The kind of people who would abuse that system likely already act that way expecting the human driver to break.

The point of an auto breaking system is to prevent accidents when a well-intentioned cyclists makes an error in judgement.

Re: The latest chapter for the self-driving car: mastering city street driving

#96

Post by sjtrny »

spuz wrote: post #82
logikblok wrote: post #64

Genuine question, can anybody answer how these cars will: 1) Allow for situational aspects of driving eg I need to get there quickly so might drive faster because I'm running late? 2) Protect from people intentionally take advantage of safety mechanisms eg cutting in front, stepping out onto the road?

My guess is that it won't cater for either of those cases. It seems unlikely that Google would program their cars to break the speed limit just to save you a few minutes (speeding probably saves you a lot less time than you think it does). Also, I cannot see why anyone would deliberately and continuously take advantage of the automatic safety mechanisms on self-driving cars such that the problem would be common enoug…

Ever heard of trolling?

Re: The latest chapter for the self-driving car: mastering city street driving

#97

Post by chopin »

deanclatworthy wrote: post #33
Gustomaximus wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The sad truth of this is that whilst it's an interesting technical challenge, I really can't forsee a situation where a computer could react to all the different things that could happen when driving a car as well as a human. I agree, at least for some time. But it's not about a computer reacting to as much as a human. The question is, can a computer can do a better job overall (e.g. drnk driving or texting while d…

I personally think society is going to have a much harder time accepting death by software bug, than human error.

A software bug IS a human error. We need to accept the overall better (statistical) performance. In aviation this works out pretty well. As well a bug will harm at most on a limited number of events after which it is weeded out (like in aviation). The same human error (eg. drunk driving) will occur over and over again.

Re: The latest chapter for the self-driving car: mastering city street driving

#98

Post by DougWebb »

alextgordon wrote: post #57
rwmj wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is .. what happens if a cyclist falls in front of a car with a human driver? Probably the car drives over him and the cyclist dies. The challenge is to do better than that, which is a rather low bar.

People won't see it like that. If a human driver makes a mistake, it's "human error". If a robot driver makes a mistake it's criminal negligence -- because robots are capable of not making mistakes. In other words, robots are held to a higher standard than humans.

I don't think it's quite that... If a human driver makes a mistake, the driver is liable. If the car makes a mistake, the car manufacturer is liable. This is true today; if you're driving along and you swerve into someone/something, that's your fault. But if your wheel falls off because of a manufacturing defect the car company is going to get sued. The car company faces a much higher liability risk, because they're responsible for ALL of the cars they manufacture, unlike the driver who is responsible for a single car.

It'll be the same with automated driving software. All of the liability for accidents that occur in cars using the software will be concentrated with the software developer, instead of distributed amongst all of the drivers. That might be too much liability to make the business viable.

The good news for us drivers: our insurance rates should drop once the cars are fully automated and manual control isn't even possible. At that point we'll just be passengers, and we shouldn't need to pay insurance.

Re: The latest chapter for the self-driving car: mastering city street driving

#99

Post by zimbatm »

furyg3 wrote: post #83
gamegoblin wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Harder yet, Southeast Asia. Hundreds of pedestrians, tons of vehicle variety (some entirely makeshift), uncontrolled intersections, very little regard to any regulations.

In my mind structured road conditions are a prerequisite for driverless cars. I've been in many situations where conservative driving according to the rules of the road is not possible. In the West this is more limited to dense cities and exceptional situations. In India, though, this is the rule. If you waited for pedestrians to finish crossing or for cars to clear intersections, maintained a safe following distance…

Crime of the future: change the road environment at the right time to get the target's car to crash themselves.

Re: The latest chapter for the self-driving car: mastering city street driving

#100

Post by maxerickson »

DougWebb wrote: post #90
maxerickson wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even New York City seems to only have tens of thousands of cab drivers ('seems' because I just looked at wikipedia for a minute), I don't think they are that big a percentage of the population.

My step-dad was a NYC cab driver. It's true that they're a small percentage of the population, but that's not the right way to think about it. In NYC (and other US cities as well I believe) to become a cab driver requires buying a Medallion, which is a license to operate a cab. They cost a LOT of money, roughly the same as a small NYC condominium. My step-dad's cost a couple hundred thousand dollars many years ago, a…

So at $1 million per, there is ~$15 billion in notional medallion value. That's a tiny slice of the New York City economy.

The individual impact will be pretty large, but I doubt it would be much of a problem for the city as a whole.

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