201–210 of 455 posts
As a city cyclist, the Google solution looks way safer than the current status quo...
Question for self-driving car aficionados. When I'm driving and encounter a strange or dangerous situation these days I often try to think if a robocar will be able to handle it properly. One situation came up the other day that made me nervous. I was driving on a relatively empty highway at high speed (70mph) and there was a piece of debris in one of the lanes. I spotted the debris far ahead and safely changed lanes…
Humans have a tendency to focus on the bizarre while dismissing the average. Perhaps a self-driving car will not see this debris, although I would be surprised if that was true. The robot car has far superior sensors, compared to yours, and it never looks at anything else. Probably the consequences of hitting the debris would have been minor anyway. On the other hand, meat-drivers are constantly murdering hundreds of…
Question for self-driving car aficionados. When I'm driving and encounter a strange or dangerous situation these days I often try to think if a robocar will be able to handle it properly. One situation came up the other day that made me nervous. I was driving on a relatively empty highway at high speed (70mph) and there was a piece of debris in one of the lanes. I spotted the debris far ahead and safely changed lanes…
I remember hearing that debris is a very hard problem that Google hasn't figured out quite yet. They can detect it just fine, but they can't tell if it's safe to run over or the car should swerve to avoid it. I think they said that currently they monitor other cars and use what they do to determine what they should do, but that obviously won't work if every car is a robot.
Question for self-driving car aficionados. When I'm driving and encounter a strange or dangerous situation these days I often try to think if a robocar will be able to handle it properly. One situation came up the other day that made me nervous. I was driving on a relatively empty highway at high speed (70mph) and there was a piece of debris in one of the lanes. I spotted the debris far ahead and safely changed lanes…
Humans have a tendency to focus on the bizarre while dismissing the average. Perhaps a self-driving car will not see this debris, although I would be surprised if that was true. The robot car has far superior sensors, compared to yours, and it never looks at anything else. Probably the consequences of hitting the debris would have been minor anyway. On the other hand, meat-drivers are constantly murdering hundreds of…
In 2012, the average number of deaths per day in the USA by motor vehicle was a touch under 100, not even close to "hundreds." And talking worldwide, it'd be much more accurate to say thousands--about 3k per day.
To your broader point, I'd be curious about how many accidents occur because of exceptional or long tail situations versus the everyday. Long tail happens more rarely, but presumably is also much more dangerous per unit time or unit distance. I think autocars will handle both sooner rather than later, but there will be a period where they outperform human drivers on the everyday (AFAIK, that may be now or very soon) while being inferior, probably even substantially inferior, in exceptional circumstances. Will the sum of net deaths of those two regimes be positive or negative?
Question for self-driving car aficionados. When I'm driving and encounter a strange or dangerous situation these days I often try to think if a robocar will be able to handle it properly. One situation came up the other day that made me nervous. I was driving on a relatively empty highway at high speed (70mph) and there was a piece of debris in one of the lanes. I spotted the debris far ahead and safely changed lanes…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with you, but I think I can explain some of the rationale behind wanting big cars. Part of the reason is fear. "If I have a very small egg-car and everyone else has a heavy car, I'll be the one that is killed."
> Part of the reason is fear. "If I have a very small egg-car and everyone else has a heavy car, I'll be the one that is killed." That isn't fear, it's entirely rational behavior. This is one of those many cases where a group of people behaving individually in their self-interest results in a situation that's worse for all participants. It would be better for everyone if we moved in aggregate to smaller, lighter cars…
Imagine two extremes. 1) You smack into another person at 70MPH while you're both in a cardboard box. Don't ask me how you got a cardboard box up to that speed, but you probably do not survive. 2) You manage to get a Maersk E class up to 70MPH and crash it into another Maersk E class. Assuming you're not at the front, you and the other guy probably both walk away from the crash unscathed.
Now, that doesn't mean that it's best for everyone to have huge cars. There are other factors beyond simply safety. Small cars can be much safer than large cars when designed and built well. My point is just that the shift to larger vehicles is not the sort of game-theoretic tragedy of the commons that one might imagine.
This is amazing, but if anything it's made me more wary of some of the challenges the project faces. - What if the cyclist fell off his bike in front of the car? How quickly can the computer process the real-time imagery and react compared to a human with their peripheral vision. - What if the cyclist swung from the pavement on to the road. A human driver will probably have spotted the hazard (we all train for that k…
The intermediary step (computer driving with human failsafe) is also incredibly challenging, because you are unsure of the computer's knowledge and intent (this is also what makes backseat drivers so annoying). This computer drives much more conservatively than a human driver, so much so that I'm not sure a human failsafe driver would grok what is going on. Waiting for a railway crossing to be completely clear before…
The most obvious intermediate stage is designated sections of highways in which self-driving cars can operate without active human drivers. The question though is whether that's an interesting enough use case to push through all the legal/regulatory/etc. changes that would be required.
Question for self-driving car aficionados. When I'm driving and encounter a strange or dangerous situation these days I often try to think if a robocar will be able to handle it properly. One situation came up the other day that made me nervous. I was driving on a relatively empty highway at high speed (70mph) and there was a piece of debris in one of the lanes. I spotted the debris far ahead and safely changed lanes…
Humans have a tendency to focus on the bizarre while dismissing the average. Perhaps a self-driving car will not see this debris, although I would be surprised if that was true. The robot car has far superior sensors, compared to yours, and it never looks at anything else. Probably the consequences of hitting the debris would have been minor anyway. On the other hand, meat-drivers are constantly murdering hundreds of…
And I would say that mowing down little kids at the local farmer's market would be one of those 'bizarre' incidents, unless there has been a rash of farmer's market mow-downs that I'm not aware of.
I've never hit anyone, and I'd rather not let a robot wreck my car and endanger my life in a situation that would have been easily avoidable, should I have been in control. There's your counter argument.
Under given circumstances the car will be safer than a human or it isn't. The moment it crosses that threshold (for most conditions) the world is going to change for the better. From there it's just a matter of optimization until a human watcher isn't even required.
Self-driving cars are worth every penny of research. They will some day be safer than human drivers. With a full network of communicating cars and fail-safes we could almost eliminate traffic-related injury and death. Some day your insurance company will probably charge you more per mile you choose to take control of your car.
Beyond safety, this could make life way more convenient and make living far more convenient. We won't need to waste 4-10%+ of our entire lives staring at the road doing nothing. That's huge! Once the cars are safe enough, you'll be able to read, write, or take a nap.
Life also gets a lot more efficient. We won't all need cars. Think about the social ramifications. We won't need all that parking space we waste at home, work, at grocery stores, or downtown. Rather than needing 2 cars for me and my wife, I could send it back to get her once I get to work - or maybe just sign up for a service that completely eliminates the need to own.
Question for self-driving car aficionados. When I'm driving and encounter a strange or dangerous situation these days I often try to think if a robocar will be able to handle it properly. One situation came up the other day that made me nervous. I was driving on a relatively empty highway at high speed (70mph) and there was a piece of debris in one of the lanes. I spotted the debris far ahead and safely changed lanes…
Along the same lines another thing that I think most of us in the US this winter (or least parts of it) had to deal with are potholes. I've gotten quite good at avoiding the potholes around me by preparing for their presence well ahead of where they actually are. In one case there's one right at the top of a hill near me and right under the passenger side tires if you don't move slightly to either side. But because o…