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

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

#281

Post by Loughla »

ripter wrote: post #235
Loughla wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your basic argument is that, although robots will make mistakes, we'll let them kill just a few of us to save many more. That seems like it's not going to go over well with most people. 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 rathe…

I think you misread. He's saying that it's better for everyone if a robot hits debris every now and then vs a human driver that causes 100ish deaths a day. According to http://www.nhtsa.gov/NCSA a pedestrians is killed every two hours and injured every 7 minutes. A robot car would reduce these rates to near zero.

I'm still not sold that "A robot car would reduce these rates to near zero" as you claim. Your statistics give: time of day; weather conditions; area (pedestrian or motor vehicle designated); alcohol consumption; and state/city data;

BUT I don't see conditions predicating the crash.

I would be very interested, and would be sold more on the idea of self-driving cars if the advocates who make your claim could point to examples that would reduce these rates. How many accidents are caused by drivers swerving to miss something? How many are caused by driver inattentiveness? How many are caused by mechanical error? Without these numbers, saying that a robot car would reduce these rates to near zero is on the same footing as anyone who wants to claim that self-driving cars would kill more people, because we can plan ahead. I hope that makes sense, I'm having a hard time with the language today.

By the way, I love the concept of self-driving cars, I just don't think they're the cure-all most advocates, such as yourself, claim them to be.

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

#282

Post by Loughla »

pekk wrote: post #229
Loughla wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your basic argument is that, although robots will make mistakes, we'll let them kill just a few of us to save many more. That seems like it's not going to go over well with most people. 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 rathe…

We let people kill more than a few of us. We let people wreck our cars and endanger our lives in situations that would have been easily avoidable.

And we don't have a choice but to live with people.

Selling a random person an item and asking them to give over control to said item, when the item carries the very real possibility of causing harm, is a harder sales pitch. You have to remember that not everyone is sold on technology, just for the sake of technology.

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

#283

Post by fancyketchup »

chillingeffect wrote: post #246
ignostic wrote: post #209

Everyone seems really concerned with the edge cases right now. What about insurance and liability? What about when X happens and it's raining? These are (usually pretty minor) technical challenges, and I haven't heard one yet that we won't be able to overcome with today's technology. Under given circumstances the car will be safer than a human or it isn't. The moment it crosses that threshold (for most conditions) th…

I. You shift the goalposts a lot. E.g. in the same sentence you mix statements about the future and the present, e.g. "we will" and "today's technology". > I haven't heard one yet that we won't be able to overcome with today's technology. BTW, LIDAR doesn't work in snow and rain. Today. It's not clear that it works for multiple independent vehicles, either. We may only have self-driving car, singular. II. Also, in yo…

> It's not clear that it works for multiple independent vehicles, either. We may only have self-driving car, singular.

I'm no LIDAR expert, but I do design and build synchronous detectors (think: boxcar/lock-in amplifier/gated counter). Maybe this has been tried and there's some reason it wouldn't work, but I don't see why you couldn't apply a pseudo-random modulation to the LIDAR emitter and then run the received signal through a correlator. Besides bringing some conversion gain and allowing for more accurate distance determination (compared to a simple pulsed-ToF), PRN modulation allows you to share the channel with other transmitters (CDMA, if you will).

> BTW, LIDAR doesn't work in snow and rain. Today.

Isn't this just a matter of the wavelength used by today's LIDARs? There's a huge hole in the liquid and solid water absorption spectrum in the visible range.

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

#284

Post by mindslight »

nitid_name wrote: post #266
mindslight wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like the law to come to a full and complete stop at every stop sign, including the four ways that blanket every neighborhood? No thank you; cyclists treat stop signs as four-dimensional yields for some damn good reasons. There's a lot of terrible bike-riders (riding on the left side of the road around a blind corner...), but there are also a lot of terrible laws and signage. Don't delude yourself into believing that…

Non-cyclists don't typically understand the very real cost of losing momentum at a stop sign/light. Cyclists don't tend to understand that unfairness aspect many drivers seem to feel when cyclists cheat. That said, some states are starting to address the stop sign/stop-light problem for bicyclists (well, sort of). Virginia, for example, lets cyclists (including motorcycles) treat stop lights as stop signs after a cer…

I understand that it is seen as unfair, but write that off as Stockholm syndrome. It does suck that cities are constantly erecting even more traffic signals (etc), but the appropriate response is to blame the job-justifying behavior of city hall, not to go zero-sum and get mad at the people who can better skirt them.

For what it's worth, I don't even really bike that much these days and certainly encounter my share of idiotic bikers when driving/walking. But that doesn't mean I'm going to give in to blowhard legality tropes when it's clear that the real nuisance bikers are doing things that are so stupid (against traffic, on sidewalk, left turn from right lane, texting) that they don't care about even bodily harm. Meanwhile there are plenty of actions that are illegal yet affect nobody else that can be performed prudently and thoughtfully.

Also, any observably-broken traffic light can and should be treated as a stop sign. What else do you do, strictly follow the narrow part of the law that you've been told and patiently wait for the police to hold your hand?

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

#285

Post by Qworg »

davedx wrote: post #280
Qworg wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly. LIDAR resolution is related to a few things: - How many beams you're putting out and at what angles - How fast you're spinning and how fast you can get the data back. - How many points of data you can get through your bus If the Google Car is using the big Velodyne ( http://velodynelidar.com/lidar/hdlproducts/hdl64e.aspx ), it puts out 1.3 Mpt/second over a 26.8 degree vertical field of view. That makes it…

Could you use some kind of LIDAR stereo configuration to tell the difference between a dry spot and a solid object?

Well, LIDAR doesn't have that differentiation problem - it has a resolution problem for small (sub half meter) things at range.

Stereo LIDAR would just add more points - you can correlate the two, but you'll still have resolution issues.

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

#286

Post by warfangle »

beachstartup wrote: post #211
scoofy wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replace bike with car. You seem to think that drivers are not massive traffic law violators? Speeding, double parking, tailgating, failing to signal, need i go on? Expecting an entire group to act like pristine angels before life saving laws can be put in place is asinine at best.

the problem is bicyclists tend to do things that are far more dangerous / serious: * running red lights * running stop signs * driving down the wrong side of the road * driving on sidewalks bikes are far less dangerous than cars, which is why nobody minds that they routinely break far worse rules. in addition, bicyclists routinely break the rules you mentioned.

As a resident of Brooklyn, I see cars that do those things more often than bicycles that do those things. (granted, the car driving the wrong way on a one way is usually one going in reverse at 30mph, or a police radio car with or without sirens on)

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

#287

Post by mindslight »

jhenkens wrote: post #270
mindslight wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Predictability and not jumping in front of cars is unrelated to not being in a crosswalk. Crosswalks actually worsen these aspects, as they make drivers more prone to needlessly slamming on their brakes to wave people out while also fostering a sense of pedestrian entitlement instead of respectful temporal negotiation. It's really not hard to look at traffic (all types), spot the existing gaps, and navigate within th…

Perhaps it could be due to the fact that you are legally required to yield to pedestrians in a crosswalk? Not to say that people do yield often, but once a pedestrian is in a crosswalk, not yielding is a great way to get a quick ticket.

Yes of course that's what it's due to. But those laws are made for people who need/want traffic to stop so they can take their time, which is understandable. But when you're willing to wait three seconds on the curb for the one last car before a large gap, but you have to turn your entire body away and pretend to daydream just so that it won't needlessly stop, sensibilities have gone too far in the other direction.

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

#288

Post by revelation »

dabeeeenster wrote: post #15

As a city cyclist, the Google solution looks way safer than the current status quo...

The fellow people over at Reddit have alerted me to the fact that the Google car is actually still breaking the law (while being a tremendous improvement over the idiots that normally operate cars):

Turning Across Bicycle Lanes 21717. Whenever it is necessary for the driver of a motor vehicle to cross a bicycle lane that is adjacent to his lane of travel to make a turn, the driver shall drive the motor vehicle into the bicycle lane prior to making the turn and shall make the turn pursuant to Section 22100 [general turning regulations]

The car must be in the bicycle lane before turning. You can not turn by crossing over the lane, and if you couldn't get into the lane before, you will have to wait to get into the lane and then turn.

This figures in nicely with the people here saying we should disregard cyclists because they constantly break the traffic laws. Are you always in the bicycle lane when turning with your car? Don't claim this is a surprising rule and not generally known; try cycling some time, you'll find the traffic laws are setup in a way that often makes it impossible to travel efficiently, safe and legally.

(If I can just add this: traffic laws for cycling are the ultimate bikeshed. Imagine a bikeshed committee, where the people on the comittee have no need for a bikeshed and no concept of how people use a bikeshed, or why. In Germany, up until some time ago, they regulated the voltage and energy source for bike lights.)

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

#289

Post by thrownaway2424 »

Loughla wrote: post #281
ripter wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you misread. He's saying that it's better for everyone if a robot hits debris every now and then vs a human driver that causes 100ish deaths a day. According to http://www.nhtsa.gov/NCSA a pedestrians is killed every two hours and injured every 7 minutes. A robot car would reduce these rates to near zero.

I'm still not sold that "A robot car would reduce these rates to near zero" as you claim. Your statistics give: time of day; weather conditions; area (pedestrian or motor vehicle designated); alcohol consumption; and state/city data; BUT I don't see conditions predicating the crash. I would be very interested, and would be sold more on the idea of self-driving cars if the advocates who make your claim could point to…

You're acting like one of those people who say that we don't have all the evidence on global climate change yet. There's no mystery about what causes motor vehicle collisions. Here is a huge report from the administration to Congress on the causes of motor vehicle collisions.

http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/811059.PDF

The majority of crashes occur in daytime, in clear weather, while the car is moving in a straight line. You'll note that substantially all of these causes would be solved by a computer-driven car.

""" About 41 percent of the driver-related critical reasons were recognition errors that include inattention, internal and external distractions, inadequate surveillance, etc. Of these, the most frequently occurring critical reason was inadequate surveillance that refers to a situation in which a driver failed to look, or looked but did not see, when it was essential to safely complete a vehicle maneuver. This critical reason was assigned to drivers in about 20 percent of crashes. Internal distraction as a critical reason was assigned to drivers in about 11 percent of the crashes. About 34 percent of the driver-related critical reasons were decision errors that included too fast for conditions (8.4%), too fast for curve (4.9%), false assumption of others’ actions (4.5%), illegal maneuver (3.8%), and misjudgment of gap or others’ speed (3.2%). In about 10 percent of the crashes, the critical reason was a performance error, such as overcompensation (4.9%), poor directional control (4.7%), etc. Among the nonperformance errors assigned as critical reasons to drivers in about 7 percent of the crashes, sleep was the most common critical reason (3.2%). The effectiveness of vehicle-based countermeasures used in mitigating the effects of various driver performance, recognition, and decision errors could be evaluated using this information. """

You'll note that "vehicle problem" is the critical pre-crash event for only 1.2% of crashes. Therefore if the computer _only_ solves the sleeping driver problem, and even if it is twice as bad as humans at handling vehicle mechanical failure, society is still reaping a net benefit. But, of course, computer-driven cars can solve nearly all of these causes of crashes: inattention, misperception, distraction, sleeping, driving too fast for conditions, and on and on.

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

#290

Post by maxerickson »

TheEzEzz wrote: post #231
ignostic wrote: post #209

Everyone seems really concerned with the edge cases right now. What about insurance and liability? What about when X happens and it's raining? These are (usually pretty minor) technical challenges, and I haven't heard one yet that we won't be able to overcome with today's technology. Under given circumstances the car will be safer than a human or it isn't. The moment it crosses that threshold (for most conditions) th…

There must be at least 50 million residential garages in the US alone. If we automate all cars and switch to a Cars-as-a-Service model that is 50 million large rooms suddenly available. That's a lot of reclaimed real estate. Edit: If the average garage is 250 sq ft (pretty small), average cost of real estate is $100/sq ft (pretty low), then this is a $1.25 trillion windfall. Not bad for a small side-effect of autonom…

That $100 is only low for highly developed wealthy areas.

Square feet of livable housing is cheaper than that in most of the country.

Undeveloped land probably mostly sells for less than $0.10 a square foot (that's still high at $4000 an acre). But that's partly because large sales of relatively isolated land will dominate the acreage transferred.

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