The View from the Front Seat of the Google Self-Driving Car • Hacker News Board

Re: The View from the Front Seat of the Google Self-Driving Car

#61

Post by agumonkey » Mon, May 11, 2015, 7:45 PM UTC

return0 wrote: post #7

When the car is too good and fast to respond, it will get hit from behind it seems. I guess they could change their algorithm to be slow-reacting. dumbing down machines so that petty humans can catch up.

I hope they already did that, they say they can track all moving agents around, and roboticists know physics so they know they have to dissipate energy as smoothly as possible in the system including all neighbors.

Re: The View from the Front Seat of the Google Self-Driving Car

#62

Post by wwkeyboard » Mon, May 11, 2015, 7:45 PM UTC

NovaS1X wrote: post #51

I want to hear the argument about people who want to drive. I enjoy driving. I like driving cars. I still drive a manual and will not buy an automatic transmission. I participate in car clubs and I compete in autocross events. I enjoy automotive photography and I do my own maintenance on my vehicles. What happens to people like me who actually enjoy driving and the act of owning a car? Do my loves get phased out beca…

People still ride horses and we've had cars for over 100 years. I don't see driving going away, it just might be constrained in when and where you are allowed to drive(maybe like Autobahn in Chicago and Motorsports Ranch in Houston).

Re: The View from the Front Seat of the Google Self-Driving Car

#63

Post by john61 » Mon, May 11, 2015, 7:46 PM UTC

The driver is not the problem of cars. It is the fact that in average 1,5 t and 10 m2 are used to transport 100 kg and 1 m2. Driverlessness does not change the bad physics of car transportation decisively.

Re: The View from the Front Seat of the Google Self-Driving Car

#64

Post by JshWright » Mon, May 11, 2015, 7:46 PM UTC

NovaS1X wrote: post #51

I want to hear the argument about people who want to drive. I enjoy driving. I like driving cars. I still drive a manual and will not buy an automatic transmission. I participate in car clubs and I compete in autocross events. I enjoy automotive photography and I do my own maintenance on my vehicles. What happens to people like me who actually enjoy driving and the act of owning a car? Do my loves get phased out beca…

Pretty easy to s/cars/guns/g and s/driving/shooting/g in your comment and I think you may have a reasonable idea what the future holds...

Re: The View from the Front Seat of the Google Self-Driving Car

#65

Post by js2 » Mon, May 11, 2015, 7:46 PM UTC

This is why we’ve programmed our cars to pause briefly after a light turns green before proceeding into the intersection

I programmed my brain to do this after learning to drive in Miami. I always look both ways before proceeding, just as I would before crossing as a pedestrian. When approaching an intersection, especially at night, I also try to look for what's coming from the side.

Intersections can be scary places

As a runner I find intersections terrifying and will typically cross instead a few hundred yards away. I'd rather jaywalk and have to deal with cars from only two directions. In my experience crosswalks are often the least safe place to cross.

Also, some comic relief:

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NEFYCaKakE (Starman)

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_BtPZRbZxY (George Carlin)

Re: The View from the Front Seat of the Google Self-Driving Car

#66

Post by vlunkr » Mon, May 11, 2015, 7:47 PM UTC

comrade1 wrote: post #4

One thing I'm looking forward to with self-driving cars is to be able to step into a street anywhere and have all the traffic stop automatically. Every inch of street now becomes a crosswalk. Even highways. (This is an ironic statement)

In all seriousness though, what would happen in this case? Do self-driving cars have emergency stop procedures? And how safe are they? This is still a serious concern about self-driving cars for me. Especially since digital image recognition still isn't that great. What if the car sees a tumbleweed that it mistakes for a boulder and puts it into emergency stop mode?

Re: The View from the Front Seat of the Google Self-Driving Car

#67

Post by agumonkey » Mon, May 11, 2015, 7:47 PM UTC

freehunter wrote: post #60

agumonkey wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Accidents, when non fatal, are such a waste of anyone's resources. And there are so many way to be cheated. I'm stunned no manufacturer included a logging device. Nowadays you have dash cams though.

Many new cars have black boxes that log what the vehicle was doing, and they can be pulled in case of an accident. It's one of the benefits of having everything be electronically controlled these days.

Happy to hear that. I don't know why it's not advertised more, it's reassuring and enforcing at the same time. Maybe people would flock toward log-free models out of a reflex to drive carelesly.

Re: The View from the Front Seat of the Google Self-Driving Car

#68

Post by Zirro » Mon, May 11, 2015, 7:47 PM UTC

buss wrote: post #17

Every time I hear about the amazingly low accident rates in current generation self-driving cars I'm reminded of this joke (unfortunately I can't remember the source): Grandpa, what did you do before self-driving cars? Well, we just drove them ourselves. We just needed a little practice and to take a test. Wow, and nobody got killed!? Oh, no, millions of people died.

I can already imagine intense debates about whether to outlaw human-driven cars in a (perhaps not so) distant future.

Re: The View from the Front Seat of the Google Self-Driving Car

#69

Post by calvin_c » Mon, May 11, 2015, 7:47 PM UTC

NovaS1X wrote: post #51

I want to hear the argument about people who want to drive. I enjoy driving. I like driving cars. I still drive a manual and will not buy an automatic transmission. I participate in car clubs and I compete in autocross events. I enjoy automotive photography and I do my own maintenance on my vehicles. What happens to people like me who actually enjoy driving and the act of owning a car? Do my loves get phased out beca…

I think it's perfectly acceptable to expect that the enthusiasts will be the ones to preserve the things they love that fall out of favor. I enjoy driving on a nice empty road as well, but I don't think it's something that "need[s] to be preserved." It's something we have to do that we've learned to enjoy and do more than we need to. If it stops being something we have to do it's up to us to make time to do it for pleasure.

Re: The View from the Front Seat of the Google Self-Driving Car

#70

Post by trequartista » Mon, May 11, 2015, 7:48 PM UTC

NovaS1X wrote: post #51

I want to hear the argument about people who want to drive. I enjoy driving. I like driving cars. I still drive a manual and will not buy an automatic transmission. I participate in car clubs and I compete in autocross events. I enjoy automotive photography and I do my own maintenance on my vehicles. What happens to people like me who actually enjoy driving and the act of owning a car? Do my loves get phased out beca…

Driving isn't going to go anywhere, but I can see driving being "penalized" via exorbitant insurance rates - so much so that the it probably might offset the cost of buying a manually driven car. It'll probably end up being a hobby, albeit an expensive one.