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

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

#121

Post by justinpaulson »

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)

I'm looking forward to when all of the self-driving cars will be so good at avoiding accidents that you can just take a manually-driven car and blast down the center of the road at 10-20 mph over the speed limit and watch all of the self-driven cars just move out of your way.

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

#122

Post by happyscrappy »

afarrell wrote: post #15
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)

Automatically != instantaneously. You'd have to make sure the car is far away enough that speed(car)^2/distance(you, car) You can't play blindfolded frogger. EDIT: "friction" is a better function name than "mu", even though we all feel nostalgic for high school physics.

There is a table saw that stops the blade the instant it senses the capacitance of a finger. It completely ruins the saw but saves the finger. Something like that could work here if the car could see the pedestrian far enough in advance to stay within parameters. Ruins the road and the car not the pedestrian.

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

#124

Post by jcoffland »

Google says their self-driving cars were not at fault in all 11 cases and perhaps technically they were not but I don't think you can discount the possibility that the self-driving cars may have behaved in an unexpected manner that may have contributed to the accidents. A machine might make choices that are logical but which throw off other drivers. Strict adherence to the rules could cause problems. For example, there are cases where changing lanes in an intersection, although illegal, could avoid an accident. If a machine controlled car insisted on following the rules an accident might be unavoidable or the action could force another driver in to an unavoidable accident.

I don't look forward to the day when I'm no longer allowed to drive my own car but it would be awesome if robot controlled cars coordinated among themselves to avoid traffic jams and to operate safely at much higher speeds. I could see cars of the future running normally at 200MPH+ were typical human drivers would find it difficult to operate safely. Hey and no more traffic tickets. One possible way to move in this direction would be to introduce robot only lanes.

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

#125

Post by fixermark »

jcoffland wrote: post #124

Google says their self-driving cars were not at fault in all 11 cases and perhaps technically they were not but I don't think you can discount the possibility that the self-driving cars may have behaved in an unexpected manner that may have contributed to the accidents. A machine might make choices that are logical but which throw off other drivers. Strict adherence to the rules could cause problems. For example, the…

Given the information available on how people actually drive (besides that mentioned directly in this article), how would one distinguish the automated car behaving "strangely" from regular human driver weirdness?

I bet if you quiz twenty of your driving friends, you'll find more than three opinions on the right way to clear a four-way stop, for example.

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

#126

Post by EvanKelly »

redbeard0x0a wrote: post #104
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…

Manual driven cars will not disappear, what will happen is Insurance will go through the roof as more self-driving cars are added to the roads. There will be some roads declared for self-driven cars only and some that will allow both. Enjoy your cars now!

I haven't thought about how this affects car insurance.

Who has the liability for collisions? Manufacturer? Owner? Last mechanic who serviced it?

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

#127

Post by dragonwriter »

NovaS1X wrote: post #113
redbeard0x0a wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Manual driven cars will not disappear, what will happen is Insurance will go through the roof as more self-driving cars are added to the roads. There will be some roads declared for self-driven cars only and some that will allow both. Enjoy your cars now!

I see this being the most plausible thing to happen. Separate insurance classes for manual and automatic cars, the costs of each being supported by their perspective groups. However that begs the question: by sheer numbers would that make insurance on a automatic car comparable to a manually driven one? If there are significantly less manual cars, there are less accidents to pay out. An accident in a manual car is no…

> However that begs the question: by sheer numbers would that make insurance on a automatic car comparable to a manually driven one? If there are significantly less manual cars, there are less accidents to pay out.

But less to spread the cost over. Moreover, insurance rates aren't set at just enough to cover the average expected cost (which would result in, over any given time period, a 50% chance of the insurance company losing money) but enough above that that the insurance company is fairly certain that it will not lose money -- because of the law of large numbers, this will (for any given minimum probability of profitability) be closer to the expected cost when there are large numbers to spread the risk over, and farther (above) that expected cost when there are smaller numbers.

So, smaller numbers of manual cars will -- all other things being equal -- drive up the costs of insuring manual cars if they are a separate risk pool from automatic cars.

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

#128

Post by fixermark »

EvanKelly wrote: post #114
ender7 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that every autocar will have an extremely accurate recording of the accident that can be analyzed and played back during a hearing. Determining fault will be trivial in almost all cases.

Is "autocar" a thing? The ambiguity between automatic/automobile/autonomous really makes me hope a better word surfaces. Self-driving car is a bit too long.

"autoautomobile" ;)

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

#129

Post by kpil »

js2 wrote: post #92

About 33,000 people die on America’s roads every year. There will eventually be a fatality caused by a self-driving car. I wonder how many of these we will be willing to accept. Say self-driving cars reduce fatalities by 10x. That is, by switching 100% to self-driving cars there are 3300 deaths a year, but they are all caused by self-driving cars. Would America accept that? I personally doubt we would. I think the nu…

I think one of the problems is that when a self-driving car do cause an accident ,it will probably do so in an obviously incompetent way. Like running into a tree that was not mapped correctly, in a way a human would never do.

The cars may not be wrong often, but I think we would have a hard time accepting accidents that we cannot understand why they happened.

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

#130

Post by baddox »

DanaDanger wrote: post #22
cyphunk wrote: post #2

Imagine that for a moment: Self driving car companies could promise to pay all accident expenses provided it was on auto drive at the time of accident. Not only is that a marketing win, potentially reducing accidents and saving costs for owners... if you jump forward many years of Google (or other) defending owners in court you would reach a point even judges would be biased to believe that the auto-driven car could…

All I hear is "this car gets in accidents." Maybe not the message marketing wants to send... ;)

It's already common for automobile manufacturers to explicitly market the collision safety features of their cars. Many car commercials have collision test footage.
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