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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

#251

Post by gambiting »

shkkmo wrote: post #183
branchan wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably very unlikely unless you solve poverty.

I think it is extremely likely that hailing and renting a self driving will be much, much cheaper than owning, maintaining and insuring your own vehicle.

I have many friends who buy cars from the $500-$1000 range and then drive them for a few years, fixing everything themselves using replacement parts. The cars are usually 15-20 years old. The insurance is $100-$200 a year. If they drive daily,do you think anyone will rent them a brand new, technology packed car for what is effectively $20 a month? HN lives in this bubble when everyone can afford a new car, or at least a lease on a car, but if you move slightly out of the 1st world countries(and by that I mean good countries with free healthcare, free education, but still with developing economies), you will find that for a lot of people $200 is half of their monthly salary. And yet those people drive their cars too. They don't live in poverty by any means, it's just that the standard of living is different than in the West.

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

#252

Post by theocs »

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.

autobot

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

#253

Post by crocowhile »

daeken wrote: post #133
bkeroack wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt it will be outlawed. You can still ride horses on public streets in most places (probably not freeways I imagine), but most people of course don't. In the same way you probably will be able to drive cars manually indefinitely, even while most will choose to use autonomous vehicles.

It won't be outlawed; it'll just be priced out of existence. When autos are good enough, insurance costs for manual driving will skyrocket . Only the very richest will be able to afford driving on roads.

It won't be just insurance prices. With self driving cars, you will not need to own a car. Self driving cabs are the future.

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

#254

Post by crocowhile »

branchan wrote: post #159

Come to think of it. Imagine driving a car yourself on a road full of self-driving cars. You would be able to drive as fast as you like and cut off anybody without ever being afriad of retaliation. Self-driving cars will always let you in because they do not want to cause a collision.

self-driving cars will have cameras and sensors all over them. I expect them to act as vigilantes by alerting police of reckless behaviour.

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

#255

Post by john61 »

thrownaway2424 wrote: post #242
john61 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is already working car sharing. No driverlessness needed.

One-way? Even with a car share you have to park it at the other end, right?

100 % driving utilization for driver less cars seems unrealistic. No?

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

#256

Post by joncrocks »

jccooper wrote: post #189
happyscrappy wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Those jam an aluminum block into the blade. I'm not sure what the equivalent would be for a car. Perhaps you could line the bottom of the car with rubber and then blow the wheels off. But there's plenty of problems with varying road surface and conditions and having a system that's never used. But a decent brake system and tires can do 1G, which is pretty good. I suppose you could go to maybe 5G for a true emergency…

Yeah, and don't forget that the car has people in it too :-)

While you can instantaneously stop a saw blade to save a finger, stopping a car 'quickly' will likely move the potential problem to one of ensuring the safety of the passengers...

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

#257

Post by Tomte »

digi_owl wrote: post #248
upofadown wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in the day they tried the overlapping red thing in my city. Once everyone got used to the new way of doing things the time when both light were red became a sort of anarchy zone. Everyone assumed that everyone else would strictly observe the red so they didn't have to. We don't do that anymore...

I find myself reminded of an article about a German town that stripped out their lights and signs and just had everyone drive by basic priority rules. Apparently this sharply reduced incidents.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohmte http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_Space_in_Bohmte

Some time ago I drove through that town without knowing anything about it. I didn't realize that they had such a concept, it just felt really stressful, because your normal expectations and intuitions don't apply.

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

#258

Post by sytse »

digi_owl wrote: post #248
upofadown wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in the day they tried the overlapping red thing in my city. Once everyone got used to the new way of doing things the time when both light were red became a sort of anarchy zone. Everyone assumed that everyone else would strictly observe the red so they didn't have to. We don't do that anymore...

I find myself reminded of an article about a German town that stripped out their lights and signs and just had everyone drive by basic priority rules. Apparently this sharply reduced incidents.

I believe this works when you do it for a limited number of places. If you do it everywhere people will adjust and it will get less safe.

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

#259

Post by msiebuhr »

benihana wrote: post #109
js2 wrote: post #65

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…

> I programmed my brain to do this after learning to drive in Miami. Same after living in Orlando and now New York. Just because you have the right of way doesn't mean it's safe. The 2 ton block of metal that hits your meaty body at 45 miles per hour doesn't care that societal rules said you were safe to cross.

Newton's laws of motion ≫ Traffic law

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

#260

Post by peteretep »

superuser2 wrote: post #188
Zirro wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If we can require all self-driving cars to take orders from a central authority, we can do some pretty amazing things: - Most traffic problems are a result of human (over)caution and poor merging technique. A centrally coordinated system of self-driving cars are perfectly aware of each other's intentions and could run much smaller safety margins, as well as make lane/exit access perfectly equitable. The effective car…

    > If we can require all self-driving cars to take orders
    > from a central authority, we can do some pretty amazing
    > things
The possibilities for fine-grained congestion and peak-usage charging are endless, for example
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