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Google self-driving car pulled over for driving too slowly

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Re: Google self-driving car pulled over for driving too slowly

#151

Post by brazzledazzle »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #43
lechuga wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

earth and the rest of the inner solar system will be strip-mined for materials to build solar collectors and autonomous robots

Why would people want to build autonomous robots if they can quantum-entangle-apport anything anywhere? But even if, replace "Mars" with "Neptune" and my point still stands. Also, autonomous cars are autonomous robots.

>Also, autonomous cars are autonomous robots

No, you wouldn't be able to reuse any of the technology built for cars. Didn't you hear? Careers will be ruined.

Re: Google self-driving car pulled over for driving too slowly

#152

Post by cbd1984 »

WildUtah wrote: post #73
afarrell wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google, a subsidiary of Alphabet, was operating the car, no?

Alphabet's Google, as we say, was operating the car. And corporations are people, my friend.

> And corporations are people

Can we have at least one discussion forum where the notion of corporate personhood isn't abused into idiocy like this? Maybe here on a discussion board run by Y Combinator, a company with the mission of helping to create new corporations?

Re: Google self-driving car pulled over for driving too slowly

#154

Post by [deleted] »

_ph_ wrote: post #40
ygra wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in Germany it's even disallowed to drive too slow without a good reason. Although "a good reason" is probably still open to interpretation.

Living in Germany, I never heard about anyone ticketed for this. The only case really covered by this rule is, that one drives extremely slow under good conditions. Otherwise, in many situations "safety" would be a good reason. And in general, you cannot be asked to drive faster than your car can go. With the exception of the Autobahn and a very few similar streets, the Google car would be legal to drive speed-wise,…

[deleted]

Re: Google self-driving car pulled over for driving too slowly

#155

Post by ubernostrum »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #142
ubernostrum wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as ticket revenue goes into the budget of the local government entity issuing the tickets, it doesn't really matter how awful you think drivers are. There are plenty of documented cases of deliberate meddling with safety features to increase revenue. Look at red-light cameras, for example, where local governments have been known to change the light timing in unsafe ways in order to manufacture ticketable viol…

> There are plenty of documented cases of deliberate meddling with safety features to increase revenue. Look at red-light cameras, for example, where local governments have been known to change the light timing in unsafe ways in order to manufacture ticketable violations. Didn't know that, thanks. If you have any links to some well-documented cases of meddling with safety features like that, I'd be glad to read. > th…

Chattanooga, TN, was ordered to refund 176 fines from a light determined to have an illegally-short yellow phase:

http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/22/2269.asp

This (large) page has a listing of quite a few towns in California where litigation overturned tickets due to illegally-short yellow:

http://www.highwayrobbery.net/redlightcamscameras.htm

Re: Google self-driving car pulled over for driving too slowly

#157

Post by Terretta »

brazzledazzle wrote: post #148
threeseed wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tailgaiting is a vague concept though. One person's idea of tailgaiting is another person's idea of maintaining a safe braking distance. If you tried to for example leave a car's body length distance in most busy cities you would have car after car aggressively cutting in front of you. This is even more dangerous than the original tailgaiting.

Now, I'm not saying a car's length is an appropriate distance. Generally speaking it should be 2-3 seconds. But I see this idea a lot on the internet, particularly on reddit: I should be unsafe because other people will get mad at me for being safe which will make them do wildly unsafe things. I'm sorry, but I can't accept that. Police need to start focusing on safety instead of revenue generation. I don't care what…

On the contrary, its unsafe to not tailgate close enough. Speed and tailgating don't kill, differences in speed kills.

If you are two seconds behind, they could come to a near stop and you can crash into them at full speed.

If you drove with zero distance between the your bumper and the car in front of you, if they brake hard you will have no impact at all.

This is why it's safe for train cars to tailgate.

In my view, autonomous cars will likely one day form trains for higher traffic density and throughput while remaining safe.

Re: Google self-driving car pulled over for driving too slowly

#158

Post by PinguTS »

ThePhysicist wrote: post #140
declan wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! That MV police blog post says the traffic officer stopped the car to "educate the operators about impeding traffic per 22400(a) of the California Vehicle Code." That section of the vehicle code says, emphasis added: "No person shall drive upon a highway at such a slow speed as to impede or block the normal and reasonable movement of traffic, unless the reduced speed is necessary for safe operation, because of…

I think if the vehicle is only able to drive 25 mph it is not allowed to drive on the freeway, otherwise one would need to allow tractors by the same argument. In most European countries there is a minimum speed requirement when driving on thr motorway (usually between 60 - 80 km/h), and sometimes there are even lane-specific speed limits (e.g. left lane requires at least 110 km/h). All that is only relevant if the t…

In Germany the 60 km/h is not required in terms of minimum speed. It is required in terms, that the vehicle is capable of driving that speed.

My Hanomag A-L 28 is a maximum speed in the papers of 78 km/h. As such I am allowed on the Autobahn, even that I am driving only 50 km/h or sometimes 40 km/h on a hill. Because each hill does slow down a Hanomag considerably.

Re: Google self-driving car pulled over for driving too slowly

#159

Post by darkr »

anon4 wrote: post #127
darkr wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I regularly exceed 40mph on my road bike, on downhills at least. It's fine. I'd agree that you shouldn't be in the bike lane at those speeds (though in much of the UK they are few and far between and mostly consist of a bit of paint on the side of the road). That's what roads are for.

40mph? Really? Not 40kph? Because holy fuck -- once I managed to go 50kph for a minute and that's incredibly FAST.

Yeah. I hit 46mph the other week on a long fast descent. That's nothing particularly out of the ordinary; especially compared to pro cyclists - Fabian Cancellara reportedly exceeded 80mph on the Tour de Suisse in 2009.

Here's a fun video of a 2011 TDF descent: https://youtu.be/MSmhgOFGl_M

Re: Google self-driving car pulled over for driving too slowly

#160

Post by revelation »

ubernostrum wrote: post #72
thrownaway2424 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You meant the safest thing for people in cars. This is not the safest thing for pedestrians, thousands of whom die from being hit by cars in the USA every year.

The safest thing for pedestrians would be to ban all motorized vehicles, then ban all other vehicles, then ban pedestrians from venturing out of their homes on foot. Good road design accommodates pedestrians when pedestrians will be present (i.e., controlled-access freeways are designed with the assumption that pedestrians will not be present), but speed limits have very little to do with pedestrian safety. Pedestria…

No, you're missing the physical picture. Someone driving at 30mph over 20mph saves time only linearly, but to maintain that speed, the vehicle has to work much harder as air resistance, the major factor above 15mph, grows with the square.

As such, it makes sense to slow cars down to 20, even 15mph - the time loss (if there even is any, people driving in cities are just accelerating unnecessarily from light to light) very much makes up for the dramatic reduction in kinetic energy that endangers pedestrians and other road users.

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