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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

#181

Post by cheshire137 »

fixermark wrote: post #125
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.

Pause long enough that everyone else is equally hesitant, then gun it into the intersection!

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

#182

Post by shkkmo »

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 agree in that I hope that ability for people to drive cars will go not away completely. Driving can be a pleasure and a rush.

I do hope that we would start holding drivers legally responsible for the deaths and injuries they cause. If you choose to drive a car yourself and you cause an accident that kills someone, then you should face a manslaughter charge. If you hit or injure someone, that should be an assault charge. I think it is ridiculous that this currently is not the case.

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

#183

Post by shkkmo »

branchan wrote: post #146
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.

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.

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

#184

Post by jerf »

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.

The wildcard is lawsuits. In theory, being one of the (say) .1% drivers on the road that is human ought to be safer than driving today, but if you do hit anybody or anything and cause any sort of significant distress you're going to be looking at a negligence lawsuit that could be wildly larger than anything we'd see today "because they shouldn't have been driving"/"because they should have been in a self-driving car".

But other wildcards could cancel that out. A law could be passed shielding humans from excessive payouts, in which case insurance could stay low. If you were demonstrated to be a safe driver by the automotive panopticon, you might still be able to get cheap insurance, although that one raises its own questions. And of course the ultimate wildcard is that they get sued out of existence entirely somehow, despite being provably safer at some point.

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

#185

Post by [deleted] »

Zirro wrote: post #68
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.

[deleted]

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

#186

Post by rhino369 »

Tloewald wrote: post #99
rhino369 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some areas just give a "brief" period where both lights are red. I'm surprised not everywhere does, or that is isn't increased.

What completely infuriates me is pedestrian crossings that don't automatically allow pedestrians to cross when the lights are in a state that would allow it.

I haaaaate that. Arlington, Va has some, but only some, crossing that do that. Sometimes I'm waiting around for 2 cycles before I realize.

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

#187

Post by thrownaway2424 »

branchan wrote: post #179
thrownaway2424 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a myth that poor people drive. They depend on biking, walking, bumming rides from their friends and relatives, and public transportation.

Public transportation is not cheap and/or available in many places in the world. Look at all the cheap beater cars (even in the US), those aren't going driverless anytime soon.

Your can downvote me for days but that won't make your statements correct. In the 2000 Bay Area Travel Survey, driving was a minority share of trips for people in the bottom income quintile. Walking, biking, transit, riding as passengers in cars, and "other" are 50% more popular than driving.

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

#188

Post by superuser2 »

Zirro wrote: post #68
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.

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 carrying capacity of highways would increase immensely, and traffic jams would be a thing of the past.

- 100% of cars on the same coordination system would also allow us to do away with most stoplights, as it could simply modulate speed so that intersections are always running in both directions, but cars never collide. (This could be overridden for pedestrian crossings, and wouldn't be much of a benefit in the city, but in places that are already pedestrian-hostile - i.e. most of Real America - it wouldn't make things much worse and pedestrians would be pretty rare.)

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

#189

Post by jccooper »

happyscrappy wrote: post #122
afarrell wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 brake system (which would be pretty rough on the occupants, eyeballs-out), but it hardly seems worth the cost (in money, weight, maintenance, accidental triggering, etc.) compared to good sensors and the existing braking systems.

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

#190

Post by branchan »

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.

Except it will never be cheaper than public transportation. If public transportation is available, they will take public transportation. If public transportation is not available, neither will be driverless taxis.
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