I would love to watch some vids of that visualization they showed off towards the end
It's your lucky day! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsaES--OTzM cut to 0:55
Awesome thank you
The View from the Front Seat of the Google Self-Driving Car
191–200 of 286 posts
Re: The View from the Front Seat of the Google Self-Driving Car
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
That could be true... assuming that the government is able to adopt innovations and cost saving measures across all of their public transit systems fast enough to keep up with price drops from private industry.
I suspect that will not be the case. While public transportation may catch up on price (if the political will exists to push it there), I do think there will be a period of time where hailing a self driving car will be cheaper than some or most public transit options.
Re: The View from the Front Seat of the Google Self-Driving Car
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
I imagine buses would be much cheaper and more prevalent when you don't have to pay for a driver.
I don't think having to pay for a human bus driver is the primary obstacle preventing us from having cheap and efficient public transportation.
Source: Most of Europe.
The issues with public transports are the same as with biking in the US: It works better when cities are really dense. Suburbs destroy the efficiency of public transport, biking, walking, inline skating, and any other non-car transportation.
Re: The View from the Front Seat of the Google Self-Driving Car
#194Earlier 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…
Designing such a system to use a centralized authority, as opposed to having a distributed architecture, sounds like an invitation for all kinds of chaos. Given how seductively "easy" centralized solutions seem to be I don't doubt things will go this way, with results varying from hilarious to frustrating to tragic. (I'm not saying that distributed architecture is a panacea, but it seems like a centralized system is both wholly disempowering to the individual and much more vulnerable to all sorts of corruption.)
Re: The View from the Front Seat of the Google Self-Driving Car
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the problem is, people really don't care about autonomous objects. There is so many unknowns with this, it's really hard to know. Like if the self-driving car gets in an accident (that is a result of the self-driving car), who is responsible? Google? Me? Other driver? Car maker? Car seller? Insurance company? Humans have kind of accepted that humans make mistakes, you're trained from day 1 to when you die, hu…
two self-driving cars, from different owners, crash: who is going to pay for that ?
The one at fault in the accident
Re: The View from the Front Seat of the Google Self-Driving Car
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Designing such a system to use a centralized authority, as opposed to having a distributed architecture, sounds like an invitation for all kinds of chaos. Given how seductively "easy" centralized solutions seem to be I don't doubt things will go this way, with results varying from hilarious to frustrating to tragic. (I'm not saying that distributed architecture is a panacea, but it seems like a centralized system is…
A distributed system would let people behave in ways advantageous to themselves, to everyone else's detriment, by causing their safety systems to yield to the dangerous driver (i.e. what happens currently). If there's nothing stopping people from creating an "everyone needs to wait for me" situation, they will.
Re: The View from the Front Seat of the Google Self-Driving Car
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can already imagine intense debates about whether to outlaw human-driven cars in a (perhaps not so) distant future.
I see a future where governments will make a laws about "manual control" like they make laws about airbags, minimum mileage and TPMS now. In 2025 automakers simply won't be allowed to make a "manual control" car, and by 2050 there will be basically none left on the roads.
While I don't doubt things will move in this direction, dates like this seem extremely optimistic. Just speaking of the US, there are something like 250 million cars on the roads, and we buy cars at the rate of about 12-16 million a year. While I can see fully autonomous cars becoming available in the next decade, it will be some time before all manufacturers have refined enough systems, and legalization is in place, let alone mandating. Then you have the slow process of manual cars cycling out and getting replaced by autonomous vehicles. Another question is for the low income people that subsist on sub $1000 used cars, does a junker autonomous car continue to function, or are the poor now having to devote a significantly larger portion of their income to transportation? Then what happens to motorcyclists? I can't see them functioning autonomously. In some countries that would be a huge hit given the ubiquity of small displacement motorcycles.
To be entirely honest, I don't expect to see the elimination of occupant driven motor vehicles in my lifetime.
Re: The View from the Front Seat of the Google Self-Driving Car
#198Earlier 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.
I've always been partial to "robocar". It has a nice tinge of dystopia to it.
Re: The View from the Front Seat of the Google Self-Driving Car
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
Designing such a system to use a centralized authority, as opposed to having a distributed architecture, sounds like an invitation for all kinds of chaos. Given how seductively "easy" centralized solutions seem to be I don't doubt things will go this way, with results varying from hilarious to frustrating to tragic. (I'm not saying that distributed architecture is a panacea, but it seems like a centralized system is…
A distributed system would let people behave in ways advantageous to themselves, to everyone else's detriment, by causing their safety systems to yield to the dangerous driver (i.e. what happens currently). If there's nothing stopping people from creating an "everyone needs to wait for me" situation, they will.
That's a problem that has to be worked around in a system with a centralized control architecture, too. Presumably there will be some safety systems acting autonomously in the car (latency and network reliability being what they are) and those systems will be gamed.
To boil my position down: I want to see an Internet-style architecture rather than a "Bell System" style architecture. I'd rather have "smarter cars" with "dumber roads" and as little mandated centralized control as possible.
In a decentralized system attestation of identity (likely tied to one or more existing civil methods) and attribution of actions observed to individual vehicles would definitely have to be a component. Any identity system cannot approach 100% reliability, but if every car is able to report to law enforcement (or private driver reputation-tracking networks) the observations it makes of the behavior of other drivers I would expect that "cheaters" would be visible as statistical outliers.
"The car to my left doesn't answer as a known transponder challenge/response in the vehicle reputation database I am querying. I am going to assign a lower priority to any non-emergency events it is reporting to me."
"Hey-- that car just started broadcasting a different transponder response. Something is really, really funny where. I'm going to alert cars in my proximity that something is up so that they can physically identify the car with their LIDAR / imaging / etc. and treat it cautiously. If enough funny-business occurs eventually law enforcement will be alerted and physical interdiction can occur."
"According to the vehicle database I'm subscribed to this car always traverses statistically similar routes 15% more quickly than other cars. Other cars in its proximity on these routes have their traversal slowed as compared to their traversal of the same routes when this care is not present. It sounds like funny business is at-play. I'm going to cast a vote for this car to be more likely to be subject to an inspection."
etc.
I'd prefer such a world to not involve the ability for totalitarian (or-- ahem-- certain republics who purport to be democratic in nature and are filled with power-mad bureaucrats conducting dragnet surveillance) to use these tools for public surveillance, but I'm resigned to that fate. Self-driving cars themselves aren't a threat to freedom, but the infrastructures of surveillance and control that will grow up around them almost certainly will be.
Freedom aside, whatever happens is going to end up being an information security nightmare. Too many disciplines who have never had any exposure to information security are going to intersect with this technology, and each of those intersections is going to be ripe with all kinds of interesting threats and failure modes. People will be inconvenienced. People will be robbed, physically assaulted, and violated. People will die. I have no illusions that criminals are unsophisticated and that these systems won't be attacked in every possible way.
Re: The View from the Front Seat of the Google Self-Driving Car
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
That's probably why it's not advertised. Because your car will tattle on you. I've often wondered about the black box in my car, if I were in an accident and I was going 71mph in a 70mph and they pulled by black box, would I be given a ticket even though I was not at fault? Although I'm pretty sure only the manufacturer has access to this data (as part of their copyright on the car), so it would take a warrant for la…
Precisely. Widespread knowledge would lead to tampering.
I was reading a recent insurance case where the driver staged and accident, but the black box indicated what really happened, and the driver withdrew the claim when presented with the evidence.
Widespread data logging including dash cams is going to improve driver behaviour. Even some cyclists are wearing 'dashcams' and this will no doubt improve treatment of all cyclists, even if overall penetration is low.