The View from the Front Seat of the Google Self-Driving Car • Hacker News Board

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

#221

Post by branchan » Mon, May 11, 2015, 11:57 PM UTC

thrownaway2424 wrote: post #187

branchan wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Jokes on you. My account cannot downvote people yet.

See, that's the thing with Hacker News. A lot of people here think Silicon Valley is the center of the world and everywhere is just like us, when the fact, we are living in a little bubble and a lot of the US operates very differently.

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

#222

Post by spullara » Tue, May 12, 2015, 12:02 AM UTC

abruzzi wrote: post #197

grecy wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

In a world with self-driving cars and a way to summon one at will, how many do you think we will need?

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

#223

Post by jessaustin » Tue, May 12, 2015, 12:07 AM UTC

oldmanjay wrote: post #154

jessaustin wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if there were no self-important driver to get pissed off, would "jaywalking" even be a thing? If the first automobile drivers had been poor folks with little political power (haha yeah right), "jaywalking" would never have been made a crime in the first place. Some streets will have heavy pedestrian traffic; the rational robot routes around them to lower-traffic streets.

I find your post somewhat detuned from reality. For instance, jaywalking is rarely a crime. Also, jaywalking becoming a thing was precisely related to cars becoming federated to the "poor folks with little political power" because in many communities, there is heavy car traffic that was prioritized over walking due to damn near everyone having at least one car.

Some retuning would seem to be in order:

http://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history

All of this happened by the mid-1920s. As of 1925, the number of cars per household in USA was 0.6. (It would later peak in the 1980s at 2.2.)

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Transportation_Deployment_Caseb...

Is your hypothesis that the poor folks got cars first?

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

#224

Post by pluma » Tue, May 12, 2015, 12:16 AM UTC

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…

I think the equivalent of jamming a block of solid aluminium into a spinning blade would involve some kind of anchoring.

It would ruin the car and likely damage the road but as long as the passengers can be protected from the rapid deceleration, it just might save a life.

OTOH you could just wrap the entire car in airbags and protect pedestrians the same way you protect the passengers. Not sure how practical or useful that would be, though.

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

#225

Post by pluma » Tue, May 12, 2015, 12:18 AM UTC

devsquid wrote: post #98

JshWright wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Less ironically, I'm looking forward to pushing a button on the dashboard of my ambulance that automatically preempts the road ahead.

Srsly, it amazes me when ppl don't get out of the way for emergency vehicles. IMHO one random day out of the year, you should be equipped with heavy machine guns and allowed to blast anyone in your way. A simple solution for a simple problem.

As a pedestrian I think the thinking generally is "if the ambulance runs me over, at least there's already an ambulance around to patch me up".

As a driver... well, I guess they're just being selfish idiots.

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

#226

Post by pluma » Tue, May 12, 2015, 12:24 AM UTC

branchan wrote: post #155

nazgulnarsil wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to hear the argument about people who want to ride. I enjoy riding. I like riding horses. I still ride a horse and will not buy an automobile. I participate in riding clubs and I compete in horse racing events. I enjoy horse photography and I do my own hoof maintenance on my steeds. What happens to people like me who actually enjoy riding and the act of owning a horse? Do my loves get phased out because the ma…

Funny analogy but it doesn't quite work here. Driverless cars are still cars. They both still use the same roads and infrastructure.

You've never seen a horse or a horse-drawn carriage on a public road?

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

#227

Post by pluma » Tue, May 12, 2015, 12:27 AM UTC

tablatom wrote: post #21

jordn wrote: post #16

I'm wondering if the self driving cars should report these bad drivers.

I was thinking the same thing. If Google start logging license plate numbers (and, hey, it's Google), they could build a database of known dangerous vehicles and automatically give them a wide berth.

Unsolicited bulk data collection. How American.

Good luck trying to make that work in places with privacy laws.

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

#228

Post by pluma » Tue, May 12, 2015, 12:32 AM UTC

Buge wrote: post #103

jordn wrote: post #16

I'm wondering if the self driving cars should report these bad drivers.

I was also wondering if the car should be programmed to honk.

I'm not sure how this varies from country to country, but in Germany honking is considered a warning signal (similar to hazard lights, but more direct) and intended to be used as such.

Of course most drivers are still primarily using it to vent their aggressions, but doing that is abusive and can result in a fine.

What would complicate automated honking, however, is that the specifics are likely different from legislation to legislation.

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

#229

Post by branchan » Tue, May 12, 2015, 12:36 AM UTC

pluma wrote: post #226

branchan wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny analogy but it doesn't quite work here. Driverless cars are still cars. They both still use the same roads and infrastructure.

You've never seen a horse or a horse-drawn carriage on a public road?

Yes, but they are more or less considered a novelty than an actual efficient means of transportation. Most of the time, horses are not allowed on roads.

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

#230

Post by pluma » Tue, May 12, 2015, 12:36 AM UTC

danans wrote: post #173

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…

(Disclaimer: I work at Google but not on self driving cars. My opinion, not my employer's, follows) What about the reduced individual and societal costs (in insurance, medical, lost productivity, psychological trauma) that come with a 10x reduction in driving fatalities? People might see the value of a 10x (or even smaller) reduction if it is expressed in those terms.

Common misconception amongst technophiles like us: humans aren't rational. We accept flaws in humans, not so much in machines. Because we can sympathise with human error but a machine error is always a defect.