Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 286 posts

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

#51

Post by NovaS1X »

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 because the majority of people just think of cars as appliances? Will this give birth to "classic-driving shows" just like we have classic-car shows and cruises?

Not saying I don't like innovation, I'd absolutely love to own a Tesla Roadster, but some things need to be preserved.

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

#52

Post by mildbow »

ams6110 wrote: post #48
tablatom wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So it's OK for Google to record license plates, but it's flip-out time when the police do it?

Of course.

The most google can do: send you ads for shovels.

The most police can do: pull you in for murder because they correlated your car to where and when some body was buried.

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

#53

Post by dysfunction »

Squarel wrote: post #29
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.

This will only be the case when all cars are self-driving. Many of these articles do not give a comparison...so,11 per 1.7m miles sounds awesome, but how do you know what the current rate is? The data I found had a passenger vehicle fatal crash per 100m miles as between 1.0 and 1.33, and a property damage only crash rate per 100m miles of 145, which relate to 0.01 fatalities per 1m miles, and 1.45 property only crash…

So it would seem purely based on these numbers that the Google cars have had about 4.5 times the mean rate of property-damage-only crashes. However, these statistics don't show us what the shape of the curve looks like, so we have no idea what percentile the Google cars are in.

If we take Google at their word that not one of the 11 crashes was caused by the self-driving system, then these numbers aren't evidence against the self-driving car being safer even with human drivers sharing the road. It's possible the car was driving unsafely in some way that increased its risk of accident without ever directly causing them, but we can't even guess at that without knowing the probability of their crash rate being this distance from the mean by pure chance.

So, do you really think the roads will only be safer when all cars are self-driving--you don't believe there will either be an incremental benefit in overall safety as more self-driving cars get on the road, or a specific safety benefit to owners of self-driving cars?

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

#54

Post by jessaustin »

danielweber wrote: post #12
comrade1 wrote: post #4

One thing I'm looking forward to with self-driving cars is to be able to step into a street anywhere and have all the traffic stop automatically. Every inch of street now becomes a crosswalk. Even highways. (This is an ironic statement)

A long long ago a science fiction story with self-driving cars had that scenario. Everyone jaywalked all the time because it was perfectly safe.

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.

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

#55

Post by dfan »

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 thought it was original when I saw it last month: https://twitter.com/cat_beltane/status/588359354136403969

Had you encountered it before?

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

#57

Post by freehunter »

DanaDanger wrote: post #22
cyphunk wrote: post #2

Imagine that for a moment: Self driving car companies could promise to pay all accident expenses provided it was on auto drive at the time of accident. Not only is that a marketing win, potentially reducing accidents and saving costs for owners... if you jump forward many years of Google (or other) defending owners in court you would reach a point even judges would be biased to believe that the auto-driven car could…

All I hear is "this car gets in accidents." Maybe not the message marketing wants to send... ;)

How do you hear that? It's basically a guarantee, and companies generally don't warrant against things they know will happen. The reason you get a 1 year warranty on things is because they are engineered to not break down within one year. After that, the incidence of failure goes up.

"We will pay for any accidents caused" means "this will not cause accidents". Because no company would do that unless they were sure it wasn't going to happen. Just like when Google gives $100,000 for bugs in Chrome. They wouldn't say that unless they were sure there were no or relatively few bugs.

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

#58

Post by Cakez0r »

Squarel wrote: post #29
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.

This will only be the case when all cars are self-driving. Many of these articles do not give a comparison...so,11 per 1.7m miles sounds awesome, but how do you know what the current rate is? The data I found had a passenger vehicle fatal crash per 100m miles as between 1.0 and 1.33, and a property damage only crash rate per 100m miles of 145, which relate to 0.01 fatalities per 1m miles, and 1.45 property only crash…

> Large Truck and Bus Crash Facts 2012

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

#59

Post by Tenhundfeld »

Squarel wrote: post #18
emptybits wrote: post #9

For balance: In the past eight months, four of the 48 self-driving cars licensed in California were involved in accidents. Three were Lexus SUVs from Google. http://www.startribune.com/ap-exclusive-self-driving-cars-ge... This does not assign blame. It is an observation.

For balance, the property only damage rate that I could find per 100 million vehicle miles for passenger cars was 145, so, 1.45 per million vehicle miles. Trends table 11 in the link http://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/safety/data-and-statistics/large-tr... Now, many PDO incidents go unreported, but, medium does not offer a number for comparison, so, when you see the headline "11 accidents in 1.7m miles" you have no reference t…

Good find. The text of the DOT website is a little vague, but I think you're right that the 1.45 per 1M number is only from police reports.

  Data for GES [General Estimates System] come from a nationally representative 
  sample of police reported motor vehicle crashes of all types, from minor to fatal. 
  ... Although various sources suggest that about half the motor vehicle crashes in 
  the country are not reported to the police, the majority of these unreported crashes 
  involve only minor property damage and no significant personal injury.
I guess that's saying the actual number should be about double, so ~3 per 1M.

I'm also wondering if any private operators of fleets publish stats. For example, does FedEx or UPS publish accident rates? I know those numbers would also be skewed, larger vehicles, more frequent stops, etc. But it could be another data point.

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

#60

Post by freehunter »

agumonkey wrote: post #50
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.

Accidents, when non fatal, are such a waste of anyone's resources. And there are so many way to be cheated. I'm stunned no manufacturer included a logging device. Nowadays you have dash cams though.

Many new cars have black boxes that log what the vehicle was doing, and they can be pulled in case of an accident. It's one of the benefits of having everything be electronically controlled these days.
Post reply on HN