Compared to the logic involved in actually driving down the road safely these are all easy problems to solve. But realistically they are problems that won't be had, because in the near future (and probably in the far future as well) most people aren't going to buy their own personal self driving car because not only are they expensive, but it is pointless to have a personal car when it is way more convenient to offlo…
Sure, I might be overstated the problem of parking, but I still don't see how this is more economical than car ownership. If I have to summon a taxi for everywhere I need to go I need the taxi rates to be a fraction of what they are today.
Well, they will be a fraction of what they are today when the taxi company no longer has to pay an hourly wage to the taxi drivers
Is there any attempt made to un-distract the driver? Flashing brake lights? Horn? This sounds too similar to victim blaming. In my opinion any action taken by someone who is about to be hit from behind in a low speed crash is likely to make the problem worse. I don't think that is the time to have a quick jerky motion into the shoulder of the road. Even honking the horn could distract or panic another driver that the…
There's a middle ground here where the car sees it's about to be rear-ended and softens the hold on the brakes just enough to convert some of the impact energy to forward motion. It knows the distance to the car in front and has a good idea of the rear car's speed. The only real variable is the weight of the approaching car but a pessimistic estimate could leave more margin to avoid touching the car in front.
If this is happening at intersections, releasing the brakes would potentially push your car into oncoming traffic and add a t-bone collision that would not have happened otherwise.
Well, for one people do not expect drivers to stop at a green light, like was the case here. You might wish everybody was well aware of their environment, but the fact is, a green light is a strong signal that makes people assume the other drivers are moving or are going to. The second point is completely off-topic, as the car in question had plenty of space between them and the Google car's rear-end. It just failed…
Perhaps this is a cultural thing? Over here green means proceed with caution. https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm... > GREEN means you may go on if the way is clear. Take special care if you intend to turn left or right and give way to pedestrians who are crossing" You seem to be saying that people are shitty drivers and that we need to either just put up with it, or fit our cars to stop some…
Your argument is essentially against all forms of safety equipment that protect against being rear-ended, and can be used without substantial modification to argue against safety equipment of all kinds: why bother with crumple zones when I could just insist everyone else on the road were better? The reality is that I am in the car being hit, there is little to nothing I can do to make people not hit me at some point in my life (and to this date, I have been in a car rear-ended twice; in both situations the person behind us was 100% at fault under essentially any useful definition of "at fault"), and so I have a budget I am willing to spend on random safety equipment to make me less likely to be injured when this happens. I already am spending a lot of money on safety features for my car: at least these ones sound cheap to add.
I think Uber sees self-driving cars much more as an opportunity than a threat - unless they are afraid they won't be able to buy self-driving cars from anyone but Google, and Google won't sell to them. But I'm sure there will be quite a few suppliers by the time they need the cars [1]. [1] - https://www.yahoo.com/autos/s/uber-ceo-tesla-sell-half-milli...
Short term I agree with you, but longer term I'm not sure. Short term, they lower costs massively. Longer term, a majority of people have self-driving cars. If I live in the suburbs, I either keep it all to myself, or loan it out when I'm not using it. If I live in the city, then I likely don't own a car - but instead call on a car as I need to. These probably come from both individual lending their car, and from gro…
I think people focus too much on Uber replacing consumer transportation. I think they're going to branch out into transport of goods and eat into the trucking industry in a major way, in addition to whatever they do with consumer transportation. A lot of the commoditization concerns that you'd have with transportation don't apply as much to transport.
It seems like the vast majority of collisions with google's AVs are rear-end collisions at intersections. I'm surprised that they haven't put any technology in place to attempt to avoid, or at least reduce the impact of these collisions. Clearly, predicting the trajectory of other vehicles should be second nature for the AVs. In the video, there appears to be a shoulder with plenty of escape room. Is there any attemp…
When I went to driving school they tought us to leave quite some room in fornt of us when stopiing at lights etc. Then when the other car stops behind you you close the gap (or if the car behind you is going to rear end you you have some escape room, ie. always also check for space to get out of the line.) The point being was that also check for trafic behind you when stopping.
> National crashes-per-miles-driven rates are currently calculated on police-reported crashes. This made me curious; wouldn't it make more sense to get that kind of data from crashes reported to insurance companies? At least here in Italy, most minor-but-with-small-damages crashes are reported to insurance companies, but not to the police.
As others have pointed out, lots of small accidents aren't reported for fear of rates going up. But there also just a lot of people without insurance. Bizarrely, not every state requires car insurance, so some people just don't have it.
Thanks, I didn't know that car insurance wasn't mandatory in all the States. That could be the reason!