One thing I haven't heard much about is how humans and AI drivers will interact.
If we all assume that AI cars are going to be very conservative and very competent drivers, will people take advantage of that? Will human drivers become even bigger assholes that cut off AI drivers at every possibility, knowing that an AI will not hit them? Why wait in a big line for an exit, when you know an AI car will always let you in. The AI driver won't even mind, as it has no emotional state, so why not?
Pedestrians and cyclists may also learn that they can freely cut off an AI car at anytime they please. Why wait for a walk signal? Why walk all the way to the intersection? Just saunter across anywhere you like, so long as you cross in front of an AI car.
I don't really see the problem with this. Cars should yield to pedestrians and cyclists, and the only reason they don't always do so now is because of some impatient humans at the wheel who prioritize their speed over the safety of other road users.
Without road-raging human drivers behind the wheel, is the vehicle occupant going to care that they got to nap a few minutes longer on the way to work? Or got to read a few more pages of their novel?
Edit to add: Also, I'm looking forward to autonomous police cars who bringing reliable traffic enforcement to all road users.
I think you underestimate how crazy and obnoxious people can be. Take San Francisco, as an example. There are people who are poor and disenfranchised, and mentally ill, who feel that it gives them some power to saunter out into traffic and make everybody stop. With an autonomous car, that deranged person can just sit down in front of the car, bringing everything to a halt. Take New York as another example. For years I only walked in NYC and I figured that all drivers were maniacs. Then I drove though Manhattan once and I realized the actual dynamic. If a driver doesn't put on a credible appearance of being willing to run down pedestrians, the pedestrians will never stop crossing the street. How does an autonomous car fit into that?
I think these cars are going to work brilliantly in very polite and orderly places like Zurich, where everybody takes their turn and neither pedestrians nor bicyclists nor drivers feel put upon by the system. I have no idea how they are going to work here in America where we dump our mentally ill on the streets, and then don't give them sidewalks and crosswalks or any sense of dignity. I have a feeling it's going to work quite poorly.
More likely are laws introduced against willfully and unconstructively obstructing autonomous vehicles with right of way and by way of facial recognition the autonomous vehicle turns in the perpetrator., else it summons its neighbors to swarm the offender till authorities come to resolve the impasse.
You can jump out of your car and either rationally debate with them the merits of allowing access to the right-of-way, or jump directly to violent threats. The problem with autonomous cars as they are being rationalized to the public is that half the time the car will have no occupants at all. There will be nobody in the car to leap out and shake their fist.
Then either the person in the car behind will jump out and tell the idiot to move or if all the cars waiting are autonomous then they can all collectively out-wait the deranged idiot blocking traffic since they have infinite patience unlike humans.
Make sure to take your GoPro, I want to see the upload of you, on a dark night, getting out of your car, into freezing winter temperatures in a lonely, isolated part of town, to negotiate with a violent drunk or two.
Just turn around? So the cars will be near spherical in design and with 4 wheel steering? Cool.
There are so many unresolved issues around self-driving cars, and the answer always seems to be "just do this", without any real solution to the problem as described. Self-driving vehicles may well be a good thing, but let's not stick our heads in the clouds and assume "it'll be okay".
Edit: ellaboration. Stopping in traffic and calling the cops because of this is going to be a non-starter. If you're the cause of the blockage how are they going to get there? The GP is right, there are many situations where it's not going to well, and I can see lots of pranks by highschoolers that will completely mess with self driving cars.
Heck an accidental release of confetti would be an interesting experiment.
The cops would only be called if the car is blocked for several minutes or the passenger decides to do so. Nobody cares if the car has to brake for a few seconds and then continues driving as usual. We spend far more time at traffic lights anway.
As someone that commutes to work via foot (for 20 years, 4 miles round trip), living across from SF, what you describe is by far the exception. The rule? Rude and dangerous drivers not yielding to legally crossing pedestrians.
I would put the ratio of bad pedestrians to bad drivers at 1:1000.
The problem is if they don't and pedestrian gets killed there is not way to resurect the pedestrian, and start over. Therefore, pedestrian's goals is staying alive regardless of what laws are written in the books.
To put it another way, most countries out there have laws about "cars yield to pedestrians on crossings" but in a lot of places I wouldn't want to prove a point or rely on the drivers to obey the law vs just staying alive and in one piece.
> autonomous police cars who bringing reliable traffic enforcement to all road users.
Hmm. Now this is interesting. We are almost there -- red light cameras, speed camers, automated toll booths, cars are always recording and logging their speed, acceleration and hundres of other parameters, onstar system. Now we just need an incentive such as an insurance discount to have cars be remotely disabled and pulled over of they speed too much where it becomes unsafe, or if they run red light.
At first you'd think nobody would buy it, but maybe if car insurance goes from $500 a quarter to $150 there would be some takers. Then before you know it, it would become illegal to drive cars that don't have that feature.
I would be very happy if all taxis and other commercial vehicles (Uber, Lyft, etc.) would have their speed tracked and automatic citations issued for going more than 15 mph above the speed limit. As it is the taxis and Uber cars speed along my 25mph limit residential street at 50mph+ all night long.
Well, personally I would prefer they drive 25 mph, as that’s the most reasonable speed on a residential street. But if they go 35 it’s at least not too insane. 55–60 on the other hand is pedestrian murder waiting to happen.
You know, in my country (Brazil), airbags were optional until last year, and this only after a lot of political fighting because of strong lobbying from the automakers. In a country with so many automobile related deaths (44,000 in 2010, more than gun related deaths, and there are a lot of gun deaths here) it's ridiculous that the bills were so hard to pass. Also, if you refuse a breathalyzer test, it can't be used agains you (the refusal), unlike what happens in many countries. So I'm all for regulation and logging, and penalties to speeding drivers. Sorry to the libertarians (I'm one on some issues) but, less regulation my ass.
That's already happening. There are also some laws/policies which state that insurance premiums won't be increased for anyone who chooses to abstain from such a tracking program, but we'll see how long that lasts.
You don't have to raise the rates of someone who doesn't use the tracking; you simply lower the rates of someone who does - that's how the current tracking systems work, several insurance companies already have them.
I'm guessing here (no numbers to back it up), but likely the reason you don't see more of this is safe drivers would sign up for it, and in insurance the safe/low risk drivers are the ones already subsidizing the crazies and making it work. I took part in something similar for my insurance company (Progressive) and received a whopping 6% discount for safe driving.
My bet is until automated driving reaches a point where it can become cheaper than the insurance premium otherwise. At that point lies the critical mass where so many will buy it to save money that the price plummets towards zero/fully integrated basic requirement.
You can't have controlled traffic flows with constant jaywalking. And traffic flows will be increasingly important in order to minimize power consumption by automobiles and keep our growing cities liveable.
AI Cars are going to have a lot of cameras and always-on recording. Aggressive driving would risk being reported to law enforcement.
> Pedestrians and cyclists may also learn that they can freely cut off an AI car at anytime they please. Why wait for a walk signal? Why walk all the way to the intersection? Just saunter across anywhere you like, so long as you cross in front of an AI car.
That's probably a good thing. Car drivers need to get out of the mindset that they own the roads.
Jaywalking is a crime for a reason, because it's potentially deadly to the pedestrian. It seems to be much worse in small/mid-size cities (probably because of less overall traffic). I've had people literally jog into my lane then walk the remaining 4 feet to the sidewalk while I slow from 35 to 10 to avoid hitting them. I think if half the cars on the road are autonomous and will just stop no matter what you will not see the decrease in pedestrian injuries and deaths some are expecting.
Jaywalking is a crime because automakers wanted it to be. It had more to do with increasing the speed and utility of cars than it did with pedestrian safety (nobody gives a shit, and nobody gets in trouble for killing pedestrians with automobiles) [1].
I hope autonomous cars can help re-enable the peaceful co-existence of multiple modes of transportation on our streets.
>> Pedestrians and cyclists may also learn that they can freely cut off an AI car at anytime they please. Why wait for a walk signal? Why walk all the way to the intersection? Just saunter across anywhere you like, so long as you cross in front of an AI car.
>That's probably a good thing. Car drivers need to get out of the mindset that they own the roads.
The problem with that is the time period before AI cars are ubiquitous. In my area I've already seen pedestrians act far more carelessly now that the pedestrian right of way laws have been enhanced and there's been an uptick in pedestrian fatalities. Sometimes giving people the impression that something is safe makes them behave so much more recklessly than they would have originally.
I don't know, jaywalking is not a crime in my country and yet most people my generation have been educated to pay respect to the law of physic.
Sure the inattentive driver may be an asshole that should not be allowed to drive a car - but he is the one in the 1+ ton tin can and if does not see you, you lose.
Younger generation are crazy to me, I see them crossing the street without even looking up, anywhere, at any time without any consideration for their visibility. I'm one of those inattentive, selfish, driver and it scares me to death.
So what about self-preservation on the road until we get those fancy autonomous cars ? Car can and should drive more slowly, but pedestrians also need to look where they are going. If the street were an industry setting, health and safety regulation would probably prevent you to move if any vehicle was moving at all, even if they were all autonomous. And you would have to go through gory induction video of what happens if you don't respect that rule and either the machine fails or you underestimated inertia.
[1] Sometimes I'm looking at a parking spot, sometimes I'm looking at that cyclist that is tailgating me and will crash in my car if I'm taking slowing down too fast. Sometimes the visibility is not great, sometimes my 2 year old is making a mess. Autonomous car have sensors everywhere but a human driven car only has 1, a very powerful one, but just one.
Recently I was in a car with a friend in Southern California. We were stopped at a red light, needing to make a right turn. On our right were two people standing on the corner. They had activated the crosswalk but were not crossing, instead were focused on their (animated) conversation. Cars were coming from the left. The driver alternated between looking at the pedestrians and looking at the other cars, waiting for the other cars to pass while she also tried to figure out if the pedestrians were going to cross or not.
After about 10-12 seconds, the other cars had cleared, and the crosswalk light had switched from the green hand to the red countdown. She started to make the turn, at which point the two pedestrians literally ran into the crosswalk, and in front of her car, with no warning. Apparently they had just noticed the countdown timer and wanted to make it across the intersection without waiting for another cycle.
Fortunately she noticed the pedestrians and stopped. The pedestrians continued their run across the intersection, apparently oblivious to the fact that they'd almost been struck
Keeping in mind the following:
1. Right turns on red are legal and expected.
2. It is illegal for a pedestrian to enter a crosswalk once the countdown timer starts.
3. Full evaluation of this intersection required visually evaluating an area of 180-200 degrees, but human beings don't have vision that wide, and so it was impossible for the driver to continuously evaluate both the oncoming cars on the left and the pedestrians on the right.
4. Drivers in California are trained to look left while making a right turn.
What was the driver supposed to do in this scenario? Should the driver have been at fault if she had struck the pedestrians, and if so, why?
I was sitting in the passenger seat, so I could evaluate the intersection and see how my friend was evaluating it as well. As far as I could see, she did nothing to violate either California law or driving custom. On the other hand the pedestrians both entered a crosswalk illegally, and also violated section 21950(b) of the California Vehicle Code (which requires pedestrians to exercise due care for their own safety when entering a roadway). So I don't think that if she had struck them, she would have been at fault. But am I wrong? If so, why?
There are certainly plenty of inattentive drivers but what I'm talking about is pedestrians who don't even look before walking into the street. They just assume that the driver(s) sees them and has time to stop.
Growing up it was always drilled into us to look both ways before crossing, even in the crosswalk. Now people can't be bothered to look even one way.
Yes, people will take advantage of AI drivers, but everything will be recorded and I'm sure the autonomous car companies can figure out how to put those recordings to use. Name&shame, sell the info to insurance companies, push to make it an automatic ticket, etc. After a shakedown period a more or less reasonable compromise will surely emerge.
It's almost there. There are license plates readers everywhere, toll booths record your times and toll gates use.
Also note, it doesn't have to be a "government" thing, where you'd expect some protection (at least on paper). It can be a completely private affair between the car makers and insurnace companies.
In fact it is already almost there and it is called CLUE ( https://www.privacyrights.org/clue-and-you-how-insurers-size... ) -- a database used by insurance companies to evaluate indivicuals and record the claims they've made in the past. Feed info from these self-driving cars into them and you can't even claim any privacy or constitutional rights were violated.
On my state's main toll road (75 mph speed limit) it is common to be going 90 in the right lane and have most people zip past you like you're standing still. The design of the road only allows one or two places for speed enforcement every 10-15 miles or so.
I've long wondered why the toll authority does not simply do the math on entry and exit and send citations to the top 5-10% of speeders. It's generate many thousands of dollars in revenue for sure.
And I don't want to live in a society where it's a customary for people to take selfish advantage of AI drivers, or any other system for that matter.
Maybe it's time to split up societies? Some people seem to value absolute freedom to do anything (and freedom from consequences). Others prefer having things actually work and be nice for everyone.
Too late. Way too late. Bottlenecking transportation is the oldest law enforcement trick in the book. Why do you think they make you tell them all your info during registration, put identifying plates on your vehicle, compile databases of VIN numbers, get access to OnStar tracking computers, etc.
That is equivalent to wanting to live in a world wherein local government is adequately funded through ordinary taxation, such that it doesn't resort to highway shakedowns of the people for its operating revenue.
I'm pretty sure "highway shakedowns" as you put it only happen when you are grossly disobeyed clearly posted speed limits, rolling through stop signs, or trying to squeeze through that yellow light so you can get to work two minutes sooner.
I'm being somewhat facetious, but there are several ways to fund local governments, including but not limited to:
A. Tax the people directly based on $ASSET (usually income, or property, or a combination of the two).
B. Lower direct taxes as well as state and federal grants, and fines from enforcement.
As someone who doesn't necessarily mind sending a few dimes on the dollar to the government, and doesn't speed often enough or at such egregious speeds that I'm subject to hyperbolic "highway shakedowns," I kind of prefer B to A because it results in a lower effective tax rate for me.
Sweden's effective tax rate is 37% on a salary of $100k (2012). UK is about 32%, US about 27% (all read from a graph) [1].
In Sweden this extra tax provides free schooling up to and including university (you even get paid going to higher education US$300+/month in grants), low cost health care with a cost ceiling (US$130/year), affordable child care, social security net, local government owned and (well) managed infrastructure (power, water, fibre, roads, etc.)
Our local government is funded through direct taxation. My local government tax rate is 30.2%.
Not sure it tells the whole story though. VAT is not included in effective tax rate AFAIK (as defined in the Economist article).
Unfortunately, that's where things are headed regardless. More cameras, cheaper sensors, big data. Every intersection will eventually give you a red light ticket. Etc etc.
Some lady did a hit and run, and her new Ford called the police [0]. There are surveillance cameras in the park by my house. I've given up, fighting this is like trying to stop a tsunami.
Fighting what? Her Ford "called the police" in that it automatically reported a collision had taken place. You make it sound like it sent a message saying "my owner committed a crime, go get her" which is not what happened.
Are you saying the world would be better off if she had gotten away with a hit and run?
I want to live in a society where less and less people die by reckless driving - make that 'less and less people die by automobile, period'. As far as I can see, only technology will do that, education being the other means but a much less reliable one. If law enforcement only gets involved when a crime is comitted, that's fine by me.
If AI driven cars achieve a superior safety record there won't be many human drivers...the insurance premiums will price most people out of the market. That is, the cost of insurance for human drivers will be exceedingly high.
I don't see why the cost would be any higher than it is today. If anything, driver-less cars would have lower insurance premiums. So if you can afford/justify your insurance today, you could still afford it in the future.
I could even see all insurance getting cheaper, since the risk of accidents for all cars should decrease as the mix of cars gets more and more automated.
Sure, it will be more expensive than the automated car. But why would it be more expensive than today? Why would automated cars on the road make manually operated cars more risky than they are today?
At the moment, there is no other option other than human driving cars. Once automated cars are a realistic option, insurance companies can properly price insurance for human drivers much higher (comparatively speaking). A self-driving car should have almost 0 risk, meaning the vast majority of cars (if self driving) would carry no risk to the insurer.
> Once automated cars are a realistic option, insurance companies can properly price insurance for human drivers much higher (comparatively speaking).
What's "proper" about raising the prices for no reason? If they start pricing human drivers higher than they currently do, some other insurer will just undercut them.
yes, but that doesn't explain why the underlying risk of insuring human drivers would rise. Nor does it explain why, since the underlying risk is the same, Progressive wouldn't offer lower rates than Geico's.
I suspect that the risk would actually lower for the remaining human drivers as the AI vehicles are probably going to be better at predicting and dodging our stupid mistakes, resulting in fewer accidents even if we don't improve our driving abilities.
I don't think that those that choose to drive would provide more risk than they do today, however, they would provide (my gut and no more) substantially more risk than driverless cars. What incentive would an insurance provider have to insure a human driver? Much higher premiums I suggest.
The same incentive they have today: profit based on taking in more in then they have to pay out based on risk. If insurance companies arbitrarily bump up insurance for manually driven cars, then that opens up a market for someone to jump in and accurately charge based on risk.
You presuppose that American insurance companies are not a very effective cartel, primarily functioning in the regulatory capture industry, with a side business in insurance.
It would be cool if what you describe actually happened, but in the real world, premiums only ever move long-term in one direction: up.
More or less, I agree. With fewer accidents and fewer drivers insurance companies will be looking at decreased revenues. No company wants decreased revenues of that sort. Now, I'm not 100% familiar with the insurance industry and any regulatory capture that may take place, but then would be the time for a cartel to flex its muscles and ensure that startup insurance companies don't undercut them with fair pricing.
>That is, the cost of insurance for human drivers will be exceedingly high.
right now, in california, you are only required to carry on the order of $35,000 in liability insurance.
Now, personally, I think this is completely crazy, that it defeats the whole point of liability laws, etc, etc, but the point is that unless you change that, even if the rates go way up for human drivers, if the insurance companies can continue to sell plans that are limited to only $35K in liability, people who don't fear bankruptcy will still very likely be able to buy that legally-minimal insurance for not all that much money.
Yeah, I've heard that before. It's crazy to me. The most basic insurance in EU is required to cover up to 5 million euro against damages to people and 3 million against damage to property. How US can only require $35k liability cover is beyond me. Does that not mean that in pretty much any accident you have to pay extra out of your own pocket?
(that "basic" insurance costs me $150 for the whole year and allows me to drive anywhere within EU for unlimited period of time. I also have full comprehensive cover for which I pay another $500 for a full year that insures me against damages to my own vehicle and provides EU-wide breakdown cover).
>How US can only require $35k liability cover is beyond me. Does that not mean that in pretty much any accident you have to pay extra out of your own pocket?
Generally speaking, only poor people carry the minimum liability insurance. Everyone else carries limits closer to yours, at least for damage to people; I mean, doing 3 million in damage to a human, I can see that. Doing that much damage to property would be... completely destroying a really nice house, which is unlikely. Also, by American standards, your rates look unrealistically low. maybe you could get something close to your level of liability coverage for that much every month.
But... uh, yeah, this brings up another point (and why I don't know how much just a few million in liability would cost) - everyone who isn't poor here carries what's called "uninsured motorist" coverage... this is essentially insurance that covers damage to me if someone with minimum coverage is at fault and I get hurt and they can't pay.
Australia has a mandatory level of insurance called Compulsory Third-Party insurance or CTP. It is required by law for all registered motor vehicles in all states and typically covers in the order of $20m or so of third-party medical expenses and/or compensation related to an injury sustained in an accident. Property damage is not covered.
As for relative price typically one would be looking at around $300-600 per year, depending on age, driving history, type of car etc. Granted with our universal health care I suspect that our average out-of-pocket medical expenses for injuries from car accidents are lower than the US.
To some extent this sounds similar to how people treat public transportation buses now. Drivers and pedestrians behave more recklessly, knowing that the bus operator will go through great lengths to avoid a collision.
But you raise the interesting point that it might perversely be safer to make automated cars less safe. Make them just dangerous enough that people won't be deliberately stupid around them.
The interaction of AI and manual cars will depend on the general discipline of the drivers. There are countries in the world where according to rumours the traffic rules are somewhat open to interpretation...
Right. And, this is generally taken to mean that we--now freed of life's pesky minutiae (such as work), which is handled via automation--will all frolic in meadows, wearing fig leaves and pursuing our inner potential. We will subsist off of a basic income and life will simply be as intended, without the need for labor or physical movement for that matter.
And, I wonder what it is in human nature or recent history that makes so many believe that this will be even remotely close to how things actually unfold. That property rights will somehow cease to exist or that those who control the various automata won't simply accrete more economic power unto themselves, relying on ever fewer humans with whom to share that power. Yet, somehow, they will share the spoils such that the masses of unnecessary humans may live comfortably without expending the slightest effort.
It need not be a full-on sci-fi style dystopic future to be problematic. We are already seeing degrees of the problem. On our relentless quest to automate humans into obsolescence, seems that we should occasionally pause to consider the consequences in the context of what we know to be true of human nature and history.
Well if this is a "race" as the headline says, it sure is gonna be a long race, folks. These cars haven't yet been programmed to handle things like snow-covered roads where you can't see the lines, or construction zones that have you driving on the opposite side of the road at the direction of flaggers, etc... there's just a ton of work remaining to be done if your goal is truly to "rid the world of human drivers".
If those high targets are the only things remaining then I'd say the race is pretty close to finishing. I'd be more pessimistic if features on the todo list still included 'identifying stop signs', 'recognizing people', 'not killing people', and 'driving more smoothly than a teenager'.
Google's self driving cars only drive on roads that have been comprehensively mapped by google at great expense. You couldn't just take it to a new country and expect it to work.
So yeah, there's a very long way to go until self-driving cars are ready to replace human drivers.
I believe it'll happen quicker than you think. Even if we can't move beyond having to create and maintain detailed road maps, once the concept has been proven to work, you can expect many companies simultaneously jumping to map their local regions. That's one thing capitalism is really good at - distributed, simultaneous deployment of solutions that have money-making potential.
I hope you're right. I could see that happening in warmer climates. But what about when landmarks and points of reference are covered in snow? GPS is not accurate enough to be used as a sole reference, you need a visual/LIDAR reference to back it up.
The system will have to work in 100% of circumstances before laws will be changed to allow for driverless cars. I could see that happening in 20 years, but I really doubt it'll be on the streets in 5 years like Elon Musk and others have suggested.
Construction alone is going to make it extremely difficult, unless there is a system such that the cars know where construction is taking place and actively avoid those routes, but that is not always known.
There are just too many edge cases. I believe, that we'll get some kind of hybrid solution: computer drives on the highway during daytime otherwise drivers takes over.
In Switzerland we have those wonderful pass roads. On one side you have the mountain, on the other side there's nothing. Never in my life would I let a computer drive down that road with my family in it:
Sometimes roads are so narrow, that drivers naturally honk while going round corners. If there's a honk back you gotta slow down. Now add some snow fall and fog and drive down in the night. Good luck!
> There are just too many edge cases. I believe, that we'll get some kind of hybrid solution: computer drives on the highway during daytime otherwise drivers takes over.
Most likely, it'll start out as driving assist systems (like an advanced cruise control, similar to what tesla recently deployed). The computer does the driving, but the car needs a driver in the drivers seat, picking his nose and waiting for the very rare instance when intervention is needed.
To be honest, I think this would be a step back. Risk compensation[0] will ensure humans will put way too much faith in the system, and not be alert enough to intervene when needed. Plus, driving is boring enough when you're actually driving the car. Just sitting still on a 4+ hour journey, not able to actually do anything else (because you need to keep your eyes on the road) sounds like a special kind of hell to me.
Self-driving cars would be a huge leap forward. More driving assist systems will just make people less careful.
We can already see a lot of manufacturers rebranding their driving assist systems as "self-driving cars" because it's the cool thing to do.
What's more, people are forgetting that normal traffic does not go through wilderness, and roads are not just slabs of concrete in a line. We draw markings on the road. We put signs next to them. It stands to reason that as self-driving cars will be slowly deployed (I don't see them rolling out simultaneously in sunny California and in snowy Switzerland), we'll be updating road infrastructure with signs and other objects designed for AI drivers - ones that could help them determine road conditions better.
Considering how poorly current roads are maintained I don't hold out hope for anything that requires more maintenance. Many roads I drive on are not properly marked for human drivers as it is.
I'm sorry but I think this is a grossly over-optimistic view. If vehicle automation requires any upgrades to road infrastructure I see it being a total non-starter.
do you know if they do well at seeing through heavy rain or running water on the road? Coming down from Snoqualamie resort near Seattle the snow turns to water with about a good inch over the road and the lines are invisible. Traffic suddenly becomes a negotiation from 3 lanes (actual stripes) to 2 (comfortable) and in between, mostly determined by what the trucks decide.
I just bought a 2016 Volkswagen that has laser cruise control and lane assist. I ordered the fully loaded package because the incremental cost was not large, and I figured I might as well have all the toys if I was going to the expense of buying a brand-new car.
I consider myself an enthusiast; I have a fair bit of time on the racetrack in lapping days and amateur races, sometimes I volunteer at car control clinics and teen instruction days. All of my cars have manual transmissions and I ride a motorcycle. I definitely did not expect to become dependent on any driving nannies.
What I've found is that it's absolutely astounding how fast you come to trust the automated systems. In my car, the laser cruise control will drive the car for you at virtually any speed. It does a great job of keeping up in traffic, has no issues with hills or going around bends, it's always able to track the car in front of me perfectly. It uses the brakes to slow the car. I've got the manual transmission so it only slows the car down to about 15mph and then prompts me to take over and press the brake; if I had the automatic, it would come to a full stop in traffic and only require a tap of the accelerator to resume once traffic ahead started moving.
Even though I only have 700 miles on the car and have only used the laser cruise for perhaps 20 or 30 miles in total (mostly just playing with it), I find I still expect the system to brake the car once disengaged. For example, I'll be coming up to a red light, lift off the throttle, start braking, and then think to myself "huh, I wonder why the car didn't start slowing down for me."
The lane assist feature will correct the steering once or twice if you start to come too close to the lane marker (within maybe 2 feet) but it's very subtle and you barely feel it while your hands are on the wheel. After a correction or two (and maybe 10 seconds, I'm not sure exactly how it decides), the system tells you "hey, idiot, you're supposed to be steering". I have, on multiple occasions, been surprised that it "allowed" me to get as close as I was to adjacent cars, before realizing that it only is meant to keep me within my lane, it knows nothing about the vehicles around me. But something about the fact that it has lane assist (and, incidentally, ultrasonic parking sensors) fools me into thinking it knows more than it does. I'm not saying I was letting the car drive for me, I was fully in control, I was simply surprised that it didn't override my judgement of how close is too close.
It's a brave new world out there. It's surprising how quickly you cede mental control, if not physical control, even to systems that have clearly defined limits and features that you don't even intend on using, let alone relying on. I imagine things will get worse before they'll get better. That said, humans are bad enough drivers that it might not get MUCH worse!
I have mixed opinions on the new assistive technology. Blind-spot monitoring is pretty good - it's not intrusive (just a yellow light in your outside mirror) and can save you from an embarrassing accident.
Same with the ultrasonic/radar parking assist. I rarely parallel park (there just aren't that many of that style parking spots any more) so the system really helps me judge where the back corners of the car are. I understand that backup cameras will be required in all new US cars soon.
The lane-keeping systems OTOH are just plain annoying. Whether they vibrate the steering wheel or give it a nudge, they have no situational awareness. Like when I'm crowding the inside lane to ensure I clear a cyclist in the bike lane.
This is my first car with the ultrasonic parking sensors; they're nice to have for sure. I won't know the corners of the car as well, but, frankly, today's cars are getting harder than ever to see out of anyway, so likely I never would have been as comfortable in a new car.
Also, part of "knowing the corners" of your car implies at least some gentle contact at some point in time, which it's best to avoid entirely.
One of my favorite features so far is rear assist, which is able to detect oncoming cars as I'm backing out of a parking spot. The bigger the car the more useful this is. It doesn't tell you when you're 6" from a vehicle, it tells you when there's a vehicle traveling at speed further away that you're about to back towards.
I personally found that lane departure warning made me a much more precise driver. I like that a lot. It goes off in error sometimes too, but it's rare now that I've been trained to properly stay within the lines.
I was actually wondering if assistive techs like this might make people more likely to signal, as there's a slightly negative feedback to departing one's lane without doing so first.
> it's always able to track the car in front of me perfectly
I've always wondered how this would really work. What happens when the car ahead changes lanes or exits the freeway? Have you run into any issues with weather (rain, snow) interfering with the sensor?
Typically the car is not following the car in front, merely regulating speed to avoid ramming it. In my car, at least, if the car in front changes lanes or exits, then the cruise control system speeds back up to whatever speed I set it to.
This can make for some exciting speed differentials if, for example, everybody is moving 20MPH and they open up a big gap by changing lanes, and my set speed is 70MPH. But it doesn't accelerate aggressively, and this is a rare occasion anyhow.
That depends on the sensors which are used. Most current ACC systems use radar, which should not be affected by weather but has other problems like high cost, narrow field of view and you only get speed and distance as data points which are not always easy to interpret correctly. Ideally it's combined with a camera to get more information about the environment like land markings, so that you know if the car in front of you is actually in your lane or just going around the corner in the lane next to you. The camera is obviously prone to glare, raindrops, etc.. When the car ahead changes lanes or exits the freeway, the system will try to find another car as a target vehicle and adapt the speed accordingly to keep a certain timegap, if it can't find a target it will behave like normal cruise control.
A more sophisticated (but expensive) radar sensor could do the job without the camera. A sensor capable of Doppler processing, sweeping, and tied to some sort of platform telemetry (GPS, INS, etc.) could maintain a large and fairly comprehensive situational picture. Add moving target indication to the signal processing and it could form tracks on all other vehicles on the road, which would provide the motion vectors for them without the need for another sensor. You could even use track behavior to detect anomalies in the road, assuming you have multiple tracks.
I could go on all day about this (having actually worked on MTI radar for several years), but I have actual work to do. :P
I'm not sure if I've used it in the rain yet, but my understanding is that, yes, the sensor needs to be kept clean. It follows the SPEED of the car in front of me; I still steer. I assume it uses steering wheel sensors to detect that it should be following the car slightly to the left of me when, say, I'm going around a left-hand curve.
The lane keeping system uses a camera to detect lane markings. I'm not sure how it decides whether or not to follow exits, but I know from the Tesla autopilot descriptions that it's not perfect.
The comments on here are funny. People lose their mind when it comes to autonomous anything. ZOMG everyone's going to shoot down autonomous delivery drones! People will walk out into traffic! People will hack their cars and do crimes!
Come on. All this is illegal now. It will still be illegal, and easily enforceable. Which is what keeps crimes from happening. That and human decency which most people have.
I think it's the other way, people on here are funny and lose their minds if you try to pose a problem that we can find a solution for. They're all "omg it's not a problem Google are already perfecting it!" There are a lot of issues that remain unresolved (snow does cover parts of N.America and Europe for months at a time). What's wrong with raising these issues and discussing them without resorting to "you so dumb, it gonna be fine, doomsayer!"?
Didn't you hear? You won't be permitted to purchase an autonomous vehicle unless you can provide documentary evidence of your having been in favour of the technology even before it was proven.
anyone work on artificial intelligence technologies here? i have some lay questions - is anyone testing driverless cars in an environment where most cars are driverless? does that make a difference?
are there any weird effects / properties that can emerge?
does it have the potential to solve the persistent traffic jam issue?
As driverless cars take over more and more, the weird (aka dangerous) behaviors should become less common. Many forms of distracted driving will simply vanish, not even considering the obvious issues like drunk driving.
Once you start automating dispatch, I think it simplifies and improves things further. For one, you're going to be less likely to be late.. which means less stress/anxiety and less distractions which should mean less accidents and near-accidents that cause traffic issues.
IF you can eliminate many - but unlikely all - of the little issues, problems, etc that compound to cause big problems, why would there be traffic jams?
(And that's not considering traffic updates to re-route around existing problems.)
My offhand anecdata suggests that the bulk of traffic jams are caused by people driving older cars. There is a little-understood cosmic force that causes cars to stop running in proportion to how critical the section of roadway is to regional transportation and in proportion to the age of the car. 1985 Nissan Sentra in a tunnel? Guaranteed to burst into flames.
More seriously, there are obvious reasons why older cars are more likely to just stop running, or to be involved in a fatal accident that snarls traffic. I think the tipping point is not going to come from the deployment of self-driving cars, but will arrive instead when the fleet of junkers nears eradication.
It's not obvious to me why older cars are more likely to be in fatal accidents. Even though my '66 Mustang is wildly less safe in many ways, it also gets driven with much more care than what I see around me.
There's probably a bathtub-shapes curve of driver care. I'm sure that drivers of classic American sports cars, at this distance from their dates of manufacture, are taking due caution. People with new cars all have ABS, stability control, and the other bells and whistles. But people who are driving the 1994 Dodge Colt were probably forced into it by financial circumstances. They don't have an investment to protect, they don't have any safety features, and they probably don't even have working shock absorbers or roadworthy tires.
I don't know if I am alone in this perception, but it has been built up over many years of being stuck in traffic on the Bay Bridge. What kinds of cars to you see on fire, on the shoulder, or being pushed off the bridge by those Caltrans wreckers? Old ones. Second-hand cop cars bought at auction. Old Japanese compact pickups with 2 tons of concrete in the beds. Cars that were going 75 MPH on emergency spare tires. Cars with no outside mirrors? WTF?
I ride the bus, so I'm biased. I think if your car breaks down or you get into an accident on the Bay Bridge you should pay a million-dollar fine and have your car and license seized permanently.
Do you mean they push wrecked cars down the length of the bridge to get them off? Or are they literally in such a rush that they just chuck it off the side of the bridge? Because that would be awesome.
On top of that, the cars can communicate more and faster than the drivers, and can be programmed to collaborate with the other vehicles. So you can have stuff like the cars in a packed highway opening up a diagonal for a car in the left lane to take an exit on the right.
I feel that will work only okay even if there is one car manufacturer, but get tthe differences between a lot of them, then throw in porsche and others programming in "advantages" and "agressive" as options and where do you end up?
I'm just thinking about the level of coordination required and then you get into timings, and other issues where one car may respond slightly slower. I think stuff like this makes it way harder than people think. And that's without any bad or just not altruistic actors there. Think if the "Sport" package on your BMW was code for "talks the other cars into letting it go first.
With peoples car, the person with the complete clunker wins that race as they obviously don't care if they hit you and don't have the money to pay you back. BMW has to back off.
With software it's down to the negotiating powers of the cars software.
We've seen how well that works in trading, no one ever games the laws slightly for their own advantage.
In the city of Nuremburg, Germany in the year 2006 Siemens started to introduce automated trains. Until this day, they have to be operated under supervision. So how exactly do all these tech companies want to get the fact out of the way, that there is an actual AI needed before they can dive into autonomous cars driving the streets? The wet dream of big biz for sure, if only it could meet up with reality. Sorry for not thinking big enough, im just confused how those companies, that not even manage to get their own available products to be working flawless want to step into a market where things will cost lives.
For people looking for an investment opportunity, once self-driving cars are a reality, buy shares in British Pub chains. Being able to have a drink and not worry about how to get home will make them a lot more accessible.
well, first auto-car, then auto-truck, then auto-truck-train. (3-10 trailers with one tractor, and possibly hub motors suitable for long hauls with no turns)
Then electric cars pas gas based cars. Then electric trucks with droppable battery packs - full charged in 2 minutes by changing it. Then they will get into local driving and delivery, into large mechanical drop boxes at houses and businesses. Deliveries 24-7. The box can be a wall port with a live floor = lots of space.
The beginning of the robot age. The last thing they will invent, before people are gone, will be the robot consumer...
Electric cars seem to be a pretty good solution, though the cars of the future will probably be much smaller - right now we pad them a lot with extra metal and plastic so that the passengers can survive a collision. With self-driving cars you won't need that anymore. I imagine the future of cars is a PRT[0] system - it's a perfect thing for a city. As for travel between cities, that's what trains are for.
For a sense of how this is going, you can read the California DMV's collection of autonomous vehicle accident reports.[1] 9 from Google, one from Delphi. Almost all the Google ones are a Google vehicle being rear-ended by another car at slow speed. Typical situation: Google AV turning right on red after a full stop. AV advances enough to get a good sensor view of cross traffic, detects cross traffic, and stops. Following vehicle rear-ends Google AV. Not AV's fault.
If manually driven cars had radar-controlled braking (now a common option, and one which may become as standard as ABS in a few years), that's enough to stop most rear-end collisions. That may be all that's necessary for AVs and human-driven cars to play well together.
Driving behavior and patterns are important for safety too, when you assume that it's not the google AV's fault that it gets rear-ended you may be wrong. If a human driver sees more than the AV (has a bigger brain, more experience) and is able to better asses a situation, the human might not see why the AV is stopping, having assessed correctly that the way is clear. It is the AV's fault for not being smart enough, and thus acting erratically by normal driving standards and patterns.
I knew several people in the UK when we were learning to drive who failed their test because the tester thought them too cautious and therefore not confident enough to avoid an accident.
Reading on the subject of self driving cars, one gets the impression that there is a auto-assumption that human drivers must all be idiots who should never, ever have been allowed behind the wheel, but that probably isn't the case. I'm not saying the roads will be any less safe with AVs, but let's not believe all the Utopian propaganda of the businesses selling us this product.
No, if you rear-end someone driving safely, you are at fault and reckless. This I can control the situation thinking are the famous last words of every idiot ever wrecking his car, or, sadly, killing others.
The truth is that people aren't all "idiots who should never, ever have been allowed behind the wheel". Driving is hard - ironically, harder than most drivers realize. It's been proven time and again that we absolutely suck at it. And the "normal driving standards and patterns" is a big part of the problem - our natural tendency to ignore the abstract rules and go with our gut is what kills people. It's hard to really blame a person for doing bad at a task that's not well-suited for their brain architecture. But it means we should leave driving to machines that are better at it, the very moment such machines become available.
There's a crazy claim / instance of the Chinese Soda Fallacy in the middle of the article. Why would the first-mover developer of automatic driving software be able to reap 10 cents per mile driven?
Hrmm, I did find exactly one instance of the phrase on Google. I'm surprised, too.
As it was explained to me, a Chinese Soda Fallacy is a business plan wherein you stand to make a dollar selling a Coke to everybody in China. You will make a billion dollars! Except that the market-clearing price for Coke in China isn't a dollar, and not everybody wants one, and so on and so forth.
The idea that you will make a dime every time anyone drives a mile strikes me as perfectly congruent with that fallacy.
Edit: This article seems to address the topic without using the phrase.
A COKE FOR EVERY KID IN CHINA
This gambit rests its case on a plethora of secondary data to show how large and fast-growing a market is. The plan then makes a heroic leap and assumes that the new venture will grab X percent of that market it could be 1%, 10%, 30% or whatever. "Surely," the plan argues, "with the large number of customers in our market, we'll easily get enough. We only need a small fraction to have a very nice business."
Sounds like the more generalized equivalent of the typical software fallacy that goes like, "There are umpty million iPhone users, if just 1% of them buys our app...."
I don't have a commute. I just recently downsized from a VW gross polluter TDI (jetta sportwagen) to a Toyota off-road tacoma. 1/2 the gas milage. This will probably be the last vehicle I personally buy for years. It will be mostly road trips and off road camping.
The wife plans on a Tesla Model 3 as her car.
For my uses, even my 2016 Tacoma TRD OR screams over technical for a lot of back country camping / jeep trail stuff.
Double clutching, seriously? That is some niche hardware you are driving - all manual transmissions are synchromeshed nowadays, unless you're driving a racecar maybe.
Double clutching makes downshifting at high revs much smoother, and reduces wear&tear on the clutch & transmission. (I have a pretty grabby clutch, yes, it's aftermarket.)
I cant wait to see what happens once the modders and criminals get a hold of self driving cars. My awesome car would pretend to be an emergency vehicle. Pretend to be a truck and that it can't stop easily, pretend emergencies so people move, claim that it's chaging lanes to mess with people. Without a centralized authority it's just negotiation. With a CA then humans and remote locations will have issues.
All of these things are already possible. Hell I see an example of most of these behaviors pretty frequently. It's not like normal people are going to suddenly become psychopaths when they get self driving cars.
If we all assume that AI cars are going to be very conservative and very competent drivers, will people take advantage of that? Will human drivers become even bigger assholes that cut off AI drivers at every possibility, knowing that an AI will not hit them? Why wait in a big line for an exit, when you know an AI car will always let you in. The AI driver won't even mind, as it has no emotional state, so why not?
Pedestrians and cyclists may also learn that they can freely cut off an AI car at anytime they please. Why wait for a walk signal? Why walk all the way to the intersection? Just saunter across anywhere you like, so long as you cross in front of an AI car.