Slashdot Mirror
Google Cars Drive Themselves, In Traffic
An anonymous reader noted that "At the TED 2011 conference this week, Google has been giving extremely rare demos of its self-driving cars. TED attendees have even been allowed to travel inside them, on a closed course. The car is a project of Google, which has been working in secret but in plain view on vehicles that can drive themselves, using artificial-intelligence software that can sense anything near the car and mimic the decisions made by a human driver."
Will it cut off the slow car parked in the fast lane too? That'll really be mimicking human behavior then.
Mod down, goatse link.
GOATSE. shikaku, i wish i saw your post in my rss reader.
This is a sad day for the robot chauffeur industry ...
Asshat.
Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaGJ6nH36uI&feature=player_embedded
Slashdot needs a URL extender, and auto block/ban goatse.*
It's pretty amazing how they've stretched the limits of technology!
The referenced article describes Google taking a car out into traffic on US 101.
In other words Google turned all the other drivers on the road into involuntary, unpaid, unknowing guinea pigs.
There's a word for that - irresponsible.
Does it track you everywhere you go?
Its from Google, of course it harvests data to better deliver targeted advertising. The real question is will it deliver targeted ads while driving. A pleasant voice telling you of the sponsored sites you are driving near.
So how do humans do it?
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Well, I don't have the Barney song stuck in my head anymore.
Does having a witty signature really indicate normality?
there is no way a @#$ robot can judge what to do about oncoming accidents, like a pedestrian, a deer, a squirrel, a semi jackknifing(...)
The same holds true for many people. And robots probably have a much easier time driving and talking on their cellphones.
If they have a cutoff where the driver can take over, not so much. Driving instructors do it all the time.
It will seach the internet for what to do about oncoming accidents!! DUH! its Google
Classic fear mongering. The car always had a driver in it (with override capabilities) while on public roads.
... the way Bill Gates allegedly said they would by now if they followed Moore's Law?
Notice, I did say "allegedly".
Have you seen the lunatics out there? Give me a robot any day! We are given a licence (one test only) in our youth and then out you go, rain, hail or shine, fit or unfit, tired or not, drunk or senile or both. That's ignoring the meatheads who want to deliberately drive dangerously and those not paying attention on a mobile phone texting "RORL" (roll off road laughing). I see your point but lets move on.
Parent link is goatse.
Mod parent up.
It's too late for me, it doesn't have to be for you.
The code they use for navigation actually runs on Linux. And they plan to open source it! and hardware design too! (They use 8 cameras and few dozens of sensors)
$ wget http://goo.gl/zjJOI -O /dev/null 2>&1 | grep -i goatse
Location: http://goatse.ru/ [following]
--2011-03-04 19:55:36-- http://goatse.ru/
Resolving goatse.ru... 78.47.200.67
Connecting to goatse.ru|78.47.200.67|:80... connected.
I can't drive due to my disabilities. This would be useful. Of course, it has to be bug free (OK almost). It probably won't be ready until after I am dead though. I always wanted KITT type of car! :(
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
The 2nd order effects from this are going to be interesting. If you only have robot drivers (and you will, cause with lower accident rates, you'll have lower insurance rates if you always let the computer drive), you won't need visible signs or traffic lights. How would this affect pedestrian crossings? Would pedestrians feel irrationally unsafe crossing a road with robot drivers on it? Will we remove speed limits as computer reaction and cognitive ability gets faster?
Seems to me they need an override and learning mode where a person can see when the car is starting to do something wrong and tell it what to do, same as you would to a sixteen-year old learning to drive.
Oh GOD MY EYES!
So how do humans do it?
They start with a small number of basic "rules" and acquire the majority of their learning from experience.
In general it seems like an expert systems AI project. You have a domain that has an incomplete definition, many variables and many inputs. You hand code some basic rules as a starting point. You rig up sensors so that a computer can observe the environment and the human and it generates new rules based on its observations(*). And/Or you let the computer loose in a simulated environment and it learns through trial and error.
(*) In the movie Starman the alien learns to drive via observation. Red means stop, green means go, and yellow means go faster. Selection of the expert to observe is a critical step.
You may be have a name with "ubuntu" in it...but what you did was far from "humanity to others"
What is seen cannot be unseen.
We should start a new Slashdot and return control to the geeks. It actually wouldn't be that hard to get some users to
It really doesn't matter how safe it is, there are regulations for testing of devices with human subjects, those standards are there for a reason. They are included in HIPAA, to give a concrete starting point. A few decades ago it was a lot more lax, and a lot of really awful experiments took place, the bar now is set really high, and its a lot more strict than just being "safe". The FAA created the Class 3 license for experimental space vehicles, the NHTSA should be doing something similar if this kind of thing is going to proceed legitimately.
I for one am surprised that Google legal department would let this one slide, then again maybe they were never even told about what was happening, typical arrogant kids (I mean that in the best possible sense, of course).
Most can't. The big difference is we hold them personally responsible for it. And they often die in their own screw-ups which is about as accountable as you get.
The responsibility/accountability is the main problem: if Toyota released a self driving car and it crashed and killed people in "corner cases" where even a skilled human might, Toyota would still get in trouble.
Using the elevator is generally much safer than using the stairs. Fortunately for elevator manufacturers and suppliers an elevator shaft is a more predictable environment than a network of roads.
So you'd trust Average Joe to do the same with something he built?
In Soviet Russia, car drive you.
well... an average human driver could take the wheel.
I hate to give credence to hollywood scripts like IRobot but there could be potential downfalls to having a pure AI computer controlling a potentially fatal machine on public streets. Suppose for whatever reason, an accident occurs in which a computer going 70 mph must choose between hitting a 7-year old girl or killing the driver. The human driver might sacrifice himself at all costs. A purely logical computer might not.
All in all it would probably be better than normal drivers out there but food for thought.
What, are you saying every time someone wants to drive for the first time every existing driver should sign a form? Explain how this is less responsible than when Drivers Ed kids hit the public streets for the first time.
Perhaps not, but it's likely to be a hell of a lot better at not doing the idiotic things that cause the overwhelming majority of accidents in the first place.
Almost all accidents other than collisions with animals that run out in front of you are due to human stupidity. Black ice may be an exception, maybe, except that if the conditions allow it to happen a prudent driver accounts for the possibility (note that if you hit a patch of black ice the accident is considered your fault esp. for purposes of determining liability). Everything from:
You name it. It's plain old human stupidity. It's a particularly egregious kind of imbecility too, the kind that fails to recognize that other people exist and can be harmed by your poor decision-making. If "robots" can be programmed not to do these things I'm all for it. Alternatively, if robots can be programmed to beat the living shit out of people who do these things, I'm all for that too.
That's a new one to me. I have heard complaints that many train systems would be uneconomical, in the sense that they'd never survive without some kind of subsidy. I haven't heard anyone actually refer to alternate transportation as a tenet of Communism, however.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
google has deep pockets.
so you get hit google pays you alot to shut up.
there is no way a @#$ robot can judge what to do about oncoming accidents, like a pedestrian, a deer, a squirrel, a semi jackknifing, an ambulance passing, a crash ahead of you, a gigantic pothole, a box full of dishes that fell off a truck, a big tree branch, a patch of black ice, a tire blowing out, a semi weaving in a strong wind, etc etc etc.
A bunch of your example are redundant, object in lane will suffice.
If the computer maintains safe following distances and brakes when there is sudden deceleration ahead or an object ahead then it will probably do better than many drivers I've seen on the road. If it has sufficient sensors to be situationally aware, ie is it safe to change lanes, and is able to change lanes to avoid an object then it will probably do better than most of the drivers out there. Keep in mind that the sensors may have better perception than the human visual system. It may be able to detect that deer beyond headlight range. It certainly would not suffer from the most common human driving failure, inattention.
These complaints sound similar to the arguments made when antilock brakes and traction control systems were introduced. How will the computer know what kind of surface I am on (paved, gravel, dirt, wet, snow, etc) so it can break accordingly. While perhaps a good question in theory when compared to an expert driver (as in professional racing/pursuit instructor) but when compared to the average driver on the road not very relevant. The computers only need to outperform the average driver.
That said. I wouldn't own/operate such a car until laws are passed to shield operators from lawsuits. Cars with automated driving are going to be law suit magnets regardless of who is at fault.
Well, if it had to make a choice, I would program it to hit the softest target and to avoid pissing off the animal rights groups. That would leave the pedestrian.
Absolutely false. The car is completely capable of detecting pedestrians, deer, stopped cars, etc. This thing knows how to stop in the event that some shit goes down (see link below). You're just making up a lot of bullshit based on literally no research.
SOURCE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Atmk07Otu9U Skip to 2:10 to see where the ABC reporter makes a move like she's going to run out in front of the car. The thing slams on the brakes.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
But why are we stopping at J.C. Penny's? Hey car!!!
It'll be interesting how the governments of the world choose to deal with self driving cars. They are bound to be statistically much better than humans but I bet it will be a long time before you don't need a license holding, sober, able-bodied person behind the wheel even though most of them will be checking their Facebook updates on the dashboard screen rather than "supervising" the car.
Google isn't the first to do this, not by a long shot. Last year, there was a story about an autonomous car driving from Italy to China. There were humans on board to take over in the event of a problem, of course. I'm sure there are other examples as well.
It is cool tech, but I think it'll be a long time before it's mature, and an even longer time before it gains acceptance. People want to be in control of their lives, even if they're better off relinquishing control. Whether it's long road trips due to fear of flying or keeping a gun in their nightstand, people often choose to do something that is statistically more dangerous rather than put their lives in someone else's hands. I'm not saying that that's a bad thing or a stupid thing, just that it's human nature. Not many people will be willing to trust a computer to drive them, even if it's safer.
I would prefer that it makes better decisions than human drivers.
"Car turning left in front of me...better change lanes, I'm sure its clear, no need to look or signal."
"Motorcycle coming, should I wait before pulling out right in front of it? Naw"
Good grief, man! You were making a really good point until you turned half of your post into a rant against the right-wing military industrial complex or whatever the current groupthink buzzword is for defense spending and generic angsty hatred toward individuals who don't happen to agree with you.
But yes, I certainly agree. AI platforms for driving vehicles have a long ways to go until they're able to interact with any imaginable situation (though I suspect it'll mostly involve stopping/slowing down and letting the human take over). That still doesn't negate the point that it's fairly impressive!
For future reference, though, save the political rant for a more appropriate discussion like those you might find on politics.slashdot.org. Otherwise you come off as an angry disaffected hipster with an axe to grind.
I, for one, find Google's efforts in this area to be very interesting even if it's not commercialized for decades. Worthless for now? Maybe, but it's a demonstration of technology that could potentially make roads safer in the future even if only parts of the system are implemented. Think collision warning/avoidance for the masses since not everyone has $80,000 to blow.
He who has no
TFA even mentions one of these avoiding a deer: "You could see the cars avoiding things like a deer that dashed in front of one or another making it carefully around a small hillside road, as a large truck came toward it."
There was also a story here a year ago about Stanford's efforts in this area with a computer-controlled car doing a 180 spin into a tight parking space. "That means Junior could have an entire language of extreme driving maneuvers it could unleash when called upon ... itâ(TM)s also a sign that the cars of the future will be able to respond to any adverse condition with remarkable driving talent."
Put them together and we're well on our way to computerized control that's safer than the average driver.
Spoken like someone who thinks the purpose of the left lane is to allow someone to exceed the legal speed limit. The left lane is for passing traffic not traveling the legal speed limit.
Someone traveling the legal speed limit is not an obstacle, they are a responsible, law-abiding citizen. What lane they are in is irrelevant, since there is no legal justification for exceeding the legal speed limit to pass them.
The root cause of the problem you cite is poor impulse control. There is no compelling reason for society to tolerate an inability to exercise self restraint and drive the legal speed limit. It does not matter if you agree that this is true because it is true; it is self-evident from even the most casual appraisal of the facts.
Slashdot is my Mercer Box.
you have to deal with the people who have been stopping the building of trains, for the past 100 years. there are many different groups that oppose trains, but they are in general, on the conservative side of the spectrum model of political opinions.
the 'individualists' would
Do you trust student drivers with instructors in the passenger seat? At least in this case a capable, trained driver can take over at a moments notice. Being cautious isn't necessarily a bad thing, but there comes a point with every new technology where it has to be tested in the real world (or are suggesting that it never be allowed off the track? I can see it now: fully automated stock car races... And you thought NASCAR was boring before).
Jesus loves me, he loves me a bunch, because he always puts Jiffy in my lunch.
which would easily be attained by an automated transportation system, is nothing to sneeze at. Or 30,000 fewer US highway deaths per year. Or a reduction of 3-5 Million ER Trauma admittances per year (if you want to see medical costs go down). There's no technical reason we couldn't have a completely automated transportation system in the next 15 years, except for the fact that the US couldn't even switch to Metric. But yeah, because there would probably still be a few thousand (instead of 36,000) deaths per year, it simply wouldn't be good enough. Go figure.
They were right - the revolution did not get televised. It was posted on YouTube instead. All in 120 characters. SLOOSH!
How will the computer know what kind of surface I am on [...] so it can break accordingly.
Ah, a WinCE-based system, I see.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
i am thinking about every unforseen situation that car drivers encounter, that could never possibly be predicted. then i am trying to imagine a robot taking over those decisions. it doesn't work.
deer and pedestrians jumping out in front of a car are one thing.
i mentioned several other things that the robot has no clue how to deal with. pulling over for a fire truck that is trying to get down the road? not going to work. there are a ton of other things that can happen that there is no way you can ever predict.
what if the car is going up an icy road, and then it starts sliding backwards because it couldnt make it? how is the robot going to slide back down the hill? it doesnt even know where the road is, the road is covered in ice.
how about your wheel falls off? it happens. what does the robot do?
what if the robots sensors go out? get jammed by some unforseen event?
most of all what it lacks is judgement. the robot can hit the brakes, but maybe it should have been going slower in the first place. drivers know in certain neighborhoods you slow down, they know when its dark to slow down, when its wet you slow down, they know where blind corners are, they know about the semi trucks that cut too close on the sharp turn on the way to work every day (and how you might have to back up) , people understand how to deal with a 4 way stop if the lights go out, they know the highway has a bad bump here and you might lose traction for a half of a second, they know there are drug dealers on this block so dont go this way,
they know that if you have two choices, one goes by an accident up ahead and the other goes through the parking lot of the church, you go through the church parking lot so as to not be a rubbernecker. but you slow down because its sunday and old people are walking through on walkers and, they are driving and their reaction times are bad.
etc etc etc.
"the real reason for progressivesâ(TM) passion for trains is their goal of diminishing Americansâ(TM) individualism in order to make them more amenable to collectivism."
Not quite calling trains Communism, but in the same league.
The quote is from George Will,http://www.newsweek.com/2011/02/27/high-speed-to-insolvency.html
the solution... is to build more trains
Trains don't come to my front door, which is rather necessary when I'm carrying a load of groceries to feed my household. Trains don't go to my friend's front door, who's effectively wheelchair-bound. Trains don't go from my grandmother's house to the post office, where she has her mailbox. Trains require tracks, which require a bigger initial investment than roads, and simply can't reach withing reasonable walking distance of everywhere people need to go. Then there's the noise, the difficulty in meeting their schedules, the limited per-person carrying capacity, and they also can't stop fast enough to avoid all those hazards you mentioned, even with a human driver!
Buses are a bit better in most of these regards, but just not enough to make shared transit an effective alternative to personal cars. If your house and your job are close to a train station, then go ahead and use it. Don't expect your situation to apply to anyone else, though.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
there is no way a @#$ robot can judge what to do about oncoming accidents, like a pedestrian, a deer, a squirrel, a semi jackknifing, an ambulance passing, a crash ahead of you, a gigantic pothole, a box full of dishes that fell off a truck, a big tree branch, a patch of black ice, a tire blowing out, a semi weaving in a strong wind, etc etc etc.
I highly suspect that majority of accidents on the roads happen due to human recklessness and/or inattentiveness, not because of any of the above.
There are a lot of great tech coming out for the handicapped. I live in a house with 3 other drivers that I feel would be less capable than most automated cars, and I'm afraid to get in the car with them after dark. I'm by far the better driver, and have better eyesight and faster reflexes but can't have a drivers license now due to unpredictable seizures. I say bring on the handicapped tech.
Everyone assumes the speed limit will be exceeded by 5 - 10 mph, including those who set it. Its main purpose is to generate municipal funding through what is essentially a random tax, and to ensure that traffic doesn't go much more than 5 - 10 over the number posted on the side of the road, 'cause that number plus 10 is usually about what's actually safe.
Adhering to the speed limit as though it's set by God is not virtuous, it's just annoying. Please move over for people that want to get past you. If they're creating a life-threatening situation, you'll know it no matter what the sign on the side of the road says. Feel free to call 911.
I'm not suggesting that an AI be given full, unchecked reign of the road (at least not right now, anyway), but a type of "smart" cruise control with a human backup wouldn't be a bad thing.
Jesus loves me, he loves me a bunch, because he always puts Jiffy in my lunch.
I always pictured Matthew Sobol exactly like this
http://img.timeinc.net/time/2010/poy_2010/poy_mz/poy_cover_z_1215.jpg
made the book a lot better.
This video has three important features. 1: the car drives really fast. 2: the wheels make a noise that shows the whole steering/speeding control scheme is badly implemented (good driving will never make your wheels cry like this, here you can predict a high risk of losing adherence). 3: the people engaged in the test are not stressed, it seems to be quite a usual task to them, which may prove to be a high level of confidence and/or a low level of security measures.
The fact that the article was published in a very bad website (here bad means full of bullshit) makes me wonder if any information given in it is reliable. Given the loose structure of the video, I would say "hell no".
Hardcastle and McCormick. Well played, sir. Well played.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
I think GP was referring to the arsefark doing 20 under in the left lane. YOU know who YOU are.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
And could these inputs be hackable? If "secure" electronic passports can be hacked with a laptop and 1k's worth of extra kit, I'd like to know that my driverless car won't even listen to anything that isn't exactly what I want it to know. Alternatively, if I get fed up with too many cars driving near my house / work, how long would it take me to figure out how to get them to take a detour or how traceable would it be if I doubled the speed limit (increasing the noise level) near an ex's house?
there is no way a @#$ robot can judge what to do about oncoming accidents, like a pedestrian, a deer, a squirrel, a semi jackknifing, an ambulance passing, a crash ahead of you, a gigantic pothole, a box full of dishes that fell off a truck, a big tree branch, a patch of black ice, a tire blowing out, a semi weaving in a strong wind, etc etc etc.
I'm pretty sure a computer can do all of those things. Detecting a pedestrian, a crash ahead of you, a semi jackknifing, weaving in a strong wind, a deer, tree branch, box full of dishes, a squirrel, or even a gigantic pothole is all just basic "There's an object of roughly x size ahead of me moving at roughly y speed" though "roughly" for the computer will probably be a lot more accurate than for a human. Then it's just a matter of "if our current direction places this car into that object, will we crash", picking the best course correction depending on the conditions and then performing it, all faster than a human brain can tell their foot to move off of the accelerator. I mean, that's a heck of a lot better than the thought process of most people I've seen drive which is generally "WE'RE GOING TO DIE, SLAM THE BRAKES!"
As far as a tire blowing out, if it happens on the car driving that's an easy thing to handle. I've had a tire blow out on the highway (twice) and both times it's "Okay this ride's gotten bumpier and harder to steer, time to slow down gradually and not make any sudden moves." Programming that into a computer is easy. It'd be harder to get a computer to jerk the wheel to the right or slam the brakes (which again, is what most people do when they freak out, then they lose control and cause an accident.) With black ice again, the computer can definitely handle the situation better than a human. It's a matter of detecting differences in the albedo of a surface, coupled with temperature and humidity sensors (which some cars I've driven actually come with to warn of black ice) obviously since you're not getting black ice if the road surface is 160F in the middle of a Phoenix summer. Then proceeding more cautiously when a possible ice patch on the road is detected, or avoiding the patch entirely.
Here you go, in all its Mike Post-rendered glory. One of the lesser Steven J. Cannell products, but still worthy of some recognition.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Thirty thousand people dead each year in US car accidents. That's over half a million dead each generation. Robots could not do worse. And I think they could do a lot better. Especially if the cars talk to each other.
In fifty years people may well look back upon our manual driving culture as next to insane. That said. I love to drive. But really. It's hell out there
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
The difference is a person can tell if they are feeling well and will not have a mass failure all at once (occasionally heart attacks or strokes cause driving issues but out of millions of drivers the numbers are low) The question is can the computer handle when it has a sudden reboot because of a overheating device or a short circuit across the main bus. Even if it can't you would have to weigh potential total failure of the computer system with how many drunks and poor drivers (those who cause unintended accidents due to incompetence.) there are on the road and find out which is the net positive. I am guessing the computer will do a better job even if the failure rate was fairly high. It is way to much to ask that everyone takes a precision driving course and actually pays attention and acts responsibly so your theory about the computer doing better sounds accurate.
It'll take you anywhere you want to go, discreetly routed past the shops and billboards that AdSense reckons you should see, while quietly logging your every breath, word, and glance for later analysis. Within a week you'll be wondering why every time you pick the kids up from school, it seems to drive home via the Lego shop!
Really, I can't wait for the first DIY experimenters to hit the highways in their homemade robocars. Slogan: DIY Robocars - making safety dangerous - your car, your code, our road.
Responsibility is an addiction
Virtue is a temptation
Community is a cartel
It would make huge sense for the alcohol industry to invest heavily in this technology.
Cars which breath-test their drivers and serve as 'designated drivers' could give a huge boost to bars and nightclubs. And, no more alcohol-related traffic deaths.
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
Access to all the worlds information, self-driving cars.. just imagine if it were to become self-aware.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
While I can't wait to get my own self-driving car, this method of testing is completely irresponsible and reckless. The other drivers on the road did not sign up to be guinea pigs in Google's little experiment.
quite a lot of cars seem to be drive without the engagement of a human brain. Perhaps Google is on to something here?
I used to love that show. The Coyote was awesome, at least until they changed it to fit on the Delorean frame.
True story: An ex-coworker of mine actually bought one of the original Coyotes (based on the VW frame) used in the show for something like $35,000 USD.
Not only are there significant technological hurdles, of course, since you have to make your self-driving car capable of coping with all the regular cars and pedestrians and so on, but there are legal hurdles. The first time your car gets in a major accident, you are getting sued big time and it'll be humans, not car computers, on the jury. Say your car hits and kills a pedestrian because there was simply no way to avoid it at all. Their family will sue you for tons.
As such you have to be able to prove, beyond any doubt, that your car did the right thing, that the choice it made was the very best possible choice in that situation and no human could have done any better. It can't be as good as a normal human, you'll lose because that's just how people are. You have to be able to completely demonstrate how you car handled the situation so much better than a human and even still couldn't do anything to prevent the accident because there was just no way it was preventable.
I've confidence that will happen. We will get to the point where they can do that, but it'll take a long time in development. The cars will have to be certified under the most adverse conditions and still have exemplary performance. Then they can be brought to the mass market.
I'd be interested in seeing how this car holds up to real life extreme situations like black ice on a freeway in heavy traffic at high speed when the cars around it start spinning out of control.
And then they let Italians and Belgians drive them.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Where did GP mention the speed limit?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Somebody doing the legal speed limit in the left lane is very fucking clearly not using the left lane for it's intended purpose, passing. Exceeding the legal speed limit during passing isn't only legal damn near anywhere that had driving laws, it's the responsible thing to do. Fuck, in some states travelling the speed limit in the left lane is explicitly against the fucking law.
The root of the problems being described here are fucking idiots such as yourself, who lack a mature understanding of how to handle yourself on the road.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
Trains and buses are generally referred to as public transport. Public = state run. State run = communist.
And if you allow socialized transport, it's the thin end of the wedge - they'll soon be socializing everything.
Plus public transport can be stopped at will by teh gubmint. The second amendment isn't much use if you can't get within range!
The clincher: people in favor of it call themselves green. Watermelons are green, but they're red on the inside.
QED
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
That's convenient except for the fact that there are lots of legal reasons to exceed the speed limit and it is not for you to decide if other drivers are being prudent. That is why we have police patrolling streets. There is no legal reason for you to be in the left lane as you stated yourself, it is for passing. If you are not passing then you should not be in said lane performing a rolling road block.
While yes, poor impulse control is a huge issue it is often caused by people that shouldn't be on the road to begin with. When someone is so scared to drive that they can't maintain speed then they shouldn't be on the road at all. They force people to pass them and clog up road ways when they fail to merge properly. Every time I see someone stop and wait for an opening I know I get a little more mad.
Citation?
Ahh yes, "fix it with a law". That's right, there's no amount of danger or risk that a good ol' Form 544813 written by a bureaucrat can't mitigate.
Does your car come right into your kitchen? Lamest thing I ever heard.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I happen to enjoy driving. This tech is cool, but I personally don't want a JohnnyCab. I don't even really care for cruise control. Yeah, yeah, and you can get off my lawn, too, but there's something about driving... maybe it's because I lived in a rural area growing up and my first car was pretty much my ticket to independence and freedom -- being able to go just about anywhere I wanted when I wanted, no longer shackled to my parents' house in the middle of nowhere -- that makes me hesitant to give up control of my car. I guess I'd rather have true freedom than a safety net, which is the way I feel about quite a lot of things now that I think about it.
Also, I realize that perceiving automated driving systems as loss of freedom is irrational to an extent; this is because my opinion is based on personal feelings which are more subjective than logical. I merely present my opinion as food for thought.
Yeah, that just happened.
This is just funded by Google. It's the group at Stanford which did the DARPA Urban Challenge that's doing the work. It's essentially the same technology. They're getting very good at this.
The thing on top of the car is a rotating cone of LIDAR scanners. The original version of that was developed by Team DAD for the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge. The prototype, which was a much bigger wheel of scanners, fell off the vehicle. But they then built a more compact production version, the Velodyne scanner, with 64 lasers. It costs about $100K per unit, but automatic driving became much better once that came out. Most of the teams in the DARPA Urban Challenge used that.
Personally, I think the rotating machinery approach is too expensive for production, and that the Advanced Scientific Concepts flash LIDAR has more promise as a production product. The ASC system requires some exotic custom imaging ICs, with a time-of-flight timer behind each pixel. That's the kind of thing that's incredibly expensive when you make 10 of them, and cheap when you make 10 million.
Of course there's a citation. He said it's against the law.
This sentence no verb.
Someone traveling the legal speed limit is not an obstacle, they are a responsible, law-abiding citizen.
OK, so they're law-abiding assholes. If you are obstructing the flow of traffic, you are, by definition, an obstacle. Move over, grandpa.
Trains don't come to my front door, which is rather necessary when I'm carrying a load of groceries to feed my household.
Maybe part of the problem is Americans' apparent cultural need to carry "loads" of things and/or the terrible urban planning that necessitates that behavior. If American communities were laid out sensibly, you could take a short walk to the grocery store every day and carry back the small bag of goods you needed for the day. Since communities are laid out retardedly, you have to climb into the SUV, drive 30 miles to super-mega-ultra-mart, and haul back four weeks of food at a time.
So add 3 independent computers so they can vote on each decision. It's not like computer power is expensive today.
I think this is pretty cool and all, but in my eyes, JR's talk at TED was the real noisemaker. Watch it if you haven't.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
That's a new one to me. I have heard complaints that many train systems would be uneconomical, in the sense that they'd never survive without some kind of subsidy.
What transit systems do we have that exist without subsidies?
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Or rather, their employees. Self driving cars are the death of the car industry as it currently stands. There is only 1 reason we need our own cars.
1. Taxis are expensive.
If you don't have a driver, you can put a taxi on every street corner which means that the customer can order one on his iphone taxi app as he leaves the house/office and it's waiting at the kerb before he gets there. No salary to pay, only running costs & depreciation.
An average taxi can currently make something like 30 journeys per day, where an average privately owned car makes about 3. So you will see something like a 10 fold reduction in the number of cars produced when self driving becomes the norm.
Deleted
You fail to account for the scenario where the driver in the right lane is driving UNDER the speed limit and the left car matches the reduced speed. In this case, the driver in the right lane is a law-abiding citizen (perhaps his car is incapable of going the speed limit, he's towing something, etc.) and the driver in the left lane is impeding traffic.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
No, this does not compute. I want my own care in order to arrive with all my "stuff", the briefcase, maybe extra coats, the 2 way radio that _I_ want in it, the external cell phone antenna, the laptop in the trunk, etc. I don't want to think of carrying all that stuff along to stuff in a Taxi when I'm going to work, etc. I want it in the garage when I get up at 4:00 AM and decide to go into work early, rather than waiting for a cab to get here from town, 20 miles away. I want _my_ car to have the "maximum summer grip" tires that will go 'round corners faster than other cars and I want to have an engine in the car that will out-accelerate the pinhead in the other lane that would like to keep me from changing lanes. In the snow I want my own car that happens to be a Jeep with the big, knobby tires to go thru it even tho it is up to the axles.
Your country apparently has a tradition of buying tiny amounts of food every single day. My country has a tradition of not wasting ridiculous amounts of time transporting small amounts of stuff a large number of times.
It's also not that our communities are laid out poorly, is that yours were laid out before America even came into existence and you haven't had the good sense to update your communities since then.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
Because of the giant, corrupt scam which are the traffic laws, the cars will have to be set to "obey the speed limit", making self-driving cars arrive 20 minutes later than one you drive yourself. Around the Chicago area they've gone to 45 mph speed limits on some their interstates where everyone flies along at 70, just to get around the 4th Amendment and be able to stop anyone they want to any time they want to. Can you imangine traveling 45 mph and getting hit by a truck doing 70? The only way this will work is to have _all_ self-driving cars on the road, and prohibit the human-driven kind. Otherwise, the self-driving cars are just going to be a huge, mobile roadblock that will slow down traffic to make rush hour last 'til 10 PM, and get you stopped by the cops for "tailgating" when there's no reason to be following much farther than 10 - 15 ft from the car ahead 'cuz the computers can react instantly, and don't need that distance.
If the gov't could get over using the highways for every purpose except getting people where they need to go, rather than generating traffic ticket money and violating people's constitutional rights to be left alone, it might work. But, probably not in our lifetimes.
(flamebait? really?)
I would be happy with augmented knowledge about my surroundings; like, beside my GPS, a radar with surrounding cars and pedestrians, with their speed and whether there's risk of collision; the route tracking would then include tips of when to change lanes. I would love* to know how is the climate on my route before leaving my house.
A robot driving a car will surely need all this data and much more.
* http://translate.google.com.br/translate?hl=pt-BR&sl=pt&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fblogseopark.blogspot.com%2F2011%2F01%2Fenchentes-em-sao-paulo-2011.html
-- --
Taxis are cheap as hell in South Korea, yet plenty of people still drive every day (way too many people for the city actually, but that's a different story). People like cars because cars afford them some privacy. In places like Seoul, Shanghai, Tokyo etc etc privacy and quiet time is valued as well. Yes Koreans and Japanese are much more accustomed to being in crowded throngs of people, but I've heard many a Korean or Japanese complain about crowded spaces. There is a reason online shopping grew so quickly in those two countries....
While I really like this development, there's one thing I'd like to see resolved: eye contact with the driver. When passing in front of a car I always try to make eye contact with the driver. For me this is the best way judge if the driver has spotted me and if I can cross safely. A robot driver should have some really simple visual way of saying: Hey, I've spotted you and I will break for you.
I wonder why they cannot limit speed to 40 km/h (it 's more than enough accepting there is no stops during trip not even on traffic lights ) and make all cars soft OUTSIDE to limit probable impact damage (they already modelling cars to minimize probable harm to pedestrian). You must be very unlucky bastard to die from pillow that struck you at less than 40 km/h.
The person driving in the left lane doing exactly the same speed as the car in the right lane is just as guilty of breaking the law in most states as the person who drives faster than the speed limit. In most states, the law says that the left lane is for passing only. There is no compelling reason for society to tolerate people who think it is their job to regulate the behaviors of others by violating the law.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
And i don't want to be on the same roads as you.
I agree that it's irresponsible. One of the drug addled wheel-monkeys might damage the robot. They really shouldn't allow human drivers on freeways.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Well played, son. That's the first goatse I've fallen for in years, and it had to happen in the god-damn apple store in the Manchester arndale centre! Long live the trolls!
This tagline was transcoded to result in at least one smirk. If you experience failure to smirk, please consult your Gen
I am confused on why this is being allowed. If a human requires proper licensing before they can engage in actual traffic, then why is a machine that can still be riddled with bugs allowed to? It just makes me twitch because of all the sub par software we have to use these days. I know that a crash (in this case literal) will inevitably happen. Hopefully, they have got placards all over this thing to let us know what it is, so we can avoid it like the plague when we see it on the highway.
Much as I'd like to believe this, it's not true. People own cars because they want to guarantee they can transport themselves at speed from any location to any other location, in a device they have overall control over. The selling points of taxis are not that they offer a way to do that, but trade driving for expense, but because they offer privacy and some degree of timeliness compared to public transport.
I, and most people in the country, wouldn't choose a taxi to go to work in the morning not because it's expensive but because it's a resource that's difficult to guarantee the availability of. Even a bus or train has a better guarantee of availability at peak periods. The idea of relying upon a version of cars
Would self driving cars kill cars? Maybe, but not because they'd be sharable - sharing doesn't come into it.
I'm a firm believer that cars are a terrible form of transport, and the only reason people tolerate them is because the person who makes the decision to buy and use them is inevitably the person driving them. That person overlooks the discomfort and inhuman conditions of sitting in a metal cage for anything from fifteen minutes, to hours, unable to move because he or she is distracted by the actual act of driving. Such a distraction will cease to exist if the car is driven by Google.
What would happen under such circumstances? My guess is things may get worse before they get better. Successful self driving cars will need to larger than SUVs or minivans are today, and the risks associated with people getting up and walking around in these larger vehicles during a road trip will result in deadlier accidents, despite the reduction in accidents overall likely to result from reduced human error.
What we need are cheaper trains, better buses, and most of all changes to planning policies that make it illegal to build neighborhoods that would make cycling and public transportation desirable, and make the latter profitable.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Now that robots have beat us in "Jeopardy," how soon will it be before they win the Indianapolis 500 or a NASCAR event?
It would be better it it didn't mimic ALL the decisions made by a human driver or else the computer, when faced with some cyclists in the lane, could decide to do something like this:
Brazil driver mows down cyclists in Porto Alegre (BBC News)
I think we can do better.
Exceeding the legal speed limit during passing isn't only legal...in some states travelling the speed limit in the left lane is explicitly against the fucking law.
Some states allow exceeding the posted speed limit while passing, when on a road which has only a single lane in the direction you are traveling (and by some I mean Washington). In no state is it "against the fucking law" to travel the posted speed limit, in any lane. Yes, some states require that the left lanes only be used to pass vehicles in the right lanes, but this does not mean you have to, or are even legally allowed to, speed to do it. If the car in the right lane is doing the speed limit, then you have no reason to attempt to pass them, and therefor no reason to be in the left lane.
Doubt it.
To put it bluntly artificial Intelligence software is software of which the behaviour can be different in similair situation based on past experiences.
I would rather have something of which the behaviour is predictable thank you very much.
New things are always on the horizon
The real problem is that there comes a point where the "corner cases" where the self-driving car would crash are vastly outnumbered by the real situations where humans actually do crash.. and because of the liability issue, we still don't get self-driving cars.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Yes, part of the problem is that the speed limits for the lanes are the same. But the left lane is for passing. If you're not overtaking the traffic to the right, you shouldn't be in it. Even if the traffic in the right lane is at or exceeding the limit. If you feel you can't legally drive fast enough to pass the cars in the right lane...you should be in the right lane, let other jokers risk traffic violations.
And, btw, it is also against the law in many states to match speeds with traffic in the manner described in the GP's post. It's called "obstructing traffic" and can get you a ticket just as surely as speeding would. If you're uncomfortable about it, then don't drive in the passing lane.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Trains require tracks, which require a bigger initial investment than roads
I know this is true in Simcity, but is this really the case in the real world? It's two thin strips of iron over a pile of rocks. How expensive can it be, really?
I'm sure the lion's share of the expense is just in acquiring the land, which should be lower for trains, because they don't require as much width as the roads do.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
A lot of people are employed driving vehicles. They are very expensive per hour. Goodbye! The upside? Automation would reduce cargo speeds to optimum fuel efficiency because doing so wouldn't actually burn up anyone's expensive time. Computer controlled throttle on regular engines already beat the snot out of hybrids for fuel savings. I think there's a 25% energy savings in there, ripe for the taking. But yeah, it'll be a major social and economic game changer.
They were right - the revolution did not get televised. It was posted on YouTube instead. All in 120 characters. SLOOSH!
Correct.
Unfortuantely, just putting in trains doesn't do much to solve the problem. You still have shit laid out retardedly, so the trains just languish unused.
And we've built of 100 years of retarded commutes.. there's a lot of shit that would have to be moved around.
But you make a good point. Consider the following example: Suppose you live in Reading MA, and work in Woburn mass. Maybe your commute looks like this 8 minute drive
Now, I've chosen two rail stops as the endpoints. Click on the "transit" button. The best option is a 44 minute walk (doable, but I don't imagine those roads have much in the way of sidewalks...) or an hour and a half rail detour, or an hour and half odyssey of bus transfers...
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
I don't think self-driving cars will use a different interior layout until most people deeply trust the automated driving system, which won't be for a long time (easily decades). Until then there'll be a human driver ready to take over, and in that case you need something similar to today's interior layout.
Also, while I'm sure larger automated personal vehicles that support walking around would exist, I think they will be too expensive to be common. A larger vehicle is simply more expensive than a smaller one and less fuel efficient/more maintenance heavy to boot. Most people will continue to use cheap but relatively cramped designs out of economic necessity (or a desire to save money for other more important things). Such larger designs make sense for buses or trains because many people share them, but what's the point in walking around in a vehicle with a SUV-sized floor containing just you and perhaps a handful of other people?
That said, perhaps designs that de-emphasize safety in exchange for comfort could appear. I could imagine seats that could be moved around to fit into other less safe but more comfortable or useful arrangements or beds becoming common (perhaps one could get a few more minutes of shuteye before work). Of course, the automated system would have to be fantastically reliable for people to have that level of trust...so I don't think this will be the case for a long time if at all.
Oh, so please tell us EXACTLY about the integration test Google did for this situation: a) Moving in dense traffic at 65 mph b) Vehicle in front has blow-out tire and swerves in front of it c) How does car react? Does it (a) slam on brakes while car in back is tailgating when it could have swerved to the left where no cars are there? (b) swerve to right into mini-van full of kids? (c) Happily plows into car in front d) In the one to two second time-frame which the human has to decide if the Google driver isn't going to do the right thing, can the human driver take over and react in time to properly respond to the situation? Yes, I want a full detailed integration test summary from you, since you appear so sure that Google is on top of this...
This is an interesting thought, but there's a few additional issues.
1. Clearly this is not the only reason we need/want our own cars, several of which are covered by the other posters (privacy, customization, cars are a good place to store things you commonly take with you, etc.). Another such issue is that taxis are icky compared to one's own car (much like a public toilet compared to one's own toilet). Personal cars offer a better experience to people who can afford them.
2. You have to wait for the taxi to arrive after you order it. This can be particularly troublesome if you're not in a high traffic area, making the wait long. If you have your own car you don't have to think about this. It can also be an issue during high-load times as the taxis may not be able to get to you immediately if there's not enough of them (and there probably won't be enough as buying excessive taxis is unprofitable). While you can order ahead, you have to think about this beforehand and if you don't then a wait is inevitable.
3. This technology will probably require a human driver behind the wheel for some time into the future (for safety and/or legal reasons), eliminating the cost advantage until such a day that cars are frequently driver-less. At this point having your own car would be advantageous for other reasons (for instance, sending your car out to do chores on its own). Maybe eventually there'd be no difference, but it could be quite some time.
4. Cheap taxis would have little to no impact on personal vehicles with a use besides passenger transport, such as trucks. Though perhaps this could lead to variants on the taxi model that would lead to an impact on such vehicles, such as a "cargo taxi".
5. At least here in the US there's a car ownership culture. What kind of car you own is an important status symbol and that culture is unlikely to change in the face of driver automation. This will be especially true if taxis are very cheap.
On the other hand, taxis would indeed become a much better choice than they are now, displacing other forms of transport. In particular it would compete head to head with buses, which fill a similar niche. As you suggest, it would reduce the number of personal cars, but just how much is debatable.
Taxis do have certain advantages though:
1. Taking taxis everywhere could very well become substantially cheaper than operating a personal car. As you point out they make more journeys in a single day, spreading the operating costs over many people.
2. The parking situation is insane in certain areas of certain cities. Cheap taxis would be particularly popular in such areas (even amongst people who own a personal car). Though this would eventually lead to a balance between taxis and cars as the parking situation improves due to fewer people parking in the same area.
How much reduction in the number of cars would this create? Probably some (especially in the personal car market), but you could even see an *increase* in the total number of cars on produced. If the cost of taxis becomes comparable to buses then a massive number of taxis would replace the bus system. Unless most people also dropped their personal cars in favor of using taxis then there'd be more cars overall.
So you are saying that driving instructors are also just as irresponsible as they are taking out 16 year olds who have never driven before? Endangering the other drivers! Some of those cars they use don't even have a brake on the instructor's side, let alone a steering wheel. So much more irresponsible compared to Google's car it seems.
I would think there would be a lot of advantages to having a taxi pick you up. For instance being paid the second one get into the taxi to the second one leaves it on the return trip. If one uses a smart phone one could work during commute. Another would be the savings from parking fees. I see this to drastically reduce the number of people in retail as I can see people ordering everything online with driver less vehicles delivering the goods to one's home. This would drastically reduce the amount of space needed for the retail stores. Stores would consist of very tall shelves with narrow passageways since products would be gathered by robots. So stores would need about a third the space to store products and no need for huge parking lots. There would be a lot of savings from every aspect of managing a store but especially from shoplifting. One can see what this would do to impulse buying since one could order something in their underwear and get it within minutes. I can just see the commercial stating that you too can enjoy the benefits of our product in less than an hour by ordering now.
there is no way a @#$ robot can judge what to do about oncoming accidents, like a pedestrian, a deer, a squirrel, a semi jackknifing, an ambulance passing, a crash ahead of you, a gigantic pothole, a box full of dishes that fell off a truck, a big tree branch, a patch of black ice, a tire blowing out, a semi weaving in a strong wind, etc etc etc.
That's ok, Bay Area drivers can't handle those situations either ;-)
Heck, 101 and 880 turn into a parking lot of accidents anytime there is some light drizzle. I actually doubt a self-driving car can be worse than the drivers around here.
Even if an AI controlled car will cause far fewer accidents the people killed by them will have names but the people saved will not. This will result in the technology being held back 30 years.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Yes, it really is. That bed of rocks, without the strips of iron, is just as wide as a road, but thicker. Any hills have to be smoothed out, and construction itself involves more work to get those heavy strips of iron perfectly where they need to be.
Or, in other words,
Over the U.S. as a whole, excluding Seattle, new light rail construction costs average about $35 million per mile. By comparison, a freeway lane expansion typically costs $20 million per lane mile (a lane mile is a mile-long lane) for two directions.
I'd expect, based on seeing the trouble getting a rail route through my hometown, that acquiring land for a train is more difficult (therefore expensive), primarily because of noise. Nobody wants to sell half of their backyard to get a noisy train next to them. The government could force it, but that's political suicide.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Oh http://www.mit.edu/~jfc/right.html
You may use the left lane (when there is more than one lane in your direction) to pass. You may or may not be able to use the left lane when not passing. The table below describes the law in effect in each state.
A few states permit use of the left lane only for passing or turning left. These have "yes" in the "keep right" column. Six states require drivers to move right if they are blocking traffic in the left lane. Most states follow the Uniform Vehicle Code and require drivers to keep right if they are going slower than the normal speed of traffic (regardless of the speed limit; see below). These are listed as "slower", with an asterisk and an explanation under "comments" if vehicles lawfully using the left lane must yield to overtaking traffic. A few states either do not require vehicles to keep right ("no"), or permit vehicles moving at the speed limit to drive in the left lane regardless of traffic conditions ("SL").
The color coding in the "keep right" column is red if the state has no restriction on slow vehicles in the left lane, yellow if vehicles moving at the normal speed of traffic are permitted in the left lane even when they are unnecessarily obstructing other traffic, green if use of the left lane is limited to passing, and grey otherwise.
file:
You left out one major purpose of the driver: To prevent vandalism. This is a major expense on bus lines, and of trucks that sit around unattended.
Presumably some way exists to deal with this, but no way that is currently being tried works. Historically it's been a difficult problem, which can be partially addressed only by so arranging things that nobody feels treated too unfairly. And this is quite difficult. This needs to be coupled with intensive conditioning against all forms of vandalism. In the 1950's this worked pretty well in the areas in which it was applied. (Of course, there was also an emphasis on re-use...not just recycling. No throwaway containers, e.g. To pick a particular example, Coke bottles were made of glass, and came with a hefty refundable deposit. About 1/10th of the price. You took them back, the store returned them to the company, which cleaned and sterilized them and then reused them.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
No. It comes to the door 20 feet away from my kitchen. I can go from my refrigerator to my car in, let's say, 10 seconds, if I walk slowly. We'll assume that picking up & dropping off bags takes no time. A typical grocery trip involves about 6 bags. I'll carry 3 or 4 bags from the car to the house, so simply getting everything inside takes 30 seconds.
The nearest grocery store is about two miles away. Assuming I go quickly, I could make that trip in about 30 minutes, accounting for load, crosswalks, and sidewalk damage. Assuming I can still take 3 bags with me, getting the same load to my kitchen now takes an hour and a half. I highly doubt that a train would be where I need every 30 minutes, so feet are still the best option.
Some quick math shows that the jogging option takes 540 times as long as using my car, and that's not including the initial trip to the store. Perhaps you have an egregious amount of spare time, but I'm afraid I do not.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
2. You have to wait for the taxi to arrive after you order it.
You are imagining a similar level of availability to current taxis. This is largely caused by the driver, he has to be kept busy and therefore increases the scarcity of the service. Without a driver, idling vehicles close to demand centres is economically viable. This brings the service response down to a couple of minutes. It may be possible to get one to you before you are out the door.
What kind of car you own is an important status symbol and that culture is unlikely to change in the face of driver automation.
This will be a generational thing. I'd expect it to take 15+ years for self driven vehicles to begin to edge out the current fleet. By that time a younger generation is entering the auto marketplace. They just wouldn't see the point of a car, particularly loading up on tens of thousands of debt just to own one when they can call a taxi for a couple of dollars and it's there in less time than it takes to walk to a parking lot.
Some people will continue to think of their cars as status symbols, these types will hang on, but most, don't really want a car, they just want the service it provides and in new generations, they'll find some other status symbol to parade around.
Deleted
Well, in California there's the "General Speed Law" which makes it illegal to drive at an unsafe speed ... unsafe either for you or for other drivers.
But I think people are confusing two lane roads (one lane in each direction) with multi-lane roads in this argument, with some clearly meaning one and others probably meaning the other. Still, IIRC it *has* been held illegal to drive as the exact same speed as the vehicle in the adjacent lane on a divided road. I don't recall whether this applied if there were only two lanes, as the case I (sort of) remember involved a three lane road. (A freeway, actually.)
Also there have been cases where people were issued tickets for not driving above the legal speed limit in the left hand lane. The "General Speed Law" was cited as the reason. (That case was somewhat interesting, as the same officer first stopped the driver for going too fast in the right lane, and then for going too slow in the fast lane, in both cases conflicting with the general speed of the traffic in an unsafe manner.) You could, perhaps, have said that he should have issued tickets to all of the other fast drivers, but the judge didn't take that as a valid defense. (OTOH, this was back around 1970. Perhaps the rules have changed. But I don't think that's the way to bet.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Actually, yes! In Delaware at least (I bet many other states) the DMV cancels their road tests on the first indication that it may rain. So the actual test occurs in quite controlled environments. Yet, you under normal conditions have to drive on rain, snow, etc. So what's the purpose of this test besides letting the state know that you know the theoretical rules and that you are capable of parallel parking in absolutely good weather conditions?
Sorry, but on multi-lane roads the left lane is not equivalent to a "passing lane" which is where a car is supposed to stay only a short amount of time during passing. These usually appear on three lane roads (one lane in each direction, and one in the center to facilitate passing) and are generally quite short chunks of road.
On freeways, the left lanes are for faster traffic, and the right lanes are for slower traffic.
On arterial roads, the left lane(s) are for traffic that plans to turn left, the right lane(s) are for traffic that's either planning to turn right, or to park, and no lane at all is intended for traffic that is going faster. Which lane is faster depends on the flow of traffic, and often it's the left lane that's the slow one. (Left hand turns can be a bear!)
And on two way roads, one lane in each direction, dotted dividing line, the lane in the other direction is for passing, and you had damned well better go as fast as is safe while you are doing it. You don't want to get stuck there.
There aren't just two cases.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
That's a new one to me. I have heard complaints that many train systems would be uneconomical, in the sense that they'd never survive without some kind of subsidy.
What transit systems do we have that exist without subsidies?
What road systems do we have that exist without subsidies?
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Google is probably one of the most advanced companies when it comes to modifying their algorithm based on simulations / tests / etc they send out to a small subset of their user base. It makes sense then, that if they had a few hundred of these for their employees, the amount of information they would gather from all that driving would help drive this product to the market in years, not decades.
c) How does car react?
Based on what I see on the roads every day, I wouldn't trust 2/3 of HUMAN drivers to react correctly.
You were saying?
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
Google actually built an all-star team. They hired the tech leads for both the Carnegie Mellon team (top finisher for 1st Grand Challenge and won the Urban Grand Challenge) and the Stanford team (won the 2nd Grand Challenge). They also hired a bunch of the other developers from each team. I was at Chris Urmson's recent presentation at Carnegie Mellon about the Google cars. The approach the Google team is using looks predominately like the CMU method but with key features of the Stanford team.
Some well known facts within the robotics community, but not outside: The Stanford team was a former CMU prof (Thrun) and his technical lead (Montemerlo) was still finishing his CMU PhD while working for Stanford. His co-advisor was the prof running the CMU team (Whittaker) and his CMU classmate was the technical lead for CMU's teams (Urmson). Google hired three out of four on this list.
Train tracks are cheaper than roads for anything beyond a dirt track. There are, however, exceptions. The High Speed Rail tracks are considerably more expensive than the regular lines, and if you add in a third rail for electricity, then the fencing to keep people out and the lawyer bills increase a lot. Also, if you elevate them or underground them they also become a lot more expensive.
OTOH, buying the land isn't generally more than half the cost of a road. And maintenance on roads is significantly more expensive than maintenance on rails.
There are reasons why trolleys used to run down all the major streets of cities. They were cheap, efficient, and easily maintained. (Also they often replaced horse-cars which ran on rails so that the horses could pull more weight.)
That said, a rail system is not a COMPLETE transport system, which a car can be. Moving freight and passengers on the same load is quite complex, and then the freight needs to be unloaded. When the freight can be a load of groceries with eggs on top, this can get quite difficult, and is usually solved by having the passenger carry the freight, which doesn't work for anything bulky and heavy, and is always annoying. The traditional solution to this was to have the merchants deliver the merchandise, which meant they needed a private vehicle that ran on roads. So the rails were not a general replacement for roads.
P.S.: The major force acting to prevent passenger trains in the US is the private rail lines which carry freight. They have quite a powerful voice, as they own the rails and the right-of-way. Generally via a highly subsidized purchase via Congress, but occasionally via an outright gift from Congress.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Interesting then how millions of people manage to get by without owning a car, even in developed nations. Maybe because they don't have a list of excuses as long as a train.
Your comment is totally retarded.
Sorry, there's nothing else to add.
Generally, it's because those nations weren't built with car transit in mind. The United States is a child, as far as nations go. I spent a few months in a small town in Italy. There was a decent-sized grocery store every few blocks. I was in a rural village in Ghana, where you could walk across the whole town in 30 minutes, and it had two marketplaces!
The United States has had cars for almost half its life. Cities are built with shopping centers in a single place, because it's easy to just use a car to get there. Because the cities are designed that way, having a car is necessary for future generations. I's a vicious cycle, but "just add trains" won't fix anything.
There are some places in the US where life without a car is perfectly fine, such as Manhattan. Such places are busy enough that a car is impractical, so there is enough demand to support smaller, more frequent grocery stores. Those places are few enough that they can't provide an adequate generalization for the rest of the country, though.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Of course, it can't be worse than distracted human drivers.
I think GP was referring to the arsefark doing 20 under in the left lane. YOU know who YOU are.
You're absolutely right. As others have noted, I never mentioned the speed limit at all. Maybe they think that's a coincidence but really that was for a reason.
Some people will invent shit, put words in your mouth, and then look down their nose at you because they don't like the words they just made up and ascribed to you. It's not a surprise to me at all that such a person makes a big deal of always following all rules. People like him love rules, not because they regulate and keep order, but because he can feel superior to those who transgress them.
That should adequately explain why he automatically assumed I meant something I quite clearly did not say. It'd be difficult or impossible to climb up on his high horse and lecture me about speed limits if he just stuck to what I actually said.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
This response to another poster also applies to you. I just replied to him instead because he understood what you failed to grasp. Enjoy.
Also, while I generally do drive the speed limit, I don't feel that it's my job to control others by physically blocking their passage. If they wish to speed, on an open highway that's built like a drag strip, that's between them and any cops in the area. By not deliberately blocking them and by moving over when I can clearly see they want to pass me, I remove any possible danger their urge to speed could have posed to me. It's called defensive driving.
If I wanted to enforce the speed limit I would become a police officer.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Except that like 90% of that driving occurs between 7am-9am and 5pm-7pm and not in an even distribution over the course of the day.
To the -1 Troll mod -- I was merely pointing out that the link was a goatse redirect (as I lacked mod points to mod parent down).
Sheesh...
Except you get mothers with screaming children in their backseat who match the speed of the car on their right... who might be slowing down to do a right turn. I get this a bunch of the time down an 8-mile road with two lanes. You get reasonable people, and then you get the slow accelerating jerks who speed match and "school bus drive". This breeds people who are impatient or may have a legitimate reason to get from point A to point B in a specific time frame and are forced to cut you off the moment you make space because they are sure you are going to take your sweet ass time getting your car in motion at the next stop light or slow everyone down so they miss the green and are forced to wait through a red or more.
Well said. I wonder if camping on the Afghan border in Tajikistan's High Pamir qualifies? It sure was fun.
https://picasaweb.google.com/bdwoolman/Pamir09?feat=directlink
Took a gander at your site and enjoyed your thoughts.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
Yeah, that's what I was getting at.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
I would go for a self-driving car ( can be useful on long trips ) , but only if it's also possible to drive manually.
Having your own car has more to do with freedom , than with status. It allows you to go wherever you want to go , whenever you want to.
Slipping shoelaces ?
Are you trying to support my claim or are you just not aware of what your quote means.
I said "some states require that the left lanes only be used to pass vehicles in the right lanes"
You quoted "A person shall not drive a motor vehicle in the passing lane...unless such person is passing other motor-vehicles that are in a non-passing lane"
I took out the part that says that this statute only applies to highways with a posted speed-limit of 65 high, since I think that is the part that might be confusing you.
Basically your quote does not support your original claim that "in some states travelling the speed limit in the left lane is explicitly against the fucking law". Your quotes does not say that it is legal to exceed the posted speed-limit, only that you have to be passing if you are in the left lane.
What's really interesting to me about this concept, assuming they get the computer stuff right, is then what does this do to commuting and living patterns. Do all the cars which communicated and found out they were all getting off the highway at the same exit hitch together and form a train, thereby reducing distance between them to much less than normal (human reaction) stopping distance? Do they hitch together mechanically or merely electronically? How much does this reduce accidents? How much does this increase highway throughput? Does this change the tradeoffs between highways and arterial roads? What about urban roads like ring roads or beltways? Do we have wind effects that increase the efficiency of cars in a "train" ? Has anyone simulated any of this stuff?
It would appear that we have reached the limits of what it is possible to achieve with computer technology, although one should be careful with such statements, as they tend to sound pretty silly in 5 years. -John Von Neumann, 1949
Think about it before you start making blanket statements about what computers can and can't do when someone has the brains to think of a way to solve a problem instead of ranting about why it can't be done.
You're right, but your numbers are off. Sure taxis would be cheaper, but if the system is cheap enough for 'the average car' you'll find more one-car families, as a car could return after taking dad to the office, or the kids to school, etc. As many still would want to own their car, there will always be a personal transportation market, but cars wouldn't be 'stuck' with one member of the family as much.
The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
I want one, when can I go to bestbuy and buy one?