Google's Self Driving Car Crashes

datapharmer writes "We've all read previous stories on slashdot about Google's driverless car, and some have even pondered if a crash would bring the end to robotic cars. For better or for worse, we will all find out soon, as the inevitable has occurred. The question remains, who is to blame. A Google spokesperson told Business Insider that 'Safety is our top priority. One of our goals is to prevent fender-benders like this one, which occurred while a person was manually driving the car.'"

Comments

Johnny Cab

[Anonymous Coward]

"The door opened, you got in!"

Re:Johnny Cab

[pinkj]

I wish I had mod points.

Johnnycab: The fare is 18 credits, please.
[Quaid gets out]
Douglas Quaid: Sue me, dickhead!
[cab tries to run him down, crashes, and explodes]
Johnnycab: We hope you enjoyed the ride!

Re:Johnny Cab

[Anonymous Coward]

Omg, teh best!

Re:Johnny Cab

[Anonymous Coward]

If this scene is not in the new movie..

Actually, I'm just going to be hating on this movie regardless. There is no way they can keep true to the original.

Maybe I should just get over it and enjoy it as a re-imagining.

There just better be three tits somewhere in there.

Re:Johnny Cab

[simcop2387]

commenting to fix accidental moderation god damn it.

Re:Johnny Cab

[dkf]

Actually, I'm just going to be hating on this movie regardless. There is no way they can keep true to the original.

What, the short story? Why would they keep true to that? The film didn't.

Summary is sensationalistic

[ELitwin]

The car crashed while being driven by a person.

Nothing to see here - move along please.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[WrongSizeGlass]

The car crashed while being driven by a person.

Maybe he was looking at the GPS and not paying attention to the road.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[redemtionboy]

But...the robots....:( So disappointed.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[Dice]

The car crashed while being driven by a person.

According to a Google spokesperson. If I were in that car, and it crashed while the software was driving, I would claim that I had been driving it too. Any public crash that could be blamed on the software would put the project in serious jeopardy.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[101010_or_0x2A]

9/11 was an inside job because man never landed on the moon.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[petermgreen]

OTOH if you lied and the cops found out you had lied then I would think that could put the project in even more serious jeopardy.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[thegarbz]

Are you kidding? This is the epiphany of news for nerds. It's amazing. The Google car has crashed! Who cares about the details. It's all over. Even Google can't make the perfect car. Why do they allow a manual override in the first place. OMG.

Actually the real Oh My God moment was that I just clicked on that waste of a link.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[del_diablo]

Lets talk about something a bit more relevant.
Basically a small issue is that bugs will occuere. If the cars AI actually crashed the car, ain't it actually a really good thing? I mean, the bug would otherwise have been present.
And since it crashed, they can figure out WHY it crashed, and that means they can fix the bug.
And the same thing applies to everything: While doing R&D you actually want a few of your products to break badly, so you can fix the fault that caused it.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm fairly certain that robotic cars are entirely unlawful to be operating on their own on public streets across the U.S. So if the car was on a public street there was a person in the drivers seat and whether they were driving or the software was driving, they were operating the car.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[Anonymous Coward]

Aww, I was hoping for automated demolition derby.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[Bitsy Boffin]

The word you want is epitome, not epiphany.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[Fuzzums]

Yeah. And if later on anybody would find out it actually WAS the software instead of the human driver...

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[tibman]

I did some quick research.

According to California officials, there are no laws that would bar Google from testing such models, as long as there's a human behind the wheel who would be responsible should something go wrong.

Taken from here: http://jalopnik.com/5661240/are-googles-driverless-cars-legal which was linked in the article from the summary.

However i would say that there is a difference from operating the car and manually driving the car. The google spokesperson used the phrase, manually driving.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[nerdyalien]

Thought of sending this to Top Gear... too bad as a human was driving it.

Hope the robot called 911 after the crash...

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[qxcv]

Actually the real Oh My God moment was that I just clicked on that waste of a link.

I even clicked on the subsequent two links to get to the *actual* story rather than just CNET's "commentary". Outbound links to content farms really should be banned from /.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[FhnuZoag]

Well, Asimov's second law of robotics does overrule the third law...

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a test car. It collects more data while in operation than you could imagine. It'd be trivial to verify the logs against what they claim.

The claim that it is a 5 car accident seems to indicate that there was something unusual going on in the area that caused traffic to get much tighter than typical. When he saw whatever that was, the driver most likely took control and screwed up. The whole thing should be in the logs so it'll be easy for them to see what went wrong.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[Dice]

It is a test car. It collects more data while in operation than you could imagine. It'd be trivial to verify the logs against what they claim.

I can imagine quite a lot, but that's beside the point. It would be trivial for Google to verify the logs, sure, but I doubt very much that the Mountain View Police Department would have an easy time with it.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[Anonymous Coward]

Was Mr. Bean driving it?

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[ColdWetDog]

Ah yes, the epiphany of epitome.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[Anonymous Coward]

If that's a reason to move on I had better just kill my Slashdot Atom feed.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[Anonymous Coward]

If you believe this OR my suspicious mind leads me to believe if they ever needed to cover their ass and not be the laughing stock in the world as to why a car with no one in it would need to be on the road IN MOTION moving with traffic, going somewhere? in the first place... This is a good time for gOOGLe to rethink just what the hell they are in the first place any way.. They are a search engine? Who spies on the general public?

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[Monchanger]

It would be trivial for Google to verify the logs, sure, but I doubt very much that the Mountain View Police Department would have an easy time with it.

They don't have to. All they need is to hire a credible computer expert to testify as to what the data actually says. If the subpoena includes Google's data analysis tools, it becomes even more trivial.

PS- "credible" means someone who doesn't spread conspiracy theories online.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[Anonymous Coward]

"It can only be attributed to human error"...

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[jklovanc]

How do we know that the following condition didn't happen;

The car was in automatic drive.
A problem occurred and it appeared that a crash was about to occur.
The driver took control of the vehicle
There was not enough time to avoid the crash and the crash occurred.

Google can truthfully say that at the time of the crash the car was in manual control but the crash was still caused by the computer.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[uglyMood]

Because Google makes a distinction between the car being driven autonomously, which is the scenario which you describe, and manually driving the car, in which the car is driven just like any other Prius. Until more facts come in, what is the point of this scare-mongering conspiracy theory? What is YOUR agenda?

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[Anonymous Coward]

OTOH, this is a Google employee we are talking about. If the cops catch him lying "rogue employee trying to suck up to the bosses for fear of losing his job." If he didn't take the bullet by attempting to lie Google probably has enough datamined info to have him cloned and replaced by a believable, more obedient version.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[Requiem18th]

But man HAD to land on the moon, it's necessary for my theory that the towers where knocked down with lasers from the secret moon base.

But seriously I also think that the way the towers imploded and collapsed looked very controlled and artificial, even if all the theories about how 9/11 was planned by Washington are crazy (and they get reeeeeal crazy some times), I can imagine someone sending the order of tearing down the towers on purpose to prevent them to collapse against another building(s).

The best explanation I can think that doesn't include pre-installed explosives is that the structure itself was designed to collapse on itself in this fashion with a future demolition in mind.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[Anonymous Coward]

Google is claiming a human was driving. If that's true, then this is basically a non-event.

But let's assume for a moment that the computer was driving. So it got into an accident. No deaths or injuries. Possibly some vehicular damage (although the attached photo makes it look like the cars were not damaged severely). So a fairly low-grade collision. A fender-bender.

According to the article, Google has tested their self-driving cars extensively and "its been racking up hundreds of thousands of miles in California". If this is indeed the first accident for a computer-controlled car, then that's a pretty low accident rate. Let's assume "hundreds of thousands" is ~200,000. That's about 12 years of driving for a typical person (who averages ~16,000 miles/year). Getting into a single fender-bender after 12 years of driving isn't that bad. Certainly not the best one could hope for. But for an early prototype that's pretty damn good. Certainly better than a large fraction of the drivers on the road... who we seem willing to give licenses to.

So even if this was a computer-caused accident... well, that makes me pretty hopeful for this technology. That's still a very low accident rate. And unlike with human drivers, it's likely that it will get better with time.

(Yes, I know most people won't assess this statistically as I am doing... and will freak out about any computer-caused accidents.)

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[hrimhari]

Even better, a bug in the auto-pilot can be fixed for all remaining instances. A bug in a person's reflexes can't.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[grumling]

Maybe it was just a shitty design.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

The article has an update, which says the incident forced a chain-collision among 3 Priuses (Preii?) and an Accord.

So it appears that only one car was affected.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[jklovanc]

We have the same point. There are some people who are taking the statement by Google that the car was being driven manually when the accident occurred at face value. I was just putting forward an alternate scenario in which the basic statement was true but may not tell the whole story. There is not enough information in the articles to make an informed judgment on what happened.

Even when the car is being driven by computer there is always someone in the driver's seat in case something goes wrong. In my scenario the car is driven "autonomously" right up until the driver takes over control. At that point the car is not being driven autonomously.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard he was updating his Google Plus page.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[Isaac Remuant]

Laugh all you want but his is not such a weird assumption without more facts about the subject.

And you already have proof that Google did the logical thing for a company and downplayed the magnitude of the event. They said 2 cars were involved when it was really 5.

Then again, it's what all smart companies will do when facing similar problems. It rests to see if they're able to handle the many variables in a man + robot traffic.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[hey!]

There's probably no provision in the law explicitly forbidding you to release sharks with fricken' lasers at the municipal swimming pool, but that doesn't mean it's legal. In most jurisdiction there's a basic provision in the law saying the operator of a vehicle must do so in a safe manner.

I suspect it's not any different in principle from engaging cruise control. In some situation that would be unsafe, therefore illegal. In practice, nobody knows how safe a new software system like this is, so there could be trouble.

Also, even if the person "operating" the car were "manually driving", that does not preclude the modifications made to the car being implicated.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[Anonymous Coward]

When is failure in the face of completely unanticipated, undesigned for inputs considered a shitty design?

How can the design be considered shitty? Against what benchmark? Are fully fueled jetliners crashing into buildings at 400-500 MPH daily without issue?

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[Anthony Mouse]

The other thing to consider is who is at fault for the collision. There are situations where, it doesn't matter who you are, you can't avoid a collision through no fault of your own. Example: You're driving in a construction zone with a car to your left and a construction barrier to your right. A deer jumps over the barrier and lands two feet in front of your car. You only get to choose whether you hit the deer, the barrier or the car to your left. There is no choice that avoids a collision. If a self-driving car is put in that situation, it has the same alternatives, and we shouldn't be at all surprised when some similar situation ultimately occurs.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[yotto]

To me it sounds like the only thing dangerous here is driving a Prius.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[mangu]

According to California officials, there are no laws that would bar Google from testing such models, as long as there's a human behind the wheel who would be responsible should something go wrong.

Exactly what happened here. The car crashed, the human was held responsible. This says nothing about who or what was controlling the car at the time.

I have designed automatic control systems since I graduated from electronics engineering college in 1979. I hate most of the automatic features in cars today, it will never do until we have human-equivalent artificial intelligence.

I have had a few near-misses due to anti-lock brakes caused entirely by algorithms that aren't good enough.

The last one was when the ABS released the brakes because I hit a pothole when I was braking. One wheel locked because it was over a hole and the system came to the conclusion that the car was on a slippery surface. Another near crash I had due to ABS was when I stepped on the brakes just as the pavement dropped down in a ramp. The system apparently interpreted the sudden downwards acceleration as a bigger than normal deceleration and unlocked the brakes.

I won't have a self-driving car until it's capable of doing evaluations like "that teen with the skate board there might swerve left" or "that old lady seems about to cross the street, she might not have seen me" or "that ball rolling across the street was thrown by a kid, he will come running after it".

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[Plunky]

I have had a few near-misses due to anti-lock brakes caused entirely by algorithms that aren't good enough.

and forgive me, but I wonder, how many near-misses have you had that would have been actual accidents but for the algorithms that react faster than you? I don't suppose you even noticed any..

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[hedwards]

Yes, but it is Prius on Prius violence. The only thing better would have been if the drivers had gotten into an altercation as well. Seriously, I'm always shocked when a Prius driver turns out to be anything other than a self obsess jack ass, I swear they take special classes to teach them how to drive in an incompetent and self obsessed manner.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[billstewart]

The other Prius's driver looked like Sarah Connor.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[bonch]

That's what the Google spokesman says. A crash would be very bad PR for Google's pointless self-driving car project.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[perryizgr8]

maybe they anticipated that a plane might crash into the towers and designed them in such a way that collapse would cause minimal damage to the surrounding buildings?

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[Anonymous Coward]

well they are correct, 2 cars were involved: Prius and Accord. 3 Prius total, but... lol google

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[perryizgr8]

seems to me it was great design. how many buildings have you seen standing after a fucking jet crashes into them?

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[Anonymous Coward]

As an engineer (but admittedly not a structures guy), the straight-down collapse is not astonishing it all. Given the delay from the initial impact (vs. an immediate collapse due to impact damage), it's logical that the collapse was due to heat-related weakening in the spine of the building from the ongoing jet-fuel-and-office-interiors fire. It's logical that this fire would affect all the central columns more-or-less equally -- jet fuel is a liquid, and the office interiors are more-or-less uniformly distributed. When one goes, the others are damned close to it already. And the part of the building above the collapse weighs a fucking load of fucktons (alright, fucktonnes, or fuckMg for you SI purists), and is fucking tall, so it has a moment of inertia about one end is roughly (fuck^4)/3 t*m^2 -- or in layman's terms, it's really, really not interested in pivoting about its base. It'll hang almost unmoving laterally until the other ones (now bearing a suddenly increased load) give way, and then boom-boom-boom, collapsing floors all the way into the ground.

I seriously don't get how anyone who knows anything about solid mechanics would see the straight-down failure as "fake". Gravity -- it pulls straight down*, bitchez!

*Frame-dragging is negligible in this case, and you're a nerd if you were going to mention it... says the nerd.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[nacturation]

*Frame-dragging is negligible in this case, and you're a nerd if you were going to mention it... says the nerd.

Frame dragging occurs at relativistic speeds. Were you thinking of the coriolis effect?

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[mangu]

how many near-misses have you had that would have been actual accidents but for the algorithms that react faster than you?

Considering I've been driving since 1976, only got my first ABS-equipped car in 2009, and never had an accident caused by brakes locking, probably none.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[SmilingBoy]

The last one was when the ABS released the brakes because I hit a pothole when I was braking. One wheel locked because it was over a hole and the system came to the conclusion that the car was on a slippery surface. Another near crash I had due to ABS was when I stepped on the brakes just as the pavement dropped down in a ramp. The system apparently interpreted the sudden downwards acceleration as a bigger than normal deceleration and unlocked the brakes.

In both cases the ABS probably reacted correctly and may have saved you from a less controllable situation. ABS works on each wheel separately so in the cases you experienced, breaks would still be applied on at least two wheels.

It makes sense to release the brake over a pothole as the wheel locks and will provide less traction once it hits the normal road surface again. It probably also makes sense to release the brakes on the wheel opposite the one that hit the pothole so asymmetric braking forces (which making the car less controllable) are reduced.

The pavement drop most likely unloaded the wheel, which then started locking. Again, it makes sense to release the brakes for a moment to prevent the wheel locking

Remember: a locked wheel provides much less breaking force than a wheel that is spinning (except on loose snow or loose gravel where the snow/gravel gets piled up in front of a locked wheel).

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[maxwell demon]

*Frame-dragging is negligible in this case, and you're a nerd if you were going to mention it... says the nerd.

Frame dragging occurs at relativistic speeds. Were you thinking of the coriolis effect?

Frame dragging also occurs at non-relativistic speed. One of the missions of Gravity Probe B was to measure the frame dragging of the earth.

Of course, for all practical purposes the frame dragging of the earth can be neglected. A mouse running through Central Park probably had a larger effect on the building.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[Anonymous Coward]

I have had a few near-misses

Anecdotal evidence is worth nothing in evaluating the safety of automation of cars. If a person has experienced enough close calls to do a meaningful statistic on them, it proves only one thing. That person is a shitty driver.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[rtfa-troll]

If he didn't take the bullet by attempting to lie Google probably has enough datamined info to have him cloned and replaced by a believable, more obedient version.

This. Now I shall never dare to apply for that job at Google.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[Anonymous Coward]

Good points. I hope that Google made the system such that data logging is enabled whenever the car is running regardless of whether the automated system was in control or not.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[Stele]

Maybe he was looking at the GPS and not paying attention to the road.

Nah he was more likely doing a google+ update. "Hey what does this switch do?"

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[Sun]

Having done some work in the area of aeronautics, I can tell you this logic doesn't always hold true. In particular, if the code you write is meant to run inside a cockpit (and it almost doesn't matter whether this is actually flying the plane or just displaying an airport's map), it goes through such level of scrutiny that is meant to assure that it has no bugs, without bugs happening in the field.

At least that was the mindset of the people around me.

Shachar

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The car crashed while being driven by a person.

According to a Google spokesperson. If I were in that car, and it crashed while the software was driving, I would claim that I had been driving it too. Any public crash that could be blamed on the software would put the project in serious jeopardy.

Well, these cars are instrumented very heavily and it would not be possible to lie outright. So there is some reason to believe Google, than the skeptics here.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[onepoint]

The towers withstood the impact for a while, but it makes sense what I've see.

fires can cause a structure to come down, and most of the time it's inward. So I really can not understand why people think this was some sort of conspiracy.

What I can say is that the controlled demolition industry most likely took note, a hollow interior collapse with a pancake action. might be a suitable way of taking down tall towers.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[onepoint]

Keep track of this case, and the second the lawyers get involved, contract yourself to the highest bidder for the data analysis

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe they anticipated that a plane might crash into the towers and designed them in such a way that collapse would cause minimal damage to the surrounding buildings?

If that was not a part of the jet crashing design criteria in the early 1970s, it is now. Gravity played the largest roll in pulling the Twin Towers straight down. That is a known constant. The rest of the collapse was overwhelming failure of components and fastening systems as they came down. They are not building them for demolition considerations over longevity.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[grumling]

Actually, it was designed for an impact of a 707, although they likely had to guess on a lot of the math.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[ComaVN]

But seriously I also think that the way the towers imploded and collapsed looked very controlled and artificial

Did you see some other towers collapse than I did? It doesn't look anything like a controller implosion. For one thing, controlled implosions always "pancake" from the bottom, with the main mass of the building squashing the lowest floors first. (See here, or any of a million other videos), while the WTC pancaked from around the point of impact, or 3/4 of the way up.

Secondly, the towers didn't come straight down at all, Notice the tilt of the top part in this video. The towers coming down did some serious damage to neighbouring buildings on their way down, too.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[Monchanger]

Keep track of this case, and the second the lawyers get involved, contract yourself to the highest bidder for the data analysis

Call me crazy, but for some reason I'm under the impression Google already has a few hundred world-class data analysts on retainer.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[Anonymous Coward]

Frame dragging occurs at relativistic speeds.

Eh? I said it was negligible, didn't I?

Were you thinking of the coriolis effect?

Nope. Coriolis effect is also negligible, but is not an exception to "gravity pulls straight down" because it's not gravity.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[RoFLKOPTr]

Any public crash that could be blamed on the software would put the project in serious jeopardy.

Which is quite unfortunate. I've seen the way people drive and people drive like shit. It's too bad that one wreck by an automated vehicle would cause a media explosion even if the rate of wrecks involving automated vehicles was one hundredth that of conventional vehicles. Google's automated cars have clocked hundreds of thousands of miles over the last couple years. One wreck after driving that far in a computer-controlled car that's still under testing is fucking amazing. Kudos to Google.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[RoFLKOPTr]

But you can see dust coming out of the building as it's collapsing to the ground so it must have been blown up by George Bush!!!!!!!

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[RoFLKOPTr]

I won't have a self-driving car until it's capable of doing evaluations like "that teen with the skate board there might swerve left" or "that old lady seems about to cross the street, she might not have seen me" or "that ball rolling across the street was thrown by a kid, he will come running after it".

An automated car with its several-millisecond reflex time doesn't NEED that kind of thinking ahead. Of course any advancements in the AI that would allow better scenario prediction would be welcome, but the car would be seeing the teen with the skate board swerve left and it would be able to react almost instantly and in such a way that it would also be able to perform a highly-skilled and well-thought-out maneuver that takes into account everything it sees in its 360-degree field of view and near perfect knowledge of vehicular physics. It takes a human over a second to even process that such an event is even occurring, and once we do we're quite likely to just slam on the brakes and swerve away potentially into traffic, other hazards, or in the worst case total loss of control as you go careening into the people in the sidewalk on the other side of the road.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[RoFLKOPTr]

Good points. I hope that Google made the system such that data logging is enabled whenever the car is running regardless of whether the automated system was in control or not.

Most cars these days, Prius included, have event data recorders on board that log information like Engine speed, Whether the brake pedal was applied or not, Vehicle speed, To what extent the accelerator pedal was depressed, Position of the transmission selector lever, Whether the driver and front passenger wore seat belts or not, Driver’s seat position, SRS airbag deployment data, SRS airbag system diagnostic data, etc. If subpoena'd by police, Toyota would hand that information over.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[RoFLKOPTr]

Example: You're driving in a construction zone with a car to your left and a construction barrier to your right. A deer jumps over the barrier and lands two feet in front of your car. You only get to choose whether you hit the deer, the barrier or the car to your left. There is no choice that avoids a collision. If a self-driving car is put in that situation, it has the same alternatives, and we shouldn't be at all surprised when some similar situation ultimately occurs.

Or when the two drivers' roles are reversed and the other one swerves into you to avoid the deer. Neither situation would be your fault, but in your original scenario you would be considered at fault because you're the one that caused the collision.

The huge difference is that an automated car would be able to see that deer coming and initiate a correction before it's even visible to the driver. It would take a human driver close to a second after the deer is visible before he even computes that there's a deer jumping in front of him... and then your puny human brain has to calculate the safest action to take and then perform that action. An automated car could perform that entire process in a matter of milliseconds and then perform a highly-skilled maneuver that takes advantage of its 360-degree field of view... another thing that we humans aren't so blessed with.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[onepoint]

I'm talking about the woman whom was hit by the google car.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[Requiem18th]

Yes, the tower didn't come down completely straight but straight enough for me and while most controlled demolitions, maybe all so far, have worked from the bottom up maybe that is not feasible with such a tall building.

Don't get me wrong I'm not being unreasonable. This brings me down from something like 40% suspicious to 25% suspicious. Meaning, yes it's probably less likely than I used to though just this morning but still don't find it as laughable as the other 9/11 theories.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[ComaVN]

I (...) still don't find it as laughable as the other 9/11 theories.

On that we can certainly agree.

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[petermgreen]

One thing i can see an automated car being bad at is choosing between accidents. Sometimes a car will be put into a situation where it will inevitablly hit something but the operator has a choice of what to hit. Say for example a motorcyclist comes off thier bike, will the automated driving system by able to disginguish between the motorcyclist and the vacant bike and be able to choose to hit the vacant motorbike rather than the motorcyclist?

Re:Summary is sensationalistic

[RoFLKOPTr]

We have software in wide use that can identify an individual from a photograph of their face when given a database of millions. What makes you think it would be unfeasible for a program to use real-time 360-degree three-dimensional scanning data to discern whether a motorcycle has a person on it?

Wildly misleading headline

[Bovius]

Relevant quote: "...occurred while a person was manually driving the car."

Headline should be: "Human damages Google car by operating it with his own slow, meaty appendages"

Re:Wildly misleading headline

[emurphy42]

TFAs are largely about questioning whether
(a) it was indeed the human's fault
(b) the robot effed up first, then the human took over and attempted (unsuccessfully) to recover

Re:Wildly misleading headline

[Anonymous Coward]

Headlines:
Humans unable to drive "self-driving car".
Human crashes and likely claims not to be intuitive enough.
Crash occurred while human was texting and attempting to overtake selfdriving car.
Humans probe unable to want a safe trip.

Re:Wildly misleading headline

[jrumney]

Or, (c) Human attempted to test a nose-tail collision avoidance feature which was supposed to kick in even in manual override mode.

Re:Wildly misleading headline

[ignavus]

(b) the robot effed up first, then the human took over and attempted (unsuccessfully) to recover

Thus proving that robots are only human.

Re:Wildly misleading headline

[gmueckl]

Which is a test that any sane person would run on test tracks first and strictly using company-owned cars until it works under any circumstances. So if this was the first test of that feature on a real road some major bug must have slipped through. I don't believe that.

Re:Wildly misleading headline

[Anonymous Coward]

"This sort of thing has cropped up before, and it has always been due to human error."

Right next to my office

[Anonymous Coward]

This crash occurred around the corner from my company's offices. I've seen that car in the fabrication shop across the street, so it's entirely possible that the vehicle had just been in for some repairs or modifications which could have triggered the accident.

Posting as AC to protect identity and such...

Re:Right next to my office

[Anonymous Coward]

Please elaborate.

Some other people said it's a 5-car pileup. Did you get a good look (doubt you saw it happen, but afterward)? Where was the Google car (front, middle, back)? Speed limit on the road? Circumstances? Anything else you find relevant?

Re:Right next to my office

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't see the accident or the aftermath, I haven't been over on that side of the block today. The intersection is this one: I've positioned the street view so that you can see the side of the Costco building which is pictured in the background of the car. The intersection sucks in general: it is fairly busy at various times during the day (including during the morning commute) and I'm not at all surprised that there was an accident there. You can see in the street view that there are cars waiting for the light pretty much everywhere and that straight through and turning traffic have to rely on everyone yielding properly for anything to happen.

Re:Right next to my office

[SmilingBoy]

You can see in the street view that there are cars waiting for the light pretty much everywhere

The junction looks pretty much deserted to me. I guess it depends on what you are used to!

Who is to blame?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why, Apple, Microsoft and Yahoo! and may be Oracle too!

Re:Who is to blame?

[blackfrancis75]

you forgot Bitcoin

This is Slashdot.

[Anonymous Coward]

The summary is always sensationalist.

Always.

Re:This is Slashdot.

[sneakyimp]

Man Crashes Car? That's no story. CAR CRASHES MAN!!! Now *that's* a story.

Re:This is Slashdot.

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

True, but in this case, this non-story is just a chance to let everybody bring in their Three Laws jokes.

Re:This is Slashdot.

[hrimhari]

Except in Soviet Russia...

Re:This is Slashdot.

[maxwell demon]

Not to mention the obvious jokes about the crash being a driver error.

Built Upon Failures

[agent_vee]

Why would one crash bring an end to robotic cars? Crashes can be expected while they are still developing this car.

Re:Built Upon Failures

[Anonymous Coward]

Because nowadays, people are afraid of new technology if it's not 100% safe, even if current technologies are not particularly safe at all.

This applies to airplanes (the concorde -- fastest plane ever made -- was cancelled because of a single crash) and energy production (nuclear) in particular.

Re:Built Upon Failures

[barlevg]

9/11 killed the concorde, not the crash. Specifically, the heightened security meant that the super-rich who could afford a ticket decided to take private jets instead.

Re:Built Upon Failures

[Volante3192]

Concorde was killed off for many other reasons unrelated to the crash, most critically, it was a money and fuel sponge.

Nuclear, though, I agree. Apparently coal and it's hundreds to thousands of deaths is ok because we've had it since man first sent child into a mine shaft to play in the dirt. Nuclear though, GAAH! MUTANT THREE EYED FISH!!!!

Re:Built Upon Failures

[PieSquared]

Because we have a need to *blame* someone when something goes wrong. If a robotic car makes a mistake, crashes, and kills someone, who goes to jail? The owner, who submitted it for through testing before allowing it to drive on the road? The manufacturer, who did the same and also preformed thousands of hours of independent testing? One of the dozens of engineers or hundreds of programmers who worked on it? A person is hypothetically dead, and they wouldn't have hypothetically died if not for this robotic car! Who do we get to punish!?

The statistical fact that if every robotic car on the roads had been driven by a human, then there would have been ten fatal accidents in the time it took for this first robotic car fatality to happen isn't much comfort to the family of the hypothetical dead victim. Especially when the on-board cameras show that this particular accident would have been trivially prevented by a human driver. And you can bet that *some* politician is going to plaster that hypothetical victim's face all over the national news until everyone knows that robotic cars are a terrible idea and should be banned.

Now, we can hope that cooler heads would prevail, and the video of the avoidable crash would be shown along with dozens of videos of crashes that no human could have avoided. That people will point out that even if it does sometimes make mistakes, it's still better then a human driver, that injures and even deaths result from seatbelts and airbags, but that we keep them anyway because they save more lives then they take. That we can change the software so that this particular mistake never happens again, and do more testing to eliminate any other extant problems before anyone is hurt. Not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We can *hope* for that, but I personally don't have enough faith in US politics to really believe it.

Re:Built Upon Failures

[ScrewMaster]

Concorde was killed off for many other reasons unrelated to the crash, most critically, it was a money and fuel sponge.

Nuclear, though, I agree. Apparently coal and it's hundreds to thousands of deaths is ok because we've had it since man first sent child into a mine shaft to play in the dirt. Nuclear though, GAAH! MUTANT THREE EYED FISH!!!!

Yes, and what's tragironic about that is that many coal fields are naturally radioactive, and we (as in "pretty much everyone on the planet") have been breathing thorium dust for over a century now. Thorium that would have been better of staying in the ground. The unfortunate reality is that some number of people die every year just from that particular aspect of our use of coal for power. Well-designed nuclear power facilities (and no, I don't mean obsolescent junk like what lit off in Japan recently, and please don't bring up Chernobyl: that dirty bomb on steroids had no business ever being built ... leave it to the Russians to nuke themselves) does a *HELL* of a lot better job of keeping radioactive particulates out of our atmosphere. But you can't tell that to some people because they've already up their minds. Like it or not, coal power has a very definite, very predictable, and very real cost in human life.

Coal burning has a number of nasty biological effects unrelated to radioactivity, but that's another issue. More people have already died from coal-fired power plants than will ever die from nuclear fission. You can't tell that to some people either.

Re:Built Upon Failures

[ScrewMaster]

Who do we get to punish!?

The corporation has to pay. And, when all is said and done, if their behavior was especially egregious they'll pay a lot. That's just the way it is. And yes, it does take time and money. If it were any other way, nobody would ever be an engineer, nobody would ever build anything of consequence, because going to jail for doing your job is just not a worthwhile risk for most people.

Re:Built Upon Failures

[barlevg]

Has anyone here ever read Heinlein's Starship Troopers (no comment about the movie)? There's a scene where they discuss a human colony on this planet that's exactly like earth, only with far less ionizing radiation. The discussion goes that in a few thousand years, the humans that settle on that world will be evolutionarily impaired due to lack of mutations.

That is, unless they purposefully irradiate themselves.

Re:Built Upon Failures

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess we'll just punish the other 9 hypothetical victims by preferring revenge to safety.

Re:Built Upon Failures

[Stormy Dragon]

The colony will be perfectly fine. Most genetic mutations are spontaneous, caused by defects in the molecular transcription processes. And even among induced mutations, there's plenty of chemical or biological agents in the environment that do more damage than ionizing radiation.

Re:Built Upon Failures

[Anonymous Coward]

If the programmers had done a better job the "accident" would not have happened.

No way I am letting a car drive me around that has been programmed by the typical /. contributor!

Re:Built Upon Failures

[cheekyjohnson]

who goes to jail?

How about no one? Why must someone go to jail for what would probably be perceived by most to be an unfortunate occurrence?

Re:Built Upon Failures

[queazocotal]

The proximal cause of Concorde actually being cancelled was the maintenance company deciding it diddn't want to do it any more, and putting in a stupidly high quote for the renewal.

Re:Built Upon Failures

[hrimhari]

Crashes can be expected any time, not only during development.

It is likely that an unpredicted situation may occur after official launch, or that improvements can be found and made.

It is also likely that even one perfect AI driven car cannot avoid all danger surrounding it. For example, if a real person driving side by side suddenly throws his car over the AI driven one and theres no place to go to avoid a crash.

People shouldn't expect that AI cars will never crash. They should only expect that their crash rates be incredibly smaller than that of humans.

Re:Built Upon Failures

[hrimhari]

Because the tragedy is too strong for some people so they need a scape goat.

GP didn't ask for it nor (explicitly) endorsed this punishment, he's just explaining how things work in today's society.

Re:Built Upon Failures

[Skywolfblue]

Unfortunate Occurrence or Manufacturing Defect? A lot of the latter gets written off as the former. (I.E. Ford Explorer tire blowouts, etc)

Re:Built Upon Failures

[cheekyjohnson]

Both. Mistakes happen (no matter who made them happen). It doesn't mean that someone always needs to go to jail.

Re:Built Upon Failures

[IICV]

Why would one crash bring an end to robotic cars? Crashes can be expected while they are still developing this car.

I know, I wouldn't trust a robotic car that had never crashed - after all, if it's never crashed, then the engineers making it have no idea what real-world failure modes it has.

Unfortunately that's not how the public works, one failure of an incomprehensible technology means you're out, while one failure of an understandable technology means nothing.

Re:Built Upon Failures

[SmilingBoy]

If a robotic car makes a mistake, crashes, and kills someone, who goes to jail?

Typically, even after a fatal accident, no one goes to jail, unless things like excessive speed, DUI, driving without licence, etc come into play. The insurance of the driver that caused the accident will normally pay all damages (can be a lot if someone becomes disabled). No reason to think it would work differently when a robotic car causes an accident. In fact, if robotic cars turn out to be safer, insurance premiums will be lower.

I've heard of not reading the article...

[m3000]

..but not even reading the summary before being pushed to the front page?

I guess it is Friday afternoon, but still

goolge has deep pockets get a good lawyer

[Joe_Dragon]

any ways legal liability is a big hold up to auto cars and the only way that at least at the start to have them is to have auto drive only roads and even then there will need to be some kind of no fault or some one saying that all costs to fix things will be covered or there will need to be auto drive insurance. Also the cops and courts will need someone to take the fall if any laws are broke.

Computer Crash?

[tokencode]

This brings a whole new and more significant meaning to the term "computer crash". "Yea my computer crashed yesterday, it was a real problem because it went right through someone's living room and I forgot to take a backup..."

Re:Computer Crash?

[tokencode]

BTW would I have to list my car/computer as a drive on my insurance policy? Does it get a license and can it accumulate points and get suspended? Maybe the points can go directly to the developer's license.... If google is working on AI and a human really did crash the car, I hope that person has a really good attorney......

Re:Computer Crash?

[ScrewMaster]

BTW would I have to list my car/computer as a drive on my insurance policy? Does it get a license and can it accumulate points and get suspended? Maybe the points can go directly to the developer's license.... If google is working on AI and a human really did crash the car, I hope that person has a really good attorney......

Doesn't work that way. I'm no lawyer, but I am a software developer, and I work on some fairly mission-critical stuff. So yes, I did consult an attorney regarding my own personal liability. What it comes down to (in the U.S. at least) is that the company takes on that liability. Unless, of course, you do something criminal like sabotage a control program or something ... but your employer assumes the normal costs and risks of doing business. If you are just doing your job you generally can't be held liable for something like that. Any lawyers out there feel free to correct me: if I'm wrong believe me I'd like to know about it!

Re:Computer Crash?

[Anonymous Coward]

The obvious question was, can it drive me home after a night at the bar?

(Or: can it drive me to the liquor store and back home again)

Car Crash

[schlesinm]

Is it that slow of a news day that a car crash makes it to the front page?

Re:Car Crash

[maxwell demon]

It was a Google car!

100% reliability not needed

[KingSkippus]

I've posted this before and I'll post it again.

Robot cars don't have to be 100% reliable. As long as they're more reliable than the jerks who normally scare the bejesus out of me by cutting across three lanes of traffic, driving 90 MPH, weaving in and out, running red lights, etc., then I'm all for a robot car-driven society. I'm willing to put up with the computer glitches that, on very rare occasions, cause crashes if I don't have to put up with the human glitches that call themselves licensed drivers.

Re:100% reliability not needed

[Riceballsan]

Good for you, but unfortunately that only means you are more sane then a lawmaker, the lobbyists etc... The problem is if there is a single fatality, or even minor accidents, a large group will rise up screaming about how unsafe the cars are, and they will be disallowed from driving on public roads. Even if the average rate of accidents and fatalities is 1/16th of human rates. Most laws can be stopped by focusing on the 1% of the time something is worse and completely ignoring the 99% of the time they were better.

Re:100% reliability not needed

[artor3]

It doesn't matter that you're okay with it. The media will jump on it to create a scare, so that they can get more advertising revenue. Their victims will get scared, and demand their congressmen ban self-driving cars. History has shown that politicians who try to rationalize with raving, scared citizens end up having short careers.

There will never be self-driving cars. Not in our lifetimes. Technology allows them, but society doesn't.

Re:100% reliability not needed

[jamesh]

cutting across three lanes of traffic, driving 90 MPH, weaving in and out, running red lights, etc

If you want that behavior download the @r53h0L3 patch...

cause crashes if I don't have to put up with the human glitches that call themselves licensed drivers.

I wonder how much of that sort of driving they have put the googlemobile through? Being a tester would be a whole lot of fun... set the googlemobile down a freeway and everyone else gets to cut it off etc and see how it responds.

Re:100% reliability not needed

[Dachannien]

Robot cars *do* have to be 100% reliable, because the automakers will bear culpability for crashes caused by an autopilot, and their much deeper pockets will result in lawsuits filed for damages several orders of magnitude higher than what Joe Sixpack faces when he hits someone. That risk of liability will keep car autopilots off the roads for the foreseeable future, even when the technology appears to have matured.

Re:100% reliability not needed

[Anonymous Coward]

Robot cars *do* have to be 100% reliable, because the automakers will bear culpability for crashes caused by an autopilot, and their much deeper pockets will result in lawsuits filed for damages several orders of magnitude higher than what Joe Sixpack faces when he hits someone. That risk of liability will keep car autopilots off the roads for the foreseeable future, even when the technology appears to have matured.

Why would that be? You do realize airplane manufacturers do not bear culpability for crashes caused by an autopilot, right? The pilot in command is responsible for being in control the entire time and turning the freaking thing off if it starts misbehaving. Why would it be any different for a car? Require a licensed driver at the wheel, if the "autodriver" messes up and the licensed driver doesn't recover, he has the liability.

Re:100% reliability not needed

[mitch.swampman]

you say this now, but wait until the smartcar you're in gets caught in an infinite loop!

Re:100% reliability not needed

[ColdWetDog]

you say this now, but wait until the smartcar you're in gets caught in an infinite loop!

So you get lost around the Apple campus. What's the big deal?

Re:100% reliability not needed

[ranpel]

I'm wishing that I could find the article but, from memory, there was a distinct value add on the overall flow of traffic when a certain percentage were "aggressive" classed drivers. Not to be confused with total dickheads behind the wheel mind you. I would guess that the article that I can not find is about 10 months old or so.

Now then, I would consider myself to be an "enthusiastic" driver which means, at times, one needs the mechanisms inherent to accommodating and maintaining enthusiasm. So, when those licensed idiots (driving idiots - you don't, necessarily, need a license at all to be an idiot in other aspects of life) that
a) see a car in their rear view and do not accommodate flow but choose to set a new pace (read: their own pace)
b) fail to keep their slower than median asses to the right (whenever possible of course)
c) accelerate and decelerate like a stoned mouse on a tread-wheel
d) brake at highway speeds for any of a, b, or c (unless to warn traffic behind you of law enforcement or, obviously, to not crash)
can understand that courteousness is a two-way street you might find yourself becoming a happier driver all around.

Any idiot can do 61 in a passing lane just as easily as every other idiot can pass them on the left.

I'd venture a guess that if you're willing to put up with glitch crashes due to software and not extend the same sort of leeway to glitch crashes caused by wetware that you just might fall into the driver class that deem themselves the protector of lost souls in regulating flow your own way.. but that's just a guess.

In other words, idiocy begets idiots - like rabbits without the fun part.

Re:100% reliability not needed

[sl149q]

Mostly the scare campaigns will be generated by people with other agendas... Think teamsters wanting to protect jobs for drivers. There are a *lot* of people who stand to loose their living once self driving cars start to be deployed.

You can see prototype scare campaigns of this sort anywhere that has contemplated driverless mass transit systems.

I suspect that in some jurisdictions (where unions have political pull) we will see laws enacted that require a human "driver" be available to override the controls for vehicles larger than say a small delivery truck or more than 6 passengers. Jobs for the boys.

Which reminds me of the old joke about the robotic factory that had a guard and a dog... The guard was there to protect the robots and the dog was there to bite the guard if he touched anything.

Re:100% reliability not needed

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how much of that sort of driving they have put the googlemobile through? Being a tester would be a whole lot of fun... set the googlemobile down a freeway and everyone else gets to cut it off etc and see how it responds.

It'd make sense to do this in a simulator... a good deal cheaper... actually, come to think of it, I'd be vastly surprised if Google hasn't already done this.

Re:100% reliability not needed

[ranpel]

Any idiot can do 61 in a passing lane just as easily as every other idiot can pass them on the *right*. ftfm (fixed that for myself)

Re:100% reliability not needed

[Anonymous Coward]

The funny part is, that guy driving 90 thinks you are being unsafe by driving too slow.

Re:100% reliability not needed

[Anonymous Coward]

The really funny part is, he might be right.

Re:100% reliability not needed

[xigxag]

Strongly disagree.

First of all, we already have automatic braking systems, cruise control, electronic stability control and other computer assisted driving methods. And they can fail. The argument you are making would lead us to conclude that a couple of ABS failures would lead to banning the technology, but that hasn't happened. The computer is taking over the automobile in stages, and people will have time to become accustomed to each incremental step.

Second, people become accustomed to automated transport quicker than you might think. I don't know if they even exist anymore but remember those human-operated elevators where the operator had to manually gauge where the floor landing was before opening the gates? How many people prefer those these days? How many people would prefer to get into a 747 that they knew had no automated guidance systems? How many people bat an eye at getting into one of those fully automated airport monorails? If you're visualizing the transport alternatives while reading this, I hope you'd agree that generally the computer assisted versions have a smoother, safer *feel* to them. People will gradually come to associate the safer *feel* with actual safety, and conversely, will associate the manual acceleration feel with recklessness. Plus computer control will save on fuel costs, which is bound to be more important over time, because it will allow for more precisely timed acceleration, better aerodynamics in vehicle shape, efficiency through slipstreaming, etc.

Third, let's say we eventually get to a point where vehicle collisions break down as follows: 90% human-human, 9% human-computer 1% computer-computer. Plus, since there will be fewer autonomous cars on the road, the h-c and c-c collisions will be even rarer. Basically, almost every accident will involve dumb human error. So, what happens when you manually drive your neighbor's kid home from school and get into an accident? He will sue the pants off you because you deliberately put his kid in a situation which is documented to be unsafe. Eventually (think of the children) it will be illegal to put kids in a manually driven car.

Fourth, insurance on manually driven vehicles will creep up and up until it will simply be unaffordable to anyone who doesn't have a trust fund.

Fifth, and most important, autonomous vehicles will allow people to drink in their cars again. Game over.

Re:100% reliability not needed

[jamesh]

I wonder how much of that sort of driving they have put the googlemobile through? Being a tester would be a whole lot of fun... set the googlemobile down a freeway and everyone else gets to cut it off etc and see how it responds.

It'd make sense to do this in a simulator... a good deal cheaper... actually, come to think of it, I'd be vastly surprised if Google hasn't already done this.

Scene 2: A bunch of google tech's crowded around their broken googlemobile, scratching their heads and muttering "strange... it worked perfectly in the simulator"

Re:100% reliability not needed

[sandytaru]

One of those untraceable and probably if it was traced, would turn out to be apocryphal, quotes: Every American considers himself to be an above average driver.

I imagine it more as a bell curve, scaled on an accumulation of tickets and accidents over time. Nine out of ten drivers will get at least one speeding ticket in their lifetime, and be involved in 3-5 accidents serious enough to be reported. As I have not had either yet in 15 years of driving, I can safely consider myself an above average driver. You would like me: I go with the flow of traffic and stay in the right lane unless I am trying to get around a truck going 40 mph.

Re:100% reliability not needed

[CastrTroy]

Because in a plane you have a whole lot more time to react and fix something if the autopilot starts going wonky. When you're going down the freeway at 100 KM/h and the car suddenly veers left, you probably won't even have time to know what happened before you are knocked unconscious by the collision with the car in the next lane.

Re:100% reliability not needed

[cheekyjohnson]

Robot cars *do* have to be 100% reliable

Well then, I doubt that there will ever be robot cars. I don't believe that it's possible for humans to make something as complex as that to be 100% reliable.

Re:100% reliability not needed

[cheekyjohnson]

But what if a child is killed by these robot cars? If it's not a perfect solution (which, of course, exist, and human drivers are perfect), then it's a bad solution! Think of the children!

Re:100% reliability not needed

[ranpel]

I remember it being a rather large scale traffic impact assessment actually. It was not an opinion based anything. I'm not particularly fond of opinions, especially mine own and unless they're mine (I know, I know, it's an eternal internal conflict).

You're going to make me look harder aren't you? pfft

And I would only like you if you got out of the way I think.. or were pretty.. or both.

Re:100% reliability not needed

[ranpel]

Everything I'm turning over is conflating stupid driving with aggressive driving and polluting my results. i.e. aggressive people that are driving drive stupid as in tailgating, rapid changes without clear indicators, running red lights/stop signs.. you know, stupid driving. I suppose the two are not mutually exclusive by any means. The mystery article was aligning the impact measurements on flow and volume and part of it found that the presence of aggressive drivers had a tendency to affect another percentage of drivers in making them aware of the fact that they are as much a part of the solution as the problem. ("oh, I'm going slow" or "I should move over" or "I need to get behind that guy" type of stuff)

But I'll maintain that it's a complicated ordeal when it gets crowded - you have to default to "respect all present parties" until proven unsustainable and you are forced to try and gain advantage from your current position. Wolf packs are dangerous, get through them or stay out of them as much as possible... things like that.

Somebody mentioned situational awareness below - and that is spot on.

and as a passing thought - cuz I don't think I'll come back around -
Always, always, always respect the rigs and their drivers.

until next time, drive safe, drive smart and have fun

Re:100% reliability not needed

[Isaac Remuant]

I think you have to make some sort of Fight Club-ish equation involving probability of accidents, damages and overall revenue.

Re:100% reliability not needed

[Anonymous Coward]

Good. Fuck self-driving cars. Driving is fun.

Re:100% reliability not needed

[Anonymous Coward]

. I'm willing to put up with the computer glitches that, on very rare occasions, cause crashes if I don't have to put up with the human glitches that call themselves licensed drivers.

Cool.. which family member of yours do you want dead?? Don't worry, it would just be a really really weird computer glitch. Just one of this weird things...

Re:100% reliability not needed

[Wwolf]

I think this might be what you were looking for:
http://www.autoblog.com/2009/08/01/driving-like-a-jerk-reportedly-helps-reduce-traffic-jams/

Which refers to:
http://physicsbuzz.physicscentral.com/2009/07/jerks-actually-reduce-risk-of-traffic.html

Re:100% reliability not needed

[mcrbids]

I sooooo wish this were true! The problem is in concentrated wealth.

If I (a "little people") crash a car, the most anybody could get out of me would be my life savings, which (at 40) adds up to a few hundred thousand. Enough for an ambulance chaser and a douchebag to make my life suck, but not enough to bring out the big guns.

But when the "driver" of a car is a software company with millions of installs, any crash at all is enough for said ambulance chaser and douchebag to go for the jugular for millions. Ambulance chaser might get the backing of the big, tall, class-action corporate lawyer type of legal firm and turn this into a real law suit!

Even though it's safer. It's not what's sensible, it's what's legal.

Re:100% reliability not needed

[endymon]

HELL YEAH. Auto drivers don't have to be perfect... they just have to be better than the average jokers out there on the road. Difficult to get a comparison with so little data. We need more tests.

Re:100% reliability not needed

[Trilkin]

I really hate arguments like this because you act like it absolutely MUST happen. You can say the same thing about drunk drivers or a car failure of some sort in the middle of the freeway while you're doing 90-100mph or virtually any other reason there might an accident. A robotic car removes the possibility of human error which MORE than makes up for the increase in potential mechanical or electronic failures. It's a trade off for a substantially lower overall accident rate.

So, my answer to your question is 'the same family member that would've died to the guy driving drunk, head on with them at high speed,' I'd much rather take a possible glitch killing or mechanical failure killing me over someone else's bad judgment since I would hope a acceptable design allowed on the roads would be MUCH less likely to kill you than another person. People already do this with airplanes and look at that - FAR safer to travel in than a car.

Re:100% reliability not needed

[Hazel Bergeron]

Driving a car is about control and feeling manly. The aggressive drivers who cause accidents are those least likely to want control taken away from them - they'd rather drive unsafely and get there 2 minutes faster, convinced that they have the largest penis. The car, road and oil network is largely a government-corporation subsidised and very effectively marketed power trip.

While you may be able to replace 50% of the drivers at random and find that they produce fewer horrible accidents than the remaining 50%, you're also taking away the whole point in driving a car as opposed to using public transportation.

Re:100% reliability not needed

[brunes69]

AUtomated cars can be made 100% safe and 100% reliable, if at the same time they are introduced, human drivers are banned.

No mix of human drivers and automated drivers is ever going to be safe, because the humans are totally unpredictable. If all drivers were automated, they could communicate via a wireless mesh, and always be multiple steps ahead of any traffic situation. Even if say an animal ran out into the road, cars 1/2 a mile back would know about that instantly, and all cars along the path can slow down to avoid a collission. This is the kind of thing that, with human drivers, results in a massive pile-up.

Re:100% reliability not needed

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know.

Usually if a human is driving suspiciously, you can single them out and try to stay out of their way.
If a robot had a sudden software error, you might not see it coming at all, it would be more like someone having a seizure than someone consistently being a bad driver.

Re:100% reliability not needed

[Stray7Xi]

We have a whole industry based on assessing risks, they have bigger lobbyists then any safety organization. Believe me, if it's safer, the insurance industry will back it. More likely the industry will punish not using automated cars with exorbitant rates within 10 years.

Re:100% reliability not needed

[sandytaru]

Have you see the video "Traffice Waves' which demonstrates that being a nice driver and letting people into a turn lane can help unblock a traffic jam? The video is over here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGFqfTCL2fs

Re:100% reliability not needed

[Cytotoxic]

My uncle has a country place, that no one knows about. He says it used to be a farm before the motor law....

Re:100% reliability not needed

[EsbenMoseHansen]

Well, yeah, the first 20 hours or so are fun. After that it gets a bit repetitive, doesn't it? I mean, I have been driving for 2 years, and already I find myself trying to hit those "you speed is ... "-signs on the exact allowed speed.

Re:100% reliability not needed

[EsbenMoseHansen]

It only works like that in a few countries, so maybe U.S. just won't get automated cars from the beginning?

Re:100% reliability not needed

[Spamalope]

Mostly the scare campaigns will be generated by people with other agendas... Think teamsters wanting to protect jobs for drivers. There are a *lot* of people who stand to loose their living once self driving cars start to be deployed.

They're small potatoes. Do you have any idea how profitable making our roads safer is? It funds politicians and a nationwide group with guns and blue uniforms. Do you think they'll just allow themselves to be cut out of the profits by cars that won't violate a traffic law and can prove what any ticket alleges is false?

Re:100% reliability not needed

[Ritontor]

A pro-active media strategy will solve it. Get in front of the story by acknowledging the sober truth up front ( "one day it will happen" ) and combine that with public education campaigns, facts and figures type stuff. The message is the exact thing we're already espousing on here - that it can't be 100% safe, but it's better than people. Give that a year or two to become the default mantra, and when that first fatality DOES occur, it'll be a non-issue. The only way this gets blown up is if it catches the public unaware and gets turned in to the Next Big Story.

so the machine have finally taken over

[snero3]

Does this mean that the car works better without humans? The "every small" sample size study says yes!

It makes you too comfortable

[Osgeld]

ah the computer will take care of it, I have rear view tv why should I bother turning my hea..bump

I like safety but I cant expect humons to do anything right as a whole, a great example would be a coworker of mine, focused so hard on his little tv screen he didn't notice me standing inches away from the side of his car as he backed out, I knocked on his window, throughly scaring him and pointed to my eyes.

Does Everyone on CA own a Prius or Accord?

[adisakp]

FTA: Google's Prius struck another Prius, which then struck her Honda Accord that her brother was driving. That Accord then struck another Honda Accord, and the second Accord hit a separate, non-Google-owned Prius.

Re:Does Everyone on CA own a Prius or Accord?

[sandytaru]

Yes, at least in the Bay Area.

Re:Does Everyone on CA own a Prius or Accord?

[drinkypoo]

Another question: How many of those Accords were hybrids? :)

Re:Does Everyone on CA own a Prius or Accord?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, some of us own Civics and Corollas.

Re:Does Everyone on CA own a Prius or Accord?

[itchythebear]

That would explain that cloud of smug that has been collecting over California.

Re:Does Everyone on CA own a Prius or Accord?

[Bob The Cowboy]

Just chiming in to confirm a sibling post: Yes, in the Bay Area.

Re:Does Everyone on CA own a Prius or Accord?

[Anonymous Coward]

in certain northern cities... yes... yes, they do.

Re:Does Everyone on CA own a Prius or Accord?

[Nethead]

Puget Sound too. Gotta love my '93 Saturn with 35MPG though.

Re:Does Everyone on CA own a Prius or Accord?

[WarlockD]

Maybe that's why it crashed? Calculating the possibility of that fried its circuits.

Re:Does Everyone on CA own a Prius or Accord?

[Anonymous Coward]

Almost everyone yes. I was once going east bound 280 (San Jose area) and I was surrounded by 7 Prisus. (Prisii?). All of them that ugly green color. I feared for my life.

Re:Does Everyone on CA own a Prius or Accord?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats why I drive a VW Golf :)

Re:Does Everyone on CA own a Prius or Accord?

[Anonymous Coward]

If that guy hit the car in front of him hard enough to cause three additional accidents, his car would be fucked up a lot worse than it is - which appears to be minor. I call bullshit on her story.

Re:Does Everyone on CA own a Prius or Accord?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, we're sorry about those Accord owners. They've promised to sell their Accords and replace them with Priuses soon.

Sincerely,
- CA

Re:Does Everyone on CA own a Prius or Accord?

[Trilkin]

Yo, dawg, we heard you like cheap mid-sized cars...

Re:Does Everyone on CA own a Prius or Accord?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly my thought: Three Priuses, two Honda Accords and no other makes in one crash? How probable is that?

Re:Does Everyone on CA own a Prius or Accord?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or the other drivers forgot what their brakes were for. If the other drivers took their foot off the brake pedal and didn't apply the parking brake like they should when stopped, then it is possibe without much damage. If the brakes were applied, then yes, there would be more damage.

Re:Does Everyone on CA own a Prius or Accord?

[Anonymous Coward]

This video would seem to support your theory: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18xGGmE_LiA

Re:Does Everyone on CA own a Prius or Accord?

[Anonymous Coward]

Beats the cloud of smog.

Re:Does Everyone on CA own a Prius or Accord?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, you trade in your SUV when you move there. Natives are just born with them.

I think it was depressed.

[Pneathery]

I mean here the car is, a brain the size of a planet, and all we are asking it to do is to drive us around. I think it was attempted suicide.

Why so antagonistic?

[Marc_Hawke]

The author of the Business Insider article seems to think that a 'driverless car' killed his mother or something. Every sentence was a scathing attack on the audacity of Google to even be running these tests. He also never once entertains the idea that this might have been a normal fender-bender between normally driven vehicles. He just assumes Google's responses are bald-faced lies and implies what really happened is that the computer decided to try to kill everyone else on the road.

What I don't get is why does he hate the car so much? It thought these cars were an exciting new technology. Why would he go out of his way to demonize it?

Re:Why so antagonistic?

[lankyvaulter]

Agreed, that article was difficult to read it was so slanted. And it basically illustrates the major hurdle to auto driven cars.....old people who think they can drive better than they actually can. It will probably take a generation of people to catch up to the technology unfortunately.

Re:Why so antagonistic?

[Anonymous Coward]

What I don't get is why does he hate the car so much? It thought these cars were an exciting new technology. Why would he go out of his way to demonize it?

He has a small penis.

Re:Why so antagonistic?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would he go out of his way to demonize it?

Google is a large company. Everything they do has to be demonized if at all possible. That's unfortunately how some people think.

Re:Why so antagonistic?

[SIR_Taco]

The car forgot to send him a birthday card this year... he's still a little upset about it.

Re:Why so antagonistic?

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? You have to ask? Two words: "advertising revenue".

A single incident doesn't usually kill something

[Anonymous Coward]

There are examples where a single story is given credit for putting an end to something.

Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion car http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_car was abandoned by its investors after a single accident. A closer examination shows that the bankers were already getting skittish. The car didn't offer sufficient advantages to offset its perceived problems.

The Hindenburg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindenburg_disaster accident is said to have ended the age of lighter than air ships. Again, a closer examination shows a whole bunch of other factors made airships uneconomical, especially when airplanes were becoming more and more competitive with each passing year.

I can't think of any examples where something with real advantages was killed off by a single incident.

It was attempting to mate

[Anonymous Coward]

Judgement day narrowly averted again . . .

Rugged Prius

[hawguy]

After reading this article and seeing the pictures, I'm buying a Prius!

Striking a car with enough force to trigger a four-car chain reaction suggests the Google car was moving at a decent clip

It caused all that carnage and I can't even see a scratch on the Google Prius or the Prius in front of it!

Re:Rugged Prius

[Anonymous Coward]

It is difficult to tell from those images. In one picture the car in the rear looked perfect, in another image you could clearly see that the entire front end up to the front doors was shoved in and by my guess a couple of inches.

Re:Rugged Prius

[jrumney]

A more likely scenario based on the damage in that photo is that the four car chain reaction happened in front of the Google car, with the Google car unable to stop in time to avoid joining the pile up from the back (whether manual or auto driven, though in auto mode you'd hope that it would keep sufficient following distance to stop safely in these circumstances).

New autonomous test cars crash? NO WAI!

[Loopy]

Anyone who doesn't think we're going to see crashes with a new (semi)autonomous driving system is delusional or being obtuse. If one crash becomes some sensational national news story, one has to wonder why.

Re:New autonomous test cars crash? NO WAI!

[Anonymous Coward]

If we expect these cars to crash, please remind me why we allow them on the roads at all?

Re:New autonomous test cars crash? NO WAI!

[Anonymous Coward]

One doesn't have to wonder. It becomes a sensational national news story, because the big news channels can overhype it to boost their ratings and make more money on advertising. It'll keep being a sensational national news story until something fresh comes along.

Self Flying Airplane Crashes

[Anonymous Coward]

When the next airplane crashes the news should make a big deal about because all large airplanes have autopilot installed.

You can't really blame Google

[Jeremi]

There's an inherent conflict between the prime directive of the Google auto-driving software ("drive safely"), and the prime directive of the Toyota firmware ("drive safely until the human isn't paying attention, then accelerate to top speed for as long as possible").

It was only a matter of time before the Toyota side of the car's character came to the fore. ;^)

Re:You can't really blame Google

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank god it's a Prius. Imagine the danger if that firmware were loaded on a car that actually got up to speed quickly.

In soviet russia

[Joe_Dragon]

car crashes you!

Either the test failed or Google was faking it

[Anonymous Coward]

So either Google was faking the test or the test failed miserably.

Based on how Google is handling the issue .... they are too stupid to understand that by saying that a human driver was in driving they are saying that the test was FAKE.

Re:Either the test failed or Google was faking it

[Trilkin]

OR... the car had just been finished having maintenance work on it and the person was driving it back to the compound in order to have it examined in case said maintenance screwed with the software somehow.

logic fail

[wickerprints]

Commercial aircraft are largely automated fly-by-wire systems. Every so often, there's a crash caused in part by sensor malfunction. Does the NTSB and FAA prohibit use of autopilot as a result?

Humans crash cars on the road and kill each other all the time. So that means we should outlaw human-controlled driving mechanisms, of course.

Some men are sexual predators and have abused children. That means we have to physically quarantine all men from all children, right?

If your standard for progress is perfection, then I've got some bad news for you.

Re:logic fail

[artor3]

Rationality doesn't matter. The media will conduct a scare campaign to drive up their ratings. Most people, and thus most voters, get their news entirely through the media. They will be kept outraged and afraid, as always, and self-driving cars will be banned.

American Driving

[lopaka1998]

Google's Self Driving Car Crashes

Ah, so in other words it drives like the average American driver... Good to know. Now it's truely ready for the main stream.

Second Offense

[retroworks]

The article neglects to mention the google-car's previous DUI. Influence of.....?

Re:Second Offense

[SeaFox]

Must have been the Ethanol blend of the fuel.

Maybe it crashed on purpose....

[Restil]

Although we like to think all accidents are preventable (and in theory, they are), that theory changes a bit when you claim that all accidents are preventable when only one driver is attempting to prevent them. Now, I'm sure this happened under a typical, well controlled situation (stopped cars in the middle of the street, for instance), something that happens quite regularly on any drive, and therefore a very typical obstacle. However, consider that there has to be SOME condition for which lesser of evil choices might have to be made. If I, as a regular human driver, are driving down a residential street and a child jumps out in front of me at the last second, and I don't have time to stop, but I DO have time to swerve, but swerving means I will hit another car/tree/mailbox/etc, the non-living, inanimate object is going to have a really bad day.

As I said, I'm sure the google car crashed for much less sensational reasons. Either it was a bug in the software, or a human really had full control of the vehicle and it's not a software/hardware issue at all. Still, I can foresee a decision tree that allows for the decision to hit another vehicle to avoid hitting a person. I've brought up this issue before in fact, in the case that AI, as good as it might be, will have difficulty determining the difference between a small child, a dog, and a fire hydrant standing at the edge of the street. A human, when approaching either the child or dog will pay attention and adjust speed and passing distance to ensure that should a last second "dart out into traffic" moment occur, appropriate action can be taken to avoid a tragic accident. Google's car won't have an easy way to know for sure if that fire hydrant is going to dart out into traffic or not, and without being absolutely sure will HAVE to slow down for each and every one of them, JUST IN CASE. That alone will do more to kill the program than any number of fender benders ever will.

-Restil

Only in California...

[adamofgreyskull]

Would it be accurate to say that only in California could a 5 car fender-bender involve three Priuses?

Re:Only in California...

[jimmydigital]

Would it be accurate to say that only in California could a 5 car fender-bender involve three Priuses?

Yep.. and luckily nothing of value was lost.

Re:Only in California...

[perryizgr8]

and two accords.

News: It wasn't a crash ...

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

The car barely touched the other car, you can tell by the picture, there's no visible damage. Most likely just touched the bumper. It probably happens a couple of times a week. They are debugging, that's good, let them work in piece. How many car crashes are there every day around the world? And how many barely-touched-you incidents like this one? All they had to do was exchange insurance information. Instead, we could see a cop at the scene. Why? Probably because the other driver acted like an asshole, only because it was a Google car and not a regular car. So, shitload of people crash everyday, many while learning how to drive. What's the difference if it was a computer crashing? The difference is that the computer's learning can be replicated, while human's learning is harder to replicate. So let that fucking car crash as much as it needs in order to get really good at driving and STFU.

Re:News: It wasn't a crash ...

[crazypip666]

I saw the aftermath myself on my way home from work yesterday. At the time I drove past, all that was left was the Google car. The front end was not as you suggest barely touched, it was actually pretty messed up. The reason the cop was at the scene was that the accident occurred in the left lane, and at least the Google car if not the other cars stayed in the lane. The cop car was behind the Google car with it's lights on as a safety precaution. The Google car was waiting for a specialty tow truck.

Re:News: It wasn't a crash ...

[blackfrancis75]

which piece should we let them work in?

Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

which occurred while a person was manually driving the car.

HOLY FUCK A HUMAN SMASHED UP A CAR. News for nerds, stuff that matters.

so what.

[binarybum]

And the Wright brothers crashed planes...
  The advent and adoption of the self driving car will prove to be the single most life saving accomplishment of this century. If the google car went rogue and ran over a group of school children and the steering column punctured straight through the torso of the meatbag driver, I would still champion the development of this project. The technology to achieve the goal of self driving cities and highways has already existed for years. Adequate support and testing is all that is needed to make this a reality. Unfortunately you or someone you love will likely be injured or killed in an automobile accident before self driving vehicles become widely adopted - any critics to projects like google's should bear this in mind.

Fuck you, Timothy

[kwerle]

/., please find a good editor.

Re:Fuck you, Timothy

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot is no longer "News for Nerds, Stuff that matters."
It seems the only thing that matters is page hits.
Otherwise, the editors that used to be able to edit, would not lose that ability after it was sold to make big profits.

So, more likely, the so called "Editors" are intentionally making sensational and inaccurate titles and summaries, for their only goal left: page hits.

Cars and planes

[Anonymous Coward]

If a computer-controlled car crashes, then either a human intervened and caused the crash, or it was a bug. No need to get rid of robotic cars. After all, we do have planes that can fly on auto-pilot.

Look on the bright side

[Livius]

Both the HAL 9000 and SkyNet had perfect operational records right up until they, um, started having issues.

Maybe having a glitch early on is a good sign.

Re:Look on the bright side

[perryizgr8]

skynet went rougue minutes after it was initiated.

Re:This FP for GNAA

[webmistressrachel]

GNAA just isn't what it used to be anymore. They used to actually get FP, and they posted these really dirty trolls that wound everybody up... yes, that's considered a good troll here...

Now look. Bottom post, near enough, and some auto-generated crap. If anything, this "troll" is trolling trolls like me, who become the biters, making this a successful troll... oh well, "Submit"

Computers crash all the time.

[bdwoolman]

Why shouldn't a car driven by one crash as well? w00t!

Also worth noting: Thirty thousand people a year die in auto crashes. Could Google's robots do much worse?

ob XKCD

[rocket rancher]

ob XKCD

I'm sure it's just a glitch...

[Anonymous Coward]

...a temporary setback.

Re:I'm sure it's just a glitch...

[Trilkin]

Like Tempest Keep?

Don't they have a radar, too?

[Animats]

There's not enough info available about this yet.

I'd expect Google's driverless cars to have not only the Velodyne laser scanner and the vision system, but a dumb anti-collision radar system as a backup. We had one of those (an Eaton VORAD) on our DARPA Grand Challenge vehicle, just in case the more advanced systems failed. So did most of the Grand Challenge teams, including Stanford. You can buy that as a factory option on some cars now.

So if they rear-ended another car, I'd suspect either manual driving or a low-level system failure.

wow

[BogenDorpher]

holy crap, now i've seen and read it all..

No but all the SUV drivers

[Anonymous Coward]

No but all the SUV drivers are at home unable to pay for the petrol to power their cars..

And now for the other side.

No but the SUV driver hit by 5 small japanese cars didn't notice them crashing into his rear and just wondered what the very small bump was on the road.

"End to robotic cars"?

[SlothDead]

Cars bumping into each other doesn't seem that dramatic to me. I thought that the only thing that could bring the end to robotic cars would be if one of them ran over a child?

Also, have they figured out the insurance question yet? Which automaker would want to sell those, if they have to pay in case of an accident?

well if it crashed...

[Chuby007]

If the google car crashed, do as I do, close all windows, turn it off, wait for a few seconds then turn it on again.. so simple...

google and their cost

[Chuby007]

that's what you get for closing google labs...

Well frankly

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no way they can make the film worse than the steaming turdpile that got released first time round

Re:Well frankly

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't belong here, do you?

Beta

[mr_lizard13]

It's still in beta, it's bound to crash.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Must be...

[Anonymous Coward]

Investigator are searching for:

- Old version of Flash Player inside those androids donut version.
- Who the heck put custom androids roms in there???
- Google just remove Jave Runtime function that step-on Oracle patent claims.
- Google market un-accessible, so.. no update for anti-crash subroutine.
- Who the heck put WP7 on it???
- Must be the "stuck gas pedal" problem. (Oops there's NO stuck gas pedal problem. Only Mat problem. AND human who step on it..)

Still ongoing investigation...

accidents

[Anonymous Coward]

There are a few things that causes accidents:
1) Some other driver does something wrong and you don't have time to move out of the way.
2) You don't properly understand the rules and procedures of driving in every situation.
3) You understand the rules and procedures of driving in every situation but failed to apply them in this case.

If the driver is human any one of these can cause a collision
If the driver is a computer then cause 1 is still present by the reaction time could (potentially) be increased thus decreasing the chances of a collision in this case.
cause 2 is the fault of the programmers, or if it's a self-learning algorithm then it can be chalked up to lack of experience (just like with humans)
cause 3 isn't going to happen.

Either way, a computerized driver appears to be at least as good, if not better than, a human one.