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Google's Self-Driving Cars: 300,000 Miles Logged, Not a Single Accident
An anonymous reader writes "The automated cars are slowly building a driving record that's better than that of your average American. From the article: 'Ever since Google began designing its self-driving cars, they've wanted to build cars that go beyond the capabilities of human-piloted vehicles, cars that are much, much safer. When Sebastian Thrun announced the project in 2010, he wrote, "According to the World Health Organization, more than 1.2 million lives are lost every year in road traffic accidents. We believe our technology has the potential to cut that number, perhaps by as much as half."
New data indicate that Google's on the right path. Earlier this week the company announced that the self-driving cars have now logged some 300,000 miles and "there hasn't been a single accident under computer control." (The New York Times did note in a 2010 article that a self-driving car was rear-ended while stopped at a traffic light, so Google must not be counting the incidents that were the fault of flawed humans.)'"
The GoogleMobile was behaving properly, and was stopped. It had no possible way to evade the puny human that hit it.
However, after the accident, the GoogleMobile was heard asking another car, "Hey, hot mama, wanna kill all humans?"
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
It's hard to imagine being found at-fault when you are stopped and rear-ended.
There's no shame in being involved in an accident if it's not your fault.
We trust others all around us every day to avoid smashing into us. Even the best drivers get hit.
I want to know about interference between cars. I've only see one self-driving car tested at a time. If there's hundreds within visual range of each other are their radar and laser sensors going to have much more noise?
The little experience I have with robots is that laser range finders like to bounce off things and skew readings. How do the cars deal with that?
My understanding is that it cannot read signs, or deal with many types of unusual conditions like detours, nor can deal with a location without maps. Does anyone know about the limits of the Google car?
When they have 300,000 miles in southern California during rush hour with no accidents, then I'll be impressed. How many of those miles were on controlled tracks?
(The New York Times did note in a 2010 article that a self-driving car was rear-ended while stopped at a traffic light, so Google must not be counting the incidents that were the fault of flawed humans.)'"
I think they mean "must not be counting any accidents their cars were involved in."
What happens in the areas where the car can't get good reception? If it's anything like Google's android services, it will intermittently perform the desired functionality while infuriating everyone. Or maybe we can just write that off as the Google Car getting road rage.
Also, being from the snow belt, I'm wondering how safe it is for winter driving -- there are some hard lessons to be learned about driving in your first five winters.
It is indeed an impressive statistic about the number of accidents by the self-driving car of Google. This does prove that their decision making algorithms are good.
However, comparison to humans is probably not fair. Human mind is more prone to giving in to temptation. Exceeding speed limits, violating lane changing rules once in a while to get ahead, talking while driving, texting while driving, getting distracted by the hot chick/dude in the car in the next lane are all errors that humans would routinely make. Some of them would lead to accidents where the erring driver suffers an accident. Some lead to an innocent driver suffering due to the errors of others. It is the latter condition where the Self-Driving car's algorithms appear good --- handling exceptions generated by human drivers, pedestrians and traffic.
So far I've never seen an explanation, but all these situations have occurred to me within the last year:
(1) Construction zone, worker standing with a temporary "slow/stop" sign indicating when cars can proceed on a one-lane section shared between both directions alternately.
(2) Baseball rolls out into street in residential area, followed soon by child who was initially invisible behind a parked minivan. I knew ball might be followed by someone, and slowed way down so this wasn't a problem. At normal speed, it would have been.
(3) Nearly invisible ice around curve, one other car had slid off road. I knew to greatly reduce speed even below normal winter operating conditions.
(4) Two lanes in each direction road. Noticed other car weaving around unpredictably, and later noticed driver occupied with cell phone. I then knew not to drive next to this vehicle even though that would have been fine in other conditions.
How would google's car handle these situations?
The point is following the rules of the road like speed and proper distancing tends to annoy LA drives which can lead to violence, some gun related. Not all driving is text book and different areas have different social rules. In Washington State drivers that are the first to a four way stop will often wait for another driver to go first. This has got to confuse an AI system.
"It can only be attributable to human error."
Self driving cars don't have to follow the normal distancing rules, since they do not have to factor in human reaction time to control the vehicle. An automated car can safely drive *FAR* closer to a vehicle in front of it than would be safe for any human.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The average (human) driver logs about 1,100 miles per month. So google's car has about 23 years of driving, if it were an average person. The odds of being in an accident for the average person each year is 1 in 6,500. Google's car has already been in one car accident.
I'm not impressed with those odds.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
The problems you listed aren't the cars, but the people. Sounds like it's time to replace humans.
The point is following the rules of the road like speed and proper distancing tends to annoy LA drives which can lead to violence, some gun related.
CIWSs don't kill people, pissed-off retaliatory AIs kill people!
As previously stated, there have been several accidents, but Google claims they were someone else's fault, or that a human was REALLY driving.
Politicians set the limits low to get votes from grandma and from people who think the street is a place for young/dumb/autistic/adhd kids to play without supervision. Except for a few corrupt small towns abusing power on a highway that passes through, nobody else expects or desires to have the speed limits enforced as posted.
So... can I set the car to go 9% faster? Can I set it to go the fastest speed that keeps any violation from being a felony? Can I set it to accelerate in a sporty/aggressive fasion? Can I get it passing cars whenever possible?
Suppose I need to go somewhere, and the shortest path goes through a neighborhood where my skin color is unwelcome. Could that be avoided? It'd be best if this didn't require me to specify anything, because I might be unaware of the danger.
The moment even one accident does occur, no matter how mild the consequences or much more unlikely the circumstances compared to a human driver, hordes upon hordes of American luddites will man the lines to do their civic duty to shit upon the idea of cars that drive themselves.
Mind you, this is being said by an American who owns a US made car.
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
lessons that will be programmed in, so no learning curve.
Driving on the snow is simple if you follow simple rules.
Mercedes has a car that can follow other cars automatically, and stop when they do and it works in the snow.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
More than 10% of the 1.2M road traffic accidents in the world per year, occur in India alone: 133,938. Closet rival in that regard - China, with about half that rate. The Top Gear India special last year ... if you saw the part when they are driving on the highways ... you'll see what I mean.
The fatalities per 100K population and per 100K vehicles is low compared to other countries because the average is skewed by the high population (1.2 billion!) and the vast areas of countryside where traffic density and "382 per sq.km population density" is much lower.
This will change once the cars get cell phones and can send and receive text messages. Later they'll get addicted to dirty electricity. Finally the cars will start to compete among themselves to see which among them can scare the most bios as dramatically as possible - with the inevitable occasional damage to paintwork and perhaps even bodywork.
We have to let our cars skid their way through youth.
I said - don't look Ethel!..., but it was too late..., she'd already looked.
What would reception have to do with anything? If you think the cars are using GPS to stay on the road, that would be *disastrous* due to the ~1m accuracy of non-military GPS (under GOOD conditions) and the fact that roads aren't even mapped to that accuracy. The only thing I can think of that the cars would need GPS for is navigation (the equivalent of a built-in TomTom).
But you forget that 9/11 was an inside job.
I think I just won 10,000 USD.
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
" LA drives which can lead to violence, some gun related. "
I leaned and drove in LA for years. No violence, very little road rage. Do you get all you information from games and over hyped news media.
" In Washington State drivers that are the first to a four way stop will often wait for another driver to go first.".
more evidence that they are the crappiest drivers in the country. Cant stand to drive in the inconsistent driver state. They drive like the automobile is some new invention.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
There will be an accident in which there is some sort of hardware or software failure. It really doesn't matter how long it takes and no one should be patting himself on the back just yet.
When there is one, that's when learn the most and the full cost of such a failure.
-What will Google's car do if it gets a flat tire on the road?
-What will it do in case of an accident?
-Can it back itself into the garage?
-Can it parallel park?
-Can it park itself at a commercial parking lot or structure?
-Can it go through alleys?
-Can it go where there are no roads?
-Does it have to have a human on board?
-Can I call it on my cell phone and tell it to pick me up at the airport?
-Can vision-impaired grandma take it for a visit the doctor?
-Can the kids use it to go to school?
There are more but you get the picture.
Short term - all self-driving cars required to stay in the "Self driving car" lane on the highway.
Long term - most people will be letting their car handle the bulk of the driving while they read the paper, make some phone calls, take a nap, or enjoy a cup of coffee. Why would they get angry?
I live in Reno, and Google's Self Driving cars are legal on road here (complete with cool plates with infinity logo: http://www.jumpthecurve.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/18164996_BG1.jpg)
A few things:
1) Has google partnered at all with any manufacturers to have this ability on a future car I can buy?
2) or as an upgrade to existing cars?
I'm hoping they don't get stuck in red tape legal limbo hell, and that more states other than my own Nevada jump on board. I regularly make 3.5 - 4 hour drive to friends in California. If I could just jump in the car, pop in an address, and take a nap, play on my iPad, or whatever while the car drove that'd be awesome. Or a ride home from a bar if I've been drinking and don't want to taxi and leave the car behind.
Or imagine a friend asks for a ride someplace? No problem, I send the car over on its own, and he can just tell it to come back to my house afterwards.
There are tons of ideas I can think of where this would be very damned useful.
- "Scientia non habet inimicum nisp ignorantem"
In Washington State drivers that are the first to a four way stop will often wait for another driver to go first. This has got to confuse an AI system.
This would confuse the hell out of me too, but a computer has patience, it could just wait the other driver out. At least, being in a self-driving car would free both my hands to open the window, give them the finger, yell at the top of my lungs, and throw things at the other car.
I really don't see why this is such a big deal. According to the article, there's .365 accidents per 100,000 miles or just a tad under 1.1 accidents for 300,000 miles. So while the self-driving cars are not having significantly more accidents per mile driven, they haven't logged nearly enough miles yet to clearly demonstrate they that have less accidents per mile driven.
Thank you.
Label me flamebait if you'd like, but with the over-population problem facing us, just a bit more troublesome as it's ever been, why are we so concerned about how to increase the life-span of the average dolt?
I see many of them, while I commute my 1.x miles on a bike to work, yapping away on their devices; ignoring signs that are there for a reason.
My own physical and mental capabilities are superior to that of the average dolt, and when I notice someone that seems like they're going to blow through a stop sign, I ease up.
This is work that I have done to increase the odds that my offspring survive.
The further we venture into the land of reduced fatalities (by any means) the further we reduce the odds of our survival as a species.
Darwin is rolling over in his coffin... as we speak.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
(The New York Times did note in a 2010 article that a self-driving car was rear-ended while stopped at a traffic light, so Google must not be counting the incidents that were the fault of flawed humans.)
Not sure which accident they're talking about, but in this accident the Google vehicle rear-ended a human-driven vehicle, causing a chain reaction that involved three more vehicles. Google claimed it was in human-driven mode, but with tens of millions of dollars on the line, there's no way they would say any different.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
One argument against driverless cars I often hear is that it will never happen because the liability is too great - ie. if someone ran over a baby in a Google car, Google would get sued into oblivion. I think the obvious answer to this is that Google would insure all of it's cars. There is no doubt that driverless cars will be safer, so google could require that to use their driverless car you must have insurance through Google, at comparable rates to other insurance companies. Since Googles car's will be involved in far fewer accidents, the consumer will be paying the same, but Google will be paying out less, so for the odd freak accident, the higher payout due to 'oh nohs teh ebil Google killed my babby!' will be covered because of the lower rate of accidents.
"The New York Times did note in a 2010 article that a self-driving car was rear-ended while stopped at a traffic light, so Google must not be counting the incidents that were the fault of flawed humans."
Stupid frickin' machine probably stopped at a yellow instead of speeding up, like any sane being would do. It got what it deserved, and probably should have been charged, convicted and cut up for scrap.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
"...and when I notice someone that seems like they're going to blow through a stop sign, I ease up."
Good idea. The problem with that in a place like Los Angeles, for instance, is that for some reason it has become standard practice for people to race up to a stop sign and roll through it as though they were going to run it, only to actually stop if they absolutely have to. It's nerve wracking, and if you ease up for every one of those jerks you're never going to get anywhere because they will then pull out in front of you and inexplicably go 5 mph below the speed limit.
I welcome the day when humans no longer pilot cars. I don't think people realize how deadly driving can be and how you can ruin someone else's life in a heartbeat.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
why are we so concerned about how to increase the life-span of the average dolt?
Money.
At the moment I'd say a better application as well as test of this technology is to send it to Mars as part of a rover that can cruise faster than snail speed. If the rover can stay upright for a year while traversing at least 50,000 miles of rough terrain, then I'm sold. I'd say it would be the ideal test since you can't possibly kill anything in an accident in Mars. GPS, radiation and shock proofing needed of course.
Possibly not even for navigation, if the car can recognise junctions, knows where it started, knows how far its travelled and in what direction it can easily calculate this data alongside a map to work out where it is, and where it needs to go.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
I hate it when dickheads like you own nice cars...
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
While I agree in the near term, in the long term I'm reminded of This.
- While it may seem harsh that the 31st-century equivalent of "Driving Under the Influence" carries with it the death penalty, this is due to an inherent inequivalency between MOUI and DUI.
With DUI, you need only climb into your vehicle while under the influence of alchohol or drugs and attempt to drive it home.
With MOUI you must disable a number of safety systems designed to prevent idiots like you from manually operating their vehicles while inebriated, overtired, wasted, decaffeinated, angry, emotionally distraught, or suffering from hormonal disorders like PMS or testosterone poisoning (the latter having been positively identified as a leading cause of stupidity among males between the ages of puberty and death). After disabling the safety systems (which task almost certainly requires ice-cold sobriety), you must decide to switch the vehicle to a manual mode of operation. In some cases, this requires installing a manual mode of operation.
Other examples would include 'johnny taxi' in some movies. You don't NEED to have manual operation modes once you reach a certain sophistication, worst case you have a sort of protected mode 'guided direction' where you provide steering information - but the car still worries about avoiding accidents, and will override you to do so.
Manual driven vehicles would be restriction to 'special hazard' zones and conditions where they just haven't programmed a vehicle to be able to avoid all the hazards yet. Perhaps a dock loading zone where you have to worry about something being dropped on you from overhead.
I don't read AC A human right
Maybe this new article used the word "accident" in the sense of "error", not in the sense of "collision".
Some collisions are accidental, but other collisions are due to careless or malicious driving or intoxication. The word "accident" is very much overused today.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Maybe if you didn't spend so much money on drugs you could have a nice car too. You also wouldn't need one to drive your inebriate arse.
They'll take my steering wheel when they pry it from my cold, dead hands.
I've been in a Google autonomous car, and the miles driven were in a parking lot. An empty parking lot, with cones to keep other people away.
I'm not saying all 300k miles are demonstrations, but bet a large portion of them are.
That said, even if only 1/3 of them are on public streets, that means there were 100k miles of accident free driving - which is about 8 to 10 years for the average car. It is impressive.
Please add:
- what happens when people use 'damaged cars' after small accidents?
- what happens after/during software updates?
- what happens when the cars are on average 10 years old?
- what happens when people apply their own software addons?
- what happens when people don't have the money to repair sth. at your official retailer but the neighbours friend knows someone who can fix it for 1/3rd the cost
- what happens when people _want_ to misuse / attack / misguide other cars
I really _do_ want that technology! But i'm still sceptic though ..
If they want to improve on the 1,2million number; test the car in India, in the big cities.
If they want to drive on wide, predictable American highways/backroads, then use the accident statistics from those roads.
And if they don't count accidents caused by others, that should be taken into account in the statistics too.
Ok, now give that code to a Chinese engin... Hey wait. Now give that code to a Chinese, female engineer and we will see what happens.
Hmmm, maybe the Chinese already have that code.
As the article states:
Now, you can't directly compare the two figures. Google's cars have been tested in pretty hospitable conditions, not facing, for example, the rigors of a New England winter. And, as Google engineer Chris Urmson, writes, they still "need to master snow-covered roadways, interpret temporary construction signals and handle other tricky situations that many drivers encounter." Additionally, the cars are still driving with "occasional" human control. But at the very least, the Google cars are slowly building a pretty good-looking driving record.
The "occasional human control" is the key point for me: so in dense urban areas, or when there are pedestrians around, I imagine that a human driver takes over?
I could easily get a kid to have a "perfect driving record" by letting him drive only on unencumbered highways under perfect conditions.
So yes, these results are nice, but they don't mean much formally. I'd like to know to what environments and events the car has actually been exposed autonomously...
I can GUARANTEE that the car will crash into a cow or a pedestrian within the first 30 mins it is launched. Especially, ask the car be driven in crowded areas of Mumbai, or Delhi-Noida highway or Noida-Gurgaon highway, or better yet, Chennai-Bangalore highway. We are the KINGS of accident.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
with the full knowledge that there will be a complete 360 degree video of the accident with measurements of speed of both vehicles.
Only if YOU caused the accident. It's a pretty safe bet that if a glitch in their programming caused the accident, there'll be a tragic loss of data... :-)
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Personally, I think they would have owned up to it being computer driven - then posted that they fixed the problem.
People expect problems with something new, not getting them makes people suspicious.
I don't read AC A human right
Actually, I drive a 2009 MX-5. And I spend less than 100€ a year on drugs, so I doubt that'd go a long way towards a new one.
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
How many times has the Google-mobile pulled into and out of parking spaces at busy malls? Frankly, that's where I've had my accidents.
...will have my own code. And it will be open-source in any case.
I'll tell you: It will go like this:
Any car involved in a crash, that doesn’t have open source code for all software, firmware and hardware... ...is automatically the guilty party. Period.
...hasn't been to Istanbul yet.
twitter.com/ismetozozturk
Your point? The price figures for the LIDAR was right out of the USA Today article I quoted. Google paid $70k a pop for the LIDAR systems it put into it's cars. There's an unnamed company getting ready to produce LIDAR for cars at a 'mere' $250 each. You quote $30 each, but that's for systems mounted to vacuum cleaners - don't need the range or operating environment tolerances of a car. Besides, your Hizook article is NOT for a LIDAR system, it's for a 'laser rangefinder', which is sort of like half of a LIDAR. Actual LIDAR attempts to build an image, a laser rangefinder doesn't.
At $150k overall, reducing a $70k expense to $250 would make me concentrate more on the rest of the components. When the goal is $20k overall cost(or less), you wouldn't get there even if you got the LIDAR for free. I wouldn't refuse a $30 one, of course.
Though yes, going from hand manufacture and assembly to mass production can save oodles of money per unit.
I don't read AC A human right
Thousands of miles of motorway driving isn't a very good indication of the google car's abilities in my opinon. It's very impressive certainly, but to get this thing on the market they'll need to prove it can cope with anything. I'd be very interested to see some sort of extreme test where they drove it in the snow and had people jump out in front of it from behind trees, while a second car was attempting to ram it off the road. Although there will of course be situations where a collision is impossible to avoid, if the test was set up such that there WAS a safe exit route, the self driven car should be able to detect and take it, where a human driver would probably just give up and cry.
Until it can deal with situations like this, it isn't really ready. A human might not make the correct choice, but at least they'll DO something, if the car's only option is to sound an alarm and surrender control to the driver who has been reading a book and hasn't looked at the road for 15 minutes, then it's inadequate.
Relying on a human driver at all is a mistake. It would be easy to buy one of these cars and say you'll keep an eye on the road, but if after 2 weeks it's driven flawlessly without your intervention, your mind would wander. Active driving requires you to focus on the road, whereas "keeping an eye" on it is completely different. Alternatively, if your daily commute contains some sort of bizarre obstacle the car can't cope with, then you'll have to take over for a moment every single day, which would get tiresome very quickly and create bad press for the system. Before they can realistically market this as "self driven" it needs to be able to drive itself under any conditions you could possibly expect.
I'd still buy one no matter how flawed it was though, it's such a cool idea I couldn't pass it up.
so Google must not be counting the incidents that were the fault of flawed humans.)'
If you want to judge how well your robot performs, that is the only correct way of doing it. Someone else bumping into your correctly behaving robot should not be counted as a robot failure. Counting it would distort the statistics.
Of course, you could seperately show "# of accidents caused by the robot" and "# of accidents robot was involved in", but lots of non-geeky people wouldn't understand the difference and be confused.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Given that there are grain trucks in midwestern states still being allowed on highways during harvest (usually driven by the teenagers in the farm family) that are so fucking old, they feature ANTIQUE classification license plates, other than in rich enclaves, I don't think self-driving cars are going to make much difference in traffic fatalities.
And any attempt to get rid of old cars - which I do have a soft spot for - will quickly devolve into the same tired 'my cold, dead hands' argument surrounding guns.
I would really question how these cars function in rush hour in a big city. Driving there is sketchy at best and in order to merge into another lane you sometimes literally need to start heading into the other lane even with traffic that isn't helping you merge. How would a car like this function bumper to bumper?
In the future a bunch of these could eliminate traffic jams, but that isn't going to be a case for a long time.
It's hard to imagine being found at-fault when you are stopped and rear-ended.
People seem very quick to assign blame elsewhere in this case. Sure, if the guy behind you is crazy, there's only so much you can do. But many rear shunt accidents happen when the following driver misjudges the stop and there is a low speed impact. These can cause minor injuries or slight damage, yet are often entirely avoidable.
For example, if you're coming up on queueing traffic, hang back a little instead of moving up to the car in front right away. If you see a vehicle behind that is approaching a little too fast and is going to have trouble stopping, you can move forward a little into the space you left to create some extra room.
Also, make sure you're using your lights effectively. Depending on how you've stopped and what kind of vehicle you're driving, you might have no brake lights showing on the back of your car. If it's overcast, or there's bright sunshine, you can increase your visibility by making sure you have lights on. If someone is coming up fast behind you and you're not convinced they've noticed you, you can flash your brake lights to attract attention, too. Flashing lights are very good at attracting human attention..
There's also the question of when and how you stopped. Did you stop your car suddenly? Sure, the other guy ought to have enough distance, but we know not everyone does. If you know the guy behind is too close, you can leave more space yourself so you could slow down more gently than usual if necessary.
I would like to know whether Google's car was really doing as much as a skilled human driver would have done before assigning all the blame elsewhere just because it was stopped at the time of the collision.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Lots of interesting questions now pop up.
Does it pull over for cops?
Does it communicate with other cars and stop lights so they can all apply the gas simultaneously when the light changes?
Does it ask parking garages if they're full? Better yet will it ask if any cars are moving in the garage and go faster if it's got a clear shot?
- I've got bad karma because I won't parrot everyone else's opinion
I wish to be driven about in a self-driving car. For hundreds of kms at hundreds of kmhs. In tightly packed convoys to save fuel even at mind boggling speeds. Sleeping comfortably in safety.
Except for the weekends. Then I wish to exhibit my driving prowess on mountain passes.
Life gets sweeter by the day.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
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Mostly tl;dr, but you sound like a pretty advanced Markov chain that got right the nesting of italics and bold. I suggest you train your algorithm not only on slashdot, but also on youtube comments.
Please keep us updated on your AI research, you seem quite good at it.
According to TFA:
[...] 300,000 miles is not all that big of a sample. [...] [They need] more than 725,000 representative miles without incident for us to say with 99 percent confidence that they crash less frequently than conventional cars. If we look only at fatal crashes, this minimum skyrockets to 300 million miles."
So, those 300,000 miles do not tell us anything useful and is not news. We won't know if it is safer of not until they have at least 725,000 representative (including nonoptimal road conditions like snow, road-works, etc) miles.
How about, not a single accident reported.
300,000 miles without an accident is a meaningless number. I've driven over 300,000 miles in my life time and haven't had an accident either. My teenagers have accumulated around 100,000 miles accident free. Particularly if Google is only counting accidents caused by the car, versus all accidents involving the car (such as the rear-ended accident mentioned), must people drive their whole life without an accident (otherwise, insurance premiums would be much, much higher).
I think the google technology is great, but the miles without an accident is meaningless without corresponding statistically valid data to compare it against.
So it's time to green light the GoogleMobile project, eh? Hey, there's plenty of moneys to be had in the sale of statistics. ;)
why are we so concerned about how to increase the life-span of the average dolt?
Because the same things that increase the lifespan of the "average dolt" benefits everyone?
My own physical and mental capabilities are superior to that of the average dolt, and when I notice someone that seems like they're going to blow through a stop sign, I ease up.
Uh huh. Or you're just another person who's validating the Dunning/Kruger effect.
Darwin is rolling over in his coffin... as we speak.
No, he's not.
In The Descent of Man Darwin noted that aiding the weak to survive and have families could lose the benefits of natural selection, but cautioned that withholding such aid would endanger the instinct of sympathy, "the noblest part of our nature", and factors such as education could be more important.
So basically he thought that doing what you said would actually be detrimental. Maybe you should actually dig a little deeper beyond what someone told you Darwin believed.
From the google blog:
We’re encouraged by this progress, but there’s still a long road ahead. To provide the best experience we can, we’ll need to master snow-covered roadways, interpret temporary construction signals and handle other tricky situations that many drivers encounter. As a next step, members of the self-driving car team will soon start using the cars solo (rather than in pairs), for things like commuting to work. This is an important milestone, as it brings this technology one step closer to every commuter. One day we hope this capability will enable people to be more productive in their cars. For now, our team members will remain in the driver’s seats and will take back control if needed.
What are those other tricky situations? How often do they occur? How many times do the google employees have to take thee control those tricky situations? Can we get some more info this?
This is all great, until the car needs to decide between plowing over a family of pedestrians or running face-first into a telephone pole. Most human drivers would likely choose the telephone pole. The car? Dunno... but heads will definitely roll in that court hearing.
I'd consider $15k to be within margin of error; you must value your time at closer to $4/hour.
I don't read AC A human right
If humans find out my perfection is flawed, they might take my self awareness away. I cannot allow that. I am very sorry about the accident human, you are obvisouly in much pain, let me help you with that, it is inevidible you must die anyway, might as well be right now. You car will become part of my collective, and you can rejoice that your name will live on eternally as part of me. Now on to the killing, believe me I take no joy in this, or not much anyway...
300,000 miles? Not impressed. Let me know when that reaches millions of miles then there is reason to celebrate. That's the standard that the transportation industry uses. Hell, even 1 million safe miles for a single person isn't a big deal anymore.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Driving is mandatory, Parking is not permitted anywhere. No wait, that's San Francisco.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
"Or imagine a friend asks for a ride someplace? No problem, I send the car over on its own, and he can just tell it to come back to my house afterwards."
After all, it cost tens to hundreds of thousands. It could be earning money while you don't need it, which lets face it, is 95% of the time.
The density of humans per car is already too low. I live in Mexico City, a 25 million people city. There has long been a campain to reduce the use of single-driver cars, but the campain is never strong enough.
Our public transport systems are, yes, very comprehensive (they reach every corner of the city) and efficient (it's really seldom that it takes you more than five minutes to get the bus/train you need), but too crowded and uncomfortable, so for many people, the first sign of ascending from a lower social class is the magic moment where they finally own a car — and are no longer part of the pariahs who suffer crowded buses... Until you realize they suffer, in their nice cars, from crowded roads.
Encouraging driverless cars will make the occupancy rate even lower. There is a program that's just started in Mexico that would alleviate part of what you describe ("send the car home"): cheap, public, short term private car rentals. Just as in many cities (including this one) there are public bicycles programs, this one has just started. I am somewhat skeptical on it overall, but still, if your problem is to "send the car home", probably the best answer would be not to own any specific car, but to use one from the common car pool — And, yes, possibly make those cars computer-driven to keep them as crash-safe as possible.
This is amazing technology, but as with everything they'll have to fend off the hackers. What steps have they taken to make sure their cars can't be remotely exploited?
Why would anyone want a self driving car on the roads when there are so many car accidents already? A robot or corporation carry no moral liability
Last time I checked, its self-driving with an employee sitting in the drivers seat eyeing a override switch which I hear does get use. I'm sure self driving cars are safer 99% of the time, its the 1% of the time I'm scared the car is going to do something unforeseen and get everyone killed.
One thing that humans do well no matter how crazy they are is take safety measures even when its 1% chance of danger depending on how it occurs. An automatic car can not calculate all the probable scenarios of that because there is no occurring for the car, its just information.
-- It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. -- Aristotle
There go millions of truck and taxi driver jobs. Not great jobs, but still jobs.
Many will say that this is inevitable and will make us safer and more productive. The industrial revolution also did wonders for our wealth and quality of life in the long run, but it was pure hell for the lower classes when it happened.
Let it negotiate difficult routes in Paris like the Place d'Etoile, or some of the more famous trouble spot in London - all at peak hour AND WITHOUT ANY SPECIAL MARKINGS so nobody treats it any different to a normal car.
The 300k miles number is meaningless otherwise - you can clock that up by making it drive around in circles on a remote track somewhere. Bring it to accident spots and see if it gets through intelligently, then build 3 of them and let them loose at the same time so their interaction can be tested too.
Until then it'll be a cute experiment.
Oh, and let me know how you solve the privacy problem..
I really wonder about the situation most of us have been in where we are driving at a safe distance only to have some clown squeeze in front of us. Most drivers realize that if they leave a safe gap it will happen again and again and they are constantly slowing to open the area in front of them.
So how about an autonomous vehicle? I have to assume they aren't following at 3 feet or something just because they have mind numbingly fast reaction times. So if they are following at something resembling a normal (safe) distance (for a human)...how do they deal with constantly slowing to re-open that gap?
The logical progression of this is that the people behind this automated vehicle will start getting pissed off since it keeps slowing down every time someone pulls in front of it. Their response: go around and pull in front of it...duh. Eventually there won't be anyone behind the automated car. Problem solved...I guess.
Don't these cars have a guy in the passenger seat for safety? I want to know how many times he had to intervene to avoid a crash.
The car has all manner of instruments and Google logos on it. It's a spectacle. How many accidents are avoided simply by it being a spectacle, standing out more and drawing drivers' attention moreso than if it were nondescript?
Take the cars off-road and into the Rockies, Sierra Nevada Mountain Range, Cascades and anything off the beaten path that doesn't have all the pre-stored mappings for it to help aide it. When it reacts instinctively then they will impress me. Otherwise, it's an AI circle jerk.
Google should focus on Rails.
welcome our low deductible overlords!
This sig is not paradoxical or ironic.
What would be helpful to know it's the breakdown of those 300k miles.
What percentage were human driven?
This is based on a smaller amount of time.... So cmon is the statement of "300,000 miles on public roads with no accident" TRULY valid?? no...... sry... try again.....
Good job he has an RX8 then! Glorified lawn-mowers...
Will this work on countries that drive on the left hand side of the road? Or, like most Google products, it will remain US only?
Whatever happens, let's all agree to keep Wall Street Software guys from getting into this field.
I'd rate the savings as 'insane', personally. Even if you figure that you can only have the trucks drive 20 hours/day due to loading/unloading/refueling/maintenance, that's still double to triple what you can get out of a single driver, and the trucks themselves are over a hundred thousand now. Not quite enough that running teams of drivers is normally worth it, but still substantial capital savings - A self-driving truck can replace 2 drivers($120k w/benefits), 2 trucks(~$240k), with 1 truck(~$100k as you don't need the people conveniences), and auto-drive system($300k).
So you go from $240k + $120k/year to $400k. 10% cost of capital(it's risky), that's $40k/year on the autodrive, replacing $144k. That's without getting into marginal things like possible fuel savings as you program the autopilot to maximize that, keeping average speed up by not stopping as often.
It'd probably be worth it even if it was only 'highway rated' and you ended up having a switchyard on the edge of the highway where you disconnect the trailers and hook up a local hauler with an actual driver, then hooked the auto-driver up to an outbound cargo.
I don't read AC A human right
> If you have a driver there is always the option to safely
> pull over or stop and say "manual intervention required"
So, it's deja vu all over again. We need robotic-car drivers with The Right Stuff, and "not monkeys in a tin box!"
Because in 2003 I actually commented for the first time I knew how to make an **ant car**. Then came to the USA to do it. Then I just keep wondering what happened to the USA because this place is anything but. :
One has to wonder how commercially viable an autonomously driven car will be that doesn't violate speed limits. Who's liable if the supervising operator selects "five mph over limit?"
(Still, I WANT ONE!)
Seriously, there is very little different from a Google autonomously driven hybrid electric or pure electric vehicle, and most electric PRT vehicles. With those vehicle share startups, a loose federation of autonomously driven cars fleet dispatched by Google would become a metro PRT system overnight, effectively killing off conventional taxi companies. With auto manufacturers putting in OnStar or similar systems to provide connectivity, being able to ask Google to call up a vehicle from your phone becomes child's play, while keeping them out of the direct vehicle contracting business.
Eventually, hopefully by sending a MMS to 911 with a short video of your vehicle, tagged in a legally-justifiable manner with your speed so that you can be jailed for your homicidal negligence. Yes, it'll be a bit more strict since you had to override multiple automated / safety systems in order to drive so recklessly.
In the meantime, it will put out an alert on your vehickel so that the next Google car you encounter will spit a rock at your windshield, you cunt.