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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.)'"
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?
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?
It's not supposed to be a fair comparison. That's the point. The idea is that cars that are driven by computer can be vastly safer than those driven by people, which will have the desired upshot of reducing accidents.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
That's a 1 in 6,500 chance of *dying* in a traffic accident.
You are creating a straw man there, 99% of similar situations with human drivers would either have not noticed the exit or not reacted in time.
Additionally you likely broke the law doing what you did and if you caused an accident or ran over a pedestrian because of it you would have been 100% at fault, whereas being shunted by the guy behind you lands 100% of the resposibility on him (unless you stopped too close to a car in front of you).
I would put money on your driving record being way worse than 300k miles accident free. The actual pouplation-wide average is a LOT higher than that, and you are asking for us to give up reducing that number because we can't reduce it to 0.
That's like people saying "Don't build gas power plants to replace coal plants because they still emit CO2", sure it's not perfect but at least it BETTER.
I'm more wondering what it would be like for the driver who actually rear ended a robotic vehicle
Uh, yeah, so I rear ended you. We should exchange insurance details.
I'm sorry, Dave, but I can't do that.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
Pretty much this.
Google deliberately avoids the more challenging situations, and a LOT of those miles are highway.
There's a reason insurance rates for someone living in a small town in the country are lower. Right now, google is pretty much "that guy".
That's not to disparage what google has accomplished, but its premature to compare it to the safety record of a downtown urban commuter; driving through rush hour traffic to and from work in a major city daily.
I'm more wondering what it would be like for the driver who actually rear ended a robotic vehicle
I imagine that you exchange details with the human in charge, with the full knowledge that there will be a complete 360 degree video of the accident with measurements of speed of both vehicles.
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.
I think you're missing the point, it's not about objective skill, but rather the fact that 80% think they are better than average. In reality 50% is better than average, 50% is worse than average. That means 30% of people at the very least, overestimate their skills. It's called illusory superiority, and you can check it out on wikipedia, it's a basic cognitivie bias. It even quoted the studies I referred to.
"For driving skill, 93% of the US sample and 69% of the Swedish sample put themselves in the top 50% (above the median). For safety, 88% of the US group and 77% of the Swedish sample put themselves in the top 50%"
-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority#Driving_ability
You can also read the article on the Dunning-Kruger effect.
"The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than average. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their mistakes."
-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
My definition of a good driver is one that doesn't get into accidents, and that can handle an unexpected situation quickly and correctly. Whether they obey traffic laws is more about whether they are a good citizen or not, and that's a different argument, however staying within the traffic laws (i.e. lowering speed around schools) prevent accidents, and is as such a trait of a good driver.
Whether you are indeed a good driver is irrelevant to the fact that a lot of people judge themselves as to be better than they are. It's after all not the individual that matters when we're talking about the group as a whole.
Think of the implications of having an automated driving system... the onboard computer is collecting and analyzing data in real time, and it will likely store that information, at least temporarily. So if a Google car is involved in a crash, a full report will be generated, detailing exactly what happened and liability will be very easy to determine in most cases. "Car A has had a faulty motion sensor on the front bumper that the driver failed to have replaced" or "Car B drove through a red light to hit Car A".
I also think that automated cars will observe all safety rules to the letter... like only driving the speed limit (or slightly below), always maintaining a safe distance behind other vehicles, stopping for yellow lights, and having a generous braking distance. Remember, Google could be held liable if the system is reckless, and they aren't going to want that when human lives are at stake.
I think that making automated, passenger-less cars legal will be a very easy decision for legislatures, and will pass quickly. Like I said, I believe automated cars will err far more on the side of caution, like the most grandmotherly of drivers.
I'm not so sure. For driving on the highway I think it will be fine, but think about some other conditions. How will it deal with passing a horse and rider on a narrow road? How will it deal with coming across another driver in a country lane at a place where there is no room to pass? How will it drive on a road with a shear drop off on one side and a cliff on another? If this is narrow with passing paces will it know to pull in so that it almost touches the cliff to give extra space to the vehicle near the drop-off? In busy commuter traffic will it adjust the "aggressiveness" of pulling out from a side-road to take into account that if you don't pull out quick and accelerate hard you could be waiting until the end of the rush? On a rutted farm track can it work out that you have to drive with one wheel on the centre of the road and the other on the edge to avoid the tractor ruts?
If you have a driver there is always the option to safely pull over or stop and say "manual intervention required", but once you allow completely automatic use with non-drivers or no driver the car has to do something sensible.