Google: Our Robot Cars Are Better Drivers Than You

An anonymous reader writes "At a robotics conference in Santa Clara, California, the head of Google's autonomous car project presented results of a study showing that the company's autonomous cars are already safer than human drivers — including trained professionals. 'We're spending less time in near-collision states,' he said. 'In addition to painting a rosy picture of his vehicles' autonomous capabilities, Urmson showed a new dashboard display that his group has developed to help people understand what an autonomous car is doing and when they might want to take over.' This follows another (non-Google) study earlier this week that found the adoption of autonomous cars could save thousands of lives and billions of dollars each year. Urmson also pointed out that determining liability for an accident is much easier using the data collected by the autonomous cars. At one point, a test car was read-ended, and the data showed it smoothly braking to a stop before being struck. 'We don't have to rely on eyewitnesses that can't be trusted as to what happened — we actually have the data. The guy around us wasn't paying enough attention. The data will set you free.'"

Comments

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[mjwalshe]

Have the Google robot take on the Stig round the top gear test track.

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[HxBro]

Some say, "he is actually the robot driving the autonomous cars... All at the same time"

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[realityimpaired]

They had a robot car from Audi (I think?) a couple of years ago doing a lap around the track... it did pretty well, I recall.

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[ravenlord_hun]

Where I come from, that's called "gross negligence" and "endangering lives". If you need to be taken to a hospital ASAP, call the police or an ambulance. They are trained to drive ignoring the traffic rules, and are equipped to warn the other drivers that someone ignoring the rules is coming. If you had failed to yield (because you're going with 80mph all the time) and killed someone, that'd have been certifiably less cool, huh?

Higher-than-thou attitudes like this are one of the reasons why I would absolutely welcome self-driving cars. And a lot more stricter police enforcement of existing traffic rules.

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[hawguy]

call me when your injured and they want one of these to drive you to the hospital. then tell me how you think of these "autonomous" cars. i'm alive because someone put me in their car as kid and drove me to the hospital as a kid doing 80 the entire drive. believe me these things are going to kill people and the makers are going to be all "it's a flawless system"

Of course, a parent rushing a child to the hospital is not in the best frame of mind for driving, and is more likely to get into an accident, like this:

http://millburn.patch.com/groups/police-and-fire/p/local-girl-hit-by-a-car

So maybe the 2 minutes saved by driving 15 miles to the hospital at 80mph instead of 65 mph isn't worth the risk to others on the road. And definitely the 6 minutes saved by driving 80mph instead of 45mph isn't worth the risk to other drivers from driving nearly twice the speed limit on that 45 mph road. There's a reason why emergency vehicles have those bright flashing lights and sirens - and even emergency vehicles get into accidents while rushing to and emergency.

In most cases, you're going to be better off calling an Advanced Life Support ambulance so the paramedics can evaluate and stabilize you on the way to the hospital, but if you choose to drive there yourself, you're likely going to be safer in a self-driving car that's not going to take unwise risks.

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[wonkey_monkey]

The plural of "anecdote" is not "data".

If you're going to use such specious reasoning, your driver could have driven you into the path of a falling meteorite that an autonomous car would have missed by being slower.

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[mjwalshe]

Ah must have missed that one - though no offence to Google I would trust Audi to do it right more than Google - probably forget to have the software cater for driving on the right side of the road give what i have seen of googles published code

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[rjh]

Where I come from, that's called "gross negligence" and "endangering lives".

I don't know where you are so I can't comment on your local laws. In the United States, it would likely be considered neither. Acts necessary to save human lives are neither criminally prosecutable nor subject to civil litigation.

The important word in that phrase, of course, being "necessary." Here's how a judge would evaluate your affirmative defense of, "Your honor, I had to drive like a madman: I had a man in obvious cardiac distress in the back of my car."

• First, did you have a reasonable belief the person was in extreme cardiac distress? "He was clutching his chest, short of breath, complaining of chest pains and having trouble remaining conscious. Okay, yes: the driver had a reasonable belief this individual was experiencing a life-threatening medical event and timely treatment was necessary."
• Second, was your action reasonable in light of the other options which were immediately available to you? "The defendant didn't bother to call an ambulance... then again, we *are* living in Detroit, where the response time to an emergency call hovers around one hour. His options were to either bring the guy to the hospital in his own vehicle, or attempt to provide cardiac care right there in the apartment. Transportation seems like a reasonable choice."
• Third, were unnecessary risks taken? "Sure, the guy was barrelling down Jefferson Avenue at 80 miles an hour. That was necessary. If he'd taken a detour and gone 80mph down a side street to hit a 7-11 along the way to buy a Slurpee, that would've been unnecessary... but he didn't do that, or anything like that."
• Fourth: if there was a reasonable belief someone's life is in jeopardy, if your action is reasonable in light of the options available to you, and if you avoided unnecessary risks, then brother, you are protected.

I am generally not a fan of urban driving. I own a Mustang GT and I go to the speedway whenever I can to race at high speeds in a controlled environment, but once I'm on public roads I obey the speed limit and I live in mortal fear of Suzy Homemaker in an SUV who's jawing on her cell phone instead of paying attention to her lane merge. I welcome the development of automated driving: for 99% of people it will be a massive step up in safety.

But let's not pretend that driving at 80mph in response to an immediate threat to a human life is something that we need to condemn. Those drivers amount to such a vanishingly small fraction of all accidents that I'm happy to give them a free pass. Go with God, may your tires have good tread, and I hope your passenger makes it.

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[Anonymous Coward]

What a terrible argument against autonomous cars. Are you claiming that if they had only driven 65 mph then you wouldn't be alive? How about 70 mph? Unless you were way way out in the middle of nowhere I find that hard to believe. Protip- instead of the hospital stop at a fire station (if you pass one) instead, as the ambulance can do most things the ER can.

Also, why do you think these cars won't have a manual mode?

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[wmac1]

Google: Our Robot Cars Are Better Drivers Than You ... They even report us where you go!

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[ravenlord_hun]

ONE HOUR? Holy moly. Here you are supposed to have an ambulance there in 20 minutes tops if you call from a residental area. One hour waiting line... that comes real close to not having any ambulance whatsoever. Seriously, if I can wait one hour, I don't need immediate medical attention!

Interesting points, btw! If the police caught you doing that here, you would have a hard time talking yourself out. You are simply supposed to leave it to the proper authorities.

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[g0bshiTe]

Hmm my father once had a heart attack, he lived a 3 minute drive from the hospital. The options were to call emergency units possibly longer than that 3 minute drive or to load him in the car and drive like hell the few blocks to the hospital. Of note my brother did call 911, of note after I arrived after 5 minutes, the ambulance still hadn't arrived so I chose to drive him the short distance.

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[g0bshiTe]

Note the 5 minutes is the amount of time it took me to get there after my brother saying "dad is having a heart attack", I lived a 15 minute drive from their house.

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[ravenlord_hun]

Ambulances come with doctors and proper equipment to save lives, you know? You have medical care from the moment they arrive - even if it's just to stabilize you to the point of being safe to transport and making sure you will be alive when you arrive to the hospital. Lying on a random car's backseat doesn't provide any of that.

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[Lohrno]

Yeah... but if those things drive too slow and your kid dies you're going to say "Oh it was worth it because I was not putting other drivers at risk..."

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[kanweg]

When I hear people say "Think about the children", my thought is: Why, they'll grow up into terrible people anyway.

What physical law is preventing Google from creating an emergency mode?
Autonomous driving can be turned off.
A manually operated/atuomatic car speeding to a hospital would be more likely to reach its destination quickly with autonomous driven cars paying attention to their environment.

Bert
Sorry if you're still cognitively suffering from head trauma

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[rjh]

Detroit is infamously bad, yeah. 58 minutes is the *official* Detroit response time. A few years ago I had to call the ambulance in Detroit for a neighbor who was having a stroke. We never found out what the response time was. We called the ER, who told us to bring her down ourselves. By the time we took her to the ER, sat with her through her diagnosis and admission and returned home, the ambulance *still* hadn't arrived. So I called 911 and canceled the ambulance call.

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[ravenlord_hun]

If that happened here, you'd see people up in arms (honestly, the few time the EMS screwed up like that, it was front page news for days everywhere). Is that related to Detroit being bankrupt, or simply the EMS is so... understaffed?

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[ravenlord_hun]

On the other side, if I kill someone because I'm rushing to the hospital, I'd probably not feel a lot better either. "I'm sorry I killed your husband, but my kid was more important, you see!"

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[hawguy]

Note the 5 minutes is the amount of time it took me to get there after my brother saying "dad is having a heart attack", I lived a 15 minute drive from their house.

Which us why self driving cars are better for all road users.... They won't drive at triple the speed limit.

And if your dad had a self driving car, your brother could have helped your dad to the car and told the car to drive to the hospital.

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[realityimpaired]

Ambulances come with doctors and proper equipment to save lives, you know?

That depends where you are, actually. In North America, they have paramedics whose job is to get you to a hospital as quickly as possible with the minimum risk to your life in doing so. In parts of Europe, the ambulances have doctors, though.

That being said, you're still *much* better off calling an ambulance for any actual medical emergency, if for no other reason then because they have bottled oxygen and defibrillators, both of which can be critical in treating shock, which can happen as a result of serious injury or illness.

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[ravenlord_hun]

The more time I spend reading these replies the more terrified I'm becoming of the EMS in the US... :/

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[rjh]

Mostly Detroit having been in a state of slow-motion collapse for 30+ years. Even the bankruptcy is caused by that -- it's not as if it suddenly came out of the blue.

30 years ago Detroit had 1.8 million people. Today it has about 700,000. A lot of businesses have also left, too. The city has spent 30 years acting as if nothing has really changed while the entire tax base has fled. Now the city is in a financial emergency of unthinkable proportions. Something like two-thirds of the ambulances have over 200,000 miles (320,000km) on them; there are 40% fewer police patrolling the streets than there were a decade ago; to save money, the city has shut off streetlights in something like half the city.

To make matters worse, half the city is functionally illiterate and thus can't find work in a modern economy. Unemployment in Detroit hovers around 50%.

Detroit's problems are the result of the city itself collapsing. The bankruptcy is just a symptom of the much bigger problems. Even if the federal government were to cut a $20 billion check to bail Detroit out of bankruptcy, these deeper problems would still exist.

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[realityimpaired]

Hmm my father once had a heart attack, he lived a 3 minute drive from the hospital. The options were to call emergency units possibly longer than that 3 minute drive or to load him in the car and drive like hell the few blocks to the hospital. Of note my brother did call 911, of note after I arrived after 5 minutes, the ambulance still hadn't arrived so I chose to drive him the short distance.

Bad idea... absolutely disgusting that it took that long for the ambulance to arrive, but you're treated with lower priority for triage because you were able to get to the hospital under your own power. Unless it's a small/quiet hospital where there's usually no wait to begin with (they do exist, usually in rural areas), you're better off waiting the 10 minutes for an ambulance and riding with them.

That, of course, depends on rural versus urban. I've been to urban hospitals where you can expect to wait 8 hours when you present with respiratory distress/asthma, and I've been to hospitals in rural areas where you can expect to be seen for a broken foot within 15 minutes of hobbling in the front door. If you're in the latter situation you're probably fine self-presenting, but if it's the former, you absolutely should wait for the ambulance. That being said, the city I live in has 9 minutes or less for 90% of calls response time for EMT in the urban area, and I've seen them arrive in under 5 minutes in the downtown core, and there's people in thread saying that their cities can be over an hour *average* (let alone 90% rate). I really don't understand how a for-profit system like the US can have response times that pathetically slow (I'm in Ottawa, Canada): the patient can't pay the bill if he dies, and they're more likely to get sued, to boot. And Americans complain that *our* health care system is slow/inefficient?

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[realityimpaired]

Protip- instead of the hospital stop at a fire station (if you pass one) instead, as the ambulance can do most things the ER can.

Mod parent up. That had not occurred to me and is a very good idea.

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[daenris]

58 minutes, really? Funny then that the official Detroit website lists it as 17. http://www.detroitmi.gov/DetroitPerformanceDashboard.aspx

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[canadiannomad]

911: 911 what is your emergency?
10 year old: I think my dad is having a heart attack.
911: How old are you?
10 year old: 10
911: Ok, thanks, we have your address at 123 Flower St. Is that correct?
10 year old: Yea
911: Is your dad's car at home?
10 year old: No it is out with my mom
911: Ok we can route a taxi to your home, it will get there faster then an ambulance, do you think you can help him to the taxi?
10 year old: I think so..
911: It will be there in 40...30 seconds. Don't hang up your cell, in case you need assistance.

Taxi arrives exactly as predicted by the operator, child is able to help their father get in, the taxi detects that both are safely in the car and speeds off to the hospital automatically, not asking for fare. The 911 operator walks child through basic emergency procedures though the taxi communication system. All other cars yield properly as the taxi is sending out an authorized emergency signal and has lights flashing and horn blaring at a recognized interval. They arrive at the hospital in a minimum amount of time with less risk then waiting for the ambulance to arrive.

I'm sure that isn't exactly how it would go down, but I can certainly see the advantages of autonomous cars, taxis, even ambulances at every step of this.

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[amorsen]

It would be completely trivial to let a human override the limits. The car could easily be made to automatically alert authorities and even the other autonomous cars that an emergency override was in effect. That should make the journey considerably safer than when a distressed human driver is trying to deal with an emergency amongst a lot of other traffic who just think he is being an idiot.

Abuse is equally trivial to deal with. Every time you activate the override, you get a nice little chat with either the police or a judge.

In Denmark the law is quite easy: If you are doing emergency driving, you must attach a white piece of cloth to the car if possible (sticking white linen in the bonnet is the typical solution). Other traffic must obey the exact same rules when dealing with a marked car as they would if it was a regular emergency vehicle with the lights flashing. The driver of the marked car is not subject to regular traffic laws (but must of course still try to avoid accidents, it is not a license to kill). Once the emergency is over, the driver must report the journey to the police as soon as reasonably possible.

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[rjh]

Check the bankruptcy declarations. The City of Detroit made various statements under penalty of perjury, and one of the most shocking was their admission that emergency response times averaged 58 minutes.

I can't explain the discrepancy between what Detroit says on a web site and what Detroit says in a courtroom. What I can do, though, is point you to my reference. :)

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[__aaltlg1547]

On the other hand, there will be significantly fewer people needing to go to the emergency room if there are fewer car accidents.

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[AlphaWolf_HK]

Well let's assume that these cars will be forbidden from speeding (which is a pretty wild assumption to begin with; hell, speeding limits are designed to allow drivers more time to react, autonomous cars react quicker, so speed limits may be less relevant if all cars were self driving) how often does somebody driving really fast in order to save a life actually happen? I'd say a good 99% of the time when I see somebody speeding, they aren't heading towards any hospital I'm aware of.

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[mspohr]

This is an interesting ongoing debate... Do you trust technology companies or car companies to make better technology driven cars?
Judging from what I have seen from car companies trying to do technology, I would give their technology low scores. Most of them are a day late and a dollar short when it comes to technology. Last Audi I purchased came with lots of expensive state of the art (from two years earlier) technology... I was not impressed.

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[__aaltlg1547]

Even 20 minutes is death to a person in cardiac arrest. If you think it could take that long to get an ambulance, better to drive, whether or not breaking traffic laws on the way.

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[Plunky]

Which us why self driving cars are better for all road users.... They won't drive at triple the speed limit.

I don't get why people think they wouldn't do that

In fact, in a world of self driving cars, I don't see why we would need a speed limit. The car can be trusted to drive within its own limits..

And if your dad had a self driving car, your brother could have helped your dad to the car and told the car to drive to the hospital.

and his brother could have told the car that it was an emergency (destination: emergency unit of hospital) and the car could have decided to drive at its maximum speed, broadcasting to other vehicles that it was doing so.

A journey such as this might attract some official attention, but assuming that the hospital corroborates the story of an emergency, then I don't see why there would be any charges..

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[firewrought]

Where I come from, that's called "gross negligence" and "endangering lives". If you need to be taken to a hospital ASAP, call the police or an ambulance.

Where I'm from, 80 MPH is "cruising speed", at least on the interstate. ;-)

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[daenris]

Every reference I've seen in regards to that talks only about the average Police response time being 58 minutes, not the EMS.

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[Immerman]

Honestly I see nothing there related to autonomous cars, except that there's no driver in the taxi to help carry the father. The rest is a matter of real-time networking across disparate systems for optimal allocation of resources. Beautiful in concept, but you must understand that actually implementing such a thing will almost certainly concentrate considerable information and power in the hands of whoever is doing the allocating.

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[firewrought]

call me when your injured and they want one of these to drive you to the hospital. then tell me how you think of these "autonomous" cars. i'm alive because someone put me in their car as kid and drove me to the hospital as a kid doing 80 the entire drive.

Eventually, I'd expect these self-driving cars to provide a big red "help me" button that dials an emergency responder and puts them on in-car speakerphone while simultaneously offering to drive you to the nearest ER or police station in a special "emergency transit mode". New laws will permit the car to violate some traffic laws while in this mode. Other self-driving cars will receive advanced notice of your passage and intelligently get out of the way.

Like any technology, version 1 will suck. But even with version 1, you're going to be safer overall: the drawback of not being able to drive 10-20MPH to the hospital (on the extremely rare occasions where that's truly needed) will be outweighed by the benefit of having an always safe, always alert AI driver.

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[cayenne8]

Screw thisâ¦I'd rather drive my OWN car.

There's a reason I've never owned any car with more than two (practical) seats, and all manual transmissions. I like to DRIVE.

Every day, I enjoy my drive to and from workâ¦.with the weather hitting now, I drop the top on my car and hit the road enjoying the thrill and experience.

I also enjoy the fact that my car so far, has very little on it to be tracked, and little data storage on it that I know in terms of a black box that can report on me (although I"m sure there is more than I would care for).

I'm hoping the laws banning human drivers in favor of robot "Johnny Cars" is far enough in the future to where I'm dead and gone from the earth.

I"d much rather take the risks for the rewards of a freer life where I'm more in control of things.

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[canadiannomad]

Honestly I see nothing there related to autonomous cars

Except that there is a taxi that can just get there, that the taxi can be trusted to safely deliver the passengers at higher then normal speeds and violate various predetermined traffic laws, that the other cars can already be pre-warned and move aside, that traffic lights can be adjusted to let the car through, etc.

Beautiful in concept, but you must understand that actually implementing such a thing will almost certainly concentrate considerable information and power in the hands of whoever is doing the allocating.

I fear this type of control is already upon us. Not that I like it.

Any good argument has many strong sides, allow me to take one opposing yours.

How right you are.

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[drkim]

call me when your injured and they want one of these to drive you to the hospital. then tell me how you think of these "autonomous" cars. i'm alive because someone put me in their car as kid and drove me to the hospital as a kid doing 80 the entire drive. believe me these things are going to kill people and the makers are going to be all "it's a flawless system"

So, some "kid doing 80 the entire drive" to the hospital seemed safer to you than calling an ambulance?
Uh, OK.

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[MightyYar]

I don't think your lifestyle is worth 30,000+ dead folks each year. Sorry. There is always the track, and I suspect driving refuges will spring up for like minded folks such as yourself.

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[demonlapin]

Where on earth do physicians staff ambulances?

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[demonlapin]

Ambulances are not staffed by fire personnel in all areas.

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[epyT-R]

He did not cause 30000 deaths. It is most likely he caused none. Safety and convenience are not the only two factors governing a lifestyle worth living. You can have your totalitarian remote controlled, spy-ridden, 'flawless' cars. These things will be a nightmare for liberty if nothing else.

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[epyT-R]

That's because in america at that time, we still had a culture where taking initiative and producing results were more important than following every rule at all times. The cops and ER vehicles can't be everywhere at once. 'trained', 'equipped' blah blah blah.. It's people like you who are so anti-risk and so dependent on authority to tell you what to do, it's amazing you even left your mother's basements.

You are the one with the higher-than-thou attitude. You're probably the kind who'd sit there and let someone bleed out rather than at least attempt a life saving tourniquet, and prevent anyone else from trying, because they weren't licensed from the state..

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[epyT-R]

Interesting points, btw! If the police caught you doing that here, you would have a hard time talking yourself out. You are simply supposed to leave it to the proper authorities.

Maybe it's about time you did something about your socialist nanny state.

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[epyT-R]

Also, why do you think these cars won't have a manual mode?

Kinda like 'cloud-enabled' software, 'offline' mode becomes a privilege that quickly becomes inaccessible to all but those on the highest rungs of the ladder. These cars will be remote controlled and tracked mercilessly. That coupled with the safety issues inherent in the crappy AI heuristics and limited sensor tech = No fucking thanks. That manual mode will be subject to crazy regulation to the point of uselessness. Might as well not have it at all.

If we can't even get something like siri to understand people when they have a cold, there's no way in hell AI is ready for intractable problems like free ranging vehicle navigation.

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[ravenlord_hun]

I'm actually trained in first-aid, thank you very much. But I also happen to know better than to disregard any risk just to satisfy the need of doing something macho.

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[ravenlord_hun]

Yeah, because operating professional services that work means turning into a granny state. Do you also want us to get rid of hospitals? REAL men cure themselves at home, afterall.

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[epyT-R]

A taxi is not equipped to handle medical emergencies any more than a private car is. The difference is that the private car and the would-be driver is here, now, when the taxi isn't, just like the EMTs. That's the point being made by people here. When it needs to happen right-the-fuck-now, there is nothing like someone getting you to the ER ASAP.

So many people today have too much expectation for the system to come to their rescue when it's pretty obvious it can never be as reliable as someone nearby to help when the need is urgent. A driver with single minded determination to get to the ER as expediently, with a slightly lower safely margin, is a better deal than some automated half-assed AI riddled with limiters put in by control-freak bureaucrats.

There are too many what-ifs. IF the car is available, IF its programming values expediency over its normal maximum-safety imperatives, IF some state mandated shutdown or traffic reroute directive doesn't trigger... No thanks. The system is better the way it is now, with the good-samaritan driver as a fallback.

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[epyT-R]

Yes, it 'could.' It won't be. There's already too much bureaucracy in life as it is, and here in the states, anyway, it's obvious officials are ready to let go of any pretense of liberty and grab as much control as technology will allow. Enough. It's my car. I drive it. Much simpler.

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[RobertLTux]

heck what a leo should do is

1 okay FOLLOW ME

2 get on the radio and state " this is unit number %number% i have a vehicle with a %code for medical emergency% that im escorting CLEAR THE ROUTE TO %hospital% from %current position%.

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[ravenlord_hun]

Hungary. We have 5 tiers of ambulances you may receive. I'm not sure about the exact tiers now, but two are only for patient transport; in two others, you have a 'paramedic' who is only trained to do the most essential life saving operations and stabilize patients; and the most serious cases are handled by paramedics who are actually physicians with an extra course taken.

Well, at least that was the system a few years ago.

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[amorsen]

Enough. It's my car. I drive it. Much simpler.

Much simpler. Much more dangerous. I will vote to not allow you to do that on roads that I share with you. Since we probably do not live in the same country, that will not be a problem for you.

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[unami]

i guess at a time where most cars are robotic, they'd have an "emergency mode" that would allow them to drive to the hospital at the top possible speed. also, other robotic cars would make way for a car in emergency mode. so it would probably be safer and faster.

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[Lumpy]

"I don't know where you are so I can't comment on your local laws. In the United States, it would likely be considered neither. Acts necessary to save human lives are neither criminally prosecutable nor subject to civil litigation."

You are not from the USA. just search online and find several stories of someone racing to the hospital and getting arrested when they arrive.
It is 100% illegal unless you have a police escort, and if you think they will not arrest or persecute you for it, then you have no idea at all what the USA is about or how citizens are treated here.

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[Lumpy]

You cant expect good service in a war zone.

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[Lumpy]

No ambulance anywhere comes with doctors.

Those are EMT's and most are far better trained than doctors are.

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[Lumpy]

Because you cant be bothered to drive on a race track? If you really liked to drive then why are you not out on a track on weekends where the real drivers and real men who can drive are?

I hope they pass laws mandating driverless cars, because most drivers cant obey the laws, cant drive safely, and need to be removed from control. My solution is to significantly increase drivers license and car ownership requirements. but that will never happen.

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[ppanon]

You're ignoring the possibility that in the case you are talking about, in a world of self-driving cars, it might be possible to have a medical emergency code signal that effectively turns your car into a siren-less ambulance where all cars pull off to the side of the road, and all signals and cars on cross streets are stopped so that your automatic car gets to barrel down the street at 90MPH.

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[Richy_T]

Government websites... The epitome of reputability at the moment...

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[Richy_T]

Yeah. But they have to wait for the police to get there to make sure no one steals the wheels off the ambulance.

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[Richy_T]

Very much true.

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[fisted]

In fact, in a world of self driving cars, I don't see why we would need a speed limit. The car can be trusted to drive within its own limits..

Yeah, it basically becomes a question of road capacity.
However, going too fast will still be bad both from a pedestrian-safety and energy investment point of view

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[fisted]

That's a nice way to deal with things.
The only problems is, it makes too much sense. The US are never going to adopt it.

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[ppanon]

And if neither of you had been there but there had been a self-driving car in the driveway that he managed to walk/crawl to, he also would have made it to the hospital faster than in an ambulance. But without a self-driving car he would be at the mercy of amulance services.

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[ppanon]

when the nearest hospital is nearly a hundred miles away and the ambulance won't even come to your home. (GPS Doesn't work is their excuse) these self driving cars are going be a godsend since you know they drive by gps and will totally work.

If the self-driving car is in your driveway, how is it going to have problems finding your home? I'm sure that the GPS is used in town because it's cheap. In cases like yours, you could have inertial recorders to track where you are. They use GPS to help determine what intersection they are at but I'm pretty sure they don't drive solely by GPS, so even occasional GPS signalling to true up position calculated from the inertial recorder should be enough. This kind of stuff is EASY to do, the hard part is the real-time 3D vision and spatial recognition of the surrounding environment.

the fact that gps devices generally are only good if you live in a dense urban area, i'll stick to a car where i'm in control.

Only-cheap phone based GPS needs the cell tower information in urban environments. I'm pretty sure the GPS that the Army uses works anywhere that has line-of-sight to satellites. You got a lot of tunnels in Kentucky hollas? Otherwise how good is your driving when you're alone and having a heart attack?

Re:Show time

[ppanon]

Because I'm pretty sure those GPS-guided cruise missiles the US Air Force uses are supposed to work in the middle of Siberia, thousands of miles from the nearest town, so that they are hard to detect and stop.

Re:Show time

[rjh]

Not only am I from the United States (born in Iowa, currently live in Virginia), but I've spent enough time in emergency rooms (pursuant to EMT work) to know this is the law. Sorry, kid. :)

Re: Show time

[iamhassi]

Toyota says their cars don't unintentionally accelerate either but now we're going to give the car computer complete control? No thanks, I will stick to my manual transmission.

Re:Show time

[operagost]

Or, more seriously, shoots at it. My wife was an EMT in a northern New Jersey city (and not even the WORST northern New Jersey city, mind you), and gangs would shoot at the ambulances if they though a rival gang member was aboard.

Re:Show time

[operagost]

Of course, the actual law has little to do with whether a police officer decides to arrest you or not.

Re:Show time

[gnasher719]

You're ignoring the possibility that in the case you are talking about, in a world of self-driving cars, it might be possible to have a medical emergency code signal that effectively turns your car into a siren-less ambulance where all cars pull off to the side of the road, and all signals and cars on cross streets are stopped so that your automatic car gets to barrel down the street at 90MPH.

On the other hand, when you try to drive away from a bank robbery, your car will drive you at safe speed to the nearest police station :-)

Re:Show time

[operagost]

Dude, the patient didn't DRIVE HIMSELF to the hospital. Any medical professional who decides to triage based on whether the patient arrived in the back seat of a private vehicle or the back of an ambulance should never work again.

Re:Show time

[gomiam]

You use "socialist" as if it was an insult. Unfortunately for you it isn't. Go whine somewhere else.

Re:Show time

[ravenlord_hun]

Uh, they do? There are four levels here, though I'm not sure how the terms translate to english. Basically they are (beware my utterly useless attempts at mirror translation):

Ambulance physician/oxyologists: doctors with 5 years of experience/training, will only respond to the most severe cases.
Ambulance physician: regular doctor with a special course undertaken, they staff the ambulances in mix with the following tier.
Ambulance officer: they get a shortened (4 year) training. Not regular doctors, but certified to do life-saving operations, apply certain types of drugs, etc.
Ambulance nurse

I mean, that's how it works here. I'm pretty sure other parts of the world do it differently.

Re:Show time

[hawguy]

Dude, the patient didn't DRIVE HIMSELF to the hospital. Any medical professional who decides to triage based on whether the patient arrived in the back seat of a private vehicle or the back of an ambulance should never work again.

I don't think you understand -- the patient in the ambulance is *already* triaged - the doctors in the ER know the condition of that patient because the EMT's in the ambulance told them. While the patient in the back seat of the car might be having a heart attack, or might have indigestion -- the ER doctors don't know how serious he is until someone examines him.

So the 15 minute ambulance ride wasn't wasted - it got the patient 15 minutes further ahead in line and the doctors know exactly what to expect when he gets there and have time to prepare.

Re:Show time

[MightyYar]

He didn't cause 30,000 deaths, but the system in place that lets him have such freedom most certainly did. Restricting _how_ you get from point A to B has nothing at all to do with liberty. Restricting your _ability_ to get from point A to B would, but we are not talking about restricting that.

Re: Show time

[MightyYar]

Look, if you think improving automotive safety is akin to restricting freedom, then I can't really tell you not to believe that - but I will tell you that I disagree. One does not have a natural right to speed around in a giant chunk of metal at 70 MPH. If you think it is worth 30,000 lives to have this deluded sense of control and liberty, then, like, that's your opinion, man. I simply disagree and will vote for people who politicians who promise to improve automotive safety.

Re:Show time

[antdude]

Ambulances are expensive. It is better to get someone else, like a local friend/relative, to drive. I had an accident, as a callow ant, when I fell off the stair and hit my forhead on the stairway's wall to get a cut and bleed like crazy. Of course my parents' friends (RIP for the husband who died recently) took me to the ER.

Re: Show time

[MickLinux]

Any chance that your drive was after a tractor accident in homer, ny?

Re: Show time

[jxander]

I wouldn't be surprised if your hobby goes the way of horseback riding, in the none too distant future.

As much as I'd like to hitch up the wagon and take a trot down to the market, that's just not an option these days.

Not only will the robots be safer and more reliable drivers, but they aren't beholden to human-centric form factors. For instance, having a giant sheet of glass directly in front of you probably isn't the safest way to travel. It might also be safer to face rear while driving ... etc etc etc. things that aren't possible with humans at the wheel.

Re:Show time

[rtb61]

I trust an international standard, audited by government and approved by motor insurance companies. That last part is the most important, if those greedy bastards feel their money is safe with the automated vehicle, why shouldn't I ;D.

Re:Show time

[adolf]

Taxis already travel at higher-than-normal speeds.

Sounding the horn/flashing lights/invoking a magic RF-based warning widget is a matter of procedure, not of automation.

Re:Show time

[ppanon]

Or you have it in manual mode but the empty Taxis will block you in and force you to a stop. The bank/police dept. will probably pick up the tab on any bodywork the taxis might require afterwards. The problem isn't the bank robbers really; if they get caught then too bad, so sad. It's the other people like whistleblowers who may anger the authorities through legitimate activities beneficial to society but detrimental to certain entrenched power groups, and who get targeted by those entrenched groups.

Re:Show time

[AK Marc]

I was awakened by a phone call. It was 2 a.m. and my sister (who lived across the street) called to say her car was "just stolen". I got in the car and drove to catch them. Only after driving 5 miles at 2-5 times the limit, did I turn around and head back home. We later found out that my 5 miles matched theirs. My sister called the police and spent 5 minutes on hold before reporting it, then called me after she hung up with the police. Had she called me first (as was my impression from the 2 a.m. wakeup call), I'd have caught them. My roomie who rode with me (to call in as I drove, if we caught them) remarked that he didn't think it possible to hit 100 mph on one particular stretch of road I did (just over 1/4 mi from turn to turn).

Was it "safe"? Nope. Was it "reasonable"? Maybe. Would it have converted "recovery of a damaged vehicle" into two arrests? Yes. And when it's "your" property, that last one may be all that's required. But then, I grew up in Texas, where if someone runs off with your stuff, it's legal to shoot them in the back with no warning. Sometimes breaking the rules is justified, either to avoid the consequences, or to accept them as part of breaking the rules, and the rule breaker would do the same thing again in the same situation.

Re:Show time

[AK Marc]

I've had the argument with others. What should the speed limit be? I argued it should be the maximum speed a car "could" go safely, with enforcement of "speeding" for speeds below the limit when appropriate. Most people think it should be set for some "average" condition, and anyone who safely exceeds the speed on the sign, should be severely punished for being safe, and if conditions are worse than the speed limit sign would allow, little or no punishment should be given for driving unsafely under the speed limit.

Speed limits don't do much to slow down people. Ask everyone you know. "If speed limits were abolished tomorrow on all roads you drive on, how would you drive?" Most everyone indicate *they* would drive the same as always, but be worried because *everyone else* would be driving like maniacs. The vast majority swear it wouldn't affect their driving, and the vast majority would vote against it because they think it would affect everyone else. I'm not sure what fallacy that falls under, but it's got to be a fallacy of some kind.

Re:Show time

[AK Marc]

Or you hit someone and your kid dies anyway waiting at the crash for an ambulance, because the one covering that area is headed to your house? Or are you going to carjack someone to finish your trip? That way you really can drive it like you stole it.

Re:Show time

[AK Marc]

The people you fear can (and do) do it all the time. They currently use plate recognition at stop light cameras, and can control all stop lights in the city in real-time. The system will take the existing state, and improve on it. Improving a bad thing is evil because it legitimizes the bad thing.

Re:Show time

[scrote-ma-hote]

I'm a doctor & volunteer some of my time as an ambulance officer. As does my wife and several of my colleagues.

Re:Show time

[Jeremi]

He didn't cause 30,000 deaths, but the system in place that lets him have such freedom most certainly did.

It's kind of a moot point, because the chances of manual driving being outlawed within our lifetime are approximately zero.

Consider this: smoking kills four times as many people per year as auto accidents do, and serves no practical purpose -- and yet after 60+ years of knowing the health costs of smoking, we have yet to make tobacco illegal.

Maybe it's conceivable that in some countries it would be politically possible to outlaw manual driving, but I'm certain that the population of the USA wouldn't stand for that.

Re:Show time

[Waccoon]

In fact, in a world of self driving cars, I don't see why we would need a speed limit.

I sure hope you're talking about the expressways, because if you're talking about regular streets, I'd be afraid of running over a child, striking an animal, hitting a pothole, or anything else that you shouldn't find on a street but may very well be there and the car isn't nimble enough to avoid.

Self-driving cars give me the willies. Even our railways and subways are not 100% computer controlled, but somehow we think that fully automating road cars is a good idea.

Re:Show time

[gknoy]

Fortunately, Detroit can easily enroll in one of those pilot programs for robotic peacekeeping units that Omni Consumer Products is working on.

Re:Show time

[Your.Master]

If there are verifiably no non-self-driving cars or pedestrians on the road, and self-driving cars are made safer, then the self-driving the speed limits can safely be *much* higher *and* traffic can be automatically routed to give people with emergencies a clear path straight to the hospital. People cheating can be treated the same way as people faking police sirens, and are at least as detectable.

Re:Show time

[Your.Master]

Yes, it 'could.' It won't be.

That's about the stupidest possible argument. You might as well say "self-driving cars will obviously designed to self-destruct randomly and eviscerate children".

This is one of the most obvious possible issues, and the non-car one has loads of exceptions and optimisations built in (traffic rules for ambulance and police sirens, provisions for police escort of non-emergency vehicles in an emergency situation, in many places the ambulances can adjust the traffic light timings, etc. etc.). It's absurd to think that this will be forgotten.

Re:Show time

[MrL0G1C]

" The car can be trusted to drive within its own limits.."

That is not the correct way to look at it, there are parts of London where it is hard enough to try and navigate lanes without having cars going at stupid speeds.

Just because the car can drive at 50mph doesn't mean it should, that would cause problems for non-computer controlled cars, bicycles, horses, pedestrians etc.

If the car is driving down a thin residential London road with a van parked and a gap behind the van, will it slow to 5mph so as to avoid running over anyone who might step out from behind the van? ( example road http://goo.gl/maps/wu4i6 ).

Re:Show time

[realityimpaired]

The GP is American. They don't put doctors in ambulances. We don't here in Canada, either, but I have lived in countries where ambulances can have a doctor, so what you're saying isn't quite as mad to my ears as it appears to be to his. :)

Re:Show time

[MightyYar]

but I'm certain that the population of the USA wouldn't stand for that.

I'm certain that you are wrong. Would you have guessed that helmets and seatbelts could be mandated? Fuel economy? I think you are underestimating the emotional power of 30,000 deaths. A few hundred per year stops wars. The slight possibility of an innocent man being executed stops capital punishment. I'm pretty sure most people won't be as cavalier about death as you are when there is a solution on hand.

Re:Show time

[Jeremi]

Would you have guessed that helmets and seatbelts could be mandated? Fuel economy?

Sure -- those things don't impose any significant constraints on anyone. Telling someone they're not allowed to drive anymore, OTOH, would likely piss them off. The ability to drive is seen as a signifier for independence and adulthood.

I'm pretty sure most people won't be as cavalier about death as you are when there is a solution on hand.

I don't recall mentioning my opinion on the topic, only how I think the rest of the population will react.

But don't take my word for it, ask your friends and family whether they would consider a ban on non-automated driving acceptable. I think their responses would be illuminating.

Re:Show time

[MightyYar]

ask your friends and family whether they would consider a ban on non-automated driving acceptable.

Most of my friends and family are old and stuck in their ways. Ask a kid. Kids don't even care if they get a drivers license anymore. The idea of driving=freedom is old fashioned, unsustainable, and destined to die.

Re:Show time

[MrResistor]

Would you have guessed that helmets and seatbelts could be mandated? Fuel economy?

Sure -- those things don't impose any significant constraints on anyone.

I'm pretty sure that imposing significant restraint on a person is the entire point of seatbelts.

Telling someone they're not allowed to drive anymore, OTOH, would likely piss them off. The ability to drive is seen as a signifier for independence and adulthood.

I don't think it's the actual driving that's important here. I think it's the ability to go where we want to go without having to rely on someone else to get us there that people actually care about. Autonomous cars satisfy that need just fine in the majority of cases.

I'm pretty sure most people won't be as cavalier about death as you are when there is a solution on hand.

I don't recall mentioning my opinion on the topic, only how I think the rest of the population will react.

But don't take my word for it, ask your friends and family whether they would consider a ban on non-automated driving acceptable. I think their responses would be illuminating.

Here, we agree. I'd be perfectly fine with a self-driving car as long as it had a manual mode. I don't have a great deal of confidence in a self-driving car's ability to properly navigate the bumpy dirt road to my mom's house, for example. But, I only make that drive a few times a year. For the other 99.9% of the driving I do, it would be awesome.

Re:Show time

[Hentes]

I would definitely trust a company that has proven the worth of their technology over a company that has started to develop autonomous cars before everybody else and has been making big claims about it for years yet still refuses to enter any independent test. Until Google shows some proof that their technology actually exist, they aren't going to convince me.

Re: Show time

[gomiam]

Because recognizing that some tasks can't be left to individual greed if you want to achieve the egalité in the "liberté, egalité, fraternité" ideal is anathema. Yes, sure.

Think about it the next time your insurance company doesn't cover your medical bills (it will come).

Re:Show time

[k2r]

Did you stop CPR when you put your father in the car?
If he didn’t need CPR when you departed - what would you have done if he needed CPR in your car on the way?
So that’s - worst case - 8 Minutes without Pulse?
Or “only” about 3 Minutes while racing to the hospital plus 1 Minute (best case) until treatment?

Seriously: If your living close to civilization do CPR while waiting AT HOME for the ambulance so they can pick up from there and TREAT the person while going to the hospital.
If you drive yourself while your father needs CPR his brain will be damaged within in the 5 Minutes you need to get to the hospital.

Driving recklessly with somebody dying in your car when you could easily have learned CPR does not make a hero or a good son.
Learn CPR as a gift to your loved ones.
And watch #theUndeading

Re:Show time

[k2r]

#theUndeading:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApmPQDAzYyM
(me, stupid)

Re:Show time

[theguyfromsaturn]

I've seen most of my friends drive (I don't drive myself so I can be a more objective 3rd party observer) and I have to say I'd welcome self driving cars any day. Most people frequently are distracted while driving. In 99.9% of the time (yes statistic made up on the fly) nothing happens because nothing out of the ordinary happened at that particular moment. Our built-in autopilot copes very well with the routine events. But change that in any significant manner and accidents are imminent. I have no doubt that self-driving cars are more effetively aware of their surroundings most of the time.

It's funny how most of my family and friends consider themselves good drivers. Having been in close calls the very few times I have been riding with each of them I find it quite scary. It's actually quite amazing that there are no more accidents on the road each day. i have sample only an infinitesimely small amount of each of those people's driving time, and the frequency of the close calls doesn't fill me with confidence about their general level of distraction. And, I repeat, ALL of them consider themselves good drivers. Food for thought.

I for one welcome our self-driving vehicles. The roads can't possibly be less safe with them.

Re:Show time

[philip.paradis]

Trained in first aid? Doing something macho? What a joke. If one of my children were dying and I knew anything resembling proper help were more than ten minutes away, you can bet your ass I'd put her in the car and do whatever was necessary to get her to the nearest hospital or clinic as fast as possible. That would likely include calling emergency services dispatch on the way and asking for an intercept on my route, but again, you can bet I'd be flying for a doctor. You can keep your "I'm trained" attitude, and that's coming from someone who served alongside Navy Corpsmen. They'd give you exactly the same response in a grievous situation: don't play doctor, do what you can to initially stabilize a life-threatening condition within reason if that means throwing someone else in the car to attempt to stem severe bleeding and/or administer CPR en route, and get to a physician as fast as possible. That last part doesn't include waiting around for an ambulance in severe situations. The one exception I would make to this would be any case involving a potential spinal injury, in which case the victim should not be moved unless the alternative is certain death from other factors.

Re:Show time

[Aereus]

I agree, to a point. I also have a manual and really enjoy driving. The problem is there are a ton of absolutely terrible drivers on the road. Both the incompetent kind, and the dangerously selfish kind. They cause a lot of accidents and/or are the source of most of a lot of horrific traffic jams/backups as they jockey lanes for perceived advantage, or can't properly merge into the highway.

A mostly automated system could virtually eliminate the idea of rush hour traffic or traffic jams, safely increase average speeds, and theoretically free up commute time for something more productive. (Depending on laws of what is or isn't allowed to be doing while on auto-pilot)

Re:Show time

[delt0r]

Failed breaks have killed people. Tire blowouts have killed people. Idiots doing 80mph in a 40 area have killed people. What makes your life more important than anyone eles?

Re:Show time

[delt0r]

Exactly how is this different from number plate cameras, which already are a "nightmare for liberty".

Re:Show time

[intermodal]

I've driven fire trucks and ambulances before. I can guarantee you right now that an autonomous ambulance is a horrible idea. Or any other emergency vehicle. But autonomous vehicles that actually yield to emergency vehicles would indeed save a lot of lives. Unpredictable reactions to lights and sirens were a constant danger.

Re:Show time

[zmollusc]

If we do away with speed limits, we will have to create a whole new set of phoney baloney jobs for the people currently devising/impementing/enforcing speed limits, otherwise we would have to put billions of dollars through a wood chipper every year.

Re:Show time

[jhumkey]

Maybe France too . . . didn't they mention that an actual Dr. came standard with the ambulance when Princess Diana's time was up?

Not so in the U.S.A. (Don't get me wrong . . . EMS and ALS is WAY better than just hoping "Bubba" can keep them alive on the trip to the hospital . . . ).
But some countries do staff "Doctors" in ambulances.

Re:Show time

[snadrus]

Agreed, I'd much rather an autonomous car be driving us to the hospital/emergency-care while the would-be driver can be on the phone preparing the destination for their arrival.

Re:Show time

[cayenne8]

Restricting _how_ you get from point A to B has nothing at all to do with liberty.

I think by definition it does....my liberty of how I wish to get from point A to point B.

Re:Show time

[MightyYar]

That's pretty semantic. Your _how_ is already restricted. You have to be licensed, your car has to meet certain safety and emissions standards, and it has to be of a certain class (rocket sleds are out, for instance). An auto-driver as a requirement is not fundamentally different.

At what speed?

[Big Smirk]

Autonomous cars will more than likely drive at exactly the speed limit. So on that stretch of highway you were used to doing 65mph in a 55 zone... well that slow car (hopefully in the right lane) will be the Google one.

I guess that's when the human takes over?

Re:At what speed?

[beelsebob]

Alternatively... you could just drive within the speed limit?

Re:At what speed?

[mbone]

I can see this as having a raft of unanticipated consequences.

Suppose that driverless cars never broke the speed limit & other traffic laws, except in an emergency. Then, revenue from traffic tickets would disappear. Now, many police departments rely on those revenues. So, will they shrink, or find some other source of revenue? (I suspect the latter, and worry what that might be.) And, both the safety and the revenue desire to keep speed limits low will largely disappear, so many speed limits are likely to rise. Likewise, low speed limits are also used to keep people out of residential areas, and that could be accomplished by setting navigation preferences in the autodriver's GPS system, so those could rise too.

And, of course, if you want to have a mistress, she had better be within walking distance, or accessible by public transportation, lest Google start sending your wife ads for Private Investigators and Divorce Attorneys ...

Re:At what speed?

[Aguazul2]

Maybe if everyone's cars drive at exactly the speed limit, then people will realize how ridiculous some of them are and get them changed.

Re:At what speed?

[darkHanzz]

Wouldn't that be cheating?

Re:At what speed?

[SecurityGuy]

Yup, I agree. I can drive the speed limit to work and get there in 30 minutes, or speed and get there in 25. To really cut a lot of time off, you have to speed A LOT. I'd rather snooze for 30 than get there 5 minutes earlier.

I really want driverless cars. Enforcement will outright go away when nothing ever speeds. Speed limits will also go up, so you won't be complaining that you speed and do 74, you'll just be legally doing 75 or more.

Re:At what speed?

[JaredOfEuropa]

I think we'll see some high-speed lanes (like diamond lanes) for robo-drivers only. They can do 160km/h safely, bumper to bumper. When there are enough robo-cars, the main reason to impose a speed limit at all is noise or environmental concerns

Re:At what speed?

[StripedCow]

Never underestimate the creativity of the government when it comes to taxes.

Re:At what speed?

[pixelpusher220]

Haha. Seriously, good one. NOBODY drives the posted limit on interstates. Try it sometime and you'll be passed left and right. 5-9 mph over is likely the reasonable average.

Both your spedometer and the radar guns have margins of error and the cops simply aren't going to bother with a ticket that could be easily argued away and margins of error. Less the 5 mph over is simply never going to happen unless there are significantly extenuating circumstances. Certainly not as a primary offense.

Re:At what speed?

[mcgrew]

If I'm the human (well, mostly human) I won't take over. When I drive to St Louis I usually do 3mph under the limit. It's usually a stress-free drive while everyone else on the road is fighting each other. I did the math and it really doesn't get me there fast enough to matter If I do 5 over. In an autonomous car that's safer than me driving I could watch the scenery (well, mostly corn) or read.

Re:At what speed?

[ShanghaiBill]

Autonomous cars will more than likely drive at exactly the speed limit.

Most cars already have an automated system to control speed. It is called "cruise control". It does not cause cars to drive exactly the speed limit. Instead, it does what a human tells it to do, including exceeding the limit.

Re:At what speed?

[ravenlord_hun]

If you would see two robo-cars driving 160km/h bumper to bumper, you should fill a bug report asap. Just because an AI drives them, the cars don't magically become something else than a 1.5-2 ton steel cube barelling down at dangerous speeds.

I would imagine the self-driven cars would keep enough distance between each other to allow a full to stop in case of emergency, or bring the car to a slow speed where there is low risk of injury (less than 30km/h).

So, if anything, I would expect that following distances between cars would actually increase. Human drivers are notoriously bad at that - thinking they can stop in 20m even when they are speeding along.

Re:At what speed?

[TubeSteak]

They can do 160km/h safely, bumper to bumper.

This makes a lot of assumptions about the level of maintenance that people put into their cars.
And at the same time, a lot of assumptions about the quality of work that mechanics put into fixing cars.

This should provide some enlightenment: http://www.reddit.com/r/Justrolledintotheshop
If you don't understand what you're seeing, there's usually an explanation in the comments.

Re:At what speed?

[Anonymous Coward]

road car capacity ~ cars/meter / speed.

increased following distance means the road will clog up sooner.
if that really is how it is going to work, robocars are a nonstarter.

Re:At what speed?

[beelsebob]

Haha. Seriously, good one. NOBODY drives the posted limit on interstates. Try it sometime and you'll be passed left and right. 5-9 mph over is likely the reasonable average.

Actually, I drive at the posted speed limit on interstates. And no, I don't find myself passed left and right all the time. Stop trying to justify your speeding.

Re:At what speed?

[maxwell demon]

(I suspect the latter, and worry what that might be.)

A tax on self-driving cars? Because ... well, they'll find a reason.

Re:At what speed?

[beelsebob]

Better yet, if all (or even most) cars become autonomous, then you stop getting sudden breaking scenarios, and stop getting caterpillar traffic jams. The fuel saving in not decelerating and accelerating there alone is huge.

Re:At what speed?

[nanospook]

So if the autonomous car is surrounded by vehicles going 65, will the algorithm maintain a safe speed in relation to the other vehicles or insist on obeying the law? I would think it would be case #1, otherwise, you increase the chances of a collision law or no law..

Re:At what speed?

[beelsebob]

No, they would decrease, but not because the cars have instantaneous reactions, instead, because the cars would communicate with each other, so that none of them has to react to the one in front breaking.

Re:At what speed?

[maxwell demon]

The required distance between two cars is mainly for the reaction time. Assuming the reaction time for autonomous cars is close to zero, so can be the distance.

Re:At what speed?

[T-Bucket]

You are either lying, or SPECTACULARLY unobservant.

Re:At what speed?

[Altrag]

More to the point, it makes a lot of assumptions about the car's computer being able to identify and predict _everything_. If a deer jumps out in front of the lead car that for whatever reason didn't register on camera half a mile back, that lead car is likely to hit it. And if they're running bumper-to-bumper, all of the cars behind the lead will in turn pile up.

160km/h safely works fine when the lead car can predict a stopping point and notify the cars behind it that its time to hit the brakes, but the best written and most well maintained computerized vehicle in the world isn't going to be able to predict 100% of everything so your only option is to leave enough spacing to compensate.

Re:At what speed?

[Aqualung812]

Try it sometime and you'll be passed left and right.

Only if you're that asshole who is in the left lane when not passing...

Re:At what speed?

[beelsebob]

No, what most people with that sentiment are missing is that while the fast lane generally is doing 5-10 above, the rest of the freeway is generally around the speed limit. Driving at the speed limit on a freeway is a remarkably relaxing experience compared to fighting with everyone trying to gain 20 seconds on their journey by speeding.

Re:At what speed?

[ravenlord_hun]

That only works if the breaking is planned. There are also things that we call "unplanned instantenous stop", which is something like blowing a tire, or a foreign object appearing in front of you that forces a stop (like slamming into some animal/debris that appears in front you). In that case, the car following yours needs to have enough space to apply some breaking. Failure to do so causes those funny car pile-ups: everyone in the conga line believing they will have time to stop... when they, in fact, don't.

If Google takes his liability in accidents seriously, they will probably want to avoid having to pay for thrashing 30-40 cars in a single pile-up accident. ;)

Re:At what speed?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

And no crashes on intersections. Time windows negotiated in advance. Smooth traffic everywhere. There are so many things automation could handle better than humans that it's not even funny.

Re:At what speed?

[ShooterNeo]

The first car cannot avoid the deer, true, but this condition will not cause a pileup.

Think about the physics. The inelastic collision between the deer and the car will marginally slow the front car down, true, but only slightly. (since a car weighs 2000 kgs and a deer weighs less than 100, for an estimate). So the combined car-deer vehicle will be going only slightly slower.

Ok, so now the car that is about to hit the deer applies maximum braking force. It begins to decelerate at a rate limited by friction between ground and car. This friction is independent of the mass of the car, for reasons I can't fit into here.

The moment it hits the brakes, the car behind it will see the distance between the two begin to decrease. They are "bumper to bumper", or within 1 meter of each other. The car behind will apply maximum braking force the very moment a single cycle of it's control loop happens (probably 1/1000 or a second or so).

The car behind that will do the same, and so on.

As long as no car in the pack has significantly better brakes than the other cars, no one will hit anyone. Even if a particular car does have better brakes, the collision will only do slight damage, as the relative velocities will be low.

Contrast this to what can happen in a real highway, where a car in front can have time to decelerate to a stop in some cases, and the cars behind may be driven by a distracted driver who does not see the stopped vehicle in time. The collision happens at highway speeds between the trailing car and the stopped car. This, in some cases, will be fatal.

Re:At what speed?

[ShanghaiBill]

Now, many police departments rely on those revenues. So, will they shrink, or find some other source of revenue?

As cars become automated, and more states follow Colorado and Washington in legalizing drugs, we are going to need far fewer police officers. Police numbers should be able to be reduced by at least half.

Re:At what speed?

[Guppy06]

Try it sometime and you'll be passed left and right.

So?

It sounds like autonomous cars are safer because they're not so concerned with "winning."

Re:At what speed?

[demonlapin]

Speeding doesn't save much time on commuting, but if you're making a thousand-mile trip it adds up fast. Driving 75 instead of 65 shaves almost two hours off that trip.

Re:At what speed?

[ravenlord_hun]

Well, that's only if safety IS a major point, of course.

Re:At what speed?

[TMB]

That's valid if you're driving for 30 minutes. Several times a month, I do an 11.5 hour drive in one day. There the extra 10mph saves me 1.5 hours, which is well worth it!

Re:At what speed?

[joe_frisch]

Well the typical american drives something like 300 hours / year. My guess is that the typical american drives ~10% over the speed limit. (60 in a 55 zone, 28 in a 25 zone etc) - it might be more like 20% but take 10% for now. That's 30 hours / year saved by speeding. With say 150 million drivers, we are talking around 5 billion hours / year:

Call it $50B/year in lost productivity.
500,000 man-years / year, corresponding to 5000 man-lives/year.

Lots of assumptions and estimates here of course,but this gives a sense of the scale.

Re:At what speed?

[0123456]

No, they would decrease, but not because the cars have instantaneous reactions, instead, because the cars would communicate with each other, so that none of them has to react to the one in front breaking.

Yeah, because it's not like a car ever has a mechanical problem or runs into something unexpectedly (like a bad guy dropping a concrete block off a bridge).

Re:At what speed?

[beelsebob]

The biggest incorrect assumption here is that going 10% faster will get you there 10% sooner. Not only is the maths wrong, but it ignores that the actual result is that it gets you to the back of the queue at the traffic lights 10% sooner, and through the lights at the exact same time. Even on a freeway generally all it does is gets you to the back of the queue of slow moving cars slightly sooner, whereupon you get out of the queue at basically the exact same time.

Re:At what speed?

[seven of five]

So what are states and towns supposed to do to plug the revenue hole once automated driving kills their ticket funds?

Re:At what speed?

[Libertarian001]

If those municipalities are relying on traffic tickets for revenue then they're doing it wrong. Citations and fines for traffic infractions are supposed to discourage bad driving, not raise money for the gov't.

Re:At what speed?

[ravenlord_hun]

Well, the law here states you "must be able to safely stop in any reasonable and unexpected situation". If the vehicle you follow comes to an abrupt and immediate stop (for whatever reason) and you slam into it, you are at fault. Keeping reaction time distance would be enough until a certain speed (I think about 70km/h), but afterwards you can't guarantee you could safely stop if the car you trail halted abruptly.

Re:At what speed?

[ulatekh]

I drive at the posted speed limit on interstates. And no, I don't find myself passed left and right all the time.

You obviously don't live within two hundred miles of Los Angeles.

Re:At what speed?

[ulatekh]

Citations and fines for traffic infractions are supposed to discourage bad driving, not raise money for the gov't.

You must be new here.

Re:At what speed?

[ATMAvatar]

And with a driverless car, you could spend that 11.5 hours doing something else. Perhaps you start the drive earlier and sleep most of the way. You would save far more time than the 1.5 hours.

Re:At what speed?

[amorsen]

In that case, the car following yours needs to have enough space to apply some breaking.

You only have to brake as well as the car you were following if you apply the brakes simultaneously. Simply reacting to LED brake lights should get the reaction time of an automated system well below 1 ms.

Yes, that means that if a meteor falls from the sky, more than one car will hit it, because the first car will be slowed down by the impact way faster than the brakes could do otherwise. However, the only cars that will get involved in the accident are the cars which would have hit the object anyway, if the road ahead of them had been clear of traffic.

Re:At what speed?

[CrimsonAvenger]

As cars become automated, and more states follow Colorado and Washington in legalizing drugs, we are going to need far fewer police officers. Police numbers should be able to be reduced by at least half.

That's so cute!

You actually believe an existing bureaucracy (personal fief) will get SMALLER???

No, they'll just find some new laws you can break that they can target easily. Even if they have to lobby to get them written....

Re:At what speed?

[TheLink]

If you lane change rapidly so that you can go fast it may cause other drivers to brake suddenly. That can create a "traffic wave jam" that persists till the rush hour is over or till the "traffic wave" moves to a light/empty traffic are before then.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_wave

That said you don't have to speed to cause other drivers to brake suddenly.

Re:At what speed?

[ravenlord_hun]

I think wild animals or large pieces debris on the road might be more common than meteors, though. Hell, I've seen cinderblocks fall off from trucks. It's not COMMON thank god, but it happens.

Re:At what speed?

[Immerman]

Stop paying traffic cops?

Re:At what speed?

[TheLink]

If an autonomous car was driving for 13 hours you could sleep and do other things. Assuming it's safer that'll be even more worth it,

Unless you enjoy driving that much and so prefer to drive for 11.5 hours.

Re:At what speed?

[ColdWetDog]

No, the biggest incorrect assumption is that lost time = lost productivity. All that would happen is joe's scenario is you would get home 2 minutes earlier so you could watch the Kardishan's or post on Slashdot or whatever useless thing you were planning on doing.

Joe's scenario isn't doing anyone any favors....

Re:At what speed?

[Immerman]

A tire blowout is extremely unlikely to bring you to a stop faster than braking hard on a paved road, in fact that blown out tire probably has less grip than the remaining ones to slow you down. Meanwhile your car can be notifying *all* the cars behind you of an accident before you've fully registered that there's a problem, allowing them to slow down gracefully. Worst case scenario with no networking the car behind you can start braking 1/8 of a second sooner than a perfectly alert human is physically capable of, and once you're a few cars back that's added up to such a huge advance warning that pileups will be extraordinarily rare.

As for obstacles in the road, that mostly only applies to the first car in a train, so you stay far enough behind them to stop safely when they hit an invisible brick wall. The third guy in the line has much less to worry about - the car in front of him is passing through space that was occupied by the first guy only seconds before - there's very few obstacles that are going to manifest that suddenly. Lost cargo is going to start out traveling at car speeds and slow down, providing plenty of warning. And deer, etc. are (I assume) considerably less likely to jump out into the *middle* of a car train.

Re:At what speed?

[firewrought]

Autonomous cars will more than likely drive at exactly the speed limit.

On the plus side, you'll be able to use that time reading, eating, or working on a laptop (assuming it's fully-autonomous and not some sort of supervised thing). The potential for road trips is awesome: get off work Friday night, pack your bags, and depart before midnight... you can fall asleep and wake up at your destination 8 hour later and have--essentially--an extra day of vacation to work with. Even the refueling (whether gas or electric) will be automatic someday.

Re:At what speed?

[amorsen]

Few wild animals are capable of slowing a car faster than what brakes can do. It is typically not the deceleration itself which kills or injures when animals are hit, it is the deformation of the car or the car going off the road. In the vast majority of cases, a car with perfect reactions following behind with even a few meters distance should be able to safely stop.

There may be exceptions if you strike a male moose or an elephant or something else with a weight beyond 500kg. It should be relatively easy to add extra distance when traveling on roads where those are a concern.

Large pieces of debris are a concern, but it is the job of the lead car to avoid those. The lead car has to drive slowly enough that it will never strike stationary objects.

Re:At what speed?

[ColdWetDog]

As cars become automated, and more states follow Colorado and Washington in legalizing drugs,

Stoned autonomous cars?

This is not the future I signed up for.

Re:At what speed?

[drkim]

Autonomous cars will more than likely drive at exactly the speed limit.

Probably: yes... ...and no.
There could be "Auto-Drive Only" lanes (like HOV lanes now) that have a speed limit of 150 or 200 MPH.
If the lane was all auto-drive cars, that were all doing real-time information networking with each other, there's no reason they couldn't run as fast as the vehicle would allow.

Re:At what speed?

[Zenin]

This makes a lot of assumptions about the level of maintenance that people put into their cars.

Electric cars require only a fraction of the maintenance of traditional cars.

Also it's trivial for the car and road to track the car's maintenance schedule and simply refuse an ill-maintained car access to the express lane.

Technologically it's a non-problem.

Re:At what speed?

[Immerman]

I think that should be the deceleration is independent of vehicle mass - the friction forces will scale linearly with the downward force on the car (weight + aerodynamics), but inertia scales linearly with weight, so the net deceleration of more mass by more friction is unchanged, Assuming of course that the braking system is capable of pushing the limits of the tire-road friction.

Other than that a pretty good analysis, though you overlooked the possibility of, for example, rocks that have fallen into the roadway around a blind curve or hidden by a dip in the road - a rock wedged between cars frame and a road irregularity road can impart some pretty tremendous forces, as can a large boulder, downed tree, etc. Still, those threats can be largely dealt with by inserting extra space just behind the lead car - it's extremely unlikely that the second or later cars will encounter unexpected obstacles, and so long as there is adequate braking distance between the first and second drivers (as in I can stop before reaching the location the first driver is currently occupying) you should be able to virtually eliminate pileups.

Even the guy with bad brakes can be partially accounted for given a responsive network - he starts closing on the guy in front of him and the message gets passed forward allowing those cars in front who have the option of doing so safely to get out of the lane and allow him adequate stopping distance. Or better still the cars all perform routine self-analysis and maintain sufficient distance to brake safely presuming the car in front of them brakes at the full industry-standard emergency braking rate. Wouldn't take much - just take your car out once a month to the county test track and let it run a couple laps to test it's safety limits. Riding along will be the most exciting thing Aunt Edna's done all month.

Re:At what speed?

[drkim]

revenue from traffic tickets would disappear. Now, many police departments rely on those revenues. So, will they shrink, or find some other source of revenue?

Conversely, city costs would shrink. There is a good deal of tax and ticket revenue money that goes toward special police traffic units, driver instruction, court costs, emergency services for accidents, highway signage, etc. that would decrease dramatically.

It's possible that auto-drive cars could actually save the city costs.

Re:At what speed?

[Behrooz]

Human drivers are bad at following safely because their reaction times are:

- Subjectively difficult to estimate accurately.
- Wildly variant from moment to moment dependent on the situation.

People are bad at realizing how fast they can respond. People are easily distracted, and are not capable of continuous full attention to more than a small fraction of their visual field even under ideal conditions. If you're looking at the radio to change the station, you are not physically capable of perceiving many changes in the peripheral view you have of the road, no matter how your brain fools you into thinking "Oh, I can still see everything", when your actual reaction time has just jumped by an order of magnitude.

Robotic reaction times are easy to measure objectively, and are situationally invariant. The the only relevant factors in following distance are the expected stopping distance at speed in the current conditions, and avoiding situations where the vehicle could potentially be unable to avoid a collision if whatever it is following stopped at maximum decelleration. This is EASY compared to most of the problems involved in navigating an unpredictable and changeable landscape.

I'd be much happier with a robot car following me than any human driver, the Stig included. It doesn't take a lot of distance to be safe with 50ms reaction time and rangefinders that are capable of discerning relative acceleration on a millisecond basis to form decisions with.

Re:At what speed?

[maxwell demon]

You forget that the car in front of you cannot stop any more abruptly than you can. Note that at 130 km/h, the complete halting way is roughly 210 meters; I don't think it would even possible to keep that distance without sooner or later another car going in between.

Actually you don't keep exactly reaction time distance but some more because not all cars break exactly the same (nor are reaction times always the same), but then, "bumper to bumper" was almost certainly also not meant literally.

Re:At what speed?

[Zenin]

If all the robo-cars were completely autonomous, sure. But from an engineering perspective that would be an incredibly stupid design.

With all the robo-cars able to communicate and respond collectively both with each other and the road itself, nearly everything that requires us to limit speeds vanishes. Not being able to see more than a car or two ahead, not being able to see around turns, not knowing the maintenance state of the cars ahead (bald tires, etc), not knowing the skill, distraction, or intoxication level of the drivers ahead, and of course the naturally low reaction time of the average human.

The nano-second one of those robo-cars blows a tire every single car behind them for miles will take emergency action. Be it slamming on the breaks, all swerving out of the lane, etc, or a mix of actions. All in perfect unison.

Re:At what speed?

[drkim]

The first car cannot avoid the deer, true, but this condition will not cause a pileup...

Actually, the situation is safer than that:

The moment it hits the brakes it transmit an emergency network STOP code to cars behind it. They are "bumper to bumper", or within 1 meter of each other. Every car in the chain behind will apply maximum braking force the very moment it receives the STOP code, bringing the entire chain of cars to a smooth halt.

Re:At what speed?

[Dr. Spork]

I think that more likely, the cops will be pulled off the highways and into office jobs. They will probably be working hard to make sure that all the poor people who don't have autonomous cars get a ticket every time they drive under a camera while slightly above the speed limit. Or here's a creative idea: They offer you an insurance discount if you install cameras on your car to monitor traffic around you, and to automatically report everyone who blows by you going well over the speed limit. Just a simple sequence of photos with accurate geotags, timestamps and velocity metadata could establish the speed of a passing car to a small margin of error. My point is that there are lots of drivers who are breaking the law now, and not getting tickets. They are the obvious targets for future enforcement. In that future world, I will most certainly not want to be doing my own driving.

Re:At what speed?

[bmimatt]

Assuming $2k fine per DUI conviction, CA would have to make up for about $30 million.  That's under $2 per resident per year.
http://www.statisticbrain.com/number-of-dui-arrests-per-state/

Re:At what speed?

[DarkOx]

because small animals and children not under robotic controll never run into streets; nor do large animals moose, deer, etc for that matter.

I am sure robotic cars can go somewhat faster and still offer better saftey than human drivers because of better reaction times, but sometimes in the real world you will still need to stop that 2 tons of steel pretty quick and there are limits to have fast that can be effected, namely you only have some much force of friction between the wheels and the road.

Re:At what speed?

[Sardaukar86]

Oh, use your brain before rolling out the sarcasm will you? Are you seriously suggesting that Google's engineers never considered the idea of an unexpected situation arising?

These machines effectively 'see' the world in slow-motion and have a small eternity to observe, process and act. A mechanical failure (or a dropped brick) is much the same sort of problem as having to contend with a Human in another car doing something stupid.

Data-sharing will almost certainly be a feature of autonomous vehicles when they become commercially available. There's no reason to believe a Human driver would handle the brick or mechanical failure situation any better, especially if the machine gets advance warning of a problem.

Re:At what speed?

[ravenlord_hun]

Oh, it can stop very abruptly. By hitting something else. Another car, obstacle, etc.
And to be fair, that's more of a guideline. Most people can't judge 210m even roughly while they are driving; I most certainly can't. But, you are supposed to leave huge gaps there for good reasons. I'm not sure I'd be comfortable if my self-driving car was fine keeping a 3m distance and that paremeter couldn't be changed.

Re:At what speed?

[ravenlord_hun]

They should be completely autonomous. If they are not, you just opened up the system for malicious input. This isn't like hacking someone's radio through a bluetooth connection that was open; this is directly interacting with the actual AI of the car. And as seen with Android, even Google cannot be trusted to not make security holes - that's impossible. Would you participate in this arms warfare game with your car, too?

Re:At what speed?

[Altrag]

Could replace it with a 300kg moose if you like and still run into the same problem. If you're going highway speeds (100km/h say) with a gap of only 1m, you have 0.036 seconds to react to whatever the car in front of you is doing. That's certainly plenty of time for the computers to calculate what they need to do but if the lead car suddenly gets slowed down by the force of impact to say 90km/h, is the braking of the car behind it going to be able to detect and adjust for that 10km/h within the given 0.036s? Seems like a heck of a speed decrease for a car's braking system but I don't know all of the equations involved so maybe it is..

The rocks the guy below mentioned (or a tree or something) are also a possibility, but one would hope that they'd only fall under this scenario if you happened to be driving through right as a rock slide started or the tree fell. I would hope that if the situation was pre-existing, the autonomous system in the lead car would notice and do something about it (stop and/or avoid) long before it fell under the scenario being described.

I agree though that overall, the autonomous system is likely to do better at a 1m gap between cars than humans would. I'm just not convinced that "better" is going to be good enough to justify tailgating that close in the first place.

And not only that, but the current gapping recommendations (2-4s depending on weather and road conditions) includes a fair bit of time for a human to notice, process and react to a problem -- most of that time could probably be done away with so the gapping could theoretically decrease by quite a bit and retain current safety standards if the computer program is only just as good as a human (but much faster.)

Re:At what speed?

[russotto]

The biggest incorrect assumption here is that going 10% faster will get you there 10% sooner. Not only is the maths wrong, but it ignores that the actual result is that it gets you to the back of the queue at the traffic lights 10% sooner, and through the lights at the exact same time. Even on a freeway generally all it does is gets you to the back of the queue of slow moving cars slightly sooner, whereupon you get out of the queue at basically the exact same time.

Currently this is +4 insightful, but should be -1 Wrong. Driving faster than the speed limit does indeed reduce time taken to travel a given distance, compared to driving at the limit. I've driven trips where I've averaged greater than 65mph -- including stops -- on mostly 55mph roads.

On roads with traffic lights, it's more variable; you might gain nothing (back of the same line), or you might gain a lot (get a series of yellows where you would have gotten many reds).

On the highway, if traffic isn't too heavy, driving faster than the speed of traffic (which in the US is generally higher than the speed limit already) tends to result in your driving relatively fast through gaps between packs of traffic, and more slowly trying to move through the packs.

Re:At what speed?

[Lumpy]

If you think laws will go away, then you are silly. No revenue from speeding, Oh look texting, while in the drivers seat of that auto drive car... bingo another revenue stream!

Re:At what speed?

[Lumpy]

In texas they can take all your cash on a traffic stop due to how drug laws are worded. Yes the cop has a legal right to mug you.

Re:At what speed?

[Lumpy]

Blows a tire? who in their right mind will have air tires on their auto drive car? airless tires are already here.

Re:At what speed?

[joe_frisch]

Yes, it depends on how you value time spent in your car vs time doing other things. OTOH a lot of people seem to want to get out of their cars quickly based on the number of people who exceed the posted speed limit when traffic conditions permit.

Time vs cost is always a tradeoff. Most cars get better mileage if they travel more slowly, and certainly would if they were optimized for lower speed. We could reduce maximum speeds to 45mph and save a lot of gas / cost.

Re:At what speed?

[fisted]

I usually do 3mph under the limit. [...] everyone else on the road is fighting each other

You're slowing down everyone else, and are part of the reason why 'everyone else' around you is fighting.
It's stress-free for you, but you're causing additional stress to others.
I am looking forward to the moment crappy drivers like you get replaced by machines.

Re:At what speed?

[Prof.Phreak]

Bumper to bumper increases road utility quite a bit... as well as fuel efficiency. This could have a HUGE impact on some areas of the country. Imagine existing 2 lane highways capable of carrying 6-10x as many cars, at perhaps 1.5x the current speed. That's quite a bit of savings in road construction and maintenance, etc.

Re:At what speed?

[gnasher719]

If you would see two robo-cars driving 160km/h bumper to bumper, you should fill a bug report asap. Just because an AI drives them, the cars don't magically become something else than a 1.5-2 ton steel cube barelling down at dangerous speeds.

Wrong. The two cars would become one car. Accelerate together, brake together. Even in the worst case, unexpected brake failure in the second car, there would be no speed difference. You'd probably design the bumper to be strong and flexible enough to survive the braking power of the front car.

Re:At what speed?

[mcgrew]

Crappy driver? You're breaking the law, not me. You and your impatience and wanting to make the highway look like the Indy 500 are the crappy driver. It isn't a fucking road race and I refure to join your herd. I'm not driving in the left lane, just go around me, asshole.

Yes, you're an asshole for driving like that and calling me out for obeying the law. And you're too fucking stupid to realize that.

Re:At what speed?

[Richy_T]

He drives in the left lane. He only finds himself passed on the right.

Re:At what speed?

[Richy_T]

There is no fast lane. It is the passing lane or lanes. I have tried going the speed limit, I got fed up having trucks come up on me 10mph faster, overtaking then slowing down going up hills. Also getting boxed in by people on cruise control is no picnic.

Re:At what speed?

[Chuckstar]

The rear cars have to have some way to know to brake with maximum force immediately. Without that, the feedback loop will be too slow and they will close that 1m gap all too quickly. Or the alternative is for the autonomous car to slam on the brakes every time the car in front slows even a little bit.

Relying on wireless communications for that is a recipe for disaster, as wireless is simply not reliable enough. (You wanna bet your life that a WiFi, Bluetooth or similar connection doesn't get dropped at the wrong moment? I don't.)

Furthermore, if the front car swerves, instead of brakes, when it detects the deer, then a car following closely behind could be in a world of trouble, not have detected the deer due to the intervening car blocking the view.

You can't just say "fast computers" and suddenly ignore physical realities.

Re:At what speed?

[Richy_T]

True for timed lights. It's an entirely different game with sensor lights however. I know lights where arriving a second earlier at the red will make the difference between whether you get an arrow this cycle or not. Also ones where dawdling and leaving too big a gap with the car in front will mean that those behind you get inconvenienced rather than being able to follow on through.

Re:At what speed?

[artor3]

Police departments don't rely on ticket revenue. They don't keep that money. It goes to the city. The city then pays for the police. That's a very important distinction.

If the cops collected the money for themselves directly, they would undoubtedly find other fines to levy in order to keep their jobs. But since it's the city that collects the money, they might choose to make up for the lost income by laying off some of the (no longer needed) officers, not to mention traffic court judges and attorneys.

Re:At what speed?

[KingMotley]

Assuming you aren't lying, you must live in Montana. Is there any other cars on the road with you?

Re:At what speed?

[KingMotley]

Of course, part of the time, you make the light that you wouldn't have otherwise, saving you a few minutes each time.

Re:At what speed?

[KingMotley]

And courts, judges, car impounds, parking ticket maids, lawyers, prosecutors, public defenders, court room clerks, all the people who have to build and maintain the increased courthouse sizes, and on and on...

Re:At what speed?

[beelsebob]

Interesting, TIL, the bay area isn't important, interesting or reasonably populated.

Re:At what speed?

[beelsebob]

And what makes you think that a computer is incapable of taking this into account?

Re:At what speed?

[ShooterNeo]

This isn't how the math works. If the vehicle in front of you is applying maximum braking force, you can see it immediately - even if their rear bumper has moved on a few centimeters.

As for wireless communications : think of all the problems this introduces, versus having each car use their own sensor packages.

I'm not completely averse to the wireless idea, but I think the system should be designed to work reliably if wireless is jammed or hacked. It would not be difficult for someone to make a "troll lol lol stop" gadget that they could use to shutdown traffic at will if wireless worked the way you want it to.

Re:At what speed?

[SnowZero]

If you assume a linear traction-limited model[1], information only needs to be sent backwards. Specifically:
(a) current velocity
(b) current acceleration/deceleration.
(c) maximum deceleration.

The immediately following car just needs to measure the distance[2], and know its own state and parameters. Then it can calculate how much space it needs to stop if the car in front immediately starts breaking at the maximum rate. You can incorporate communication & reaction delays easily too, as well as any bounded noise on the state variables. This would work for an arbitrarily long chain of cars, with each car just needing to monitor the one in front of it. It even works for autonomous cars following human-driven cars[3].

I used to be a robotics researcher, with a focus on high performance navigation. The lane-free full 2D generalization of the problem above was a chapter in my thesis (from 2007).

[1] or just make sure your actual model fits within a conservative linear envelope.
[2] obviously you can estimate a&b, but it potentially introduces additional delay to get the noise down, in particular for acceleration since that is second order.
[3] this is an ideal case *IF* that driver is paying attention, since the human driver has a better perception system.

Re:At what speed?

[drkim]

And you think that they will what?.. put it to good use? No they will use it as a stimulus to further automate things and make up the lost revenue of tickets by investing in lawyers to make up more BS laws.

Could be. That depends on the leaders we elect.

My point was only that auto-drive car will have positive financial impact that could out weigh the negative.

Re:At what speed?

[ppanon]

On the other hand, part of the reason that hour+ matters so much is because your time is being wasted controlling an automobile instead of doing something productive with your time. With an AI is doing the driving, if you're reading, finishing off or prepping for that presentation, or playing a game of PunchBuggy/OhHell/Risk with the kids then you may not care as much if it takes an extra hour.

Re:At what speed?

[AK Marc]

You don't drive much. I drove from Dallas to Chicago regularly for a while, and 85 in a 70 on the Indian Nation Turnpike would make you the slowest car on the road. One time I was in the left lane of Central Expressway in Dallas, going 70+ in a 55 (with traffic), and the police car turned on his lights, and where he was, he had to pull directly into traffic with no speed-up area, and he couldn't get into traffic without causing a crash. Traffic was bumper to bumper at 70+ in a 55. I was a little faster than those around me, so I guessed he was trying to get me, which is why he started out when he did. I never saw him pull out.

And I measured my 10 mile commute over a year. "fighting for 20 seconds" cut over 25% off my travel time. Just because you are willing to throw away 25% of your time as worthless doesn't mean everyone else should be held to your standard and your standard alone.

You are more like the road-hypnotized fools that drive straight off a curve to their deaths with their eyes open. "I'm going slow, so I have to be safe." *crash*

Re:At what speed?

[AK Marc]

What, never been passed on the shoulder?

Re:At what speed?

[zippthorne]

If you're passed on the right, you were in the wrong lane....

Re:At what speed?

[AK Marc]

The time to communicate the information to the car behind should be sub-millisecond. Let's call it 5ms. At 160 km/s, that's about 2 m.

How can you tell a bad driver? They believe in magic. Houdini is there, on the side of the road, magically making things appear:

(like slamming into some animal/debris that appears in front you)

If you weren't an idiot, you'd realize that nothing "appears" on a road. Even a friend that was hit by a flying wheel saw it dropping from above, having been liberated from a car on the other side of the freeway in a crash ahead on the other side.

Re:At what speed?

[AK Marc]

Any block liftable by a human for throwing over a bridge is "safe" to hit (not safe as in no vehicle damage, but safe as in no risk of passenger damage Yes, hitting a 8"x8"x16" cinderblock is "trivial" for all cars for safety of the passengers. Unless these hypothetical "bad guys" are making walls and shapes from them and throwing them over the side. 5000 lbs of caltrop-shaped wall would be an issue, but a lone bad guy would have trouble handling that himself.

Re:At what speed?

[AK Marc]

One of my regrets in life is a publication by the Texas Department of Transportation that (under studies conducted at the TTI), concluded the least safe following distance is 2-4 seconds (the one most recommended). Closer than that (tailgating) and the speed differential is smaller. Above that and the chance of the following car reacts properly increases. I read it. I saw it. I know it exists. But I only saw it that once, and when I went back to cite it for a paper, it was missing. I never found it again.

Re:At what speed?

[Jeremi]

You actually believe an existing bureaucracy (personal fief) will get SMALLER???

Isn't that what the Libertarians (and Tea Partiers) have been lobbying for?

It's not inconceivable that they might someday succeed; especially if technology has evolved to the point where significant amounts of government beuracracy can actually be replaced by cheap automation. That would be ideal, as then people could have their government services and their tax cuts as well, without running a deficit.

Re:At what speed?

[Jeremi]

The moment it hits the brakes it transmit an emergency network STOP code to cars behind it. They are "bumper to bumper", or within 1 meter of each other. Every car in the chain behind will apply maximum braking force the very moment it receives the STOP code, bringing the entire chain of cars to a smooth halt.

While the above could work, I wonder if it will be actually implemented in practice.

For one thing, it shouldn't be necessary: every autonomous car should be able to detect the slowing of the car in front of it and respond within a few milliseconds anyway. So why tell the car behind you something that it pretty much already knows?

For another thing, it would open the door to abuse. You can imagine what would happen as soon as some sociopathic teenagers/hackers/terrorists/what-have-you figured out how to hack their car's firmware to send the STOP code at the press of a dashboard button. Mass annoyance at the very least, plus brake damage and whiplash injuries if the engineering isn't perfect (which, if history is any guide, it won't be).

Re:At what speed?

[Waccoon]

the actual result is that it gets you to the back of the queue at the traffic lights 10% sooner

Wouldn't that imply that you're not actually going 10% faster than normal traffic, because you're going the same speed as traffic?

I can't remember the last time I drove on a regular street where people were over the speed limit (given that almost all the roads in my area are set at 45 MPH). All the speeding takes place on expressways where there are no traffic lights, and practically everyone goes 20 MPH over the limit.

Re:At what speed?

[maxwell demon]

If you are driving somewhere where there's a reasonable danger to hit an object fixed to the ground (and face it, if there's a reasonable danger for the car in front of you to hit something, there's also a reasonable danger for you), you'd be batshit crazy to drive at such a speed.

Re:At what speed?

[Your.Master]

I think some people assume speed limit observance doesn't vary from place to place, let alone worldwide.

Most places I've been to, people exceed the speed limit by a fair degree, even in the rightmost lanes, provided weather conditions aren't extreme. During my driving test I had to observe the limit and it was comical how much I was being passed. But I've been to ones where non-passing-lanes tend to stick pretty close to the speed limit and it was odd.

Re:At what speed?

[Kjella]

While the above could work, I wonder if it will be actually implemented in practice. For one thing, it shouldn't be necessary: every autonomous car should be able to detect the slowing of the car in front of it and respond within a few milliseconds anyway. So why tell the car behind you something that it pretty much already knows?

Don't underestimate the cumulative effects of even a small delay in this system. The first car brakes. The second car brakes 10ms later, but to make up for those 10ms it hits the brakes harder. The third car brakes 10ms later, and since the second car is breaking hard it's breaking even harder. If it's a long line of cars the last could easily go into a full emergency break even if the first one just made a small speed adjustment. I think broadcasting an intent to change speed is very useful, if you're slowing down from 50 to 45 mph with low urgency because you're hitting slow traffic that should cause a different reaction than an intent of 0 mph with high urgency. You could make non-emergency speed adjustments happen in sync or back-to-front, not front-to-back.

I see this as working in conjunction with the sensors to stay inside a buffer zone, if you broadcast a fake 0 mph signal all that would happen is that the car behind would slam the brakes only until the distance and speed differential is big enough. If you transmit a fake 45 mph signal when you're really slamming the brakes the sensors would detect it and slam your brakes anyway. It's a guideline of intent but if the map doesn't match the terrain, trust the sensors. Besides, it could be that the car in front of you has lost all braking power and is about to slam into a traffic jam. I think anyone sending funny signals would be found and taken care of rather quick, after all there's plenty sensors to document it.

Re:At what speed?

[Your.Master]

I think traffic tickets is basically an unfortunate necessity in the first place, and won't be sorry to see that go, even if it has to be made up for in a more conventional tax like eg. a tiny extra bump in income tax or sales tax or whatever.

Re:At what speed?

[drkim]

The moment it hits the brakes it transmit an emergency network STOP code to cars behind it. They are "bumper to bumper", or within 1 meter of each other. Every car in the chain behind will apply maximum braking force the very moment it receives the STOP code, bringing the entire chain of cars to a smooth halt.

You can imagine what would happen as soon as some sociopathic teenagers/hackers/terrorists/what-have-you figured out how to hack their car's firmware to send the STOP code at the press of a dashboard button.

A hacker could certainly send out a STOP code, but all it would do is bring the cars to a safe stop. (Obviously, the car firmware would be programmed to come to a stop that would not subject the occupants to damaging G forces.) This would be far more complex, and far less dangerous than the people pointing LASERs at aircraft now.

While irritating, it wouldn't cause a fatal pile-up.

For the hacker, they would face felony penalties. Similar penalties are already on the books.

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/532992/SIGNAL-TAMPERING-TO-BRING-FELONY-CHARGES.html?pg=all

Every car could have a constellation of sensors that would combine the wireless network info as well as motion sensor and camera data:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdlSvtUInu0

Re:At what speed?

[Chuckstar]

You didn't read my reply. I don't want wireless to work that way. I'm arguing that wireless is not a solution for allowing cars to travel that close together.

As far as stopping distance, you should leave high school physics behind and think about practical engineering. First, the sensors they will be using will have some inherent error within them. The car in front may also be swerving at the same time and it's front end will be dipping. Either of those will throw off any calculations of distance by multiple millimeters. If you're counting on matching that car's deceleration before closing a one meter distance, you'll simply need to do better than that. Even worse, what happens if the car in front of you has better tires/brakes than yours. Automobile deceleration rates can vary pretty dramatically, especially when starting at highway speeds (downforce varies by body style).

People love to talk about computers allowing cars to travel closer together. You can certainly let the computer trail closer than you'd want a human to trail, but we're not going to be driving at highway speeds with one meter separations. Computers simply aren't enough to keep that from being dangerous.

Re:At what speed?

[MrL0G1C]

If the gov'ts and councils that actually build and maintain the roads charged the costs to the vehicles that actually do the damage there would be much less of a problem. HGVs should have weight taxes, they rip up the roads. I think the percentage of gov't revenue that comes from fines is miniscule after the cost of policing those fines is taken in to account.

Re:At what speed?

[MrL0G1C]

They can do 160km/h safely, bumper to bumper.

No, they can't.

http://www.caranddriver.com/features/the-power-to-stop

http://www.which.co.uk/news/2012/05/best-and-worst-supermini-braking-distances-285596/

Even with the same car, stopping from 40mph, some stops took 40 meters longer than others. 40 meters is not bumper to bumper.

Pile-ups happen because people don't understand stopping distances.

Re:At what speed?

[MrL0G1C]

Curse Slashdot's non-editing, I of course meant from stopping from 100mph, not 40mph.

Re:At what speed?

[MrL0G1C]

That would cause a pile-up.

Note the massively different braking distances, even in the same car model - braking differences of up to 40 meters

http://www.caranddriver.com/features/the-power-to-stop

This idea of cars driving bumper to bumper is pure fantasy, extremely dangerous, would cause a pile-up, regardless of how good inter-car communications is etc.

Re:At what speed?

[ShooterNeo]

Well, there's one other factor you haven't thought of, apparently. More high school physics here. What happens if the cars, separated by 1 meter, DO collide.

With the distance so narrow, the relative velocity between the vehicles cannot become very high. (because the distance for acceleration is only 1 meter) The collision should do minimal damage, and then the collided 2-vehicle system should still keep decelerating because both vehicles still have brakes.

That's the theory, but I acknowledge that at highway speeds, it may not work out this cleanly.

Re:At what speed?

[fisted]

Whoa, forgot your meds today. You don't sound very stress-free.

You're breaking the law, not me.

How am I breaking the law?

You and your impatience and wanting to make the highway look like the Indy 500 are the crappy driver. It isn't a fucking road race and I refure to join your herd.

Thanks demonstrating how little attention you're actually paying. Try reading the post you're replying to again.

Yes, you're an asshole for driving like that and calling me out for obeying the law. And you're too fucking stupid to realize that.

So I'm an asshole for driving at the speed limit. I see. And I call you out for ``obeying the law'', hm? No, I call you out for slowing everyone down by doing less than the given speed limt allows.

I'm not driving in the left lane, just go around me, asshole.

This is exactly why you're causing trouble and slow down everybody around you.
Seriously, after even spelling it out yourself, don't you see how you are a fucking obstacle on your lane even to those who drive at the speed limit?

I can only repeat, I am truly looking forward to the day crappy [and stupid] drivers like you get replaced by machines.

Re:At what speed?

[ChoosyBeggar]

How about drunk people getting home in robotic cars? It's certainly a lot better than the drunk people driving cars manually that we have now!

Re:At what speed?

[mcgrew]

Whoa, forgot your meds today.

Troll alert...

How am I breaking the law?

You're speeding.

Thanks demonstrating how little attention you're actually paying.

Thanks for trolling.

So I'm an asshole for driving at the speed limit.

You're not doing the speed limit. Two miles an hour difference shouldn't bother you.

Seriously, after even spelling it out yourself, don't you see how you are a fucking obstacle on your lane even to those who drive at the speed limit?

Don't you see what a douche you are? Two miles an hour difference wouldn't bother you a bit, but ten will.

Asshole. Actually, stupid asshole.

Re:At what speed?

[IanBal]

The article says that human drivers "accelerated and braked significantly more sharply" than when the google computer drove. So they took someone who needs to get to the next red light as soon as possible rather than a calm and patient driver. The results can be easily manipulated, and most probably have been.

Re:At what speed?

[NoOneInParticular]

But when it's a train, where two train-wagons run bumper to bumper, you would call it a feature? Having the cars essentially lock together and then run 160 mph is not only safe, it is also energy efficient. When you literally run bumper to bumper with a distance of 10 cm, the impact of a sudden change in speed is much less than when you have a runway of a few 10s of meters in which the front car can decelerate enough to have a significant difference in speed from the car running in its back. And it's a lot more energy efficient to make essentially one car out of two.

Re:At what speed?

[fisted]

You're not doing the speed limit.

Yes, I do. Nowhere I said, nor implied anything else, so I take this as a textbook attempt to establish a straw-man. Oh wait, no, it's simply a bold and false claim about something you can not possibly know about, making me even more certain you're a complete idiot. Not that further evidence was actually necessary...
Protip: Most sections of the parts of the Autobahn I typically drive on does not even have a speed limit, so it would be pretty difficult to me to break it.

Now as for the only thing worth responding to:

Two miles an hour difference shouldn't bother you.

Completely wrong. Relative distances between cars are pretty small, even when not tailgating. Hence, even two (ignoring you were originally talking about three) mph do matter.
It causes people /at/ the speed limit to unnecessarily overtake, temporarily reducing the road capacity by one lane.
This is my last attempt to explain this to you, as you are obviously unable to do some basic thinking on your own.

As for why...:

Troll [...] You're speeding. [...] Thanks for trolling. [...] You're not doing the speed limit.[...] Two miles an hour difference shouldn't bother you. [...] what a douche you are [...] Two miles an hour difference wouldn't bother you [...] Asshole [...] stupid asshole.

Are you still surprised I was assuming you forgot your meds today?
Nice mix of insults, lies, logical fallacies and ad hominem, anyway.

Re:At what speed?

[drkim]

What happens when the STOP code is transmitted by pranksters on the side of the road?

Good question, discussed here:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4380905&cid=45250069

Re:At what speed?

[bigkahunah]

As usual a purely physics based approach assumes a lot of variables. It takes me little thought to imagine many problems with this, I live in Oklahoma and this situation isn't rare. The described deceleration is assuming the cubic object is traveling on a friction-less surface that hits a static object at a known rate in an inelastic collision. So many more variables. Vehicle flips, vehicle spins and takes out the 2-3 vehicles behind it, vehicle is bumped into a guard rail or bridge support and has a very very rapid rate of change in velocity. Or a truck is jarred and the shotgun in the back seat shoots too many holes in your assumptions.

Yes, control systems can react much faster than humans; however, the statement "The car behind will apply maximum braking force the very moment a single cycle of it's control loop happens (probably 1/1000 or a second or so)." is almost patently absurd and shows a best a limited understanding of tuning a control loop. Yes, a reaction will happen within a single cycle, and yes 1kHz is reasonable, but assuming maximum braking force is assuming it is only a proportional control that is tuned to be highly reactive. I would challenge anyone to ride in a car that has a purely proportional control that would react as described. You'd sue me for whiplash.

Re:At what speed?

[bigkahunah]

Depends on where you are driving and how well timed the lights are. Living in a smaller town, beating the timed lights or the delay after a waiting car signals a change can be very beneficial. The worst case is that you wind up moving forward as soon as everyone else. Best case you get an extra green light.

Re:At what speed?

[pixelpusher220]

sorry, bad figure of speech ;-) 'passed left and right' I *meant* 'passed a LOT'

Re:At what speed?

[pixelpusher220]

No argument on that point. Doesn't change the reality of current human drivers going well over posted limits :)

Re:At what speed?

[pixelpusher220]

why not both?

Re:At what speed?

[pixelpusher220]

So you're either 'not passed left and right all the time' while going posted limit or the 'fast late' is generally doing 5-10 above what you're doing?

Which is it?

Re:At what speed?

[Gripp]

For as long as there are human drivers on the road, I think that's inevitable. But in the long run, once there are nothing but automated cars, and humans couldn't take over if they wanted, there would be no reason for speed limits, stop lights, etc.
However, how long it takes authorities to recognize this is a totally different question. I suspect it wont be until our grandchildren are our age that we'll see a push for that model. Which is really too bad, considering the amount of money we could save on infrastructure and traffic police sooner than later.

Re:At what speed?

[omtinez]

Have you ever seen a real deer? If you estimate less than 100kg I assume not... I have seen cars coming to a full stop (granted, they hit on the brakes too as soon as the deer was into their field of vision) after a collision with the dear at a significantly high speed. In two of those occasions, the car was totaled (the cost of repairing was higher than a new car) and the son of a b**** deer got back up and walked away!!!

Re:At what speed?

[GuB-42]

I think it is better to consider these robo-cars as a train. And like modern trains, cars will synchronize acceleration and breaking.
Driving bumper to bumper can actually be safer than leaving space between the cars. For example, if your car fails to break for any reason, you won't have time to build relative speed between your car and the car in front of you and the impact will be greatly reduced. This train-like behavior can be improved using special bumpers.
Of course, if something like a large rock suddenly falls on the road, the result may be catastrophic but trains are not immune to this kind of problem and are still the safest kind of transportation.

Re:At what speed?

[Quirkz]

What kind of productivity do you think we get back by being able to do something else while the car drives us? And why don't you think this makes up for the 10% time that might be lost?

Re:At what speed?

[Quirkz]

Less the 5 mph over is simply never going to happen unless there are significantly extenuating circumstances. Certainly not as a primary offense.

My brother got pulled over for going 72 in a 70.

Yes, this was Kansas, so maybe that explains it. Possibly he was pulled over for "looking under 30 and having out-of-state plates" but there wasn't any other actual traffic infraction.

Re:At what speed?

[jhumkey]

I've said it in similar articles . . . I'll repeat it again.

What happens when its a 50lb child, instead of a 100lb deer?

The goal isn't to "survive hitting the deer" the goal is to "avoid hitting the child".

The last time I pointed this out, the response was "the car can react 1000 times faster". True, but that's confusing "response time to apply the brakes" with "stopping distance of the car."

It doesn't matter who applies the brakes . . . stopping distance for a 25mph car on dry asphalt is about 30ft. If you begin slowing/stopping upon seeing the ball, the child might live. If you wait until you see the child. Prepare for a big lawsuit and lots of guilt therapy in your future.

I'll vote/allow the autonomous car, when it stops for the "ball rolling out into traffic, and can 'guess' that a child will follow, and 'anticipates' to stop for the child it can't see yet."

I've had friends see cattle come out thorough a fence and lay on the pavement at night, because it was warmer.
I've had friends know to stop because NOTHING was wrong with the SURFACE of the road . . . but the raging stream underneath it . . . had washed all the underlying support away . . . the asphalt simply hadn't collapsed yet.
Sorry . . . we've just got WAY too many years of AI ahead of us before autonomous cars are ready.

Out in the "left lane" of a Interstate . . . "maybe" . . . through a city . . . we're 50-100 years away from even a remote prayer of that.

Re:At what speed?

[LanMan04]

A human would respond the same or worse in every one of those scenarios.

Autonomous cars don't have to be perfect, they just have to be better at driving than humans (which is a *really* low bar to clear).

Re:At what speed?

[jhumkey]

I've seen the ball . . . and stopped to save the child.
Until they can show me a car that will do the same . . . No! Just . . . No!

Re:At what speed?

[LanMan04]

I'm sure they could program something along those lines.

"Weird object enters roadway = engage cautious mode for next X seconds."

And even if it does kill the occasional child in that scenario, it'll save thousands more from fiery wrecks and other instances where they're passengers.

Re:At what speed?

[beelsebob]

So, this is an ancient topic, but I thought I'd follow up. I happened to be on the I-280 for a short stretch the other day when it was nearly clear and moving very well. I decided to track whether I was spectacularly unobservant or not. The answer: By doing 65mph down it ±2mph consistently, I overtook well over 20 cars, and was overtaken by 4.

Basically, no, the normal speed on a freeway is *not* well above the speed limit. There are a few who do it, but it's far from normal.

Re:At what speed?

[u38cg]

That only works if every member of the chain is guaranteed to obey the stop command. Since introduction of driverless vehicles will be gradual, this will never be the case, so autonomous operation is the sensible approach.

Yup, and it doesn't matter.

[jeffb (2.718)]

We'll soon reach a point where autonomous vehicles are orders of magnitude less likely than human-driven vehicles to have an accident. It won't matter, though; people would rather face a daily one-in-a-million chance of dying due to their own mistake than a daily one-in-a-billion chance of dying due to a machine failure.

Autonomous vehicles will still take over in the end. It's just that this particular rational motive to make it happen won't be contributing very much. So, it'll take longer than it should, and more people will die.

Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter.

[rogueippacket]

Your assertion that autonomous vehicles will take over fails to take into account one of the major reasons we have such a large automotive industry - people like to drive. They like to buy new cars, repair old cars, and do stupid things in fast cars. At most, a car with auto-pilot would be a convenience feature for the daily commute, but so long as people get an adrenaline rush when they put the pedal to the floor, this will not change.

Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter.

[Anonymous Coward]

Except, if you've read any of the news for the last few years, it IS changing. Young people aren't entering into the automobile culture the way their parents did. They are favoring bicycles, walking, public transit, and other non-car ways to get around. It's something the big car mfgs are worried about a lot because their customer base is rapidly aging.

http://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/5-reasons-young-people-are-not-buying-cars-or-getting-their-drivers-license/

Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter.

[qbzzt]

It won't go away, but it might end up being like riding. It used to be a common skill, necessary for daily life in many cases. Now it is an expensive hobby, and an extremely rare skill. When my son is 16, I'd much rather he get into a Google car that drives for him than drive. By the time he is an adult and able to buy a car for himself, that pattern will be set and he'll probably be looking for thrills elsewhere.

Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter.

[demonlapin]

Very few people, even those who enjoy driving, enjoy more than a tiny fraction of the driving they do. In these situations, I find that the best touchstone is asking what very, very wealthy people do. They have essentially unlimited options, and what they do is reflective of human desire not limited by constraints.

Overwhelmingly, they choose to be driven. They choose to fly private jets. If you could afford it, you would do the same thing most of the time, because most of the time getting there is just a task, not a joy.

It will be the same with regular people. Imagine what society looks like when there are zero deaths due to drunk driving, distracted driving, and falling asleep at the wheel. Imagine how much lower car insurance premiums are when the risk of an at fault accident is nearly zero. People will still buy cars, because they will want one customized to them, but imagine all the things that can change when a human pilot no longer has to be accommodated: cars set up so that parents and children can face each other and play games together while traveling, lay-flat seats for overnight driving. You can leave Washington after work on Friday and eat lunch in New Orleans.

Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter.

[Khyber]

"We'll soon reach a point where autonomous vehicles are orders of magnitude less likely than human-driven vehicles to have an accident."

No, we will not. You're too ignorant to think of the other thousands of extraneous factors that can make things go wrong outside of both human and computer control. Like metal fatigue causing physical wear and tear on brakes, rotors, axles, etc.

Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter.

[tinkerton]

I agree. I love driving and enjoy my advanced footwork skills and I regret the evolution but it will proceed despite people regretting it.

Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter.

[schlachter]

We like to be ABLE to drive. We don't like to HAVE to drive.

I'll be fine with limiting my driving to some self driving counties or some weekend race track options if I don't have to
1. drive my work commute
2. sit in traffic
3. worry about my family getting in an accident
4. worry about parking
5. own a car
6. maintain a car
7. assume liability for a car and/or car accident
8. destroy the environment

Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter.

[Gavagai80]

Outside of young adults with sports cars, few people like to drive. Most drivers, myself included, would love to never need to drive again. In fact, some people even suffer public transit because of their dislike of driving (or inability to drive).

A bigger problem for autonomous vehicles may be price. When can they do it all for $1000 on a low end car?

Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter.

[hawguy]

Except, if you've read any of the news for the last few years, it IS changing. Young people aren't entering into the automobile culture the way their parents did. They are favoring bicycles, walking, public transit, and other non-car ways to get around. It's something the big car mfgs are worried about a lot because their customer base is rapidly aging.

http://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/5-reasons-young-people-are-not-buying-cars-or-getting-their-drivers-license/

And as a cyclist, I trust the self-driving cars *much* more than human piloted cars. I see drivers texting while driving every day, and I'm confident that a self-driving car will never be reading a break-up text from its boyfriend and plow into me while txting a reply.

Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter.

[mcgrew]

Your assertion that autonomous vehicles will take over fails to take into account one of the major reasons we have such a large automotive industry - people like to drive. They like to buy new cars, repair old cars, and do stupid things in fast cars.

Only some people. Most people buy cars because they need transportation, which is what people buy cars for, no matter how the TV commercials propagandize it.

Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter.

[ravenlord_hun]

I don't think wear-and-tear is any significant percent in the causes of car-related accidents. And when they become, you will see laws to have your car routinely inspected (which you are supposed to do in every 2 years where I live). Your self-driving car will probably also complain to you to do so.

Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter.

[wonkey_monkey]

people would rather face a daily one-in-a-million chance of dying due to their own mistake than a daily one-in-a-billion chance of dying due to a machine failure.

Who is this "people" you refer to? Last time I checked, everyone was an individual with their own independent opinions on these things.

Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter.

[Greg01851]

SOME people like to drive. They like to buy new cars, repair old cars, and do stupid things in fast cars. There, fixed that for ya... Don't assume everyone drives for the same reasons.

Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter.

[Greg01851]

And you're too ignorant to think that autonomous cars won't be able to recognize signs of wear and tear, and NOT IGNORE them like many humans do, thinking they'll check it out when they have time.

Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter.

[nanospook]

Maybe for local trips, but if you are commuting daily and on the road for 1-2 hours a day, wouldn't you rather do something else? I would be happy to catch up on my sleep or do other tasks and let the vehicle drive itself. I hate the waste of time in commuting and would see this as an opportunity to regain it.

Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter.

[CanadianRealist]

I also think that autonomous vehicles will be much safer than human-driven vehicles. We can keep making them better based on experience while on the other hand we would keep adding new inexperienced human drivers. I'm sure that we can correct any problems that we may find with early autonomous vehicles. I doubt that we'll ever be able to correct human distraction, emotional reactions, bad judgement and general stupidity.

Do you have any stats on the percentage of accidents caused by physical wear and tear on brakes rotors and axles? Or on the "other thousands of extraneous factors" that you've considered? How do those compare to the percentage caused by any sort of human error?

The following claims human error is the sole cause 57% of the time and a contributing factor 90% of the time, while mechanical fault is the sole cause only 2.4% of the time.

Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter.

[Fierlo]

I would much rather see self-driving bikes than human-piloted ones. Every day, the human-piloted ones seem to weave in and out of traffic, and obey the rules of the road only when convenient.

Any time you can take the human out of the equation, you are making it safer.

Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter.

[Mr D from 63]

Great, now I'll be stuck behind some cyclist for 20 minutes since the auto-car is too much of a wuss to pass, and won't do it until I get to a passing lane which might not even exist on some roads.

Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter.

[Mr D from 63]

Very few people, even those who enjoy driving, enjoy more than a tiny fraction of the driving they do. In these situations, I find that the best touchstone is asking what very, very wealthy people do. They have essentially unlimited options, and what they do is reflective of human desire not limited by constraints. Overwhelmingly, they choose to be driven. .

Your image of the very rich must have been painted for you. Reality is that you drive by a lot of very rich folks every day and just don't know it because they drive regular cars and look a lot like regular people. Just because a small fraction of the extremely wealthy prefer arranged transportation and decide to use their time for other means doesn't translate to anyone else at all. And even those folks that do use chauffeurs don't use them all the time, its often more when working. There are a lot of people that could afford chauffeurs that choose to drive on a regular basis. My guess is that is a very large majority.

I love driving. Not every minute of it, but most of it. I take pride in my driving skills. I hate being driven by someone else. I'm not rich by US standards.

Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter.

[jeffb (2.718)]

Your assertion that autonomous vehicles will take over fails to take into account one of the major reasons we have such a large automotive industry - people like to drive. They like to buy new cars, repair old cars, and do stupid things in fast cars. At most, a car with auto-pilot would be a convenience feature for the daily commute, but so long as people get an adrenaline rush when they put the pedal to the floor, this will not change.

Indeed, and I wouldn't dream of preventing them from doing so -- as long as they aren't threatening my life while they do it.

I know there are lots of drivers who are far more skillful than me. (At least, I hope so; I have slow reflexes, I'm a bit more distractible than average, and I'm just really not that interested in high-performance driving.) But I also know there are lots of drivers who overestimate their own competence, not to mention the competence of others on the road. That's a recipe for disaster.

If so many people like to drive for recreation, I'd expect an increase in private tracks and roads where people can do just that, in the company of other competent and attentive drivers. I'd hope as a result that they'd stop doing fast stupid stuff on roads full of innocent bystanders.

Even if they don't stop that, though, a critical mass of autonomous and networked vehicles will drastically reduce the mayhem. If a maniac is blasting through at twice the speed limit, the network will be able to move everybody cooperatively out of the way. It'll even eliminate onlooker delays passing the wreckage after the maniac makes a mistake.

Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter.

[hawguy]

Great, now I'll be stuck behind some cyclist for 20 minutes since the auto-car is too much of a wuss to pass, and won't do it until I get to a passing lane which might not even exist on some roads.

You're not seeing the benefit of self driving cars.... Your car can interrogate other cars to see if they are coming and if not then it can send out a beacon to say that its taking the passing lane for 5.326 seconds to pass the bike so any oncoming cars can anticipate and adjust accordingly.

Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter.

[Libertarian001]

Oh, we're going to have this discussion again. Okay, I'll play. You see drivers texting and putting on make-up. I see cyclists riding in the pedestrian crosswalk, riding against the flow of traffic, maneuvering around slowing/stopped vehicles, and they never EVER use hand signals to indicate a turn or stop. And most of them don't use required safety equipment, let alone the recommended ones.

In aviation, more maneuverable aircraft yield right-of-way to less maneuverable aircraft. Though not actually codified, this is generally true in automotive. No one argues with the 18-wheeler. Then it breaks down when cyclists expect everyone to move for them (and this is the exact argument another gentlemen here was making the other day when claiming it's the driver's responsibility to adjust *their* behavior to accommodate cyclists).

Maybe motorcycles and bicycles should also be automated. I mean, fair is fair.

Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter.

[Altrag]

Not to mention a well designed autonomous program is likely far better at handling wear and tear situations than human drivers to boot. At the very least, it could simply pop up a warning telling the user that the car is unsafe and refuse to go anywhere until its repaired.

Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter.

[demonlapin]

Who are you to generalize from yourself to the majority of people?

Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter.

[demonlapin]

I'm sure Bill Gates drives himself to his kids' school plays, but I'm also sure he doesn't drive himself to the airport.

Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter.

[JonnyCalcutta]

Sorry - just removing a bad mod

Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter.

[jeffb (2.718)]

Where did I say "all people"?

All that I've read indicates that the vast majority of people are bad at evaluating low-probability risks, in just the way I described. If you're able to evaluate all risks with unbounded rationality, congratulations.

Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter.

[Wraithlyn]

I can imagine how this went about a century ago...

Your assertion that automobiles will take over fails to take into account one of the major reasons we have such a large horse industry - people like to ride horses. They like to buy new horses, take care of old horses, and do stupid tricks with horses. At most, an automobile would be a convenience feature for the daily commute, but so long as people get an adrenaline rush when they ride horses at a full gallop, this will not change.

Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter.

[R3d M3rcury]

They like to buy new cars, repair old cars, and do stupid things in fast cars. At most, a car with auto-pilot would be a convenience feature for the daily commute, but so long as people get an adrenaline rush when they put the pedal to the floor, this will not change.

I agree that, in the near future, you will not see a car without a "human-drive" mode. But how often will it be used?

I could see myself driving my own car and flipping on self-drive when a phone call comes in. Now I can chat with the person while I dig through my tablet looking for information. Of course, I could also use it when I text, tweet, Facebook, or whatever social media thing comes along. Pretty soon, I'm rarely driving--I'm just getting in the car and saying "Take me to the office" while barely skipping a beat typing my e-mail.

Cars will continue to have a "human-drive" mode. But, at some point, some car manufacturer will make the jump and you'll see a minivan with no "human-drive" mode. It'll be $10,000 cheaper, since it doesn't need the extra pedals, steering wheel, and linkages to make all those things work. Then you'll start to see people switching over because the car is cheaper.

Yes, there are people who love to drive. But, believe it or not, they're a small community compared to the overall number of people who use cars. To use a computer analogy (since we're talking about cars), my needs for a personal computer are far different than the needs of my Mom. The question will be is there enough of a market of people who love to drive to keep the sports car makers in business. Personally, I think there will be. But I don't think you'll see a purely "human-drive" car--they'll all have an "auto-drive" button.

Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter.

[TheLink]

But he IS talking about those extremely wealthy bunch. Most of them have someone drive/fly them around.

However he forgets that the sons/grandsons of these very rich often do drive their own cars (but they're certainly not regular cars ;) ) and prefer not to be driven. These sons/grandsons are as similarly unconstrained.

Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter.

[the grace of R'hllor]

In the US, where there is virtually no cycling infrastructure and bikes have to share the road with cars. Cyclists have to use the highways(!!) to get to places, which is utterly ridiculous. The weaving is pretty much necessary for safe travel. Both cyclists and drivers need to get used to doing it safely though.

It's pretty simple: As a cyclist on a general road, make yourself as little nuisance as possible, so hug the right side of the road. If you need to overtake someone, see a pothole or need to take a left turn, look back, and if it's fairly clear, claim your place closer to the middle of the lane. Vacate this place as soon as convenient. As a driver sharing the road with cyclists, if you see a cyclist looking back and edging out into your lane, stop throttling up, assume he has a reason (and has seen you), and hang back until you can safely pass.

Voila, you're welcome.

Also, as for obeying rules: just like pedestrians tend to ignore red lights if the way is clear and traffic is light, because they have great overview and can accelerate quickly, cyclists have similar overview and acceleration capability. Also, like peds, cyclists are unlikely to injure someone if they break the rules, other than themselves. Right-of-way is the only absolute ruleset I can think of that you shouldn't break (except via communication with the other participant, obviously).

Disclaimer: I'm from Holland.

Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter.

[the grace of R'hllor]

You don't have a codified right-of-way? WTF?

For right-of-way, in the Netherlands, we do not distinguish between the various "vehicle operators". This includes bicycles, mopeds, tractors, 18-wheelers, horses (at least with rider; I'm assuming horses themselves have not read this bit of traffic law), and all must keep to the simple elements.

Traffic from the right has right of way. If two participants are on the same road and one wants to make a left or right turn crossing the other's path, the turning driver has to yield (this actually also applies to pedestrians). If two drivers meet at an intersection and want to turn into the same lane, the guy making a right turn has right of way. Etc.

Obviously, with eye contact and other means of communication (positioning, lights, etc) you could yield where you don't have to, for more convenience. And yes, more cyclists should use hand signals. I tend to use them when I have to cross other traffic or slow down for a turn.

Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter.

[Immerman]

Actually it's not a complete breakdown - bicycles are only more maneuverable in planned ways - you can make a much tighter turn on a bicycle than you can in a car, but you have to prepare for it. Tell both to "turn right NOW" and the guy in a car who can just yank on the wheel will have the tighter turning radius. Combine that with the fact that in most places bicycles straddle the line between "car" and "pedestrian" and yeah, things can get a little annoying for drivers.

Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter.

[sl149q]

And like horse riding driving your pet car will be confined to places where other people remain safe while you are doing it.

I.e. anywhere but on public roads.

Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter.

[Immerman]

Or less infuriatingly, it could simply maintain adequate safety margins given its compromised abilities, and inform nearby vehicles of the fact.

Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter.

[Immerman]

Why would you expect autonomous vehicles to be make any difference in this regard? They're not going to be paying for their own repairs, and shade-tree mechanics will no doubt learn quickly enough how to bypass any attempted lockouts. This is an issue unrelated to self-driving, it's comes down to the car's ability to perform self-diagnostics, which they can already do in a crude manner. Only instead of meaningful information you just get the check engine "idiot light" glowing at you.

Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter.

[drkim]

"We'll soon reach a point where autonomous vehicles are orders of magnitude less likely than human-driven vehicles to have an accident."

No, we will not. You're too ignorant to think of the other thousands of extraneous factors that can make things go wrong outside of both human and computer control. Like metal fatigue causing physical wear and tear on brakes, rotors, axles, etc.

But, by this standard, a car that auto-drives perfectly, but might have an accident because of physical "wear and tear" would still be safer than a human-drive car that might have an accident because of physical "wear and tear" or human error.

Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter.

[Kevin Fishburne]

Maybe all the cost savings from wrecked vehicles and injured people can be applied toward the construction more race tracks so people can get their rush in a controlled environment and far away from family-filled minivans. Or put Playstations with free copies of GT6 in each autonomous vehicle. Or if you really need a rush just snort some coke before your GT6 Occulus Rift session.

Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter.

[drkim]

Maybe for local trips, but if you are commuting daily and on the road for 1-2 hours a day, wouldn't you rather do something else?

Exactly! Wouldn't you rather text, or read a newspaper, or eat a bowl of noodles with both hands, or get drunk, or make out with your GF, than have to concentrate on controlling your vehicle?

Oh wait, you're already doing all that stuff, you idiots!!

Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter.

[wonkey_monkey]

You also didn't say "some people." Or "60% of people." Or "10% of people."

You might be right; I don't think you are, but I'm not going to state my opinion as fact.

Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter.

[charles2678]

It's pretty simple: As a cyclist on a general road, make yourself as little nuisance as possible, so hug the right side of the road. If you need to overtake someone, see a pothole or need to take a left turn, look back, and if it's fairly clear, claim your place closer to the middle of the lane.

I suggest taking a class before you try riding in the US like that. The League of American Bicyclists -- formerly, the League of American Wheelmen -- has a great one; first day is nothing but classroom theory, talking accident statistics, lane positioning, etc.

Among the outcomes from those statistics? Hugging the shoulder is absolutely the wrong thing to do; it makes it look like you're safe to pass in the same lane even when you aren't. It doesn't kill as many people as riding on the wrong side of the road, riding at night without lights, or riding at speed on the sidewalk (which, yes, are the three biggest causes of cyclist-at-fault accidents; riding on the sidewalk means folks pulling in and out of driveways can't see you).

Much, much safer to actually take the lane. You're highly visible there; your location communicates to other road users that you're traveling straight ahead; and folks who need to pass you are encouraged to change to the next lane over rather than trying to pass too close within the existing lane.

Now, if you're on a one-lane road, things get hairy -- but even then, the best practice is to have a good rear-view mirror and yield to passing traffic whenever possible. If your default position is in the far right, you don't have anywhere to swerve if there's a hazard in your way; if your default position is middle-of-the-lane, you have options -- one of those being to pull over to the side when you've observed that it's safe to do so.

Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter.

[magic maverick]

And how many can kill you just by runnnig into you?

If a bike rider is not wearing safety equipment, how many people are put at risk? *

If a bike rider decides to read a text message while riding, and crashes, how many people are put at risk? **

If a bike rider decides to play chicken with traffic, who's at risk? ***

* Just one.
** Most of the time, just one. Sometimes there will be a driver paying attention who then crashes into someone else.
*** Normally just the one. Even if a car does crash into another car, in city streets the speeds are not fast enough to threaten car drivers wearing seat belts. And the bikes aren't on the highways where the speeds are more dangerous.

Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter.

[quacking duck]

In aviation, more maneuverable aircraft yield right-of-way to less maneuverable aircraft. Though not actually codified, this is generally true in automotive. No one argues with the 18-wheeler. Then it breaks down when cyclists expect everyone to move for them (and this is the exact argument another gentlemen here was making the other day when claiming it's the driver's responsibility to adjust *their* behavior to accommodate cyclists).

Maybe motorcycles and bicycles should also be automated. I mean, fair is fair.

It's not just bicycles, the practice breaks down for anything smaller than a car, like mopeds and of course pedestrians.

I suspect it has to do with relative speeds, and available room to manoeuvre. A car and an 18 wheeler are wildly different masses but can move at the same speed on the roadway. A smaller plane might be slower than a bigger one, but can manoeuvre better and it isn't restricted to 2 dimensions for avoiding a collision.

For the slower, smaller things on the road: they may technically be more manoeuvrable but the speed differences make it harder to get out of the way in time. Bikes/mopeds are restricted to veering left and right, with curb or barrier limiting choices further. Pedestrians have more freedom of movement but even less speed.

As for the gentleman saying drivers have to adjust their behaviour to accommodate cyclists: as you noted cyclists aren't angels, but generally speaking, he's not wrong. Bikes legally belong on roads, so car drivers do in fact have to accommodate them, whether it's to pass them, turning at intersections... heck, even opening driver-side doors after parking on on a street can be deadly (New York City taxis have stickers asking clients to exit passenger-side for this very reason). In many places without dedicated bike lanes, bikes are even legally allowed (and sometimes encouraged) to take the entire lane, the same way a horse-drawn carriage or tractor does, so cars would have to move an entire lane to pass. Most cyclists are reluctant to take advantage of this last privilege because they do recognize the inconveniences they've already put on drivers and don't want to cause even more grief, but they reduce own their safety by not doing so.

Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter.

[dinfinity]

A tu quoque?

That is shameful.

Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter.

[jeffb (2.718)]

It won't go away, but it might end up being like riding. It used to be a common skill, necessary for daily life in many cases. Now it is an expensive hobby, and an extremely rare skill.

I really, really like this analogy. (I assume you're talking about horseback riding.) There are still lots of people who love horses, and a separate (but largely overlapping) set of people who love riding horses. The people who actually ride regularly are a small minority, though; most of us don't think about horses, or think they're kind of cool, but not enough to invest the time and money they require.

If I rode a horse to work around here (suburbia), I'd get a lot of double-takes, but there's a rails-to-trails park a few miles away where I encounter people riding most days. If I go back to visit friends in Pennsylvania's Amish country, there are horse-drawn buggies all over the place, drivers expect and adapt to them, and many businesses have "parking" to accommodate them.

Decades hence, I'd expect to see an analogous situation with manual vehicles.

Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter.

[the grace of R'hllor]

If I ever go cycling in the US, it'll probably be with friends, but point taken.

In the decade before I was born (the 70's), the Dutch made a concerted effort to increase cycling infrastructure. At the start of that decade, the situation was much like the US still is, today. By the time I got to riding a bike out in traffic, age 4-5, cars were used to bicycles, and there were plenty of bicycle lanes and paths, so direct mingling didn't happen very often.

One thing that helps is that you have to take driving lessons from an accredited school here, no parents teaching children how to drive. You learn practically how to deal with cyclists.

Also, if you're a driver and you hit a cyclist for whatever reason, you are responsible for at least 50% of the damages to the other person, whether material or not. If the other person is below 14 years of age it's 100%. This is regardless of the cause of the accident.

If you're ever going to ride your bike in Europe, and especially the Netherlands, I suggest you strap on a grin and try to follow other peoples' leads. :)

Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter.

[ChoosyBeggar]

Ignoring the fact that accidents caused by mechanical failure represent an *astoundingly* small percentage of road accidents, the fact of the matter is that cars in the near future will become intelligent enough to sense micro-structural damage in their critical assemblies, reporting them for maintenance long before they fail. This will be realized by emerging revolutionary technologies in the electronics industry.

Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter.

[SourceFrog]

Oh, we're going to have this discussion again. Okay, I'll play

Why is it that whenever I see someone precede an argument with "OK, I'll play", it's never, ever followed by a properly rational argument free of logical fallacies?

It's almost as if the extra dose of smugness is a sort of psychological 'mask' of sorts to conceal the weak reasoning - an 'orange-sherbert'-like handwave given with the hope that if projecting arrogant over-confidence, readers will assume the point that follows carries the weight of a well-considered argument rather than actually analyzing it.

Firstly, you seem to believe that because you've seen some cyclists doing dangerous things, that all cyclists do dangerous things (tribal/collectivist fallacy of generalization). Secondly, that some cyclists sometimes do dangerous things in no way whatsoever negates that car drivers often do, too. Third, even if it did, that some cyclists sometimes do dangerous things in no way invalidates the argument that robot cars would still make roads safer for everyone, both cyclists and car occupants alike.

Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter.

[IanBal]

People should learn how to drive, and be patient. The number of idiots on the road are the real reason for autonomous cars.

Who controls the software that produces the data?

[gQuigs]

Is it Google? Is it the consumer?

They are right that the data will have a lot of power over you in these situations...

I wonder when...

[cronostitan]

...in the future you are being looked at as being crazy if you tell other people that you are still driving yourself.
"Seriously, how can you live with that - risking the life of others. Robot-Cars are much safer."

Re:I wonder when...

[mbone]

I suspect that that will be driven (or not) by insurance; an insurance policy that allows for non-emergency personal driving might become prohibitively expensive.

In the very early days of automobiles, it was assumed that the market would always be small because only professionals (chauffeurs) would learn how to drive, and only the wealthy could afford chauffeurs.

Re:I wonder when...

[rogueippacket]

Love for cars and love of driving is too ingrained in our culture to permit the future you have just described. People don't simply buy the safest vehicle they can afford - they buy something that's fun/sporty/responsive/peppy/powerful/fast/etc. and safe. Safety is almost an implied feature, but it always takes second fiddle to something a driver can enjoy. At most, self-driving will be a switch for the morning commute.

Re:I wonder when...

[beelsebob]

Why would emergency personnel be allowed to drive?

By the time you get to 90% autonomous vehicles on the road it starts to make sense to just ban non-autonomous ones, because the autonomous one can then use the space much more efficiently, travelling faster, and closer together (but communicating with each other to not collide). Even an emergency vehicle in this situation will 1) get there faster if driven autonomously, 2) be safer than if not driven autonomously.

Re:I wonder when...

[dcollins]

Possibly because emergency drivers are breaking the normal rules of driving like going through red lights and such. Will the robo-cars be equipped with a subroutine to know when it's safe to pass on a solid dividing line and blow through a red light? Perhaps not.

Re:I wonder when...

[beelsebob]

The point is that the reasons why emergency drivers are allowed to do this would not exist any more. Emergency drivers are trained to do this kind of thing because we structure our roads around human drivers, and how they are able to drive. As soon as we structure our road system around computer drivers, and their abilities, having a human driver breaking the rules in the middle of the system causes more problems than it solves. Instead, we just let the automated system do it's thing, and transport us (faster than a human emergency driver would anyway) to the hospital.

Re:I wonder when...

[Altrag]

The software designed for your average Corolla certainly won't (well, I'm sure some company will take a shortcut and try to leave the code there but "disabled" -- which will immediately be reenabled by somebody who's got more brains than survival instinct.)

But there's nothing stopping us from having a different set of software for fire trucks, ambulances, big rigs, buses, etc. All of these different vehicles have different usage patterns and assuming that there would be a one-size-fits-all software product is pretty naive.

Of course, that's probably a bit further in the future. The initial goal is to replace the 90% of vehicles that are used purely for daily commuting. Once that's down, they can start looking into the more specialized vehicles and we'll just have to trust our ambulance drivers until then.

Of course, it wouldn't surprise me if they start equipping ambulances (and such) with a transmitter of some sort to inform the autonomous vehicles that its coming through -- same as they're already equipped with lights and sirens to inform other humans that its coming through. The software might not be setup to drive an ambulance but you can be pretty sure it'll have some functionality to allow for ambulances sharing the road with it.

Re:I wonder when...

[ColdWetDog]

Exactly. Driving emergency vehicles is rather dangerous because, in large part, you are relying on people understanding that you are breaking rules and doing unusual things. MOST drivers wander around in a drug induced haze and are only marginally cognizant of their environment. If vehicles were autonomous, then the fire truck would communicate with all of the other happy little vehicles and tell them it had the right of way. And they would smoothly move to the side of the road or communicate their intentions with the emergency vehicle.

Instead of dealing with an 85 year old grandma in the middle stages of dementia or a twenty something in the middle of an MDMA afternoon, it would be dealing with an AI who is just busy doing whatever it's supposed to be doing (and, of course, if it's Google trying to figure out what your doing so it can monetize it).

Re:I wonder when...

[sl149q]

At some point the tradeoff becomes continue to allow autonomous vehicles with present speed limits or eliminate them and raise speed limits by X %. Since the vast majority of people will benefit they will vote to get rid of human drivers and make their own commutes faster and more efficient.

Re:I wonder when...

[drkim]

Why would emergency personnel be allowed to drive?

By the time you get to 90% autonomous vehicles on the road it starts to make sense to just ban non-autonomous ones, because the autonomous one can then use the space much more efficiently, travelling faster, and closer together (but communicating with each other to not collide). Even an emergency vehicle in this situation will 1) get there faster if driven autonomously, 2) be safer than if not driven autonomously.

Once you get to 100% auto-drive cars, you won't need red/green lights, or traffic direction signs, or speed limits.

An emergency vehicle will just transmit a digital beacon that moves every other car out of it's way.

If you actually watch emergency vehicles now, they pretty much travel the speed limit; however, other cars move aside for them (theoretically!) and they go through red lights (carefully.)

Re:I wonder when...

[Immerman]

Give it a few generations and you might be surprised. Our "car loving" culture is primarily based on two things - cars grant freedom of motion, and make a public statement about your economic position and values. Neither of those require that you be behind the wheel. It's a very small minority of people that enjoy most of the driving they do. Sure they may love the sunday drive, or the late-night racing down the strip, but by and large they're just going from A to B, and if they can eat breakfast, text their friends, or read a book instead of driving then that's an improvement.

Certainly I'd expect there to be a switch on the dash so you could enjoy driving when it was fun, or could take manual control when you want to do something unusual/offroad, but I fully expect most people, most of the time to use the virtual chauffeur. Especially if you figure that little Tommy will likely have been allowed to have the family car drive him around solo long before he's ever allowed to take the wheel. He'll grow up feeling it's perfectly normal for the car to do the driving, and finally being allowed to take the wheel won't increase his mobility significantly, and can only interfere with his ability to hang with his friends while they're going somewhere.

Re:I wonder when...

[CodeHxr]

Disagree. Fuel economy is my primary motivating factor in a vehicle; I don't care so much for entertainment value in a method of transportation, it's all function over form. While I do know people who are as you describe (most of them are very young drivers), they are finding themselves in an accelerating minority.

Sounds Good

[TubeSteak]

if {collision}
then {arbitrary braking profile}
else {real data}

Re:Sounds Good

[OzPeter]

if {collision}
then {arbitrary braking profile}
else {real data}

Burma-shave

Re:Sounds Good

[Anonymous Coward]

There was no rear-ending. It was their Prius trying to make other self-driving little Priuses.

Re:Sounds Good

[Anonymous Coward]

The update to the article you linked to included this quote from Google:

"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."

and a link to an article titled: Human Driver Crashes Google's Self Driving Car (http://www.businessinsider.com/googles-self-driving-cars-get-in-their-first-accident-2011-8)

Re:Autopilots

[Sique]

If you had read TFA, you would have noticed that the robot car operates more safely than humans in the highway infrastructure that is in place today. We don't need to redesign today's infrastructure, if we switch over to autonomous cars.

Conversely

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd come to a complete stop once too, and was almost rear-ended. Luckily, I'd been glancing in my rear-view mirror and noticed that the guy pulling up behind me wasn't paying attention. So I rolled forward a few feet, and he ended up just stopping in time. Autonomous and sensors are one thing, but picking up on non-sensor cues and reacting accordingly (going into motion when the vehicle is legally supposed to be stopped) are still beyond the realm of sensors and algorithms.

Re:Conversely

[belthize]

An autonomous car will be even better than you in that situation, *if* it's programmed for it. Not only can it always be looking behind (and sideways, forward etc) it can gauge the oncoming car's closing speed, deceleration etc and figure out how far to move forward.

The lesson learned from the example is they need to add some rules that it's ok to enter an intersection through a red light or stop sign if it means avoiding getting rear ended.

Re:Conversely

[guruevi]

And risk getting T-boned? You can only move a few feet forward in an intersection. If the guy behind you isn't paying attention and going full speed, you are still getting rear-ended. Having moved a few feet forward may cause your car to be pushed further into the intersection with cross-traffic.

Re:Conversely

[camperdave]

An autonomous car will be even better than you in that situation, *if* it's programmed for it.

One of the beauties of autonomous cars is that they can be programmed from simulations. Not only that, if these auto-cars have black boxes, then data from accidents can be analyzed and used to update other cars.

Re:Conversely

[belthize]

And an autonomous car will be much better than you at calculating all the variables. It can look both ways, behind and ahead, nearly instantly calculate multiple closing speeds and decide the best outcome. It may decide getting rear ended is better, it may decide traveling all the way through the intersection is better.

The point is, you have to invoke bugs or failure to come up with a scenario where a human will be better at avoiding an accident than an autonomous car. Most humans are nearly oblivious to what's going on around them while they drive.
 

Re:Conversely

[gnasher719]

And risk getting T-boned? You can only move a few feet forward in an intersection. If the guy behind you isn't paying attention and going full speed, you are still getting rear-ended. Having moved a few feet forward may cause your car to be pushed further into the intersection with cross-traffic.

You're absolutely right. A self-driving car can be programmed to stop at red lights. It can also be programmed to ignore the rule for stopping at red lights if stopping means being rammed from behind. However, it is absolutely f***ing impossible to program the car to stop if stopping means being rammed at low speed from behind and proceeding means to be rammed at high speed from the side. Absolutely impossible.

I've been in that situation _once_. Went through a red traffic light because the driver behind me didn't look like he was slowing down at all. I didn't actually have the time to watch traffic coming from the sides. If a car had come from the sides at speed (which they shouldn't since their traffic light would have just turned green), I would have been hit. A self-driving car could make the right decision in any situation.

Not that Google cares

[mbone]

"The data will set you free.'"

Or imprison you, as the case may be.

Re:Not that Google cares

[SeaFox]

I read this in Lawrence Fishburn's voice.

Re:Not that Google cares

[SeaFox]

oops, forgot the "e" at the end of his name.

Agreed, Robot Drivers are better, but..

[houbou]

the problem isn't that I wouldn't trust a Robot Driver, but, how can you be sure it won't get hacked? or malfunction? Some things should always be left to be in control by a human. Intuition isn't something a robot can acquire.

Re:Agreed, Robot Drivers are better, but..

[mcgrew]

the problem isn't that I wouldn't trust a Robot Driver, but, how can you be sure it won't get hacked? or malfunction? Some things should always be left to be in control by a human.

For thousands of years driverless vehicles hauled their sleeping drunken passengers home, with navigation and engine being a horse.

Re:Agreed, Robot Drivers are better, but..

[houbou]

not the point..but kudos for being a wiseass.

Re:What is the use of being better Driver?

[mbone]

Get it into production, allow for Moore's law, and these could be competitively priced in a very few years.

Re:Who controls the software that produces the dat

[marcello_dl]

No way the consumer can control the data. If he could alter it, he could claim innocence while he is liable. So the "carputer" (it's an ugly name so somebody is going to use it eventually) will be closed source or DRM. It's great for public transport, but not for something you want to call My car.

Perfect Synergy

[some old guy]

Thanks to our dear friends at the NSA, law enforcement will soon have the ability to override the destination selection of autonomous cars and have any driver/passenger they wish promptly delivered to a convenient jail or donut shop.

I love technology!

Re:What is the use of being better Driver?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, because prices never come down once the items are being mass-manufactured..

Re:What is the use of being better Driver?

[Sarten-X]

So let me get this straight... prototypes and first-run units are expensive? Go figure.

I guess we should just give up on the whole thing now, because of course prices will never come down once the technology matures and production increases.

Re:What is the use of being better Driver?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you acting stupid or are you always like this?

Liability

[Dan East]

I commented about insurance and liability a couple days ago when another autonomous vehicle story was posted. This answered my question:

a new dashboard display that his group has developed to help people understand what an autonomous car is doing and when they might want to take over

Well there you have it. As long as a human has the ability to take over, and it's a decision they have to make, then the liability goes from Google to the person sitting in the driver's seat. Subtle but clear as day. Google wants to transfer liability off of their system onto a person in the vehicle. I can see it in court now "Our dashboard clearly indicated to the driver 5 seconds before the accident that it could no longer maintain control of the vehicle given the circumstances involved and that the driver was to disengage the system and take over control."

Re:Liability

[Provocateur]

a new dashboard display that his group has developed to help people understand what an autonomous car is doing and when they might want to take over

How come you left out the next two words "the world"?

Re:Liability

[phantomfive]

If you have to sit there in the car paying attention, that removes all incentive to have an autonomous car in the first place. What is the point? Driving will still be just as boring, if not moreso.

You made a good analysis.

Re:Liability

[Ardipithecus]

On the Air France 447 crash that is about what happened.

When it got too difficult (or to be fair, beyond its parameters) the computer basically said "you got it", disconnected the autopilot and switched from the more hand holding "normal law" program mode to the freer "alternate law," giving the pilots more control, who then crashed the plane.

When control of the car is handed over to the "Transporter", np, but to mom who has not been doing real driving for a while, yikes.

Story: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/aviation/crashes/what-really-happened-aboard-air-france-447-6611877
Full English transcript: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/the-last-harrowing-minutes-inside-air-france-447s-cockpit/article4393626/

Re:Liability

[stymy]

Autonomous cars could also be treated the same way vaccines are. That is, if they result in a very significant decrease in fatalities, then the car company (and the driver, if they maintained the vehicle properly, etc.) are shielded from liability for those fatalities that do occur when the car is robot-driven.

Re:Liability

[Chuckstar]

It's worse than that. If the system relies on a person sitting there doing nothing, but ready to take over in an instant... IMHO, that's worse than if the person just drives. My understanding of the current Google vehicle is that the drivers are often taking over for complicated parts of their journey, on a pre-emptive basis. I'm not that excited to have systems on the road, being driven by Joe Sixpack, where the driver has to (i) pay close attention while the car drives and (ii) make intelligent decisions about taking over control in anticipation of complicated situations coming up.

(For the record, Joe Sixpack includes me. I'd be terrible at paying good attention while the car drives itself. I don't even use cruise control because I feel like my reaction time -- getting my foot to the brake -- is slower when I use cruise control.)

Re:On the desert roads of Nevada, maybe

[jovius]

Solution: robot children and pedestrians. Anyway, wearable computing will make the garments aware of the surroundings. Trying to cross the road? Your pants know better!

Innocent until prooven guilty

[burni2]

"we actually have the data. The guy around us wasn't paying enough attention. The data will set you free.'"
The old argument we collect all your data and IF you are acused of a crime we can set you free if we have ALL YOUR DATA, but with the data
we can adjust the payment for your insurance even if you have no accident.

This circumvents and undermines the common principles of law: You don't have to proof that you are innocent, an acuser must proof that you are guilty.

These are many steps that will eliminate the freedom in between and a new generation of 1984 conformists are born. Innocent until prooven guilty.

STOP - GOOGLE - NOW!

Re:Innocent until prooven guilty

[mcgrew]

Ok, I've seen similar sentiments earlier and I think criminals are probably sharper than you guys. They'll have a record of where the car was, but not who was in it. A criminal could either report the car stolen before committing the crime, or more likely just steal a car. Because, you know, that's what criminals do.

Re:Innocent until prooven guilty

[Altrag]

This fails miserably when both parties are accusing each other of the offense -- at least one of the parties is going to have to offer up some evidence and that's where "the data" comes in.

That is, they aren't trying to prove their own innocence directly -- they're trying to prove the other party's guilt (which generally also "proves" their innocence to be sure, as we don't often hear much about shared liability cases.)

How well that would work in practice vs how much is just marketing BS is up for grabs (and most likely can only be answered by having a few such cases go to trial -- so several years from now at best.)

Re:Innocent until prooven guilty

[ColdWetDog]

Smile into the camera please. No, not that camera. The little tiny one you didn't know was there....

Most criminals won't be that smart. Certainly the politicians won't be (don't worry Senator, we turned all the recorders off....)

Re:Innocent until prooven guilty

[mcgrew]

Specifically illegal in Illinois, and in fact selling a car with a hidden camera unknown to the driver is a felony here. A warrant would have to be issued before the car was sold. A civil servant would be fired and maybe jailed (while the guy who ordered him would get off scott-free) and the criminal would get off because none of the evidence would be admissible.

Re:Innocent until prooven guilty

[u38cg]

Well, congratulations for not knowing the difference between a civil claim and a criminal offence. If you get sued, the court decides on the balance of probability. On that basis, you're better off with more data, not less.

Industrial-strength

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

'We don't have to rely on eyewitnesses that can't be trusted as to what happened — we actually have the data. The guy around us wasn't paying enough attention. The data will set you free.'"

That's the only way this is going to work with thousands of predatory, fraudulent lawyers waiting to pounce with clients in cahoots. I would also recommend a video log of forward and rear for the inevitable Russian-like heaving yourself onto the car pretending to be hit.

It's also a huge concern for household robots that may clean your house someday.

Driverless Cars Are Further Away Than You Think

[theodp]

Driverless Cars Are Further Away Than You Think: "Most daunting, however, are the remaining computer science and artificial-intelligence challenges. Automated driving will at first be limited to relatively simple situations, mainly highway driving, because the technology still can't respond to uncertainties posed by oncoming traffic, rotaries, and pedestrians. And drivers will also almost certainly be expected to assume some sort of supervisory role, requiring them to be ready to retake control as soon as the system gets outside its comfort zone."

Re:Driverless Cars Are Further Away Than You Think

[tinkerton]

Which would mean they're not yet suited for the two things I would like to have them for:
- taking me home when I've(we've) drunk more alcohol than allowed for driving
- dropping me off in the city and being able to find a parking spot by itself or just drive around till I call it up again.

Grumble Grumble iGoogle, Google Reader, Desktop...

[Dr. Eggman]

That's all well and good until you're given a notice that they will be shutting down the automated driving service because they have Google Taxi now.

"the expected cost"

[mha]

You complain about "the expected cost".

Did you ever think about that EVERYTHING anyone earns anywhere is a "cost" for somebody else? Nature and economies are circular systems.

You WANT "costs" to be high - that means incomes are high. Of course, you don't want ANY costs to be high - battle tanks, mines, bridges to nowhere, poison gas, etc. are costs that are bad to have. Paying people to do nothing, by the way, is not on that category - these days A LOT of people would be much better paid to do nothing because what they DO get paid for is actually bad for the majority of people.

So "costs" are over all GOOD, but you have to look at the details, what they stand for. Too much abstraction is bad, comparing apples and oranges ("cost, money" makes everything seem completely equal) has gotten WAY too far.

Re:"the expected cost"

[AlphaWolf_HK]

You've got that totally bass ackwards. You always want costs to be low. Always.

That should be common sense. Think of it this way: What good is having a high income if you can't afford anything anyways because everything costs so much?

On slashdot I so often see commenters complaining about how technology is replacing jobs and there won't be any jobs left (flashbacks to that robot that replaces noodle chefs in China come to mind.) Imagine the opposite scenario where there is no technology. For example, think replacing traffic lights with somebody whose job it is to stand in the middle of the intersection all day long directing traffic. Or worse, a computer used to be a person's occupation instead of a thing; why not just go back to those days? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_computer

Eventually you end up in a situation where we have no creature comforts, or even time to enjoy them, because we're always busy doing shit that we don't even want to do.

Technology by definition makes things cheaper. If you want to make things cost more, your best solution would be to ban all inventions of any kind. Cost represents efficiency in more ways than one, and the more something costs, the less efficient it is. Just as you always want to be more efficient, you also always want to reduce costs. And historically, there never has been any indication that human jobs are going away any time soon, nor has there been any indication that higher costs actually improve quality of life (quite the opposite, really.)

Good, good ...

[LordKaT]

Now go and take this out into New York City on 5th avenue at 5pm ET rush hour during the work week.

No, seriously, I want to see how well this car performs in a city where the posted 40mph speed limit oin the Staten Island Expressway is ignored by the vast majority of cops and motorists, the normal speed is about 70mph or so, and people will rear end you out of spite if you go too slow for them.

Then get me the data on how much less it costs to run this car.

Re:Good, good ...

[dkf]

No, seriously, I want to see how well this car performs in a city where the posted 40mph speed limit oin the Staten Island Expressway is ignored by the vast majority of cops and motorists, the normal speed is about 70mph or so, and people will rear end you out of spite if you go too slow for them.

Don't worry. The car can be fitted with a rear-facing camera so that the person who speeds into the rear end can be automatically reported to both the police and their insurance company. What's more, there won't be any recourse on the lines of "oh, that shouldn't have been reported" since there will be video evidence of (at least) gross negligence. The most perfect "fuck you, asshole" ever.

Who knows, it might even start to improve driving habits round NYC...

Re:On the desert roads of Nevada, maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

you are so funny - you think drivers (or you for that matter) are some magical being that can predict actions?

Re:On the desert roads of Nevada, maybe

[guruevi]

Yes there is and it's already on high-end non-robotic cars. There are IR sensors that can see deer/bicycles/pedestrians even if your headlights don't pick it up yet at night or if they are (partially) hidden behind a car. Also, a robotic car can respond in a matter of microseconds, the human brain easily takes up a second to respond in these situations.

Data will get you jailed

[almostadnsguy]

1. Will you still be drving drunk if you have your autonomous car drive you home after a night of drinking? 2. What if you are driving link and ass and rear-end someone, will they be able to use that data against you? What if both people are at fault? 3. Who's going to absorb the liability for these cars when something unexpected breaks? The large automotives are going to drag their feet for years on self-driving cars. Their will need to be a lot of testing in real life before they mass produce any cars.

Re:Data will get you jailed

[macklin01]

I figure there needs to be something similar to the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program: here, something that makes society safer overall (vaccines) is promoted by reducing the risk of an individual harm (a rare side effect). This says: "Pay in and help make society safer, and if it individually harms you, we've got your back."

So, why not something for driverless cars? You opt into a driverless car with the societal benefit of reduced accidents, and if your driverless car harms you individually (physically or legally), the national defense fund takes over.

Re:Data will get you jailed

[__aasqbs9791]

...driving link and ass and rear-end someone...

Please tell me that is a typo and not something I have to look up on Urban Dictionary?

Re:Data will get you jailed

[MrL0G1C]

Do insurance companies currently sue car manufacturers when faults occur?

I really don't see any need for change from the status quo, the insurance company pays, not the driver, not the manufacturer.

Re:Data will get you jailed

[MrL0G1C]

Although, since the number of pay-outs would most likely be massively reduced, insurance premiums would also drop hugely. So I would expect insurance companies to be against driver-less cars, due to the reduced profit.

Confusing summary

[slasho81]

The summary looks like a collection of vaguely-related sentences.

Re:Confusing summary

[mcgrew]

Try reading it after the reefer wears off.

Taking over during emergency...

[HockeyPuck]

So when you're driving today you're in a state of being aware of the situation and are engaged with the surroundings.

If you're letting the car drive, I highly doubt you're paying that much attention. Why wouldn't I let the car drive and I read, do email, surf the web or turn around and talk to the passengers in the rear seats.

In the event where you need to take an emergency action, it's much easy in the first case to go to heightened state than in the second one. Atleast in the first one you aren't completely surprised by the events you're facing before you.

Think of the case of a gravel truck that has a loose load. If I know there's a truck in front of me, I'm not 100% surprised if some gravel comes out, whereby if i'm reading/emailing and I'm forced to take over to avoid gravel, it's more of a surprise and I'm forced to figure quite a bit more out about the situation before I can act. One could also panic because of the amount of elevated emotion or adrenaline dump that would be taking place since you'd go from "reading iPad" to "dodging gravel".

Re:Taking over during emergency...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a common problem for pilots on long flights where the computer is doing most of the flying.

Re:Taking over during emergency...

[Guppy06]

So when you're driving today you're in a state of being aware of the situation and are engaged with the surroundings.

In theory. In practice you're fucking with the radio while ogling the bicyclist in spandex.

In the event where you need to take an emergency action,

Re-read the summary. The point isn't that autonomous systems are better able to handle emergency situations, but that they don't get into "emergency situations" to begin with.

Since you're so attentive to your surroundings, how often do you count off seconds to gauge your following distance? If you're answer is anything less than "All the time, constantly," you're less attentive than the autonomous system.

Re:Taking over during emergency...

[Guppy06]

Think of the case of a gravel truck that has a loose load.

The good driver would apply the brakes, gas and turn the wheel to make sure the gravel passes harmlessly over or under the car.

The better driver would remember that there was still traffic to the sides and behind him and, rather than hoping they all have better reflexes than he does in dealing with his own sudden braking/accelerating/steering, lets the rock chip the windshield, which is later replaced on-site within 30 minutes, with costs covered entirely by his insurer.

The best driver notes the standardized "STAY BACK" sign on the back of the dump truck and actually stays back.

Guess which one the autonomous system does!

Re:Taking over during emergency...

[ColdWetDog]

So when you're driving today you're in a state of being aware of the situation and are engaged with the surroundings.

In theory. In practice you're fucking with the radio while ogling the bicyclist in spandex.

Onboard computer: "Wow, look that that cute little MacBook over there!"

** Crash ***

We have a lot of work to do yet.

Re:Taking over during emergency...

[iroll]

"Taking over during emergency" is one of the stupidest platitudes ever requested by a regulator. The only time a driver would take over an actual, consumer-ready autonomous car would be if the computer detected a fault of some kind and asked them to. In any other case, the computer would guide the car through the emergency, and probably to a stop before turning to the driver for help.

It would make absolutely no sense to expect an autonomous car driver to see a deer bounding into the road and suddenly grab the wheel and brakes. That would do nothing but create a more dangerous situation.

Re:Taking over during emergency...

[Guppy06]

Regardless, best practice is still to stay back out of harm's way, rather than to risk even greater jeopardy to the lives and property of yourself and those around you with your sudden, erratic and unpredictable evasive driving.

Re:Taking over during emergency...

[GrumpySteen]

Really? You're arguing that an increase in cracked windshields is more important than a large reduction in the over 30,000 people who die in auto accidents every year?

Re:Taking over during emergency...

[Guppy06]

and slings it at twice the trucks speed into your lane so it hits your windshield at 90 meters per second

Which would mean both you and the truck area traveling at around 20 m/s, which is highway speed, which means that you and oncoming traffic are separated by a wide median, a retaining wall, or both.

So in your hypothetical scenario, all these measures fail, and you just happen to be in the path of said gravel coming at you with a relative speed of over 300 km/h. Aside from the ridiculously long odds of being in such a scenario, what's your point? That you would somehow have the superhuman reflexes necessary to avoid a projectile coming at you at nearly 1/3 the speed of sound, whereas a computer would not? And that you could and would do this without jeopardizing traffic around you?

Accounting 101

[sjbe]

So, what is the use of being better Driver while it is too much costly so that it can not be used by many people even if the Government allows self-driving cars in future?

The cost of ANYTHING is high at first. The main reason for this is fixed costs which are very high on a per unit basis if you haven't produced a lot of units. You need to scale up production to bring the costs down since that allows you to spread the fixed costs over more units. Since we are still in the R&D phase with this technology there is no point in mass producing anything in order to lower the costs. Furthermore as the technology develops we discover cheaper ways to accomplish what was previously expensive.

Re:On the desert roads of Nevada, maybe

[alexgieg]

There is no tech yet that can anticipate a child about to kick a ball out onto a road, or to see that a pedestrian is about to walk out in front of you without looking first.

Do you really think you 300ms senses are better at detecting 'random_object_in_car_path()' and doing a 'controlled_break( distance( random_object_in_car_path() ) / car_speed() );' than a laser detection system operating at sub-millisecond speeds?

Defensive Driving

[rsilvergun]

It took me a while to learn what that meant. Basically, be aware of situations where you could be in an accident and get out of them as soon as you can. Also,try to make it a rule that if there's more than 2 things that could go wrong with a driving maneuver I don't do it :).

It's a hard thing to teach though. When I did driver's Ed as a kid they tried to hammer it into us so hard it just came off as a joke ("Blood on the Highway!"). For me, I'm more than a little neurotic, so it came natural :), but I struggle with how to get the point across to my kid that she should periodically be taking stock of her situation.

Self driving cars do all that without the messiness of trying to teach them :)

Re: On the desert roads of Nevada, maybe

[jbo5112]

I'm pretty sure that the cars are constantly watching in front, back and both sides (too lazy to double check). They have been tested accident free (or at least fault free) in San Francisco, and successfully navigated Lombard Street. There is also driverless technology to allow them to see traffic (possibly just driverless traffic) around blind corners, obscured by buildings.

Re:Who controls the software that produces the dat

[SecurityGuy]

It doesn't have to be closed source, or DRM, which i think is not the term you want anyway. Having some kind of non-repudiation would be nice, but still not completely required. Just take speeding tickets now. The cop catches you on radar speeding and does what? Writes it on a piece of paper. Could he be lying? Absolutely! It's still accepted as evidence.

John Henry was a Steel Drivin' Man

[istartedi]

Time for a contest

Re:John Henry was a Steel Drivin' Man

[mcgrew]

Here you go.

Very obvious point they are making

[houghi]

EVERYBODY says they are a good driver and better then others. So why would Google do otherwise?

I also like the bit at the end: The data will set you free.

Also : yes, you need eye witnesses. Or at least external experts.
I would not trust a company saying they are innocent in an accident and back it up by THEIR data. "We promise there was no software error in ANY of the cars. All people need to do is sit on the left cheek and hold the doorknob with the right hand. People just are using it wrong. They also signed a waiver when they opened the door. Look it up. It is in the Company-Is-Always-Right law that was passed last week."

Re:Very obvious point they are making

[Waccoon]

Also : yes, you need eye witnesses. Or at least external experts.

My external expert is my dash cam.

Fuck fake carbon fiber, leather seats, auto-dimming mirrors, and $2,000 "convenience packages". I'll pay good money for an integrated dash cam if I can use and remove my own memory card.

Re:Very obvious point they are making

[ahabswhale]

Yeah, I've been driving for over 25 years with no accidents. Wake me when their car that's "better than you" beats that record. I think I have a lot more fucking data than they do.

more complete spying...

[schlachter]

more so, they will know exactly where everyone is intending to go, the second they get in their car.

that's why Google's pursuing this tech. they know what we're searching for online. now they will know where we are going in real life.
your dash becomes the perfect targeted ad platform.

They are solving the wrong problem.

[StripedCow]

I don't want a driverless car.

I want an automatic chef cook. Because when I go home from work, I still have to sit in the car for 1 hour, and I still have to prepare my food for 45 minutes.

Now, without a driverless car, but having a chef cook, I'd have to sit in the car for 1 hour, and have a meal waiting for me. A net reduction of 45 minutes.

Re:They are solving the wrong problem.

[MrLogic17]

This already exists. On the way out of work, call a restaurant on the way home. Say "I want to place an order for carry out".
Many places walk it out to your car.
Expensive, but adds almost no time to the commute, and no cooking.

Re:They are solving the wrong problem.

[isorox]

I don't want a driverless car.

I want an automatic chef cook. Because when I go home from work, I still have to sit in the car for 1 hour, and I still have to prepare my food for 45 minutes.

Now, without a driverless car, but having a chef cook, I'd have to sit in the car for 1 hour, and have a meal waiting for me. A net reduction of 45 minutes.

Already invented, it's called a wife.

I'd rather spend that hour in the car reading a book, or surfing slashdot.

(Fortunately my commute is under 45 seconds most of the time to the study, or it's a taxi + flight, which means I can work/read all the way. A robotic car wouldn't really help me much.)

City Construction

[number17]

Where I live there is construction season and winter. Call me when it can deal with those.
I would sincerely like to know how it deals with the this construction situation. Will the car reroute or stop in the middle of the intersection thinking there is a car in front of it.

Re:City Construction

[mcgrew]

It will follow the detour signs, OCR is pretty good these days. Notice the sign in the picture you linked? Your car will.

Re:City Construction

[number17]

Too bad there isn't a detour sign.

Re:City Construction

[mcgrew]

Look again, there is a sign. It's hard to see from the camera angle but it's there.

The data will set you free... but it can also be

[divisionbyzero]

faked. I'm not sure how admissable it'd be in court but they do accept GPS data so maybe...

incorrect conclusion

[Gravis Zero]

google's car may be a great driver in nominal driving conditions but as i've posted before, it cant deal with all situations. if your car cant deal with situations a person can, it's not a safer driver, it's a non-driver.

- bad weather (e.g. heavy snow)
- construction areas
- odd situations

dont believe me? how about the lead engineer?

of course if we added electronic assistance to the road itself (special markers/paint for lines) it could solve the first two but it's the unforeseen that is the biggest issue.

Re:incorrect conclusion

[mcgrew]

That link is over a year old. You don't think they've made progress since then?

Re:incorrect conclusion

[Gravis Zero]

sure they have made progress but this is a VAST issue to work out. considering how long we have been chipping away at the problems in computer vision and AI, i wouldnt be surprised if it took decades.

Re:incorrect conclusion

[Altrag]

Weather and construction will definitely have to be figured out before these go mainstream no question about it.

As for "odd situations.." The question isn't "can it handle every odd situation better than a person" but "can it handle more odd situations better than a person?" Or at least a comparable amount. They don't even have to be the same odd situations. A child running out from behind a car is something the human would have to predict but the car could potentially measure. In the human's case, you don't even know the child is there and have to rely on secondary information ("hmm a soccer ball just came flying out from behind that car maybe I'd better stop") while the computer could potentially be using primary information (using IR cameras for example it could actually see the child and make a measurement of the child's movements in addition to also seeing the soccer ball.)

All of that would require incredibly complex and intelligent software no question about it and I can't begin to guess how far along Google or anyone else really is with such software.

All I can really say is we need to stop coming up with one-off "what ifs" that we (in general) assume the computer can't handle and start measuring the aggregate total situations and their probabilities. If the car is going to do better than me (or as good) in 9 out of 10 "odd" situations, I'll happily take that over the 1 out of 10 where I'd do better.

Even if we're equal on 8 of those 10 and each of us is only better in one situation, its still a win in my book as it means I don't have to deal with those other 8 myself and can focus my energy on other things.

Re:Autopilots

[number17]

If you had read TFA, you would have noticed that the robot car operates more safely than humans in the highway infrastructure that is in place today.

None of the three links describe the driving scenario's in which the car operates more safely than humans. Did the article you read mention anything about city driving? That's what i'm interested in.

lower speed = safer

[globaljustin]

TFA headline says the cars drive 'better'. How does the Google engineers define 'better'?

One of those analyses showed that when a human was behind the wheel, Google’s cars accelerated and braked **significantly more sharply** than they did when piloting themselves. Another showed that the cars’ software was much better at **maintaining a safe distance** from the vehicle ahead than the human drivers were.

lets look in reverse order

> maintaining 'safe' distance from car in front of you...'safe' as defined by the DMV is '2 seconds'...a variable distance that accounts for speed...

so, they programed the Google cars not to get closer than a prescribed ammount...the cars did not significantly get any closer than programmed...so "we win!!"

not so fast...that 'safety' they measure has very rapidly decreasing marginal utility...after awhile a .0000000000000001% gain in 'safety' is not work the extra 20 minutes to your commute b/c the Google control software won't let your car ever get any closer than 2 car lengths...so turning left on that busy intersection takes 3x as long in the morning....

> cars [with drivers] accelerated and braked significantly more sharply....again this is a programmed parameter, not some 'victory' for the car...

they defined 'safe' as smooth stops and starts...programed the machine to do smooth stops and starts...therefore, scientifically "ITS SAFER!"

wrong again...it's ridiculously **slower** which almost by default makes it 'safer'...

humans can estimate distances in real time and **make decisions** that safe TIME

TIME is the key here

anyone can just drive more slowly to be safer...we don't b/c we'd never get where we are going if we didn't cut corners

Re:lower speed = safer

[Yosho]

not so fast...that 'safety' they measure has very rapidly decreasing marginal utility...after awhile a .0000000000000001% gain in 'safety' is not work the extra 20 minutes to your commute b/c the Google control software won't let your car ever get any closer than 2 car lengths...so turning left on that busy intersection takes 3x as long in the morning....

When was the last time you took a driving class? They recommend you keep at least 4 seconds between you and the car in front of you as the minimum safe distance you need to stop if an emergency happens.

If you're regularly driving with less than 2 seconds between you and the car in front of you, congratulations, you're part of the problem that automated cars are trying to solve, and I can't wait until you're no longer behind the wheel on a highway.

Re:lower speed = safer

[PPH]

They recommend you keep at least 4 seconds between you and the car in front of you as the minimum safe distance you need to stop if an emergency happens.

It was 2 seconds when I learned to drive. Cars with drum brakes and bias ply recap tires. It went up to 3 seconds, and now 4 when the auto/insurance industry realized that changes had to be made to keep grandpa buying Cadillacs and not hastle mom for texting while driving the kids to soccer practice.

Two seconds is still fine. Just take the brain dead clowns off the road. This will also free up a lot of road capacity and reduce expenditures on continually expanding freeway capacity. Figure out how many drivers the streets can handle and issue that many licenses to the most competent drivers. Everyone else takes the bus. Can't stop in 2 seconds? No license for you!

Re:lower speed = safer

[hibiki_r]

Safe breaking distance depends on a whole lot of things, including the car in front of you. For instance, if the car ahead of you is a small sports car with summer tires, it'll be able to break quite a bit faster than your average minivan with tires that are supposed to last 70K miles. Imagine the minivan is right behind the sports car: Panic break differences, if we start at 60 mph, can be about 60 feet or so. 2 seconds is nowhere near enough in that situation: The minivan better have time to swerve to a different lane. 4 seconds is probably not enough either.

So if you are driving a van or an SUV, you better give nice security distances to the guy in front of you.

Re:lower speed = safer

[isorox]

not so fast...that 'safety' they measure has very rapidly decreasing marginal utility...after awhile a .0000000000000001% gain in 'safety' is not work the extra 20 minutes to your commute b/c the Google control software won't let your car ever get any closer than 2 car lengths...so turning left on that busy intersection takes 3x as long in the morning....

When was the last time you took a driving class? They recommend you keep at least 4 seconds between you and the car in front of you as the minimum safe distance you need to stop if an emergency happens.

If you're regularly driving with less than 2 seconds between you and the car in front of you, congratulations, you're part of the problem that automated cars are trying to solve, and I can't wait until you're no longer behind the wheel on a highway.

In the UK it's 2 seconds in normal conditions, 4 in rain.

Fortunately that's ignored. A 4 second gap between cars means a maximum 900 cars per hour (actually less than that due to car lengths), so the M1 would have 2700 cars an hour, on a road that is used by more than twice that during rush hour.

Of course a 4 second gap, or even a 2 second gap, means you'll be cut up. So you have to brake to reintroduce the gap, then someone pulls in, then you brake. Before you know it, you are doing 20, with the other traffic doing 70, and you're still braking. Hopefully by then the cops will have arrested you and taken your license.

gets rid of drunk driving

[KernelMuncher]

I see the biggest benefit to this technology not as saving us from a boring commute but in preventing drunk driving deaths. It's like having a designated driver for everyone. That would save 10's of thousands of lives per year.

Re:gets rid of drunk driving

[sl149q]

The analogy is there but you have not got it right.

MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Drivers) have campaigned for years to reduce the number of deaths from drunk driving with reasonably success. The point is that they number of deaths was in the range of about 20,000 a year.

That still leaves about 30,000 deaths a year from other causes which mostly are due to human drivers. I.e. some number greater than the problem that drunk drivers presented.

Once autonomous vehicles are available the focus will move quickly from Drunk Drivers to simply Drivers. Think MAHD (Mothers Against Human Drivers). And that will move with Internet Social Media speed. It will simply become socially unacceptable to drive yourself (just like driving drunk) within five years at that point.

And the net benefit to society is similar. Probably in excess of 20,000 people a year who won't die.

GIGO

[Dcnjoe60]

Garbage in, Garbage Out

Of course Google's cars are safer, that is until you need to take over -- as evidenced by the new display they are talking about to tell drivers that they need to take over. Of course, that is assuming that the drivers are allert and not doing something else because they haven't had to be paying attention. If the country was interested in highway safety, it has already been proven that lowering the speed limits (and enforcing them) will also produce dramatic results in the reduction of accidents. The main reason being that human drivers will have more time to react.

Simply put, we can already reduce accidents, but the price to pay is safer driving habits. If people aren't willing to exhibit safer driving habits, then they shouldn't be permitted to drive in the first place. In development the old adage is low cost, fast or feature rich, pick any two. The same goes with highway safety. New cars are already out of the price range of the average American, how much will a robotic car cost? Face it, we could have better fuel economy, less highway accidents/injuries/fatalities and lower infrastructure maintenance if all we would do is drop the speed limit from 70 to 60 and enforce it.

But in the future, when the wealthy have their autonomous cars, we will build new prisons to lock up the poor who must be the cause of accidents by driving their antiquated vehicles, or we will just outlaw them all together. Like it or not, at the anticipated price points, autonomous cars are not about highway safety, but maintaining separation of the classes.

Re:GIGO

[T-Bucket]

No, that's not it at all. Dropping the speed limit from "stupidly low" to "Even MORE stupidly low" won't change a thing. Most modern cars can cruise at 80+ all day long on an interstate highway perfectly safely. The problem is the idiot texting, or insisting he has the right to be in the left lane because "he's going the speed limit!"

I'm too lazy to search it out now, but there are NUMEROUS studies showing that increasing speed limits has either no effect or a net POSITIVE effect on safety. (It's only negative for police revenue generation).

Re:GIGO

[Dcnjoe60]

No, that's not it at all. Dropping the speed limit from "stupidly low" to "Even MORE stupidly low" won't change a thing. Most modern cars can cruise at 80+ all day long on an interstate highway perfectly safely. The problem is the idiot texting, or insisting he has the right to be in the left lane because "he's going the speed limit!"

I'm too lazy to search it out now, but there are NUMEROUS studies showing that increasing speed limits has either no effect or a net POSITIVE effect on safety. (It's only negative for police revenue generation).

Has nothing to do with how fast a modern car can cruise and everything to do with how fast the average person can react. There is a reason why most military pilots don't fly fighter jets. It is all about reaction times and physics dictates that the faster the vehicle goes, the less time the driver has to react. Cars in the 60s and 70s could go 80+, too, and they didn't have the problem with texting, but when speed limits were lowered, accidents went down. It doesn't matter if one is distracted because of texting or because they sneezed, it takes a finite amount of time for a human being to recover, re-assess and react.

There may be numerous studies showing that increasing speed limits has either no effect or a net positive effect on safety, however, they would be outweighed 100 to 1 by scientifically valid studies showing just the opposite. It has zero to do with police revenue and everything to do with physics.

Try it in Britain

[GrahamCox]

Last week I had an American friend over and we were talking about driverless cars, and she said she thought they might work in the USA, but having seen what UK roads are like, she was very skeptical they'd work there, so maybe Google should try it!

For example, many roads in tows date back to roman times, and are too narrow for two-lane traffic. You need to look far ahead and work out when exactly you need to duck into a gap behind a parked car to let oncoming traffic through, and when to go for it when you have right of way so as not to block traffic in either direction. And if a block does occur, will it mount the pavement (sidewalk) to free things up, or know when it's time to back up and give in?

The UK has very few towns laid out in a grid, and most roads are twisty, and narrow, other than motorways. Can a driverless car cope with such terrain? If Google really want to prove their technology is better than a human, let them bring their cars over to the UK. If they work here, I'll be impressed.

Re:Try it in Britain

[serviscope_minor]

For example, many roads in tows date back to roman times, and are too narrow for two-lane traffic. You need to look far ahead and work out when exactly you need to duck into a gap behind a parked car to let oncoming traffic through, and when to go for it when you have right of way so as not to block traffic in either direction.

Not just Roman roads. Any road through a general urbam residential area (e.g. London Zone 2-6 off the main high street or A roads) is like that. Wide enough easily for 3 cars side by side, except the ones on the left and right are of course parked.

If they work here, I'll be impressed.

They also have a higher bar to pass. The UK driving test is much tougher than the US one and statistically, despite having nasty roads with heavy traffic ,the roads are some of the safest in the world.

Re:Try it in Britain

[the eric conspiracy]

We have something like that in the US. It's called Boston.

Actually it's worse that what you described. There are streets in Boston that are too narrow for even one car.

So anyway I'll be buying my self-driving car after these things are successful in Boston.

Re:Try it in Britain

[dkf]

We have something like that in the US. It's called Boston.

I live in the UK, and I've visited Boston a few times. You've got no idea what you're talking about. While Boston's got the same sort of layout as most UK (and European) cities due to having the road layout designed in pre-motor-vehicle times (and not being "rationalized") most of its roads are not too narrow. Most of the UK uses roads (especially away from major routes) where the road would be entirely adequate without any parking and provided nothing is wider than an ordinary car. But now add plenty of parking, trucks and buses. And this isn't just part of one city. It's virtually all of them, and out in the 'burbs and the countryside too.

I commute by train; I'm not crazy.

Re:Try it in Britain

[zippthorne]

There might be less parking with robotic cars, though. You could just get out at your destination and instruct your car to go to a nearby parking lot. Zip cars would also have an interesting advantage....

Re:On the desert roads of Nevada, maybe

[bazmail]

Good drivers can "anticipate" actions. This is quite different to "predicting" actions. If you're confused just go look it up.

Re:On the desert roads of Nevada, maybe

[bazmail]

This just means the can can *react* to something that is already moving, rather than *proactively* anticipate a movement. Often times this is the difference between life and death.

Trust Google .. yeah right

[hebertrich]

Before i trust a google software packed car it will be boxed in a faraday cage , dismanteled in components and all of them smashes to bits.
Imagine the possibilities .. while you discuss business with a passenger , Google relays it all to the NSA.. bla bla
Position is sent to them and your whole travels are nicely tucked away for future uses .. or sent to the police for ticketing purposes
Trust a Google Car ? like hell .. I'd rather trust Big Brother .. of the Devil himself .

Drive it in Belgium

[Coward Anonymous]

I propose Google set their cars free in Belgium. If they can prove that they drive safely through Belgium I'll be somewhat convinced.

Why Belgium you ask? Belgium has a very extreme interpretation of yielding right of way at intersections to traffic coming from your right. So extreme that it often extends to blind intersections where you might not even be able to see there is a road intersecting on your right (think alleys in towns). You need to be familiar with the roads in question to know where to yield, otherwise there is no way for you to know what to do.

Re:Drive it in Belgium

[WaroDaBeast]

Wait... So you're telling me there's no way to tell there's an intersection? Like, no signs? No white paint on the road? That screams defective by design.

Re:Drive it in Belgium

[serviscope_minor]

You think that's defective by design? Wait until you see:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ceg6NQKHd70

Honestly, after seeing that video are you surprised about the road rules?

Re:On the desert roads of Nevada, maybe

[bazmail]

>Do you really think you 300ms senses are better at detecting 'random_object_in_car_path()' and doing a 'controlled_break( distance( random_object_in_car_path() ) / car_speed() );' than a laser detection system operating at sub-millisecond speeds? Yes I do. Especially when I, and most good drivers, can often anticipate a movement several seconds before it actually happens. Put that in your equation.

Re:What is the use of being better Driver?

[mcgrew]

In 1983, just 30 years ago, a computer with a clock speed of 4 mHz, 64k of memory, and two 5 1/4 inch floppies and a ten megabyte hard drive was over $4000. Now one with a thousand times the clock speed, a million times the memory and a million times the drive space for a tenth of that price in absolute dollars, while the cost of gasoline and many other things have quadrupled. Now do the math on your $150k car and see what one will cost in 30 years.

Re:Autopilots

[Smivs]

Well up to a point. The comparison is with 'normal' drivers, American drivers at that. As far as I know driver training in the US is fairly basic compared to many countries, and TFA doesn't actually mention 'professionally trained' drivers at all unlike the /. summary. I would contest that a 'real' advanced driver, say a UK police Class 1 driving certificate holder, will out-perform a robot any day, not because they are quicker to react but because the skills and experience they have gathered over years of dedicated training and practice would give them the ability to predict problems and prevent incidents, rather than relying on their robotically quick response times to cope with a developing problem the advanced human driver would have already avoided.

Re:Autopilots

[jamesl]

If you had read TFA ...

I did. I also read:

Proceed with Caution toward the Self-Driving Car
Completely autonomous vehicles will remain a fantasy for years. Until they're here, we need technology that enhances human drivers' abilities rather than making those abilities increasingly obsolete
http://www.technologyreview.com/review/513531/proceed-with-caution-toward-the-self-driving-car/

and

Driverless Cars Are Further Away Than You Think
http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/520431/driverless-cars-are-further-away-than-you-think/

What about privacy?

[FridayBob]

Personally, I love the idea of autonomous vehicles, but what about privacy? These days, almost all smart phone users must assume that anything they do with the device is being recorded by one or more spy agencies, so will that also be true for self-driving cars? At this point in our history I imagine the answer would have to be yes, which I find depressing.

In the future I hope things will be different, but then we will first have to get money out of politics .

Re:What about privacy?

[mcgrew]

Already crossed that bridge; you have a phone in your pocket. No car needed to stalk you.

Re:What about privacy?

[safetyinnumbers]

Personally, I love the idea of autonomous vehicles, but what about privacy?

Well, one advantage of self-driving cars is that they can be fitted with curtains...

A prediction

[TheloniousToady]

I predict that one day it will be illegal to drive a car manually. I can't predict exactly when, but I bet some of you will live to see it.

Re:A prediction

[TheloniousToady]

...or, if not actually illegal, it will at least be discouraged for the general population via increased insurance. Maybe you'll be able to drive manually for fun, on occasion, and that won't affect your premiums much.

Can't wait to read the Google ToS

[JeffOwl]

So why is Google investing all this money into this project? This is just their excuse to gather more information on you, and it goes without saying that the government will have access to all of it. Google can monitor your health: Airbag arming sensor in the seat measures your weight; Car knows where you shop and where you eat; If you drive to health clubs and how often. Google can determine who your associates are: The car can use biometric cues along with phone data to correlate particular passengers and track meetings even if one of you leaves their phone at home from time to time. Google knows where you are going before you get there and sells that real time information to the businesses at your destination.

Re:But what about black swans?

[ravenlord_hun]

The beautiful thing about automated systems, though, is if such a condition occours, it can be patched to not occour again. Whereas if one human driver gets into a hairy situation and learns something, the rest of the world is none the wiser - a different person can (and more than likely will) repeat the mistake.

Re:What is the use of being better Driver?

[Greg01851]

If only it worked that well... we'd have flying cars that go .25 light speed :)

Re:who cares if it's safer?

[ravenlord_hun]

I think people will keep taking risk. If you want to be extreme, people will be travelling to base-jumping using their safer self-driven cars. The thing about driving is not really the risk, but the fact most drivers don't actually like driving. It's a neccesary loss of time that is hard to avoid. Also being safer just makes for a lot better PR to Google, of course.

Extreme weather conditions

[TheloniousToady]

I wonder how these things do under extreme weather conditions, such as ice and snow? Do they still do better than humans?

Years ago, I suddenly hit a patch of black ice and I instinctively steered the wrong way, which only made it worse. I ended up doing a 180 and going over a curb. There wasn't much damage to me or the car, but I was very lucky - a large industrial truck was only about 10 seconds away.

In principle, steering wrong on ice is the sort of mistake that a well-programmed computer wouldn't make. I assume they're trying to account for all situations, but I've never actually seen any coverage about that.

2 or 4 seconds doesn't matter to my point

[globaljustin]

so I made a mistake...its **4** seconds instead of **2** (btw, the DMV rules vary by state in the USA...& some states mandate a time-distance, some don't)

you dodged my greater point...

Google's engineers gamed the test by slowing the cars down...

Of course they are 'safer'

Re: 2 or 4 seconds doesn't matter to my point

[dave420]

Nah, I think your mistake proves entirely that some drivers (including yourself) are woefully ill-informed, yet assume they are the very paradigm of safe driving. You got the recommended spacing between cars off by 100%. Brilliant. You're a credit to the other side.

It will never do my job

[reboot246]

I spend many of my days driving less than 2 mph along the side of the road, usually with the two right tires about 2 or 3 feet off the pavement. Sometimes I'm on the wrong side of the road doing the same thing. All the while looking at an instrument; looking for changes in vegetation; keeping up with how far I've traveled; watching for traffic; reading a map; watching out for holes, broken glass, mailboxes, low-hanging limbs, etc; and trying my best to get near where the gas pipeline is buried. Show me a computer controlled vehicle that can handle that and I'll buy one today. I could sit back, watch the instrument and sip coffee.

Oh, did I mention backing around a mailbox with a 6 foot PVC arm sticking out to the side of the truck? Try that some time; it's a skill not many have. I can back into places where YOU couldn't even drive out of.

actually IT IS 2 SECONDS

[globaljustin]

I was right all along:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-second_rule

I revoke my apology...

Re:who cares if it's safer?

[maxwell demon]

I don't see why it should not be possible to make an autonomous car which doesn't constantly tell Google/the NSA/some other organization its position. Such a car will probably not be made by Google. It may not be made in the US. But I'm sure if autonomous cars become commonplace, it will be made somewhere by someone.

Re:On the desert roads of Nevada, maybe

[alexgieg]

I, and most good drivers, can often anticipate a movement several seconds before it actually happens. Put that in your equation.

Why wouldn't a computer system be able to "anticipate a movement several seconds before it actually happens", specially when it's continuously and actively looking for such movements for the specific purpose of anticipating them and avoiding collisions?

Sure, the human brain has lots of pattern recognition functions that go about working even when you aren't consciously using them, but pretending they're beyond and/or faster than what technology can do doesn't make sense. The prime example are air bags. The system detects an impact and deploys the bags way before your brain (or your body, for that matter) starts noticing that a crash occurred. One instant everything is fine, the next instance the bags are around you, your car is topside down.

As for a fully operational computer driver system, with it most of the time the accident won't have occurred to begin with.

No thanks.

[theGhostPony]

I commute about a thousand miles a week, mostly rural thank goodness and I still enjoy driving. Still work on my own cars too. Robot cars? No thanks.

But for the other screwball drivers out there who seem to have the attention span of a fruit fly, I hope they all adopt the system, and soon. From what I've observed over the past several years, it would seem most cars are already driverless.

Re: How about driving to rural cottage or snowy co

[maxwell demon]

Yeah, and it will also stop driving as it doesn't believe there's road there. How would it handle parking at a college football game or a county fair where you're directed by a guy in an orange vest with a flash light pointing you to a made up spot in the middle of a grass field?

Why do you think they can't be switched to manual driving if needed? Airplanes have had autopilots for quite some time, and to my knowledge there's not a single one where you can't switch the autopilot off.

Re:trains

[maxwell demon]

Trains are great for connections used by many people. They are not so good for going from your rural house to the next village five miles away.

issues

[jklovanc]

Urmson showed a new dashboard display that his group has developed to help people understand what an autonomous car is doing and when they might want to take over.

This is an interesting quote that brings up a few points. If the driver has to take over the vehicle is not autonomous and it is being driven by autopilot. There is a big step between "drive most of the time" and "drive all of the time". I am a big believer in the 80/20 rule. In this case 80% of the work needs to be done to deal with the last 20% of the situations the vehicle gets into. Another issue is that all current tests have been with drivers who's only job is to test the vehicle and monitor it's performance. The average driver will not be that attentive. What happens when the driver is asleep, distracted and/or drunk when the system tells them to take over? What if the driver has not been watching the situation when the system tells him to take over. It will take a few seconds to orient oneself to a dangerous situation and by that time it may be too late to react. This whole "take over when needed" method predicates on drivers doing keeping track of what is going on so they can take over when needed. Most drivers are not attentive when they have to be let alone when they don't have to be.

One of those analyses showed that when a human was behind the wheel, Google’s cars accelerated and braked significantly more sharply than they did when piloting themselves. Another showed that the cars’ software was much better at maintaining a safe distance from the vehicle ahead than the human drivers were.

We’re spending less time in near-collision states

No news here. Computers have better reflexes and measurement techniques than humans and they are infinity more patient. When the car in front slows a bit the computer will instantly know and be able to react which will lead to smoother breaking and better distance control. A human may take a few seconds to react which will mean harder braking and loss of distance. The real question is "is it significant?". Following a vehicle is a simple problem for a computer but there are many, much more difficult issues involved when driving. The Google solution is to have the driver take over which has issues in itself.
Also, who defined what is "near-collision states"? The word "near" is a relative term and is defined by the context where it is used. For example near means something different to an astronomer than it does to a microbiologist. It could be argued that cars are in a "near-collision state" most of the time. All it takes is for the vehicle in the next lane to swerve and there is a collision. If no collision happened is there a problem? is "near-collision state" really a good measure of safety?

When the computer can drive 100% of the time we will have autonomous vehicles. Until then we are trading one problem for another.

Re:Autopilots

[Baloroth]

Possibly. On the other hand, the robot car has the potential to have hundreds of thousands or millions of years worth of experience in handling such situations (mind you, the current crop of cars don't, but that's because they're still very definitely a prototype design). Regardless, the point of autonomous cars is that they can be used by anyone without such experience: if they're safer than the average driver, they'll save lives. Not to mention potentially eliminating problems like drunk driving entirely.

The only way I would accept this...

[Lohrno]

Sorry but the only way I would accept giving up the control to a computer is if they upped the speed limits for them too. Surely if a computer controlled car is safer than a human they can go faster right?

Re:Autopilots

[LifesABeach]

There is an ancient saying the roughly goes, "Before the Gods make you fall, they first offer you the gift of Pride." Now how could Google have pissed off the Gods?

Re:What is the use of being better Driver?

[jklovanc]

Moor's law is about capability and not price. If it was about price since I bought a computer for $3000 in 1985 I should be able to buy one for $23. Even if the price of the system gets down to $5000 it would still be a third the price of some new vehicles. Then there is the catch-22 of pricing; people don't buy something because the price is so high and the price is so high because people are not buying them. We are not talking about a couple of thousand dollars. The price of an autonomous vehicle will be out of range of most people and available only to the very rich for a long time to come.

People who never learn how to drive

[kheldan]

That's where this is going.

More and more we are becoming a nation (a world?) where people don't know how to do anything for themselves. Dependence on machines to do everything for us is a disaster waiting to happen. Also, getting your car literally hijacked by a hacker, causing it to take you somewhere you didn't want to go, or intentionally getting you killed. More opportunities for governments and corporations to spy on you and track you. Less privacy. Etcetera.

Re:People who never learn how to drive

[Lohrno]

You sound like one of those conspiracy nuts. That said I have a hard time saying you're wrong necessarily. Especially with the black box stuff they're already doing and the rfid tagging of license plates.

Yeah I want a mechanical override too.

Re:People who never learn how to drive

[kheldan]

If you're going to name-call then I'm going to insist you qualify that statement: How do I sound like a conspiracy nut? We live in a day and age where the fucking government spies on everyone, and a self-driving car would come equipped with everything they'd want to track where you're going at all times. Teenage hackers hack just about everything, what makes you think some little asshole isn't going to hack self-driving cars "for the lulz" and cause someone to drive off a bridge or into a concrete abutment and get killed? Well? Explain to me how I'm wrong?

Re:Autopilots

[Smivs]

Indeed. The fact is most drivers are pants, and autonomous cars will undoubtedly save many lives and avoid many crashes. I just wanted to put this in some sort of context.

Re:Oh really ? Let's see your Prius keep up with m

[jeffb (2.718)]

Yeah, yeah, and before you let that steam drill beat you down, you'll die with a hammer in your hand.

Enjoy your superiority while you can. You've probably got years to do so, but certainly not decades.

But don't cars already get hijacked...

[Sits]

...and don't people sometimes malfunction while behind the wheel too?

Re:But don't cars already get hijacked...

[houbou]

yeah, nothing is perfect.

Perfect when only driving with other robots

[bussdriver]

All robot situations will work great but mixing in humans is just asking for trouble; nobody is so ingenious at finding problems than a foolish human.

I can detect the context of avoiding people on their cell phones and adapt or avoid a mother driving a bunch of kids; these robots can't. That is my "near collision state" to avoid. Now in avoiding these risky situations one could be placed into a worse situation - such as NOT speeding when everybody else is speeding and recklessly passing you - every lane change around you increases the risk.

I wonder what happens when in bad road conditions the google maps indicates to drive off a cliff... Some humans have had troubles in those situations.

Google: Our robot cars have better lawyers than your lawyers.

Re:Perfect when only driving with other robots

[jklovanc]

All robot situations will work great but mixing in humans is just asking for trouble;

and animals, pieces of tires, fallen rocks, icy conditions, etc. Like I said, 80/20.

Re:Perfect when only driving with other robots

[hibiki_r]

So why do you think the computer can't? The sensors can see things just as well as you do. The sensors also can see that every single lane is driving 80 mph when the road is marked 40. There's nothing stopping the algorithm designer to let the computer realize that following the speed limit might be dangerous.

And the computer isn't driving based off a map: It determines its route using the map. The actual 'tactical' driving is done using local sensors. It doesn't matter what google maps think: Automated drivers don't drive down cliffs.

Re:Perfect when only driving with other robots

[bussdriver]

I don't think those others are a big problem. Deer perhaps, but I'd think the robot would handle that better overall. Icy conditions probably not bad either, my car already adjusts itself when it is freezing (it does mess up sometimes when it's warmer at the sensor than colder wind swept areas or where the ice hasn't melted but it is a 10 year old car. Given the number of people slipping around during season changes here I'm not convinced people are good at learning to adapt.)

Re:Perfect when only driving with other robots

[jklovanc]

Wen I see a deer at the side of the road I slow down and move more toward the center of the road. That takes forethought and the ability to differentiate between a deer and a postal box on the side of the road. The AI for a computer to do something similar is not simple and has yet to be invented.

Re:Perfect when only driving with other robots

[dave420]

So you know everything the Google cars can do, and more importantly what they can't. Gotcha. You should go tell Google, as apparently all they had to do was to ask you, and they'd know what they should be doing. Or you're wrong. I wonder which is more plausible...

I don't get the point

[khallow]

If we're going to talk of safest drivers, then the safest drivers whether human or automatic are the ones that aren't behind a wheel. You can't hurt anyone with a car unless you're driving it. My point here is that Google is ignoring the style of driving, for example, that of the car sitting in the parking lot.

I imagine the automated driver would lose their safety advantage, if human drivers were to drive like the automated ones.

What if GPS is wrong?

[techdolphin]

What happens if the GPS is wrong and how do we make the car go to the right location? Just recently, I went to a store and the GPS routed me the wrong way. I also have had many case where the GPS misses the address by several hundred feet. I think before we go robot cars the routing needs to perfect, and that has not been achieved yet.

Re:Who controls the software that produces the dat

[Altrag]

Huge difference though:
- Both you and the cop have a copy of the ticket, so he can't pull you over for a 10mph ticket and then secretly write it up as 25mph after he's done with you. Nor could you take your copy and do the opposite.

- Police officers in general are in a position of trust (whether its warranted isn't always clear, but its necessary nonetheless for them to do their jobs.) That includes trusting that the officer won't try and do something like this (on the threat of losing their jobs and potentially facing civil or criminal charges themselves if they're caught.)

None of that is really relevant to whether or not its possible to have an open source and still tamper-proof data log. But the answer is "sure why not." Just have the log storage in a "black box" with a tamper-proof seal and an external interface that only allows appends and reads (no modify or delete.)

All of the components could be completely open source / open hardware as long a sufficiently tamper-proof seal can be designed in such a way that it couldn't be re-built without detection should someone attempt to tamper. I'm sure someone clever could come up with such a thing (and probably already has long ago, though I wouldn't know where to look for one, open or not.)

Of course, you probably don't want users being able to muck around with their car's software anyway if safety is a concern (which it is!) Hacking a 1-2ton machine that barrels down the highway at 80mph is a bit more serious of a risk to yourself and others than hacking at Linux kernel on your test box where the worst that happens is you have to hit the power button and try again.

So you could STILL have open everything -- but the implementation would have to be further locked down to prevent unproven hacks from being installed on actual vehicles. Which kind of defeats the purpose to some degree (still leaves the "many eyes" bug-hunting argument for open source but not the "anyone can muck with it" argument.)

Then again, that's kind of needed for closed software as well since there's enough smart people out there who are able to reverse-engineer and start hacking at damned near anything without the source!

Re:Autopilots

[Bengie]

Since you can get rid of stop signs and stop lights, I would say that they are better. Well, in non-residential zones anyway.

Re:What is the use of being better Driver?

[mcgrew]

The cars themselves won't advance much in perfprmance and won't shrink in price like that; cars never have. But I expect the electronics to. In 1976 a 25 inch RCA TV was the biggest one available, and it cost $600. That's a few thousand in today's money.

Re:On the desert roads of Nevada, maybe

[Altrag]

No, but the cameras could be equipped to look into the IR spectrum and see a child (or dog or other such heat profile) and attempt to determine whether its moving into the street or not.

Can never predict 100% of everything of course and even if you predict it you might be too late to prevent it but the computer's got far far more sensory input (potentially) available and is significantly faster at making mathematical calculations such as "trajectory of that IR blob that's behind the vehicle." than any human.

At the end of the day, there's not really any question about these vehicles having the potential to be safer than human drivers -- its basically all about the software implementation. If they can do enough stuff and handle enough special cases in the software, then as a human you will simply be outclassed in every situation except one -- having a "bad feeling" and stopping for only that reason. I would hazard to say that the number of times that's used as a successful accident avoidance mechanism pales a lot in comparison to the more common scenario of just not noticing something in time.

Re:Autopilots

[__aaltlg1547]

We need to redesign some parts of the infrastructure whether or not we switch to autonomous cars.

The real secret of 'self driving' cars.

[Kaenneth]

They are actually remotely controlled by low-paid operators offshore in china and india.

They both control the car, however, both have to apply the gas to accellerate, but only one has to hit the brakes to stop.

Re:Grumble Grumble iGoogle, Google Reader, Desktop

[Altrag]

If it was cheap enough, this wouldn't necessarily be horrible (well, assuming they had some competition in the market of course..)

If we take an average of say $16k for a low-mid range new vehicle and fully depreciate it over 10 years (ie: equivalent to $1600/yr or a bit over $30/wk or a bit over $4/day.) Add fuel and insurance costs to that $4/day and you could probably have $10-15/day worth of alternative transportation before you start really losing money on the deal.

Of course that's still far far less than current taxi services are willing to offer for any significant trip (at least any I've seen) and also ignores the possibility of picking up a much cheaper used car and additionally ignores the requirement of having enough taxis in service to actually get everyone where they need to go when they need to get there (that last one being the biggest stumbling block by far -- needing thousands upon thousands of vehicles in service for rush hour each day.. all just sitting there idle the rest of the time.)

Blind corners

[Tetetrasaurus]

I don't see how autonomous cars will ever be able to do things that require taking the initiative and forcing your way in, like when you have a stop sign and the perpendicular traffic does not, and because of some obstruction you can't see what's coming, so you essentially just have to stick your nose out and edge into traffic until you can crane your neck forward trying to get a glimpse or just go, hoping for the best, which frequently requires gunning it. I see autonomous cars being much like the Griswolds from European Vacation, trying to merge into the outer circle of that roundabout for hours, to no avail, while appreciating Big Ben every time they go round. Picture yourself merging onto a very crowded fast-moving highway, having to make your own space by wedging yourself in, how can an autonomous car do that, simply because if it goes wrong, it's your liability. "My car did that dangerous move, not me, ticket and sue the engineers" sounds like a future common refrain. Obviously the engineers aren't going to make the car aggressive enough like that, so I forsee a possibly worse problem of these cars coming to a halt when merging, which is even more dangerous, makes traffic worse, and draws the ire of drivers all around you.

Of course the solution is to make all cars autonomous and aware of each other, but can anyone imagine that happening in our car culture?

Re:What is the use of being better Driver?

[JesseMcDonald]

Moor's law is about capability and not price. If it was about price since I bought a computer for $3000 in 1985 I should be able to buy one for $23.

Well, you can buy a Raspberry Pi Model A for less than $23, with more CPU performance and memory than anything you were likely to see in 1985, not to mention far lower power consumption. You still have to supply your own keyboard and monitor, though.

Re:Trust Google .. yeah right

[the eric conspiracy]

You can get that from any cell phone now. Self-driving car is an optional accessory.

A few points on self-driving cars

[Animats]

Having worked on self-driving cars (2005 Grand Challenge), a few points:

The comment about minimizing "near-collision states" is significant. A near-collision state is one where a reasonable variance of the behavior of another vehicle could cause a collision. It's about predicting other-vehicle behavior. That's an important area to study. Aviation people put a lot of effort into minimizing near-misses, and it pays off.

Incidentally, Tesla's announcement that they're starting work on an "autopilot" is them playing catch-up. Audi, BMW, Cadillac, and Ford are already demoing automatic driving systems. It looks like Cadillac will be the first to ship hands-off highway driving, in 2015. All these early systems are highway driving only, although Cadillac includes stop-and-go driving in traffic jams. That's likely to be a very popular feature.

On the sensor side, more progress is needed, and it's coming. That rotating LIDAR contraption on top of Google's self-driving cars is from Velodyne. It's 64 LIDAR units on a spinning turntable. That's a research device, not a production one. There are better ways to do LIDAR, but the cost needs to come down. The approaches used in the Kinect and the XBox One will not work outdoors in bright sunlight. Outdoor LIDAR systems work fine, but they're pulsed, not continuous. For a nanosecond, at one frequency (color) they far outshine the sun. But the total energy per pulse is low, so they're eye-safe. Currently, such devices are very expensive, but that's not for any good reason. It's because some exotic ICs have to be made in tiny quantities.

Radars are getting better, too. A decade ago, in the Grand Challenge, we had to use Eaton VORAD radars, which operate at 24GHz. These could reliably range cars, trucks, and larger bicycles, but not people at long range, or signposts. (Such radars return range, azimuth, and range rate; this isn't a speed gun. I used to have one of these looking out my window at at an intersection, with a display plotting the traffic.) Today's automotive radars are running at 77GHz, with plans to move to 79GHz. There's an effort to standardize on 79GHz internationally. Tripling the frequency, plus applying more compute power to the processing, means that most objects a car might hit are detectable. These radars are getting cheap and small, so a car will have enough of them to provide full-circle data. Long range is needed mostly in front; on the side and in back, much lower power can be used.

A key issue is a high viewpoint. This isn't just about obstacle detection. You also need to profile the road. This was a big deal for the off-road DARPA Grand Challenge, but even on paved roads you need to be able to detect junk on the pavement and potholes. Google has their sensor on top of the roof. This will probably be unacceptable in a production car. I'd go for flash LIDARs at the top corners of the front windows. One possibility is a narrow strip just above the windshield, to contain all the sensors. This is one way to combine vehicle aesthetics and field of view.

Cameras are useful, but computer vision is still kind of dumb. Distance from stereo only works at short ranges, and range rate info from cameras is poor. Digital cameras are so cheap now, so it's tempting to think they can do the whole job. Not yet. Computer vision isn't good enough. Tesla is probably putting too much hope into camera processing. You need cameras to recognize signs, traffic lights, and such. Also, you need multiple sensors because not all objects are visible on all sensors. Radars can't see insulators. Cameras can't see objects with little contrast against the background. LIDARs can't see some materials, such as the charcoal fabric used on many office chairs. Sensor fusion is essential.

Enough for now. This looks quite do-able.

Re:A few points on self-driving cars

[russotto]

A near-collision state is one where a reasonable variance of the behavior of another vehicle could cause a collision.

I'd like to see a self-driving car avoid a "near-collision" state on the Capital Beltway during busy times. Or the MD I-270 of old (they've changed it a lot since I commuted on it) -- I (along with everyone else on the road) used to spend entire commutes in a "near-collision" state, sub-second following distances at ~65mph alternated with panic stops.

Re:A few points on self-driving cars

[Animats]

The above was posted by some clown who copied it from an old posting of mine - John Nagle

Not quite complete

[turb]

I'll be impressed with Google's solution once they leave the comforts of California and drive day to day on the snow and ice of places like Minnesota, Montana and so on.

I'm sure they will master it someday but until then, Googles solution is incomplete.

Re:What is the use of being better Driver?

[r2kordmaa]

Moores law is about price vs capability.

Re:What is the use of being better Driver?

[jklovanc]

You also forget power supply, software, technical expertise and tools needed to get a raspberry pie to do anything useful.

Also the high starting price of a computer was about three months average salary while the starting price of an autonomous car is closer to five years salary. The other issue is that businesses could justify buying computers to increase productivity. That can't really be said for semi-autonomous vehicles. The penetration into business drove the price down to make it affordable to the consumer. Computers facilitated the information revolution. People were willing to pay a reasonable price to get into the game. I doubt there is that much incentive for semi-autonomous vehicles,

Re:What is the use of being better Driver?

[r2kordmaa]

Moores law applies to computer price vs capability. You can bet that the PC-s doing the control are not the bulk of the cost in that 150k$. Sure mass production cuts cost per unit, but it wont make it insignificant. Cutting 150k$ down to something reasonable is not going to be easy

Re:What is the use of being better Driver?

[jklovanc]

Guess again

Moore's law is the observation that, over the history of computing hardware, the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles approximately every two years. "

Re:USA != World

[r2kordmaa]

Well richer parts of the word tend to have better traffic culture and you get to guess three times where most of the customer base will be for the fancy and probably very expensive self driving cars

Re:What is the use of being better Driver?

[ColdWetDog]

The reason you can't buy a (new) computer for $23 isn't Moore's law. It's because manufacturers can't make money on $23 dollar computer (we;re talking personal computer, not embedded something which, can, and does, cost a few bucks).

Support, dealer chain, R&D are much more important than transistors in pricing PCs.

Re:What is the use of being better Driver?

[r2kordmaa]

With enough buck you can buy a google server farm. Theoretically 20 years ago you could have bought a computer with the capabilities of todays PC, only it would have been very large and very expensive.

Re:What is the use of being better Driver?

[jklovanc]

Exactly my point that Moore's law does not apply.

Re:What is the use of being better Driver?

[Immerman]

> If [Moore's Law] was about price since I bought a computer for $3000 in 1985 I should be able to buy one for $23.

And you can. You can buy a Raspberry Pi computer for ~$25 that will blow the socks off anything available in 1985. IO devices haven't fallen nearly as much, but then they're generally not governed by Moore's Law. Yes, technically the Law apply to capability (or more precisely transistor count, which is typically closely related), but that high-end technology can typically be scaled down to provide ridiculously cheap low-end hardware if only someone decides to do so.

And much of the hardware used in the self-driving cars has extensive uses outside that market, so the costs will continue to fall whether or not self-driving cars become popular. Eventually the hardware will be cheap enough that a market will emerge for anyone who has the software and track-record to enter it. I imagine the shipping industry is paying close attention - superhumanly safe truck drivers who never need to sleep nor use judgment-impairing drugs? For a price less than a year's wages for a human driver?

Re:The data will set you free??

[Immerman]

No, no, they're saying "The data will set us free", what makes you think they're talking about anyone outside the NSA?

Re:who cares if it's safer?

[epyT-R]

Yeah, but this won't happen.. Please tell me you're not that naive. Such cars will not be street legal.

Inaccurate headline

[jklovanc]

Our Semi-Robot Cars With You As Backup When The Computer Can't Handle It Are Better Drivers Than You Alone

FTFY
They are not comparing with completely robotic systems as there always needs to be a qualified driver to take over when the computer can not deal with the situation. The robots we have are assisting drivers not replacing them.

Re:trains

[Immerman]

How about car-carrying trains? If you're going somewhere far enough that it's cost effective to go to a train station, ride the train, then get off at another station and proceed to your destination, then your car can do so automatically while you take a nap.

Buses make far more sense in most situations. Done well they can get most of the efficiency benefits of trains, while making use of existing automotive infrastructure and being far more flexible as a result. Shifting a city's infrastructure from car to bus oriented can be as easy as declaring certain lanes to be dedicated mass-transit only, simultaneously decreasing the appeal of driving while increasing the appeal of buses.

Re:Organ Donors

[Immerman]

By what right do the diseased masses place claim upon my organs? Sure, you can have them once I'm done with them, but you already trashed your own, don't expect me to be in any kind of hurry to share mine.

Re:What is the use of being better Driver?

[jklovanc]

Out of the box a Raspberry Pie can do nothing. By concentrating on one single component you lose the whole picture.

And much of the hardware used in the self-driving cars has extensive uses outside that market

How many other applications are there for a 64 beam laser rangefinder(The main sensor used in the Google car)? Also many of the components are already at very low prices, gps, inertial sensors, ultrasonic sensors, etc. They won't significantly come down in price any time soon.

Scam

[jklovanc]

I realize the article is two years old but it may still be relevant;

Two things seem particularly interesting about Google's approach. First, it relies on very detailed maps of the roads and terrain, something that Urmson said is essential to determine accurately where the car is. Using GPS-based techniques alone, he said, the location could be off by several meters.

Google map data has been inaccurate and/or out of date a significant amount of the time. I would not trust my life to a Google map.

The second thing is that, before sending the self-driving car on a road test, Google engineers drive along the route one or more times to gather data about the environment. When it's the autonomous vehicle's turn to drive itself, it compares the data it is acquiring to the previously recorded data, an approach that is useful to differentiate pedestrians from stationary objects like poles and mailboxes.

So you have a human drive the road, record the path and then the semi-autonomous car does it's best to follow that path. That's cheating. A scan like that is only valid for a few days at most and how much data is needed to store that kind of scan? An everyday vehicle would need a high speed connection to just keep up with the changes.

I.G.Y.

[wickerprints]

Standing tough under stars and stripes
We can tell
This dream's in sight
You've got to admit it
At this point in time that it's clear
The future looks bright
On that train all graphite and glitter
Undersea by rail
Ninety minutes from New York to Paris
Well by '76 we'll be A-O.K.

What a beautiful world this will be
What a glorious time to be free
What a beautiful world this will be
What a glorious time to be free

Get your ticket to that wheel in space
While there's time
The fix is in
You'll be a witness to that game of chance in the sky
You know we've got to win
Here at home we'll play in the city
Powered by the sun
Perfect weather for a streamlined world
There'll be spandex jackets one for everyone

What a beautiful world this will be
What a glorious time to be free
What a beautiful world this will be
What a glorious time to be free

On that train all graphite and glitter
Undersea by rail
Ninety minutes from New York to Paris
(more leisure for artists everywhere)
A just machine to make big decisions
Programmed by fellows with compassion and vision
We'll be clean when their work is done
We'll be eternally free yes and eternally young

What a glorious world this will be
What a glorious time to be free

Re:What is the use of being better Driver?

[Immerman]

>Out of the box a Raspberry Pie can do nothing

Neither can a PC. Add a monitor, keyboard, and mouse (none of which are "computers" or under the influence of Moore's law) and it's probably considerably more capable than whatever PC you had in even 1995.

Re:What is the use of being better Driver?

[JesseMcDonald]

A power supply I'll grant you. I forgot that the Pi boards don't come with one, so that puts us a few dollars over budget. Technical expertise and tools were not included for the $3000 computer in 1985, so it would be unfair to complain that the Pi doesn't include them now. You can get better software for free these days which didn't exist at any price then. And then there's computers like the MK908, which is a bit pricier at $55 but includes a case, WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, a power supply, and pre-installed software for an essentially plug-and-play experience—just add a cheap USB keyboard and hook it up to your TV.

Businesses will have plenty of incentive to switch to semi-autonomous vehicles for their fleets, provided they're actually safer. That translates into reduced exposure to liability for accidents, less money spent repairing and/or replacing vehicles (and employees), and less lost cargo. If nothing else, their insurance providers will insist on it.

Re:What is the use of being better Driver?

[forand]

If I could buy and used a 150k robot car now I would. I would get my neighbors together and buy 10 for the block. Sell all our other cars and close the road in front of our houses to all traffic aside from the robotic cars. We would save money and have a huge area we could convert to a park for the large number of young kids we have on our block. Or we could wait till someone actually makes a production model for 75k and do it all then.

Re:What is the use of being better Driver?

[jklovanc]

Did you stop reading at the quote? The point is the cost of an autonomous car system is much more than the main motherboard.

Rear-end collisions - already a solved probelm

[Animats]

I'd like to see a self-driving car avoid a "near-collision" state on the Capital Beltway during busy times. Or the MD I-270 of old (they've changed it a lot since I commuted on it) -- I (along with everyone else on the road) used to spend entire commutes in a "near-collision" state, sub-second following distances at ~65mph alternated with panic stops.

That's a classic control theory problem. You want to maintain a following distance as the speed of the car ahead changes, but there's lag due to reaction time. So you can get oscillation. Solutions are known.

Smart cruise controls already do this better than humans. With radar systems you have good range rate information. Vision isn't good at range rate, especially when it's changing. With good range rate info, you can servo on speed difference and range. You can buy such systems now; that's what "smart cruise" systems do. Here's an Audi A7 doing it. 2014 Kia Those demos are in low-speed stop and go traffic. Here's a Porsche 991 doing 90 in a 55 zone on adaptive cruise control. Here's a Subaru Forester in stop and go freeway traffic in Los Angeles with smart cruise control, with speed varying from high speed down to zero and back.

Solved problem. Available now at your car dealer.

Autonomous Cars - not for the open road

[ALeader71]

Self driving cars aren't meant for longer highway speed driving. They are meant for highly congested roadways which rarely get much over 45 mph anyway. I live in just such an area. The biggest traffic tie ups are always at the merge points. Why? People are terrible at merging, and everyone merges differently. Some follow the driving class' rules and drive to the end of the on ramp. Others find a hole and dive in. Others slowly sneak out. Some only recently started driving or moved into the area from a place that didn't have traffic congestion.

Shows like Top Gear will argue that self driving cars ruin the driving experience. Personally, I don't consider my morning commute a worthwhile experience. It's merely a less time consuming method than riding the bus. If I could let my car handle the daily commute while I grab a nap or read my RSS feeds, I'd leave the driving to Google or whoever. Leave the highway miles and scenic road ways to me. Leave the drudgery to the machines.

following distance

[globaljustin]

Lord have mercy...the most random stuff brings out the trolls

I'm talking about this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-second_rule

It's a common US heuristic taught to help keep a safe following distance

that's all...two second rule exists...

So what's left for me to do?

[holophrastic]

I'm not into gardening. I'm handy but I don't really care to improve my house any more. Driving's been a fun thing to do ever since I bought the sportscar and joined the car club. In a typical day of running errands, it's the driving between the errands that's the fun part of my day. It's the commute to and from clients that breaks up the work day.

If I stop driving, what's the fun part of my day? Does the google car come with a google hooker? Because there aren't too many recreational dreams a young man has. Driving's probably in the top three. Maybe the google car comes with unlimited google sandwiches. But even if the hooker serves the sandwiches, how many hours of pleasure can hookers and sandwiches provide in a single day? There's a bottle neck, or two, on my side.

Re:On the desert roads of Nevada, maybe

[adolf]

In the event of a kid who is about to kick a ball into a street: I see one or more kid playing in a yard, see a ball, and I'm already proactively slowing down just in case something goes wrong.

The computer-driver has no mechanism to pre-emptively guess about what the kids in the yard might do next. All it can do is react to stuff that is in its way.

Re:On the desert roads of Nevada, maybe

[alexgieg]

The computer-driver has no mechanism to pre-emptively guess about what the kids in the yard might do next. All it can do is react to stuff that is in its way.

Yes, but it can do it instantly. Consider: the instant it detects the ball moving in the direction of the street it can start maneuvering, and from the driving computer there's an eternity between that instant and the one the child starts moving after the ball, not to mention between she starting to move and actually reaching the street. You need to start reacting much earlier because we are indeed very slow, so we must compensate. A driving computer doesn't have this limitation.

sure, why not?

[Chirs]

And even better, *any* vehicle could become an emergency vehicle by broadcasting an emergency code and all the other vehicles would automatically get out of their way. This would presumably be logged and tracked, to minimize abuse of the system.

would love to have highway autopilot

[Chirs]

I live in the Canadian prairies. The nearest large cities are 5hrs, 7hrs, and 9hrs drive away. If I could sleep or read or watch movies during that time, it'd be *awesome*.

Re:would love to have highway autopilot

[tinkerton]

Yeah, just the idea that you've got this copilot you can hand over the driving to when you don't feel like it or just want to sleep is pretty cool.

most people don't have glass coverage

[Chirs]

and their deductible is high enough that they'd end up replacing it out of pocket.

Re:most people don't have glass coverage

[adolf]

AFAICT, most automobile glass (especially the windshield) is covered without a deductible on any vehicle that has full coverage, in most states, usually.

The theory that I've read is that it is cheaper to repair/replace the slightly-damaged glass, than pay for the repercussions (which may include personal injury) of total failure later.

(If you drive around with liability coverage only, or live in a no-fault state that doesn't require insurance at all and therefore have none, you're on your own: You've made your bed, now sleep in it.)

Come on, nerds!

[dhaines]

The solution is obvious:

Autonomously-driving cars would also have manual controls, activated by a bright purple Special Handle. Pulling the Special Handle enables manual high-speed driving mode and the driver, skills un-degraded by years of not driving, can rush the Special Emergency to the hospital.

Special Emergency Unicorn Mode activates the car-top rotating purple beacon, to alert everyone else (via their cars' Special Unicorn Detector) that there's a Special Emergency nearby.

Unicorn Mode also transmits geolocation and in-car audio/video (copyright waived) to DMV and the History Channel, deploys a trail of glowing purple sparkles behind the car for use by Actionhype News, and marks the driver's hand with permanent purple Tribute Ink.

After the Special Emergency, circumstances can be validated by DMV and hospital staff. Drivers reasonably acting to save a life win a guest appearance on NatGeo's True Unicorns, 10% off Tuesdays at Disneyland, and a $25 Applebees gift card.

Alternately, drivers who Unicorned their very special offspring to the hospital for a split a lip from squabbling over the iPad will get their car's Special Handle removed, their purple-dyed hand surgically attached to their head like that thing on a rooster, and a $25 Applebees gift card.

Re:On the desert roads of Nevada, maybe

[adolf]

You can't compute random human behavior out of this particular safety equation unless you first produce a vehicle with perfect performance characteristics (which is impossible to do, with friction being what it is).

The instant I see a kid with a ball, even from several blocks away, I'm already planning to or actively beginning to slow down. It doesn't matter if the ball starts heading that direction: I recognize that there are unpredictable things happening ahead, and reduce speed accordingly. Slowing down also allows the kid more chance to observe my vehicle and its direction of travel, automatically decreasing the chance that a kid or a ball will wind up in the path of my car to begin with.

I'm unwilling to make a blanket assumption that one method, by itself, is better than the other.

Ideally, the computer would recognize kids playing just as I do, and pre-emptively slow down all by itself, thus minimizing braking distance in case a ball or a kid -does- enter the road.

And that will remain the ideal case as long as braking distance remains >0, and humans continue to behave as humans (including little humans).

The highway patrol should shrink quite a bit.

[GPS Pilot]

In theory, here's how it should work.

The highway patrol will have a lot less to do after the adoption of autonomous cars, so its overall expenses are lower. Where all citizens used to pay the patrol's operating costs through a combination of taxes and traffic fines, now we pay for their much lower operating costs through taxes only. The net savings to you and me should be substantial.

FTFY

[GPS Pilot]

people would rather face a daily one-in-a-million chance of dying due to their own mistake than a daily one-in-a-billion chance of dying due to a machine failure.

Irrational people would rather face a daily one-in-a-million chance of dying due to their own mistake than a daily one-in-a-billion chance of dying due to a machine failure.

People who are like me would rather take the one-in-a-billion chance.

Re:FTFY

[jeffb (2.718)]

Congratulations on your rationality in this scenario.

If you're claiming that you're perfectly rational in all situations (as opposed to the "irrational people" you called out in your comment), well, congratulations on your... self-confidence, I guess.

Micro vs. Macro

[mha]

No, YOU got it completely wrong. You are unable to see the difference between micro- and macro-economics. I was talking macro. In micro you only see the individual or firm, in macro you see ALL (at ONCE, if you look at macro again looking at one individual at a time than you are NOT in macro view). You want low costs only in micro view, from the point of view of the individual. In macro costs = earnings (of the next entity in the chain).

Re:who cares if it's safer?

[maxwell demon]

Such cars will not be street legal.

Maybe in the US. But the world is a bit larger than the US. Fortunately.

Re:On the desert roads of Nevada, maybe

[Waccoon]

I can accept automatic braking systems just fine, but that's not exactly the definition of a self-driving car.

You can't honestly say you're a good driver if you don't already account for your 300ms or longer reaction time.

concorde!

[jafffacake]

It's possible to fly from london to new york in three hours. In fact, you could do for a span of twenty years or so, before concorde was decomissioned. Just because it's possible, doesn't mean it'll become widely available, or even at all available. Ditto driverless cars. The technology will filter down into ordinary cars as extra safety features to augment the driver's slow reactions. For the foreseeable future, anyway.

robot car

[AaronHall]

Well i will have to see this for myself i really have no doubt that i can outdrove a robot car

Great, just what we need...

[ToddInSF]

As it currently stands in the US, drivers are already distracted enough, already careless enough, already lack the skill and seriousness that is reasonable when controlling a ~ 4,000lb vehicle.

So lets "solve" this uniquely American problem of what amounts to accepted incompetency by further removing the appropriate level of responsibility that is really merely the bare minimum.

Because technology solves every problem.

Look, you don't own the road, you're sharing it. You don't have a right to drive, a right to be a danger to me, a right to waste my time, a right to BE in your care and BE distracted in ANY way.

Hang up, STFU, and just DRIVE.

Skynet....

[tutungzone7675]

I believe I would love the thought and would buy into it, however terminator comes to mind... hopefully the future is not a robot controlled life, at least not in mine or my kids future. Safety at this poi t would be nice... hell I would take a nap on the way to work, I have an hour drive!

d-a-t-a

[dragga_09]

data data data Can someone give me a solid definition of what data is?

It's about freedom

[TheDesignerGSD]

I live in Southern California where all of the idiots drive (I guess that includes me). I would LOVE an automated system so I could read in transit. I don't like the idea of Big Brother looking over my shoulder (can anyone say NSA).

Re:On the desert roads of Nevada, maybe

[swilver]

A computer can distinguish people along the road, and could drive the maximum possible speed depending on the distance and time it would take said people to be in danger. If the person is still 50m away and it would need 20m to break from 50 km/hour, then it can drive 50 km/h 100% safely all the way until it touches that person lightly with the bumper -- at which point it should apply the horn.

If a person would need to move 5m first before it would be in the car's path, the car can compute the earliest possible time that person might be in its path (given the maximum possible human speed) and drive whatever speed is safe to make it impossible to hit that person.

I'm afraid you will be beaten by these computers, especially when you are sleepy, it is dark, it is raining, the sun is in your eyes or something happens you DIDN'T anticipate.

Re:On the desert roads of Nevada, maybe

[adolf]

Sure.

Show me a computer that can do these things, driving at 100%, 100% of the time, on all roads, in all conditions, with people around doing whatever it is that people do.

Show me a computer that cannot be blinded by the sun.

Show me a computer that can see through rain.

Hell, show me a computer that can do any of the things you talk about without spilling my coffee because from what I've seen, computer drivers are full-on 100% until PANIC STOP.

Re:Autopilots

[dave420]

How about Google get some of those guys in to teach the system. Then we have the best of both worlds - advanced driving techniques with the fastest reaction times available.

Re:trains

[dave420]

You should look at the Karlsruhe system. Local and regional trains that use the same tram tracks through the town. Jump on the tram that goes 100m near your house, and get off in a city 50km away. Or 100km. Or change at the train station and travel to another country. Not all trains are as ridiculous as the US's.

A hidden cost of human drivers

[sabbede]

I noticed in the article about saving money and lives something that was missed here as well. Traffic jams cost money. The number 1 cause of traffic jams? Human drivers doing dumb things. Not just getting into accidents, but trying not miss an exit when they are on the wrong side of the highway, rubbernecking, and other dumb, dumb things.

Robots will also reliably use their turn signals to indicate a lane change.

Not. A. Fuck.

[zakkie]

Google + NSA + autonomous cars: you will get fucked, certainly.

I think they meant to say

[WillAffleckUW]

IMHO they meant to say:

Our robot cars are better than human cars, so long as nothing goes wrong and all the human cars are driven by drunks with road rage.

There, fixed it.

Re:trains

[maxwell demon]

You should look at the Karlsruhe system. Local and regional trains that use the same tram tracks through the town.

What part of "rural village" did you not understand? Not everyone lives in a town.

Crash data.

[zmollusc]

If i built my own data logger and was involved in an accident, my data would show that I was the innocent party, too.

we need a better name for these contraptions

[markjhood2003]

"Self-driving car" is beginning to sound a lot like "horseless carriage". I would suggest "automobile" but that seems to be taken already...

is is two seconds_i was right the whole time

[globaljustin]

I was right...it's two seconds...which is what I originally said, before I was trolled

trolled 2x now...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-second_rule

I knew what I was talking about the whole time...my only mistake was being open to what other /.'ers had to say