Slashdot Mirror
Google's Driverless Cars Capable of Exceeding Speed Limit
mrspoonsi sends a report about how Google's autonomous vehicles handle speed limits. It's easy to assume that driverless cars will simply be programmed never to exceed a posted speed limit, but Google has found that such behavior can actually be less safe than speeding a bit. Thus, they've allowed their cars to exceed the speed limit by up to 10 miles per hour.
In July, the U.K. government announced that driverless cars will be allowed on public roads from January next year. In addition, ministers ordered a review of the U.K.'s road regulations to provide appropriate guidelines. This will cover the need for self-drive vehicles to comply with safety and traffic laws, and involve changes to the Highway Code, which applies to England, Scotland and Wales. Commenting on Google self-drive cars' ability to exceed the speed limit, a Department for Transport spokesman said: "There are no plans to change speed limits, which will still apply to driverless cars." In a separate development on Monday, the White House said it wanted all cars and light trucks to be equipped with technology that could prevent collisions.
If you take an American driverless car to London, I hope it can figure out which side of the road to drive on...
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
It is within Google's capability to dynamically map every speed trap and even moving police cars.
With this in place, and with computer reflexes why not speed like a maniac? I for one would buy Google car tomorrow if it could get me to work at 120mph shaving time off my commute.
Yeah, going the speed limit in certain areas will simply result in google cars getting shot at, or ran off the road.
IE, the 101 or I-17 in Phoenix. LOL@75mph. Unless there's a traffic jam of course.
If I were a terrorist group and wanted to cripple any city in America, I would get a group of 20 people together and simply go back and forth on all the major roads, driving the speed-limit abreast with one another in all lanes.
After a few days of that the city would do whatever you demanded.
That is, if you all survived the road rage.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Once there are enough autonomous vehicles on the road, highway speeds will SLOW DOWN. Think about it. If, on a 4-lane highway, there are 4 autonomous vehicles all driving the speed limit, each in its own lane, all side-by-side, then traffic behind them will be slowed to the speed limit. The end result is a rolling roadblock. Nobody will be able to exceed the speed limit because there will be too many vehicles all doing the exact same speed.
When it comes to breaking the speed limit or being run over by a semi, I'll break the speed limit every time.
Because I would not want any driverless car I own to *EVER* decide that it is safe to exceed the speed limit if I didn't explicitly allow it to.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
In a separate development on Monday, the White House said it wanted all cars and light trucks to be equipped with technology that could prevent collisions.
And finally law enforcements wet dream of being able to remotely disable your car becomes a reality. If you think this is anything but that, you're very naive.
I think the V2V proposal should be scrapped altogether. It would take decades to implement, be very expensive (at hundreds of dollars per car) and it won't actually make cars safer compared with relatively simpler collision avoidance using cameras and other relatively cheap proximity sensors that don't rely on everyone else having functioning V2V systems in their car.
Autonomous cars have cameras and other fail safe sensors they can rely on. GPS is for navigational way points and route planning. Just getting a signal from another car that it is at a certain position is not a sufficient replacement for actually seeing that car with a camera. In all cases I would program that car to trust the camera and distrust the V2V and if it didn't have a camera then the car should stop as safely as it can and not continue to try and drive automatically. GPS is better for navigational way points where precision on the scale of feet and inches is not as important. For collision avoidance in close proximity you want to rely on sensors.
When the law says X, you break it at your own risk.
When a stupid law says X, you follow it at your own risk.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
When a stupid law says X, you follow it at your own risk
Which is exactly why we need driverless cars: dumb fucks who believe they're such exceptionally good drivers that the rules don't apply to them.
You are "driving" a Google automated car. You get pulled over for doing 10 over the speed limit. You didn't tell the car to do it, the programmers did. Who gets the ticket?
If you do, then that suggests that you have liability for the control of the vehicle. If that's the case, you probably shouldn't allow the car to make the choice whether or not to exceed the speed limit without your input.
If the programmer has liability, then say good by to automated automobiles! No one wants this liability.
Thus, Google cars will not automatically speed... but they may allow you to tell the car to exceed the speed limit... thus reducing the safety of the product overall.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I can easily see a future 30 years, potentially even 20 down the road where auto-drive become mandatory on metropolitan freeways at certain times of day (rush hour). In fact, I could easily see a not-too-distant future where such a thing is mandatory, regardless of time-of-day. Now the question I ask is, as with concern with electric vehicles and lower revenues from gasoline tax, how are municipalities going to cope with the reduced revenue from speeding tickets?
When it comes to breaking the speed limit or being run over by a semi, I'll break the speed limit every time.
To what advantage if the semi is also being driven far above the speed limit?
Realistically, what are your chances of actually keeping pace with the thing or out-running it without losing control of your own vehicle?
They need to test year around in the chicago area.
In Pennsylvania, the vehicle code (Title 75, 3368), you can not be cited for speeding less that 6 miles per hour when the posted limit is less than 55 miles per hour, and over 55, you have to be going 10 miles an hour or over. I'm pretty sure this is what it is all about.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Or, according to TFA, it's true.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
When a stupid law says X, you follow it at your own risk
Which is exactly why we need driverless cars: dumb fucks who believe they're such exceptionally good drivers that the rules don't apply to them.
Perhaps Google's driverless cars and their research on driving safety will someday help raise the dangerously low speed limits. Why should people risk their lives to follow an unsafe law? (Just because the official purpose of a law is to increase safety, doesn't mean it won't do the opposite.)
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Some people already tried it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Increase the speed limits? Then there will be idiots driving even faster.
Yes there will. Simply changing the rules without adequate training after decades of an undesirable behavior isn't going to change said behavior overnight.
Trying to change a systemic behavior in a system as vast and (in the US) as untrained as the driving public isn't a small undertaking.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
It's just such a shame that some people on the road believe they are in a perpetual state of potentially being run over by a semi.
Similar logic of some carrying guns everywhere. [Not trying to start an argument, just sayin' ...]
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Solution C: Deputize driverless cars to enforce traffic rules of surrounding cars and report it to the authorities. Make it enourmously expensive to drive cars manually, causing the free market to make driverless cars mandatory. When you include all the little potential violations, the frequency at which drivers violate traffic rules is probably several times per mile.
Differences in speed are far more dangerous than moderate increases in speed. When cars have to brake/weave to avoid the one or two people driving significantly slower than everyone else is when accidents happen. So the goody-two-shoes who think that the speed limit is the law and exceeding it is dangerous are actually making the roads more dangerous for the 95% of people that are driving a tad bit faster.
Please cite this. I looked at the online California Driver Manual and I find to the contrary that most things say slow down in congestion and other situation. At no point does it say go faster than the posted speed which is a maximum for normal conditions.
Brant Gurganus http://gurganus.name/brant
offtopic to raise possibility of feds using tech to stop or crash your car? the mods have limited imaginations
or your just going a few mph faster than a Semi trying to pass on the interstate and due to high winds the truck is fighting to keep it in the lane... I consider that almost getting hit and because I rack up tens of thousands of miles a year on interstates in midwest it happens ALOT.
Just accelerate past the speed limit and get around the hazard as quickly as possible = safest.. It should not become a several min encounter/maneuver passing someone because your autopilot wont go faster than a couple mph more than the object your trying to overtake.
Once I started driving motorcycles around I became deathly afraid of sitting next to a semi truck after watching a re-tread come off one and having to avoid it; if I had been next to the truck when it had happened I would not be posting here; since that experience I make an effort to spend the least amount of time trying to pass one as possible regardless of the vehicle; screw the speed limit.. 16 giant wheels that have hundreds of thousands of miles on them will blow eventually; it happens all the time and how much of your life do you want to spend next to one hoping it dont go off?
Wrong, wrong, wrong. It is 100% the fault of the person making an unsafe lane change if there is an accident, NOT the person who was driving too slow for your taste. You still have not given a single legitimate reason why low speed limits (by themselves), or slow drivers (by themselves) are dangerous.
Increase the speed limits? Then there will be idiots driving even faster.
No, studies have shown that people drive at a speed that feels reasonable, regardless of limit.
Raising a speed limit often means just making legal what everyone is already doing.
There will always be crazy people going faster but they were already ignoring the speed limit entirely to begin with.
Many drivers already drive too fast for the road condition, traffic situation and the limitations of both their car and their driving abilities.
What studies show that?
Instead raising the speed limit in various states has lowered accident rates.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yeah on a dark night in snowy weather the rules of the road are kill or be killed .
The low speed limit is not dangerous, the change in speed limit without warning is dangerous.
And learn some defensive driving. Here's a tip: if you are approaching a blind curve (as you claim) where you can't see what it around it, and someone is following you too closely, SLOW DOWN before you get to the 'have to slam on brakes' stage. If you can't see a 'dangerous' speed limit sign, you also might not see people, animals, disabled vehicles, etc that could also cause you to 'slam on the brakes'.
Will this be a user-configurable option? Who is responsible for paying a ticket if a self-driving car is pulled over?
I have seen speed traps like that. They were like that for years. They have slowly gone away as the area has become less rural. I wouldn't be shocked to see them still in existence further out though. It's very real. Good luck getting THE judge (aka the police chief's brother in law) to invalidate the ticket in towns like that.
In more urban areas they prefer to use red light cams and dangerously short yellows to force people to break the law for safety reasons. Generally, the traffic engineering 'rules' are legally just guidelines or recommendations.
Actually, studies have shown that raising speed limits can reduce speeds. For example, people who drove at 50mph in a 30 limit that was set far too low would often reduce their speed to obey a 40mph limit, because it was sensible enough that they weren't willing to break it any more... once they'd decided to break the 30mph speed limit, they'd already broken it, so were as likely to drive at 50 as 40.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. It is 100% the fault of the person making an unsafe lane change if there is an accident, NOT the person who was driving too slow for your taste. You still have not given a single legitimate reason why low speed limits (by themselves), or slow drivers (by themselves) are dangerous.
People who are driving at a speed that is far outside the average speed on a particular road are a danger simply because the difference between their speed and others is likely to be large. Note that whether they're going "faster" or "slower" doesn't matter - it's the difference in speed.
If I'm going 90MPH and I bump someone going 89MPH we'll be fine and have minimal damage to our cars. If I'm going 45 and bump someone going 44 it's the same. But bumping someone who's going 45 when you're going 90 will result in a major accident.
I remember reading something a few years ago said by a patrol officer. Basically, fast drivers and slow drivers cause the same number of accidents. But in his experience the fast drivers were part of the accident while the slow drivers caused other people to have an accident (trying to avoid the slow poke) and drove off possibly unaware that they had caused an accident.
Do you have ESP?