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Google Car Pulled Over For Driving Too Slow, Doesn't Get a Ticket (thenextweb.com)
New submitter slickwillie writes: A Google self-driving car was pulled over for going too slow. A photo uploaded to Facebook by Zandr Milewski shows one of Google's self-driving cars being pulled over by a Mountain View, California police officer. On on its Self-Driving Car Project page on Google+ the team wrote: "We’ve capped the speed of our prototype vehicles at 25mph for safety reasons. We want them to feel friendly and approachable, rather than zooming scarily through neighborhood streets. The Mountain View Police Department also commented on the traffic stop in a blog post saying in part: "...The officer stopped the car and made contact with the operators to learn more about how the car was choosing speeds along certain roadways and to educate the operators about impeding traffic per 22400(a) of the California Vehicle Code. The Google self-driving cars operate under the Neighborhood Electric Vehicle Definition per 385.5 of the California Vehicle Code and can only be operated on roadways with speed limits at or under 35 mph. In this case, it was lawful for the car to be traveling on the street as El Camino Real is rated at 35 mph."
Basically what I take away from this is that the cars are not ready for prime-time if they're limited to NEV speeds and have been mostly used in suburban neighborhoods.
I actually want autonomous vehicles. I want them to be capable of driving entirely without occupant involvement beyond stating a destination. I do want honest disclosure of how development is going though, and most of the discussion to this point has made it sound like they were further along and further tested than this article describes.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
or did the engineers have to take manual control of it and do so?
Reposting under my name. /. forgets my login in some browsers
One of the most dangerous things you can do on a road is to be stopped dead at a long-been-green stoplight, say playing with your phone. That's because *no one sees you as stopped*, specifically the car coming up to the light going 50. No one looks for it. People glance at the light, it's green, keep going at speed. What sort of idiot is stopped at a green light, your big chance to go? It's in the same category as saying "no" to free money. Being stopped at a green light is a nearly invisible event.
So let's talk about how dangerous going too slow is because your algorithm encountered a novel traffic situation (aren't a majority of them novel, really?) and urged caution to the accelerator. It's nearly as bad as being stopped at a green light, especially if you're the only one *reasoning* the way you reason about things, rightly or wrongly. In fact, this may be their fallback tactic- when confused, slow down. That way Google doesn't have any high-speed accidents that actually kill people. That would be bad, and bad press, too.
This is another thing about Google cars and self driving cars generally. They're safer *if they're in the majority*. They all know what each other is likely to do and can take account of it in their own behavior. They can coordinate. It's sort of the opposite effect of the Wall Street bots. They all know do the same thing, and then crater the market on account of it.
So here is a thing to think about. Self driving cars may have real trouble as an incremental approach. I have to think that it's a self conscious part of Google's game plan to reach a tipping point of self-driving cars where they are a significant minority. Until then, the project is a financial loss. Past that point, and working in tandem with insurance companies, expect to pay a first a little then a LOT more for insurance to drive regular cars. This will force the market (that means you) towards self-driving cars, if only for economic reasons. Somewhere along the way to this tipping point, the government will subsidize the purchase of self driving cars using the argument that that money comes back to them and more in the cost savings realized by fewer accidents, less healthcare costs associated with accidents, less police and emergency costs etc etc.
It's interesting to think that owning a car with self driving features is a status symbol now, reflecting wealth and prestige but in the future, driving a regular car will be the status symbol, signalling wealth and the freedom and autonomy it brings.
Google must be reasoning all this through even as they try to get self-driving car technology working. The players- insurance companies, the government the regulators, are all talking about these kinds of things- how they can economically *flip* everyone onto self-driving cars. They also have to be thinking about the popular perception and possible resistance to the technology. Obviously, cars are a form of individual autonomy. The government can't remotely pull the plug on your driving or automatically track your whereabouts. But with self-driving cars, expect to see them demand these *features* and Google *begrudgingly* go along with it.
When we switched from horses to cars, there were obviously numerous social issues that got dragged along. There was a large popular resistance because with a horse, you went where you wanted, the way you wanted. With a car, you could only go where what roads there were were. One of the things that made cars popular was amusingly enough, sex. A car was a kind of rolling bed, a possibly subversive dual purpose technology with a respectable side. The very first porn movie features a man and two women driving in an car in the country. The woman says she has to get out and pee. The car stops and woman gets out and after a little while the man follows. Pants-down embarrassment is followed by flirting which leads to fucking, of course. The other woman follows onto the scene and the gates o