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Google Self-Driving Car Might Have Caused First Crash In Autonomous Mode (roboticstrends.com)
An anonymous reader writes: While driving in autonomous mode, a Google self-driving car was involved in an accident with a public bus in California on Valentine's Day, according to an accident report filed with the California DMV.The accident report, signed by Chris Urmson, says the Google self-driving car was trying to get around some sandbags on a street when its left front struck the bus' right side. The car was going 2 mph, while the bus was going 15 mph.Google said its car's safety driver thought the bus would yield. No injuries were reported. If it's determined the Google self-driving car was at fault, it would be the first time one of its cars caused an accident while in autonomous mode.
Ow my neck!!
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
No it didn't.
At 2MPH and 15MPH it's at best a shared fault, and more likely the bus to blame. i.e. you don't have the right to plow into cars you can avoid because they venture into your lane.
An unsafe lane change would make it the Google cars fault.
The fault is on the vehicle that was changing lanes. Unless they were both changing lanes, it's not a shared fault.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
in some jurisdictions, cars have to yield right of way to buses in general.
Buses certainly have right of weight.
Also, what's with the aggressive / obnoxious sneaking around cars in same lane tactic. Did someone program that or did the software learn it?
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
It's hard to conclude that from a fender-bender in a situation in which humans make the same type of error all the time... and also considering that both parties shared some responsibility.
Talk to me when the number of injuries or fatalities approaches even 1/10 that of human drivers. Until then, I want to see how this plays out.
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Unsafe is a term designed to have flexibility to be determined by a judge. In the same way that "it's never your fault if you're rear ended", it's common wisdom that's incorrect.
I'm a big believer in autonomous cars, but when I see
Google said its car's safety driver thought the bus would yield.
it makes me wonder how many crashes we would have had in autonomous mode, if there weren't an attentive driver who was fully aware he was sitting in an experimental vehicle.
Even if the first rounds of autonomous cars still require a driver for override (for legal reasons if nothing else), it seems like the number of autonomous crashes that likely would have happened is the number has to be driven way down to be comparable to, or less than, the ones with human drivers*; it's not really the amount of autonomous crashes overall that is important.
Also makes me wonder whether any of the manual mode crashes were initiated in autonomous mode and the manual override driver just couldn't recover the situation.
*whether average human drivers or above-average human drivers or even below-average human drivers are the standard is up for debate.
Neither school buses nor soccer moms ever yield in traffic.
Actually, the bus was on the left.
Could somebody please come up with a fitting car analogy?
love is just extroverted narcissism
Google is now saying they were following the "spirit of the road" when the crash happened and that they've reviewed the incident, as well as thousands of variations on it, in a driving simulator and made refinements to its AV software.
Except neither vehicle was making a lane change. It was a single lane with enough width (normally) to accommodate two vehicles for the purposes of facilitating right turns. In this case, the lane was unexpectedly narrowed by sand bags, so two vehicles attempted to share the lane briefly when there was insufficient space. Fault in these cases is difficult to determine. Technically, since it is still considered a single lane, the bus should not have the right of way. Although, it's likely that the bus driver could not see the obstruction in front of the google car and didn't expect it to move into his path.
There is, however, an argument that a good human driver would have recognized the difference in danger and avoided the incident by just driving over the sand bags. The google vehicle only knew that "something" was in the way and is likely programmed to avoid all round shaped ground obstacles just in case they are a small child or animal.
Knowledge Brings Fear
You would also think that a good human driver would have seen that car going 2 mph trying to avoid the sandbags and not continued on obliviously at 15 mph.
According to the report, they were side-by-side in the same, double-wide lane, hence the shared responsibility. Here's a Street View picture of the turn in question. Apparently, the sequence was:
1) Red light.
2) Google car signals for a right turn.
3) Google car gets into right side of the double-wide lane and passes cars that are stopped for the red light.
4) Google car has to stop because there are sandbags blocking the storm drain.
5) Light turns green, cars start moving.
6) Google car waits for cars to pass to create an opening, then slowly moves back towards the center of the lane.
7) Bus decides not to yield to the Google car that's ahead of it in the lane, trying to pass it anyway.
8) Bus gets its nose a bit ahead of the Google car.
9) Google car doesn't turn the wheel back in time and scrapes the side of the bus.
More or less, the Google car technically had the right of way, because it was in the same lane as the bus but ahead of it, but the bus had every reason to think the Google car, which was stopped, would cede the right of way to it just the same as it had to several other cars, and thus had clearly decided to pass the Google car. Which is to say, the bus created the situation that caused the impact when it failed to yield to a car that had the right of way, but that doesn't give the Google car a free pass to cause an accident with a vehicle that's already begun passing it. Both had every reason to believe the other would behave differently, yet an accident still occurred, so it's likely a case of shared responsibility.
Of course, most humans would have the common sense to avoid iffy maneuvers around a bus, and the bus driver may have been expecting that as well.
So based on numerous descriptions I have read, the Google car was in a very wide lane and moved to the right side of the lane to make a right turn. It saw some sandbags blocking the very right side of the lane, so it tried to move back to the middle of the lane. A bus, coming up from behind in the same lane, did not yield to to the Google car and there was contact.
I think it is important to note that all of this happened in the same "lane".
While the Google car could have possibly avoided the accident, I am not sure it is to blame. It seems to me that the bus was attempting to pass a car ahead of it in the same lane.
The blame seems about 80% on the city for not properly marking the lanes, about 15% on the bus for not yielding to a car ahead of it in its own lane, and about 5% on the Google car for not stopping for the bus who was trying to barge its way through.
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1st rule of defensive driving- never expect another driver to do anything I won't yield into traffic or turn into a street if another driver will need to slow or brake not to hit me Never sit in a median to turn with front or back of car sticking out I actually speed up a bit before turning to maximize distance between myself and driver behind and turn shallow. This is a bit hard to explain but you angle into the turn and actually do most of your slowing when you are already in the turn Many others but I probably don't even think about them.
You should probably take a driving safety course. Speeding up or slowing down in a turn requires traction. Your traction in a turn is always a fixed amount (that varies on conditions). With 4 wheels, this may not be a huge problem in favorable conditions. With two wheels, this can be very dangerous. I hate when people do exactly what you describe while I'm on my motorcycle. I do not want to touch my brakes in a turn unless its an emergency. I try to maintain a constant speed. Even if I coast to slow down, I slow down much more slowly than a car when turning.
A car changing lanes does not have right of way.
Had you read what I wrote, you'd have seen that there was no lane change, hence the weird situation. I'm not attempting to defend anyone, just explain based on my reading.
Unless you intentionally jump in front of someone and then slam on the brakes, how could it ever be your fault if you're rear ended?
(1) Failure to maintain brake lights. If your brake lights don't go on, then you are not obviously stopping, and therefore you can easily cause an accident.
(2) When antilock braking systems were first introduced, the stopping distance for cars with them got drastically shorter, while the cars not equipped with them kept the old stopping distance. What was previously legally defined as a safe stopping distance was no longer a safe stopping distance for unequipped cars. It's beholden on the person with the shorter stopping distance to take into account the stopping distance of the following vehicle. So lane changing in front of a semi on the freeway and then slamming on your brakes: still not a good idea.
(3) Slow vehicle merges into fast moving traffic. This is a problem, both in terms of lane change merges left (yes, I know: most California drivers are woefully ignorant of traffic laws, because license requirements are so lax compared to other states), but, even more to the point, correct use of acceleration lanes and onramps to get to freeway speeds, rather than getting to freeway speeds only once you are on the freeway.
So: lots of ways to be the guilty party, even if you're the one getting rear ended because you were a dick.
You would also think that a good human driver would have seen that car going 2 mph trying to avoid the sandbags and not continued on obliviously at 15 mph.
You have obviously never met or interacted with a Bay Area Muni driver. If the driver were not stoned or drunk, they would likely have been *aiming* for the car.
Where do you draw the line?
Typically, it is drawn between the lanes...
That "objective description" omits a key detail: that the bus was behind the Google car at the time that the Google car began its maneuver. Given that rights of way are determined by facts such as which car was in front at which time, your omission would implicitly place the blame solely on the Google car, when, in fact, the actual facts suggest that the case is more nuanced.
Which isn't to say that my description is objective either, to be clear, nor am I suggesting that the bus should have stopped. I'm merely pointing out that your description has flaws as well.
In this case; having read the article (I know, I know...) it seems that the car programming is overly optimistic about predicting the behaviour of vehicles overtaking it. It seems possible that the programming includes implicit assumptions of the likely stopping distance and reaction times it should expect from other vehicles as well. In other words; it "thought" it had sufficient space and time to perform the manoeuvre because it "assumed" a bus would behave and react the way a car might.
I have two thoughts, each in defence of one of the vehicles in this collision:
1) Even the safety driver expected the bus to yield and from I can glean from the article, legally the bus should have yielded. So this was a mistake that even the majority of human drivers might have made in the same situation.
2) Others in this thread have posted criticisms of bus drivers in their city or in general. Much of the annoying behaviours they mention though are pretty understandable from the bus drivers POV. You can't just suddenly hit the brakes if a smaller vehicle or pedestrian darts in front of you. Not only do you have a hell of a lot of momentum (highly variable, depending on passenger load) you also have to make as gradual velocity changes as you can. Your passengers aren't buckled up, you might have a fair number of them standing, with any number of knapsacks, briefcases, skateboards etc etc that become flying hazards when you come stop too suddenly. You have to ease to the left a fair bit when making a right turn because you have a much larger turning radius than most other vehicles. You have to drive straddling lines sometimes because if you stayed tight to the right, you are going to crunch someone, hop the curb or both. On the other hand, if you do stick to the left as much as you can, lots of people are going to pull what Torontonians call a "cabby pass" where the cab illegally passes a bus or streetcar on the right so as to get out from behind it. If they don't use their rear end to block the traffic lane, quite often they'll never get back out because no one wants to stop at the buses back corner and let the bus back in. (I have a relative who is a TTC bus driver and he has passed along some training and daily work anecdotes)
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It was a single lane with enough width (normally) to accommodate two vehicles for the purposes of facilitating right turns. In this case, the lane was unexpectedly narrowed by sand bags, so two vehicles attempted to share the lane briefly when there was insufficient space. Fault in these cases is difficult to determine. Technically, since it is still considered a single lane, the bus should not have the right of way.
Based on the street view it looks like it's primarily that wide to facilitate the ability to park, and drive, in the same lane. By the same note if a parked car pulls out in front of a bus is it still the bus's fault? The report mentions it is an articulated bus. That means it's even heavier and less maneuverable than a normal bus.
The article mentioned the car signaled the intention to turn right, however there was no mention whether it canceled the signal, or signaled left to indicate the desire to move into the center portion of the lane. This could be confusing / conflicting information for the bus driver. A stopped (or virtually stopped) car in the right side of the lane, near an intersection, with a right turn signal, is not expected to move left.
That's pretty screwed up. In the U.S., she might get a ticket, but the cyclist would be found to be 100% at fault for the wreck. Speed limit on the roads in the U.S. are, by law, required to be set such that a vehicle moving at the limit would have adequate time to stop even if there's a vehicle stopped or other obstruction on the road, and that's probably true in Canada as well. If a vehicle approaching from behind fails to stop, regardless of the reason why the vehicle fails to stop, that vehicle should always be at fault unless the front vehicle shifted into the lane in front of another car and then immediately slammed on the brakes.
I find it particularly mind-boggling that the judge found that the motorcyclist's grossly excessive speed was not a significant factor. The motorcyclist was going 80 in a 55 zone. That's 145% of the posted speed limit. The motorcyclist would have gotten automatic jail time for that sort of gross recklessness in most of the U.S., had he survived. More to the point, had he been traveling the speed limit, he would have had almost twice as long to slow down, and likely would have been able to dodge the car entirely.
As for the Google situation, legally, it likely depends on how far back the bus driver was when the Google car started around. With that said, San Francisco bus drivers are (or so I'm told by friends who are crazy enough to actually drive there) notorious for not stopping for cars stopped in bus lanes. Google's car needs to make the assumption that Muni buses never yield the right of way even if they legally should. Anything less is just inviting an accident. :-)
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I think a 98% reduction in accident rates is pretty easily doable by first-generation autonomous cars. But you know there are some people who don't think in those terms. "Look," they'll say, "here's one that drove into a bus; we mustn't let these things on the road!"
So what is needed to keep this lifesaving technology from being derailed is a concerted effort to educate people that the perfect must not become the enemy of the extraordinarily good.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.