Google Self-Driving Car Might Have Caused First Crash In Autonomous Mode (roboticstrends.com) 410
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.
30 of the 24 bus passengers to sue Google (Score:5, Funny)
Ow my neck!!
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30 of the 24 bus passengers to sue Google
Do you happen to tally votes for a living ?
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Do you happen to tally votes for a living ?
OP must work for Wall Street. The stock market had predicted nine out of the last five recessions.
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Works for Hillary
Only in 7 of the 57 States that Obama visited in 2008.
Re:30 of the 24 bus passengers to sue Google (Score:4, Funny)
Machine Learning (Score:2, Insightful)
>> Google said its car's safety driver thought the bus would yield.
So Google is teaching their cars to drive like normal Californians: expect that the other guy will yield.
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The safety driver thought the bus would yield, they did not say anything about what the Google AI expected the bus to do.
Looks like that is what the AI thought too.
Buses have right of way (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
Re:Buses have right of way (Score:5, Insightful)
That may be true in some jurisdictions, but what's true in all jurisdictions is driving is that right of way isn't a license to get into an accident that you can avoid. If the Google car really was traveling at just 2 mph, then you have to wonder whether the bus driver could have avoided the accident.
In any case it's clear that if the safety driver had been driving the accident still would have happened; he judged that the bus would yield, but it didn't.
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That may be true in some jurisdictions, but what's true in all jurisdictions is driving is that right of way isn't a license to get into an accident that you can avoid. If the Google car really was traveling at just 2 mph, then you have to wonder whether the bus driver could have avoided the accident.
In any case it's clear that if the safety driver had been driving the accident still would have happened; he judged that the bus would yield, but it didn't.
I do not believe that most jurisdictions require you to take action to avoid someone else hitting you. That could result in far more dangerous circumstances. And if the google car was going 2mph then the correct action is for the google car to stop for the sandbag rather than jump in front of a bus. Besides, I thought the whole point of autonomous cars is that they're supposed to be safer? It is clear that the car merged into the bus.
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And if the google car was going 2mph then the correct action is for the google car to stop for the sandbag rather than jump in front of a bus.
From the description in the summary, it sounds like the car ran into the side of the bus. It didn't jump in front of it, it sideswiped it as it tried to go around sandbags in its lane. Assuming that the bus was in its own lane, the car had to leave the lane it was in to do that.
Every discussion about safe driving I've seen in this forum has had the "safe" drivers claiming that the only safe thing to do is stop when faced with an impediment to traffic, not to try swerving around it. And the autonomous discu
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And if the google car was going 2mph then the correct action is for the google car to stop for the sandbag rather than jump in front of a bus.
From the description in the summary, it sounds like the car ran into the side of the bus. It didn't jump in front of it, it sideswiped it as it tried to go around sandbags in its lane. Assuming that the bus was in its own lane, the car had to leave the lane it was in to do that.
See, that's the thing - they were in the same lane. The AV was in the right side of the lane preparing to turn, the bus was behind and starting to pass the AV on the left side of the lane. The AV saw sandbags in its way, so slowed and moved over - and the bus did not yield. You cannot pass another vehicle in its same lane in nearly any situation (the one I know of that is legal is lane splitting on a motorcycle in California). The bus was in the wrong - it was passing another vehicle in the same lane.
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the bus was behind and starting to pass the AV on the left side
To hit the side of a bus, it has to already be passing you.
The bus was in the wrong - it was passing another vehicle in the same lane.
The whole purpose of double-wide lanes is so that people making right turns don't impede people not making right turns. You don't need that extra space for any other purpose. If you can't go past someone making a right hand turn, then the whole reason for the lane is defeated.
And that ignores the question, did the car not see the bus or did the extra-smart computer just assume that the human would yield, as did the extra-smart human driver of said
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I do not believe that most jurisdictions require you to take action to avoid someone else hitting you.
In California you actually are required to do so if it can be done safely.
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The good part is that the Google car has a whole lot of telemetry data waiting to be analyzed to figure out what really happened.
Or one court case... (Score:2)
That's proprietary info, you are not going to have access to it until after a couple of gigantic court cases involving dead children.
Or one court case involving a gigantic dead child?
How many autonomous crashes were overridden? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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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.
What's your point? Yes, it isn't ready yet. That is why they have a safety driver there in the first place.
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Well the point would be that the state of public discourse is based around the assumption that the cars have never caused an accident because they wouldn't. Stories were written all the time about how there were no known instances of an accident where the autonomous system were at fault. That dialog could be disingenuous if the safety drivers intervene often. For example, one accident that was caused by a 'safety driver' was when the car gave up trying to make a left term and the human had to try and mes
Re:How many autonomous crashes were overridden? (Score:4, Insightful)
it makes me wonder how many crashes we would have had in autonomous mode, if there weren't an attentive driver
What's your point?
The point is that the safety driver's presence and power to intervene means that we cannot rely on the accident rate statistics racked up so far.
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As long as the programmers wear the penalties for what their programs do, including custodial sentences, autonomous vehicles are fine. If they expect the same old, same old, bullshit of you use the program, it's your fault because in the EULA we contrary to all the marketing the program is shite and you are an idiot to use it (marketing says the exact opposite), well, no autonomous vehicles should be banned. Sorry but there is now way in hell I want to share a road with software with the typical EULA no wa
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Some companies have already declared that they'll assume liability for their autonomous vehicles. [jalopnik.com] They do this knowing full well that autonomous vehicles are going to be an order of magnitude or two safer than human drivers, mainly because human drivers, on average, are pretty terrible drivers.
Quite frankly, I'm much concerned about sharing the road with other humans who get distracted, don't pay attention, or drive impaired / recklessly around me, and I'm very much looking forward to the day when vehicula
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Dude, we a talking typical lying jack ass corporations, let's see it in writing because before then it is just empty promises. I did read through the various claims and articles and they are just empty claims subject to government regulatory testing and government vehicle licensing, with a government implemented supportive framework (immediate out, not our fault, the governments fault, never ever forget lobbyists hard at work privatising profits and socialising losses). Here's is betting they will immediat
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However, what data we do have suggests that the combination of AV and scrupulous test driver is better than the average driver. We also know that every time the driver has to take the wheel that it will make the next generation of AV that much better.
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Dear Google... (Score:5, Funny)
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Change that to TRANSIT buses and soccer moms and i'm with you in Atlanta.
OTOH the school buses in my burb are actually pretty considerate.
thought the bus would yield (Score:3)
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.
Re:thought the bus would yield (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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That's illegal in California. You're supposed to make the turn from as close as practicable to the right-hand curb or edge of the roadway [ca.gov].
Talented Slashdotters (Score:4, Interesting)
Google is now taking some responsibility (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Google is now taking some responsibility (Score:5, Insightful)
And there in lies the rub. No Google car will make the same mistake again. Likely no other autonomous car will make the same mistake again. And thus by having a minor fender bender during beta testing we prevent hundreds of collisions in the future. No matter how many times a human did the same thing, more humans would continue to make the same mistake, until we could come up with a law to prevent it. i.e. always yield to buses no matter what.
In the same lane? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
'Caused' (Score:2, Flamebait)
Agreed, reading the report it is very obvious the bus actually caused the accident by trying an inappropriate overtake the Lexus
The Lexus only 'Caused' the accident only in so much as it did not avoid it.
No such thing as wide lane ... (Score:2)
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.
I don't think there is any such thing as a wide lane where cars are allowed to go side by side. Whether it is marked as such by paint on the road or not the google car had moved into a right turn lane. It is common for parking spots and bike lanes and such to turn into a right turn lane near a corner. So marked with paint or not, the google car seems to have being trying to move from a right turn lane to a traffic lane. Perhaps the lack of paint contributed to the error, the software failed to recognize the
It's up to the level of human drivers (Score:3)
The accident was because the car saw sandbags on the right and in an overabundance of caution decided to move a whole lane over, into a bus.
Well that's as good as many human drivers who I have seen swerve from the lane they are in at seemingly nothing without a glance, and absolutely why you do not linger in someones blind spot.
An open question though is how it saw sandbags and not a BUS...
Buses YIELD? (Score:3)
Google said its car's safety driver thought the bus would yield.
BWAHAHAHAHA!!! Has this guy ever driven in SF before? A bus YIELDING to another car? In your dreams. I drove through SF for years, and buses didn't give a crap who was around them. When they pulled off to pick-up/drop-off passengers, they would intentionally park at an angle to keep the lane blocked so they could more easily start back into the lane. Even if they didn't block the lane, if they wanted to get moving in that lane, they just go. They know that they are bigger than the cars, so they know the car will slow down or move out of the way. If a lane became more narrow than they liked due to parked cars on the side of the road, they would just take up two lanes. If you are next to it in the lane that they now want to occupy? You better move the fuck over. They would run red lights at will. Watch out if you are trying to cross at an intersection with a traffic light and a bus is coming through. Without a doubt, bus drivers in SF were the worst.
Google's cars made illegal right turns all along (Score:3, Informative)
The law says a right-hand turn shall be made as close as practicable to the right-hand curb or edge of the roadway [ca.gov]. So Google's self-driving cars have been making their right turns illegally until just recently.
I expected better from Google.
A car with no driver moving at 2mph (Score:2)
This touches on what I said before. (Score:4, Interesting)
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)
Who will be the first to die by it? (Score:3)
It never had to take a driving test like you did.
It will come defended by one of he largest companies the world has ever seen.
It will put thousands of people out of a job.
It's not likely to see a woman in woman in a black fur coat.
I can't decide whether a child or an adult dies.
It can't see at 400hz like your eyes can.
[Yes, we have persistence of about 16-24 hz, like you though you did, but we can see a new object enter the scene at about 400hz. Try it with an Aduino if you don't believe me. You can plainly see the difference between 60-120hz in monitors.]
Re:Might? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Might? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Might? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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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.
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? Even if you make an illegal stop in traffic. And how do you prove that the driver in front was at fault without a video of the incident or unusually good witnesses?
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You don't need both, either one will do. Just Google "comparative negligence rear-end" there's plenty written about it on law blogs and the like.
Re:Might? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Responding as a Georgia Driver very well versed in Georgia Driving laws and have successfully self represented in court on several occasions. Thus, IANAL... but I don't need one on this.
First, a link to someone who is a Lawyer that represents in Georgia, USA [robbinslaw.com]
Point 1. The Driver of Car A (the lead car) involved in a rear-end collision will receive a Citation for faulty equippment, however will not be cited at fault for the accident. That will fall on the driver of Car B (the trailing vehicle).
Point 2. The
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Here's someone that basically parked in the passing lane of a highway to help ducklings cross the road. They were charged with criminal negligence causing death [www.cbc.ca] when they were rear ended by a motorcycle that killed the riders
Re:Might? (Score:5, Informative)
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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So... just plow into the stopped vehicles in front of you? In order to maintain speed?
Obviously you've never been in stop and go traffic on an interstate.
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Although that is true, that offense is typically an infraction (at least in the U.S.). By contrast, exceeding the speed limit by 25 MPH (80 in a 55 zone) would normally be a misdemeanor. If both parties committed some sort of traffic violation leading to a wreck, you'd expect blame to fall upon the driver whose vi
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That negligence was factored into the law when they decided to make blocking traffic an infraction, not an offense that can result in jail time. If you want to treat the negligence as somehow more important than that, then you would have to make a claim that a reasonable person would expect blocking traffic to have that sort of outcome in this particular circumstance.
Vehicular manslaughter generally requires recklessness, which usually requires that the person be aware of the likelihood of stopping causin
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I don't know about there, but around here if you willingly fails to avoid an accident, you can be charge for life endangerment. The guy that made the mistake would be prosecuted by civil law for the losses, but you would face a prosecution by criminal law.
Unless you are a public transport driver and the victim is a biker. By some reason, they're allowed to ram bikers on the street.... =/ (Don't ask, I don't understand it neither)
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I don't know about there, but around here if you willingly fails to avoid an accident, you can be charge for life endangerment. The guy that made the mistake would be prosecuted by civil law for the losses, but you would face a prosecution by criminal law.
Unless you are a public transport driver and the victim is a biker. By some reason, they're allowed to ram bikers on the street.... =/ (Don't ask, I don't understand it neither)
That seems like a law that is begging for trouble. How can you possibly determine that someone willfully failed to avoid the accident? If taking action could result in another accident then it is typically better to let the other person hit you. What if dodging that vehicle caused you to crash?
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Imagine Florida-man driving his $500 beater truck when somebody in a new BMW pulls out in front of him. Instead of slowing down to avoid it, Florida-man stomps the gas because he technically has the right of way and wants to teach the other driver an expensive lesson.
I think I will side with the guy who very obviously has a railroad tie bolted onto the front of his truck as a bumper... I mean, you'd have to be stupid to pull in front of a vehicle like that, even if you weren't doing it to cut them off...
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I think I will side with the guy who very obviously has a railroad tie bolted onto the front of his truck as a bumper... I mean, you'd have to be stupid to pull in front of a vehicle like that, even if you weren't doing it to cut them off...
Unless the other guy's vehicle is a bus or truck weighting 10 times your car's weight - in which event your neck will receive full impact, as the railroad tie will not deform and will transfer fully the impact to the passengers. ;-)
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Expected the other guy to yield ... (Score:2)
How can you possibly determine that someone willfully failed to avoid the accident?
When one side says "Google said its car's safety driver thought the bus would yield." When a driver sees a potential accident coming the proper response is not to bet the other guy will yield, even if you have the right of way. Sometimes you have to accommodate the other guys illegal move.
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How can you possibly determine that someone willfully failed to avoid the accident?
By analyzing the accident. There's enough space on the road to avoid the hit? At what speed was you? At what speed was the culprit?
If you were speeding, you was on reckless driving.
If there was space to avoid the hit, you at very minimum was incompetent to void the accident and should not be driving.
Your right to be right is not greater than the right of other to be not be injured if you can avoid the injury.
If taking action could result in another accident then it is typically better to let the other person hit you.
Being that a good and valid excuse to the accident. All you have to do now is to prove your point -
Re:Might? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
Re:Might? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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 safety driver thought the bus would yield. That suggests they wouldn't, and that the safety driver would have had the same crash if they had been driving. Unless they were being complacent and trusted the car knew what it was doing.
Google guy obviously hasn't been driving long if he thinks a bus is going to give way, ever.
Re:Might? (Score:5, Informative)
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 [google.com]. 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.
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Trucks do the same thing at times, assuming that the other vehicle will give way. If a truck wants to merge into your lane then common sense says to move regardless of who has the right to be there. So how do you teach that to an AI?
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Trucks do the same thing at times, assuming that the other vehicle will give way. If a truck wants to merge into your lane then common sense says to move regardless of who has the right to be there. So how do you teach that to an AI?
You think this is the first case where Google had to adjust the programming to cope with how people actually drive? Reality is that there's a ton of unwritten rules that don't formally violate any law or regulation but is all about managing expectations, like how we resolve yield deadlocks, lane changing/merging and positioning, passing various obstacles and so on. And yes, large vehicles like buses and trucks seem to follow their own rules sometimes, but Google's car doesn't care what's right or if it got
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More importantly, really big ships must often limit themselves to a very narrow passageway or risk running aground. On the road, this means avoiding low bridges or gross vehicle weight limits, neither of which are relevant in this collision between the self-driving car and the bus.
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6) Google car waits for cars to pass to create an opening, then slowly moves back towards the center of the lane.
If it has an opening, then no accident, right?
7) Bus decides not to yield to the Google car that's ahead of it in the lane, trying to pass it anyway.
I see now, the google car was brake checking a 20,000+ lb vehicle by drifting into its path.
People dont do that because they dont want to get hit by a 20,000+ lb vehicle. Google car did because it doesn't know better.
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Your description seems to inject blame, particularly with the bus. Maybe a better description would be
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 attempts to slowly moves back towards the center of the lane.
7) Google car scrapes bus that is in center lane.
That
Re:Might? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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I bet that's what settles it right there. Although it's courteous to do so, with very wide lanes "we assume are wider so we can use them as a storage lane for turning". That doesn't necessarily make it legal to do so. The google car could get ticketed for passing on the right. It could also get ticketed for improper use of parking lane.
Case in point. I was almost in a collision when I came to a
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That means either the other car drove off the road, or you weren't far enough to the right. In California, what you did would be a violation of CVC 22100(a) [ca.gov]:
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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.
That's a big assumption, and the collision rate of vehicles driven by irrational bags of meat begs to differ.
I have seen many drivers with "they will yield to me because their car is more expensive and I don't care about mine" or "I can make that" or "f**k them I'm in a rush" or any other number of ego driven bad choices.
Yes a rational thoughtful person might act as you said, but they are a rare specimen nowadays.
Google in the wrong. (Score:3)
Thanks for the street view and concise list! But that double-wide does not look like two lanes, it is a lane and a shoulder for parking. Our city does this too, and people do use it like the Google car intended to but it is not marked for turning. Practically speaking you have to consider the shoulder area near the intersection as a no-mans-land.
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 [google.com] [google.com]. 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.
My take is, even though it intended to turn right, the Google car was in the wrong to drift to the right away from the dashed white line it was obviously following
Re:Might? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
If there is a "double wide lane" to accommodate right turns then there is essentially an implicit right turn lane despite the lack of paint on the road. The google car was attempting to maneuver around an obstacle by moving from the implicit right turn lane to the implicit traffic lane.
I've studied the CA DMV handbook a few times over the decades and I don't recall any such thing as a "double wide lane". However I do recall something about space reserved for parkings spots and bicycle lanes can turn into
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Re:Might? (Score:5, Funny)
"Where do you draw the line?" (Score:5, Funny)
Where do you draw the line?
Typically, it is drawn between the lanes...
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That's why I really don't like to drive in San Francisco. Impossible to predict what other drivers, pedestrians, or especially cyclists, will do.
As for that particular intersection, you could wait there stopped for hours until someone lets you move over. This is the Bay Area, if you want polite and reasonable drivers you go to Los Angeles instead.
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it was testing software that allowed it to make reasonable assumptions about other traffic as any sane driver would.
It is exactly this assumption of action on the part of other drivers that AV are supposed to remove from the excuses for accidents, not create more accidents because a computer can't guess what a human is going to do. You're saying that Google is actually making their AV more accident prone.
I can't see how any 'sane' AV would guess that a bus next to it is going to stop before it runs into the side of the bus. No sane human would make such an assumption about any vehicle, much less a bus that is already go
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By that standard you will be stuck in traffic constantly and be an even greater hazard on the road. The reason this AV even got into this situation was because it was testing software that allowed it to make reasonable assumptions about other traffic as any sane driver would.
I'm pretty sure that in every state the law is , if you are blocked in your lane, you either wait for somebody to let you in or you just wait. Just because you are blocked doesn't mean you have the right of way to force your way into moving traffic. If you do that, and I know everybody does, and there is an accident, you get ticketed for failure to yield right of way or improper lane change or something such as that. In effect, you get a ticket for causing an accident, just like the AV did in this case.
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Your own reasoning suggests that if a child rushes onto the road between cars, we should charge you with vehicular manslaughter since pedestrians always have the right of way.
The law is not binary.
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That's exactly my point, jackass.
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No darling, my point was all these "well understood laws" are not as well understood as most people think, and certainly not as clear cut.
In the same way as a series of jackasses are convinced the Google car is automatically 100% at fault, the "pedestrians have the right of way" fallacy would mean anyone striking one dead is guilty of manslaughter 100% of the time.
Maybe read for context and get that burr out of your ass, or you know, just stop being a cunt.
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It's like being at driving school again. Learn to start the engine, ensure the engine is in neutral, put the car into 1st gear, accelerate, brake, learn to turn left and right, reverse driving, reverse turning, going up and down hills (lower and higher gears). Then you try various obstacles, more complicated road layouts like hidden junctions, roundabouts, exits hidden behind hedges and trees, traffic lights on steep hills, hairpin junctions that require sharp turns. Various hazards like school zones, one w
Re:The approach is too hard... (Score:4, Insightful)
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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You do realise that /. had an article a month ago about how driver-less cars have been involved in a statistically higher number of accidents so far? In fact the statistic stated was twice as many accidents than the average human driver.
Don't let the perfect become the enemy of the good (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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No jury would find against the human and in favor of the robot.
I would find against the human, if the evidence showed that the human were in fact at fault. I have enough faith in the rationality of my fellow man to predict that most jurors would do the same.
And with a self-driving car there will be no lack of evidence regarding exactly what happened, since it keeps a full audit trail of everything that occurred before and during the accident. (Compare with a typical accident involving human drivers, which often devolves into a he-said-vs-he-said situation, with both
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I would find against the human, if the evidence showed that the human were in fact at fault.
Have you been on a bus that suddenly slammed on the brakes because a car just pulled out in front of it? And you'd find the bus driver at fault for not causing injuries to the bus passengers?
The AV was going two miles per hour. That means it was just starting up. The bus was going 15. That means it had been in motion for a much longer period of time. The amazing perfect computer car couldn't see the bus before pulling over, or did it just not care?
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I know I can.
No jury would find against the human and in favor of the robot.
Just because the robot took your job doesn't mean the robot gets a paycheck. Sue the robot all you want: it's not going to be able to pay you.
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When they're all robots, the cars would have been in communication rather than needed to predict anything.
Unless the car is infected with the A-HOLE virus, then it takes two parking spots for parking. Something that Hummer owners used to do at a job I've worked at.