Self-Driving Cars Should Be Legal Because They Pass Safety Tests, Argues Google (theverge.com) 265
An anonymous reader quotes an article on The Verge: Chris Urmson, director of Google's self-driving car project, has sent a letter to US Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx today with a plan for selling autonomous vehicles that have no steering wheels or pedals. The plan appears to be pretty straightforward: Urmson argues that if a self-driving car can pass standardized federal safety tests, they should be road-legal. Urmson adds that regulators could 'set conditions that limit use based on safety concerns.'
driving test standards (Score:4, Funny)
About three years ago I accidentally let my license expire and thus had to re-take the driving component of the exam.
I am somewhat convinced you could pass it with a non-autonomous vehicle having no steering wheels or pedals.
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I failed my driving test on a critical error. ... They gave me the license anyway and told me to watch out a bit when I'm driving or I may end up hurting someone. Quite frankly driving tests are a joke designed to be passable by the lowest common denominator of society.
Re:driving test standards (Score:4, Insightful)
Not in the UK. Maybe Google should try having one of their cars pass the test over here.
Re:driving test standards (Score:4)
It is not the test's deficiencies but the complete lack of tests...for old people. Really old people. People in their 80s and 90s.
I saw an old guy at a red light suddenly bolt into the intersection where traffic moves at 50mph. No reason, lots of witnesses, he hit someone of course. Just too old to be driving.
In Canada my grandmother had to retake her test every so many years once she reached 65. The US doesn't seem to have that standard. I'm not sure why.
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It is not the test's deficiencies but the complete lack of tests...for old people. Really old people. People in their 80s and 90s.
I saw an old guy at a red light suddenly bolt into the intersection where traffic moves at 50mph. No reason, lots of witnesses, he hit someone of course. Just too old to be driving.
In Canada my grandmother had to retake her test every so many years once she reached 65. The US doesn't seem to have that standard. I'm not sure why.
Because old people vote and complain more.
Meanwhile my phone crashes about once a month... (Score:3, Insightful)
We can't write a 100% working OS for a phone. Please trust our software with your life.
Re:Meanwhile my phone crashes about once a month.. (Score:4, Insightful)
There are plenty of computers in use (a lot of the better ones are running Linux or an RTOS and hell, even Windows NT/CE/XP) that people trust their lives to implicitly on a daily basis in a lot more delicate situations than driving a car. Commercial planes do most of the flying fully autonomous, most of both your debt and savings is being invested fully automated, any machine in a hospital parses a lot more data than a few dozen sensor and requires much more precision.
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flight is actually a much simpler problem to solve for an AI than ground travel. Planes don't typically have to avoid unexpected obstacles because their vectors are carefully monitored and controlled by human pilots in the air and on the ground. So while the speeds and distances are much greater, the path to destination is much simpler (even if elliptical).
Machines are quicker, yes, but a lot dumber and lack situational awareness. A medical machine monitoring vitals can notice changes a lot more quickly
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Machines are quicker, yes, but a lot dumber and lack situational awareness
On the other hand, machines are capable of watching dozens of different sensors and cameras at once, in all directions around the car, with much higher precision, and without getting distracted or sleepy. What they are lacking right now is human-like interpretation of what they see, but that's a field that is rapidly improving.
Re:Meanwhile my phone crashes about once a month.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Look up TCAS sometime. The planes have sensors to detect each other. If the TCAS system detects a possible collision situation, the planes determine, all by themselves, the correct course of action, and then relay that information to the pilot. Commands like CLIMB or DESCEND or STAY LEVEL. In this situation, the pilot has absolutely no say in the matter. They are required to obey the computer because in the past, pilots ignoring this input have cause planes to crash into each other in mid-air because the pilot thought he knew better. The TCAS commands even override Air Traffic Control commands. How's that for trusting your life to a computer?
Re: Meanwhile my phone crashes about once a month. (Score:2)
This is not true, according to the Wikipedia article. The only thing the pilot is absolutely required to do is not manouver in the direction opposite to the one indicated by the TCAS. As for actually following what the TCAS says, there is some leeway.
Let all autonomous cars share Driver License point (Score:2)
There are plenty of computers in use (a lot of the better ones are running Linux or an RTOS and hell, even Windows NT/CE/XP) that people trust their lives to implicitly on a daily basis in a lot more delicate situations than driving a car. Commercial planes do most of the flying fully autonomous, most of both your debt and savings is being invested fully automated, any machine in a hospital parses a lot more data than a few dozen sensor and requires much more precision.
Driving is a far more difficult problem than auto landing, auto pilot and auto takeoff on an airplane.
So if one vendor's software passes a driving test let it also share all the driver's license "points" accumulated by all the autonomous vehicles. So if it makes too many mistakes or gets into too many accidents it looses its license. Again, not an individual car, all cars running the vendor's software.
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pilots land and take off manually.
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Unless the weather isn't conducive to VFR, in which case, guess what? The autopilot lands the plane. In situations where the pilot cannot be trusted to land due to poor visibility or other issues, the autopilot is king. I've taken an A320 class D flight simulator from ATL to JFK without touching the controls except to set the throttles to the climb position from TOGA, setting the flaps, and landing gear position.
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An automobile not only has many, many more variables but it has variables that apply to it as well as variables that apply to other vehicles and terrain types. Call me back when your AV can get me to my home, in a snowstorm, without having been there before. Then, it needs to be safer than I am.
My home is in NW Maine, near the edge of cellular connection but there are actually two towers to work with, it's on the side of a mountain, the driveway is paved, it's about a half-mile long. It's steep but not too
Re:Let all autonomous cars share Driver License po (Score:4, Funny)
"So if it makes too many mistakes or gets into too many accidents it looses its license."
You now have one point on your spelling license.
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Have you seen a commercial plane without human pilots ? I thought so.
That's not the point. The computers on board a commercial plane have the potential to cause major accidents that the pilots would be unable to prevent. And still we trust them.
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How will a computer respond to a tire blow out on the highway at 60mph plus? Some other emergency?
How will the car that gets slammed into by an autonomous vehicle with a blown tire respond?
How will the cars behind it react to the event in front? How fast?
What will happen to the hacker that intercepted and manipulated those signals the other cars are sending to each other? ( assumption made )
Has any of these scenarios been tested? I don't see any crushed google cars so I am going to guess NONE.
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How will a computer respond to a tire blow out on the highway at 60mph plus?
Within one millisecond after the blow out, the computer will get data from a tire pressure sensor that indicates what happened, and which tire blew out, and take the appropriate action. They'll be in a much better position to handle this gracefully compared to a human driver that has never experienced this, and maybe requires a few seconds to realize what the hell is going on, and has no clue how to react safely.
Has any of these scenarios been tested? I don't see any crushed google cars so I am going to guess NONE.
Why would you assume Google would notify you of any experiments they have done with blown out ti
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and take the appropriate action
And tell me how you would code that? Tell me how a coder that may or may not have experienced a blowout would approach that problem ?
I have, and it's immediately obvious why you're getting the snot shook out of you while you bring the car to a halt without making it worse. Think about the visual problems that would occur from the shaking and vibrations of that event?
and take the appropriate action
I am sorry, but I really think you don't have a clue.
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Tell me how a coder that may or may not have experienced a blowout would approach that problem ?
Drive a car along an empty road, and blow out the tire. Collect data, code algorithm, run tests, and repeat until you get it right.
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code algorithm
An algorithm? Just one? I can tell you have never experienced a blow out that's for sure.
Lets crank it up a notch. The tire didn't blow out, but the tread separated and wrapped itself round some structure of the undercarriage and locks up the rear end. On asphalt pavement with a ton of road grit and gravel.
Then there's this other post:
Lol, now put the driverless car on a highway with thousands of other cars, fog, rain, etc... and let the fun begin.
Put those cars on the rad and let the slaughter begin.
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An algorithm? Just one?
You must not know what an algorithm is. Hint: 1 algorithm + 1 algorithm = 1 algorithm.
I can tell you have never experienced a blow out that's for sure.
That's right. And I probably wouldn't handle it correctly, even though I'm human.
lol, now put the driverless car on a highway with thousands of other cars, fog, rain, etc... and let the fun begin.
Highway driving is the simplest of all. The car can see through fog and rain using radar and infrared, and can accurately measure the speed of all the cars using doppler, measure the slickness of the road, and accurately determine safe speed and driving distances. These extreme circumstances are actually much harder to handle for humans, as yo
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An algorithm? Just one?
Yes, just one algorithm. As slashping points out, it's the combination of other smaller algorithms:
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Why do you move to the things that humans are worst at? Everything you're describing is *super easy* for a computer to do better than humans. You've picked scenarios with an incredibly low bar for software to cross.
What you should be picking are things humans find easy and safe, but which are nonetheless unusual. Like "the traffic lights have failed and a private citizen has taken it upon himself to direct traffic" or "driving into a restricted off-road area which is closed to the general public and blac
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and now you're worried about rain?
Nice try, that method of argument will not be accepted.
Decades of road simulation? Perhaps with functional programming regarding rules and 'best practices' according to the rule of law and making sure the car operates on the road as expected in ideal conditions. But there's no way to simulate the real world failures like you're asserting has been done. And certainly not for decades.
Pardon the pun, but the real work will be where the rubber meets the road.
The good news is natural selection will get it's chan
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Decades of road simulation? Perhaps with functional programming regarding rules and 'best practices' according to the rule of law and making sure the car operates on the road as expected in ideal conditions. But there's no way to simulate the real world failures like you're asserting has been done. And certainly not for decades.
You clearly have no idea what the state of the art actually is, where I've actually built such simulators. We've been building them for several decades (of real time) already. Yes, some algorithms (mostly for communications and basic sensors, including tire pressure) have had simulated time exceeding a hundred thousand hours, which is over a decade of continuous real testing.
You'd be amazed what can be simulated these days. One of my colleagues works on simulators for a tire company, modeling the wear patte
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After almost two decades on Slashdot and a decade in industry it's dead accurate. You guys whine constantly about new technology. I can almost guarantee most of you are the guys in the office that insist on doing things 'the way you learned them' 20 or 30 years ago. Where I work you're the barriers to progress. Up to a point it's just cheaper to keep you around until it's easier to start over with a fresh grad or a H1B and train them on new tools.
This isn't a CS problem, this is a mechanical engineering / d
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*Chuckle*
This right here. ;)
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Think about the visual problems that would occur from the shaking and vibrations of that event?
Really, those are the easy problems. A much harder problem would be to recognize whether a pedestrian is signalling you to stop or urging you to move on, or anticipating what a cyclists is going to do based on where he's looking.
Re:Meanwhile my phone crashes about once a month.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, I love this game! The Luddites bring it up every time autonomous cars are discussed.
How will a computer respond to a tire blow out on the highway at 60mph plus? Some other emergency?
Within a few milliseconds of the emergency being detected by sensors, the computer will have fully assessed the situation and determined the safest course of action. A blown tire is simple, because it only really affects the vehicle handling parameters. At over 60MPH on a highway, the vehicle is going to have very minimal handling needs. The steering system can be told (within those milliseconds) that it will need to adjust, and in a few rotations of the tire, it can analyse the shape of effects of the new tire's shape. At minimum, it will know that it needs to steer a few degrees to the side of its intended course, allowing it to stay on course and maneuver safely to the shoulder.
How will the car that gets slammed into by an autonomous vehicle with a blown tire respond?
If by some absurd accident that does occur, it'd be treated like any other unavoided collision. As soon as the vehicle determines that a collision is unavoidable, it will attempt to minimize the damage. There has been research into having algorithms adjust the vehicle speed to change impact position, relying on a database of the vehicle's crush characteristics to reduce the chance of injury. Results show that the computer can do that faster and more successfully than any human driver.
How will the cars behind it react to the event in front? How fast?
When the front car detects the blowout, or when the cars behind it detect the debris or change in driving characteristics, they will consider the car to be a risk, and avoid it. They will start slowing down, changing lanes, and otherwise avoiding the affected vehicle. Again, this has all been tested.
As for the speed of this decision, everything happens in a few dozen milliseconds. At 60MPH highway speeds, that means that the computer will process and understand a situation before the vehicle has traveled a few feet. In comparison, a human brain reacts in about 150 to 250 ms, depending mostly on the type of stimulus. It doesn't matter how good of a driver you are, or how much attention you're paying to what's going on. An autonomous vehicle can observe, consider, and begin reacting to an emergency in front of it before your brain can even understand what your eyes are seeing.
What will happen to the hacker that intercepted and manipulated those signals the other cars are sending to each other? ( assumption made )
Oh, don't be so coy. You've made an awful lot of assumptions without actually understanding the current state of the art.
Legally, probably nothing will happen to the hacker, because it'd be difficult to find and catch such an attack, but that has nothing to do with the cars. It's equally hard to find someone using a cell phone jammer today. There have been a few cases, but they were caught due to prolonged or repeated use.
From the perspective of the cars on the road, losing communications with the other vehicles is a known and tested risk. Similarly, mismatched information is a risk condition. The easiest response is to slow down and try to move out of traffic.
Has any of these scenarios been tested? I don't see any crushed google cars so I am going to guess NONE.
Yes, these scenarios have been tested extensively, but you don't know about it, because you're not bothering to do research. One of the fascinating aspects of robotics research is that researchers can control all of the inputs to the algorithms. We can put a sensor in a tire, then drive it down a test track and make it blow. We can take that data, mix it with data from a dozen other test runs, and use that to build thousands of simulation input cases. Those inputs are run in simulated environments, with and without vehicle-to-vehicle
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Yes, this is real life, not your if-it-ain't-broke-don't-fix-it fantasy.
You can choose to ignore what I've written, as you've chosen to ignore the other research and progress in the field. Looking through your comment history, you seem to do that a lot. You also seem to have a bias against modern automotive safety [slashdot.org], based on myths that have been continually disproven.
Yes, it's true that there are faults to modern technology, especially with regards to safety equipment. However, you don't seem to understand t
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Don't forget to ask 'em about privacy, about ubiquity - not all of us live in areas where the maps are accurate - or even remotely accurate. (Remember my story about the bus(es) full of Canadian foliage tourists that show up in my driveway every year?) I modeled traffic for a living - well enough so that my business has long since been sold and I'm happily retired. I'm a driving enthusiast - someone who's taken many, many advanced driving courses and even done things like take special classes, rent exotics,
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not all of us live in areas where the maps are accurate - or even remotely accurate.
Maps are just one sensor. The algorithms work well enough without them, though you may need to tell the car exactly what route to follow.
I'm a driving enthusiast... I'd like to think I've got a qualified opinion.
Your opinion may indeed be qualified, or it may not be. Experience and understanding are related, but distinct.
What's awesome is when they say how many miles the cars have driven without accidents. Sure, how many times have humans intervened and how much of that was on roads that were unfamiliar? How much of that was in less than optimal situations?
Actually, a lot of it is in less-than-optimal situations, with very little human intervention. There are controlled and uncontrolled tests. Google and the media make a big deal about the uncontrolled tests, where a vehicle is out on the roads in public areas, but
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echo-chambers like Slashdot
That's the most frustrating thing hindering good debate on this forum any more. Dissenting opinions are shouted or modded down no matter how valid the concern is of the dissenter.
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So tell me how does a human driver that never experienced a blowout (most drivers) respond? Most drivers are very bad at realizing what happened in the first 1-3 seconds and simply panic by slamming the brakes, swirving etc.
In a car you can at least code an appropriate response, cars don't care if it's foggy and already have countermeasures for wet roads or loss of traction.
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Everyone keeps saying you CAN do this or that. And nobody has linked to any real research, done in the real world. Specifically related to vehicle failures.
Also, if the car encounters a condition it's not programmed to deal with, what will be it's default response?
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it's very much the point, because goog's argument in the summary is that the us shoudl legalize automated cars with no steering wheels or brakes.
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Re: Meanwhile my phone crashes about once a month. (Score:2)
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(don't feel too bad; that's very much the norm these days)
As you aptly demonstrate.
Re: Meanwhile my phone crashes about once a month (Score:2)
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LOL I'm glad I don't drink alcohol any more. I didn't quite spit it up but I *did* have to swallow awkwardly.
Hmm... That sentence should not be taken out of context. It was just coffee. There's a whole lot of really strange optimism with this. People seem to think they're going to be able to get drunk, hop in the back, and say, "Home, James." They seem to think this is right around the corner - and that it will be done while respecting privacy. Oh my... They've never seen the big picture that is traffic and
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As long as Google is willing to take responsibility for the damages, I'm fine with it. Basically, Google is the driver of all driverless cars they sell.
No, the owner of the car should get regular car insurance, and then the insurance company will take up the responsibility for the damages. Of course, if the insurance company can argue that google has been grossly negligent in some case, they can take them to court.
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The thing is that a third party would actually be responsible for the accident, and as such you would need additional coverage specifically for the case. Insurance policies spell out such things. They want to even know how much you drive it on average, where you drive and in what conditions. They take into account things like if it is a motor cycle all the way up to a tractor trailer. The price of insurance is based on these factors.
Now add the concept of hardware driving the car. Sure, we can demonstrate t
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Sure, we can demonstrate that this car with this software is this safe, but then comes a software update. This makes the insurance company's management of their risk much more difficult. All it takes is one bad update and lets say, hypothetically, a vehicle or two careens into the side of a bus.
Insurance companies are experts at calculating risk. This type of risk won't be any different from the thousands of other types they already have to worry about. If there's X% additional insecurity, they just add Y% extra premium. Furthermore, software updates can be installed gradually over an extended period, and the insurance company can keep track of numbers and types of incidents for all the different software versions. As soon as there's a pattern that a certain version is less safe than others, the u
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I think having manual controls will increase the cost of insurance. You simply can't have an "autonomous" car that has the capability to hand-off to a real driver if it "gets tough". There's no point in it. It's hard enough paying attention when you really need to, but when 98% of the time it doesn't matter, but those 2% remaining you have to be at full attention? Good luck with that.
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No, the owner of the car should get regular car insurance, and then the insurance company will take up the responsibility for the damages. Of course, if the insurance company can argue that google has been grossly negligent in some case, they can take them to court.
If these cars are as good as they are claimed to be, no liability insurance is needed.
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Assuming that they are safer than the average driver, it is almost a certainty. Most car insurance companies are mutual companies, which means they aren't trying to make a profit. If those vehicles are actually safer, those insurance companies will quickly add discounts to encourage further adoption so that everyone's rates will eventually go down. And any non-mutual insurance companies will be forced to follow suit if they want to remain competitive.
Re:Meanwhile my phone crashes about once a month.. (Score:4)
Re: Meanwhile my phone crashes about once a month (Score:2)
Lots of products pass safety tests (Score:5, Insightful)
..and lots of them have been proven later to be unsafe anyway. The law cannot account for everything.
Re:Lots of products pass safety tests (Score:5, Insightful)
The same goes for drivers.
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That's true. The difference is that a half attentive human is still far more situationally aware than a computer.
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This shows what a horrible idea it was for Google to remove the standard driver controls from their car design.
First, it gives absolutely no backup when the inevitable failure occurs and the car doesn't know WTF to do. For example how exactly are you supposed to direct the car to a specific parking spot inside a garage?
Second, it was stupid simply from a regulatory point of view. Yeah, no kidding regulators are not going to be thrilled about letting version 1.0 of an autonomous vehicle on the road without
Re:Lots of products pass safety tests (Score:5, Funny)
My bet is that Google is going to have to backpedal on this
They would, but unfortunately, the backpedal has already been taken out.
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This shows what a horrible idea it was for Google to remove the standard driver controls from their car design. First, it gives absolutely no backup when the inevitable failure occurs and the car doesn't know WTF to do. For example how exactly are you supposed to direct the car to a specific parking spot inside a garage?
Just like human drivers Google's car is free to take directions from the passengers but still be the one legally responsible. I'm sure they have a plan B, but it's obvious the car would have a ton more value if it didn't require a licensed and capable driver. And principally humans don't have a backup, if the driver is incapacitated well call an ambulance and a tow truck. Yes, that might mean the passengers are shit out of luck. But if they don't have a license or are drunk or whatever they would be anyway,
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For example how exactly are you supposed to direct the car to a specific parking spot inside a garage?
Ok, google, park next to the elevator/blue sedan/in spot 14A/etc...
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Ok, google, park next to the elevator/blue sedan/in spot 14A/etc...
A relatively simple touch screen should do the trick, if it's not the passenger's responsibility to check the mirrors and such. You just say where you want to go, the car works out if it's safe to do so.
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Ok, google, park next to the elevator/blue sedan/in spot 14A/etc...
"Now parking next to Ellen's gator/flew command/in pot for teen gay"
Wait, no... aaaaaaah!
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For example how exactly are you supposed to direct the car to a specific parking spot..?
Ok, google, park next to the elevator/blue sedan/in spot 14A/etc...
I like to park away from other cars (less likely to get dinged) and away from the elevator. I expect the Google car would be programmed to park as close as possible to the elevator anyway, which is what most people want and exactly what I don't.
At work I park in the remotest area of the car park because I like quiet and privacy when I often go and sit in it at lunch break. I even wash it there sometimes. There are a few other like-minded people who do the same, spaced about. And the slots are not num
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I expect the Google car would be programmed to park as close as possible to the elevator anyway, which is what most people want and exactly what I don't.
I expect them to let you say where you want your car parked, either through voice commands or just tapping on the location on the screen.
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Why would it even need to be parked near the building at all? The car could just drop you off and continue on to the municipal garage which has been specially marked to accommodate autonomous vehicles. For short visits, it could just orbit the block until you're ready to leave (probably this doesn't scale, though).
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Oh, no doubt I agree that eventually cars will not even require a licensed driver at some point in the future. Heck, I'm not even really debating the issue of whether or not their car *should* be designated road worthy. I just think it was wildly optimistic of Google to think that their version 1.0 driverless cars could look like this, given the practical and regulatory hurdles they'll be facing.
Every other autonomous car manufacturer is taking a much saner approach of integrating these systems so that th
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it's obvious the car would have a ton more value if it didn't require a licensed and capable driver.
Absolutely. Children, drunks, the blind and the elderly could all benefit from personal transport. Also, drivers are one of the largest unpredictables for autonomous cars. The less drivers there are, the better they will communicate and work together.
Not to mention that if the cars drive well in normal conditions, the driver is unlikely going to be paying enough attention to "take charge" in an emergency
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Re: Lots of products pass safety tests (Score:2)
Since any fool, even the non-technical shitheads jerking off over the prospect of not having to ever drive again because they suck so badly at it (we know who you are) sh
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Re: Lots of products pass safety tests (Score:2)
How about a sudden, complete loss of steering wheel ?
Let's ignore the fact, for a moment, that you just demonstrated your unsuitability to even be participating in this conversation and pretend that what you actually asked was...
How about a sudden, complete loss of steering ability?
...in which case, my reply would be a sarcastic and altogether-assholish "Well then then, it's a good thing self-driving cars will be immune from tie-rod/turnbuckle and other forms of mechanical failure."
Heard a new one recently; I believe it applies here: Don't bring piss to a shit fight. ;)
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For example how exactly are you supposed to direct the car to a specific parking spot inside a garage?
Yep I'm sure the best and brightest minds in car automation haven't given this a moment's thought. What idiots!
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For example how exactly are you supposed to direct the car to a specific parking spot inside a garage?
Yep I'm sure the best and brightest minds in car automation haven't given this a moment's thought. What idiots!
The real question is... why do you care where your network-connected self-driving car parks? Let the damned thing figure it out by itself. Whey you need it, you don't go find it, you grab your phone and tell it to come to you.
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I can't imagine what leads Google to think they can actually solve EVERY problem an autonomous car will run into with the very first version. Where exactly does that extraordinary self-confidence (hubris?) come from?
Their hubris comes from your lack of research. Maybe look into what, how long, and how many iterations Google have gone through in their car design before you claim they are solving "EVERY" problem in the "very first version".
Traditional car companies know that they can only get away with this on their concept cars - not their production models.
Traditional car companies think the most advanced device in their car is an iPhone dock. It has always taken small start-up or independent inventors / engineering firms to create a significant change in the car industry. If you left it up to car companies you wouldn't have seatbelts, c
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For example how exactly are you supposed to direct the car to a specific parking spot inside a garage?
Why would you want to? Just get out and let the car figure out where to park. Or maybe tell it to go home. When you're ready to go, just use your phone to tell the car where to pick you up.
I can't imagine what leads Google to think they can actually solve EVERY problem an autonomous car will run into with the very first version.
This is very, very far from the first version.
Where exactly does that extraordinary self-confidence (hubris?) come from?
Several years and ~1.5 million miles of real-world testing.
That is, designers felt the damn thing didn't look futuristic enough if it still had a steering wheel and petals.
No, actually. The people working on it have explained at length why they took this step, and it derived from actual experience and testing. There are two problems with putting controls in a self-driving car. First, it
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Monkey? (Score:5, Insightful)
Any ordinary car driven by a raging retarded monkey would pass the safety tests as well.
BECAUSE THE SAFETY TESTS ON CARS DOESN'T TEST DRIVING OR COGNITIVE SKILLS!!!!
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So what you are really saying is that the self-driving car should just get a driving licence and then we're golden.
Sure, if it can navigate the bureacracy of becoming a US citizen and then getting a drivers license, especially as a non-human, it surely would be able to navigate our streets as well.
REALLY? No manual controls? (Score:2)
No steering or pedals? Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory!
Err, yes, okay (Score:2)
Urmson argues that if a self-driving car can pass standardized federal safety tests, they should be road-legal.
Umm, yes, seems reasonable...
Sorry, is there any actual story here? It's practically tautological. Of course there should be some kind of safety test for self-driving cars before they're allowed on the roads for any reason other than testing. Was anyone expecting anything else?
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Of course there should be some kind of safety test for self-driving cars before they're allowed on the roads for any reason other than testing
You're missing the point. Google argues that the safety test should be good enough.
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As in only the standard safety tests that all cars currently go through, and nothing else? One of the articles could be read that way, but neither is crystal clear.
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Urmson adds that regulators could "set conditions that limit use based on safety concerns,"
I think that means they are open to the idea that there could be additional tests or limitations, as long as they can remove the steering wheel and pedals.
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As in only the standard safety tests that all cars currently go through, and nothing else?
Google's claim is disingenuous BS.
Current car construction regulations were written with the unspoken assumption that there would be a competent driver who can react to failures, for example can apply the handbrake if the footbrake fails. Of course a Google car can be programmed to apply a secondary brake if the primary one fails, but for that to occur automatically is not a requirement in the present construction regulations (in the UK anyway).
What a self-driving car needs to meet is the sum of the
they will kill the taxi driver profession (Score:2)
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Depends on the location, I'd think. I know a bunch of people who are far richer than you need to be in order to drive a car in NYC, but who still take the subway because self-driving or not, a car during rush hour in NYC is going nowhere.
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Enough autonomous cars in NYC and no more rush hour congestion.
Fine (Score:2)
- would I feel OK sitting in one of those and everything around me moves and I cannot act at all, sitting there passively?
I think I would worry myself to death.
Cruse Control fine, maybe automatic steering but steering wheel disappearing, seats swerving 90 degree away from driving direction towards each other, as it was written about the BMW "experiment" and semis overtaken by software passing by right before my eyes - no mf. way ...
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- would I feel OK sitting in one of those and everything around me moves and I cannot act at all, sitting there passively?
It's like you're sitting in a bus like a pauper.
Hardly - you look in driving direction, there is no software steering and in most buses you are elevated and there is lots of space around, not two seats behind a wind-shield to your left or right side.
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Hardly - you look in driving direction, there is no software steering
There may be no software steering, but there could be a driver playing on his phone. And some bus seats are turned sideways, or even backwards.
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To be fair, all seats facing forward position is only for first gen autonomous cars anyway, because that's what people who buy cars expect cars to look like. After enough acceptance, some companies will start to challenge that assumption and produce other configurations. All facing rearward might be one, supposedly that is better in an accident, or perhaps all seats face inward so you can have a group conversation with everyone in the car.
I still don't understand how this will work (Score:4, Interesting)
1) Suppose I live on a small farm or ranch and you are coming to visit me in your car. I might say "When you get here, come up the drive, turn left at the old tractor and park behind the barn next to the chickens". With a conventional car this should be easy, but what if you have one of these Google cars with no controls. Presumably it will find my address and arrive at the end of the drive. Given that there are no manual controls, how would you tell it the bit about the tractor and chickens? Will you just be able to type that in and it will be clever enough to follow those instructions?
2) What about parking at work? I work on a big site with several car parks. How will I describe to the car which one I want to park in. They don't have separate Zip codes.
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Will you just be able to type that in and it will be clever enough to follow those instructions?
Yes. And then it will kick your butt at a game of Go.
Machines Humans? (Score:2)
Should every self-driving car pass the same test humans do?
What will happen if everyone has self-driving cars, and our GPS system goes out?
Who will be the first one to die in a driverless car?
So you don't enjoy driving?
How do motorcycles fit in in a world of self-driving cars?
How many people will be made unemployed by self-driving cars, buses, and trucks?
Perfectly safe.... (Score:2)
... until somebody loads up a few car bombs and sends them to town.
Who do I sue? (Score:2)
Slow down and live, (Score:2)
Come Labor Day and the VFW and our rural volunteer firemen have beer tents set up in a small town parks, with temporary parking on the grass, while minor road work elsewhere have traffic being routed off onto the shoulder. In theory, every hazard should be properly signed and flagged and posted to the web. In practice, it doesn't always work out that
Tests don't try to cover every possible situation (Score:2)
A machine built to only pass the situations being tested should automatically fail. The actual "rules" of the road is the State driving code, which is usually several hundred pages long and probably filled with sit
How about the moral choices? (Score:2)
I'm never going to allow one of these things to drive me, as I will not let Google make life-and-death choices for me. Let me illustrate with a story that happened to me a couple of years ago in Morocco. I was driving from Marrakesh to Ouarzazate (beautiful trip, btw) in a narrow road when a truck coming at high speed from the opposite direction invades my lane. I thought quickly of two ways to escape it:
1 - Swerve to the right, crashing into the mountain. Likely to destroy my car and cause me minor injurie
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Programmed in LOGO of course.