9 ms·

Once self driving cars reach a certain penetration level I wonder how long it'll take the remaining human drivers to start taking advantage of that fact by assu

by pivo 11y ago

Once self driving cars reach a certain penetration level I wonder how long it'll take the remaining human drivers to start taking advantage of that fact by assuming most cars will automatically stop for them when they try stupid maneuvers like this one. I commute on foot in Boston and I regularly witness pedestrians cross streets in front of traffic when they know they can get away with it, for example, when they're part of a crowd of pedestrians or the traffic is moving slowly. Every time I see that I wonder how much worse it'll be when they don't have to worry about being hit. Our sidewalks are narrow and crowded, will pedestrians just move to the streets? Based on our geography, drivers and pedestrians I fully expect my city to pioneer the field of taking advantage of self driving car's automated accident avoidance systems.

imaginenore 11y ago
> when they try stupid maneuvers like this one. It's called natural selection. Eventually they will meet each other.
pavel_lishin 11y ago
Isn't one of the ideas of self-driving cars the idea that they'll reduce overall congestion and traffic volume? It might become pretty reasonable to step off into the street, because there won't be much traffic there to inconvenience. Although it would definitely be a habit that'll end up killing someone.
- Grue3 11y ago
  There's no way self-driving cars will reduce traffic volume. If anything, it will increase since not only you don't need to be able to drive in order to travel in a self-driving car, the car might be completely empty and driving on its own for some sort of reason. And of course people who currently drive a car will still be driving a car (which might be self-driving or not).
  - Tepix 11y ago
    There is a way: A lot of traffic these days is people looking for a parking spot. If the car leaves the area right away after dropping you off, it will be less congested there.
- kd0amg 11y ago
  I doubt they'll turn major arteries into quiet streets, especially at rush hour.
  - ogrisel 11y ago
    Unless it becomes cheaper and more convenient to share rides in robotic vans booked on a smartphone and scheduled via a robotic taxi platforms that can match the bids (vans with spare seats going in the right direction) with asks (potential passengers requesting a cheap trip on their smartphone).
- mc32 11y ago
  They may decrease congestion (backups) due to improved flow, but that does not necessarily mean there will be fewer automobiles, if anything, better flow/throughput likely would encourage new or more motorists to take to the road.
calpaterson 11y ago
As a pedestrian who has to do this regularly when I have priority at a crossing: I live in hope
jnty 11y ago
"Our sidewalks are narrow and crowded, will pedestrians just move to the streets?" I hope so. If drvierless cars allow pedestrians to safely reclaim the streets that, as you point out, have marginalized them for so long, then that's fantastic.
btbuildem 11y ago
It'll do wonders for carjackings, that's for sure.
maratd 11y ago
> Once self driving cars reach a certain penetration level I wonder how long it'll take the remaining human drivers to start taking advantage of that fact by assuming most cars will automatically stop for them when they try stupid maneuvers like this one. I don't understand this argument. If you do something abusive in front of me ... I will do what a robot will do. I will stop. Because I don't want to crash. I might open the window and yell some profanities at you ... but I can do that anyway, regardless of who triggered the stop, whether it was me or the on-board computer. If you're arguing that the on-board computer has better reflexes and therefore people will engage in even more demented behavior ... that penetration level would have to be 99%. If it's something like 90%, then 1 out of 10 times you do something that abusive will result in a crash and you'll die. By the time penetration reaches 99%, you essentially have all cars with automation built in and it's likely that using that automation will be mandatory. Cars that aren't automated will be illegal on public roads exactly because of this problem.
- xgbi 11y ago
  No you don't understand: if 99% of the traffic is automated and resilient to idiots, what prevents me from passing a red light? What prevents me from going the wrong way on the motorway? You'll have overstressed idiots that will get that and start driving like fools to meet their appointments. It has already happened in some way: the overconfident TMAXes that don't think the laws of traffic apply to them.
  - lsaferite 11y ago
    TMAXes?
    - vmarsy 11y ago
      The parent is probably from Europe and refers to TMAX Scooters, http://www.ocregister.com/articles/tmax-672750-bike-motorcycle.html http://www.ocregister.com/articles/tmax-672750-bike-motorcyc... These are very powerful scooters, almost as fast as motorcycles but they don't require manual speed shifting, making. Usually drivers or those are reckless in cities like Paris
xexers 11y ago
Agreed... it will be similar to putting your hand into a closing elevator door knowing it will open for you. I'd imagine new laws will be made to restrict pedestrians from egregiously abusing the self driving car.
whitenoice 11y ago
Would love to see how self driving cars perform on crazy Boston roads and with Boston drivers especially near hvd square, route 2,3 ;)
JoeAltmaier 11y ago
I wonder how the next generation of automated cars will respond to this generation? Will they dodge around an auto-car in front of them that's emergency braking? Will that cause them to emergency brake for oncoming cars in that lane? Will those cars have to dodge back into this lane? What loops and bugs and combinations of emergency responses will occur, at the speed of electronic control? Who will law consider 'to blame' in all this?
theklub 11y ago
Everything will be recorded.
rayiner 11y ago
That would be awesome. The streets can return to belonging to pedestrians instead of to cars. We could get rid of crosswalks and crosswalk lights and just let the automated cars deal with it.
- sevensor 11y ago
  Or, in the dystopia of my nightmares, bicycles and pedestrians are forbidden from using all roads, not just highways. For their own protection, of course.
EvanAnderson 11y ago
The various threats and exploitation strategies that will be used against self-driving cars are going to be very interesting (and likely ranging from inconvenient to lethal). There needs to be significant public discourse on the subject. Sadly, I expect that the fact that general purpose computers are a major component of self-driving cars will mean further legislative restriction on the use of general purpose computers. The idyllic vision of everyone riding in self-driving cars with "tamper-proof" and "trusted" firmware / processors is seductive (and arguably easier to build) than developing systems that are resilient in the face of malicious actors. Cars will end up being computers you ride in, running code that you legally prevented from examining or modifying. I hate the thought of it, but I can't see another scenario actually playing out.
- projct 11y ago
  At least part of one alternate scenario is playing out, the EFF won the petition to inspect and modify software that controls cars https://supporters.eff.org/civicrm/mailing/view?reset=1&id=1234 https://supporters.eff.org/civicrm/mailing/view?reset=1&id=1...
  - EvanAnderson 11y ago
    For the next three years, and then the exemption could be revoked. When industry lobby successfully stirs up other groups with "safety" concerns I don't think it will be so easy to win another exemption.
- darkmighty 11y ago
  Security is definitively going to be a concern. Tesla currently deals with it by some strong sandboxing the user interface. I've heard of breaches into the controls with other manufacturers but no internet bourne breach afaik. I think the key is common sense good security engineering with strong verification of security models. We have had a few networked systems that can be target by malicious actors for a while now, like factory control systems; thankfully there's no big motivated enemy out there, but the risk will surely increase in the face of possibility of mass modification (overriding the manufacturer's firmware en masse), even accidental modification by the manufacturers. Of course, if the user purposely modifies his own control systems he's going to be liable for any damage it causes.
dghughes 11y ago
I'm pretty sure that's a given that people drive more aggressively when their vehicles have safety systems ABS being the big one.
obastani 11y ago
I don't know about about your city, but I would expect drivers to stop for pedestrians even if they are crossing in the middle of the road. The reason I never cross in front of a moving car is a matter of courtesy and not wanting to break the law, not out of fear of being run over.
warfangle 11y ago
> I commute on foot in Boston and I regularly witness pedestrians cross streets in front of traffic when they know they can get away with it, for example, when they're part of a crowd of pedestrians or the traffic is moving slowly. Every time I see that I wonder how much worse it'll be when they don't have to worry about being hit. Our sidewalks are narrow and crowded, will pedestrians just move to the streets? Once upon a time, streets were for people. And then the automotive industry coined the term jaywalking...
- edvinbesic 11y ago
  Adam does ruin everything.
- shostack 11y ago
  For anyone interested in this, 99% Invisible did a great episode on this[1]. [1] http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-76-the-modern-moloch/ http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-76-the-modern-...
- Crito 11y ago
  Once upon a time, people shit in bowls and threw it out their windows. Pedestrians taking roads from motor vehicles is a modern example of the tragedy of the commons.
- hugh4 11y ago
  Once upon a time I never heard this silly idea that the idea that you shouldn't blunder out into the street is a conspiracy by automakers. Then it was an article on HN and now I hear it all the time. Separating pedestrians from vehicles just makes sense. Streets before 1900 still had sections for horses and sections for people. And you didn't need to tell people not to stroll down the horsey sections, they were covered in horseshit.
  - mjmahone17 11y ago
    Really? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RF9wV-57dE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RF9wV-57dE Doesn't look like Market Street in SF did (admittedly, 1906, not before 1900. But pretty close).
anthonybsd 11y ago
> I commute on foot in Boston Boston is special. You know how sometimes pedestrians will cross on red and when they see a car and make eye contact with the driver they will turn their head the other way to make sure that the driver understands that they aren't looking in their direction and is forced to slow down? Yeah, Boston is the only place on the planet where I've seen actual drivers do the same thing. Unbelievable.
- Crito 11y ago
  In Philadelphia everyone maintains eye contact with the driver. Less bassy, but also less passive aggressive I think.
r_klancer 11y ago
> I wonder how much w̶o̶r̶s̶e̶ better it'll be when they don't have to worry about being hit There. Fixed it for you. (I commute by T and foot in Cambridge and Boston, by the way; and, yes, sounds flippant, but how awesome would it be for all streets to be "complete streets"?)
mhandley 11y ago
A self-driving car will have better reactions, but it's still governed by the laws of physics. Beyond a certain point, all the self-driving car can do is minimize the collision speed. After that, you can be sure the cameras on the self-driving car have recorded exactly what stupid maneuver someone pulled.
Animats 11y ago
The automated cars will all be taking video of the incident, recording speed and direction info from radars and lidars, and transmitting all the data to some cloud server. At the cloud server, license plates will be read, driver faces identified, and the relevant info forwarded to law enforcement, insurance companies, and, of course, Youtube.
drumdance 11y ago
There was an article awhile back, I think linked from HN, about this. Not about expecting self-driving cars to stop, but about the fact you can take advantaee of their "drives like grandma" behavior -- cutting them off, tailgating etc
rasz_pl 11y ago
automagic cars by design have tons of cameras, at some point politicians will legislate mandatory reporting of recorded infractions .. for the children, you know
omegaworks 11y ago
It's very likely that once self-driving cars reach a certain penetration, we'll see continuous-flow intersections where no human driver would dare try and cross. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pbAI40dK0A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pbAI40dK0A

by pivo 11y ago

imaginenore 11y ago

> when they try stupid maneuvers like this one. It's called natural selection. Eventually they will meet each other.

pavel_lishin 11y ago

Isn't one of the ideas of self-driving cars the idea that they'll reduce overall congestion and traffic volume? It might become pretty reasonable to step off into the street, because there won't be much traffic there to inconvenience. Although it would definitely be a habit that'll end up killing someone.

Grue3 11y ago
There's no way self-driving cars will reduce traffic volume. If anything, it will increase since not only you don't need to be able to drive in order to travel in a self-driving car, the car might be completely empty and driving on its own for some sort of reason. And of course people who currently drive a car will still be driving a car (which might be self-driving or not).
- Tepix 11y ago
  There is a way: A lot of traffic these days is people looking for a parking spot. If the car leaves the area right away after dropping you off, it will be less congested there.
kd0amg 11y ago
I doubt they'll turn major arteries into quiet streets, especially at rush hour.
- ogrisel 11y ago
  Unless it becomes cheaper and more convenient to share rides in robotic vans booked on a smartphone and scheduled via a robotic taxi platforms that can match the bids (vans with spare seats going in the right direction) with asks (potential passengers requesting a cheap trip on their smartphone).
mc32 11y ago
They may decrease congestion (backups) due to improved flow, but that does not necessarily mean there will be fewer automobiles, if anything, better flow/throughput likely would encourage new or more motorists to take to the road.

calpaterson 11y ago

As a pedestrian who has to do this regularly when I have priority at a crossing: I live in hope

jnty 11y ago

"Our sidewalks are narrow and crowded, will pedestrians just move to the streets?" I hope so. If drvierless cars allow pedestrians to safely reclaim the streets that, as you point out, have marginalized them for so long, then that's fantastic.

btbuildem 11y ago

It'll do wonders for carjackings, that's for sure.

maratd 11y ago

> Once self driving cars reach a certain penetration level I wonder how long it'll take the remaining human drivers to start taking advantage of that fact by assuming most cars will automatically stop for them when they try stupid maneuvers like this one. I don't understand this argument. If you do something abusive in front of me ... I will do what a robot will do. I will stop. Because I don't want to crash. I might open the window and yell some profanities at you ... but I can do that anyway, regardless of who triggered the stop, whether it was me or the on-board computer. If you're arguing that the on-board computer has better reflexes and therefore people will engage in even more demented behavior ... that penetration level would have to be 99%. If it's something like 90%, then 1 out of 10 times you do something that abusive will result in a crash and you'll die. By the time penetration reaches 99%, you essentially have all cars with automation built in and it's likely that using that automation will be mandatory. Cars that aren't automated will be illegal on public roads exactly because of this problem.

xgbi 11y ago
No you don't understand: if 99% of the traffic is automated and resilient to idiots, what prevents me from passing a red light? What prevents me from going the wrong way on the motorway? You'll have overstressed idiots that will get that and start driving like fools to meet their appointments. It has already happened in some way: the overconfident TMAXes that don't think the laws of traffic apply to them.
- lsaferite 11y ago
  TMAXes?
  - vmarsy 11y ago
    The parent is probably from Europe and refers to TMAX Scooters, http://www.ocregister.com/articles/tmax-672750-bike-motorcycle.html http://www.ocregister.com/articles/tmax-672750-bike-motorcyc... These are very powerful scooters, almost as fast as motorcycles but they don't require manual speed shifting, making. Usually drivers or those are reckless in cities like Paris

xexers 11y ago

Agreed... it will be similar to putting your hand into a closing elevator door knowing it will open for you. I'd imagine new laws will be made to restrict pedestrians from egregiously abusing the self driving car.

whitenoice 11y ago

Would love to see how self driving cars perform on crazy Boston roads and with Boston drivers especially near hvd square, route 2,3 ;)

JoeAltmaier 11y ago

I wonder how the next generation of automated cars will respond to this generation? Will they dodge around an auto-car in front of them that's emergency braking? Will that cause them to emergency brake for oncoming cars in that lane? Will those cars have to dodge back into this lane? What loops and bugs and combinations of emergency responses will occur, at the speed of electronic control? Who will law consider 'to blame' in all this?

theklub 11y ago

Everything will be recorded.

rayiner 11y ago

That would be awesome. The streets can return to belonging to pedestrians instead of to cars. We could get rid of crosswalks and crosswalk lights and just let the automated cars deal with it.

sevensor 11y ago
Or, in the dystopia of my nightmares, bicycles and pedestrians are forbidden from using all roads, not just highways. For their own protection, of course.

EvanAnderson 11y ago

The various threats and exploitation strategies that will be used against self-driving cars are going to be very interesting (and likely ranging from inconvenient to lethal). There needs to be significant public discourse on the subject. Sadly, I expect that the fact that general purpose computers are a major component of self-driving cars will mean further legislative restriction on the use of general purpose computers. The idyllic vision of everyone riding in self-driving cars with "tamper-proof" and "trusted" firmware / processors is seductive (and arguably easier to build) than developing systems that are resilient in the face of malicious actors. Cars will end up being computers you ride in, running code that you legally prevented from examining or modifying. I hate the thought of it, but I can't see another scenario actually playing out.

projct 11y ago
At least part of one alternate scenario is playing out, the EFF won the petition to inspect and modify software that controls cars https://supporters.eff.org/civicrm/mailing/view?reset=1&id=1234 https://supporters.eff.org/civicrm/mailing/view?reset=1&id=1...
- EvanAnderson 11y ago
  For the next three years, and then the exemption could be revoked. When industry lobby successfully stirs up other groups with "safety" concerns I don't think it will be so easy to win another exemption.
darkmighty 11y ago
Security is definitively going to be a concern. Tesla currently deals with it by some strong sandboxing the user interface. I've heard of breaches into the controls with other manufacturers but no internet bourne breach afaik. I think the key is common sense good security engineering with strong verification of security models. We have had a few networked systems that can be target by malicious actors for a while now, like factory control systems; thankfully there's no big motivated enemy out there, but the risk will surely increase in the face of possibility of mass modification (overriding the manufacturer's firmware en masse), even accidental modification by the manufacturers. Of course, if the user purposely modifies his own control systems he's going to be liable for any damage it causes.

dghughes 11y ago

I'm pretty sure that's a given that people drive more aggressively when their vehicles have safety systems ABS being the big one.

obastani 11y ago

I don't know about about your city, but I would expect drivers to stop for pedestrians even if they are crossing in the middle of the road. The reason I never cross in front of a moving car is a matter of courtesy and not wanting to break the law, not out of fear of being run over.

warfangle 11y ago

> I commute on foot in Boston and I regularly witness pedestrians cross streets in front of traffic when they know they can get away with it, for example, when they're part of a crowd of pedestrians or the traffic is moving slowly. Every time I see that I wonder how much worse it'll be when they don't have to worry about being hit. Our sidewalks are narrow and crowded, will pedestrians just move to the streets? Once upon a time, streets were for people. And then the automotive industry coined the term jaywalking...

edvinbesic 11y ago
Adam does ruin everything.
shostack 11y ago
For anyone interested in this, 99% Invisible did a great episode on this[1]. [1] http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-76-the-modern-moloch/ http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-76-the-modern-...
Crito 11y ago
Once upon a time, people shit in bowls and threw it out their windows. Pedestrians taking roads from motor vehicles is a modern example of the tragedy of the commons.
hugh4 11y ago
Once upon a time I never heard this silly idea that the idea that you shouldn't blunder out into the street is a conspiracy by automakers. Then it was an article on HN and now I hear it all the time. Separating pedestrians from vehicles just makes sense. Streets before 1900 still had sections for horses and sections for people. And you didn't need to tell people not to stroll down the horsey sections, they were covered in horseshit.
- mjmahone17 11y ago
  Really? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RF9wV-57dE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RF9wV-57dE Doesn't look like Market Street in SF did (admittedly, 1906, not before 1900. But pretty close).

anthonybsd 11y ago

> I commute on foot in Boston Boston is special. You know how sometimes pedestrians will cross on red and when they see a car and make eye contact with the driver they will turn their head the other way to make sure that the driver understands that they aren't looking in their direction and is forced to slow down? Yeah, Boston is the only place on the planet where I've seen actual drivers do the same thing. Unbelievable.

Crito 11y ago
In Philadelphia everyone maintains eye contact with the driver. Less bassy, but also less passive aggressive I think.

r_klancer 11y ago

> I wonder how much w̶o̶r̶s̶e̶ better it'll be when they don't have to worry about being hit There. Fixed it for you. (I commute by T and foot in Cambridge and Boston, by the way; and, yes, sounds flippant, but how awesome would it be for all streets to be "complete streets"?)

mhandley 11y ago

A self-driving car will have better reactions, but it's still governed by the laws of physics. Beyond a certain point, all the self-driving car can do is minimize the collision speed. After that, you can be sure the cameras on the self-driving car have recorded exactly what stupid maneuver someone pulled.

Animats 11y ago

The automated cars will all be taking video of the incident, recording speed and direction info from radars and lidars, and transmitting all the data to some cloud server. At the cloud server, license plates will be read, driver faces identified, and the relevant info forwarded to law enforcement, insurance companies, and, of course, Youtube.

drumdance 11y ago

There was an article awhile back, I think linked from HN, about this. Not about expecting self-driving cars to stop, but about the fact you can take advantaee of their "drives like grandma" behavior -- cutting them off, tailgating etc

rasz_pl 11y ago

automagic cars by design have tons of cameras, at some point politicians will legislate mandatory reporting of recorded infractions .. for the children, you know

omegaworks 11y ago

It's very likely that once self-driving cars reach a certain penetration, we'll see continuous-flow intersections where no human driver would dare try and cross. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pbAI40dK0A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pbAI40dK0A