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Google self-driving car pulled over for driving too slowly
- RobotCaleb 11y agoIn autonomous mode do they pull over properly if A. getting pulled over and B. emergency vehicles are whirring about doing their thing?
- EdwardDiego 11y agoExcellent question.
- gcr 11y agoI can't wait for a hacker to make a "Get-out-of-my-way" gun out of blinking lights that makes all the Google cars in front of her pull over. Maybe she could build it out of IR LEDs, so it's not obvious to humans. :)
- wpietri 11y agoImpersonating a police car is, unsurprisingly, already a crime: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_impersonation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_impersonation States have similar laws for other emergency vehicles. E.g.: http://www.azleg.state.az.us/FormatDocument.asp?inDoc=/ars/28/00947.htm&Title=28&DocType=ARS http://www.azleg.state.az.us/FormatDocument.asp?inDoc=/ars/2...
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- anon4 11y agoDoes this apply when you're not fooling any person? As in, you're not trying to impersonate a police officer per se, you're fooling the vehicle's police detection into assuming a police vehicle is coming.
- DrScump 11y agoIt's illegal to have a forward-facing red light at all (for one example)... even if it's not turned on.
- hinoka 11y ago> you're fooling the vehicle's police detection Sounds like impersonation to me. The "person" in impersonation refers to the entity being imitated, not the entity being deceived.
- anon4 11y agoYeah, but is a couple of infrared lights enough to be considered "police"? What if I yell "VWEEEWOOOWEEEOOO" and someone mistakes that for a legitimate police siren -- am I still impersonating police, or is that person incredibly stupid?
- DanBC 11y agointent matters. If you say "Here's some infra-red lights. They simulate enough of a police car for other cars to change their behaviours" you're not going to have a fun time in court.
- brazzledazzle 11y agoWhy does everyone think that the entire law system is like tax code and finance laws? You (usually) can't just break a law because you found a technical loophole.
- petepete 11y agoOr if you're impersonating another emergency vehicle, like an ambulance or fire engine.
- Daneel_ 11y agoGoogle cars pay attention to emergency services workers already - they talked about it in their TED talk earlier this year - link: https://www.ted.com/talks/chris_urmson_how_a_driverless_car_sees_the_road https://www.ted.com/talks/chris_urmson_how_a_driverless_car_... Skip to 10:00 for the police man halting the car, then waving it through. The whole video is worth a watch, to be honest. It's amazing how well they cater for edge cases.
- sundvor 11y agoWell I for one would find a vehicle travelling at 40km/h in a 60 zone incredibly annoying, even if they're legally allowed to travel that slow.
- ubernostrum 11y agoThere are places in the US with minimum speed limits (a highway I take fairly regularly has a maximum of 75mph and minimum of 40mph). There are also many places where driving slowly enough to be disruptive to traffic (in the officer's judgment) is an offense.
- raldi 11y agoHow do you feel about cyclists on 35mph (60kph) roads?
- mjevans 11y agoThat urban planners should really have bike highways/trials.
- dalke 11y agoOr people using a horse and cart.
- mikekchar 11y agoBanning cyclists on roads should be done based on road usage, not speed. There are lots of 60-80 kph roads that are perfectly safe to ride on and where you won't obstruct car traffic. To be silly, I could turn the question around. How do you feel about cars on roads that are slower than 60 kph? We could ban cars on all residential roads and have wonderful walking/cycling communities. When I was living in the UK I was amazed at how many high streets have gone pedestrian. It has reinvigorated small towns. Of course the problem is, "What happens if I can't get from A to B in my car?" I think for car drivers the idea of banning cars on residential roads makes this point very clear. The same thing happens with bicycles. In many cities it is impossible to get from point A to point B without a car. This encourages/forces cyclists to use inappropriate roads. As the sibling post notes, we need to do a better job of designing our cities.
- mberning 11y agoI think about this often. Every day in rush hour traffic I have to take a number of calculated risks in order to get to work. This usually crops up when making a turn onto a highly congested road. I could easily see a self driving car being too conservative to find a gap and pull out, leading to a furious string of drivers behind it.
- sundvor 11y agoThe problem would be resolved quite nicely if all cars were self driving, interconnected, and could be governed by a master plan.
- ajmurmann 11y agoThe possible improvements would truly need mind blowing. I can't even think of a reason why those cars would have to stop asking the way if everything goes right. There would be no more need for traffic lights or stop signs to coordinate traffic between cars. You would still need them for pedestrians. However, if the traffic lights are integrated I the same system as the cars then the cars can just adjust their speed to not have to stop at the light. Their gain in fuel efficiency would be huge! As long as nobody jaywalks or we have cross walks without traffic lights or bicycles..
- laichzeit0 11y agoIt would also be great when a traffic light turned green that all cars started moving at exactly the same time, as opposed to the delay where every car waits for the car in front of them to start moving with human drivers.
- executesorder66 11y agoFuck I hate it when people do that i.e. 99.99% of the time. Just go as soon as the person in front of you starts going and build your gap by accelerating slightly slower than the person in front of you _after_ you are on the other side of the traffic light.
- finnn 11y agoThey didn't link to either of their sources, so I went and found them: Mountain View Police Department blog post: http://mountainviewpoliceblog.com/2015/11/12/inquiring-minds-want-to-know/ http://mountainviewpoliceblog.com/2015/11/12/inquiring-minds... Google Self-Driving Car Project Google+ post: https://plus.google.com/+SelfDrivingCar/posts/j9ouVZSZnRf https://plus.google.com/+SelfDrivingCar/posts/j9ouVZSZnRf
- declan 11y agoThanks! That MV police blog post says the traffic officer stopped the car to "educate the operators about impeding traffic per 22400(a) of the California Vehicle Code." That section of the vehicle code says, emphasis added: "No person shall drive upon a highway at such a slow speed as to impede or block the normal and reasonable movement of traffic, unless the reduced speed is necessary for safe operation, because of a grade, or in compliance with law." https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/pubs/vctop/vc/d11/c7/a2/22400 https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/pubs/vctop/vc/d11/c... If Google's self-driving cars are limited by law to 25mph, and the car was not exceeding 25mph, then it was "in compliance with the law" and 22400(a) doesn't apply. It would be allowed to impede or block traffic, even if we human drivers would really prefer it to be going 45mph.
- geon 11y agoIs it at all allowed to drive slow vehicles like tractors or scooters on a highway? Here in Sweden, highways are off limits if the vehicle may not legally be driven faster than (i think) 45 kmph.
- maxerickson 11y agoIn the US there are many roads with access limitations and minimum speeds, but many do not have those conditions.
- Piskvorrr 11y agoThat's a bit of a "lost in translation" issue here: what is usually called a "highway" in Europe is usually a "freeway" in the USA. What we'd just call a "road" (pretty much any road) is called a "highway" in the US legal codes.
- Broken_Hippo 11y agoThis car was driving a bit too conservatively: However, this highlights my own experience trying to follow traffic laws. First, speeding: I figured out that the time saved speeding wasnt enough to actually help - theoretically, I could save 2 minutes if things went well. It is upsetting when people follow laws and safety instead of normal local social driving standards. So long as we are mixing drivers and driverless, I think we'll need to close the gap while the problem exists. Laws that reflect driving and better enforcement paired with continual updating to driverless cars so that they can safely manuever in traffic without causing problems.
- ubernostrum 11y agoSafety and posted speed limits are often not super compatible; the safest thing, in most road conditions, is to be driving relatively close to the speed of the surrounding traffic, even if that means exceeding the posted speed limit. (in other words, speed itself is not dangerous except in certain situations -- like sharp curves or wet/snowy/icy roads -- speed differential is dangerous)
- nshepperd 11y agoYou're basically saying that everyone should defect because everyone else does. Which may well be true for a single human driver, but is probably not how autonomous cars as a whole should be programmed. Nor does it support the claim that "speed itself is not dangerous". If everyone were driving slower, everyone would be safer (which we may actually be able to achieve once a sufficient number of law-abiding robot cars displace human drivers).
- TeMPOraL 11y agoExactly. If everyone followed the traffic rules instead of considering themselves smarter than traffic engineers, rules could then be adjusted to accomodate for optimal flow and safety. Alas, drivers know better and you can't optimize anything, because people will ignore the rules anyway.
- lechuga 11y agothese cars are going to be like beta max. quantum entanglement will make everyone who wasted time on them feel like an idiot. careers will be ruined.
- deadbeef404 11y agoEven if some technology is not successful in the end, it doesn't mean that there isn't value in it. This even is a good rule for most/all life experiences.
- cmdrfred 11y agoI'll bite, how does sending information vast distances instantly drive a car?
- lechuga 11y agowe're information
- TeMPOraL 11y agoWhat if quantum waveforming magic turns out to be prohibitely expensive energy-wise? It may be that teleportation will be used between Earth and Mars, but self-driving cars will still roam the planet surface.
- lechuga 11y agoearth and the rest of the inner solar system will be strip-mined for materials to build solar collectors and autonomous robots
- TeMPOraL 11y agoWhy would people want to build autonomous robots if they can quantum-entangle-apport anything anywhere? But even if, replace "Mars" with "Neptune" and my point still stands. Also, autonomous cars are autonomous robots.
- jws 11y agoThe Google cars are licensed as Neighborhood Electric Vehicles. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neighborhood_Electric_Vehicle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neighborhood_Electric_Vehicl... This means they are legally limited to 25mph and legally allowed to drive on roadways with speed limits up to 45mph. NEVs let you have very light weight, inexpensive vehicles with exceptional economy… that would be instant death traps in a high speed collision. They don't undergo ordinary crash testing. Think of them as posh golf carts. I looked into getting an NEV, but most of my local streets are 30mph and I can't in good conscience drive down them at 25mph.
- Joeri 11y agoIt's no more dangerous than driving a motorbike. People do that all the time without worrying about the risk.
- reticulated 11y agoThat's true, but consider the amount of extra protection a rider wears in order to mitigate risk of injury.
- Piskvorrr 11y agoWorrying about the risk does not correlate with the actual risk. Funny how you picked the poster example of this.
- alistairSH 11y agoWhile they may not "worry" about the risk, they are certainly cognizant of it. Most wear helmets and gloves, many wear armor and leathers. In the case of a NEV, it's a 4-wheel car with doors... Unless told otherwise, most drivers are going to assume they meet passenger car safety standards.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- semi-extrinsic 11y agoAt least your NEVs are limited to less than 25 mph. Here in Europe, cars like the Renault Twizy [1], the Reva etc. are all registered as four-wheel motorbikes because they won't survive a crash test. But they will easily do 50 mph and you can legally drive them on any highway. These things really are death traps. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_Twizy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_Twizy
- rubyfan 11y agoWhat's more interesting is they purposefully made it look like that. /ot
- Animats 11y agoI thought Google was building the little 25MPH self driving cars for senior communities, campuses, and such. But they're running them on El Camino Real. They apparently registered the small self driving cars as what California calls a "Neighborhood Electric Vehicle".[0] A NEV is limited to 25 MPH, and cannot be operated on a road with a speed limit above 35 MPH. It's one step above a golf cart. Local municipalities can limit their use on faster streets, if they so choose, but they don't have to. There's a related flap over high speed electric bicycles. They're supposed to be limited to 20MPH, but some can reach 40MPH, and a few can reach 50MPH.[1] They only have bicycle-grade wheels, brakes, and pothole tolerance[2], which is a problem. At what point is a driver's license, or a motorcycle license, required, what's allowed on a bike path, and do you have to have pedals?[3] There are now three classes of electric bikes in California, one of which doesn't have pedals but is still considered a "bicycle". There are also electric mopeds and electric motorcycles. Trying to fit all these vehicles on the same road and bike path system is difficult. [0] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/?1dmy&urile=wcm:path:/dmv_content_en/dmv/pubs/brochures/fast_facts/ffvr37 https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/?1dmy&urile=wcm:path:/dmv_... [1] https://www.electricbike.com/stealth-bomber-review/ https://www.electricbike.com/stealth-bomber-review/ [2] http://www.levassociation.com/worldwide-legislation http://www.levassociation.com/worldwide-legislation [3] https://www.electricbike.com/california-ebike-laws/ https://www.electricbike.com/california-ebike-laws/
- darkr 11y agoI regularly exceed 40mph on my road bike, on downhills at least. It's fine. I'd agree that you shouldn't be in the bike lane at those speeds (though in much of the UK they are few and far between and mostly consist of a bit of paint on the side of the road). That's what roads are for.
- anon4 11y ago40mph? Really? Not 40kph? Because holy fuck -- once I managed to go 50kph for a minute and that's incredibly FAST.
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- callesgg 11y agoPersonally i think it is quite obvious that a self driving car a tool that you use. And therefore you as a user is accountable for the actions/damage you inflict with your tool. No different that using a gun and shooting someone by accident.
- jfoster 11y agoA gun isn't very autonomous, though. As tools become increasingly autonomous, it might not always be fair to place blame on the end user rather than the manufacturer.
- amelius 11y agoI agree with this. But why use a gun-analogy when you can use a car-analogy?
- callesgg 11y agoDid honestly not think of it :O But i like to go with stuff that is emotionally loaded when i compare stuff.
- callesgg 11y agoIt really depends on what you are buying. Are you buying a car that is guaranteed to never be in or cause any form of car-accidents. Or are you buying a car that will try to it's best to get you from point A to point B. In an accident with the first example the there is a manufacturing flaw, the car did not meet it's specs. In an accident with the second example you fucked up, you should not have given the control away and it is your fault. The car did nothing wrong it did what you told it to do.
- jrapdx3 11y agoGoing at an unusually low speed can attract police attention up here in Oregon. The legalization of recreation cannabis has increased the number of non-alcohol intoxicated drivers. Apparently one sign of DUI of cannabis is going too slow for traffic conditions. AFAIK no driverless cars around here (yet), but there are plenty of other potential hazards for motorists, like pedestrians and bicycles on narrow, twisty, dark and wet streets this time of year. Ideally it calls for everyone to be patient, careful and vigilant. Above all be thankful if born with great reflexes, on the road alas only a few are so gifted.
- nisdec 11y agoI'm curious how it works. How does the Google car know that it's getting pulled over?
- dheera 11y agoIt probably doesn't. Google doesn't let their cars roam freely yet; they always have someone inside the car.
- chillingeffect 11y agoSpeaking of which, how does a fully autonomous car know it's getting pulled over? Does it have some algorithm to detect police lights?
- sjclemmy 11y agoSo how does a police officer stop a self driving car?