5 ms·

Google's meetings with UK Government over driverless cars revealed

22 points by e15ctr0n 11y ago

victorantos 11y ago
I think this is to test the car on UK roads
jacquesm 11y ago
./drive_yourself --side-of-the-road=left Let's hope there weren't any assumptions baked in as to which side of the road you have to drive on. Google is absolutely right to start testing in all modes of driving, the UK (and the other countries where you drive on the left side of the road) are a major concern for auto manufacturers targeting those markets because of the need to switch over the steering wheel and pedal box. This causes all kinds of headaches (for instance, the steering housing turns the other way, you can't just flip that) and I imagine that if taken for granted that 'it will work' software will contain all kinds of subtle issues that might lead to trouble.
- arethuza 11y ago
  I'm interested to see how self driving cars handle single roads with passing places - there are a fair amount of these here in Scotland and non-locals sometimes cause chaos when they don't quite understand the rules and conventions. NB I'm pretty sure self driving cars will handle them OK - just interested to see how they will do it.
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    I took a classic mini through Scotland for the holidays a few years back and one interesting near-fatality was a tunnel that was so narrow that only one car could enter. Some bus driver thought it was fun to drive in at full speed. Fortunately the brakes were in good service. We reversed out, he moved past us (barely) and then we were able to continue our journey. Having the 'right of way' doesn't matter much if you're 575 kg vs 15,000.
  - louthy 11y ago
    There's lots of 'randomness' from the historical nature of our roads that I suspect it would be hard for a self driving car to deal with. Mostly I suspect they'd end up being overcautious where real drivers need to be a bit more aggressive to actually progress. That's definitely the case in London for example (possibly one of the most stressful places to drive), where you could easily be stuck at a junction for an extremely long time unless you inch out and kind of force the other drivers to give way. Other issues that I thought about the other day whilst driving around Leicester is poor road markings. The Leicestershire region in particular have let their markings go to pot (I've noticed this in other places in the UK too) to the point where even I as a human driver struggle to know where the lanes are. What would a self driving car do in that situation? Then there are the 1 car wide country lanes that are national speed limit but actually have two-way traffic. I wouldn't want a self-driving car thinking it's OK to go 60 mph down one of those roads even though that's the allowed speed limit. And could it safely mount the verge or plan to be in one of the few sidings that allow it to pass other cars? I reeeally hope the self-driving cars can be taught to deal with the complexities of the UK road system, I desperately want this to work. Although I like driving, it's mostly tedious in the UK now due to congestion and the big-brother speed camera network. The government expects us to act like robots when we drive, so actually getting a robot to drive would be perfect.
    - arethuza 11y ago
      I wonder how far away a self-driving car can detect another car - there is usually a bit of a judgment call about deciding whether to stop at a passing place or to go on. Interestingly, simply stopping in the road is probably not a great default action on a single track road as you'll block everything!
    - madeofpalk 11y ago
      > There's lots of 'randomness' from the historical nature of our roads that I suspect it would be hard for a self driving car to deal with. Mostly I suspect they'd end up being overcautious where real drivers need to be a bit more aggressive to actually progress. Funnily enough, this was recently brought up in the TV series The Good Wife where the self driving car manufacturer had to add in a certain amount of 'law abiding fuzziness' into the algo to match real people and to actually advance at an intersection.
  - jjp 11y ago
    It would be very interesting to see whether it can use LIDAR to enhance the model of the road in order to detect passing places. And then use this data to know which of the vehicles should reverse because it is closer to a passing place. Bonus marks for working out that the driver of the other vehicle is dithering and whilst they might only be 50 yards from a passing place it will still be quicker to reverse 0.5 mile yourself. Some of the autonomous vehicles could communicate to negotiate the behaviour I assume it would have to work without in order to deal with both non-autonomous vehicles and areas of no cell phone signal. Other country hazards such as sheep, cattle, horses, deer, foxes, badgers and bunny rabbits create a complex set of responses. Sheep and horses might need to be approached slowly to encourage them out of the way. Rabbits you can often avoid by steering into their direction of travel because they'll go back the way they've come to escape the danger.
    - louthy 11y ago
      > Some of the autonomous vehicles could communicate to negotiate the behaviour I assume it would have to work without in order to deal with both non-autonomous vehicles and areas of no cell phone signal. Even the non-autonomous vehicles could have the capacity to show on-screen to the driver what it's planning to do, or what it will do based on your actions. That could be quite a cool approach, although the systems would have to be smart enough to not overload human drivers with too much information (and in turn cause accidents due to distraction).
jjp 11y ago
If a vehicle is approved in the UK I'm assuming it would have to be geo-fenced to stop me going into the rest of Europe. Either because it wasn't approved or because it didn't know how to cope with country specific road conditions, e.g. Priorité a droite in France.
- crististm 11y ago
  If I'm not mistaken, UK has "priority to the right" even though they drive on the left side.
  - Already__Taken 11y ago
    Not quite sure what you mean but roundabouts work by giving way to your right plus a bit of a mexican standoff if you all arrive at a mini one at the sametime. Other than that I can't think of anything special about the right. Or left for that matter. You should only overtake on the right but that's not a law it's just in the highway code. But you can only find room to undertake on a motorway anyway.
    - theoh 11y ago
      There's no Wikipedia page for "Priorité a Droite", but it's an internationally known, if mysterious, aspect of the rules of the road in France. It doesn't have a counterpart in the UK as far as I know. Here's an unreliable source: "The overriding rule of the road in France is Priorité a droite which basically means that you must give way to traffic coming from your right. It is an archaic law that dates back to the times of the horse and cart and for some unknown reason has never been repealed. It is true to say however that the French have spent thousands of millions of Euros to indicate that it does not apply in most circumstances. We have tried to explain some of the mysteries surrounding this law, but the old driving proverb is very apt here. "if in doubt put both feet out" i.e. Slow down or stop." From http://www.vendee-guide.co.uk/priority-a-droite.htm http://www.vendee-guide.co.uk/priority-a-droite.htm (That's not good advice, obviously, as if it was the only principle you knew it would lead to hopelessly tentative driving.) A slightly more comprehensive source: http://www.france-pub.com/forum/2012/04/14/la-priorite-a-droite%E2%80%8E-priority-to-the-right/ http://www.france-pub.com/forum/2012/04/14/la-priorite-a-dro...
velox_io 11y ago
I wonder how driver-less cars will fair here in London, while I would prefer a computer over many humans. To drive in London (which is tame compared to some European and Eastern cities). To drive you do need a certain amount of aggression; for instance, if you wait for a gap when turning onto a main road you could be waiting a long time. There's a thin line between being assertive and being a d..k.

22 points by e15ctr0n 11y ago

I think this is to test the car on UK roads

./drive_yourself --side-of-the-road=left Let's hope there weren't any assumptions baked in as to which side of the road you have to drive on. Google is absolutely right to start testing in all modes of driving, the UK (and the other countries where you drive on the left side of the road) are a major concern for auto manufacturers targeting those markets because of the need to switch over the steering wheel and pedal box. This causes all kinds of headaches (for instance, the steering housing turns the other way, you can't just flip that) and I imagine that if taken for granted that 'it will work' software will contain all kinds of subtle issues that might lead to trouble.

arethuza 11y ago
I'm interested to see how self driving cars handle single roads with passing places - there are a fair amount of these here in Scotland and non-locals sometimes cause chaos when they don't quite understand the rules and conventions. NB I'm pretty sure self driving cars will handle them OK - just interested to see how they will do it.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  I took a classic mini through Scotland for the holidays a few years back and one interesting near-fatality was a tunnel that was so narrow that only one car could enter. Some bus driver thought it was fun to drive in at full speed. Fortunately the brakes were in good service. We reversed out, he moved past us (barely) and then we were able to continue our journey. Having the 'right of way' doesn't matter much if you're 575 kg vs 15,000.
- louthy 11y ago
  There's lots of 'randomness' from the historical nature of our roads that I suspect it would be hard for a self driving car to deal with. Mostly I suspect they'd end up being overcautious where real drivers need to be a bit more aggressive to actually progress. That's definitely the case in London for example (possibly one of the most stressful places to drive), where you could easily be stuck at a junction for an extremely long time unless you inch out and kind of force the other drivers to give way. Other issues that I thought about the other day whilst driving around Leicester is poor road markings. The Leicestershire region in particular have let their markings go to pot (I've noticed this in other places in the UK too) to the point where even I as a human driver struggle to know where the lanes are. What would a self driving car do in that situation? Then there are the 1 car wide country lanes that are national speed limit but actually have two-way traffic. I wouldn't want a self-driving car thinking it's OK to go 60 mph down one of those roads even though that's the allowed speed limit. And could it safely mount the verge or plan to be in one of the few sidings that allow it to pass other cars? I reeeally hope the self-driving cars can be taught to deal with the complexities of the UK road system, I desperately want this to work. Although I like driving, it's mostly tedious in the UK now due to congestion and the big-brother speed camera network. The government expects us to act like robots when we drive, so actually getting a robot to drive would be perfect.
  - arethuza 11y ago
    I wonder how far away a self-driving car can detect another car - there is usually a bit of a judgment call about deciding whether to stop at a passing place or to go on. Interestingly, simply stopping in the road is probably not a great default action on a single track road as you'll block everything!
  - madeofpalk 11y ago
    > There's lots of 'randomness' from the historical nature of our roads that I suspect it would be hard for a self driving car to deal with. Mostly I suspect they'd end up being overcautious where real drivers need to be a bit more aggressive to actually progress. Funnily enough, this was recently brought up in the TV series The Good Wife where the self driving car manufacturer had to add in a certain amount of 'law abiding fuzziness' into the algo to match real people and to actually advance at an intersection.
- jjp 11y ago
  It would be very interesting to see whether it can use LIDAR to enhance the model of the road in order to detect passing places. And then use this data to know which of the vehicles should reverse because it is closer to a passing place. Bonus marks for working out that the driver of the other vehicle is dithering and whilst they might only be 50 yards from a passing place it will still be quicker to reverse 0.5 mile yourself. Some of the autonomous vehicles could communicate to negotiate the behaviour I assume it would have to work without in order to deal with both non-autonomous vehicles and areas of no cell phone signal. Other country hazards such as sheep, cattle, horses, deer, foxes, badgers and bunny rabbits create a complex set of responses. Sheep and horses might need to be approached slowly to encourage them out of the way. Rabbits you can often avoid by steering into their direction of travel because they'll go back the way they've come to escape the danger.
  - louthy 11y ago
    > Some of the autonomous vehicles could communicate to negotiate the behaviour I assume it would have to work without in order to deal with both non-autonomous vehicles and areas of no cell phone signal. Even the non-autonomous vehicles could have the capacity to show on-screen to the driver what it's planning to do, or what it will do based on your actions. That could be quite a cool approach, although the systems would have to be smart enough to not overload human drivers with too much information (and in turn cause accidents due to distraction).

jjp 11y ago

If a vehicle is approved in the UK I'm assuming it would have to be geo-fenced to stop me going into the rest of Europe. Either because it wasn't approved or because it didn't know how to cope with country specific road conditions, e.g. Priorité a droite in France.

crististm 11y ago
If I'm not mistaken, UK has "priority to the right" even though they drive on the left side.
- Already__Taken 11y ago
  Not quite sure what you mean but roundabouts work by giving way to your right plus a bit of a mexican standoff if you all arrive at a mini one at the sametime. Other than that I can't think of anything special about the right. Or left for that matter. You should only overtake on the right but that's not a law it's just in the highway code. But you can only find room to undertake on a motorway anyway.
  - theoh 11y ago
    There's no Wikipedia page for "Priorité a Droite", but it's an internationally known, if mysterious, aspect of the rules of the road in France. It doesn't have a counterpart in the UK as far as I know. Here's an unreliable source: "The overriding rule of the road in France is Priorité a droite which basically means that you must give way to traffic coming from your right. It is an archaic law that dates back to the times of the horse and cart and for some unknown reason has never been repealed. It is true to say however that the French have spent thousands of millions of Euros to indicate that it does not apply in most circumstances. We have tried to explain some of the mysteries surrounding this law, but the old driving proverb is very apt here. "if in doubt put both feet out" i.e. Slow down or stop." From http://www.vendee-guide.co.uk/priority-a-droite.htm http://www.vendee-guide.co.uk/priority-a-droite.htm (That's not good advice, obviously, as if it was the only principle you knew it would lead to hopelessly tentative driving.) A slightly more comprehensive source: http://www.france-pub.com/forum/2012/04/14/la-priorite-a-droite%E2%80%8E-priority-to-the-right/ http://www.france-pub.com/forum/2012/04/14/la-priorite-a-dro...

velox_io 11y ago

I wonder how driver-less cars will fair here in London, while I would prefer a computer over many humans. To drive in London (which is tame compared to some European and Eastern cities). To drive you do need a certain amount of aggression; for instance, if you wait for a gap when turning onto a main road you could be waiting a long time. There's a thin line between being assertive and being a d..k.