12 ms·

I live in the area. The stinking buses around here ... They crowd the lanes regularly. Us human drivers I suppose are used to it, but it is a serious pain in

by Gratsby 11y ago

I live in the area. The stinking buses around here ... They crowd the lanes regularly. Us human drivers I suppose are used to it, but it is a serious pain in the butt. The buses will drive right next to the lane marker, with their mirrors hanging over into your lane. This makes it so everybody has to creep over a little bit into the drivers side lane and hopefully everybody in traffic has a small enough car to deal with it. Otherwise, you have to hang back behind the bus as if it's in your lane and wait for it to get to a stop. I've had my issues with Google autonomous cars (they drive slow and they used to be exceptionally slow at making right hand turns, causing traffic problems), but in this instance I'm happy to throw VTA under the bus, if you will, and lay blame 100% at their feet.

esolyt 11y ago
Seems like Google acknowledged this: "From now on, our cars will more deeply understand that buses (and other large vehicles) are less likely to yield to us than other types of vehicles"
- mojuba 11y ago
  I will probably get downvoted for this, but: this is why I am skeptical about self-driving vehicles. Driving in general and adjusting to each country/locality, then to vehicle types is such a human thing that you'd need a thousand more "deep understanding" things like this. It will be an endless process for an algorithm driven car. Buses in Dublin will be so much different from buses in London, or trucks in the US different from trucks in Germany. Then there are the bikes, pedestrians. When human drivers/bikers/pedestrians look at each other and know what to expect. These are the things that would be incredibly difficult to formalize, if possible at all. Unless you have something like a Deep Mind on board, but even then I wouldn't be so sure.
  - jonesb6 11y ago
    Wouldn't this be a great application for machine learning? Collect traffic data locally, run it through the system a few bazillion times, them you realize the only way to avoid a car crash is to drive like a maniac in certain places.
    - redwall_hp 11y ago
      Google already does this. The cars have virtually driven nearly as many miles as they have on the road by now. And every time there's a near accident, or one of the various accidents where other vehicles were at fault, they feed in the data and run simulations on how the car could have avoided the accident. Even if they're not perfect, they're still already better than the median driver in the majority of daily driving. They don't need to be perfect, just better than most and you're drastically reducing deaths. Below median drivers cause more accidents than above median. Most accidents come down to awareness and reaction (both reaction speed and the ability to evaluate the right course of action). These are two things that a sufficiently advanced computer system will always be better at. A human gets distracted, doesn't have 360-degree constant vision, doesn't have thermal imaging or the ability to range-find obstacles through fog. A human can't use perfect situational awareness of obstacles and road conditions to avoid an accident. Anyway, the plural of anecdote isn't data. Google is in the data business and has a firm grasp of what they're attempting. I doubt they're going to be proven wrong.
      - eru 11y ago
        > They don't need to be perfect, just better than most and you're drastically reducing deaths. From a utilitarian perspective, they would only need to be better than whoever they are replacing one driver at a time. From a human-feely point of view, they'll need to be massively better than the best human to stand a chance of adoption. My guess about AI: for human-suitable tasks the gap between a typical human and the best human is actually not all that great, compared to the difficulty of getting to human-level skill in the first place. So by waiting for surpassing the best human, we don't actually lose too much time.
    - mojuba 11y ago
      I don't think ML can solve the "human" part, i.e. like I said drivers, bikers and pedestrians looking at each other knowing what to expect and silently agreeing on what to do next, all happening in an instant. This is a crucial component of driving especially in cities with dense traffic and oftentimes unclear markings and signs, where the human factor becomes important.
  - fixermark 11y ago
    Humans will also adapt. If there are local driving quirks in an area that the automated cars don't follow, after watching the automated cars fail to follow them a few times, people will account for the unexpected behavior. This is already an issue humans solve in the context of tourists driving through town, who aren't accustom to local rules like "First driver at an intersection gets to make a left on green instead of yielding to the column of oncoming straight traffic."
    - bewatson 11y ago
      I utterly despise that local rule, even as someone who grew up with it.
      - fixermark 11y ago
        If you hate that one, I hope you've never encountered the one that appears to operate around the D.C. beltway / suburb area: Signalling intent to change lanes indicates that you are weak; people will actively cut you off.
        ogsharkman 11y ago
        There can be only one!..person on time to work and it's going to be me
nicholas73 11y ago
I especially loathe the double length buses. Seriously, why? Not like these buses get all that full. Just run them more often at peak hours.
- konspence 11y ago
  That costs far more (in fuel, maintenance, and drivers), and typically places that have articulated buses warrant having articulated buses.
  - JupiterMoon 11y ago
    London used to have them. It was sort of amusing watching them trying to navigate the tight corners and narrow streets. But very scary to be near them on a bike.
  - freshyill 11y ago
    And some places even run smaller buses. Here in the DC area, we have articulated buses, standard ones, and even smaller ones—about 60 percent of the size of a standard bus. It's rare to get the ideal size at the right time in an area of such bad traffic, but they do make an attempt.
    - aidenn0 11y ago
      In the small city I live in, we have small buses, which is sized right for the ridership. Unfortunately their top speed is about 26MPH on level ground and My commute includes a steep freeway overpass, which that drops to about 18MPH. The speed limit on that stretch of road is 25MPH and most traffic goes about 35MPH on the overpass as there is nowhere for a speed trap to be set. I can tell from 4 blocks away when one of those buses has been there recently.
- vacri 11y ago
  > Just run them more often at peak hours. Every bus you run requires a qualified employee to drive it, and putting them on for only an hour or two per shift would make it even more expensive (what employee would want to work such minor shifts?)
superuser2 11y ago
Indeed. Buses are held up as a solution to traffic, but they are terrible things to share the road with as either a driver or cyclist. I wonder how many people have to be on the bus for that many cars to be as annoying as a single bus.
- sharkweek 11y ago
  Oooh fun thought exercise - My guess is about four cars equal the annoyance of a bus over the span of a year. Four randomized drivers will on average be slightly more annoying than an average year for one bus. Taking into account: 1) Number of drivers removed from the roads by average annual bus use 2) Size of the vehicles 3) Random acts of annoyance 4) Dangers posed by each To confess my bias - I'm a huge fan of mass transit and a bike commuter who touches his car maybe once a week, but curious how else one might model this.
  - blackhaz 11y ago
    I beg to differ. It doesn't remove that many cars, really. How often do you see a bus pass by? Every 20 minutes or so? Count how many cars pass by in the same amount of time, and some of them carry multiple passengers. (I have no problems with buses here in Europe at all, just sayin'..)
    - adt2bt 11y ago
      One could argue every passenger on a bus saves some fraction of a car trip. Even if the total number of car trips saved is a much smaller number than the total number of cars, there's a 'breakeven' point above which the pain of the buses is less than the pain of the bus passengers in cars. I bet in most cities, we've hit that breakeven point, regardless of bus behavior. <wild speculation> I bet that number is about 6 passengers per bus, excluding environmental concerns. </wild speculation>
      - devin 11y ago
        Your wild speculation started earlier than your last line.
megablast 11y ago
I would rather a bus any day. Easier to see, move slowly, less dangerously, less off them, more predictable, and mostly pretty courteous. Completely unlike drivers.
- x3n0ph3n3 11y ago
  You would rather what a bus?
  - bennyg 11y ago
    You knew what he/she was trying to say...
    - craigmccaskill 11y ago
      Personally, I don't and I'm a native English speaker. I doubt many who weren't would have any chance of deciphering the meaning here either.
      - ridgeguy 11y ago
        It's just an ellipsis. Or, as my first Google hit said: "the omission from speech or writing of a word or words that are superfluous or able to be understood from contextual clues." So: I would rather [have] a bus any day.
      - jcrawfordor 11y ago
        I see this usage fairly regularly. I'm not 100% certain of this, but I think it might be more common in Britain than America.
      - gdy 11y ago
        Is "I would rather you did..." odd too? Not a native speaker here :)
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
DBNO 11y ago
Here's a link to a video showing the damage to the Google car: https://youtu.be/wBU9zsGQR5k https://youtu.be/wBU9zsGQR5k Here's a link to the DMV Google traffic report: https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/3946fbb8-e04e-4d52-8f80-b33948df34b2/Google+Auto+LLC+02.14.16.pdf?MOD=AJPERES https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/3946fbb8-e04e-4d52... From reading the above report, it seems it was officially only a one-lane road, but the road was big enough to handle two-streams of traffic. The google car could have just stayed in the middle of the road, but instead, was hugging the right side of the road in preparation for a right-hand turn. Due to sand bags next to a storm drain, the google car had to "merge" back into the one-land road to get around the sandbags. Considering it's still a one-land road, the bus driver should have yielded to any car that was in front of it. I'd place a majority of the blame on the bus. What I don't understand: Why doesn't the Google car have video of the accident? Or if they do, does anyone know if they will share a video of it?
- ocdtrekkie 11y ago
  I suspect Google will render some of the fancy video of 'what their car sees' of this incident like they've used in previous marketing materials. Those fancy videos aren't rendered on the spot though! We'll probably see it soon.
  - justinhj 11y ago
    I wonder if the cars graphical renderings are acceptable in court
    - ocdtrekkie 11y ago
      I doubt this is big enough a deal to be handled in open court. But I'm sure the data could be looked at by a third party, and the visualization could be vetted as a fair representation of the sensor data picked up by the car.
  - eru 11y ago
    Just speculation: they might also have to still figure out the PR angle. (Or waiting is their PR angle?) Right now, lots of people are already blaming the bus, without Google ever actually saying so. Moral high ground for them.

by Gratsby 11y ago

esolyt 11y ago

Seems like Google acknowledged this: "From now on, our cars will more deeply understand that buses (and other large vehicles) are less likely to yield to us than other types of vehicles"

mojuba 11y ago
I will probably get downvoted for this, but: this is why I am skeptical about self-driving vehicles. Driving in general and adjusting to each country/locality, then to vehicle types is such a human thing that you'd need a thousand more "deep understanding" things like this. It will be an endless process for an algorithm driven car. Buses in Dublin will be so much different from buses in London, or trucks in the US different from trucks in Germany. Then there are the bikes, pedestrians. When human drivers/bikers/pedestrians look at each other and know what to expect. These are the things that would be incredibly difficult to formalize, if possible at all. Unless you have something like a Deep Mind on board, but even then I wouldn't be so sure.
- jonesb6 11y ago
  Wouldn't this be a great application for machine learning? Collect traffic data locally, run it through the system a few bazillion times, them you realize the only way to avoid a car crash is to drive like a maniac in certain places.
  - redwall_hp 11y ago
    Google already does this. The cars have virtually driven nearly as many miles as they have on the road by now. And every time there's a near accident, or one of the various accidents where other vehicles were at fault, they feed in the data and run simulations on how the car could have avoided the accident. Even if they're not perfect, they're still already better than the median driver in the majority of daily driving. They don't need to be perfect, just better than most and you're drastically reducing deaths. Below median drivers cause more accidents than above median. Most accidents come down to awareness and reaction (both reaction speed and the ability to evaluate the right course of action). These are two things that a sufficiently advanced computer system will always be better at. A human gets distracted, doesn't have 360-degree constant vision, doesn't have thermal imaging or the ability to range-find obstacles through fog. A human can't use perfect situational awareness of obstacles and road conditions to avoid an accident. Anyway, the plural of anecdote isn't data. Google is in the data business and has a firm grasp of what they're attempting. I doubt they're going to be proven wrong.
    - eru 11y ago
      > They don't need to be perfect, just better than most and you're drastically reducing deaths. From a utilitarian perspective, they would only need to be better than whoever they are replacing one driver at a time. From a human-feely point of view, they'll need to be massively better than the best human to stand a chance of adoption. My guess about AI: for human-suitable tasks the gap between a typical human and the best human is actually not all that great, compared to the difficulty of getting to human-level skill in the first place. So by waiting for surpassing the best human, we don't actually lose too much time.
  - mojuba 11y ago
    I don't think ML can solve the "human" part, i.e. like I said drivers, bikers and pedestrians looking at each other knowing what to expect and silently agreeing on what to do next, all happening in an instant. This is a crucial component of driving especially in cities with dense traffic and oftentimes unclear markings and signs, where the human factor becomes important.
- fixermark 11y ago
  Humans will also adapt. If there are local driving quirks in an area that the automated cars don't follow, after watching the automated cars fail to follow them a few times, people will account for the unexpected behavior. This is already an issue humans solve in the context of tourists driving through town, who aren't accustom to local rules like "First driver at an intersection gets to make a left on green instead of yielding to the column of oncoming straight traffic."
  - bewatson 11y ago
    I utterly despise that local rule, even as someone who grew up with it.
    - fixermark 11y ago
      If you hate that one, I hope you've never encountered the one that appears to operate around the D.C. beltway / suburb area: Signalling intent to change lanes indicates that you are weak; people will actively cut you off.
      - ogsharkman 11y ago
        There can be only one!..person on time to work and it's going to be me

nicholas73 11y ago

I especially loathe the double length buses. Seriously, why? Not like these buses get all that full. Just run them more often at peak hours.

konspence 11y ago
That costs far more (in fuel, maintenance, and drivers), and typically places that have articulated buses warrant having articulated buses.
- JupiterMoon 11y ago
  London used to have them. It was sort of amusing watching them trying to navigate the tight corners and narrow streets. But very scary to be near them on a bike.
- freshyill 11y ago
  And some places even run smaller buses. Here in the DC area, we have articulated buses, standard ones, and even smaller ones—about 60 percent of the size of a standard bus. It's rare to get the ideal size at the right time in an area of such bad traffic, but they do make an attempt.
  - aidenn0 11y ago
    In the small city I live in, we have small buses, which is sized right for the ridership. Unfortunately their top speed is about 26MPH on level ground and My commute includes a steep freeway overpass, which that drops to about 18MPH. The speed limit on that stretch of road is 25MPH and most traffic goes about 35MPH on the overpass as there is nowhere for a speed trap to be set. I can tell from 4 blocks away when one of those buses has been there recently.
vacri 11y ago
> Just run them more often at peak hours. Every bus you run requires a qualified employee to drive it, and putting them on for only an hour or two per shift would make it even more expensive (what employee would want to work such minor shifts?)

superuser2 11y ago

Indeed. Buses are held up as a solution to traffic, but they are terrible things to share the road with as either a driver or cyclist. I wonder how many people have to be on the bus for that many cars to be as annoying as a single bus.

sharkweek 11y ago
Oooh fun thought exercise - My guess is about four cars equal the annoyance of a bus over the span of a year. Four randomized drivers will on average be slightly more annoying than an average year for one bus. Taking into account: 1) Number of drivers removed from the roads by average annual bus use 2) Size of the vehicles 3) Random acts of annoyance 4) Dangers posed by each To confess my bias - I'm a huge fan of mass transit and a bike commuter who touches his car maybe once a week, but curious how else one might model this.
- blackhaz 11y ago
  I beg to differ. It doesn't remove that many cars, really. How often do you see a bus pass by? Every 20 minutes or so? Count how many cars pass by in the same amount of time, and some of them carry multiple passengers. (I have no problems with buses here in Europe at all, just sayin'..)
  - adt2bt 11y ago
    One could argue every passenger on a bus saves some fraction of a car trip. Even if the total number of car trips saved is a much smaller number than the total number of cars, there's a 'breakeven' point above which the pain of the buses is less than the pain of the bus passengers in cars. I bet in most cities, we've hit that breakeven point, regardless of bus behavior. <wild speculation> I bet that number is about 6 passengers per bus, excluding environmental concerns. </wild speculation>
    - devin 11y ago
      Your wild speculation started earlier than your last line.

megablast 11y ago

I would rather a bus any day. Easier to see, move slowly, less dangerously, less off them, more predictable, and mostly pretty courteous. Completely unlike drivers.

x3n0ph3n3 11y ago
You would rather what a bus?
- bennyg 11y ago
  You knew what he/she was trying to say...
  - craigmccaskill 11y ago
    Personally, I don't and I'm a native English speaker. I doubt many who weren't would have any chance of deciphering the meaning here either.
    - ridgeguy 11y ago
      It's just an ellipsis. Or, as my first Google hit said: "the omission from speech or writing of a word or words that are superfluous or able to be understood from contextual clues." So: I would rather [have] a bus any day.
    - jcrawfordor 11y ago
      I see this usage fairly regularly. I'm not 100% certain of this, but I think it might be more common in Britain than America.
    - gdy 11y ago
      Is "I would rather you did..." odd too? Not a native speaker here :)
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]

DBNO 11y ago

Here's a link to a video showing the damage to the Google car: https://youtu.be/wBU9zsGQR5k https://youtu.be/wBU9zsGQR5k Here's a link to the DMV Google traffic report: https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/3946fbb8-e04e-4d52-8f80-b33948df34b2/Google+Auto+LLC+02.14.16.pdf?MOD=AJPERES https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/3946fbb8-e04e-4d52... From reading the above report, it seems it was officially only a one-lane road, but the road was big enough to handle two-streams of traffic. The google car could have just stayed in the middle of the road, but instead, was hugging the right side of the road in preparation for a right-hand turn. Due to sand bags next to a storm drain, the google car had to "merge" back into the one-land road to get around the sandbags. Considering it's still a one-land road, the bus driver should have yielded to any car that was in front of it. I'd place a majority of the blame on the bus. What I don't understand: Why doesn't the Google car have video of the accident? Or if they do, does anyone know if they will share a video of it?

ocdtrekkie 11y ago
I suspect Google will render some of the fancy video of 'what their car sees' of this incident like they've used in previous marketing materials. Those fancy videos aren't rendered on the spot though! We'll probably see it soon.
- justinhj 11y ago
  I wonder if the cars graphical renderings are acceptable in court
  - ocdtrekkie 11y ago
    I doubt this is big enough a deal to be handled in open court. But I'm sure the data could be looked at by a third party, and the visualization could be vetted as a fair representation of the sensor data picked up by the car.
- eru 11y ago
  Just speculation: they might also have to still figure out the PR angle. (Or waiting is their PR angle?) Right now, lots of people are already blaming the bus, without Google ever actually saying so. Moral high ground for them.