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Imagine New York City -- where unless a car appears as if it is ready and willing to kill pedestrians people will jaywalk directly in front of it. Now imagine

Imagine New York City -- where unless a car appears as if it is ready and willing to kill pedestrians people will jaywalk directly in front of it. Now imagine New York City clogged up with self driving cars -- frozen at each intersection in fear of hitting someone. It'd be a disaster. Humans will quickly understand that these cars are easily bullied, and many will take advantage of that. Why wait for your turn when you can just cut off a driverless car?

fixermark 11y ago
This topic comes up over and over again, and people keep missing a key difference between automated vehicles and human drivers---automated vehicles have cameras and perfect memories. How many times do people get to play that game until the NYPD is flooded with metrics on where to go to hand out free jaywalking tickets?
- jMyles 11y ago
  They won't do that though, because they know that there will then be clamor for repeal of jaywalking laws. I'm at 32nd and 2nd as I type this, and let me tell you: pedestrian pride is SERIOUS in NYC. We don't give a fuck about jaywalking laws, and if they start making this city impossible to walk in, city hall will hear about it. Currently, jaywalking laws are (disgustingly) used to target people that police want to target and for no other reason. If you put it to a vote, I think that the vast majority of NYCers will prefer an "implied crosswalk" law, where pedestrians have the right-of-way in all situations except when they jump in front of moving traffic.
  - coderdude 11y ago
    Let natural selection run its course. At some point humans will evolve an instinct to not walk in front of a moving vehicle.
dragonwriter 11y ago
Unless behavior changes, perhaps because something changed regarding enforcement of laws governing pedestrians which changed the perceived incentives. Which, were self-driving cars to become more common and, consequently, moving violations by human drivers less of a problem for traffic and safety and pedestrian violations relatively more of a problem for traffic, would probably happen.
jMyles 11y ago
> Humans will quickly understand that these cars are easily bullied, and many will take advantage of that. Why wait for your turn when you can just cut off a driverless car? "bullied?" This doesn't sound like bullying to me; it sounds like utilizing the roadway properly (whereas 'jaywalking' laws paint a picture of the roadway as belonging to vehicles, which we New Yorkers protest everyday). If anything, driverless cars might make occupants more patient when dealing with pedestrians with whom they share the roadway. If you can chill and listen to music, read something, etc, maybe you won't be in such a hurry.
- david-given 11y ago
  How long's it going to take before someone starts selling T-shirts with pictures of stop signs on them? What's going to happen when a self-driving car sees someone wearing one standing by the side of the road?
  - jMyles 11y ago
    This is an awesome low-tech hack idea, but my sense is that if they can't distinguish a t-shirt from a road sign, there will have been other far more serious computerviz problems.
    - kpil 11y ago
      The state of the art is actually that the car can't tell diddly squat apart unless it's in the car's map database. So unless you hack the database and stand at the correct spot you can dress as any traffic sign you like...
      - maxerickson 11y ago
        This video from 2014 shows the software identifying a cyclist making a hand signal... https://googleblog.blogspot.co.at/2014/04/the-latest-chapter-for-self-driving-car.html https://googleblog.blogspot.co.at/2014/04/the-latest-chapter...
imgabe 11y ago
All the cops freed up from having to write speeding and parking tickets can hand out jaywalking tickets instead.
- yolesaber 11y ago
  If cops start handing out tickets for jaywalking in NYC I can guarantee you there will be hell to pay. If there's one thing New Yorkers hold more dear than their bagels, it's their ability to jaywalk as they please.
the8472 11y ago
Or the computer-controlled car could simply keep track of humans in its immediate vicinity and use any momentary gap that arises. It has a much much lower reaction delay than humans. Combine with electric engines and they can practically jump into any gap.
- maxerickson 11y ago
  There will frequently be passengers in the car. Comfort puts a practical limit on how much stopping and starting you can do.
kps 11y ago
I'd like to work on Artificial Road Rage. There are some great opportunities, especially for networked vehicles. You cut off one Taxy™? Now there are 50,000 tons of mobile neural net wandering the city looking for ways to make your life miserable.
- brbsix 11y ago
  This has been a free market dream of mine. There's no need for a state to enforce minor traffic violations (and who knows what else) when "the network" is willing to do the enforcement. However this poses a huge problem when the rules are dictated by a central coercive entity rather than by consensus.
Retric 11y ago
Don't forget people need ~250ms (1/4 second) to react to someone, self driving cars could easily operate at 1/10th that. So, a person needs 9 feet to stop at 10MPH, but a self driving car might only need 5 feet. If anything self driving cars will look like they are going to hit you far more than human drivers. http://www.random-science-tools.com/physics/stopping-distance.htm http://www.random-science-tools.com/physics/stopping-distanc... Also, people don't as a rule physically touch cars when jwalking. Thus, a self driving car rarely needs to stop even with significant number of people jwalking. At worst they slow down, but again less than you might think.
Lewton 11y ago
Simple: Just program the AI cars to randomly kill a pedestrian who jaywalks every million miles or so. Oh wait. That's crazy-talk you say? Well that's the exact same system we have in place right now
sentenza 11y ago
You don't even need humans for safety features to become a problem: Every day, I drive on a road that goes through the German woods. The road is barely wide enough for two average-sized cars to pass each other. If one car is wider than average, then one of the cars has to go off the road onto the dirt-and-stones shoulder. The speed limit there is 60km/h. Nearly all the humans drive 80. If you drive 60 there, you will cause a queue to form behind you, because there is so much traffic on that 5km stretch of road. The reason why I consider this to be such a good example is because there is no solution here for self-driving cars that will work in the real world. If you just put self-driving cars as they are on that road, then you'll convert it into a giant traffic jam. Of course, the only _logical_ way forward would be to widen that road so that it can actually sustain its traffic load, but that is not a real-world solution. Because a) The local levels of government are too broke to fix all the roads like this even on a time scale of decades (!) and b) the road was built on the private property of local nobility in the 1920s (for weird historical reasons) and they have refused to give up the land for the road to be widened on at least one occasion in the past. Now, this is Germany, possibly the most orderly car-nation on the planet. What about Italy? Or India? Or South Africa? Self-driving vehicles will become ubiquitous on the Autobahns and in rectangular American cities. I would be very surprised if there were still many human truck drivers doing cross-Europe tours 30 years from now. But human-driven cars will not disappear in the lifetime of anybody reading this, simply because outside of a few well-planned environments, you have to bend the rules to maintain traffic flow.
- msellout 11y ago
  Or, there might end up being fewer cars on the road because it's so easy to jump on a self-driving bus, then transfer at the station (with no waiting time) to a small pooled ride...
msellout 11y ago
"Jaywalking" was originally a marketing campaign by the motor vehicle industry before it became law. Your description sounds like a return to the way it ought to be. The bully is the human driver who threatens to kill a pedestrian by being inattentive.
DrScump 11y ago
<Humans will quickly understand that these cars are easily bullied, and many will take advantage of that.> I do see a theoretical risk of induced accidents for the purpose of damage/injury claims. For example, jamming the LIDAR and using one's parking brake to stop abruptly without triggering the brake lights.
Mandatum 11y ago
This is my biggest gripe when it comes to implementing self-driving vehicles. Once it gets to the 80%ish range and a lot of people can spot an self-driving car from a pedestrian-driving car, I just know there'll be so many people that will walk in-front of those cars because it's faster for the pedestrian than waiting to cross the road.

fixermark 11y ago

This topic comes up over and over again, and people keep missing a key difference between automated vehicles and human drivers---automated vehicles have cameras and perfect memories. How many times do people get to play that game until the NYPD is flooded with metrics on where to go to hand out free jaywalking tickets?

jMyles 11y ago
They won't do that though, because they know that there will then be clamor for repeal of jaywalking laws. I'm at 32nd and 2nd as I type this, and let me tell you: pedestrian pride is SERIOUS in NYC. We don't give a fuck about jaywalking laws, and if they start making this city impossible to walk in, city hall will hear about it. Currently, jaywalking laws are (disgustingly) used to target people that police want to target and for no other reason. If you put it to a vote, I think that the vast majority of NYCers will prefer an "implied crosswalk" law, where pedestrians have the right-of-way in all situations except when they jump in front of moving traffic.
- coderdude 11y ago
  Let natural selection run its course. At some point humans will evolve an instinct to not walk in front of a moving vehicle.

dragonwriter 11y ago

Unless behavior changes, perhaps because something changed regarding enforcement of laws governing pedestrians which changed the perceived incentives. Which, were self-driving cars to become more common and, consequently, moving violations by human drivers less of a problem for traffic and safety and pedestrian violations relatively more of a problem for traffic, would probably happen.

jMyles 11y ago

> Humans will quickly understand that these cars are easily bullied, and many will take advantage of that. Why wait for your turn when you can just cut off a driverless car? "bullied?" This doesn't sound like bullying to me; it sounds like utilizing the roadway properly (whereas 'jaywalking' laws paint a picture of the roadway as belonging to vehicles, which we New Yorkers protest everyday). If anything, driverless cars might make occupants more patient when dealing with pedestrians with whom they share the roadway. If you can chill and listen to music, read something, etc, maybe you won't be in such a hurry.

david-given 11y ago
How long's it going to take before someone starts selling T-shirts with pictures of stop signs on them? What's going to happen when a self-driving car sees someone wearing one standing by the side of the road?
- jMyles 11y ago
  This is an awesome low-tech hack idea, but my sense is that if they can't distinguish a t-shirt from a road sign, there will have been other far more serious computerviz problems.
  - kpil 11y ago
    The state of the art is actually that the car can't tell diddly squat apart unless it's in the car's map database. So unless you hack the database and stand at the correct spot you can dress as any traffic sign you like...
    - maxerickson 11y ago
      This video from 2014 shows the software identifying a cyclist making a hand signal... https://googleblog.blogspot.co.at/2014/04/the-latest-chapter-for-self-driving-car.html https://googleblog.blogspot.co.at/2014/04/the-latest-chapter...

imgabe 11y ago

All the cops freed up from having to write speeding and parking tickets can hand out jaywalking tickets instead.

yolesaber 11y ago
If cops start handing out tickets for jaywalking in NYC I can guarantee you there will be hell to pay. If there's one thing New Yorkers hold more dear than their bagels, it's their ability to jaywalk as they please.

the8472 11y ago

Or the computer-controlled car could simply keep track of humans in its immediate vicinity and use any momentary gap that arises. It has a much much lower reaction delay than humans. Combine with electric engines and they can practically jump into any gap.

maxerickson 11y ago
There will frequently be passengers in the car. Comfort puts a practical limit on how much stopping and starting you can do.

kps 11y ago

I'd like to work on Artificial Road Rage. There are some great opportunities, especially for networked vehicles. You cut off one Taxy™? Now there are 50,000 tons of mobile neural net wandering the city looking for ways to make your life miserable.

brbsix 11y ago
This has been a free market dream of mine. There's no need for a state to enforce minor traffic violations (and who knows what else) when "the network" is willing to do the enforcement. However this poses a huge problem when the rules are dictated by a central coercive entity rather than by consensus.

Retric 11y ago

Don't forget people need ~250ms (1/4 second) to react to someone, self driving cars could easily operate at 1/10th that. So, a person needs 9 feet to stop at 10MPH, but a self driving car might only need 5 feet. If anything self driving cars will look like they are going to hit you far more than human drivers. http://www.random-science-tools.com/physics/stopping-distance.htm http://www.random-science-tools.com/physics/stopping-distanc... Also, people don't as a rule physically touch cars when jwalking. Thus, a self driving car rarely needs to stop even with significant number of people jwalking. At worst they slow down, but again less than you might think.

Lewton 11y ago

Simple: Just program the AI cars to randomly kill a pedestrian who jaywalks every million miles or so. Oh wait. That's crazy-talk you say? Well that's the exact same system we have in place right now

sentenza 11y ago

You don't even need humans for safety features to become a problem: Every day, I drive on a road that goes through the German woods. The road is barely wide enough for two average-sized cars to pass each other. If one car is wider than average, then one of the cars has to go off the road onto the dirt-and-stones shoulder. The speed limit there is 60km/h. Nearly all the humans drive 80. If you drive 60 there, you will cause a queue to form behind you, because there is so much traffic on that 5km stretch of road. The reason why I consider this to be such a good example is because there is no solution here for self-driving cars that will work in the real world. If you just put self-driving cars as they are on that road, then you'll convert it into a giant traffic jam. Of course, the only _logical_ way forward would be to widen that road so that it can actually sustain its traffic load, but that is not a real-world solution. Because a) The local levels of government are too broke to fix all the roads like this even on a time scale of decades (!) and b) the road was built on the private property of local nobility in the 1920s (for weird historical reasons) and they have refused to give up the land for the road to be widened on at least one occasion in the past. Now, this is Germany, possibly the most orderly car-nation on the planet. What about Italy? Or India? Or South Africa? Self-driving vehicles will become ubiquitous on the Autobahns and in rectangular American cities. I would be very surprised if there were still many human truck drivers doing cross-Europe tours 30 years from now. But human-driven cars will not disappear in the lifetime of anybody reading this, simply because outside of a few well-planned environments, you have to bend the rules to maintain traffic flow.

msellout 11y ago
Or, there might end up being fewer cars on the road because it's so easy to jump on a self-driving bus, then transfer at the station (with no waiting time) to a small pooled ride...

msellout 11y ago

"Jaywalking" was originally a marketing campaign by the motor vehicle industry before it became law. Your description sounds like a return to the way it ought to be. The bully is the human driver who threatens to kill a pedestrian by being inattentive.

DrScump 11y ago

<Humans will quickly understand that these cars are easily bullied, and many will take advantage of that.> I do see a theoretical risk of induced accidents for the purpose of damage/injury claims. For example, jamming the LIDAR and using one's parking brake to stop abruptly without triggering the brake lights.

Mandatum 11y ago

This is my biggest gripe when it comes to implementing self-driving vehicles. Once it gets to the 80%ish range and a lot of people can spot an self-driving car from a pedestrian-driving car, I just know there'll be so many people that will walk in-front of those cars because it's faster for the pedestrian than waiting to cross the road.