4 ms·
Google’s self-driving car has been involved in its worst crash yet
- danielvf 10y agoTLDR: A van ran a red light and hit a Google car. Nothing really to see here.
- to3m 10y ago"involved in" - a very weaselly phrase!
- JoeAltmaier 10y agoThat's the right phrase. It was not at fault.
- gumby 10y agoActually the important part is buried: the human saw the van and tried to brake, but was too slow. We can certainly imagine that future AVs will look further "ahead" sideways for this kind of thing and be less prone to the accident.
- Fricken 10y agoIf Google's car was cautious enough, this accident likely could have been averted. But it opens up an ethical question: how cautious is too cautious to be practical?
- mdrzn 10y ago"In a statement issued to 9to5Google, the company revealed that the traffic light was green for at least six seconds before the vehicle entered the intersection"
- JoeAltmaier 10y agoIt was hit in the side, toward the rear. Possibly if the driver had not hit the brakes the accident would have been avoided?
- angryasian 10y agoagree, its possible if the google car had sped up it could have cleared the intersection.
- norea-armozel 10y agoYeah but it's still a real problem. I know this personally from getting in a side impact which was my fault. The whole measure twice, cut once maxim I think applies to handling traffic at intersections. I've more than once since my accident was right to be cautious as I've seen people just blow a red light even if it's been a solid red for more than 20 seconds. When it doubt check the traffic that's coming to the stop light at the intersection by more than a few seconds if you have that kind of visibility. I'm sure Google's algos will start having that sort of sliding cautious scan of cross traffic at intersections in the future.
- comex 10y agoNo official accident report yet, it seems: https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/autonomousveh_ol316 https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/auton... From the article: > The car was operating in its autonomous mode at the time of the crash, but that didn’t stop the human driver from slamming on the breaks when he spotted the oncoming van. Unfortunately, his reaction was a little too slow. Is this just speculation, or is it confirmed that the car did not act optimally by itself once the van could be seen running the red light?
- duskwuff 10y agoOr is it possible that the car would have accelerated to avoid the van if the driver had not intervened?
- kazinator 10y agoIs this that "El Camino Real" that is the subject of an old CS geek joke, involving "El Camino Bignum"? [edit] It's in the Jagon File: http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/E/El-Camino-Bignum.html http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/E/El-Camino-Bignum.html "When a hacker from MIT visited Stanford in 1976, he remarked what a long road El Camino Real was. Making a pun on ‘real’, he started calling it ‘El Camino Double Precision’ — but when the hacker was told that the road was hundreds of miles long, he renamed it ‘El Camino Bignum’, and that name has stuck." That hacker was ESR himself.