6 ms·

I don't know if any amount of data collection and model refinement will allow self driving in ALL situations. We always see self driving demos in California on

by teebot 10y ago

I don't know if any amount of data collection and model refinement will allow self driving in ALL situations. We always see self driving demos in California on very large roads, I'd like to see one in a small crowded street of Napoli or on a crossroad in Ho-Chi Minh.

funkdobiest 10y ago
Yes, small cobblestone streets in Philly? I wonder how it handles other bad/rude drivers? In the video I saw it merging on to the freeway, but sometime you have to go over the speed limit to get in front of the car that is in the merge lane, will it be courteous to allow others to merge properly?
doikor 10y ago
It will be a long time before Teslas can drive on dirt roads or roads covered in snow. But most daily driving happens on pavement either on the highway or in the city. Both of which it already handles quite well and will just get better.
- dagw 10y ago
  The reason most people can handle driving on shitty dirt roads, in snow and other "uncommon" situations is because they've first logged thousands of hours of practice driving under more normal conditions. Remove that experience and routine and why would you expect them to have any idea what to do in those tricky situations where the AI fails on them?
  - davidiach 10y ago
    That's not the case. Children can learn how to drive in snow or dirt roads in a matter of hours. Learning to drive on public roads has more to do with learning the rules than learning to drive a car per se.
    - ryanmarsh 10y ago
      This. Lots of kids on farms learn to drive the farm truck off road as soon as their feet can touch the pedals while seeing over the steering wheel. Any folks who grew up on a farm who can confirm?
      - millettjon 10y ago
        I learned to drive a small manual shift tractor at 7 and mowed a 4 acre lawn with lots of trees and bushes. Also snowmobile and motor boat.
      - technofiend 10y ago
        I didn't grow up on a farm, but my grandparents were from rural Arkansas and raised me in a small Texas town. I had plenty of opportunity to learn to drive cars on back roads and had my own dirt bikes and motorcycles by age nine. (Modern day helicopter parents would boggle at the freedom we kids had in the 70's). By the time I was twelve my grandmother retired and bought a 3.5 acre plot in rural Texas. I wasn't allowed to fell the trees but I had to use a chainsaw and cut the branches off the felled trees and then section the denuded trees into small enough rounds they were suitable for busting into firewood with an axe. I was given the option to learn to drive my grandfather's stick shift Toyota pickup truck in order to move all the wood with that, or move it by hand. It was an easy decision.
      - dagw 10y ago
        Driving a tracktor with it's big nobbly wheels and low gear ratios along a dirt path is trivial compared to trying to coax your Honda with worn out tires up a icy hill or out of the mud. The two just don't compare.
    - ghaff 10y ago
      Learning the rules and developing situational awareness. But, yes, until you're talking about more serious off-road/bad road (which is challenging in a completely different way), there's nothing especially hard about driving on a private dirt road.
  - doikor 10y ago
    I did my driving education during the summer and got my license. Got my first car during the middle of winter and just learned to drive in snow (we did have a 2 hour course on a slippery track as part of the driving education). It isn't really hard. Just have proper winter tires and don't go too fast. Also driving the shitty back roads in Finland was a lot of fun in my old Honda Civic which didn't have power steering or ABS (let alone any kind of traction control and stabilization you have in newer cars). Driving a modern car with all the modern aids is very easy on dirt. On snow some of them can hinder you though (some automatic gearboxes just don't know what to do when none of the wheels have any traction) but for the most part it is very easy too if you have winter tires. Driving is very easy. Too easy I think which causes people to drive way too fast for the situation quite often. Main issue for driving on dirt roads/snow for automated cars I see is just seeing the road itself correctly not with controlling the car.
  - pjscott 10y ago
    I don't think you're wrong, but I predict that this will be a complete non-problem: by the time people's skills have atrophied significantly, self-driving car technology will have improved to the point where it won't matter anymore.
- ZanyProgrammer 10y ago
  Most daily driving happens where software engineers in the Bay Area live, you mean.
  - raisedbyninjas 10y ago
    80% of the US lives in an urban area as of 2010.
    - ghaff 10y ago
      Note the definition of urban area though: "To qualify as an urban area, the territory identified according to criteria must encompass at least 2,500 people, at least 1,500 of which reside outside institutional group quarters." Urban really means not clearly rural. But there are a lot of "urban areas" 10s of miles outside metropolitan areas that people would consider exurban with forests and homes on significant acreage.
      - frgtpsswrdlame 10y ago
        To clarify even more, Kansas is listed as having almost 80 Urban Areas in the 2010 census. I think many of the people in this thread would flatly classify those areas as rural.
wmeredith 10y ago
Honestly, I kind of want to drive in those situations. (I enjoy driving for the most part.) It's exactly on long stretches of highway or during an urban commute that want autopilot.
redwood 10y ago
While I agree for roads with no other cars around, I think there are shortcuts that can be taken on roads where there are indeed other cars. If you think about what humans do an unknown conditions or abnormal conditions, they basically follow the car in front of them. Self-driving cars could follow the same paradigm
- HiroshiSan 10y ago
  What happens when the car in front goes off a cliff on a twisty mountain road?
  - phkahler 10y ago
    >> What happens when the car in front goes off a cliff on a twisty mountain road? Humans have been known to "follow" the car in front of them when its not appropriate. Being parked on the side of the freeway (especially on a curve) is one of the worst places to be. I recall hearing that people hit those parked cars quite often.
    - HiroshiSan 10y ago
      I was driving down a two way street, a car parked on the right was facing the wrong way, which made me think I was driving down a one way street. I saw a street light and had to use it to conclude I was in fact not on a one way street and that guy parked illegally. Fun issues to think about.
rayiner 10y ago
I'd settle for a test drive in downtown DC where roads get shut down at random, one-say streets switch directions throughout the day, etc.
- Drdrdrq 10y ago
  That's really more a navigational problem though?
Diederich 10y ago
> very large roads I've seen quite a few Google self driving cars on Castro in Mountain View. http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4082/4939372588_47979bceec_z.jpg http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4082/4939372588_47979bceec_z.... That picture doesn't do it justice during the most busy hours of the evening, where there's tons of people crossing and bicycles flying about in every direction. Given that, I've never seen a crowded street in Napoli or a crossroad in Ho-Chi Minh, but I can imagine they are a completely different level of complex all together. As noted elsewhere, the announcement was that the necessary hardware will now ship standard. Musk has said elsewhere that the software is many times harder than the hardware.
- lucaspiller 10y ago
  > a crowded street in Napoli I'm in Rome, which isn't quite as bad, but yes compared to driving in the US it's completely different. Every day I have to deal with someone cutting me up, or doing something otherwise stupid. You need to drive quite aggressively here, and in a self-driving car I'd imagine the journey would take twice as long, as it would keep stopping to give way to avoid an accident - and drivers would definitely try to take advantage of that.
- buro9 10y ago
  > Given that, I've never seen a crowded street in Napoli My three tests for self-driving cars would be: 1. Drive through Milan on a Saturday afternoon, from the outside of the city, and park on the opposite side of the centre of the city. 2. Drive through London during a weekday, similar thing... cross the centre and find a parking space and park. 3. Drive through Paris during a weekend, same deal. Those three cities are the most stressful to drive through for various reasons. With Milan it's speed and decisiveness, small spaces and tight navigation. With London it's the mix of traffic with a high cycling % along with a good mix of motorbikes and heavy goods vehicles as well as a phenomenal number of pedestrians who will walk out at any moment. With Paris it's the speed of the ring-road (and the challenge of handling variable speed traffic on and near it) as well as the tight spaces on the streets and the numbers of scooter riders. I also like the diversity of traffic signals and signs across those cities. When I see a self-driving car manage those cities I am going to be impressed. It will exercise so much of their systems to do any one of those. PS: I like that they are all fashion capitals... it would be a good marketing campaign to throw in Tokyo and NYC and present an accessible and fashionable angle to a set of super complex technical achievements.
Retric 10y ago
I don't think self driving cars need to work on say dirt roads to be useful. So, ALL situations is kind of misleading.
clarkmoody 10y ago
The most important thing is if the car has the capability to detect when its effectiveness is lower than some threshold and smoothly hands control back to the human. At the same time, it would beam this data back to HQ and to other cars, telling them to avoid the area of uncertainty.
testrecord 10y ago
Here in Pittsburgh I see Uber's self driving cars every once in a while. We've some pretty crazy/small/hilly roads here.
YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago
Or anywhere in India: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjrEQaG5jPM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjrEQaG5jPM Edit: This video from a motorcyle gives a nice first-person perspective: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqOLehUdqkU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqOLehUdqkU

by teebot 10y ago

funkdobiest 10y ago

Yes, small cobblestone streets in Philly? I wonder how it handles other bad/rude drivers? In the video I saw it merging on to the freeway, but sometime you have to go over the speed limit to get in front of the car that is in the merge lane, will it be courteous to allow others to merge properly?

doikor 10y ago

It will be a long time before Teslas can drive on dirt roads or roads covered in snow. But most daily driving happens on pavement either on the highway or in the city. Both of which it already handles quite well and will just get better.

dagw 10y ago
The reason most people can handle driving on shitty dirt roads, in snow and other "uncommon" situations is because they've first logged thousands of hours of practice driving under more normal conditions. Remove that experience and routine and why would you expect them to have any idea what to do in those tricky situations where the AI fails on them?
- davidiach 10y ago
  That's not the case. Children can learn how to drive in snow or dirt roads in a matter of hours. Learning to drive on public roads has more to do with learning the rules than learning to drive a car per se.
  - ryanmarsh 10y ago
    This. Lots of kids on farms learn to drive the farm truck off road as soon as their feet can touch the pedals while seeing over the steering wheel. Any folks who grew up on a farm who can confirm?
    - millettjon 10y ago
      I learned to drive a small manual shift tractor at 7 and mowed a 4 acre lawn with lots of trees and bushes. Also snowmobile and motor boat.
    - technofiend 10y ago
      I didn't grow up on a farm, but my grandparents were from rural Arkansas and raised me in a small Texas town. I had plenty of opportunity to learn to drive cars on back roads and had my own dirt bikes and motorcycles by age nine. (Modern day helicopter parents would boggle at the freedom we kids had in the 70's). By the time I was twelve my grandmother retired and bought a 3.5 acre plot in rural Texas. I wasn't allowed to fell the trees but I had to use a chainsaw and cut the branches off the felled trees and then section the denuded trees into small enough rounds they were suitable for busting into firewood with an axe. I was given the option to learn to drive my grandfather's stick shift Toyota pickup truck in order to move all the wood with that, or move it by hand. It was an easy decision.
    - dagw 10y ago
      Driving a tracktor with it's big nobbly wheels and low gear ratios along a dirt path is trivial compared to trying to coax your Honda with worn out tires up a icy hill or out of the mud. The two just don't compare.
  - ghaff 10y ago
    Learning the rules and developing situational awareness. But, yes, until you're talking about more serious off-road/bad road (which is challenging in a completely different way), there's nothing especially hard about driving on a private dirt road.
- doikor 10y ago
  I did my driving education during the summer and got my license. Got my first car during the middle of winter and just learned to drive in snow (we did have a 2 hour course on a slippery track as part of the driving education). It isn't really hard. Just have proper winter tires and don't go too fast. Also driving the shitty back roads in Finland was a lot of fun in my old Honda Civic which didn't have power steering or ABS (let alone any kind of traction control and stabilization you have in newer cars). Driving a modern car with all the modern aids is very easy on dirt. On snow some of them can hinder you though (some automatic gearboxes just don't know what to do when none of the wheels have any traction) but for the most part it is very easy too if you have winter tires. Driving is very easy. Too easy I think which causes people to drive way too fast for the situation quite often. Main issue for driving on dirt roads/snow for automated cars I see is just seeing the road itself correctly not with controlling the car.
- pjscott 10y ago
  I don't think you're wrong, but I predict that this will be a complete non-problem: by the time people's skills have atrophied significantly, self-driving car technology will have improved to the point where it won't matter anymore.
ZanyProgrammer 10y ago
Most daily driving happens where software engineers in the Bay Area live, you mean.
- raisedbyninjas 10y ago
  80% of the US lives in an urban area as of 2010.
  - ghaff 10y ago
    Note the definition of urban area though: "To qualify as an urban area, the territory identified according to criteria must encompass at least 2,500 people, at least 1,500 of which reside outside institutional group quarters." Urban really means not clearly rural. But there are a lot of "urban areas" 10s of miles outside metropolitan areas that people would consider exurban with forests and homes on significant acreage.
    - frgtpsswrdlame 10y ago
      To clarify even more, Kansas is listed as having almost 80 Urban Areas in the 2010 census. I think many of the people in this thread would flatly classify those areas as rural.

wmeredith 10y ago

Honestly, I kind of want to drive in those situations. (I enjoy driving for the most part.) It's exactly on long stretches of highway or during an urban commute that want autopilot.

redwood 10y ago

While I agree for roads with no other cars around, I think there are shortcuts that can be taken on roads where there are indeed other cars. If you think about what humans do an unknown conditions or abnormal conditions, they basically follow the car in front of them. Self-driving cars could follow the same paradigm

HiroshiSan 10y ago
What happens when the car in front goes off a cliff on a twisty mountain road?
- phkahler 10y ago
  >> What happens when the car in front goes off a cliff on a twisty mountain road? Humans have been known to "follow" the car in front of them when its not appropriate. Being parked on the side of the freeway (especially on a curve) is one of the worst places to be. I recall hearing that people hit those parked cars quite often.
  - HiroshiSan 10y ago
    I was driving down a two way street, a car parked on the right was facing the wrong way, which made me think I was driving down a one way street. I saw a street light and had to use it to conclude I was in fact not on a one way street and that guy parked illegally. Fun issues to think about.

rayiner 10y ago

I'd settle for a test drive in downtown DC where roads get shut down at random, one-say streets switch directions throughout the day, etc.

Drdrdrq 10y ago
That's really more a navigational problem though?

Diederich 10y ago

> very large roads I've seen quite a few Google self driving cars on Castro in Mountain View. http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4082/4939372588_47979bceec_z.jpg http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4082/4939372588_47979bceec_z.... That picture doesn't do it justice during the most busy hours of the evening, where there's tons of people crossing and bicycles flying about in every direction. Given that, I've never seen a crowded street in Napoli or a crossroad in Ho-Chi Minh, but I can imagine they are a completely different level of complex all together. As noted elsewhere, the announcement was that the necessary hardware will now ship standard. Musk has said elsewhere that the software is many times harder than the hardware.

lucaspiller 10y ago
> a crowded street in Napoli I'm in Rome, which isn't quite as bad, but yes compared to driving in the US it's completely different. Every day I have to deal with someone cutting me up, or doing something otherwise stupid. You need to drive quite aggressively here, and in a self-driving car I'd imagine the journey would take twice as long, as it would keep stopping to give way to avoid an accident - and drivers would definitely try to take advantage of that.
buro9 10y ago
> Given that, I've never seen a crowded street in Napoli My three tests for self-driving cars would be: 1. Drive through Milan on a Saturday afternoon, from the outside of the city, and park on the opposite side of the centre of the city. 2. Drive through London during a weekday, similar thing... cross the centre and find a parking space and park. 3. Drive through Paris during a weekend, same deal. Those three cities are the most stressful to drive through for various reasons. With Milan it's speed and decisiveness, small spaces and tight navigation. With London it's the mix of traffic with a high cycling % along with a good mix of motorbikes and heavy goods vehicles as well as a phenomenal number of pedestrians who will walk out at any moment. With Paris it's the speed of the ring-road (and the challenge of handling variable speed traffic on and near it) as well as the tight spaces on the streets and the numbers of scooter riders. I also like the diversity of traffic signals and signs across those cities. When I see a self-driving car manage those cities I am going to be impressed. It will exercise so much of their systems to do any one of those. PS: I like that they are all fashion capitals... it would be a good marketing campaign to throw in Tokyo and NYC and present an accessible and fashionable angle to a set of super complex technical achievements.

Retric 10y ago

I don't think self driving cars need to work on say dirt roads to be useful. So, ALL situations is kind of misleading.

clarkmoody 10y ago

The most important thing is if the car has the capability to detect when its effectiveness is lower than some threshold and smoothly hands control back to the human. At the same time, it would beam this data back to HQ and to other cars, telling them to avoid the area of uncertainty.

testrecord 10y ago

Here in Pittsburgh I see Uber's self driving cars every once in a while. We've some pretty crazy/small/hilly roads here.

YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago

Or anywhere in India: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjrEQaG5jPM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjrEQaG5jPM Edit: This video from a motorcyle gives a nice first-person perspective: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqOLehUdqkU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqOLehUdqkU