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> 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

> 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.
- irishcoffee 10y ago
  > 3. Drive through Paris during a weekend, same deal. Having recently returned from Paris, I was completely flabbergasted by the driving patterns. It was surreal. I am excited about Tesla and this self-driving car, I really am. If it can in fact navigate around the city of Paris on a Saturday I'm not sure how I would react. Probably wouldn't believe it.
  - buro9 10y ago
    Visit Milan! I ranked them in order of crazy. Milan is the most crazy of crazy. As are the motorways around Milan. I am pretty sure that the shared philosophy to not use the brake is that if they just go faster they can be ahead of any trouble about to occur.
  - IanCal 10y ago
    I do rather wonder just how hard these situations really are for machines. Watching videos taken at the Arc de Triomphe actually leave me thinking the google car could possibly be fine already. It knows where it is, it knows where it needs to go and they already have an "aggression" where they'll pull out a bit to signal to other drivers they're going. The really complex part for us is that we can't easily keep track of all the things around us and have very slow reactions. The computer knows the distance of all things around it accurately and can respond in milliseconds and doesn't get flustered or angry. Or am I missing something, is there a lot of complex reasoning?
- mvidal01 10y ago
  I'd be impressed if a self-driving car could cross Ho Chi Minh City during M-F.
- celticninja 10y ago
  to be fair on point 2 a human driver would have issues finding a legal, valid parking spot in London.
- jobigoud 10y ago
  I've experienced London and Paris but I would still swap one of them with a city in a less developed country for variety. Say Dakar for example (2.5M people): no road signs, pedestrians on the highway, constant honking from every directions, more varied "vehicles" like horse carriage and "car rapides" (small buses).
0xffff2 10y ago
Dude, compared to streets in European cities, Castro is most definitely a "very large road". The lane widths anywhere in California are massive compared to the older roads in Europe.
hjnilsson 10y ago
That is an hilarious example compared to streets in Europe. I'm interested how it would tackle this road for example: https://www.google.no/maps/@40.9956543,17.2208349,3a,75y,266.65h,60.81t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sjU7jve0tVwTn1C-KVJVlDw!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo2.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DjU7jve0tVwTn1C-KVJVlDw%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D73.567%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.no/maps/@40.9956543,17.2208349,3a,75y,266...

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.

irishcoffee 10y ago
> 3. Drive through Paris during a weekend, same deal. Having recently returned from Paris, I was completely flabbergasted by the driving patterns. It was surreal. I am excited about Tesla and this self-driving car, I really am. If it can in fact navigate around the city of Paris on a Saturday I'm not sure how I would react. Probably wouldn't believe it.
- buro9 10y ago
  Visit Milan! I ranked them in order of crazy. Milan is the most crazy of crazy. As are the motorways around Milan. I am pretty sure that the shared philosophy to not use the brake is that if they just go faster they can be ahead of any trouble about to occur.
- IanCal 10y ago
  I do rather wonder just how hard these situations really are for machines. Watching videos taken at the Arc de Triomphe actually leave me thinking the google car could possibly be fine already. It knows where it is, it knows where it needs to go and they already have an "aggression" where they'll pull out a bit to signal to other drivers they're going. The really complex part for us is that we can't easily keep track of all the things around us and have very slow reactions. The computer knows the distance of all things around it accurately and can respond in milliseconds and doesn't get flustered or angry. Or am I missing something, is there a lot of complex reasoning?
mvidal01 10y ago
I'd be impressed if a self-driving car could cross Ho Chi Minh City during M-F.
celticninja 10y ago
to be fair on point 2 a human driver would have issues finding a legal, valid parking spot in London.
jobigoud 10y ago
I've experienced London and Paris but I would still swap one of them with a city in a less developed country for variety. Say Dakar for example (2.5M people): no road signs, pedestrians on the highway, constant honking from every directions, more varied "vehicles" like horse carriage and "car rapides" (small buses).

0xffff2 10y ago

Dude, compared to streets in European cities, Castro is most definitely a "very large road". The lane widths anywhere in California are massive compared to the older roads in Europe.

hjnilsson 10y ago

That is an hilarious example compared to streets in Europe. I'm interested how it would tackle this road for example: https://www.google.no/maps/@40.9956543,17.2208349,3a,75y,266.65h,60.81t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sjU7jve0tVwTn1C-KVJVlDw!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo2.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DjU7jve0tVwTn1C-KVJVlDw%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D73.567%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.no/maps/@40.9956543,17.2208349,3a,75y,266...