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Self-driving car accidents: Robot drivers are ‘odd, and that’s why they get hit’
- TeMPOraL 9y agoI'd say that instead of making self-driving cars as reckless as typical drivers, we should keep the cars driving by the book, and fine the people who collide into them. Will it cause frustration? Yes, but even today, people who try to drive safely and with respect to the law cause frustration too. And I think self-driving tech has enough momentum now that, frustrating or not, they will get accepted anyway.
- TheSmiddy 9y agoFurthermore if these events are common then perhaps it's an indication that the laws need to change. I think it's incredibly unwise to program a machine to "strategically" break the law.
- kranner 9y agoI agree. Maybe it is time that all vehicles (including cyclists) were required to carry dashcams etc and a mandatory report (that is as automated/cheap to generate as possible) required for every accident, no matter how minor.
- labster 9y agoGovernment mandated cameras? Plusgood idea, citizen.
- pvdebbe 9y agoIt can be tied to insurance so it doesn't have to be exactly govt mandated.
- krageon 9y agoThat's an even worse idea. You've shifted all of the data from the agency at least tangentially concerned with people's welfare to a corporation only concerned with profit.
- pvdebbe 9y agoI don't think the cameras have to be network connected. Have the video feed locally only and for insurance claims you have to provide the relevant bit of video that will help determine the culprit. Like the Russians do.
- labster 9y agoI doubleplusagree that we should have at least the level of security measures as in Eurasia.
- Piskvorrr 9y agoThat was not the point. Why do you think the Russians do this? Because the insurance co would deny any coverage by default ("meh, must have been your fault anyway, now f* off"), and no recourse. Yeah, that's definitely a worthy goal to aim for.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- eleebad 9y agoThe other way to look at it is that the traffic laws, taken to the letter, are too conservative in some circumstances, and there are perfectly safe, more efficient limitations that can be employed (The 100% complete stop for example, frivolous waste of potential energy!) Maybe instead of teaching self-driving cars to break the laws like everyone else does, we should change the laws to reflect more how people drive.
- jamesrcole 9y ago> there are perfectly safe, more efficient limitations that can be employed (The 100% complete stop for example, frivolous waste of potential energy!) Genuine question: what do you think is the better alternative to the 100% complete stop? I'm not saying I think there is or isn't a better alternative, just wanted to know what you had in mind.
- userbinator 9y agowhat do you think is the better alternative to the 100% complete stop? I think that would be to slow enough that you can stop if you need to, but not actually stop completely --- something which almost everyone already seems to do, because it saves wear and helps with passenger comfort too. (I've been in vehicles where the driver insisted on completely stopping exactly as legally specified, with the accompanying double-jerk of deceleration followed by acceleration. Not pleasant at all.)
- Piskvorrr 9y agoIf the stop causes a "jerk", the driver is braking far too aggressively for an expected and routine stop (which implies that they'll have much smaller margin of safety when emergency braking would be called for). This seems to strengthen the point "people are driving like crazy, that's not a good thing".
- jon_richards 9y agoNext time you drive, come to a complete stop and feel the car as it rocks back on its suspension. This will happen even if you brake quite lightly. You can slowly raise the brake so that you are barely braking right as you stop, which will almost completely eliminate the feeling, but it makes your stop excruciatingly slow. Theoretically, you could also eliminate the rock back at a stop sign by lifting your foot off the brake right as the car stops (before it moves backwards that little bit). The vast majority of drivers who think they are stopping completely actually lift their foot off right before that moment, so they don't experience the jerk.
- omarforgotpwd 9y agoI think you're thinking about it the wrong way. Following the letter of the law doesn't mean the ride is safer. For example, say the software could say for certain that there is nobody else in an intersection. Thinking about how you would design a new system of traffic rules from scratch, why stop for the stop sign?
- saiya-jin 9y ago... because there is a stop sign? you should stop there nevertheless. major number of motorcycle accidents happen because people feel they have overview of whole situation and don't respect the simple traffic rules, both in cars and on bikes. and yes, based on my 100k+ ridden mostly on european roads, following dead simple traffic rules of these days would prevent many accidents (and deaths). Maybe we would all get to destination 3 minutes late... so what (actually self driving should clean up the roads and especially traffic jams)
- Piskvorrr 9y ago"It's completely safe, there's nobody else at the interse-CRASH Sorry mate, did not see you." You're impressively sure in your assumption that software can be certain that the intersection is empty.
- omarforgotpwd 9y agoIf the car can't be certain that the intersection is empty, it's going to hit something when it tries to cross regardless. With fully networked cars, sensors in the intersection, and tons of sensors built into the car, the software can be pretty damn sure that the intersection is empty... at least more so than a human can.
- Piskvorrr 9y agoPerhaps. Or you now have to deal with actual obstacles, and with obstacles that are denied or falsely inserted by rogue nodes. "Fully networked" is a mixed bag.
- 9y ago
- hnlmorg 9y agoWhile that is a fair point I think a reasonable counterargument would be that the current rules are based around the fallibility of humans (stopping distance, speed limits, etc) which is less applicable to AI due to it's lower reaction times and greater awareness of the environment around it (in terms of it's constant sensor sampling when humans would normally "zone out").
- Piskvorrr 9y agoMost of the rules are based on physics. The stopping distance increases quadratically with speed, whether the driver is a human or not.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoUp until human drivers get removed from the public roads entirely, we need to apply human-centric rules, because humans are the weakest link in the chain. One of the problem with human drivers is that they feel they know better, and routinely disrespect the rules. Peer pressure makes it hard for individual drivers to follow the law when so many people get angry at them for that. Introduction of self-driving cars provides us with good opportunity to improve the safety of human traffic - autonomous cars don't care if you're angry at them, and by following the rules, they can force everyone else to do the same. That is, unless we chose to have self-driving cars ignore the rules too, like the article suggests.
- Piskvorrr 9y agoDrivers are at least protected by their metal shell. What of the bikers, cyclists, and pedestrians? Those are unlikely to become non-self-driving, so to speak.
- emodendroket 9y agoI don't think it has very much momentum at all. Who owns one?
- manicdee 9y ago"They drive funny" claims human, regarding high level of reporting of accidents where computer drivers are required to report encounters but humans are not. If humans were required to report every bump and scrape, what would we find out? I suspect we would find that humans are just poor drivers overall, and "they don't drive like I do" is the number one cause of minor incidents worldwide. My main submission to this argument is the ubiquitous rear-ending in the turning lane where the first car's driver starts to roll and then stops, while the second driver is turned to watch approaching traffic and thus oblivious to the behaviour of the car in front.
- rflrob 9y ago"They aren't driving like I would" is a major red flag for me, causing me to either drive/bike/walk more carefully, get well away if possible, and keep them in view if necessary.
- vntok 9y agoSounds like success to me.
- omarforgotpwd 9y agoThe issue isn't that the cars are worse drivers than humans. They're obviously going to be much better statistically. The article is just making the point that they're going to have to be programmed to break the rules just like humans do i.e. with speeding, stopping too often etc. If they are not programmed to break the rules, they will frustrate people and even cause accidents as humans try to interact with them. There's not always a good way to know that the car in front of you is being driven by a computer.
- achamayou 9y agoThere’s a way to know they’re learning to drive or just recently got their license, why wouldn’t there be a way to know they’re driven by software?
- Animats 9y agoI wrote something similar on this subject a few days ago.[1] Autonomous vehicles (the good ones) have sensor-generated maps of what's around them, and those maps indicate what's unknown due to occlusion. Cautious behavior at intersections comes from that. If visibility is good, there's no hesitation. This is fine. There are no CA DMV reports of "autonomous vehicle entered blind intersection and was hit by cross traffic". Near term solution: put a rear bumper on your autonomous vehicle which meets the old 5MPH bumper standard from the 1980s. Longer term solution: manually driven cars need basic anti-collision radar, which is now standard on many high-end cars and all Volvos, and may be mandated in the US just as ABS is now. Useful temporary fix: brake lights that go up to super-bright ambulance level when the autonomous vehicle's sensors indicate something close behind and there's a need to brake. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15437322 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15437322
- notatoad 9y ago"Useful temporary fix: brake lights that go up to super-bright ambulance level when the autonomous vehicle's sensors indicate something close behind and there's a need to brake." this seems like a pretty clever solution if it would actually encourage the correct behaviour in human drivers. unexpectedly bright tail-lights might just have the opposite effect though, and further distract the driver who is about to rear end you.
- pipio21 9y agoWhen I was in university we made a project for the Statistics class: Measure the velocity of cars from bridges for cars going outside and inside a big city in Europe. We controlled all big highways. The result: Over 95% of the cars were going way faster than what the rules were and nothing wrong happens. That is, rules are wrong because politicians decide them and they are always extra cautious, so they are not responsible for accidents, and they make money out of fines. I see a big problem if everybody follows the law every time, like robots do, because rules are so wrong in the first place. One of the big things with robots is that you could have real feedback with real data measuring in the real world. You don't need to guess, just test in the real world and measure the consequences for example, of increasing the velocity. You could also change the parameters on real time when you know there is ice or snow in the road... you don't need to have the same parameters when it is sunny in summer and in winter.
- a_imho 9y agoThe result: Over 95% of the cars were going way faster than what the rules were and nothing wrong happens. I'm not sure what do you mean, there are plenty of accidents caused by speeding both on highways and within city limits. Care to elaborate how you conducted the study and/or link to it? As far as I'm aware extra caution is built in exactly to account for human errors and disregard for laws and have a margin of safety.
- pbhjpbhj 9y agoWhich city is this that never has any crashes? I can't help but feel maybe your professor missed an opportunity to teach about sampling errors. A road can go decades without a crash, reduced speed will reduce severity of a crash when it happens. Reduced speed usually increases fuel efficiency, which is also a factor in pollution control; in cities in particular that can have a big impact on health.
- euyyn 9y ago> rules are wrong because politicians decide them I would have thought speed limits are decided by technicians, based on statistics. I don't think it's elected politicians who decide them.
- Chinjut 9y agoShocked and saddened to see such blatant, disgusting victim-blaming…
- paulajohnson 9y agoI love the statement “Humans violate the rules in a safe and principled way”. Really sums up the problem. So when you break the rules, what principles (i.e. rules) are you following?
- userbinator 9y agoDiscretion.
- Piskvorrr 9y agoMight as well say "magic", and it would be equally useful. In other words, a private ruleset which partially overlaps with the official one.
- StavrosK 9y agoYou assess the road conditions and conclude that the speed limit is set too low for a road that is in broad daylight and has no other cars. Are you implying that the speed limit is binarily safe, no matter the road conditions (night, rain, snow, congestion, etc)?
- dx034 9y agoI doubt many drivers know their car and tyres well enough to assess the safe speed given current conditions. People either adapt to others or choose a speed they feel comfortable with. Speed limits are not perfect for every condition but humans are certainly not good at choosing a better one while driving.
- rijoja 9y agoThis might be a problem with the ways roads are "signed". I believe that stop signs are much more common in the US than in Europe where there are signs that are more relaxed. I.e that you have to stop only in case of another car.
- _pmf_ 9y agoRationalization hamstering at full speed.
- perlgeek 9y ago> "Humans violate the rules in a safe and principled way" I don't share this optimism. I've been driven by folks who violate the rules in totally unsafe and scary ways (though "principled" in a way, in that they do it consistently -- unless a cop is looking).
- grecy 9y agoSpend some time driving in Latin America or West Africa. The rules mean nothing, everyone drives freestyle. In towns and cities, it works extremely well because everyone is very attentive and ready for anyone else to do anything, at any time. My experience in over 60,000 miles in those parts of the world through more than 30 countries would say they are an order of magnitude less crashes there than in US/Australia/Europe, in the towns and cities. (Note: highway driving is a whole different story)
- saosebastiao 9y ago> The rules mean nothing, everyone drives freestyle. In towns and cities, it works extremely well because everyone is very attentive and ready for anyone else to do anything, at any time. There's some truth to that, but there's also the ugly reality: statistically those places tend to have extremely high death rates (which may or may not come with high accident rates). Because while people are definitely more aware and cautious on the road in general, nobody will ever take the extremely dangerous drivers off the road, and they're now emboldened by the lack of consequences (both from the law and from drivers who mostly willingly give up their right of way to whomever is most reckless). I know someone whose entire family was killed by a driver who hit them head on due to blindly passing a truck while going 160kph on a 40kph road in Honduras. I know for a fact that his wife was an extremely cautious driver, but you can't avoid something like that no matter how hard you try to predict the unpredictable.
- grecy 9y agoAbsolutely, that's why I gave the caveat. In the cities, freestyle driving works great, and I would bet the accident rate is much lower than "rules based" driving. On the highways is a totally different game. I have seen some horrific accidents, luckily I have avoided them all so far.
- Booktrope 9y agoThis article is a good example of stupid tech reporting. Someone who's supposed to be a knowledgeable reporter does some speculating, without bothering with any actual data, and comes up with a so-called "problem" and idiotic suggestion for "solution". The article suggests that, though self-driving cars don't crash into other cars, they "cause" crashes (mostly fender-benders) by driving in a different manner than humans. No evidence that they cause more fender-benders than humans, who drive all sorts of different ways. Apparently, the author thinks this is so obvious, no data is required. Then, the article seems to propose that self-driving cars should be like humans, who allegedly violate laws in a "safe and principled" way. This ridiculous statement ignores the tens of thousands of people killed in crashes caused by human-driven cars every year, and the many tens of thousands severely injured, by these "safe and principled" violation of driving laws. Most accidents do not involve complying with traffic laws, actually. That's why we have traffic laws -- to prevent this carnage. Individually, however, we still tend to believe that even if we engage in risky behavior like speeding or running lights, we're not the one personally who will crash. As to some people who think self-driving cars should speed because so many people speed, please check the mortality rates for accidents at various speeds (they're widely published) -- survival rates go down lots as speed goes up, especially if a pedestrian is involved. On the other hand, if you do the math, on most trips the amount of time actually saved is much smaller than the exhilarating sense of going faster than the next guy you get from even moving a couple of mph faster. This is why many major cities are reducing speed limits and taking other steps to reduce traffic speeds. Speeding, the most common rule violation in driving, is neither safe nor reasonable, and the author, supposedly an expert on driving, cannot provide any evidence to indicate that it is. Well, except that he seems to assume that tens of thousands of traffic deaths are acceptable and unavoidable. Perceptive readers will notice that I haven't cited stats to support my assertions in this comment. That's because it's a comment and I'm not holding myself out as a journalist who's done sufficient research to report on issues of motor vehicle safety. I'm a mere commenter, but be sure, if you do the work to find out what the real numbers are (regarding both driving safety and actual driving times) it bears out what I'm saying.
- mikeash 9y ago"Humans violate the rules in a safe and principled way...." Thanks, it's nice to start my morning with a good laugh. Maybe the author lives in some magical wonderland filled with good drivers, but this is not what I observe at all. People drift out of their lane for no reason. They careen past the stop line because they can't be bothered to push the brake pedal a bit farther down. They refrain from signaling because they just don't care. They blast through stop signs and red lights without heed to traffic or pedestrians. They brake spontaneously in the middle of a fast moving road. They drive fast in dangerous conditions and slow in safe conditions. They spend half their drive texting because they think they're the one person on the planet who is able to safely text and drive. How is any of that safe or principled?
- reacweb 9y agoAs a Parisian driver, I think I understand exactly what he means. Other Parisian drivers violate the rules with a nicely predictable scheme where non Parisian may respect the rules but are very dangerous and get horned continuously.
- cordite 9y agoWhat are the rules for if following them makes them dangerous?
- JumpCrisscross 9y agoWith traffic, agreement often matters more than the specific rules.
- upofadown 9y agoIn other words, bad drivers tend to run into things. It isn't really the case that no one ever conservatively follows the rules of the road while driving manually.
- occultist_throw 9y agoSo, in other words, the law is wrong. And the is kept as such for purposes of revenue enhancement (illegal taxation)? I can see a few interesting govt things coming out of "Autos": 1. Revenue from bad laws drops to 0. These vehicles follow the letter of the law. And they have the logs to prove any sort of claim against the former. 2. A false claim is filed (BLM makes about a point about this..) and says driver did X. Is this the person's responsibility, or the company who wrote the AI?
- wyldfire 9y ago> the reality is that the self-driving vehicles are overly cautious. Humans contribute to lots of accidents when they unconventionally yield the right of way. Other drivers which should be yielding are now faced with the unpredictability of the too-cautious ("dangerously" cautious IMO) driver re-claiming their right of way. Or they face the problem of other drivers in other lanes who don't notice that the incorrectly-yielding driver is letting another vehicle into their right-of-way.
- yipopov 9y agoInappropriate yielding should be penalised just like lack of appropriate yielding. At sea the COLREGS require ships with right of way to maintain their course and speed (unless of course they have to give way to another ship, or make evasive maneuvers). Of course fishermen tend to ignore this rule, changing their course and speed whenever convenient to them.
- emodendroket 9y ago> Inappropriate yielding should be penalised just like lack of appropriate yielding. Uh, yeah, I've had too many close calls with people merging to just blindly assert my right of way every time.
- yipopov 9y agoCOLREGS don't say do it blindly, why should you?
- stronglikedan 9y agoI'll typically just sit there until the person yielding their right-of-way gives up and goes. No way I'm pulling in front of someone with the right-of-way only to have them change their mind on a whim. I just assume they're trying to commit insurance fraud and ruin my day, whether they are or not.
- funkymike 9y ago
- otakucode 9y agoI'm sure that when you're trying to engineer a participant in a complex system, factoring in your own impact on that system and how it might come back to affect you is as simple as it sounds. I mean, it's not like self-reference is the generator of intractable complexity in every situation it is found, right?
- bischofs 9y agoI think most people discount the effect that connected cars will have on safety even when you have mixed levels of human operated and level 1-5 AVs. If a car operated by a human has even a basic connected control system in it then a AV can simply communicate that the driver is about to hit the AV and the human operated car will take some basic corrective action. The interesting tech is not only AV but the infrastructure where cars communicate automatically about which lanes there in, what their intentions are etc. The current use case I think is cool is a car comes up to a slow truck and the truck communicates to the car that the passing lane is clear.
- dx034 9y ago> The interesting tech is not only AV but the infrastructure where cars communicate automatically about which lanes there in, what their intentions are etc. I don't think that this will really work. Considering how interaction between tech of different manufacturers works in other areas, I doubt that cars will be able to safely communicate within milliseconds in high risk situations. But they won't need to, they can just use their own sensors to detect what happens around them.
- lostconfused 9y agoSame deal as https://www.theverge.com/2016/4/8/11391840/us-navy-autonomous-ship-sea-hunter-christened https://www.theverge.com/2016/4/8/11391840/us-navy-autonomou... "One consideration in implementing the ship's autonomous functions was making its movements seem human-like. Any maneuvers it makes to avoid collisions have to be detectable by crew on other boats, so changes in direction (which are more easily spotted) are preferable to changes in speed that might be just as effective but are less obvious signals." Obeying rules is nice but you need to account for behaviour of human actors as well.
- Symmetry 9y agoIf autonomous cars become more common this seems like a problem that would solve itself. If more cars on the road are following the letter of the law then people will stop being so surprised to find a car following the law and won't be caught by surprise.
- nickthemagicman 9y agoExactly. And then there will be a tipping point where autonomous cars are the norm with people 'riding' in them and all of our lives will be made easier because autonomous cars will do the driving, and the traffic laws pretty much will be obsolete. It will just be routing autonomous cars various places.
- noonespecial 9y agoAt first (and probably for quite a while) self-driving cars probably need a big sticker that's easy to see so people know that they are going to be "different" on the road. People will rapidly learn to recognize those "damn robot drivers" and adapt the same way they do now when they see the "student driver" placard or the unmistakable sway and surge of an intoxicated driver.
- mst 9y agoI wonder if having the sign the same colour as the L plates but with an A would help, given that learners are often much closer to following the rules and the colour might help human drivers pattern match even if they're not really aware of the A plate yet.
- saosebastiao 9y agoOne of the many ways that drivers can be more predictable to other drivers is to disobey the laws regarding pedestrian rights of way and safety. Drivers not only disobey these laws all the time, but they expect you to do so too, lest they honk and use their car as a weapon to show you how angry they are that you let someone cross the street at an unmarked crosswalk. Unfortunately for all those with fantastical fantasies about our autonomous car future, when they finally get here they’re going to be slow. And that’s a good thing, even if it means the utopia is still slow and congested.
- btbuildem 9y agoA crosswalk by definition is marked. Drivers expect other drivers to follow the rules of the road, not to be nice. Did you hear about the woman in Canada [1] who tried to "be nice" and stopped in the middle of a highway to let some ducks cross? She killed a motorcyclist and his passenger. Don't be nice -- be predictable. Same is the reason why the bots get rear-ended -- everyone expects them to roll through a stop, who in the world does a complete, 3 second stop? [1] https://www.google.ca/search?q=Quebec+woman+stopped+for+ducks+fatal+crash+-who https://www.google.ca/search?q=Quebec+woman+stopped+for+duck...
- saosebastiao 9y agoA crosswalk by definition is a place where pedestrians can cross with the right of way. They absolutely can be and often are unmarked, and exist in practically every first world country, including yours. Here are the rules by state in the US. http://www.ncsl.org/research/transportation/pedestrian-crossing-50-state-summary.aspx http://www.ncsl.org/research/transportation/pedestrian-cross... You should probably learn the rules of the road before you kill someone.
- dragonwriter 9y agoAnytime a vehicle gets rear-ended, fault belongs with the rear-ending vehicle’s driver for either failing to maintain safe following distance or failing to pay adequate attention to conditions in front. And rolling a stop is not following the rules of the road, it is a dangerous violation.
- btbuildem 9y agoI take this as evidence to support my argument that (at least in North America) stop signs are mostly unnecessary and utilized badly. 90% of them could go, some replaced by yield signs, some just removed. An intersection with a line of sight onto cross traffic should not have a stop sign. Maybe the robot drivers will finally drive home how dumb some of our road infrastructure is.
- hamstercat 9y agoThis is purely an anecdote, but in my city it's hard to cross a road as a pedestrian even when there's a stop or a priority light for pedestrians. I've been honked and yelled at for "not crossing fast enough" or whatever. Of course it's not the norm and most drivers are respectful and doing just fine, but even a couple of those in a month gets annoying. I shiver at the thought of having to cross any of these if there was only a yield sign. The principle that I have priority is not important enough over not getting hit by a bad driver. TL;DR: I agree 100% with your point, but I do think bad drivers should be taken into consideration.
- macNchz 9y agoYou're definitely correct that yield signs make it harder to be a pedestrian–most American cities are awful for pedestrians to begin with, outside of a small core downtown area. Even intersections with proper crosswalks and lights are often massively wide with no middle refuge, have traffic crossing the crosswalk from multiple directions/lanes and poor sight lines, require multiple long waits at lights to cross all the various lanes etc. There seems to be a growing use of traffic circles (with yield signs) in the US, which are very much like playing real life Frogger as a pedestrian: cars coming quickly around the circle, often not 100% comfortable with how it works, watching for cars around them instead of paying attention to people crossing at the exits. In a busy intersection you sort of have to step out and try to get someone to stop for you or dash across a gap in traffic–a firm stop required for cars makes for a much more pleasant crossing.
- FilterSweep 9y agoA trivial sign that you find a minor inconvenience probably saved some innocent driver thousands of dollars in insurance payments when a separate, at-fault driver took them to court.
- FilterSweep 9y agoHow much is this exposing humans who are not paying attention (ie: on their phone) while driving? I would like to know to what extent are accidents caused by robot drivers being "odd" versus humans not paying attention and then blaming the robot for being odd. (ED: grammar)
- nickthemagicman 9y agoLol. I love how they say humans need to drive more like robots when it comes to traffic cameras, insurance, and making big money for insurance and gov't. However, when it comes to something that threatens these industries...it's suddenly the humans that need to lighten up? I'm ready to get rid of the entire auto industry once and for all, along with all of the insane amount of income they generate off the backs of regular people.
- DecoPerson 9y agoIn Australia, stop means stop. If it’s safe for you to roll through, there will be a GIVEWAY sign. But if you roll through a STOP you’re an absolute fool who’s risking the lives of yourself and others. We don’t have four-way stop signs. We have roundabouts, or give one street priority and the other STOP signs in cross-streets. I recently passed my California driving test, and I’ve observed that the placement of STOP signs here does not correlate with safety in the same way as Australia and lots of people roll through them. I think self-driving cars would do a lot better in Australia.
- funkymike 9y agoYou've hit on what I see as the big problem with stop signs in the US - they are inconsistent. Sometimes they are used at intersections where failing to stop is very dangerous, but much more often they are used when a yield sign would be sufficient. It conditions people in their normal driving to think of stop signs as recommendations, not requirements. This would seem to increase the danger of intersections where stopping fully is really necessary since people are more inclined to roll pass the stop sign.
- protomyth 9y agoThere is an interesting tangent to this story that I think would answer some of the written rules of the road versus custom. By and large, do the people designing robot cars like to drive? Do they like getting out on the road and driving around?
- DonHopkins 9y agoMy friend was driving in Boston for the first time, and was rear-ended when he stopped for a light that just turned red, while the rain was just starting to sprinkle (so the oil was freshly slicking up the road). The guy was PISSED OFF: "I thought you were going to run the red light too!"
- khalilravanna 9y agoAlmost got rear ended on my motorcycle because of this absurd behavior. Guy just blew by me on the right and ran the red light after I stopped. If there was a car parked on my right I would likely ended up on the pavement and likely the hospital. I've lived in MA most of my life but (and especially after spending the last four years in Austin), Boston is some next level bad driving. I think the most infuriating part about driving in Boston is every week I can feel myself drifting farther and farther from the rules. I always stop at stop signs and red lights. I mean, as a motorcycle rider, you follow the rules or you die. But here, I'm often forced to break the rules so I don't get hit by all the other people breaking the rules. My road-humanity is slowly slipping away. I always used wonder how people get to be so absolutely terrible at driving. It's not like a minor slip up, a rolling stop here, a cutoff that they feel bad about there. It's this insane either A) extreme aggressiveness and willful disdain for the safety of other drivers around them or B) a complete and utter lack of awareness of where they are in relation to other cars and pedestrians. Usually a mix between the two. But what I realized is a good portion of the drivers around cities like Boston have only ever driven around Boston. They've only ever driven in a place that, due to its layout, is a hodgepodge of hard-to-read intersections, a mish-mash of people who don't know where they're going and people who needed to be where they're going 30 minutes ago and heaven forbid you slow them down by another 2 minutes. They learned the rules of Boston, not the rules of a sane, conscientious, safe driver. I swear, if all these people rode a motorcycle for a month or took a MSF class, they'd all become much better drivers and realize the heinous unsafe conditions they perpetuate on a daily basis. That or they'd die because that behavior does not work on a motorycle. At least, not for very long.
- lttlrck 9y agoPerhaps there should be a visual indication on self-driving cars. Not something ridiculous on the roof, maybe something glowing in the license plate area, or upper window area. I imagine most people are more considerate around learner drivers because of the signs, without which you could (quite rationally) get frustrated.
- pmontra 9y agoInstead of making their cars more human like self driving companies could start a campaign similar to the one against jaywalking 90 years ago. This time against human driven cars. http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26073797 http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26073797
- aj_g 9y agoYes, I think this is the solution. Do not conform to the pre-existing culture. Force a new one. Through marketing/consumerism, sheer numbers of self driving cars on the road, I don't care. The current culture needs to die. It's cool that it got us here, but it has so many drawbacks that it's not worth using as a starting point for a new generation of autonomous vehicles.
- joejerryronnie 9y agoPerhaps we need an "autonomous vehicle" sign prominently displayed on the car, similar to how we display "student driver" signs. When I see a student driver, I automatically assume their driving behavior will be significantly different than the other cars on the road and I adjust my driving accordingly.
- Saaster 9y agoAs the number of autonomous vehicles increase, people's behavior will change in time. It is shortsighted to relax the rules for the benefit of current human drivers. Once there is a critical mass of autonomous vehicles, then you can then start modifying the rules to make traffic more efficient with the guarantee that the rules will be followed. If and when rear ending an autonomous vehicle becomes a common problem, awareness will rise and it will become less of a problem. Besides, rear-ending something with a dozen cameras and indisputable telemetry is just a bad idea, financially speaking.
- ChuckMcM 9y agoBasically there are the 'rules' and there is 'how people drive'. As I recall Flocking behavior is largely group consensus driven, where members that disrupt the flock are penalized, ones that conform move at the flock rate, and small optimizations propagate by example. I would expect lines of self driving cars along the right lane of the freeway driving at the speed limit while the non-autonomous drivers speed by them on the left. Merging into that would look scary but would be fairly straight forward as the robot cars would always yield rather than collide. Going to be interesting to see how this evolves out in practice.
- norswap 9y agoTangential to the article, but I'm still waiting to see how these self-driving cars fare in European villages (& elsewhere), which are, shall we say, more challenging to navigate than Californian roads.
- stcredzero 9y agoI think I was in a low speed collision of this nature before autonomous cars even existed, and I was in the role of the autonomous car. I was inching forward at a stop sign because I couldn't see on coming traffic from the left. The driver behind didn't understand what I was doing, lost patience, and deliberately bumped me. (I'm not going to commit to merging into traffic without being able to see what's coming towards me, naturally.)
- zellyn 9y agoThis seems at least lazy, and at worst click-mongering, in light of the recent article on Waymo's testing regime. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/08/inside-waymos-secret-testing-and-simulation-facilities/537648/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/08/insid... It has several discussions on making self-driving cars act more human-like: > It turns out that the hard part is not really the what-if-a-zombie-is-eating-a-person-in-the-road scenarios people dream up, but proceeding confidently and reliably like a human driver within the endless variation of normal traffic. > Waymo seems like it has driving as a technical skill—the speed and direction parts of it—down. It is driving as a human social activity that they’re working on now. What is it to drive “normally,” not just “legally”? And how does one teach an artificial intelligence what that means?
- eleebad 9y agoPeople mention "when there are no more human drivers" like it's the inevitable endgame (probably people who work for autonomous driving companies I'm guessing) I hope I don't live long enough to see the day the law prevents me from riding a bike down the street, or walk down it for that matter. The implication of the above assumption is there is no freedom. (Analogous to gun ownership controversy, btw)
- tonyquart 9y agoI have just also read an article that talks about this matter at https://www.lemberglaw.com/self-driving-autonomous-car-accident-injury-lawyers-attorneys/ https://www.lemberglaw.com/self-driving-autonomous-car-accid.... I actually haven't been able to imagine how if we all use this kind of car. I personally will always choose manual cars if possible.