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My takeaway from the comments in this thread: self-driving Ubers don't drive defensively, almost surely can't "read" pedestrian behavior, and even with lidar ma

My takeaway from the comments in this thread: self-driving Ubers don't drive defensively, almost surely can't "read" pedestrian behavior, and even with lidar may never have seen Elaine Herzberg. Oh, and they speed. This sounds like straight out of the "hell" scenario for driverless cars: "we cannot accept responsibility for what happens to pedestrians and cyclists foolish enough to stray out of their designated safe zone". I'm referencing Robin Chase (the Zipcar founder)'s "heaven or hell" framing - https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2014/04/will-world-driverless-cars-be-heaven-or-hell/8784/ https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2014/04/will-world-dr... For a recent, thoughtful talk about the damage self-driving cars might do to the city if we are not careful, see this Congress for the New Urbanism talk about "Autonomous Vehicles & The Good City" at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utnPEbDNbrE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utnPEbDNbrE It's also worth mentioning that there's a bill (AV START, or S. 1885) in the current Senate that would actually preempt local and state regulation of autonomous car safety, but it has been put on hold.

isaachier 9y ago
I think you might be confusing "defensively" with perfectly. There are situations even defensive driving cannot prevent. For example, any car going 35 mph will need a few feet to brake if something jumps directly in front of it. Defensive driving just accounts for one's surroundings and likely outcomes. Seeing as the cars have been on the road in Arizona for a while, and this is the first we are hearing about a pedestrian collision, it seems the algorithm is pretty safe.
- hnaccy 9y ago
  >Seeing as the cars have been on the road in Arizona for a while, and this is the first we are hearing about a pedestrian collision, it seems the algorithm is pretty safe. One fatality in 4 million miles is safe? Humans are 20 times better than that.
  - invisible 9y ago
    I wonder what the margin of error is on that one in 4 million rate since the sample size is one. Also of note: > Arizona has experienced a surge of pedestrian fatalities recently, with more than 10 in a single week of March in Phoenix alone. The state has the highest rate of pedestrian fatalities in the United States.
    - ajb 9y ago
      The sample size is not one. The sample size is 4 million. The 5% and 95% quantiles of the posterior are roughly one in 11 million and one in 800,000.
  - w0utert 9y ago
    >> One fatality in 4 million miles is safe? Humans are 20 times better than that. And this is considering the fatality rate for all human drivers, including those that are drunk, playing on their smartphone, sleepy, speeding, street racing, etc. I would not be surprised if those cases account for a very sizable majority of fatal car accidents. Now imagine you would reduce those numbers by relatively simple measures that don't involve AI. Let the car enforce speed limits, mandate smartphone companies to have a 'car mode' that cannot be shut off, mandate attention tracking capabilities for cars, dead-zone indicators, automatic emergency braking, etc. Maybe even mandate an alcohol lock, or at the very least a black box that records driving behavior so it can be analyzed in case of a crash, with sever penalties after the fact if the black box shows signs of drunk driving, etc. The list of things you can do to improve road safety without requiring AI cars is endless, yet billions are invested in trying to fully automate driving. This just shows that self-driving cars are not about safety, but purely about business opportunities.
    - ACow_Adonis 9y ago
      And conversely, those 4 million miles will (presumably) be highly biased to safe/above-standard driving conditions. As you've basically said, the human stats include all the very worst drivers in the full range of driving conditions, whereas the auto-cars not only have the very best driving conditions, but likely also have the statistical benefit of a likely number of cases where the human actually stepped in and upped the auto-car score even further (since we can't account for the auto-car deaths/fatalities that humans have successfully stepped in and stopped).
      - w0utert 9y ago
        Yes, so far the statistics we have about the safety of AI cars are mostly meaningless to say anything useful about how they would scale if applied universally. Another thing that bothers me is how often the argument 'human drivers are terrible, far worse than computers for situations A, B, C, etc' is used to suggest that AI systems will improve road safety. I will be the first to admit that many people are terrible drivers, they make mistakes, don't pay enough attention, don't obey traffic laws, have bad reaction times, etc, no argument there. But so far I have never seen any statistics about how many of the accidents caused by these kinds of human failures actually lead to fatalities. Taking the human out of the equation could in theory improve all kinds of car accidents, but how many would be just fender-benders as opposed to road fatalities? It's not like it is super-easy to accidentally cause a fatal road accident, and everyone knows one or more people who were involved in one. Who can prove that AI cars will not decrease the total number of accidents of any kind, but increase the kinds of accidents with fatalities, like this one with the Uber car? Maybe human drivers, with all their faults, would have avoided this particular accident by driving more defensively or using social cues to be more prepared for this woman crossing the street? I'm not trying to make an argument about the viability of AI cars that are safer than humans here by the way. I personally don't believe AI cars will ever be safer overall than humans in all possible situations that people drive in, but that's a different discussion. What bugs me is that suddenly it seems as if the whole world is willing to bend over backwards to interpret statistics about the presumed safety of AI cars in the most favorable way possible, and at the same time ignore all these relatively simple things that could actually improve safety right now, at much lower costs than developing fully autonomous cars.
- Cybiote 9y ago
  An important observation is that the probability of death drops very rapidly with drops in speed. A rough calculation shows that at 38 mph and a near instant reaction (as a robot should) would within ~1 second of applied breaking force, allow going from a ~70% chance of death to ~5%. A very rough calculation: v(t) = -μgt + v_0. To reach 32 kph or 20 mph, t ~= 0.82/μ, guessing a fair μ=0.8 and the chart here https://ec.europa.eu/transport/road_safety/specialist/knowledge/speed/speed_is_a_central_issue_in_road_safety/speed_and_the_injury_risk_for_different_speed_levels_en https://ec.europa.eu/transport/road_safety/specialist/knowle...
  - sol_remmy 9y ago
    Except if the speed limit is 35, you need to drive 35. You can't drive 25 just to be more "defensive", that will get you a ticket.
    - Balgair 9y ago
      Typically, no. There are some municipalities and areas of road where there is a minimum speed limit, but in the US, those are very rare. Granted, a law enforcement officer has wide jurisdiction to determine if you are 'safe' to drive and a low speed may become unsafe. But they are unlikely to ticket you and are more likely to try to help you out. Driving under the speed limit may be annoying, but it is nearly-universally not illegal.
      - DoTheNeedful 9y ago
        > Typically, no. Typically it will get you pulled over. Obstructing the flow of traffic is a thing.
      - 1812Overture 9y ago
        It's actually more dangerous as it forces other cars to change lanes to get around you.
        galdosdi 9y ago
- InclinedPlane 9y ago
  I think you might not be familiar with the concept of defensive driving. Defensive driving means slowing down and paying more attention in areas of low visibility, especially if there are likely pedestrian crossings. It means increasing your following distance. It means increasing the odds that even if something unlikely happens you, the driver, will still be in a better position to react, or you will be less likely to cause harm. It's not about prevention, it's about risk management and harm reduction. This is definitely something that is likely to be difficult to teach to autonomous systems.
  - danmaz74 9y ago
    > This is definitely something that is likely to be difficult to teach to autonomous systems. Why? What you listed seem like conditions that should be easy enough to recognize even with simple algorithms.
    - TeMPOraL 9y ago
      Yup. An algorithm should be in much better position to recognize its confidence about what it sees and can happen, and alter the driving speed to reduce the amount of uncertain spots that fall within its stopping range. That is, unless they use neural network magic black boxes to implement the self-driving part.
      - carlmr 9y ago
        >That is, unless they use neural network magic black boxes to implement the self-driving part. Is this actually done? I thought neural networks were more or less used for the vision system to detect parts of the scene (pedestrians, stop-signs, etc). This is the only area where to me it makes sense to take the blackbox tadeoff right now.
        rcxdude 9y ago
        Neural nets are also likely to be used to model the behavior of other road users (i.e. 'how is this car/pedestrian/etc likely to move in the next few seconds'?). No-one seems to be seriously considering an end-to-end neural network (i.e. inputs are sensors, outputs are throttle and steering wheel), but neural nets are pervasive components of the full system.
- freyir 9y ago
  > any car going 35 mph will need a few feet to brake if something jumps directly in front of it. It seems like you're working pretty hard to justify this woman's death. She was apparently walking her bicycle through an intersection. Did she grab her bike and jump directly in front of the car? Maybe, but let's not jump to assumptions. > it seems the algorithm is pretty safe It ran at least six red lights in San Francisco and would apparently swerve into the bike lane when making turns, now it's killed a pedestrian. It just doesn't seem that good. How many similar incidents have you heard about with Waymo? They've driven more than twice as many miles in city streets.
  - kwillets 9y ago
    I agree but one nitpick: merging into the bike lane before a right turn is the correct maneuver.
    - TheCoelacanth 9y ago
      At least in some jurisdictions. I remember seeing articles about Uber getting in trouble for doing this in jurisdictions where it is not the correct behavior and for not doing it in jurisdictions where it is the correct behavior.
    - freyir 9y ago
      "Rather than merging into bike lanes early to make right-hand turns, as per California state law, the Uber vehicle reportedly pulled across the bike lanes at the last second, risking collisions with oncoming cyclists" https://www.theverge.com/2016/12/20/14020720/uber-self-driving-cars-bike-lane-problem https://www.theverge.com/2016/12/20/14020720/uber-self-drivi...
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- galdosdi 9y ago
  Judging based on anecdotal feelings, you find that it "seems the algorithm is pretty safe" But if you looked at the data (just numbers I've seen repeated a lot in this thread, heh), you'd find Uber's achieved 1 fatality after only around a couple million miles of driving. The average human being goes a hundred million miles between fatalities. Not a lot of data but so far Uber looks 50 times more dangerous than an average human driver. They have a lot of catching up to do
googlemike 9y ago
The google maps streetview sign says 45, so the car was not speeding. The article most likely had a typo... edit: https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/85ozqr/exclusive_tempe_police_chief_says_early_probe/dvz5ztt/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/85ozqr/exc...
- InclinedPlane 9y ago
  Do we know which way the car was going? The speed limit is 35 in that section going southbound. https://goo.gl/maps/GNfKZzePD9t https://goo.gl/maps/GNfKZzePD9t
  - danso 9y ago
    The Uber was going northbound.
    - freyir 9y ago
      Google Street View says 45 MPH, but they might have change it in the past seven months. https://www.google.com/maps/@33.4350531,-111.941492,3a,75y,338.41h,81.08t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sx-K4_17J8MVthFRapvIa2A!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.com/maps/@33.4350531,-111.941492,3a,75y,3...
- pella 9y ago
  "The police said that the vehicle was traveling 38 miles per hour in a 35 mile-per-hour zone, according to the Chronicle—though a Google Street View shot of the roadway taken last July shows a speed limit of 45 miles per hour along that stretch of road." (https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/03/police-chief-uber-self-driving-car-likely-not-at-fault-in-fatal-crash/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/03/police-chief-uber-self-...)
ShorsHammer 9y ago
I don't see why autonomous vehicles are so big. Virtually all travel is one person, ideally it would be a tiny 4 wheel electric with the sole passenger highly reclined. The hangover from internal combustion is real.
- numismatex 9y ago
  Because A) Crash-safety and B) Luxury still being in the bigger packages.
- dingaling 9y ago
  Even the original DARPA Grand Challenge in 2005 was won by a system installed on VW Taureg, an enormous two-tonne SUV.
  - ovi256 9y ago
    They used a big SUV to get rough road capability, necessary for the Grand Challenge, and to have the space to rack all the equipment they needed. 13 years later, an Nvidia Jetson (a single board computer) has more computing power than their whole setup, and a medium drone can carry it.
- ckinnan 9y ago
  As autonomy is implemented and refined, and safety improves dramatically, new regulatory and economic models will emerge. This will spark design innovation. No doubt both single rider and shuttle-bus options will emerge, with much lighter builds as crashes decrease.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- nikanj 9y ago
  The same reason non-autonomous ones are so big. It's a status symbol, plus there's the arms race of "bigger truck wins in an accident"
  - 9y ago
Theodores 9y ago
Thanks for the Youtube video, that is making sense to me now, it explains what I see as a cyclist. I have thought about 'investing' in an electric vehicle and participating in the brave new future that will eventually be autonomous driving machines, but it is quite badly thought out. But I think I will stick with the bicycle, it really is the fastest transport when combined with rail, there is no quicker way across town and these autonomous cars are not going to change that. Public transport and bikes are the only way.
cthalupa 9y ago
>Oh, and they speed. 3mph variance is perfectly normal even on modern cruise control. And even on most modern cards, what you see on the speedometer is often off by ~1 mph at low speeds, and even more at higher speeds. (This is the reason you will often see people talk about 'GPS verified' speeds when it comes to talking about the top speed they have achieved in a car). Federal law in the US only requires they be accurate within 5% when using a standard tire size on normal pavement with the recommended tire air pressure. If you have over or under-inflated tires or have upgraded your car to larger tires for whatever reason, this 5% might become a very different. Even if the Uber was perfectly maintained, that could be 1.75mph variance on the speedometer @ 35mph. Keeping to exactly the speed limit also just isn't how anyone drives. It wouldn't be, even if speedometers were perfectly accurate. It's impractical. It's hugely fuel inefficient. Everyday driving, be it by person or cruise control, involves accelerating and then letting off the gas. This means if you are targeting a speed limit of 35, you're swinging a few mph in either direction. Add in things like changing road conditions - every highway I've ever driven on will have random patches of road that are made up of different material or different levels of wear after having had potholes, etc, repaired - changes in road incline, weather conditions (winds), or even the behavior of cars in front of you - a vehicle changing lanes is going to result in different air resistance, especially larger vehicles, and plenty of other variables, makes the idea that any vehicle should be kept at exactly the speed limit is pretty unreasonable. Speedometers aren't perfect. Cruise control or even excellent human driving will never keep you at exactly the speed limit. While saying going '38 MPH in a 35 MPH Zone is speeding' is technically accurate, it's not particularly useful.
- huhtenberg 9y ago
  > 3mph variance is perfectly normal even on modern cruise control. That'd be a variance between true ground speed and the speed as estimated by the car. Chances are that the 38mph number came from the car itself, so there should be no "variance", leave alone 3mph over the limit. Modern cruise controls are perfectly capable of maintaining set speed, even at a considerable downhill.
  - cthalupa 9y ago

isaachier 9y ago

I think you might be confusing "defensively" with perfectly. There are situations even defensive driving cannot prevent. For example, any car going 35 mph will need a few feet to brake if something jumps directly in front of it. Defensive driving just accounts for one's surroundings and likely outcomes. Seeing as the cars have been on the road in Arizona for a while, and this is the first we are hearing about a pedestrian collision, it seems the algorithm is pretty safe.

hnaccy 9y ago
>Seeing as the cars have been on the road in Arizona for a while, and this is the first we are hearing about a pedestrian collision, it seems the algorithm is pretty safe. One fatality in 4 million miles is safe? Humans are 20 times better than that.
- invisible 9y ago
  I wonder what the margin of error is on that one in 4 million rate since the sample size is one. Also of note: > Arizona has experienced a surge of pedestrian fatalities recently, with more than 10 in a single week of March in Phoenix alone. The state has the highest rate of pedestrian fatalities in the United States.
  - ajb 9y ago
    The sample size is not one. The sample size is 4 million. The 5% and 95% quantiles of the posterior are roughly one in 11 million and one in 800,000.
- w0utert 9y ago
  >> One fatality in 4 million miles is safe? Humans are 20 times better than that. And this is considering the fatality rate for all human drivers, including those that are drunk, playing on their smartphone, sleepy, speeding, street racing, etc. I would not be surprised if those cases account for a very sizable majority of fatal car accidents. Now imagine you would reduce those numbers by relatively simple measures that don't involve AI. Let the car enforce speed limits, mandate smartphone companies to have a 'car mode' that cannot be shut off, mandate attention tracking capabilities for cars, dead-zone indicators, automatic emergency braking, etc. Maybe even mandate an alcohol lock, or at the very least a black box that records driving behavior so it can be analyzed in case of a crash, with sever penalties after the fact if the black box shows signs of drunk driving, etc. The list of things you can do to improve road safety without requiring AI cars is endless, yet billions are invested in trying to fully automate driving. This just shows that self-driving cars are not about safety, but purely about business opportunities.
  - ACow_Adonis 9y ago
    And conversely, those 4 million miles will (presumably) be highly biased to safe/above-standard driving conditions. As you've basically said, the human stats include all the very worst drivers in the full range of driving conditions, whereas the auto-cars not only have the very best driving conditions, but likely also have the statistical benefit of a likely number of cases where the human actually stepped in and upped the auto-car score even further (since we can't account for the auto-car deaths/fatalities that humans have successfully stepped in and stopped).
    - w0utert 9y ago
      Yes, so far the statistics we have about the safety of AI cars are mostly meaningless to say anything useful about how they would scale if applied universally. Another thing that bothers me is how often the argument 'human drivers are terrible, far worse than computers for situations A, B, C, etc' is used to suggest that AI systems will improve road safety. I will be the first to admit that many people are terrible drivers, they make mistakes, don't pay enough attention, don't obey traffic laws, have bad reaction times, etc, no argument there. But so far I have never seen any statistics about how many of the accidents caused by these kinds of human failures actually lead to fatalities. Taking the human out of the equation could in theory improve all kinds of car accidents, but how many would be just fender-benders as opposed to road fatalities? It's not like it is super-easy to accidentally cause a fatal road accident, and everyone knows one or more people who were involved in one. Who can prove that AI cars will not decrease the total number of accidents of any kind, but increase the kinds of accidents with fatalities, like this one with the Uber car? Maybe human drivers, with all their faults, would have avoided this particular accident by driving more defensively or using social cues to be more prepared for this woman crossing the street? I'm not trying to make an argument about the viability of AI cars that are safer than humans here by the way. I personally don't believe AI cars will ever be safer overall than humans in all possible situations that people drive in, but that's a different discussion. What bugs me is that suddenly it seems as if the whole world is willing to bend over backwards to interpret statistics about the presumed safety of AI cars in the most favorable way possible, and at the same time ignore all these relatively simple things that could actually improve safety right now, at much lower costs than developing fully autonomous cars.
Cybiote 9y ago
An important observation is that the probability of death drops very rapidly with drops in speed. A rough calculation shows that at 38 mph and a near instant reaction (as a robot should) would within ~1 second of applied breaking force, allow going from a ~70% chance of death to ~5%. A very rough calculation: v(t) = -μgt + v_0. To reach 32 kph or 20 mph, t ~= 0.82/μ, guessing a fair μ=0.8 and the chart here https://ec.europa.eu/transport/road_safety/specialist/knowledge/speed/speed_is_a_central_issue_in_road_safety/speed_and_the_injury_risk_for_different_speed_levels_en https://ec.europa.eu/transport/road_safety/specialist/knowle...
- sol_remmy 9y ago
  Except if the speed limit is 35, you need to drive 35. You can't drive 25 just to be more "defensive", that will get you a ticket.
  - Balgair 9y ago
    Typically, no. There are some municipalities and areas of road where there is a minimum speed limit, but in the US, those are very rare. Granted, a law enforcement officer has wide jurisdiction to determine if you are 'safe' to drive and a low speed may become unsafe. But they are unlikely to ticket you and are more likely to try to help you out. Driving under the speed limit may be annoying, but it is nearly-universally not illegal.
    - DoTheNeedful 9y ago
      > Typically, no. Typically it will get you pulled over. Obstructing the flow of traffic is a thing.
    - 1812Overture 9y ago
      It's actually more dangerous as it forces other cars to change lanes to get around you.
      - galdosdi 9y ago
InclinedPlane 9y ago
I think you might not be familiar with the concept of defensive driving. Defensive driving means slowing down and paying more attention in areas of low visibility, especially if there are likely pedestrian crossings. It means increasing your following distance. It means increasing the odds that even if something unlikely happens you, the driver, will still be in a better position to react, or you will be less likely to cause harm. It's not about prevention, it's about risk management and harm reduction. This is definitely something that is likely to be difficult to teach to autonomous systems.
- danmaz74 9y ago
  > This is definitely something that is likely to be difficult to teach to autonomous systems. Why? What you listed seem like conditions that should be easy enough to recognize even with simple algorithms.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    Yup. An algorithm should be in much better position to recognize its confidence about what it sees and can happen, and alter the driving speed to reduce the amount of uncertain spots that fall within its stopping range. That is, unless they use neural network magic black boxes to implement the self-driving part.
    - carlmr 9y ago
      >That is, unless they use neural network magic black boxes to implement the self-driving part. Is this actually done? I thought neural networks were more or less used for the vision system to detect parts of the scene (pedestrians, stop-signs, etc). This is the only area where to me it makes sense to take the blackbox tadeoff right now.
      - rcxdude 9y ago
        Neural nets are also likely to be used to model the behavior of other road users (i.e. 'how is this car/pedestrian/etc likely to move in the next few seconds'?). No-one seems to be seriously considering an end-to-end neural network (i.e. inputs are sensors, outputs are throttle and steering wheel), but neural nets are pervasive components of the full system.
freyir 9y ago
> any car going 35 mph will need a few feet to brake if something jumps directly in front of it. It seems like you're working pretty hard to justify this woman's death. She was apparently walking her bicycle through an intersection. Did she grab her bike and jump directly in front of the car? Maybe, but let's not jump to assumptions. > it seems the algorithm is pretty safe It ran at least six red lights in San Francisco and would apparently swerve into the bike lane when making turns, now it's killed a pedestrian. It just doesn't seem that good. How many similar incidents have you heard about with Waymo? They've driven more than twice as many miles in city streets.
- kwillets 9y ago
  I agree but one nitpick: merging into the bike lane before a right turn is the correct maneuver.
  - TheCoelacanth 9y ago
    At least in some jurisdictions. I remember seeing articles about Uber getting in trouble for doing this in jurisdictions where it is not the correct behavior and for not doing it in jurisdictions where it is the correct behavior.
  - freyir 9y ago
    "Rather than merging into bike lanes early to make right-hand turns, as per California state law, the Uber vehicle reportedly pulled across the bike lanes at the last second, risking collisions with oncoming cyclists" https://www.theverge.com/2016/12/20/14020720/uber-self-driving-cars-bike-lane-problem https://www.theverge.com/2016/12/20/14020720/uber-self-drivi...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
galdosdi 9y ago
Judging based on anecdotal feelings, you find that it "seems the algorithm is pretty safe" But if you looked at the data (just numbers I've seen repeated a lot in this thread, heh), you'd find Uber's achieved 1 fatality after only around a couple million miles of driving. The average human being goes a hundred million miles between fatalities. Not a lot of data but so far Uber looks 50 times more dangerous than an average human driver. They have a lot of catching up to do

googlemike 9y ago

The google maps streetview sign says 45, so the car was not speeding. The article most likely had a typo... edit: https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/85ozqr/exclusive_tempe_police_chief_says_early_probe/dvz5ztt/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/85ozqr/exc...

InclinedPlane 9y ago
Do we know which way the car was going? The speed limit is 35 in that section going southbound. https://goo.gl/maps/GNfKZzePD9t https://goo.gl/maps/GNfKZzePD9t
- danso 9y ago
  The Uber was going northbound.
  - freyir 9y ago
    Google Street View says 45 MPH, but they might have change it in the past seven months. https://www.google.com/maps/@33.4350531,-111.941492,3a,75y,338.41h,81.08t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sx-K4_17J8MVthFRapvIa2A!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.com/maps/@33.4350531,-111.941492,3a,75y,3...
pella 9y ago
"The police said that the vehicle was traveling 38 miles per hour in a 35 mile-per-hour zone, according to the Chronicle—though a Google Street View shot of the roadway taken last July shows a speed limit of 45 miles per hour along that stretch of road." (https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/03/police-chief-uber-self-driving-car-likely-not-at-fault-in-fatal-crash/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/03/police-chief-uber-self-...)

ShorsHammer 9y ago

I don't see why autonomous vehicles are so big. Virtually all travel is one person, ideally it would be a tiny 4 wheel electric with the sole passenger highly reclined. The hangover from internal combustion is real.

numismatex 9y ago
Because A) Crash-safety and B) Luxury still being in the bigger packages.
dingaling 9y ago
Even the original DARPA Grand Challenge in 2005 was won by a system installed on VW Taureg, an enormous two-tonne SUV.
- ovi256 9y ago
  They used a big SUV to get rough road capability, necessary for the Grand Challenge, and to have the space to rack all the equipment they needed. 13 years later, an Nvidia Jetson (a single board computer) has more computing power than their whole setup, and a medium drone can carry it.
ckinnan 9y ago
As autonomy is implemented and refined, and safety improves dramatically, new regulatory and economic models will emerge. This will spark design innovation. No doubt both single rider and shuttle-bus options will emerge, with much lighter builds as crashes decrease.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
nikanj 9y ago
The same reason non-autonomous ones are so big. It's a status symbol, plus there's the arms race of "bigger truck wins in an accident"
- 9y ago

Theodores 9y ago

Thanks for the Youtube video, that is making sense to me now, it explains what I see as a cyclist. I have thought about 'investing' in an electric vehicle and participating in the brave new future that will eventually be autonomous driving machines, but it is quite badly thought out. But I think I will stick with the bicycle, it really is the fastest transport when combined with rail, there is no quicker way across town and these autonomous cars are not going to change that. Public transport and bikes are the only way.

cthalupa 9y ago

>Oh, and they speed. 3mph variance is perfectly normal even on modern cruise control. And even on most modern cards, what you see on the speedometer is often off by ~1 mph at low speeds, and even more at higher speeds. (This is the reason you will often see people talk about 'GPS verified' speeds when it comes to talking about the top speed they have achieved in a car). Federal law in the US only requires they be accurate within 5% when using a standard tire size on normal pavement with the recommended tire air pressure. If you have over or under-inflated tires or have upgraded your car to larger tires for whatever reason, this 5% might become a very different. Even if the Uber was perfectly maintained, that could be 1.75mph variance on the speedometer @ 35mph. Keeping to exactly the speed limit also just isn't how anyone drives. It wouldn't be, even if speedometers were perfectly accurate. It's impractical. It's hugely fuel inefficient. Everyday driving, be it by person or cruise control, involves accelerating and then letting off the gas. This means if you are targeting a speed limit of 35, you're swinging a few mph in either direction. Add in things like changing road conditions - every highway I've ever driven on will have random patches of road that are made up of different material or different levels of wear after having had potholes, etc, repaired - changes in road incline, weather conditions (winds), or even the behavior of cars in front of you - a vehicle changing lanes is going to result in different air resistance, especially larger vehicles, and plenty of other variables, makes the idea that any vehicle should be kept at exactly the speed limit is pretty unreasonable. Speedometers aren't perfect. Cruise control or even excellent human driving will never keep you at exactly the speed limit. While saying going '38 MPH in a 35 MPH Zone is speeding' is technically accurate, it's not particularly useful.

huhtenberg 9y ago
> 3mph variance is perfectly normal even on modern cruise control. That'd be a variance between true ground speed and the speed as estimated by the car. Chances are that the 38mph number came from the car itself, so there should be no "variance", leave alone 3mph over the limit. Modern cruise controls are perfectly capable of maintaining set speed, even at a considerable downhill.
- cthalupa 9y ago