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Apple self-driving car in accident: California DMV filing
- throwaway255 8y agoDupe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17889132 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17889132
- comex 8y agoThe actual filing: https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/36a7cf14-592c-4197-9226-fa40bb652c62/Apple_082418.pdf?MOD=AJPERES&CVID= https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/36a7cf14-592c-4197...
- trevyn 8y agoWas in autonomous mode, “waiting to merge”.
- GhostVII 8y agoDoesn't seem particularly notable, they got rear ended at 15 miles an hour while essentially stopped.
- janekm 8y agoThe notable part is that it appears to confirm that Apple is testing self-driving cars.
- diminoten 8y agoIs this the result of the old, "Every company that gets big enough also becomes an investment firm." or does Apple really think autonomous cars fit into its portfolio of technology?
- toomuchtodo 8y agoEvery company that gets big enough becomes a VC firm, which is natural when you've got a firehose of money and don't want to miss out on the Next Big Thing.
- ENGNR 8y agoIf Apple can take over transport and wall it off for somebody then it just further cements their high ground I fully expect that you won't be able to tether an Android (or any open specced) phone to an Apple car, like iMessage and Apple TV, and they'll use further cement their grip on existing customers
- jarjoura 8y agoIt only mattered in the last couple of years that you could buy a car that supported Android Auto. So as long as Bluetooth works, I think that gets you 80% of the way there. Maps seems to be the only real UI app allowed anyway, and hopefully Google releases a version for iOS 12.
- MBCook 8y agoI can’t imagine Google NOT releasing that update. Ever since CarPlay first came out people have been complaining about this and blaming Apple. When iOS 12 was first unveiled a huge chunk of the comments I saw were people happy about this exact feature. Now that there’s absolutely no reason Google can’t do this… it seems moronic said they would choose to hold the feature back. What would the benefit be? They wouldn’t get the data collection because the app isn’t running, and how many people would realistically switch to Android over this single decision? When it comes to the Apple car I guess part of the question is… can people even buy them? It’s not as much of an issue if it’s a fleet car or a cab kind of situation. It’ll be very interesting to see what Apple does if that day comes.
- userbinator 8y agoThe important part is that it got rear-ended while waiting to merge --- I suspect a strong factor in this was the fact that the car behind it was expecting it to go and merge, but it suddenly stopped instead. Even for a human, merging into flowing traffic is tricky and one of the more difficult maneuvers; combine that with a (not obviously?) self-driving car that doesn't behave quite like human drivers expect, and I can see how this could happen. If I saw a clearly-marked "autonomous test vehicle" I'd probably stay far away from it, but I suspect this one wasn't. Imagine the surprise of the human driver who thought the car in front that he hit was just driven by another idiot...
- Mizza 8y agoI wonder if it would be more useful if these cars had more lights than normal cars (yellow, green, etc.), so that they could signal their intentions before they act.
- refurb 8y agoLooks like it happened here: https://goo.gl/maps/RHiVTRSuDJ62 https://goo.gl/maps/RHiVTRSuDJ62 Pretty short merge lane, more of a surface street than a highway. Probably not atypical for a car to stop to wait for an opening to merge.
- AceJohnny2 8y agoLawrence Expressway is terrible. I frequently see cars stopped at these "merge lanes".
- saagarjha 8y agoBut that’s what you’re supposed to do here, right? There’s a yield sign.
- userbinator 8y agoYou're not supposed to stop at a yield sign if there isn't traffic preventing you from merging. That's why it's a yield sign, not a stop sign. Since the report mentions Apple's car was moving slowly (~1mph) when it got hit, I suspect what could've happened is it may have just released the brakes and was about to accelerate into the merge, meaning the car coming from behind would see both a clear path in front of it and its brake lights off. There's a comment here about the car behind following too closely, but if you look at regular traffic and your own driving behaviour, you'll find that you subconsciously monitor and anticipate the behaviour of the cars around you --- meaning that almost everyone is technically "following too closely" to expect the car in front to suddenly and rapidly brake to a complete halt. Self-driving cars are far less predictable in that sense. If you come up behind a car in a merge lane with its brake lights off and no traffic obstructing it, you would not expect it to be slowing down or even stopped, because your past knowledge has taught you that a car in this condition is almost certainly going to be accelerating.
- stephengillie 8y agoIt's like a humble-brag form of advertising that you've got a self-driving car program.
- toasterlovin 8y agoSomehow I don't think Tim Cook is the kind of guy who does shit just so he can brag about it.
- stephengillie 8y agoWhy waste an opportune situation?
- somerandomness 8y agoAlso interesting to see all autonomous accident reports: https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/autonomousveh_ol316+ https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/auton...
- mygo 8y agoAlthough the title is not inaccurate, we don’t have all the details yet. “Apple self-driving car rear ended” would be a more accurate report.. especially considering what comes to mind for the average person when someone mentions a self-driving car in an accident.
- riffic 8y ago#CrashNotAccident https://daringfireball.net/linked/2018/03/19/crashes-not-accidents https://daringfireball.net/linked/2018/03/19/crashes-not-acc...
- tialaramex 8y agoNo, they're accidents. The impetus behind trying to rename accidents is that Americans are perversely enthusiastic about revenge. Accepting that it was an accident doesn't stop us trying to ensure it doesn't happen again, that is indeed exactly what Accident Investigators are for, and you'll notice they aren't called "No, it wasn't an accident, it was a crash" Investigators. By re-framing this as "not an accident" we get to insist there's somebody to blame, and we can start looking for revenge. That won't do a thing to undo what happened or prevent it from happening again, it's one of our nastiest human traits and it needs to be fought, not supported by reinforcing it with language. This (random example from another open tab) is what investigating accidents looks like: https://www.gov.uk/raib-reports/report-13-2018-near-miss-with-track-workers-at-pelaw-north-junction https://www.gov.uk/raib-reports/report-13-2018-near-miss-wit... The investigators wanted to understand everything that went wrong, and how it contributed to what happened (two people nearly got hit by a train), and then they used that information to recommend how to avoid it happening again.
- fucking_tragedy 8y agoThe crashes, not accidents talking point is heavily pushed by law enforcement, as well, because it aids in getting convictions. A jury that is primed to look for someone to blame in an accident is more likely to convict. Reminder that the conviction rate in the US is over 90%.
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- MBCook 8y agoI wonder when we will see the first accident between two self driving cars in autonomous mode. Especially between different brands.
- sorokod 8y agoI think especially between same brand. The legal acrobatics by the manufacturer will be interesting to watch.
- MBCook 8y agoBetween the same brand doesn’t seem to unlikely to me. If you have a bunch of cars stored somewhere overnight (so you can fuel them or charge them or whatever) it’s easy enough to imagine some situation where two of them run into each other trying to get out of the lot. Or one going in one coming. Out on the road it’s kind of the same thing. There are lots of Waymo cars in city X, so if they’re going to hit another automated vehicle there’s a decent chance it would be one of their own. To get a crash between different brands they both have to be in the same space, running automated, at the same time, and both make or be unable to avoid mistakes. That seems less likely, at least right now. Of course if one brand runs into itself more than once I imagine the press will have a field day.
- coatmatter 8y agoThose interested (or not interested) in self-driving cars might find this thread quite interesting: https://twitter.com/amir/status/1034442936774258688 https://twitter.com/amir/status/1034442936774258688 "Just out: The truth about Waymo..."
- sofon 8y agoInteresting thread. I think self-driving cars are short term doomed, and we've doomed them. The problem is we view them as a purely technical problem where-as the real issues are sociological. It's not possible to create a self-driving car that acts perfectly on roads designed for humans (arguably, it's not possible to have humans acts perfectly either). There are two solutions to this problem. Either shift human expectations such that they accept the failures of self-driving cars, or change the roads to make it easier for automated cars to drive on them. I believe we should overwhelmingly be doing the second. We should be augmenting and instrumenting our road infrastructure to make self-driving easier. And in particular, we should be concentrating our efforts where this is easier, and has the most value (probably transit).
- protomyth 8y agoInfrastructure spending is problematic. Heck, many states cannot even keep their bridges in good repair. I get the feeling that to enhance the roads, big tech needs to come up with a standard and finance it’s inclusion when major road work is done. Otherwise, I don’t see a way forward with augmented roads.
- egd 8y agoI genuinely do not understand Apple's move into this space. They've made a trillion dollar business out of small, high-margin electronics that consumers replace every couple year. Most of their products serve to enhance this business model or have high complementarity from a technology standpoint. The self-driving car project feels like an incredibly expensive diversion from this core business with limited technological overlap to their existing product lines. I'm trying not to see this as "Post-Jobs Apple finally jumps the shark," but I'm just not getting what the vision here is. This isn't snark, by the way - I'd really love to hear a good model for what they're doing.
- staticassertion 8y agoI'd imagine it's a matter of leveraging existing resources (or resources they could recoup by moving back to their core upon failure) for a chance at a massive, global business.
- monocasa 8y agoOr a new field means lots of potential patents to sit on.
- staticassertion 8y agoBut that's often the case. The thing is that 'smart cars' are not so different from where Apple is already comfortable, and where they want to move. Let's say they invest massive funds into ML, hardware, etc just to fail in the car market. They can recoup a lot of that by just taking the tech they've built and reinvesting it into their comfort zone.
- computerex 8y agoHow do you figure? Can you explain where the overlap is between Apple's current tech investments and autonomous vehicles?
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- imranq 8y agoWhy can’t all these companies just make one self driving car? Seems like a lot of overlapping effort with all of these separate initiatives towards the same goal. The technology is agnostic unless you redesign the car from the ground up. All the training data and model development should be open source with some monetary incentive for the organization that contributes the most
- saurik 8y agoIn all seriousness: because mankind is depressing and the only system of incentives we have requires people to compete with each other rather than cooperate.
- glenra 8y agoCompetition is a discovery process; if we knew the right answer ahead of time we might not need it. Having ten companies try ten different strategies is likely to find the right answer - the product that best fits our current set of technical/financial/social constraints - faster than having ten companies get together and hold joint meetings trying to get cooperation on ONE strategy only to discover it doesn't work, so they hold more meetings to convince the group to try ANOTHER strategy, discover it doesn't work either...until decades have passed. Attacking this kind of challenge serially instead of in parallel, by the time they have something that works the problem domain is likely to have entirely changed. And sure, independent companies competing might all fail - some problems just can't be solved - but the odds of success are better. It's like the difference between having a dozen archers all aim arrows at a target, versus having the dozen archers all try together to cooperatively fire one arrow at the target.
- ObsoleteNerd 8y agoWhat's wrong with 10 companies working together to try 10 different things, then eliminate the poorer performing ones, increasing resources on the better ones, until there's 1 winner they've all agreed on? Seems a lot more logical than 10 companies working on 10 things where 8 doing the exact same thing and wasting 8x the resources.
- protomyth 8y agoWhat is the black box situation with these cars? Is there a dump of the last minute before the accident that the programmers or NTSB could look at to see what and why the car made its decisions? I am curious if the merge looked different from a human that got it rear ended.
- apo 8y agoApple executives have never publicly spoken about the company’s self-driving car program, but filings in a criminal court case last month confirmed that the company had at least 5,000 employees working on the project and that it was working on circuit boards and a “proprietary chip” related to self-driving cars. That sounds like a lot of people working on this project. The estimate appears to come from this July 2018 article: But the complaint also for the first time gave an official account of some details of the self-driving car program. About 5,000 employees were authorized to access information about the program, including about 2,700 “core” employees with access to secret databases. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-autonomous/criminal-case-sheds-light-on-apple-self-driving-car-technology-idUSKBN1K109O https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-autonomous/criminal... What's the plan here? To retrofit a Lexus or similar car with self-driving features or build a self-driving car from scratch?
- listic 8y ago> Instead of many stand-alone embedded systems each doing one thing, we’ll have cheap dumb sensors and actuators controlled by software on a single central control board, running some sort of operating system Is the approach of having a network of stand-alone embedded systems each doing one thing really going away? I thought it is a sensible way of handling complexity.