6 ms·

It's also the easiest solution and probably the only viable one right now. The difficulty jump from "Mostly straight line highway driving" to "good fucking luc

It's also the easiest solution and probably the only viable one right now. The difficulty jump from "Mostly straight line highway driving" to "good fucking luck city streets" is extreme

egeozcan 5y ago
In city streets, the car sometimes fails to correctly detect the speed limit, let alone driving autonomously. Also the Germans apparently love making the rules in every junction different, and while most people are capable of intense street-sign following (I feel like a robot when driving, yeah the irony is not lost on me), I doubt a computer can do that too, especially when every mistake has a bigger chance to end up with an accident, compared to (I imagine) anywhere else in the world, because a typical driver here doesn't want to calculate the risk of another failing to follow the rules correctly. Look at driving fail videos from Germany and the ones from Russia and the USA, you'll regularly see something they show as "huge mistake OMG" in Germany being unremarkable (if not business as usual) when compared to others.
- mrtksn 5y ago
  Actually, the speed limits are not imposed randomly and you can usually "sense" the limit from the surroundings and the structure of the road. I don't really look at speed limits when driving, if I'm on a road that looks like a pedestrian can walk then I probably need to go slow and if there's a school ahead or the street is particularly narrow or the road pavement is not asphalt I probably need to go extremely slow. TBF, now I'm not in Germany but when I was, driving on the autobahn usually involved religiously following the signs of speed limit and no speed limit(the limit-free coverage on the autobahn is patchy). I wonder if the self driving systems asses the road type to determine the speed they should go. Is there a possibility for a autonomous car to speed up to 120kph around a school or in a residential area if the sign is missing or someone puts a bogus sign?
  - egeozcan 5y ago
    when there's a construction and the speed limit is 60kph, I really hate it when the car starts accelerating like it's in a race track the moment it sees the limit removed. it scared me a couple of times, so I imagine it's not impossible for that to happen. it also takes the curvature of the road into account and slows for the traffic, but there's always a small empty town with straight roads... it also sometimes messes up the steering when going through a construction site with yellow lines, so I really hope that they improved this system heavily in the last year since I bought my car.
  - oynqr 5y ago
    Signs are also frequently wrong, even in Germany. This can get so bad that there are multiple maximum speeds on the same road in the same direction, all depending on where you came from.
    - foepys 5y ago
      No, the speed limit is always the same, regardless where you came from. If there is no speed limit posted after a junction, the default speed limit for this kind of road (unlimited, 100km/h, 50km/h, or zone specific as posted before entering the zone, usually 30km/h) applies. But even a lot of Germans don't know this, I'm afraid.
      - nmehner 5y ago
        > But even a lot of Germans don't know this, I'm afraid. Yes, because this is not the case. https://www.bussgeldkatalog.de/geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung-aufgehoben/ https://www.bussgeldkatalog.de/geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung-au...
      - ciex 5y ago
        While this is true it's also not uncommon for signage to be faulty, i.e. not following official regulations, or invalid unfortunately. Most often at construction sites.
      - oynqr 5y ago
- nmehner 5y ago
  I always wonder if this is a problem that has to be solved at all. Instead of cars recognizing the speed limits there should be government managed maps containing all the roads/lanes and speed limits. When creating a construction site just add it to the map. If you can legally rely on the speed limits in the maps, this should be much easier to do. Recognizing speed limits seems to be a technical solution to an organizational problem.
  - carlmr 5y ago
    Very true, it's kind of like when you try to automate existing human processes. There are often too many exceptions to make it easy enough to automate, compared to a company that automated this process from the beginning. Humans are very good at exception handling, albeit slow, and this is implicit in any process involving humans. Standardization is necessary for good automation.
  - randomNumber7 5y ago
    In Germany a speed limit doesn't mean it's always reasonable to drive at maximum speed. E.g. there are narrow streets in citys with cars parking on both sides. The official speed limit is 50 km/h. If you drive at this speed you straight up murder any pedestrian coming out behind of a car. If you do this you'll be pleaded guilty, because your speed was not appropriate to the situation. You even have to learn this exact situation when you make your drivers license. An other funny example. Where i lived was road with a bend, where an ordinary person should maybe drive 50 km/h. It was borderline questionable to drive through there with 70 km/h and a good car. Directly before the bend the speedlimit changed from 70 km/h to 100 km/h. There where a lot of accidents, because even germans don't understand the meaning of german speed limits.
    - puszczyk 5y ago
      I’ve noticed this on Polish vs Czech roads (I’ve driven mostly in the mountains border regions of Czechia so this maybe local). Polish roads have gazillion of signs and usually you’ll see a lower speed limit sign just before the curve or a bend if it’s not supposed to be driven at the speed limit of the main road. In my opinion there are way too many signs and I feel—as another poster commented here—like a robot. On the other hand in Czechia on a small mountain road there’s a general limit say 90kmh or 70kmh and there’s no way you make the bends with that speed— it’s your responsibility to slow down. I’ve seen a similar differences in another border regions, e.g. Switzerland-France or France-Germany. It almost seems like there are two schools of thoughts that different countries subscribe to.
- neither_color 5y ago
  I've been in a Tesla running the self-driving beta in Manhattan and it is NOT fun or relaxing at all. The car is overly "jumpy", but by jumpy I mean "breaky." The way a lot of pedestrians cross streets (walk into the side of the road and get 2 feet away from a passing car before crossing right behind the car) causes it to slam on the break constantly while people "stage" their crossing. It's also terrible at left turns without a light. Both of these flaws are completely understandable because it's a complex safety situation, but people who think human drivers are replaceable within 5 years are naive.

It's also the easiest solution and probably the only viable one right now. The difficulty jump from "Mostly straight line highway driving" to "good fucking luck city streets" is extreme

egeozcan 5y ago

In city streets, the car sometimes fails to correctly detect the speed limit, let alone driving autonomously. Also the Germans apparently love making the rules in every junction different, and while most people are capable of intense street-sign following (I feel like a robot when driving, yeah the irony is not lost on me), I doubt a computer can do that too, especially when every mistake has a bigger chance to end up with an accident, compared to (I imagine) anywhere else in the world, because a typical driver here doesn't want to calculate the risk of another failing to follow the rules correctly. Look at driving fail videos from Germany and the ones from Russia and the USA, you'll regularly see something they show as "huge mistake OMG" in Germany being unremarkable (if not business as usual) when compared to others.

mrtksn 5y ago
Actually, the speed limits are not imposed randomly and you can usually "sense" the limit from the surroundings and the structure of the road. I don't really look at speed limits when driving, if I'm on a road that looks like a pedestrian can walk then I probably need to go slow and if there's a school ahead or the street is particularly narrow or the road pavement is not asphalt I probably need to go extremely slow. TBF, now I'm not in Germany but when I was, driving on the autobahn usually involved religiously following the signs of speed limit and no speed limit(the limit-free coverage on the autobahn is patchy). I wonder if the self driving systems asses the road type to determine the speed they should go. Is there a possibility for a autonomous car to speed up to 120kph around a school or in a residential area if the sign is missing or someone puts a bogus sign?
- egeozcan 5y ago
  when there's a construction and the speed limit is 60kph, I really hate it when the car starts accelerating like it's in a race track the moment it sees the limit removed. it scared me a couple of times, so I imagine it's not impossible for that to happen. it also takes the curvature of the road into account and slows for the traffic, but there's always a small empty town with straight roads... it also sometimes messes up the steering when going through a construction site with yellow lines, so I really hope that they improved this system heavily in the last year since I bought my car.
- oynqr 5y ago
  Signs are also frequently wrong, even in Germany. This can get so bad that there are multiple maximum speeds on the same road in the same direction, all depending on where you came from.
  - foepys 5y ago
    No, the speed limit is always the same, regardless where you came from. If there is no speed limit posted after a junction, the default speed limit for this kind of road (unlimited, 100km/h, 50km/h, or zone specific as posted before entering the zone, usually 30km/h) applies. But even a lot of Germans don't know this, I'm afraid.
    - nmehner 5y ago
      > But even a lot of Germans don't know this, I'm afraid. Yes, because this is not the case. https://www.bussgeldkatalog.de/geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung-aufgehoben/ https://www.bussgeldkatalog.de/geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung-au...
    - ciex 5y ago
      While this is true it's also not uncommon for signage to be faulty, i.e. not following official regulations, or invalid unfortunately. Most often at construction sites.
    - oynqr 5y ago
nmehner 5y ago
I always wonder if this is a problem that has to be solved at all. Instead of cars recognizing the speed limits there should be government managed maps containing all the roads/lanes and speed limits. When creating a construction site just add it to the map. If you can legally rely on the speed limits in the maps, this should be much easier to do. Recognizing speed limits seems to be a technical solution to an organizational problem.
- carlmr 5y ago
  Very true, it's kind of like when you try to automate existing human processes. There are often too many exceptions to make it easy enough to automate, compared to a company that automated this process from the beginning. Humans are very good at exception handling, albeit slow, and this is implicit in any process involving humans. Standardization is necessary for good automation.
- randomNumber7 5y ago
  In Germany a speed limit doesn't mean it's always reasonable to drive at maximum speed. E.g. there are narrow streets in citys with cars parking on both sides. The official speed limit is 50 km/h. If you drive at this speed you straight up murder any pedestrian coming out behind of a car. If you do this you'll be pleaded guilty, because your speed was not appropriate to the situation. You even have to learn this exact situation when you make your drivers license. An other funny example. Where i lived was road with a bend, where an ordinary person should maybe drive 50 km/h. It was borderline questionable to drive through there with 70 km/h and a good car. Directly before the bend the speedlimit changed from 70 km/h to 100 km/h. There where a lot of accidents, because even germans don't understand the meaning of german speed limits.
  - puszczyk 5y ago
    I’ve noticed this on Polish vs Czech roads (I’ve driven mostly in the mountains border regions of Czechia so this maybe local). Polish roads have gazillion of signs and usually you’ll see a lower speed limit sign just before the curve or a bend if it’s not supposed to be driven at the speed limit of the main road. In my opinion there are way too many signs and I feel—as another poster commented here—like a robot. On the other hand in Czechia on a small mountain road there’s a general limit say 90kmh or 70kmh and there’s no way you make the bends with that speed— it’s your responsibility to slow down. I’ve seen a similar differences in another border regions, e.g. Switzerland-France or France-Germany. It almost seems like there are two schools of thoughts that different countries subscribe to.
neither_color 5y ago
I've been in a Tesla running the self-driving beta in Manhattan and it is NOT fun or relaxing at all. The car is overly "jumpy", but by jumpy I mean "breaky." The way a lot of pedestrians cross streets (walk into the side of the road and get 2 feet away from a passing car before crossing right behind the car) causes it to slam on the break constantly while people "stage" their crossing. It's also terrible at left turns without a light. Both of these flaws are completely understandable because it's a complex safety situation, but people who think human drivers are replaceable within 5 years are naive.