5 ms·

It is normal for pedestrians to look for eye contact in order to know if a driver will yield the right of way or simply will accelerate and pass (in light less

by omegant 14y ago

It is normal for pedestrians to look for eye contact in order to know if a driver will yield the right of way or simply will accelerate and pass (in light less crosswalks). In dense pedestrian cities (I am from Spain) it is very usual to have some guessing and false start stop between the pedestrian and the driver, nobody seems to know who is going to yield finally. I wonder if this is been thought and how you'll signal the car's intention to a pedestrian?, maybe a forward braking light?. It could be that automatic cars will be much better yielders than a human driver.

adamjernst 14y ago
I too thought of a forward braking light. When self-driving cars become common enough, people would learn to interpret it.
VBprogrammer 14y ago
My experience in Spain is that drivers won't yield unless the alternative is hitting you! In that regard not much will change with self driving cars.
- excuse-me 14y ago
  That is one concern - will there local versions of this car as there are with google search? I really would prefer to face the google.Canadian version rather the google.Paris or google.Rome tuned examples
pilgrim689 14y ago
It makes sense for the self-driving car to yield to pedestrians all the time. So if you see that there is no driver, you assume it will stop until you are out of its way. There will be no more awkward social guessing games!
- omegant 14y ago
  There is a second part on it. How will cars behave when they are driving along a crowded street in a place where people crosses anywhere and changing directions and intentions very fast. I don't think there will be dangers to pedestrian. But it's going to be a tought problem avoiding false emergency breaking. Once more you have to rely on visual contact to know what are the real intentions of people. Crossing, waiting for the car to pass, simply unaware of the car coming, going to pick something that fell at the border of the street but no intention to cross. Not an easy task! Also it is strange they are not working on a kind of transponder, that could be used between nearby cars to coordinate maneuvers(maybe I missed it on this article, but I think I read about somebody was developing it) . It will be usefull once robocars are more common.
  - solutionyogi 14y ago
    My guess is that originally self driving cars will be mainly used on highways and take you to the metro hubs. Once you reach a very populated metro area, you will use the local public transportation.
    - omegant 14y ago
      Then they will lose the advantage of an autonomous car.
    - Joeri 14y ago
      They would probably BE the public transportation. We need large buses because drivers aren't flexible enough to deploy, and you need to have enough capacity to meet peak demand. If you can have smaller driverless vehicles, and just put more of them on the road during peak hours, it's much more cost-effective (and environmentally friendly) to have smaller capacity vehicles. I doubt we'll see more than 10 people per public transit vehicle once driverless transport becomes the norm.
      - njs12345 14y ago
        A diesel bus gets 6mpg --- you only need 10-15 people on one to match even the most fuel-efficient of cars in terms of environmental friendliness, unless you're referring to something else..
- zf1234 14y ago
  It will be interesting to see how people exploit the A.I. There might be little tricks you could do to make an autonomous car yield. Or if you see one about to park, maybe you could get really close to it, and it would try to find another spot instead of fighting for the spot. Or pedestrians might carelessly walk in front of it, knowing it will stop for them. Edit: It will also be interesting to see how the technology changes as whole fleets of them are deployed. They will constantly be sending each other data: pothole detected on highway; I'm ahead of you and have braked suddenly; this road is congested, use alternate route; is there a parking spot close to my location?; tsunami warning - all cars go to high ground.
  - Someone 14y ago
    "this road is congested, use alternate route" I guess someone will hack the software in his car to send a "road blocked" signal, so that he can drag race a friend on fifth avenue at rush hour. I also expect that it will become illegal to hack one's own car soon after that.
    - jiggy2011 14y ago
      Stuff like congestion would probably be left to computers operated by the local traffic authority rather than the general public. Of course you would need some form of hazard signaling which could be open to abuse (although it could be abused by human drivers anyway). You can always monitor what cars are doing and if you find that some particular persons car is always behaving in a way that causes problems then you can potentially take legal action against them.
- merlincorey 14y ago
  Something tells me you just made highway robbery (and worse) quite a bit easier with this scheme.
noonespecial 14y ago
I guessing the robots will behave a great deal more deterministically than the humans. Its the old style human driven cars that will need the warning lights.
tomkarlo 14y ago
My guess is that automated vehicles will be both more predictable, and more dependable, at yielding. When a pedestrian jaywalks in front of an oncoming vehicle, he's depending on the fact that the driver isn't distracted, and can pick him out of the visual clutter at the sides of the road. I'm a good driver, but I still find that it can be difficult to spot a pedestrian who is standing among parked cars at dusk, especially considering that my rear-view mirror obstructs some of my vision further up the road on the right side, as it does for a lot of drivers. An automated car should always be paying attention (especially since it can pay attention to lots of things at once) and doesn't have to depend on human eyesight to detect potential collisions - it can utilize lasers, infrared and other sensors.

by omegant 14y ago

adamjernst 14y ago

I too thought of a forward braking light. When self-driving cars become common enough, people would learn to interpret it.

VBprogrammer 14y ago

My experience in Spain is that drivers won't yield unless the alternative is hitting you! In that regard not much will change with self driving cars.

excuse-me 14y ago
That is one concern - will there local versions of this car as there are with google search? I really would prefer to face the google.Canadian version rather the google.Paris or google.Rome tuned examples

pilgrim689 14y ago

It makes sense for the self-driving car to yield to pedestrians all the time. So if you see that there is no driver, you assume it will stop until you are out of its way. There will be no more awkward social guessing games!

omegant 14y ago
There is a second part on it. How will cars behave when they are driving along a crowded street in a place where people crosses anywhere and changing directions and intentions very fast. I don't think there will be dangers to pedestrian. But it's going to be a tought problem avoiding false emergency breaking. Once more you have to rely on visual contact to know what are the real intentions of people. Crossing, waiting for the car to pass, simply unaware of the car coming, going to pick something that fell at the border of the street but no intention to cross. Not an easy task! Also it is strange they are not working on a kind of transponder, that could be used between nearby cars to coordinate maneuvers(maybe I missed it on this article, but I think I read about somebody was developing it) . It will be usefull once robocars are more common.
- solutionyogi 14y ago
  My guess is that originally self driving cars will be mainly used on highways and take you to the metro hubs. Once you reach a very populated metro area, you will use the local public transportation.
  - omegant 14y ago
    Then they will lose the advantage of an autonomous car.
  - Joeri 14y ago
    They would probably BE the public transportation. We need large buses because drivers aren't flexible enough to deploy, and you need to have enough capacity to meet peak demand. If you can have smaller driverless vehicles, and just put more of them on the road during peak hours, it's much more cost-effective (and environmentally friendly) to have smaller capacity vehicles. I doubt we'll see more than 10 people per public transit vehicle once driverless transport becomes the norm.
    - njs12345 14y ago
      A diesel bus gets 6mpg --- you only need 10-15 people on one to match even the most fuel-efficient of cars in terms of environmental friendliness, unless you're referring to something else..
zf1234 14y ago
It will be interesting to see how people exploit the A.I. There might be little tricks you could do to make an autonomous car yield. Or if you see one about to park, maybe you could get really close to it, and it would try to find another spot instead of fighting for the spot. Or pedestrians might carelessly walk in front of it, knowing it will stop for them. Edit: It will also be interesting to see how the technology changes as whole fleets of them are deployed. They will constantly be sending each other data: pothole detected on highway; I'm ahead of you and have braked suddenly; this road is congested, use alternate route; is there a parking spot close to my location?; tsunami warning - all cars go to high ground.
- Someone 14y ago
  "this road is congested, use alternate route" I guess someone will hack the software in his car to send a "road blocked" signal, so that he can drag race a friend on fifth avenue at rush hour. I also expect that it will become illegal to hack one's own car soon after that.
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    Stuff like congestion would probably be left to computers operated by the local traffic authority rather than the general public. Of course you would need some form of hazard signaling which could be open to abuse (although it could be abused by human drivers anyway). You can always monitor what cars are doing and if you find that some particular persons car is always behaving in a way that causes problems then you can potentially take legal action against them.
merlincorey 14y ago
Something tells me you just made highway robbery (and worse) quite a bit easier with this scheme.

noonespecial 14y ago

I guessing the robots will behave a great deal more deterministically than the humans. Its the old style human driven cars that will need the warning lights.

tomkarlo 14y ago

My guess is that automated vehicles will be both more predictable, and more dependable, at yielding. When a pedestrian jaywalks in front of an oncoming vehicle, he's depending on the fact that the driver isn't distracted, and can pick him out of the visual clutter at the sides of the road. I'm a good driver, but I still find that it can be difficult to spot a pedestrian who is standing among parked cars at dusk, especially considering that my rear-view mirror obstructs some of my vision further up the road on the right side, as it does for a lot of drivers. An automated car should always be paying attention (especially since it can pay attention to lots of things at once) and doesn't have to depend on human eyesight to detect potential collisions - it can utilize lasers, infrared and other sensors.