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Indeed -- They'll have to be on the road for years before they are allowed to operate without a person inside. I have a few concerns about the short term ramif

Indeed -- They'll have to be on the road for years before they are allowed to operate without a person inside. I have a few concerns about the short term ramifications. 1) The person behind the wheel can't do work, read, eat, or apply make-up if their primary responsibility is to second-guess the computer. So the most tantalizing benefit of being driven wherever you want is going to have to wait until some future day. 2) A vehicle that obeys the speed limit and makes a full stop at stop signs is going to infuriate some drivers. They should probably avoid matching the speed of adjacent cars when possible, to prevent blocking aggressive drivers that want to pass. These cars are probably going to avoid the fast lane. 3) I can see plenty of scenarios where an autonomous vehicle acts safely but still gets in an accident. Slowing to avoid a collision could result in being rear-ended, or a human driver might merge into the car because he failed to check his blind spot. So there will be accidents. I assume the cars will have to be rigged with video cameras and telemetry to prove that the car's programming was not at fault.

sukuriant 14y ago
Defensive driving includes not speed-matching people in your blind-spot, and being mindful of merging cars, going so far as to move into an adjacent lane if the merging lane disappears. The cars need to consider this anyway. More thoughts on speed-matching the car in your blind-spot: there are many, many things that can go wrong, even if a car has omnidirectional visual information. If a tire blows, you have to compensate. I wonder how much sway-room a computer needs to retake-control/move the car off the road.
coopdog 14y ago
In Australia (and presumably the rest of the world?), it's never the fault of the driver who was rear ended. Everyone else is expected to maintain a safe distance in case the driver needs to perform an emergency stop. Actually I remember hearing somewhere that Japan uses a 50/50 split for all accidents, without working out who's to blame, to encourage everyone to be more responsible. They'll definitely have to tweak the cars driving styles per region. I'm now actually pessimistic that this will ever leave the USA any time soon, given how long it seems for even simple things to make it out.
danielweber 14y ago
They should probably avoid matching the speed of adjacent cars when possible, to prevent blocking aggressive drivers that want to pass As a sibling comment said, this is unsafe. The Google car actively avoids being in another car's blind spot as much as it can.
- MiguelHudnandez 14y ago
  My concern is mostly for edge cases, like stretches of two-lane highway where both lanes are going the same speed because of congestion. Is the car going to fluctuate its speed often, to try to isolate itself from neighboring cars? Or would it reduce its speed even further below the limit so that the left lane is constantly passing? Keeping the left lane moving faster is probably wisest, but it's going to infuriate the drivers behind the autonomous vehicle, even though they're in the slow lane. How far would a car go to avoid being rear-ended? Would a tailgater be able to cause the car to accelerate? At what point would the car stop trying to avoid an accident because it's safer to get rear ended than continue avoiding? When you put these things on the road, human drivers are going to start messing with them.
deleted 14y ago
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sukuriant 14y ago

Defensive driving includes not speed-matching people in your blind-spot, and being mindful of merging cars, going so far as to move into an adjacent lane if the merging lane disappears. The cars need to consider this anyway. More thoughts on speed-matching the car in your blind-spot: there are many, many things that can go wrong, even if a car has omnidirectional visual information. If a tire blows, you have to compensate. I wonder how much sway-room a computer needs to retake-control/move the car off the road.

coopdog 14y ago

In Australia (and presumably the rest of the world?), it's never the fault of the driver who was rear ended. Everyone else is expected to maintain a safe distance in case the driver needs to perform an emergency stop. Actually I remember hearing somewhere that Japan uses a 50/50 split for all accidents, without working out who's to blame, to encourage everyone to be more responsible. They'll definitely have to tweak the cars driving styles per region. I'm now actually pessimistic that this will ever leave the USA any time soon, given how long it seems for even simple things to make it out.

danielweber 14y ago

They should probably avoid matching the speed of adjacent cars when possible, to prevent blocking aggressive drivers that want to pass As a sibling comment said, this is unsafe. The Google car actively avoids being in another car's blind spot as much as it can.

MiguelHudnandez 14y ago
My concern is mostly for edge cases, like stretches of two-lane highway where both lanes are going the same speed because of congestion. Is the car going to fluctuate its speed often, to try to isolate itself from neighboring cars? Or would it reduce its speed even further below the limit so that the left lane is constantly passing? Keeping the left lane moving faster is probably wisest, but it's going to infuriate the drivers behind the autonomous vehicle, even though they're in the slow lane. How far would a car go to avoid being rear-ended? Would a tailgater be able to cause the car to accelerate? At what point would the car stop trying to avoid an accident because it's safer to get rear ended than continue avoiding? When you put these things on the road, human drivers are going to start messing with them.

deleted 14y ago

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