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Data Shows Google’s Robot Cars Are Smoother, Safer Drivers Than You or I
- nawitus 13y agoBetter title: Google claims that Google cars are safer than competitors.
- dinkumthinkum 13y agoNo it doesn't discuss other self-driving competitors unless you think of humans as competitors. Let's get real, very soon self driving cars will be tremendously safer and more efficient by many factors than human drivers.
- lucian1900 13y agoComputers will always be better drivers than humans, that is quite obvious. This article is backing that up with some data.
- nawitus 13y agoGoogle is claiming to have data.
- jmulho 13y agoA better title would be "Data show..." Data are plural.
- _delirium 13y agoIn American English, "data" is a collective noun treated as grammatically singular, like "research" and "furniture".
- jmulho 13y agoIf the word "data" in its context may be replaced with the word "information", then it is being used as a "collective noun" and may be treated a singular. If it would be better replaced with "the individual items of information that we have collected", then it should be treated as plural. Which seems right in this case, "Information shows that Google cars...", or "The individual items of information that we have collected show that Google cars..."?
- _delirium 13y agoI would read it more like the former, that "data we have collected" is similar to "information we have collected". Alternately, data is also often a synonym for "set of observations" or similar, a shorthand term for "data set", etymology notwithstanding. A common exchange: "Can you send us the fracking data?" "Sure, once I get approval I'll send it over." If you instead said "send them over" in this context it would suggest, at least in typical usage I'm familiar with, that there were not only multiple data points, but multiple data sets being set over.
- WalterBright 13y agoI'd like to know what those autodrivers do for failsafety. What about software crashes? bugs? sensors giving bad readings? intermittent loose connections? chips failing? They should at least talk to the engineers who design airplane autopilots, who know how to deal with that stuff.
- dinkumthinkum 13y agoWhat do people do when their cars fail or there are drinks behind the wheel? I agree with what you're saying sort of but there are very serious people working this technology (it's not just Google) but there will be accidents but much less than with human drivers. It may seem fantastic but if you actually look at the current state of the technology and even conservative projections by people like the Economist ... It's quite impressive.
- GuiA 13y ago> They should at least talk to the engineers who design airplane autopilots, who know how to deal with that stuff. What leads you to think they don't?
- fnordfnordfnord 13y agoI used to write embedded firmware for factory machinery, and I can tell you that there are a few obvious nuisance bugs in my car's firmware. The kind of things that probably wouldn't be present if they had even owned or driven the car.
- jjoonathan 13y agoExactly. This sort of thing is what embedded programming is all about. "Real Time Computing" is the relevant keyword. Just like a frontend dev learns HTML/CSS/JSframeworks and a backend dev learns JSframeworks/Node/(no)SQL, embedded developers learn about creating real-time, fault tolerant, highly recoverable systems. Tell an embedded engineer that he should consult with Boeing and he'll give you the same strained smile that you would give a family member who suggested consulting with Amazon/Ebay/YouTube because "they are good at making websites."
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- grej 13y agoThere are real legal questions on what happens when robotic cars are really ready. For instance, what happens IF the vehicle actually does have an accident? Who is liable? Is it the "driver" who wasn't actually controlling the car, or the company who wrote the driving software? There will be several hundred ambulance chasers ready to sign up victims of any accidents in order to get a class action suit against Google.
- kiba 13y agoWhat is the rate of class action lawsuits against airliners and airplane manufacturers?
- grej 13y agoGood point! It could actually be that with lower accident rates robotic cars will produce, automobile insurance companies actually help drive the change.
- baddox 13y agoIt shouldn't be much different than current legal cases where accidents are caused by mechanical or software failure.
- adrianbg 13y ago"And existing product liability laws make it clear that a car’s manufacturer would be at fault if the car caused a crash, he said. He also said that when the inevitable accidents do occur, the data autonomous cars collect in order to navigate will provide a powerful and accurate picture of exactly who was responsible."
- dinkumthinkum 13y agoThere are very serious people working on this. The reality is there will be fewer accidents. Some people think think the manufacturers themselves will take on the insurance liability, eventually "disrupting" the auto insurance industry completely. Sure, there will be media hay made out if any accidents in the beginning. It's like anything. It will be hard to deny the safety of this mode of transportation. Actually, the most unsafe aspect about this will be combining human drivers on the road with efficient autonomous driving systems.
- josephlord 13y agoI'd be interested to see how it made progress somewhere like Sicily (Naples is meant to be even more exciting to drive in but I haven't been there) or Thailand or India. [Note that I haven't visited Thailand for about 20 years, Sicily for 10 years and India ever so perceptions may be out of date or incorrect based on media/TV coverage for the India case.]
- mojuba 13y agoIt's an interesting problem that exposes the fundamental difference between humans and algorithms: While some humans may be able to adopt to driving in Sicily or Thailand after the U.S., algorithms will never be able to do that. Unless, of course, specifically designed for driving in the U.S., Sicily and Thailand. (Or Russia for that matter, where driving is barely subject to any formalization.) Humans can learn and adapt, it's in our nature, but an algorithm is just a reflection of some narrow aspect of what we, humans, have learned. Change a few external variables and your algorithm fails miserably. I'm sorry, but somehow I don't believe in the future of self-driving cars, just like I don't believe in algorithms that would do image or voice recognition as well as we do.
- pauletienney 13y agoI agree but it might work if a vast majority of cars are automated ones. I can imagine a transition with "smartcars" : you drive with help and advice from your car.
- josephlord 13y agoYes but going through a city in Southern Italy how often is it going to say something other than STOP! If you don't assume that other drivers are going to change course and avoid you won't make much progress. The skill and alertness of the drivers in Sciliy were much greater than in the UK and the US but they had to be as those were relied on more than rules and systems. I also wonder about what human driven cars, motorbikes and bikes might start to do once they know and can identify that there are nearly uncrashable and will reliably take avoiding action - will they learn that they can just pull out and let the computers avoid them?
- siculars 13y agoOk, cool. So insurance companies should be lining up to insure autonomous cars, ya? As soon as an insurance company will insure an autonomous car then we will be able to buy them and use them. Or maybe the autonomous car makers will accept risk? This will be great! Cause the only person who wont have to have insurance is - me, the driver! Er... passenger.
- kkowalczyk 13y agoInsurance companies won't care if you're driving yourself or using a self-driving car. They price their premiums so that they always make a profit, regardless of the risk. That's why drivers that have accidents pay more than drivers with no accidents and young drivers (that are statistically more risky) pay more than not-young drivers. Insurance companies will simply adjust the cost of insurance for self-driving cars to account for risk based on past data. If those cars will turn out to be involved in less accidents, the insurance will cost less. More accidents => cost more.
- malandrew 13y agoEven better, Google and the automaker's could get into the market of managing fleets and their own insurance directly or via wholly owned subsidiaries. That's what I would do if I were in their position. Basically, this is going to completely disrupt the auto insurance industry as well and no one has more and better data to price the insurance than Google that now has hundreds of thousands of miles logged and will always be in possession of the sum total of all data on all miles ever driven. They are no longer performing statistics on a sample size, but are instead doing so based on an entire population. Basically Google can do the same for auto insurance that Amazon has done for online retail. i.e. they can operate on razor thin margins that no one else will ever be able to match because they'll be operating on sample-based statistics and it will take them a while before they have a significantly large sample to properly price their product.
- grej 13y agoIt's also interesting to think about the financial implications for localities as data shows that the average police officer issues speeding tickets for approximately 300k/yr. (http://www.statisticbrain.com/driving-citation-statistics/ http://www.statisticbrain.com/driving-citation-statistics/)
- Apocryphon 13y agoHow does privacy factor into this? Doubtless these cars would be even easier to track than modern ones. But could they be hackable or overridden by control to be driven someplace? The code behind this will have to be completely open sourced to allay all fears.
- krapp 13y agoI don't doubt for one second someone in the US government doesn't already have plans to backdoor, take over and turn an autonomous vehicle infrastructure against people if they deem it necessary for "the greater good." Imagine one day your car decides you need to drive out into a facility out in the desert for "questioning..." or suddenly a group of them get commandeered as an ad-hoc roadblock, or any number of ridiculous but maybe too-tempting to resist possibilities, which people couldn't escape should these things become a dominant form of transportation.
- dinkumthinkum 13y agoWell, just wrap your whole body in aluminum foil ... Is this serious? Also what stops this from going into non autonomous cars, the tracking bits, anyway?
- krapp 13y agoThe tracking bits aren't the big problem, the "car that drives you instead of you driving it" is the potential problem.
- dinkumthinkum 13y agoOh my, really? The Feds could just track you down and grab you. Why is this worse? I agree, in some fantasy dystopia this may seem scary but ... If this ever happened, I mean, we would have much bigger problems than the self-driving car.
- krapp 13y ago
- paulyg 13y agoThis is the second "computers are better drivers than humans" article I've seen this week. And all I can say is: Duh!
- austingunter 13y agoYep, it starts. I happen to really love driving, clean record, etc. In 10 years, it's going to be getting touchy for folks who still prefer driving themselves rather than letting the self-driving cars do it. The freedom will be exchanged for safety, and nobody will blink.
- woofyman 13y agoThe cost will be prohibitive for most people. And in the USA, the car culture is too ingrained. I don't see autonomous cars and human driven cars on the same roads. I don't think the technology will be ready in ten years anyway.
- gfodor 13y agoI have to say, you are probably 100% wrong on all counts. It's all opinion of course but once these are on the road and they work they will spread quickly costs will come down, and culture will adapt. The value prop is just too high, it's like any other computerization: sure, there are some charming aspects to past practices but the machines always win.
- dinkumthinkum 13y agoYes, I think driving your own car at some point will be either leisure or status symbol.
- vinkelhake 13y agoWhy wouldn't they be on the same roads? Everyone will gain from having autonomous cars on the roads, both people riding them and people driving their own cars. I like driving too, sometimes. Sometimes it's awfully boring and I wish I could do something else while on the road.
- dinkumthinkum 13y agoNo i think you're wrong about that. Even conservative estimates put it between 2018-2020. Also I don't think it's so much that people would be buying these cars. I think you will see different models, club cats, zip cars, etc. Sure people will buy them but I don't cost will deter then being a significant percentage of the total transportation in 10 years.
- cheesylard 13y agoI did not get any new information out of this article. Not only does the title basically tell you everything that the article is going to talk about, but the statement is obvious. Of course an autonomous driver is safer than a human.
- grej 13y agoI think this was the main thing that hasn't been shown with data before: "One of those analyses showed that when a human was behind the wheel, Google’s cars accelerated and braked significantly more sharply than they did when piloting themselves. Another showed that the cars’ software was much better at maintaining a safe distance from the vehicle ahead than the human drivers were." They were known to be very safe with a very low (almost non-existant) accident rate, but I believe this was the first presentation of some of the more detailed driving data such as acceleration and braking.
- yen223 13y agoIs no one going to point out the fact that the data came from Google themselves? I mean, I'm excited about autonomous cars too, but what happened to taking everything with a pinch of salt?
- grej 13y agoThis is a good point. They compared the braking and acceleration of the vehicles vs. a human driver. A human driver supplied by Google. Nevertheless it's clear this technology has immense near-term promise.
- coryrc 13y agoAs long as the ground looks very similar to Google Earth images and is heterogeneous. Unlike when it is snowing, when they don't work well at all.
- raldi 13y agoPsst: Human drivers also have a lot of trouble in the snow.
- dinkumthinkum 13y agoum ... DARPA challenge. They have LIDAR and other sensors. It's not based on GPS for negotiating the road.
- itchitawa 13y agoPredictably many people are skeptical. But just stop and think about how many times you've caused an accident or near miss, ignored a road sign, got stuck while merging, etc and ask yourself if the computer would have done a better job. The new buzzword is "zero fatalities" and it's a far too important goal to just dismiss with typical I'm-a-better-driver-than-any-dumb-machine attitude.
- samstave 13y agoThis is why Google invested in Uber. Self driving cabs. WHen will they come out?
- dinkumthinkum 13y agoI think taxis will be a thing of the past. The barrier to entry will be gone, anyone could rent out self-driving cars.