8 ms·

As a city cyclist, the Google solution looks way safer than the current status quo...

Zigurd 13y ago
Even before we get self-driving cars, autonomous braking should be mandated so that cars and trucks are literally incapable of coming too close to a cyclist.
- rwmj 13y ago
  For trucks, ASL360. This uses 4 cameras around the vehicle and some simple software to synthesize an "eye in the sky" view. Actually, I'd like this on my car. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvKReY1tYHw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvKReY1tYHw
- josephlord 13y ago
  I'm a cyclist as well as a driver and I give a lot of space to cyclists when overtaking them but I don't see that working too well. When cyclists/pedestrians get used to the system they will start to abuse it and rely on the systems to force the vehicles to avoid them/stop. Also what defines too close? If you stray 1mm inside that zone do the brakes come on hard regardless of other traffic? What happens when the cyclist has come close to the car (overtaking either side in traffic).
  - Zigurd 13y ago
    Autonomous braking exists for those kinds of events: When a person steps out in front of a car, for example. Yet I don't see people deliberately jumping out in front of cars just to mess with them.
    - e40 13y ago
      It's pretty clear why, because there are too few cars with automatic breaks. When 100% of the cars have them, you might see it.
    - danielweber 13y ago
      Because only a small fraction of cars have them. Jay-walking can be dangerous. When you know that all cars will stop for you, it becomes a lot safer to just cross the street wherever you want. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_compensation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_compensation
    - josephlord 13y ago
      It's not deliberately jumping out to mess with them (although that might be a hijack risk in some regions of the world) but the person in a hurry seeing a street full of uncrashable cars and just running across the road in a much smaller gap than they would normally risk.
    - jacquesm 13y ago
      Google 'russia dashcam' videos and have your worldview adjusted. Incredibly, in Russia people apparently throw themselves in front of cars to try to get injury compensation. It doesn't happen often but often enough that people have made compilation videos. That and a whole pile of crazy drivers are the reason that dashcams are so popular in Russia in the first place, they give the driver some evidence to show what happened prior to the accident.
      - TeMPOraL 13y ago
        So maybe the data collected by the cars could be used to sue people deliberately running through traffic to the Moon and back.
  - anon4 13y ago
    The kind of people who would abuse that system likely already act that way expecting the human driver to break. The point of an auto breaking system is to prevent accidents when a well-intentioned cyclists makes an error in judgement.
- josefresco 13y ago
  I'll back that as soon as a system to force bicyclists to abide by traffic laws is required.
  - iron_ball 13y ago
    As a sometime cyclist, I agree that cyclists should abide by traffic laws. I assume this was downvoted for tone. The premise is undeniable. Bicycles should obey the laws. Greater rule adherence means a more predictable, and thus safer, street.
    - mindslight 13y ago
      Like the law to come to a full and complete stop at every stop sign, including the four ways that blanket every neighborhood? No thank you; cyclists treat stop signs as four-dimensional yields for some damn good reasons. There's a lot of terrible bike-riders (riding on the left side of the road around a blind corner...), but there are also a lot of terrible laws and signage. Don't delude yourself into believing that strict adherence to rules will solve the world's problems.
      - nitid_name 13y ago
        Non-cyclists don't typically understand the very real cost of losing momentum at a stop sign/light. Cyclists don't tend to understand that unfairness aspect many drivers seem to feel when cyclists cheat. That said, some states are starting to address the stop sign/stop-light problem for bicyclists (well, sort of). Virginia, for example, lets cyclists (including motorcycles) treat stop lights as stop signs after a certain amount of time/cycles. I'm sure most cyclists would prefer they be treated like flashing yellow or flashing red lights (yield sign and stop sign equivalent, respectively), but we've got a ways to go before that can happen. I think we'll need to start licensing street riding and overhaul traffic law to include bicycles on the road before things get much better.
        mindslight 13y ago
        I understand that it is seen as unfair, but write that off as Stockholm syndrome. It does suck that cities are constantly erecting even more traffic signals (etc), but the appropriate response is to blame the job-justifying behavior of city hall, not to go zero-sum and get mad at the people who can better skirt them. For what it's worth, I don't even really bike that much these days and certainly encounter my share of idiotic bikers when driving/walking. But that doesn't mean I'm going to give in to blowhard legality tropes when it's clear that the real nuisance bikers are doing things that are so stupid (against traffic, on sidewalk, left turn from right lane, texting) that they don't care about even bodily harm. Meanwhile there are plenty of actions that are illegal yet affect nobody else that can be performed prudently and thoughtfully. Also, any observably-broken traffic light can and should be treated as a stop sign. What else do you do, strictly follow the narrow part of the law that you've been told and patiently wait for the police to hold your hand?
bertil 13y ago
I absolutely agree, and I now feel like offering to cyclists a t-shirt that reads in bold “We WANT Google self-driving cars.” and maybe, in tiny ‘Because, if you can read this, your driving sucks and you don’t respect security distance.’
nmueller 13y ago
I think they have a lot more work to do. I bike through Mountain View every day and over the last few years I've had more close calls with self-driving cars then the normal kind.
bowlofpetunias 13y ago
As a city cyclist in Amsterdam, I have to disagree...
revelation 13y ago
The fellow people over at Reddit have alerted me to the fact that the Google car is actually still breaking the law (while being a tremendous improvement over the idiots that normally operate cars): Turning Across Bicycle Lanes 21717. Whenever it is necessary for the driver of a motor vehicle to cross a bicycle lane that is adjacent to his lane of travel to make a turn, the driver shall drive the motor vehicle into the bicycle lane prior to making the turn and shall make the turn pursuant to Section 22100 [general turning regulations] The car must be in the bicycle lane before turning. You can not turn by crossing over the lane, and if you couldn't get into the lane before, you will have to wait to get into the lane and then turn. This figures in nicely with the people here saying we should disregard cyclists because they constantly break the traffic laws. Are you always in the bicycle lane when turning with your car? Don't claim this is a surprising rule and not generally known; try cycling some time, you'll find the traffic laws are setup in a way that often makes it impossible to travel efficiently, safe and legally. (If I can just add this: traffic laws for cycling are the ultimate bikeshed. Imagine a bikeshed committee, where the people on the comittee have no need for a bikeshed and no concept of how people use a bikeshed, or why. In Germany, up until some time ago, they regulated the voltage and energy source for bike lights.)
- jfoster 13y ago
  Interesting thing about that law is that it's probably there due to the limitations of human drivers. An autonomous vehicle that is fully aware of objects on every side probably doesn't need the precaution that the law requires. It will only turn when there is no cyclist coming.

Even before we get self-driving cars, autonomous braking should be mandated so that cars and trucks are literally incapable of coming too close to a cyclist.

rwmj 13y ago
For trucks, ASL360. This uses 4 cameras around the vehicle and some simple software to synthesize an "eye in the sky" view. Actually, I'd like this on my car. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvKReY1tYHw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvKReY1tYHw
josephlord 13y ago
I'm a cyclist as well as a driver and I give a lot of space to cyclists when overtaking them but I don't see that working too well. When cyclists/pedestrians get used to the system they will start to abuse it and rely on the systems to force the vehicles to avoid them/stop. Also what defines too close? If you stray 1mm inside that zone do the brakes come on hard regardless of other traffic? What happens when the cyclist has come close to the car (overtaking either side in traffic).
- Zigurd 13y ago
  Autonomous braking exists for those kinds of events: When a person steps out in front of a car, for example. Yet I don't see people deliberately jumping out in front of cars just to mess with them.
  - e40 13y ago
    It's pretty clear why, because there are too few cars with automatic breaks. When 100% of the cars have them, you might see it.
  - danielweber 13y ago
    Because only a small fraction of cars have them. Jay-walking can be dangerous. When you know that all cars will stop for you, it becomes a lot safer to just cross the street wherever you want. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_compensation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_compensation
  - josephlord 13y ago
    It's not deliberately jumping out to mess with them (although that might be a hijack risk in some regions of the world) but the person in a hurry seeing a street full of uncrashable cars and just running across the road in a much smaller gap than they would normally risk.
  - jacquesm 13y ago
    Google 'russia dashcam' videos and have your worldview adjusted. Incredibly, in Russia people apparently throw themselves in front of cars to try to get injury compensation. It doesn't happen often but often enough that people have made compilation videos. That and a whole pile of crazy drivers are the reason that dashcams are so popular in Russia in the first place, they give the driver some evidence to show what happened prior to the accident.
    - TeMPOraL 13y ago
      So maybe the data collected by the cars could be used to sue people deliberately running through traffic to the Moon and back.
- anon4 13y ago
  The kind of people who would abuse that system likely already act that way expecting the human driver to break. The point of an auto breaking system is to prevent accidents when a well-intentioned cyclists makes an error in judgement.
josefresco 13y ago
I'll back that as soon as a system to force bicyclists to abide by traffic laws is required.
- iron_ball 13y ago
  As a sometime cyclist, I agree that cyclists should abide by traffic laws. I assume this was downvoted for tone. The premise is undeniable. Bicycles should obey the laws. Greater rule adherence means a more predictable, and thus safer, street.
  - mindslight 13y ago
    Like the law to come to a full and complete stop at every stop sign, including the four ways that blanket every neighborhood? No thank you; cyclists treat stop signs as four-dimensional yields for some damn good reasons. There's a lot of terrible bike-riders (riding on the left side of the road around a blind corner...), but there are also a lot of terrible laws and signage. Don't delude yourself into believing that strict adherence to rules will solve the world's problems.
    - nitid_name 13y ago
      Non-cyclists don't typically understand the very real cost of losing momentum at a stop sign/light. Cyclists don't tend to understand that unfairness aspect many drivers seem to feel when cyclists cheat. That said, some states are starting to address the stop sign/stop-light problem for bicyclists (well, sort of). Virginia, for example, lets cyclists (including motorcycles) treat stop lights as stop signs after a certain amount of time/cycles. I'm sure most cyclists would prefer they be treated like flashing yellow or flashing red lights (yield sign and stop sign equivalent, respectively), but we've got a ways to go before that can happen. I think we'll need to start licensing street riding and overhaul traffic law to include bicycles on the road before things get much better.
      - mindslight 13y ago
        I understand that it is seen as unfair, but write that off as Stockholm syndrome. It does suck that cities are constantly erecting even more traffic signals (etc), but the appropriate response is to blame the job-justifying behavior of city hall, not to go zero-sum and get mad at the people who can better skirt them. For what it's worth, I don't even really bike that much these days and certainly encounter my share of idiotic bikers when driving/walking. But that doesn't mean I'm going to give in to blowhard legality tropes when it's clear that the real nuisance bikers are doing things that are so stupid (against traffic, on sidewalk, left turn from right lane, texting) that they don't care about even bodily harm. Meanwhile there are plenty of actions that are illegal yet affect nobody else that can be performed prudently and thoughtfully. Also, any observably-broken traffic light can and should be treated as a stop sign. What else do you do, strictly follow the narrow part of the law that you've been told and patiently wait for the police to hold your hand?

bertil 13y ago

I absolutely agree, and I now feel like offering to cyclists a t-shirt that reads in bold “We WANT Google self-driving cars.” and maybe, in tiny ‘Because, if you can read this, your driving sucks and you don’t respect security distance.’

nmueller 13y ago

I think they have a lot more work to do. I bike through Mountain View every day and over the last few years I've had more close calls with self-driving cars then the normal kind.

bowlofpetunias 13y ago

As a city cyclist in Amsterdam, I have to disagree...

revelation 13y ago

The fellow people over at Reddit have alerted me to the fact that the Google car is actually still breaking the law (while being a tremendous improvement over the idiots that normally operate cars): Turning Across Bicycle Lanes 21717. Whenever it is necessary for the driver of a motor vehicle to cross a bicycle lane that is adjacent to his lane of travel to make a turn, the driver shall drive the motor vehicle into the bicycle lane prior to making the turn and shall make the turn pursuant to Section 22100 [general turning regulations] The car must be in the bicycle lane before turning. You can not turn by crossing over the lane, and if you couldn't get into the lane before, you will have to wait to get into the lane and then turn. This figures in nicely with the people here saying we should disregard cyclists because they constantly break the traffic laws. Are you always in the bicycle lane when turning with your car? Don't claim this is a surprising rule and not generally known; try cycling some time, you'll find the traffic laws are setup in a way that often makes it impossible to travel efficiently, safe and legally. (If I can just add this: traffic laws for cycling are the ultimate bikeshed. Imagine a bikeshed committee, where the people on the comittee have no need for a bikeshed and no concept of how people use a bikeshed, or why. In Germany, up until some time ago, they regulated the voltage and energy source for bike lights.)

jfoster 13y ago
Interesting thing about that law is that it's probably there due to the limitations of human drivers. An autonomous vehicle that is fully aware of objects on every side probably doesn't need the precaution that the law requires. It will only turn when there is no cyclist coming.