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Californians OK with Google self-driving cars and ban non-self-driving cars

20 points by SimplyUseless 11y ago

SimplyUseless 11y ago
Google self-driving cars are better than Californian drivers.They don't accelerate quickly, they don't speed, they leave plenty of space and are very polite to pedestrians.
- eveningcoffee 11y ago
  Difference between driving a car and using Google owned self-driving car is like difference between kings carriage service and owning a horse.
  - logical42 11y ago
    Did you accidentally flip the second part of your analogy? It doesn't really make sense to me as stated..
    - eveningcoffee 11y ago
      Indeed, but as I was comparing differences (difference remains the same regardless of the order of the compared), I thought that it actually does not matter and it is understandable from the context.
mzjs 11y ago
Google needs to make the cars overly cautious though, because everyone is watching them. One accident, and the whole idea of a self-driving car will be called into question by many people.
- abstractbeliefs 11y ago
  Google SD cars have actually already been in a number of accidents and other hazardous situations. While we do, should, and will continue to hold these cars up to higher-than-human standard, the future looks bright for their record. https://medium.com/backchannel/the-view-from-the-front-seat-of-the-google-self-driving-car-46fc9f3e6088 https://medium.com/backchannel/the-view-from-the-front-seat-...
kw71 11y ago
I am a car nut, love driving, drive a powerful car, and can't wait for more of the autonomous cars to hit the streets. Like the article says, they operate predictably and safely. Sometimes it feels like everyone around me is acting like they are a teenager on their first day of being licensed. I live in the USA, and feel that I am a more skilled driver and more mindful than most people who I share the road with. I do not want to be banned from driving. I operate the vehicle safely, strive to obey traffic regulations, give my full attention to driving, and despite having a powerful car almost always drive in a manner that minimizes fuel consumption. Maybe rather than banning human drivers, the standard for obtaining a driving license should be raised. When I have driven in countries with higher standards, like Germany, it's seemed to me that there's much less chaos on the road and drivers are more responsible. There are definitely less of the metro California style shenanigans the author is talking about.
- bla2 11y ago
  "Svenson (1981) surveyed 161 students in [...] the United States, asking them to compare their driving skills and safety to other people. For driving skills, 93% of the U.S. sample [...] put themselves in the top 50%; for safety, 88% of the U.S. [...] put themselves in the top 50%." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority#Driving_ability http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority#Driving_ab...
  - kw71 11y ago
    I was once a student in the United States, back then I was young, cocky and arrogant. I wrongly thought that I was great at driving so long ago. The citation that follows your quote doesn't offer any implications as to age or experience. But the results of the citation following _that_ are ridiculous. I have heard people say that they are better drunk drivers than most people, too. Survey results like these probably shed some light on why people here are such bad drivers. They simply don't realize that they are bad. I'm a lot older now and have a lot more experience. At least, the insurance companies and police agree with my self-assessment now :)
  - jbuzbee 11y ago
snambi 11y ago
As more SD cars hit the road, there is less need for a car license. Think about what this can do for tourism in california and other industries that need drivers. For example, Someone who doesn't know driving can comfortably rent a car from SFO and go to Yosemite. UPS/Fedex can do 24 hr deliveries. Overall this is really good.
codemac 11y ago
I do believe that human drivers are a huge problem on the road, and that self-driving cars are the future. However - Something needs to be done about thet fact that generally people who are poorer have to commute further with less [0] and that if they can afford to move to a neighborhood that fixes their commute problem, they are more likely to come out of poverty [1]. We need this to not be the next tesla, but the next bus. [0]: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/07/upshot/transportation-emerges-as-crucial-to-escaping-poverty.html?abt=0002&abg=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/07/upshot/transportation-emer... [1]: http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/images/nbhds_exec_summary.pdf http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/images/nbhds_exec_sum...
- TTPrograms 11y ago
  Distributed auto-routing smaller busses should cut costs drastically, so this should be very feasible either if implemented commercially or as a commercial service. I have to imagine that paying the bus driver is generally the largest cost for a single bus in any given public transportation system, and being able to route directly during periods of lower traffic (or high traffic even) should be much more efficient in terms of time. Hell I bet Uber could implement scheduled ride sharing and be competitive with public transport on cost now in many cities. 4 people get grouped with the most similar commute and split a $15 fare? That gets you pretty close.
- jessaustin 11y ago
  ISTM that a fleet of self-driving cars will serve everyone it can. Every car will try to stay occupied as much as possible. Perhaps this means that service will cost a lot during Friday rush hour and very little at 4 AM on Wednesday. In that case the poor may just decide to travel at nontraditional times. [EDIT:] to clarify, the phrase "just decide" is more of a medium-term phenomenon than a short-term one, and elides a great deal of noteworthy human experience. Of course, being disadvantaged often means one can't make sudden changes to one's routine. The poor are not stupid, however. When using short-term self-driving cars is cheaper than owning "clunkers", they'll sell the clunkers and figure out how best to integrate self-driving cars into their lives.
  - 11y ago
jwatte 11y ago
I, for one, would like to be the first to welcome our new robot overlords!
theCricketer 11y ago
Would commuter buses (public transit) be a good target to make self-driven? They go on the same route multiple times a day, and since the technology relies on mapping out the route in great detail, wouldn't buses be a good target?
- abstractbeliefs 11y ago
  The fascinating thing about SD cars is that actually, they don't need to pre-map routes in excruciating detail. They carry enough sensing equipment (the primary being LIDARs) to build high detail maps on the fly, along with recording the location of other road users. Low-detail, pre-mapped, road maps are mainly used for routefinding rather than second-to-second navigation.
pfooti 11y ago
Self-driving cars will be the future, as long as they're all rock-solid on cooperation. Imagine normal intersections, with inefficient stop lights where half the cycle is idle (all the cars on the green side went through already) due to a change in traffic patterns from when they were programmed. Instead, cars that all cooperate can move through the intersection pretty well by taking turns. About thirty percent of traffic in SF is due to people cruising around the block, looking for parking. [1]. Imagine if you could just tell your car, "go park somewhere, I don't care where", and have it come back when you need it. Heck, someone else could use it to get from A to B instead of letting it idle parked. There's a lot of potential awesome here, but it all springs from rock-solid cooperation routines. If people manage to write aggressive / betraying self-driving algorithms, a lot of those traffic light scenarios could easily get a lot worse. Trust issues are a thing: should the car's driving routines be black-boxed? If there were FOSS car brains, would we trust people to not mod their cars to do illegal stuff? I guess traditional traffic cops could handle a lot of the same things they do now, we'd just need the standard autodrive package to account for and expect other cars to be driven in poor, uncooperative fashions. [1]: http://shoup.bol.ucla.edu/CruisingForParkingAccess.pdf http://shoup.bol.ucla.edu/CruisingForParkingAccess.pdf
- ChuckMcM 11y ago
  Yet another reason to replace stop light controlled intersections with roundabouts. The roundabout is designed for cooperating drivers, stoplights just implement a worst case algorithm.
  - TTPrograms 11y ago
    Roundabouts with unbalanced peak flow traffic can be impossible to enter if a previous entrance has a near-constant peak traffic flow. At rush hour they basically break under this condition. You could mildly gate them with lights to fix that, though.
    - nitrogen 11y ago
      If I am entering a roundabout from a dominant direction I try to leave enough of a gap for an attentive driver on the other entrances to get in. It seems fair, since sometimes I'm that driver who is waiting.
wcarss 11y ago
I think it's worth noting that this is not a poll, and has nothing to do with a government action. It is entirely the opinion of one person about other people's opinions, from the perspective of Mountain View, CA. It also doesn't really speak to the banning part at all. I'm very optimistic about the technology and the social change required to enable its spread, but the claim made by the title of this link is not supported by the evidence presented. Nice read, at least.
RodrigoT 11y ago
My other opinion about SD cars is that their analysis of the road can be used to assess the state of the infrastructures, imagine a SD car refusing to enter your street to pick you up until the pot holes are fixed
raldi 11y ago
Flagged for misleading title.
thaumaturgy 11y ago
There is no data here -- it's just some guy's observations of some interactions with self-driving cars in Mountain View. There's nothing to indicate that "Californians are OK with self-driving cars" (although I would guess they are), and nothing to indicate they're OK with banning manually-operated vehicles (no way, no how). The link behind "I think that, inevitably, non-self driving cars will eventually be banned" just goes to a short blog post on the same site from a couple of weeks ago about a newer version of the Google self-driving car. There's not even a word in there about anything being banned. There is an awful lot of California outside of Mountain View (surprising, I know). I'm pretty sure California has the highest number of active vehicle registrations of any state (13 million in 2014, vs. 10 million in 2013 for New York, the most recent data I could find) -- and along with that comes an awful lot of car clubs and driving enthusiasts who would raise an unholy ruckus over the merest whisper of banning their beloved vehicles. So the title's misleading.

20 points by SimplyUseless 11y ago

Google self-driving cars are better than Californian drivers.They don't accelerate quickly, they don't speed, they leave plenty of space and are very polite to pedestrians.

eveningcoffee 11y ago
Difference between driving a car and using Google owned self-driving car is like difference between kings carriage service and owning a horse.
- logical42 11y ago
  Did you accidentally flip the second part of your analogy? It doesn't really make sense to me as stated..
  - eveningcoffee 11y ago
    Indeed, but as I was comparing differences (difference remains the same regardless of the order of the compared), I thought that it actually does not matter and it is understandable from the context.

mzjs 11y ago

Google needs to make the cars overly cautious though, because everyone is watching them. One accident, and the whole idea of a self-driving car will be called into question by many people.

abstractbeliefs 11y ago
Google SD cars have actually already been in a number of accidents and other hazardous situations. While we do, should, and will continue to hold these cars up to higher-than-human standard, the future looks bright for their record. https://medium.com/backchannel/the-view-from-the-front-seat-of-the-google-self-driving-car-46fc9f3e6088 https://medium.com/backchannel/the-view-from-the-front-seat-...

kw71 11y ago

I am a car nut, love driving, drive a powerful car, and can't wait for more of the autonomous cars to hit the streets. Like the article says, they operate predictably and safely. Sometimes it feels like everyone around me is acting like they are a teenager on their first day of being licensed. I live in the USA, and feel that I am a more skilled driver and more mindful than most people who I share the road with. I do not want to be banned from driving. I operate the vehicle safely, strive to obey traffic regulations, give my full attention to driving, and despite having a powerful car almost always drive in a manner that minimizes fuel consumption. Maybe rather than banning human drivers, the standard for obtaining a driving license should be raised. When I have driven in countries with higher standards, like Germany, it's seemed to me that there's much less chaos on the road and drivers are more responsible. There are definitely less of the metro California style shenanigans the author is talking about.

bla2 11y ago
"Svenson (1981) surveyed 161 students in [...] the United States, asking them to compare their driving skills and safety to other people. For driving skills, 93% of the U.S. sample [...] put themselves in the top 50%; for safety, 88% of the U.S. [...] put themselves in the top 50%." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority#Driving_ability http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority#Driving_ab...
- kw71 11y ago
  I was once a student in the United States, back then I was young, cocky and arrogant. I wrongly thought that I was great at driving so long ago. The citation that follows your quote doesn't offer any implications as to age or experience. But the results of the citation following _that_ are ridiculous. I have heard people say that they are better drunk drivers than most people, too. Survey results like these probably shed some light on why people here are such bad drivers. They simply don't realize that they are bad. I'm a lot older now and have a lot more experience. At least, the insurance companies and police agree with my self-assessment now :)
- jbuzbee 11y ago

snambi 11y ago

As more SD cars hit the road, there is less need for a car license. Think about what this can do for tourism in california and other industries that need drivers. For example, Someone who doesn't know driving can comfortably rent a car from SFO and go to Yosemite. UPS/Fedex can do 24 hr deliveries. Overall this is really good.

codemac 11y ago

I do believe that human drivers are a huge problem on the road, and that self-driving cars are the future. However - Something needs to be done about thet fact that generally people who are poorer have to commute further with less [0] and that if they can afford to move to a neighborhood that fixes their commute problem, they are more likely to come out of poverty [1]. We need this to not be the next tesla, but the next bus. [0]: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/07/upshot/transportation-emerges-as-crucial-to-escaping-poverty.html?abt=0002&abg=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/07/upshot/transportation-emer... [1]: http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/images/nbhds_exec_summary.pdf http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/images/nbhds_exec_sum...

TTPrograms 11y ago
Distributed auto-routing smaller busses should cut costs drastically, so this should be very feasible either if implemented commercially or as a commercial service. I have to imagine that paying the bus driver is generally the largest cost for a single bus in any given public transportation system, and being able to route directly during periods of lower traffic (or high traffic even) should be much more efficient in terms of time. Hell I bet Uber could implement scheduled ride sharing and be competitive with public transport on cost now in many cities. 4 people get grouped with the most similar commute and split a $15 fare? That gets you pretty close.
jessaustin 11y ago
ISTM that a fleet of self-driving cars will serve everyone it can. Every car will try to stay occupied as much as possible. Perhaps this means that service will cost a lot during Friday rush hour and very little at 4 AM on Wednesday. In that case the poor may just decide to travel at nontraditional times. [EDIT:] to clarify, the phrase "just decide" is more of a medium-term phenomenon than a short-term one, and elides a great deal of noteworthy human experience. Of course, being disadvantaged often means one can't make sudden changes to one's routine. The poor are not stupid, however. When using short-term self-driving cars is cheaper than owning "clunkers", they'll sell the clunkers and figure out how best to integrate self-driving cars into their lives.
- 11y ago

jwatte 11y ago

I, for one, would like to be the first to welcome our new robot overlords!

theCricketer 11y ago

Would commuter buses (public transit) be a good target to make self-driven? They go on the same route multiple times a day, and since the technology relies on mapping out the route in great detail, wouldn't buses be a good target?

abstractbeliefs 11y ago
The fascinating thing about SD cars is that actually, they don't need to pre-map routes in excruciating detail. They carry enough sensing equipment (the primary being LIDARs) to build high detail maps on the fly, along with recording the location of other road users. Low-detail, pre-mapped, road maps are mainly used for routefinding rather than second-to-second navigation.

pfooti 11y ago

Self-driving cars will be the future, as long as they're all rock-solid on cooperation. Imagine normal intersections, with inefficient stop lights where half the cycle is idle (all the cars on the green side went through already) due to a change in traffic patterns from when they were programmed. Instead, cars that all cooperate can move through the intersection pretty well by taking turns. About thirty percent of traffic in SF is due to people cruising around the block, looking for parking. [1]. Imagine if you could just tell your car, "go park somewhere, I don't care where", and have it come back when you need it. Heck, someone else could use it to get from A to B instead of letting it idle parked. There's a lot of potential awesome here, but it all springs from rock-solid cooperation routines. If people manage to write aggressive / betraying self-driving algorithms, a lot of those traffic light scenarios could easily get a lot worse. Trust issues are a thing: should the car's driving routines be black-boxed? If there were FOSS car brains, would we trust people to not mod their cars to do illegal stuff? I guess traditional traffic cops could handle a lot of the same things they do now, we'd just need the standard autodrive package to account for and expect other cars to be driven in poor, uncooperative fashions. [1]: http://shoup.bol.ucla.edu/CruisingForParkingAccess.pdf http://shoup.bol.ucla.edu/CruisingForParkingAccess.pdf

ChuckMcM 11y ago
Yet another reason to replace stop light controlled intersections with roundabouts. The roundabout is designed for cooperating drivers, stoplights just implement a worst case algorithm.
- TTPrograms 11y ago
  Roundabouts with unbalanced peak flow traffic can be impossible to enter if a previous entrance has a near-constant peak traffic flow. At rush hour they basically break under this condition. You could mildly gate them with lights to fix that, though.
  - nitrogen 11y ago
    If I am entering a roundabout from a dominant direction I try to leave enough of a gap for an attentive driver on the other entrances to get in. It seems fair, since sometimes I'm that driver who is waiting.

wcarss 11y ago

I think it's worth noting that this is not a poll, and has nothing to do with a government action. It is entirely the opinion of one person about other people's opinions, from the perspective of Mountain View, CA. It also doesn't really speak to the banning part at all. I'm very optimistic about the technology and the social change required to enable its spread, but the claim made by the title of this link is not supported by the evidence presented. Nice read, at least.

RodrigoT 11y ago

My other opinion about SD cars is that their analysis of the road can be used to assess the state of the infrastructures, imagine a SD car refusing to enter your street to pick you up until the pot holes are fixed

raldi 11y ago

Flagged for misleading title.

thaumaturgy 11y ago

There is no data here -- it's just some guy's observations of some interactions with self-driving cars in Mountain View. There's nothing to indicate that "Californians are OK with self-driving cars" (although I would guess they are), and nothing to indicate they're OK with banning manually-operated vehicles (no way, no how). The link behind "I think that, inevitably, non-self driving cars will eventually be banned" just goes to a short blog post on the same site from a couple of weeks ago about a newer version of the Google self-driving car. There's not even a word in there about anything being banned. There is an awful lot of California outside of Mountain View (surprising, I know). I'm pretty sure California has the highest number of active vehicle registrations of any state (13 million in 2014, vs. 10 million in 2013 for New York, the most recent data I could find) -- and along with that comes an awful lot of car clubs and driving enthusiasts who would raise an unholy ruckus over the merest whisper of banning their beloved vehicles. So the title's misleading.