10 ms·

The View from the Front Seat of the Google Self-Driving Car, Chapter 2

109 points by ivank 11y ago

ge0rg 11y ago
Chapter 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9526602 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9526602 / 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-... tl;dr: most accidents with Google cars were caused by distracted human drivers. Drive safely! Watch the road!
rwmj 11y ago
The experiment's been going on for 6 years, so when can I have one? I absolutely hate driving - a complete waste of 30+ minutes of my day, every day, and stressful too dealing with all the idiots on the road.
- coldpie 11y ago
  This is precisely why I take public transit. I know it's not an option for everybody, but if it's available in your area, take another look. I'd much rather spend 45 minutes reading a book than 20 minutes staring at someone's bumper and hoping I don't get killed. And I do.
- sdoering 11y ago
  I really love driving - but I hate the 60 or so minutes per day stuck in idiotic traffic on my way from and to work. OK, podcasts make live bearable, but I would love to do way more during this time. I imagine having a 4G network and being able to use this time for working remotely. What a nice thought - being home 1 hour early and quite relaxed...
- martincmartin 11y ago
  Actually, it's been going on for 20 years. http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tjochem/nhaa/Journal.html http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tjochem/nhaa/Journal.html http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tjochem/nhaa/navlab5_details.html http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tjochem/nhaa/navlab5_details.html
danmaz74 11y ago
> National crashes-per-miles-driven rates are currently calculated on police-reported crashes. This made me curious; wouldn't it make more sense to get that kind of data from crashes reported to insurance companies? At least here in Italy, most minor-but-with-small-damages crashes are reported to insurance companies, but not to the police.
- eseehausen 11y ago
  I would imagine one of the primary reasons for not reporting to the police in the USA is to avoid reporting to insurance companies. A claim makes one's premiums go up, often higher than it would take to amicably settle the issue between the drivers. Note: I'm not commenting on the legality of such an approach, which varies by local law and the severity of the crash.
- donkeyd 11y ago
  As a fellow European, this also surprises me. However, IIRC, in the US a lot of accidents aren't reported to the insurance companies either, but are handled with cash transactions.
- realusername 11y ago
  On my case in France (countryside, don't know about large cities), most small damages are not even reported at all since both driver are fearing that the insurance would increase their monthly fee so people are giving cash to each other, it's quite common.
  - pmx 11y ago
    Very much the same in the UK as well. Most folk will try to avoid going through insurance. I'd rather be out of pocket for a few hundred £ than pay extra on insurance for the next few years.
    - DanBC 11y ago
      Not reporting a crash to your insurance company is a bad idea - especially if you do it with the intention of reducing your insurance bill. It means you are currently underinsured and maybe committing fraud.
jdscriven 11y ago
It seems like the vast majority of collisions with google's AVs are rear-end collisions at intersections. I'm surprised that they haven't put any technology in place to attempt to avoid, or at least reduce the impact of these collisions. Clearly, predicting the trajectory of other vehicles should be second nature for the AVs. In the video, there appears to be a shoulder with plenty of escape room. Is there any attempt made to un-distract the driver? Flashing brake lights? Horn? The June report from Google (http://www.google.com/selfdrivingcar/reports/ http://www.google.com/selfdrivingcar/reports/) contains some interesting language: "The Google AV had been stopped for about 11 seconds at the time of the impact" The cynic in me thinks they are intentionally avoiding technology to address these types of accidents so that they can unequivocally prove the the AV had no fault (i.e., had been stopped for x seconds).
- 300bps 11y ago
  Is there any attempt made to un-distract the driver? Flashing brake lights? Horn? This sounds too similar to victim blaming. In my opinion any action taken by someone who is about to be hit from behind in a low speed crash is likely to make the problem worse. I don't think that is the time to have a quick jerky motion into the shoulder of the road. Even honking the horn could distract or panic another driver that then causes a crash. To me the solution is to eliminate distracted driving.
  - daviddumenil 11y ago
    There's a middle ground here where the car sees it's about to be rear-ended and softens the hold on the brakes just enough to convert some of the impact energy to forward motion. It knows the distance to the car in front and has a good idea of the rear car's speed. The only real variable is the weight of the approaching car but a pessimistic estimate could leave more margin to avoid touching the car in front.
    - thrownaway2424 11y ago
      That's the total opposite of what the car should do if it knows it's going to be rear ended. It should lock the brakes and tension the seat belts.
sambeau 11y ago
I wonder how many of these driver errors are due to the assumption that the self-driven car will behave just like a human driven one? It wouldn't take much — an unnecessary hesitation, a slow pull away or (on the other end of the spectrum) super-human reactions to cause me to rear-end someone. Most of my near-collision experiences have been at a junction where I've judged a situation to be safe to pull into the road for both myself and the car in front, and I start to manoeuvre while doing my one last check into the oncoming traffic to verify its clear. My assumption is that the car in front will do the same but occasionally they don't and I have to stop suddenly to avoid collision. Every time I feel surprised and embarrassed. Why didn't I check? Truth is the other 400 times we all behaved as expected. My point being, if the cars are still being limited in their speeds and are (as sometimes reported) a little ponderous in the middle of a manoeuvre maybe it is their behaviour that is causing some of these 'driver' errors.
- 300bps 11y ago
  The one time I rear-ended someone in my life I was doing what you described. It was fully my fault and the result of me trying to gain approximately two seconds on my trip. Fortunately that was over twenty years ago and I haven't repeated the mistake. I see autonomous cars as the solution to this problem.
- DanBC 11y ago
  > It wouldn't take much — an unnecessary hesitation, a slow pull away or (on the other end of the spectrum) super-human reactions to cause me to rear-end someone. If you rear end someone it is almost always[1] your fault, and in the examples you give it's definitely your fault. I'm a little bit surprised that you describe this as the fault of the Google cars. [1] ALMOST
  - codingdave 11y ago
    Yes, but fault isn't the problem - if another driver is doing something that would make an accident "their fault", I normally still see their erratic driving and move my own car away from them. If I see someone flying up at me in my rear-view mirror, I move. If I see someone weaving a bit in their lane, I give them an extra lane of space between us. I don't know if Google's cars do these things or not - but those are the kinds of avoidance techniques I would hope for, even if an accident would not have been their fault.
inthewoods 11y ago
These cars could be so freeing for so many segments of society. I agree with everyone that reducing the commuting annoyance would be awesome - imagine not having to worry about parking your car in the city anymore. You drive in on a highway at 90mph, get dropped off and then the car goes home or onto another task or gets shared out. Amazing. I'm even more excited about getting the elderly out of their homes safely, and getting drunk people off the road altogether. It's easy to play out the use cases and see why Uber is investing in this area and why it feels threatened by this technology advance.
- higherpurpose 11y ago
  I think Uber sees self-driving cars much more as an opportunity than a threat - unless they are afraid they won't be able to buy self-driving cars from anyone but Google, and Google won't sell to them. But I'm sure there will be quite a few suppliers by the time they need the cars [1]. [1] - https://www.yahoo.com/autos/s/uber-ceo-tesla-sell-half-million-autonomous-electric-110000053.html https://www.yahoo.com/autos/s/uber-ceo-tesla-sell-half-milli...
  - jpatokal 11y ago
    I'm pretty sure Google would love to sell Uber some cars: http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/22/google-ventures-puts-258m-into-uber-its-largest-deal-ever/ http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/22/google-ventures-puts-258m-i...
    - toomuchtodo 11y ago
      Google Ventures and Google are separate arms of the same company. Ventures invested, but Google proper is working on their own service to compete against Uber. Note how easy it'll be for Google to flip the "Uber" provider in Google Maps to their own service.
  - inthewoods 11y ago
    Short term I agree with you, but longer term I'm not sure. Short term, they lower costs massively. Longer term, a majority of people have self-driving cars. If I live in the suburbs, I either keep it all to myself, or loan it out when I'm not using it. If I live in the city, then I likely don't own a car - but instead call on a car as I need to. These probably come from both individual lending their car, and from groups/companies that are setup as a service. Either way, these cars are likely to be network agnostic - meaning they'll lend themselves out to Uber, Lyft - whoever. So while costs will go down, it could lead to a big margin compression. Meanwhile, the arms seller (Google, whoever) makes money on each car being sold. Makes sense, therefore, for Uber to continue to focus on capturing the market - their installed consumer base (and their brand) is their strongest asset going forward.
ousta 11y ago
a quick question. heres the situation I am in a self driving car driving full speed on the highway, a little girl crosses the highway (highly unprobable but still possible) what will my car do? maintain high speed and kill her? or try to avoid her knowing that any attemps to avoid collision at this speed would likely injure me if not kill me? then how the car would react if it is a deer? then how the car will be 100% sure its a deer? this is where self driving cars are limited and shoudlnt decide for us.
- Khao 11y ago
  I trust a highly trained algorithm to make better and faster decision than a human driver. The algorithm is even aware of all the cars around it and their speed and can decide to take evasive action with a way better chance of success than I ever could.
  - ousta 11y ago
    yes but what if your goal is to get out of this and the goal of the algorithm is to save the deer or the little girl?
    - Khao 11y ago
      Then I trust the safety engineers of that car to have designed a car that will get me out of an accident alive.
  - brixon 11y ago
    It should be a three tier decision. First, preserve the life in the vehicle. Second, preserve life outside of the vehicle. Third, minimize property damage. Deer vs little girl does not really matter, that is just an emotional ploy.
    - Khao 11y ago
      I'd hope the algorithm was designed to crash the car instead of running over a pedestrian. A pedestrian has little chance to survive getting run over compared to a passenger in a car with a seatbelt, airbags, crumple zones, etc.. to protect him.
twrkit 11y ago
One of my good friends is a veteran of the USMC, who served two tours in Afghanistan. While deployed, he sustained injuries to his hip and brain. As a result, his mobility is impaired, and he has lost half of his field of vision. Until his town succumbed to the taxi lobby and banned ridesharing, he was able to run errands, get groceries, and take care of himself. Now, he is counting down the days in captivity, waiting until he can once again be self-sufficient thanks to autonomous vehicles. Keep up the great work, Google et al, and let's hope that day comes soon :)
Animats 11y ago
It's interesting to see Google's display of the situation.[1] Some of that has to be guessing by the software. They don't have an aerial view of the situation; that's reconstructed from their LIDAR scanner. That view is subject to occlusion by other vehicles. Their scanner is high enough that they can see over most small cars, but they can't see their far side. They show a map of all the vehicles in the intersection as if they had all that info, but if there's a truck or an SUV blocking their view, they can't see through it. I'd like to see the video (they have cameras) that goes with the LIDAR reconstruction. The CMU/Cadillac/Uber self-driving effort doesn't have a LIDAR on a tower, so they don't have as much information. They haven't been reporting accident data, which would be interesting. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtLp2f-vM14 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtLp2f-vM14
- brixon 11y ago
  TED Talk explaining how the car sees: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiwVMrTLUWg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiwVMrTLUWg

109 points by ivank 11y ago

ge0rg 11y ago

Chapter 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9526602 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9526602 / 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-... tl;dr: most accidents with Google cars were caused by distracted human drivers. Drive safely! Watch the road!

rwmj 11y ago

The experiment's been going on for 6 years, so when can I have one? I absolutely hate driving - a complete waste of 30+ minutes of my day, every day, and stressful too dealing with all the idiots on the road.

coldpie 11y ago
This is precisely why I take public transit. I know it's not an option for everybody, but if it's available in your area, take another look. I'd much rather spend 45 minutes reading a book than 20 minutes staring at someone's bumper and hoping I don't get killed. And I do.
sdoering 11y ago
I really love driving - but I hate the 60 or so minutes per day stuck in idiotic traffic on my way from and to work. OK, podcasts make live bearable, but I would love to do way more during this time. I imagine having a 4G network and being able to use this time for working remotely. What a nice thought - being home 1 hour early and quite relaxed...
martincmartin 11y ago
Actually, it's been going on for 20 years. http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tjochem/nhaa/Journal.html http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tjochem/nhaa/Journal.html http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tjochem/nhaa/navlab5_details.html http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tjochem/nhaa/navlab5_details.html

danmaz74 11y ago

> National crashes-per-miles-driven rates are currently calculated on police-reported crashes. This made me curious; wouldn't it make more sense to get that kind of data from crashes reported to insurance companies? At least here in Italy, most minor-but-with-small-damages crashes are reported to insurance companies, but not to the police.

eseehausen 11y ago
I would imagine one of the primary reasons for not reporting to the police in the USA is to avoid reporting to insurance companies. A claim makes one's premiums go up, often higher than it would take to amicably settle the issue between the drivers. Note: I'm not commenting on the legality of such an approach, which varies by local law and the severity of the crash.
donkeyd 11y ago
As a fellow European, this also surprises me. However, IIRC, in the US a lot of accidents aren't reported to the insurance companies either, but are handled with cash transactions.
realusername 11y ago
On my case in France (countryside, don't know about large cities), most small damages are not even reported at all since both driver are fearing that the insurance would increase their monthly fee so people are giving cash to each other, it's quite common.
- pmx 11y ago
  Very much the same in the UK as well. Most folk will try to avoid going through insurance. I'd rather be out of pocket for a few hundred £ than pay extra on insurance for the next few years.
  - DanBC 11y ago
    Not reporting a crash to your insurance company is a bad idea - especially if you do it with the intention of reducing your insurance bill. It means you are currently underinsured and maybe committing fraud.

jdscriven 11y ago

It seems like the vast majority of collisions with google's AVs are rear-end collisions at intersections. I'm surprised that they haven't put any technology in place to attempt to avoid, or at least reduce the impact of these collisions. Clearly, predicting the trajectory of other vehicles should be second nature for the AVs. In the video, there appears to be a shoulder with plenty of escape room. Is there any attempt made to un-distract the driver? Flashing brake lights? Horn? The June report from Google (http://www.google.com/selfdrivingcar/reports/ http://www.google.com/selfdrivingcar/reports/) contains some interesting language: "The Google AV had been stopped for about 11 seconds at the time of the impact" The cynic in me thinks they are intentionally avoiding technology to address these types of accidents so that they can unequivocally prove the the AV had no fault (i.e., had been stopped for x seconds).

300bps 11y ago
Is there any attempt made to un-distract the driver? Flashing brake lights? Horn? This sounds too similar to victim blaming. In my opinion any action taken by someone who is about to be hit from behind in a low speed crash is likely to make the problem worse. I don't think that is the time to have a quick jerky motion into the shoulder of the road. Even honking the horn could distract or panic another driver that then causes a crash. To me the solution is to eliminate distracted driving.
- daviddumenil 11y ago
  There's a middle ground here where the car sees it's about to be rear-ended and softens the hold on the brakes just enough to convert some of the impact energy to forward motion. It knows the distance to the car in front and has a good idea of the rear car's speed. The only real variable is the weight of the approaching car but a pessimistic estimate could leave more margin to avoid touching the car in front.
  - thrownaway2424 11y ago
    That's the total opposite of what the car should do if it knows it's going to be rear ended. It should lock the brakes and tension the seat belts.

sambeau 11y ago

I wonder how many of these driver errors are due to the assumption that the self-driven car will behave just like a human driven one? It wouldn't take much — an unnecessary hesitation, a slow pull away or (on the other end of the spectrum) super-human reactions to cause me to rear-end someone. Most of my near-collision experiences have been at a junction where I've judged a situation to be safe to pull into the road for both myself and the car in front, and I start to manoeuvre while doing my one last check into the oncoming traffic to verify its clear. My assumption is that the car in front will do the same but occasionally they don't and I have to stop suddenly to avoid collision. Every time I feel surprised and embarrassed. Why didn't I check? Truth is the other 400 times we all behaved as expected. My point being, if the cars are still being limited in their speeds and are (as sometimes reported) a little ponderous in the middle of a manoeuvre maybe it is their behaviour that is causing some of these 'driver' errors.

300bps 11y ago
The one time I rear-ended someone in my life I was doing what you described. It was fully my fault and the result of me trying to gain approximately two seconds on my trip. Fortunately that was over twenty years ago and I haven't repeated the mistake. I see autonomous cars as the solution to this problem.
DanBC 11y ago
> It wouldn't take much — an unnecessary hesitation, a slow pull away or (on the other end of the spectrum) super-human reactions to cause me to rear-end someone. If you rear end someone it is almost always[1] your fault, and in the examples you give it's definitely your fault. I'm a little bit surprised that you describe this as the fault of the Google cars. [1] ALMOST
- codingdave 11y ago
  Yes, but fault isn't the problem - if another driver is doing something that would make an accident "their fault", I normally still see their erratic driving and move my own car away from them. If I see someone flying up at me in my rear-view mirror, I move. If I see someone weaving a bit in their lane, I give them an extra lane of space between us. I don't know if Google's cars do these things or not - but those are the kinds of avoidance techniques I would hope for, even if an accident would not have been their fault.

inthewoods 11y ago

These cars could be so freeing for so many segments of society. I agree with everyone that reducing the commuting annoyance would be awesome - imagine not having to worry about parking your car in the city anymore. You drive in on a highway at 90mph, get dropped off and then the car goes home or onto another task or gets shared out. Amazing. I'm even more excited about getting the elderly out of their homes safely, and getting drunk people off the road altogether. It's easy to play out the use cases and see why Uber is investing in this area and why it feels threatened by this technology advance.

higherpurpose 11y ago
I think Uber sees self-driving cars much more as an opportunity than a threat - unless they are afraid they won't be able to buy self-driving cars from anyone but Google, and Google won't sell to them. But I'm sure there will be quite a few suppliers by the time they need the cars [1]. [1] - https://www.yahoo.com/autos/s/uber-ceo-tesla-sell-half-million-autonomous-electric-110000053.html https://www.yahoo.com/autos/s/uber-ceo-tesla-sell-half-milli...
- jpatokal 11y ago
  I'm pretty sure Google would love to sell Uber some cars: http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/22/google-ventures-puts-258m-into-uber-its-largest-deal-ever/ http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/22/google-ventures-puts-258m-i...
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    Google Ventures and Google are separate arms of the same company. Ventures invested, but Google proper is working on their own service to compete against Uber. Note how easy it'll be for Google to flip the "Uber" provider in Google Maps to their own service.
- inthewoods 11y ago
  Short term I agree with you, but longer term I'm not sure. Short term, they lower costs massively. Longer term, a majority of people have self-driving cars. If I live in the suburbs, I either keep it all to myself, or loan it out when I'm not using it. If I live in the city, then I likely don't own a car - but instead call on a car as I need to. These probably come from both individual lending their car, and from groups/companies that are setup as a service. Either way, these cars are likely to be network agnostic - meaning they'll lend themselves out to Uber, Lyft - whoever. So while costs will go down, it could lead to a big margin compression. Meanwhile, the arms seller (Google, whoever) makes money on each car being sold. Makes sense, therefore, for Uber to continue to focus on capturing the market - their installed consumer base (and their brand) is their strongest asset going forward.

ousta 11y ago

a quick question. heres the situation I am in a self driving car driving full speed on the highway, a little girl crosses the highway (highly unprobable but still possible) what will my car do? maintain high speed and kill her? or try to avoid her knowing that any attemps to avoid collision at this speed would likely injure me if not kill me? then how the car would react if it is a deer? then how the car will be 100% sure its a deer? this is where self driving cars are limited and shoudlnt decide for us.

Khao 11y ago
I trust a highly trained algorithm to make better and faster decision than a human driver. The algorithm is even aware of all the cars around it and their speed and can decide to take evasive action with a way better chance of success than I ever could.
- ousta 11y ago
  yes but what if your goal is to get out of this and the goal of the algorithm is to save the deer or the little girl?
  - Khao 11y ago
    Then I trust the safety engineers of that car to have designed a car that will get me out of an accident alive.
- brixon 11y ago
  It should be a three tier decision. First, preserve the life in the vehicle. Second, preserve life outside of the vehicle. Third, minimize property damage. Deer vs little girl does not really matter, that is just an emotional ploy.
  - Khao 11y ago
    I'd hope the algorithm was designed to crash the car instead of running over a pedestrian. A pedestrian has little chance to survive getting run over compared to a passenger in a car with a seatbelt, airbags, crumple zones, etc.. to protect him.

twrkit 11y ago

One of my good friends is a veteran of the USMC, who served two tours in Afghanistan. While deployed, he sustained injuries to his hip and brain. As a result, his mobility is impaired, and he has lost half of his field of vision. Until his town succumbed to the taxi lobby and banned ridesharing, he was able to run errands, get groceries, and take care of himself. Now, he is counting down the days in captivity, waiting until he can once again be self-sufficient thanks to autonomous vehicles. Keep up the great work, Google et al, and let's hope that day comes soon :)

Animats 11y ago

It's interesting to see Google's display of the situation.[1] Some of that has to be guessing by the software. They don't have an aerial view of the situation; that's reconstructed from their LIDAR scanner. That view is subject to occlusion by other vehicles. Their scanner is high enough that they can see over most small cars, but they can't see their far side. They show a map of all the vehicles in the intersection as if they had all that info, but if there's a truck or an SUV blocking their view, they can't see through it. I'd like to see the video (they have cameras) that goes with the LIDAR reconstruction. The CMU/Cadillac/Uber self-driving effort doesn't have a LIDAR on a tower, so they don't have as much information. They haven't been reporting accident data, which would be interesting. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtLp2f-vM14 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtLp2f-vM14

brixon 11y ago
TED Talk explaining how the car sees: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiwVMrTLUWg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiwVMrTLUWg