Self-driving Cars

[Odds]

I have some bad news: You are almost certainly a worse driver than you think you are...here’s as much as a 2.5-second lag between what we perceive and how fast we can react in a vehicle traveling 60 mph, which means a car will travel the equivalent of two basketball court lengths before its driver can even hit the brake.

Nearly 1.2 million people die in road crashes globally each year [and] In a peer-reviewed study that is set to be published in the journal Traffic Injury Prevention, Waymo analyzed the safety performance of its autonomous vehicles over the course of 56.7 million miles driven in Austin, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and San Francisco — all without a human safety driver present to take the wheel in an emergency. They then compared that data to human driving safety over the same number of miles driven on the same kind of roads. The results of the study, almost certainly the biggest and most comprehensive research on self-driving car safety yet released, are striking.

Compared to human drivers, the Waymo self-driving cars had:

• 81 percent fewer airbag-deploying crashes
• 85 percent fewer crashes with suspected serious or worse injuries
• 96 percent fewer injury crashes at intersections (primarily because Waymo detects red lights faster than humans)
• 92 percent fewer crashes that involve injuries to pedestrians.

Had the typical human-driven fleet of cars covered those same 56.7 million miles, the Waymo researchers project it would have resulted in an estimated 181 additional injury crashes, 78 additional air-bag crashes, and 11 extra serious-injury crashes.

Bryan Walsh@Vox

Would you buy one if the network was available?

 

[robinbanks]

Nearly 1.2 million people die in road crashes globally each year

But.. there are just so many of us; there is no way such a feeble effort will curb the rampant population explosion

I'd buy a self driving car - I've long held the opinion that coordinating millions of vehicles simultaneously is something computers could do so much better than we can. You've only got to look at something like that video of 900 Teslas on a race circuit in Finland, all coordinating their lights and audio systems to realise that, while an apparently gimmick feature, it's a demonstration of inter communication between cars that could do things like end traffic jams (if they would even occur in the first place) - imagine miles and miles of cars on a motorway, having them all set off simultaneously and accelerate at the same rate - no more jam. Humans can only see the car in front of them, slowly set off after they see it start to set off, try and concentrate on not running into the back of it if some berk has a moment. Meanwhile cars are whooshing into the back of the tailback far faster than they leave at the front, so it just grows. You finally get to the front of it and there is nothing there, there was just two Volvo drivers who hit the brakes three hours ago rubbernecking a crash on the other side that started this bizarre concertina

I once tried to explain this to someone who I formerly thought was quite bright, being as he ran a successful business and all, and he was driving the car to France that we were sat in, in a tailback. And he said "but if all the cars set off at the same time, they'd all crash into each other"

Sorry, but that level of stupidity needs removing from the coordinated system as soon as possible. We should get the clever humans to distill their knowledge into a computer that can action it with routine precision over and over again, so the meatballs no longer bring their flawed decision making into the process. It goes on all around you; the computer in your car repetitively running a loop that works out exactly how much fuel to inject every other stroke of the piston, the control of the air fryer that cooks your food, your Internet router deciding where to send millions of information packets a minute.

Introduce humans into the system, who think they can operate with the same tireless accuracy, and all of a sudden you have should-be-impossibly-remote events like planes crashing into each other in relatively empty sky, when one of them only needed to be 30m this way or that to avoid it

Nah, if humans want to drive, give them a cart and horse

 

[evdamadiynot]

No because I believe the data is distorted.
It will never be conducted on twisted narrow country lane where there is no clear priority for one vehicle over another and a judgement/acceptance has to be made.
We have a complex major junction in town which is usually controlled by traffic lights.
They were switched off for a few days last week .No accidents, and delightfully none of the usual crazy congestion.
Im not sure how a number of driverless car would cope with such a complete lack of perameters.

 

[robinbanks]

Im not sure how a number of driverless car would cope with such a complete lack of perameters.

So just because you cannot conceive how someone/thing that is not you would solve a problem, means no one should be allowed to solve the problem?

Attitudes like that are a huge part of the problem. It's also hypocrisy; pretty sure you didn't design or build your microwave, you just heated your soup up in it grateful that someone else had solved the problem of using light waves to warm up food quickly without baking the person watching the magic happen through the door.

 

[evdamadiynot]

A good software designer will often look at how humans or nature solves a problem.
In the case of the road junction it was done by individuals who were not even working collectively.
Some were courteous,some were timid ,some were assertive, some were oblivious - and some were asleep.
None really knew what the other was actually going to do
But it worked better than the software normally controlling the lights

It was done by emotion.
At present that is something that the driverless car cant do.


I love technology where it helps and brings joy -I marvel at my colleagues drone flights and 3d prints and am grateful for the medical advancement.
I hate it where it just adds another layer of unnecessary complexity -or just doesnt work.
A major Marks and Spencer supplier reverted to a pen and paper system last week-guess why?

Due caution is often dismissed as being luddite and sensible people are also ridiculed if they even mention the Terminator scenario
(Of course that could never happen could it....)

I'll leave it there and await the apocalypse

 

[Murdochcat]

One thing i detest on my modern car is the adaptable cruise control. It will put the brakes on abruptly if a car comes into to space in front of me whereas my foot will just come off the throttle

 

[EFLImpudence]

which means a car will travel the equivalent of two basketball court lengths before its driver can even hit the brake.

How far is that?

 

[johnny2007]

here’s as much as a 2.5-second lag between what we perceive and how fast we can react in a vehicle traveling 60 mph, which means a car will travel the equivalent of two basketball court lengths before its driver can even hit the brake.

Before I release my favourite punchline, anyone who takes 2.5 seconds to react to anything is either asleep or in need of an urgent medical checkup.
In any case they shouldn't be driving.
I see lots of these "studies" and they always, always assume that humans take ages to react when in reality they probably take 0.1 seconds.
Now for my favourite punchline...
Boll@x!

No because I believe the data is distorted.
It will never be conducted on twisted narrow country lane where there is no clear priority for one vehicle over another and a judgement/acceptance has to be made.
We have a complex major junction in town which is usually controlled by traffic lights.
They were switched off for a few days last week .No accidents, and delightfully none of the usual crazy congestion.
Im not sure how a number of driverless car would cope with such a complete lack of perameters.

Exactly

How far is that?

Enough to know that this "study" is simply another pile of shyt and totally boll@x.

 

[freddiemercurystwin]

One thing i detest on my modern car is the adaptable cruise control. It will put the brakes on abruptly if a car comes into to space in front of me whereas my foot will just come off the throttle

And then the bloke behind you is wondering why you braked. Same for when a car slows down in front to turn into a side road.

 

[Munroast]

How far is that?

some strange American rubbish

 

[Odds]

How far is that?

It's about...

 

[Odds]

Before I release my favourite punchline, anyone who takes 2.5 seconds to react to anything is either asleep or in need of an urgent medical checkup.
In any case they shouldn't be driving.
I see lots of these "studies" and they always, always assume that humans take ages to react when in reality they probably take 0.1 seconds.

Yeah, the average reaction time is about half a second but i think the writer is adding the time from the first moment a danger is perceived.

Now for my favourite punchline...
Boll@x!

Exactly

Enough to know that this "study" is simply another pile of shyt and totally boll@x.

Although i wouldn't condemn the article on one statistic. Self-driving cars have been noted for the times when they did bump into something and all the safe journeys are ignored. I don't see how they'd work in everyday situations when the network could be affected by bad weather or heavy traffic but an automated system is a distinct possibility in the future when gas-guzzling cars are replaced by electric vehicles. Not in our lifetime, probably, but these are the early days of an automated transport system that'll make our roads - and air travel - safer.

 

[Odds]

It looks like we'll soon have the chance to find out as the BBC reports Uber will trial robotaxis London next spring.

Uber launched a robotaxi service in Austin, Texas in March and said its driverless vehicles could work for 20 hours per day, seven days per week. Customers there can choose whether to take a robotaxi if there is one available, with no difference in fare. Tesla is planning to launch a rival service in the same city in June.

 

[Odds]

 

[Rodders53]

Yep all our latest cars have speed sign detectors / mapping of road speeds and they get it wrong often enough. Ours said I could do 40 on a 30 road earlier. Then complained I exceeded 40 on a 60 single carriageway.

One thing i detest on my modern car is the adaptable cruise control. It will put the brakes on abruptly if a car comes into to space in front of me whereas my foot will just come off the throttle

Ours seems to decide to suddenly slow (regen brake) sometimes as we are passing an artic on otherwise clear multi-lane roads (motorway or A roads). Not always, just sometimes.

I've had the braking when people move into "my" lane and agree I'd not have braked but then the 'set distance' of adaptive CC to the car in front (now an intruder) is being maintained by the autopilot braking... and lifting my foot off the throttle brakes anyway (one pedal drive).
Still learning with the new car.
Most weird is the auto accelerate when indicating for an overtake, far sooner than I'd have done, so I'm needing to 're-learn' that process as well.