
The latest chapter for the self-driving car: mastering city street driving - mgw
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-latest-chapter-for-self-driving-car.html
======
ignostic
Everyone seems really concerned with the edge cases right now. What about
insurance and liability? What about when X happens and it's raining? These are
(usually pretty minor) technical challenges, and I haven't heard one yet that
we won't be able to overcome with today's technology.

Under given circumstances the car will be safer than a human or it isn't. The
moment it crosses that threshold (for most conditions) the world is going to
change for the better. From there it's just a matter of optimization until a
human watcher isn't even required.

Self-driving cars are worth every penny of research. They will some day be
safer than human drivers. With a full network of communicating cars and fail-
safes we could almost eliminate traffic-related injury and death. Some day
your insurance company will probably charge you more per mile you choose to
take control of your car.

Beyond safety, this could make life way more convenient and make living far
more convenient. We won't need to waste 4-10%+ of our entire lives staring at
the road doing nothing. That's huge! Once the cars are safe enough, you'll be
able to read, write, or take a nap.

Life also gets a lot more efficient. We won't all need cars. Think about the
social ramifications. We won't need all that parking space we waste at home,
work, at grocery stores, or downtown. Rather than needing 2 cars for me and my
wife, I could send it back to get her once I get to work - or maybe just sign
up for a service that completely eliminates the need to own.

~~~
untog
There's the simple issue of legal liability, though. If you crash into
someone, it's your fault and you can be taken to court for it. If a Google
driverless car crashes into someone then it's Google's fault. That's an
extremely large number of potential crashes and legal challenges.

Absent any higher concern, Google has to be very careful about this out of
their own self-interest.

~~~
ignostic
I hear people fretting about liability as a "problem to overcome," but it's
actually much simpler than the technical challenges.

People have to drive the same distance regardless. Whether it's human or
computer error leading to the accident is irrelevant to your premium. To a car
insurance company it's all about rates and risks.

Assuming driverless cars are shown to be safer than humans - and they'll have
to be in order to get approval - your car insurance company would be stupid
not to cover them. From their perspective it's simple economics. The accident
rate is lower, thus the potential liability is lower.

If your insurer isn't willing to insure your driverless car, you'll switch to
someone who does. If no established provider insures driverless, that's a no-
brainer company to start. Similar payments in a high-margin industry with
lower average payouts? Yes, please.

Liability is the easy part.

~~~
dclowd9901
The problem is your insurance company. If you get in an accident, they're not
going to want to pay for it, and they're going to go after Google for the
damages. Now we're right back where we started.

~~~
brc
No. Current driver-based insurance policies might be based on the ability to
hold the driver personally responsible if they are negligent.

Insuring a vehicle is just figuring out what the likely payout ratio across a
cohort of those vehicles is going to be, then working backwards from there to
come up with a premium that will cover the claim amounts, administrative costs
and provide a pool of funds to invest.

Lots of things are insured today with no interest in who is operating them.
Automated cars are no different to that.

Essentially you're imaging a current situation (where a driver is insured) and
transferring that to a situation with no driver. That's wrong.

Insurance companies don't care - they just want to be able to predict what the
likely payout rate is. And that's how much it will cost. If that includes
cover for buggy code, it just means a higher premium. Essentially younger
drivers have buggier driving code, and that's why they cost more to insure.

~~~
stormbrew
Also, in terms of regulatory capture, it's almost certain that the legal
requirement to hold insurance for your car will continue. But the combination
of the fact that payouts will probably move towards class action against
software bugs (where class action suits usually have a lower per-person
payout, and will be paid out by massive policies held by the car companies)
and the fact that in general fewer of those people will ever need a payout
thanks to safety improvements (especially as we move into most cars on city
roads being driverless) will mean insurance companies will have to pay out
less.

I will never understand why people think insurance companies will be a barrier
to adoption. Insurance companies are going to love this. I think the tipping
point will be when insurance rates on driving your own car skyrocket.

~~~
brc
>I will never understand why people think insurance companies will be a
barrier to adoption. Insurance companies are going to love this. I think the
tipping point will be when insurance rates on driving your own car skyrocket.

Yes. The logic goes like this. 'Currently I'm an insured driver'. I will have
a car with no driver. It therefore cannot be insured.

Where I live cars are _already_ insured for third-party personal damages,
regardless of who is driving them. It's a fixed-cost premium attached and paid
at vehicle registration time. Thus, if you are injured in a motor vehicle
accident, regardless of who is at fault, you (or your heirs) will be paid
compensation in a regulated environment. This is a functioning market which
doesn't adjust for driver age or experience, but instead collectively insures
all vehicles on the road, and pays out when a claim is made. Periodically,
when more than one insurer is involved, they will negotiate an 'at fault'
percentage in order to work out which ratio at which the claims are attributed
to each insurer. This may involve discussion of the drivers actions (to
determine fault), but the payout is always made - because the _vehicle itself_
is the thing that is insured.

In this system, the only way the driver can become liable for the claim is if
they specifically and deliberately engaged in a criminal act, such as driving
an unregistered vehicle, or driving under influence. Mere speeding or red-
light running doesn't void the insurance (as these are traffic infringements
rather than criminal acts). And in these cases, the insurance company still
pays out the compensation, but may proceed to recover the compensation from
the driver that broke the law.

This type of system would easily be translated to driverless vehicles. The
owner of the vehicle would pay a registration fee, and a portion of that fee
would be passed onto the owners choice of insurer (or a valid certificate of
insurance would need to be presented for registration, which is the same
thing). As long as the insurance was paid, then third-party personal and
property damage would be paid out to any accident claimants. If the insurance
company then decided someone was directly liable for causing the claim (such
as tampering with vehicle systems or negligent coding) then they could recover
the claim money.

Such a system would be a vast improvement on the current situation, whereby
it's the driver that is insured, and because of the various risk factors,
insurance premiums are all over the place. As a result, the riskiest drivers
also tend to be the ones lacking insurance, which is the worst case for
someone who needs to make a claim.

But then insurance is one of the most misunderstood products around, so I
guess it's not surprising that ignorance of how it works abounds.

------
gbog
In this discussion I very rarely see mentioned how heavy are cars. Since when
do we need multi tons machine to move a being that is usually below 100kg from
a to b? Here in northern China, many people have very small egg-cars, which
are nothing more than an electric bike with a thin shell for the cold, and
this is much less likely to kill someone by accident.

I think we have been under a very strong brain washing so that we all believe
a nice car is big and has this and that. Maybe these car ads will be seen in
20 years the same way we see cigarette ads right now: dangerous brain washing
by a lobby gone crazy.

(Edited slightly to avoid unfortunate pun)

~~~
pinaceae
because it is a multi-purpose vehicle. i drive a car to work, single
passenger. i drive the car to buy stuff, with my wife, 2 passengers, plus
hauling stuff in the trunk. i drive the car to various places on the weekend,
wife plus kid plus shit in the trunk.

i bought it to cover multiple transportation scenarios I encounter on a weekly
basis. it also has a certain size to protect me in an accident. bumping into
something at 30mph needs a certain amount of crumple zone to make it
survivable. physics are hard to beat.

and I haven't killed anyone so far with my car - and I've driven on multiple
continents, on and offroad.

no lobby needed.

~~~
bertil
Actually, with self-driving cars, it’s likely that those four activity could
be handled by different vehicles that you would only rent for the time you
need them. If the law allows them to drive empty, they could go to the next
user on their own, and reduce both waste parking, and inefficiencies like the
ones you describe.

Such plans are however more likely to happen in areas where those issues are
more dire (concentrated living) and where non-ownership is already commonly
accepted: bike-sharing already exists in NY. Not sure where you are, but I’m
assuming you don’t have city-car-sharing there. This discrepancy can come off
as a result of lobbying: car companies typically appear hostile to selling a
lot less cars to sharing platform operators. I know for a fact there was a lot
of lobbying involved in some cases, but I doubt that was the key issues in
most places where ‘transportation alternatives’ isn’t used.

~~~
pinaceae
sure, but this why ownership as a concept is actually quite nice - i can
decide _right now_ to do something with _my_ car. i don't need to plan ahead.
i am not dependent on anybody else. i gladly pay for that luxury.

~~~
TulliusCicero
Yes, and surely some people (particularly in less dense suburbs and rural
areas) will continue to own cars. They will just be self-driving cars, because
manually operated cars will be illegal.

~~~
mcherm
You write: > because manually operated cars will be illegal.

I have a question for you. How many years after the introduction of the
gasoline powered automobile did it take before horse-drawn vehicles became
illegal on the roads?

Near where I live (eastern Pennsylvania, USA) one still encounters a horse-
and-buggy occasionally, especially near Amish areas. And a few roads
(interstates and limited access highways) are specifically posted for motor
vehicles only.

I posit that there will be a LONG period in which manually operated cars will
share the road with self-driving cars.

------
gfodor
Question for self-driving car aficionados. When I'm driving and encounter a
strange or dangerous situation these days I often try to think if a robocar
will be able to handle it properly. One situation came up the other day that
made me nervous. I was driving on a relatively empty highway at high speed
(70mph) and there was a piece of debris in one of the lanes. I spotted the
debris far ahead and safely changed lanes.

For an autonomous car, the car will a) need incredibly far range to see this
debris in time and b) will need incredibly precise lidar/radar to see the
debris if it is small. At a far distance, a small piece of debris covers a
minuscule solid angle on the sensor. At high speeds, you have a twofold
problem that tests the limits of the onboard sensors and collision avoidance
systems: objects approach rapidly, and small objects can cause catastrophic
damage or cause other collisions. In the case where other cars are on the
road, the problem seems straightforward since the robocar can probably see all
the other cars ahead of it changing lanes in a pattern. On a deserted highway
however the car is in trouble unless it can spot the debris from a very far
distance, it seems. Any thoughts?

~~~
thrownaway2424
Humans have a tendency to focus on the bizarre while dismissing the average.
Perhaps a self-driving car will not see this debris, although I would be
surprised if that was true. The robot car has far superior sensors, compared
to yours, and it never looks at anything else. Probably the consequences of
hitting the debris would have been minor anyway.

On the other hand, meat-drivers are constantly murdering hundreds of people
every day. A robot-driven car won't do that. It would even be acceptable if
the robot car stuck the debris in the roadway at full speed, every single
time, as long as it wasn't mowing down little kids at the local farmers'
market every Sunday.

~~~
Loughla
Your basic argument is that, although robots will make mistakes, we'll let
them kill just a few of us to save many more. That seems like it's not going
to go over well with most people.

And I would say that mowing down little kids at the local farmer's market
would be one of those 'bizarre' incidents, unless there has been a rash of
farmer's market mow-downs that I'm not aware of.

I've never hit anyone, and I'd rather not let a robot wreck my car and
endanger my life in a situation that would have been easily avoidable, should
I have been in control. There's your counter argument.

~~~
ripter
I think you misread. He's saying that it's better for everyone if a robot hits
debris every now and then vs a human driver that causes 100ish deaths a day.

According to [http://www.nhtsa.gov/NCSA](http://www.nhtsa.gov/NCSA) a
pedestrians is killed every two hours and injured every 7 minutes. A robot car
would reduce these rates to near zero.

~~~
Loughla
I'm still not sold that "A robot car would reduce these rates to near zero" as
you claim. Your statistics give: time of day; weather conditions; area
(pedestrian or motor vehicle designated); alcohol consumption; and state/city
data;

BUT I don't see conditions predicating the crash.

I would be very interested, and would be sold more on the idea of self-driving
cars if the advocates who make your claim could point to examples that would
reduce these rates. How many accidents are caused by drivers swerving to miss
something? How many are caused by driver inattentiveness? How many are caused
by mechanical error? Without these numbers, saying that a robot car would
reduce these rates to near zero is on the same footing as anyone who wants to
claim that self-driving cars would kill more people, because we can plan
ahead. I hope that makes sense, I'm having a hard time with the language
today.

By the way, I love the concept of self-driving cars, I just don't think
they're the cure-all most advocates, such as yourself, claim them to be.

~~~
thrownaway2424
You're acting like one of those people who say that we don't have all the
evidence on global climate change yet. There's no mystery about what causes
motor vehicle collisions. Here is a huge report from the administration to
Congress on the causes of motor vehicle collisions.

[http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/811059.PDF](http://www-
nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/811059.PDF)

The majority of crashes occur in daytime, in clear weather, while the car is
moving in a straight line. You'll note that substantially all of these causes
would be solved by a computer-driven car.

""" About 41 percent of the driver-related critical reasons were recognition
errors that include inattention, internal and external distractions,
inadequate surveillance, etc. Of these, the most frequently occurring critical
reason was inadequate surveillance that refers to a situation in which a
driver failed to look, or looked but did not see, when it was essential to
safely complete a vehicle maneuver. This critical reason was assigned to
drivers in about 20 percent of crashes. Internal distraction as a critical
reason was assigned to drivers in about 11 percent of the crashes. About 34
percent of the driver-related critical reasons were decision errors that
included too fast for conditions (8.4%), too fast for curve (4.9%), false
assumption of others’ actions (4.5%), illegal maneuver (3.8%), and misjudgment
of gap or others’ speed (3.2%). In about 10 percent of the crashes, the
critical reason was a performance error, such as overcompensation (4.9%), poor
directional control (4.7%), etc. Among the nonperformance errors assigned as
critical reasons to drivers in about 7 percent of the crashes, sleep was the
most common critical reason (3.2%). The effectiveness of vehicle-based
countermeasures used in mitigating the effects of various driver performance,
recognition, and decision errors could be evaluated using this information.
"""

You'll note that "vehicle problem" is the critical pre-crash event for only
1.2% of crashes. Therefore if the computer _only_ solves the sleeping driver
problem, and even if it is twice as bad as humans at handling vehicle
mechanical failure, society is still reaping a net benefit. But, of course,
computer-driven cars can solve nearly all of these causes of crashes:
inattention, misperception, distraction, sleeping, driving too fast for
conditions, and on and on.

------
yardie
It's amazing how new technology is meeting old technology again. For example,
the horse drawn carriage.

Typically, the carriage driver doesn't steer the horse but points it in the
direction they want to go. The horse and it's little horse brain negotiates
the terrain and immediate obstacles.

You never had to steer the horse to avoid driving over the cliff, it was smart
enough to know self preservation. The modern mechanical car doesn't even have
that level of avoidance systems. This left the driver to manage more strategic
tasks. There were downsides obviously. Horses could freak out and run over a
crowd of people.

------
dabeeeenster
As a city cyclist, the Google solution looks _way_ safer than the current
status quo...

~~~
Zigurd
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.

~~~
josefresco
I'll back that as soon as a system to force bicyclists to abide by traffic
laws is required.

~~~
thefreeman
I have a feeling that the general populace of hacker news will disagree with
us, but I am with you 100%.

I live in a small-ish town on the outskirts of Philadelphia that happens to be
in the middle of some sort of really popular biking route. Unfortunately, we
have a ton of really small streets with cars parked on both sides.

I understand and appreciate that cyclists have no other place to ride then in
the street, and they as much a right to the road as drivers. But it can be
quite frustrating to be stuck behind a cyclist who is making no effort to
pedal quickly on a road where it is impossible to pass them.

The really frustrating thing though is that they completely ignore traffic
rules. If you have to ride in the street and I have to treat you as part of
traffic, fine. But why do you get to creep up the side of the street at red
lights, then positioning yourself in front of more cars to slow down. And why
do you get to run red lights? It seems it needs to be one way or the other.
Either you are a pedestrian, and you should be trying to avoid traffic, or you
are a participant on the road and you should obey the traffic laws.

~~~
mzs
Why I pull in front of the line of cars stopped at the red light on my bike is
because otherwise a car will clobber me. It's not a matter of if but when and
the consequences will be severe for my family and me. On my commute I am
minimally wearing a bright neon green penny over my clothing. When I have
stopped in the line of cars at the light I have had cars almost rear end me.
Also when I get to the intersection drivers do not seem to notice me there and
turn right directly in front of me or a car from the oncoming lane decides to
turn into me. So I crawl to the front. And do you know what happened here a
handful of time? Even when I make eye contact with an oncoming car, the moment
the light turned green, the driver forget I was there and tried to turn left
as I was crossing on the green. So for my safety on this particular
intersection on my commute I crawl to the front, wait for the light for the
cross traffic to turn red and verify that all the cars are slowing, then I
book it across before the light turns green for me and the other people barely
awake behind the wheel. In this way I am not there anymore when another car
starts going. I know it's illegal, but it is the only way I have found to get
to and from work safely as it is the only entrance. Anyway, I just wanted to
let you know why I do that. Some people that do not ride bicycles enough just
don't have the experience to appreciate what other things might be going on
when not in a car.

~~~
grkvlt
In the UK this is actually enforced, and we have ASLs
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_stop_line](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_stop_line))
allowing cyclists to move in front of other traffic at junctions, and start
ahead of them. Is this sort of thing not part of the road system i9n the US?

~~~
mzs
It's quite rare here in US, I've only encountered it sporadically near some
universities. I think they make a lot of sense and wish they were common.
Typically here there is enough room for a bicycle and then some ahead of the
stopped cars, so it makes little sense to me why the extra markings are not
painted on the road - possibly lack of familiarity?

------
deanclatworthy
This is amazing, but if anything it's made me more wary of some of the
challenges the project faces.

\- What if the cyclist fell off his bike in front of the car? How quickly can
the computer process the real-time imagery and react compared to a human with
their peripheral vision. \- What if the cyclist swung from the pavement on to
the road. A human driver will probably have spotted the hazard (we all train
for that kind of thing when learning to drive) earlier. What are the
limitations of the peripheral vision of the car when checking hazards? \- What
if a fire hydrant bursts on the side of the road 50m in front of the car and
makes the road ahead really wet? Can the cameras determine and detect quickly
enough the need for different driving (and probably braking) due to a change
in surface?

The sad truth of this is that whilst it's an interesting technical challenge,
I really can't forsee a situation where a computer could react to all the
different things that could happen when driving a car as well as a human.

~~~
nabla9
Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but Google cars still can't drive in the
rain or in the snow. Not even on a wet street. They have driven all those
thousand miles in Mountain View, Calif. in good weather.

Generally lidar's don't work well with rain or reflective surfaces.

~~~
cbhl
My understanding is that it uses vision processing algorithms on a camera
nowadays, and works just fine in rain. Snow is an issue because the car can't
see the lane markings through the snow -- a human drives through snow by
remembering where they were or making a guess.

~~~
DavidAdams
There's a relatively simple fix for lane markings, that would help autonomous
cars even in good weather. You know those reflective lane marking doodads they
embed in the road surface? We start replacing them with magnetized nails that
are pounded into the asphalt in intervals. Sensors in the car could recognize
the lanes even in deep snow or pea-soup fog. And homeowners could easily
outfit their driveways with a trip to Home Depot.

~~~
cbhl
They don't use the embedded ones in most parts of snow countries like Canada,
because it's hard to get them flush with the road so that they work with
snowplows. AFAICT, Toronto still uses just plain old paint on most of its
roads.

------
antr
I love how the car understands the cyclist's hand signals. The self-driving
car is going to have a gigantic impact on the world, I can't wait to see it
commercialised.

~~~
bertil
As a cyclist, I was shocked to see the cyclist change his mind like that
—unless he was a tester too, that’s how you get bumped– but I really hope
Google Cars learn that most cyclists actually don’t signal their turn that
well.

Cars don’t bother either, and the last frame show how most non-car drivers get
killed: don’t notice what passing just being, shift in gear, swerve and… bang.
Seeing how Google taught its car to behave literally had me shout in joy an
dance at my desk.

~~~
barrkel
_don’t notice what passing just being, shift in gear, swerve and… bang_

Can you rephrase this? I can't understand it.

~~~
bertil
At the very end of the video, you can see a common situation: a car waits at
an intersection to turn right. Nothing seems to block its way. Actually, in
the US, cars seem to turn right even when the light is red, for instance.

Anyway: what they show is that, just behind the car, just at its right, there
is a cyclist. But it is in the dead spot. That cyclist is most likely going
steady because the path is clear: cars were waiting at the intersection, but
what was blocking them just passed, so you can move along. My experience is
that cars _always_ forget to signal they are turning, and they never think
about check the deadspot.

This is how most cyclists die.

It was notoriously how the first death involving a Vélib, (Paris’ free bike
scheme); it actually happened meters away from where I was at the time.

More importantly, this is something that most car drivers don’t care to check:
they _always_ blame the cyclist for “showing up out of nowhere” and usually do
so violently. They completely neglect that the don’t have the right of way at
all, nor that it would make no sense for them to pretend to have it if the
vehicle was anything else than a bicycle: I’ve seen them always apologise
profusely when they caught a motorbike in the same situation.

I was living in a very busy street (the largest in Paris, actually) where
there are dozens of such intersections, and it used to happen to me everyday.
By ‘happen’, I mean that I had to bang on the car side to prevent the blow
daily; there was visible damage to either the car or the bike weekly. I had to
drop my bike at the last minute, letting it be crunched by the car wheel, or
jump on the car front/engine to avoid being crushed almost every other month.
That’s why I rapidly switched from my beloved bike to Vélib, to be able to
afford such frequent accidents. I was hit badly twice, fell on the macadam
both time: the first time, my front teeth cut my lip open (still have a scar,
and one front tooth is still visibly broken in half); the second time, I
busted my knee and couldn’t walk for a month. I have less of a limp now, but I
can predict the weather quite accurately; and I can’t play tennis, basketball,
ski, skate or do anything remotely fun, really.

In a dense city, there is nothing you can do to prevent it, except never cross
a street: cars would come out and turn at any time when the light is green to
cross. You are inches away from the car (because that’s how much space city
planning grants you) and a ton of steel is going full Bruce-Lee finger-length
punch on you. It’s very hard to describe the feeling it gives you: imagine a
car willingly crushing you to death. That’s about as reassuring at that. It’s
unexpected, sudden and overwhelmingly violent.

This is why cyclists insist one staying one meter away from deadly machines as
much as they can. Most drivers reaction is “I didn’t touch you! Why do you
care?!” -- including when the bicycle wheel was torn under the car front
wheel. Taxi drivers are particularly violent in that circumstance -- and their
parent company don’t care, at all, when you mention the problem, and a need
for training.

Out of principle, I refused to yield and stop cycling around: I felt I was
right, and should be respected for it. Once you’ve experience Paris with a
bicycle (and I had for a decade) walking in painfully slow, metro stinks and
driving is absurd on every level.

I’ve asked several Police officers to do something, from warning, surveilling
the most common intersection; offer training; all those I talked to (including
a Commissioner’ aid) felt clueless and said that they only thing they can do
is scrape away the leftovers… I never dared to ask how much gore was in those.
Official statistics purposely downplay the issue. I’ve challenged every local
‘Open data’ initiative to let me cross-reference hospital, morgue and police
reports and sort death by vehicle driven and exact location — in vain.

Someone in my family worked on car electronics, and I did challenge him to
implement a side radar on the right side to prevent it -- his reaction was the
usual, dis-heartening reaction from all drivers and car makers: it doesn’t
threaten people inside the car, why should I care? I’ve called this the “I
have a tank! Fuck You!” mentality.

Notice how until couple of years ago, not a single security feature, or even
measurement was about people outside the car? That’s how you ended up with a
ton of reinforced metal with narrower and narrower windows, up to the point
now where standard cars are actually stronger than the first armored tanks.

I have banged on car side windows at the last minute as much as I could, but
my life remained in constant danger. After seeing that the Police was
powerless, I have investigated the idea that in this particular situation, my
life was expressly at stake; no public authority could do something. I even
asked them to sign affidavit confirming that was what they told me. Therefore,
I believed I was left in a state of nature, i.e. a legal void in principled
law systems, meaning should be allowed to defend myself using deadly force. I
had started to learn how to use a firearm, and working on a campaign saying
that cyclists were now armed, would not hesitate to shoot in that particular
case. I considered some scary premiss around the idea that the blood would
stop being ours, and start being those of the actual culprits.

I considered the very likely scenario that would lead me in jail for
manslaughter, i.e. for a decade. As someone who had taught classes at the
local security jail, I knew what that meant: daily, violent anal rape;
possibly forced drug addition if I wasn’t cooperative.

This is something that made me have nightmares for years. Imagine having
bruises from living your worst dream on a regular basis, and contemplating
rape for a decade as your only way out.

The friend who showed me how to shoot noticed I was more scared of the gun
that beginners usually are; I was more scared _after_. I mentioned why, or
rather, I said that I wasn’t sure I could stop a car swerving by killing the
driver -- which was true; that just wasn’t the main reason holding a gun
scared me. He thankfully pointed how far I had gone -- ignoring the main
extent of it.

I realised how this had repeatedly triggered very problematic psychiatric
issues over the years. It’s strange and yet very empowering to have a paranoia
directly triggered by a perfectly rational inference from regular lucid
experience.

This is the actual reason why I left Paris, the city I spent my life in, and
whom I will always love. I have swore to not come back until taxi drivers, by
far the worst offenders, are gone.

That’s why I’m so supportive of Uber, other similar services, and Google Self
driving cars: there offer a working solution. I can recognise the tiny license
Uber cars have, and they have consistently respected road rules. I never
considered owning a car myself, or even moving around in such a violent mean
of transport. But those became the only ways for me to come back home without
having crippling, yet rational, nightmares.

That last five seconds, that “side death”, has been a haunting companion for
years. This exact situation, so let me answer your question precisely: a car
turns right without checking there is a bike there in the blind-spot (one that
actually has the right of way, and more importantly a body about to be
crushed).

Detecting it, and waiting for the bike to pass first might be some engineers’
couple of month of work, but it is far more to me.

I have never mentioned this to anyone. I just though the discrepancy between
what that means to cyclist and your misunderstanding mattered.

~~~
dnr
In the US, that situation is called a "right hook", and it's indeed very
dangerous for cyclists. Once you know about it, though, it's pretty easy to
ride defensively and avoid it: just refuse to pass on the right of a car that
might turn right. Get behind them instead and wait for them to turn (or go
straight). In California, at least, a cyclist is legally entitled to take the
lane at any intersection where a right turn is allowed.

(In practice, I admit that I don't do this 100% of the time. I never pass to
the right of a car with a right turn signal on, but if a car is waiting at a
red light without a turn signal, I'll sometimes pass on their right, always
stopping well in front of the front of the car, so that I'm confident the
driver sees me.)

------
rwmj
This is hardly city driving. Try driving in a European city. (I love this
project and can't wait to buy or rent a self-driving car)

~~~
gamegoblin
Harder yet, Southeast Asia. Hundreds of pedestrians, tons of vehicle variety
(some entirely makeshift), uncontrolled intersections, very little regard to
any regulations.

~~~
furyg3
In my mind structured road conditions are a prerequisite for driverless cars.

I've been in many situations where conservative driving according to the rules
of the road is not possible. In the West this is more limited to dense cities
and exceptional situations. In India, though, this is the rule.

If you waited for pedestrians to finish crossing or for cars to clear
intersections, maintained a safe following distance, signaled before turning,
waited for other parties to yield, etc, you would never leave your driveway.

It's difficult for me to imagine a computer deciding to gently nudge
pedestrians with its bumper in order to proceed through a green light, which
I've had to do several times while driving there.

~~~
yaddayadda
@zimbatm (because there isn't a reply option at this level)

I'm also sure there are screenwriters already working on incorporating such
scenes into movies. Likely we'll see it on the big screen before we see it in
real life.

------
robotresearcher
There are lots of subtleties in in-town driving. For example, the Google car
will crawl its nose forward just a bit to indicate when it thinks its turn has
come at 3 and 4-way stops. This is a strong signal to the other drivers that
the car is about to make the turn, and reduces the frequency of contentions
inside the intersection.

It's a nice touch to have the robot replicate behaviour that most people are
not even aware they are using.

------
lmg643
somehow the current scuffle between uber and regular cabs seems to miss the
joke. we're going to need a plan for the eventual unemployment of a lot of cab
drivers, regardless of how the cab is hailed.

~~~
maxerickson
Even New York City seems to only have tens of thousands of cab drivers
('seems' because I just looked at wikipedia for a minute), I don't think they
are that big a percentage of the population.

~~~
seren
I think the real markets are long haul trucking and small delivery van for the
last miles. All in all it is probably a significant portions of job.

~~~
furyg3
I don't understand why subways and trains aren't implementing. The universe of
possibilities is so incredibly limited in these situations that it seems like
a piece of cake, compared to city driving.

"Can you see that the track is clear of obstacles? If not, stop!"

~~~
jon-wood
They are, often on a huge scale. The DLR[1] in London is entirely automated
(although sometimes the ticket inspector will sit at the front with the backup
control panel open, presumably so they can pretend to drive a train), and the
Central, Northern, and Jubilee lines also run semi-automated, and I'm pretty
sure the bits that aren't automated are due to union lobbying rather than any
particular need.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docklands_Light_Railway](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docklands_Light_Railway)

------
danpat
I assume that someone has done an analysis of how the sensors will interact
when there are many self-driving cars on the road?

Because many of the primary sensors are active (radar, lidar), will they work
when they're surrounded by 50 other cars also blasting out the same signals?

~~~
genericone
When 50 other cars are nearby actively communicating with each other about the
road conditions that they each see, only a representative subset of those cars
need to correctly identify road conditions and report them to the entire group
as a road-conditions map. Cars in the group validate the observations and
risk-factors reported by other cars. Then each car independently makes its
driving decisions based on this shared-data based on its relative position in
the group.

In this way, being surrounded by hundreds of other cars is a plus, and leads
to more data by which to determine safe self-driving behavior.

------
arikrak
It won't be able to drive around New York if it follows the rules so strictly.
It will never be able to turn. They'll have to add a setting for aggression...

~~~
troels
That's funny, but probably a very real challenge. As a (human) driver, it
happens that we come across ambiguous, contradictory or just plain impossible
constraints and we overcome them by deliberately breaking the rules. I wonder
how they would cope with that?

~~~
mikepurvis
This is part of the larger problem of roboethics—prioritizing and balancing a
set of conflicting objectives and requirements. There's a neat introductory
article with some video of example scenarios here:

[http://footnote1.com/what-should-a-robot-do-designing-
robots...](http://footnote1.com/what-should-a-robot-do-designing-robots-that-
know-right-from-wrong/)

------
sixQuarks
What happens when some asshole with some knowledge of the algorithm decides to
troll commuters? For example, standing around an intersection, pretending to
move forward/backward, forcing cars to just stop there.

~~~
robrenaud
Standing in the middle of the intersection is going to be an effective way to
stop cars even if they have human drivers.

------
hrktb
> Jaywalking pedestrians.

There was a episode on this on the 99% invisible podcast:
[http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-76-the-
modern-...](http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-76-the-modern-
moloch/)

The above page has photos and a full transcript of the episode, I very highly
recommand it.

This piece reminded me of the 'problem' of jaywalking because the complexity
the self driving Googe car boast to be able to handle, could also be instead
reduced or anhilated by adequate urban policies. There are movements to get
the car out of urban areas [1] or at least make the pedestrian the 'owner' of
the street, and I think self driving cars should be positionned more as an
auto-pilot for long distances, rather than attempt to make sense of the
current chaos in high density areas.

[1] [http://i.imgur.com/v3ff7FY.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/v3ff7FY.jpg) ("you are
the traffic", a Roumanian poster seen in /r/bycicling)

------
_zen
I think the coolest thing about self-driving cars is they can create a mesh
network with one another. If I'm driving to work and a traffic accident occurs
2 miles ahead on my route, with multiple self-driving cars present at the
accident, those cars can share traffic information with all self-driving cars
in the area. My car will then plan an alternative route around the accident
before I've even seen it.

Communication would be encrypted of course to prevent tampering.

~~~
astrange
> Communication would be encrypted of course to prevent tampering.

There's little purpose in encrypting a signal like this. You're still
proposing to trust random cars you've never met before, so how would you know
which messages are fake and which aren't?

------
cseelus
Apparently Mercedes Benz has come quite far regarding autonomous driving.

In September 2013 they let one of their S-Class models drive the historic
route from Mannheim to Pforzheim in Germany with some journalist(s) on
board[1].

On this route the worlds first long-distance (194km/121mi) ride in a motorized
car was undertaken in 1888 by Bertha Benz, wife of Carl Benz, who developed,
what is known today as the worlds first modern automobile.[2]

This route contains interurban as well as urban parts. The prototype car
nicknamed "Bertha" is not easily recognizable from a standard S-Class model,
which already contains most of the systems necessary to enable autonomous
driving.

[1] Google translation:
[http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=de&sl=auto&tl=en&pr...](http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=de&sl=auto&tl=en&prev=_dd&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spiegel.de%2Fauto%2Faktuell%2Fautonomes-
fahren-unterwegs-mit-einer-s-klasse-auf-autopilot-a-920803.html)

[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertha_Benz_Memorial_Route](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertha_Benz_Memorial_Route)

~~~
frik
I see no Lidar. What are the sensors?

"With sensors Bertha analyzed their environment [...] detailed and peppered
with additional information navigation map"

I suspect a front-radar, camera and a detailed navigation map with GPS points
especially for this route.

------
shekhar101
I saw an interesting comment on the blog post. Is anyone keeping tab on the
project knows if Google in working on some sort of communication between
vehicles on road. That will make the self driving cars much more accurate. Lot
of 'sudden' circumstances will be predictable by the car.

~~~
dalke
What fun it will be when someone figures out how to fake the signals and, for
example, force other cars to slow down or stop.

~~~
skrause
You can do that now already, e.g. pretend to quickly step on a road while a
car is approaching and watch the human drives hit their brakes. Yet I don't
see that happening because the majority of people aren't jerks.

~~~
dalke
Doing so physically, that is, driving erratically or aggressively, or giving
false signals, is both visible to other drivers and illegal. It can also be
recorded on camera. Electronic signals are not visible, and fewer people have
the ability to record and analyze the signal traffic.

While the majority of people aren't jerks, consider existing cases of
people/jerks who use traffic signal preemption devices for personal gain - see
[http://boingboing.net/2006/04/18/man-fined-50-for-
usi.html](http://boingboing.net/2006/04/18/man-fined-50-for-usi.html) for an
example and some discussion. See also
[http://www.statter911.com/2012/04/05/preempting-the-
preempte...](http://www.statter911.com/2012/04/05/preempting-the-preempters-
california-town-cracks-down-on-citizens-with-signal-changing-devices/) .

I believe this shows that is a non-trivial population of people/jerks that
will be interested in traffic shaping for personal gain.

Note how the defenses against those signal devices include state and federal
laws and the addition of auditing techniques. The latter is possible because
the transmitters and receivers are effectively controlled by the state. This
is harder with cars.

~~~
shekhar101
Errr... wouldn't it be easier to record such 'jerks' electronically? I mean
isn't it difficult to catch a number plate in dark while it would be lot
easier to record someone doing it if there is a communication along with an ID
for each vehicle?

~~~
dalke
In the traffic signal example, the lights can be programed, with a whitelist
of all IDs which are allowed to change the signals, and where the signals can
be reprogrammed, to mitigate cloning.

I presume that any sort of illegal device which modifies car-to-car
communications for other than safety reasons would not be tied to an id
registered to a specific car. If only because those devices may need to be
replaced, making a registration headache.

I also presume that there won't be a global upload/download of the message
traffic for centralized analysis, so who do you think will be doing the
recording and analysis?

------
frik
We need a DIY Lidar or a cheap Lidar. Any ideas or existing projects?

(the 3D scanning device on top of the Google car,
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidar](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidar) )

The Lidar that Google uses costs 80k dollars, more than most cars.

------
intended
Reading a lot of comments here, the theme seems to be that the benefits will
trickle down to the average consumer. I can see immediate cases where it's
just going to go to those with sufficient economic muscle.

Less need for a garage means smaller houses, and more of them (for example).

Improved insurance? Probably the same insurance premiums (inflation adjusted),
with a higher premium for more human miles driven.

If there is money on the table, it will get taken by those with the
wherewithal to grab it.

~~~
jpatokal
Which is why all the wealth generated by the Industrial Revolution went to the
feudal lords in their castles?

As a trivial counterexample, since automated taxis will be considerably
cheaper than human-driven ones, they'll become an affordable commodity usable
for day-to-day travel, instead of a rare luxury used only when absolutely
necessary (or somebody else foots the bill).

------
genofon
I'm wondering how much self-driving cars will improve the system?

far less accidents, much faster, less traffic jams, more efficient, no traffic
light, different speed limits etc...

~~~
kumbasha
0 day exploit kills 300 in a pileup on the freeway...

~~~
prawn
Almost 100 people a day die by motor vehicle in the US right now so while your
above example would hit the media hard, unless it's a daily occurrence it's
probably improving on the current situation.

------
slazaro
I still think that the best application for computer controlled cars is to
have humans driving and computers handling the safety, braking when they
detect danger, stuff like that. Lots of accidents like hitting pedestrians,
cyclists or other cars could be avoided, and it's not as high level and
difficult as what they're currently trying to figure out.

------
0x006A
Looking forward to see how self-driving cars can handle traffic in a city like
Mumbai or Cairo.

~~~
bertil
Indeed…

I just hope that problem is the same as when someone asked them, 15 years ago,
how their crawler could handle websites with “tens of thousands of pages”
fearing libraries would put their ressources on-line, overburden and halt
their effort.

~~~
0x006A
In my experience driving is much more interactive and not so much rule based
in those cities. You have to judge other drivers - there aggression and
willingness to drive into your lane, there willingness to let you sneak in in
front of them.

Taking traffic from all sides into account might be something that works
better for self-driving cars. Knowing when its ok to force someone else to
slow down might be harder. I don't expect this to be just a question of
scaling up. It will require new concepts and models. You might have to choose
the country like you can now choose the language for predictive typing on your
phone.

~~~
bertil
Indeed. I actually believe — or rather, sense, because that tends to be a
fairly instinctive appreciation for me, after modeling things for so 15 years
— that aggressivity is a fairly straightforward parameter in driving style:
basically, it’s the margin you allow yourself to touch, or the acceptable risk
you‘d take. Choosing “the country”, on a vehicle with more GPS captors that
anyone could remember is probably not something difficult, but there are major
and new ethical issues around that point, precisely: what do we let the user
control?

Can, should, will Google include a ‘Don’t abide to local driving laws’ mode?
How explicit should it be? Modern ethics tend to surround several though
exercices, most of which are centered around transportation accidents, namely
one involving throwing, or letting fall, or pushing a button to release a
lever… to have one obese man fall and prevent a car or a train from hurting
three other people; those may or may not be relatives, have been careful in
their behaviour, etc. What used to be theoretical questions, used to classify
philosophers in their principles might become soon electronic options. Should
your car, detecting a swerving vehicle is about to hit a child running after
his ball, run that car into the nearby wall (after checking in 10 ms that it
has working airbags) and stop the accident? Whose insurance pays the damages?

------
midas007
The interesting problems are:

\- tracking thousands of objects' trajectories to avoid as many threat-
weighted collisions as possible. (think NYC times square)

\- not going too fast when visibility is blocked

FYI: When I was at Trimble Nav, there were self-driving farm equipment
demonstrated c. 2000.

------
venti
Autonomous car in the Berlin city center (2011):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZqL6j2D5H4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZqL6j2D5H4)

------
josephschmoe
Between truck drivers, bus drivers and taxi drivers, that's 3 million people
who should look for another line of work when this starts to happen.

------
monksy
I wonder how that deals with potholes or roads that lack the proper markings
or one way streets.

Chicago has both of those.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Probably the same way humans do, only better. Computers do have memory, as
well as access to external information.

------
anjc
Are their cameras visible spectrum ones? How will it work at night? Night
vision? IR?

~~~
Shivetya
Night, hell tell me how it works in snow, with fully covered roads. I would
love to see how they make that leap that people do when looking at situations
where the road is fully obscured, but you know exactly where its at based on
objects your used too (like mailboxes/trees/etc) GPS ain't that accurate.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Computers can remember more objects better, recall them faster and calculate
your position against them with much more detail, as well as apply inference
rules to correct for any missing/moved objects much better than humans can.

------
logikblok
Genuine question, can anybody answer how these cars will: 1) Allow for
situational aspects of driving eg I need to get there quickly so might drive
faster because I'm running late? 2) Protect from people intentionally take
advantage of safety mechanisms eg cutting in front, stepping out onto the
road?

~~~
spuz
My guess is that it won't cater for either of those cases. It seems unlikely
that Google would program their cars to break the speed limit just to save you
a few minutes (speeding probably saves you a lot less time than you think it
does). Also, I cannot see why anyone would deliberately and continuously take
advantage of the automatic safety mechanisms on self-driving cars such that
the problem would be common enough that it would cause a passenger any
irritation.

~~~
sjtrny
Ever heard of trolling?

------
scrabble
I'm wondering how a robot car is going to park in a driveway -- or in a
parking lot.

~~~
prawn
Very easily. Not to mention that storage will be simpler as cars will be able
to park closely together without requiring doors to open before moving to
where you can enter them, or in elevated storage.

At some point in the future, most people will be unlikely to own a car (just
use one on demand) so their driveway will go mostly unused and their garage
will be used for something else also.

~~~
scrabble
The issue comes up somewhere like a townhouse complex. Maps does not contain
detailed data on assigned parking spaces and the like for these areas.

This is not an issue if everyone is using self-driving cars. But when only
some people are, I don't see how you'd avoid the need for cars to take over in
these instances.

Same with street driving really, you already have self-parking cars, but the
car would need to be able to not only determine where the parking spaces are
(and deal with issues like faded parking lines) but also determine whether or
not there are any laws restricting the use of that space -- not only
handicapped spaces, but also time of day and week.

Again, not an issue when everyone is in self-driving cars because most of
these rules seem designed to optimize traffic flow, but until that point (and
maybe for a time after) these laws will remain in affect.

~~~
prawn
I imagine that eventually cars will park themselves in dedicated areas or move
on to another job and most of us won't leave a car in a particular place and
expect it to be there when we return.

Most apartment owners would probably elect to use their parking space for a
storage capsule and then subscribe to a robo-car service. The car would be
waiting when they got downstairs and leave to go elsewhere when it returned
them home.

Eventually, street parking will disappear. If I still want to be driven to
work, the car will drop me at the front door and then head elsewhere. In the
evening, a different car will likely arrive for pick-up.

Any cars not on a job or driving to a job would head to a depot for charging,
service or storage.

------
etep
Inspirational.

------
pazra
Given that the NSA will likely have a backdoor into any automated driving
system, is this really a technology you'd like to see become all pervasive?
"We don't like this guy's ideology - ok, let's arrange for him to have an
'accident'".

~~~
1stop
They control killer robots in the sky with missiles... It doesn't really get
worse than that...

~~~
pazra
That's a much more obvious way of doing away with someone though. Having a car
experience a 'software failure' and driving you into a wall at 80MPH, is less
so.

~~~
sean-duffy
If the government was willing to pull those kind of tactics to have you
killed, I'm pretty sure they could do it without self-driving cars.

~~~
kumbasha
Your government maybe. What about North Korea's government?

~~~
prawn
They also have many methods at their disposal - North Korea's government can
throw you in a labour camp easily enough.

In the US, a car accident in an environment where accidents are less common
(presumably the case with robo-cars) will stand out more.

------
jameshk
The next step is highways!

~~~
genofon
as a theoretical problem highway should be much easier because few types of
"street agents" can access them (i.e. no bicycles, no pedestrians, no traffic
lights)

~~~
maxerickson
As far as I know, they already have a pretty good handle on limited access
roads.

People use 'highway' to describe all manner of roads, I wonder if the gp is
thinking about major 2 lane roads that have higher speeds but still lots of
intersections to deal with.

