
The View from the Front Seat of the Google Self-Driving Car, Chapter 2 - ivank
https://medium.com/@chris_urmson/the-view-from-the-front-seat-of-the-google-self-driving-car-chapter-2-8d5e2990101b
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inthewoods
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
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-
milli...](https://www.yahoo.com/autos/s/uber-ceo-tesla-sell-half-million-
autonomous-electric-110000053.html)

~~~
inthewoods
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.

~~~
nocarrier
I think people focus too much on Uber replacing consumer transportation. I
think they're going to branch out into transport of goods and eat into the
trucking industry in a major way, in addition to whatever they do with
consumer transportation. A lot of the commoditization concerns that you'd have
with transportation don't apply as much to transport.

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twrkit
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 :)

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rwmj
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
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.

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ge0rg
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-...](https://medium.com/backchannel/the-view-from-the-front-seat-of-the-
google-self-driving-car-46fc9f3e6088)

tl;dr: most accidents with Google cars were caused by distracted human
drivers. Drive safely! Watch the road!

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jdscriven
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
_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
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
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.

~~~
NathanKP
It depends on how fast the incoming car is travelling. If you are about to be
rear ended by someone traveling 60 miles an hour (happens sometimes in rural
areas where people don't pay attention and are traveling highway speeds on
narrow two lane roads), then it would actually be safer to accelerate the car
to 30mph and crash into the person in front of you so that it is a 30mph
impact to front and 30mph impact to rear rather than a massive 60mph impact to
the rear of the car.

~~~
thrownaway2424
You're demonstrating perfectly the urgent need for self-driving cars.

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Animats
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
TED Talk explaining how the car sees:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiwVMrTLUWg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiwVMrTLUWg)

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danmaz74
> 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.

~~~
realusername
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
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
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.

~~~
sdoering
Could you please provide legislation for that? I would not believe, that you
would commit fraud when not reporting an accident and paying for repair
yourself. At least not in Germany, where I am from.

~~~
DanBC
[http://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/problem/ive-been-
in-a...](http://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/problem/ive-been-in-a-car-
accident-do-i-have-to-claim-on-my-insurance)

It's part of almost every insurer's terms and conditions.

They use your driving history to set your premiums. Thus they want to know
every accident you've been in because that affects how much they charge you -
it affects how risky you are.

If you know you've had an accident, and they ask you to report all accidents,
and you do not report an accident with the intent to keep your premiums down
you've possibly committed fraud.

~~~
ghaff
I have absolutely never heard of such a thing in the US and I've been driving
for a long time. I mean, people get little dings and whatnot in parking lots
or wherever all the time--which they may or may not do something about at some
point. I've never heard of sending a letter to the insurance company in the
absence of a claim. I'm not saying there isn't some fine print in some
contracts but it's just not something I've ever heard of someone doing.

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ousta
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
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.

~~~
brixon
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
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.

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sambeau
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.

~~~
DanBC
> 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

~~~
ghaff
As I understand it, from the perspective of an insurance company, rear-ending
is basically always your fault no matter what the extenuating circumstances
are. I couldn't stop on glare ice a number of years back (brakes basically did
zero) and eventually kissed the bumper of a car I was following a good 100 ft.
behind that had skidded and eventually came to a stop in the middle of the
road. No damage but I mentioned this to a friend who worked at an insurance
company and he said I'd have been considered at fault if a claim had been
necessary.

