
Data Shows Google’s Robot Cars Are Smoother, Safer Drivers Than You or I - grej
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/520746/data-shows-googles-robot-cars-are-smoother-safer-drivers-than-you-or-i/
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josephlord
I'd be interested to see how it made progress somewhere like Sicily (Naples is
meant to be even more exciting to drive in but I haven't been there) or
Thailand or India.

[Note that I haven't visited Thailand for about 20 years, Sicily for 10 years
and India ever so perceptions may be out of date or incorrect based on
media/TV coverage for the India case.]

~~~
mojuba
It's an interesting problem that exposes the fundamental difference between
humans and algorithms:

While some humans may be able to adopt to driving in Sicily or Thailand after
the U.S., _algorithms_ will never be able to do that. Unless, of course,
specifically designed for driving in the U.S., Sicily and Thailand. (Or Russia
for that matter, where driving is barely subject to any formalization.)

Humans can learn and adapt, it's in our nature, but an algorithm is just a
reflection of some narrow aspect of what we, humans, have learned. Change a
few external variables and your algorithm fails miserably.

I'm sorry, but somehow I don't believe in the future of self-driving cars,
just like I don't believe in _algorithms_ that would do image or voice
recognition as well as we do.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
I don't want to be rude but I don't think you know very much about self-
driving cars. They are much more advanced than you think. Also you talk
Thailand, I guess you mean the free-for-all situation ... Well, humans would
adjust their behavior to the reality of self driving cars but in reality,
these cars are much better at these situations than you think. You greatly
underestimate the state of the technology even in its current form. We're
talking the possibility of reducing 95% of accidents and fatalities. The
sensor perception and trajectory calculation is much better than what humans
can do. Driving is not about solving natural language riddles. You don't need
"strong AI."

~~~
mojuba
I don't blindly believe in what Google is saying about self-driving cars. I do
blindly believe in what this artcile is saying though:
[http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/520431/driverl...](http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/520431/driverless-
cars-are-further-away-than-you-think/) (a recent HN link, by the way)

~~~
dinkumthinkum
Oh I don't blindly believe what Google says either. Google is hardly the only
one in this game. There many analysts in this field thinking the same thing.
This is already going to affect toll roads being built in the next few years
regarding risk propositions. The risk proposition will change. Go and talk to
people at the Transpirtation Research Board next year. This is not just Google
starry eyes but very serious.

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siculars
Ok, cool. So insurance companies should be lining up to insure autonomous
cars, ya? As soon as an insurance company will insure an autonomous car then
we will be able to buy them and use them. Or maybe the autonomous car makers
will accept risk? This will be great! Cause the only person who wont have to
have insurance is - me, the driver! Er... passenger.

~~~
kkowalczyk
Insurance companies won't care if you're driving yourself or using a self-
driving car.

They price their premiums so that they always make a profit, regardless of the
risk.

That's why drivers that have accidents pay more than drivers with no accidents
and young drivers (that are statistically more risky) pay more than not-young
drivers.

Insurance companies will simply adjust the cost of insurance for self-driving
cars to account for risk based on past data. If those cars will turn out to be
involved in less accidents, the insurance will cost less. More accidents =>
cost more.

~~~
malandrew
Even better, Google and the automaker's could get into the market of managing
fleets and their own insurance directly or via wholly owned subsidiaries.
That's what I would do if I were in their position. Basically, this is going
to completely disrupt the auto insurance industry as well and no one has more
and better data to price the insurance than Google that now has hundreds of
thousands of miles logged and will always be in possession of the sum total of
all data on all miles ever driven. They are no longer performing statistics on
a sample size, but are instead doing so based on an entire population.

Basically Google can do the same for auto insurance that Amazon has done for
online retail. i.e. they can operate on razor thin margins that no one else
will ever be able to match because they'll be operating on sample-based
statistics and it will take them a while before they have a significantly
large sample to properly price their product.

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yen223
Is no one going to point out the fact that the data came from Google
themselves? I mean, I'm excited about autonomous cars too, but what happened
to taking everything with a pinch of salt?

~~~
grej
This is a good point. They compared the braking and acceleration of the
vehicles vs. a human driver. A human driver supplied by Google. Nevertheless
it's clear this technology has immense near-term promise.

------
grej
It's also interesting to think about the financial implications for localities
as data shows that the average police officer issues speeding tickets for
approximately 300k/yr. ([http://www.statisticbrain.com/driving-citation-
statistics/](http://www.statisticbrain.com/driving-citation-statistics/))

------
WalterBright
I'd like to know what those autodrivers do for failsafety. What about software
crashes? bugs? sensors giving bad readings? intermittent loose connections?
chips failing?

They should at least talk to the engineers who design airplane autopilots, who
know how to deal with that stuff.

~~~
dclowd9901
In that same vein but perhaps more subtle, what of the social failsafes? I
keep imagining this scenario (one which I run into consistently in the Bay
Area), where I am looking to merge into the lane to my left because my lane
has ended, and nobody will fucking let me in. Does the automatic driver have a
level of aggressiveness that it follows? What if two automated drivers have
the same level of aggressiveness and one wants to merge and the other won't
let it? Do they just stop, resigning themselves to an endless loop of near
catastrophe because neither will yield? I'd love to know more about exactly by
what driving conventions these automated drivers abide. I think it'd go a long
way to help people understand how such a process could be automated at all.

~~~
judk
Can Google cars even change lanes _at all_?

~~~
uncoder0
This was a basic requirement of the Urban Grand Challenge... in 2007.

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Apocryphon
How does privacy factor into this? Doubtless these cars would be even easier
to track than modern ones. But could they be hackable or overridden by control
to be driven someplace?

The code behind this will have to be completely open sourced to allay all
fears.

~~~
krapp
I don't doubt for one second someone in the US government doesn't already have
plans to backdoor, take over and turn an autonomous vehicle infrastructure
against people if they deem it necessary for "the greater good." Imagine one
day your car decides you need to drive out into a facility out in the desert
for "questioning..." or suddenly a group of them get commandeered as an ad-hoc
roadblock, or any number of ridiculous but maybe too-tempting to resist
possibilities, which people couldn't escape should these things become a
dominant form of transportation.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
Well, just wrap your whole body in aluminum foil ... Is this serious? Also
what stops this from going into non autonomous cars, the tracking bits,
anyway?

~~~
krapp
The tracking bits aren't the big problem, the "car that drives you instead of
you driving it" is the potential problem.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
Oh my, really? The Feds could just track you down and grab you. Why is this
worse? I agree, in some fantasy dystopia this may seem scary but ... If this
ever happened, I mean, we would have much bigger problems than the self-
driving car.

~~~
Apocryphon
Come on- isn't the prospect of being in a personal transportation that could
override your controls not scary at all?

And remember, it isn't just potentially the government who might do this. What
about hackers working on behalf of some malicious and sinister agency? What if
instead of kidnapping you, they mess with the controls and cause you to drive
into incoming traffic? Or worse, an entire highway's worth of cars in a
terrorist attack?

I'd be first in line to buy an autonomous automobile, but these are still real
concerns. The more control you cede to programming, the more rigorous the code
has to be.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
:( this is a silly response.

Who are these sinister organizations? Chaos? E.V.I.L.? Or the FSB or what?

A terrorist attack? Wouldn't you be more worried people going crazy and
driving down the wrong side of the highway?

By your thinking maybe we shouldn't even have cities because they are dense
target rich environments. Even under an attack by Loki or whatever sinister
organization from a comic book, you're still talking about something far safer
than what we have currently.

I think it's hilarious that HN is the first place to see people saying the
Boston Bombing was no big deal and more babies are killed each year by peanut
buffer or something but yet here we have people more concerned about Magneto
controlling cars and causing terrorist actions than reducing the very real 95%
of traffic deaths. That's pretty hard to take seriously!

~~~
Apocryphon
I never said that we shouldn't have self-driving cars. I'm saying the code
that govern these cars should be open-sourced. To prevent governments (or al-
Qaeda or the mob or someone else with the resources to get hackers) from
having an advantage in figuring out ways to abuse these systems.

We already live in an age where pacemakers with wireless components can be
hacked, and potentially kill the people who wear them.

------
cheesylard
I did not get any new information out of this article. Not only does the title
basically tell you everything that the article is going to talk about, but the
statement is obvious. Of course an autonomous driver is safer than a human.

~~~
grej
I think this was the main thing that hasn't been shown with data before: "One
of those analyses showed that when a human was behind the wheel, Google’s cars
accelerated and braked significantly more sharply than they did when piloting
themselves. Another showed that the cars’ software was much better at
maintaining a safe distance from the vehicle ahead than the human drivers
were."

They were known to be very safe with a very low (almost non-existant) accident
rate, but I believe this was the first presentation of some of the more
detailed driving data such as acceleration and braking.

------
grej
There are real legal questions on what happens when robotic cars are really
ready. For instance, what happens _IF_ the vehicle actually does have an
accident? Who is liable? Is it the "driver" who wasn't actually controlling
the car, or the company who wrote the driving software? There will be several
hundred ambulance chasers ready to sign up victims of any accidents in order
to get a class action suit against Google.

~~~
whateverfor
While that's true, it's not as big a deal as you'd think if these cars are
dramatically safer. Auto insurance is a 180 billion dollar industry in the US
(that's a billion with a B). If the cars are actually safer, they will have
dramatically lower insurance premiums, which will allow the manufacturer to
charge more money for the car upfront and still come out ahead even if they
assume lots of liability. People will find a way to make it work because
there's just too much money to be made.

~~~
YZF
Short car insurance companies then? (Assuming their profit is some % of the
total)

------
itchitawa
Predictably many people are skeptical. But just stop and think about how many
times you've caused an accident or near miss, ignored a road sign, got stuck
while merging, etc and ask yourself if the computer would have done a better
job. The new buzzword is "zero fatalities" and it's a far too important goal
to just dismiss with typical I'm-a-better-driver-than-any-dumb-machine
attitude.

------
coryrc
As long as the ground looks very similar to Google Earth images and is
heterogeneous. Unlike when it is snowing, when they don't work well at all.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
um ... DARPA challenge. They have LIDAR and other sensors. It's not based on
GPS for negotiating the road.

------
paulyg
This is the second "computers are better drivers than humans" article I've
seen this week. And all I can say is: Duh!

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austingunter
Yep, it starts. I happen to really love driving, clean record, etc. In 10
years, it's going to be getting touchy for folks who still prefer driving
themselves rather than letting the self-driving cars do it. The freedom will
be exchanged for safety, and nobody will blink.

~~~
woofyman
The cost will be prohibitive for most people. And in the USA, the car culture
is too ingrained. I don't see autonomous cars and human driven cars on the
same roads. I don't think the technology will be ready in ten years anyway.

~~~
gfodor
I have to say, you are probably 100% wrong on all counts. It's all opinion of
course but once these are on the road and they work they will spread quickly
costs will come down, and culture will adapt. The value prop is just too high,
it's like any other computerization: sure, there are some charming aspects to
past practices but the machines always win.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
Yes, I think driving your own car at some point will be either leisure or
status symbol.

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nawitus
Better title: Google claims that Google cars are safer than competitors.

~~~
lucian1900
Computers will always be better drivers than humans, that is quite obvious.
This article is backing that up with some data.

~~~
nawitus
Google is claiming to have data.

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samstave
This is why Google invested in Uber. Self driving cabs.

WHen will they come out?

~~~
dinkumthinkum
I think taxis will be a thing of the past. The barrier to entry will be gone,
anyone could rent out self-driving cars.

