
Where's the lane? Self-driving cars confused by shabby U.S. roadways - eplanit
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-autos-autonomous-infrastructure-insig-idUSKCN0WX131
======
hyperion2010
This is one of those cases where the engineers aren't going to be able to
cheat and force the world to conform to their model of reality. I await the
"falsehoods programmers believe about roads." If you actually want to build
autonomous cars there are a whole host of assumptions that you have to throw
out. To give only one example: are all roads paved?

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akira2501
It would also imply that anyone with access to road marking paint can fool
autonomous vehicles into misbehavior.

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knodi123
Such tricks could fool a significant percentage of humans, too.

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philipov
And road construction crews love to play those tricks. There's a spot on the
FDR highway around NYC where for years the road was redirected to swerve, but
the lane markings remained straight. If you were not paying full attention and
just followed the lines, you'd drive straight into the wall.

~~~
jonnathanson
That seems less like a fun prank and more like sociopathy. I'm really
surprised nobody got sued.

(I'm not a lawyer, but "We created an optical illusion directing people to
crash into a wall, so those victims should have been paying attention and
figuring it out" doesn't strike me as a robust defense in court.)

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outworlder
"Shabby roadways"? If there was ever a case of "first world problems", this is
it.

Frankly, US roadways are really good. I was amazed by the amount of signage
present, not to mention the pavement itself.

Yes there are imperfections. But when was the last time you tore apart your
car's axle due to inability to avoid the 20th gaping hole you ran across in
just one way of your commute?

You want shabby roads? Go to third world countries. That's the real test for
self-driving cars.

~~~
capote
It's pointless to compare the United States with third world countries. You
should be holding it to much higher standards.

I myself compare the United States with our peers in Western Europe, Japan,
Korea, etc. In this scope, our roadways are actually kind of sad, especially
when you factor in how much we spend on them and double-especially when you
factor in that we don't have solid railroads.

Our highways are generally paved really thin (compare to: German highways) and
they end up cracking and breaking all the time. I've never driven between two
cities on an Interstate highway without being slowed down by construction
work.

Also, just from day to day observation: I live in Chicago and everywhere I
walk, the streets look disastrous. They're broken apart, and some of them are
half-repaired with concrete chunks sticking out (check out LaSalle and
Randolph)--on some streets it's a miracle to me some cars get through without
a flat tire.

We are a tremendously successful and advanced country. There is clearly a very
big problem with the state of our roads.

~~~
gwright
> double-especially when you factor in that we don't have solid railroads

I think you mean 'passenger railroads'. The US freight railroad is world-
class. Lots of spurious debate about railroads in the US comes from confusing
the pros and cons of a freight network (which we have) with the pros and cons
of a high-speed passenger network (which we don't have). The benefits of a
continent-sized high-speed rail network in a continent with low population
density tends to be over-emphasized.

[http://business.time.com/2012/07/09/us-freight-
railroads/](http://business.time.com/2012/07/09/us-freight-railroads/)

~~~
capote
That is indeed what I meant.

As for benefits/needs of a high speed passenger network--all I have to say is
that my current options for going Chicago - New York which I do frequently
are: 1. garbage airlines that are consolidating more and more and increasing
their prices for no apparent reason, 2. broken roads that are constantly being
repaired, and 3. Amtrak

That said, it's clear to me that a high speed rail connection (for example
Chicago - NY at ~200mph) would be a no brainer. I'd even pay more than I pay
American Airlines for the route.

~~~
Tiksi
Between DC-NYC-Boston we have the Acela train here, which is surprisingly
decent in terms of price and service. It gets up to 150mph but due to traffic
and the layout of the tracks only averages 80mph or so. Still, it beats flying
imho.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acela_Express](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acela_Express)

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irixusr
"Where's the lane?"

I've often asked that myself dear robot. Welcome, you're now truly a fellow
driver

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JoshTriplett
Non-self-driving cars are often similarly confused. While there are situations
a human can handle that a self-driving car can't as easily, many situations
confound both, and necessitate cautious driving and a careful lookout in case
you're not actually in your lane (or another vehicle isn't in theirs).

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sanoli
What?? You want to sell a self-driving car but you want it to be a good driver
_only_ in pristine, well-marked roads?? What kind of half-assed solution is
that? Well, now that I think about it, the car could determine if the road
wasn't good enough and tell you to take over, but then you'd have to be ready
to do it and not busy reading a novel or talking with your mother on the
phone, so it would defeat the purpose of doing the driving a bit. Anyway, I'll
bet the only real solution will be to make the ai better. Just as with
airplanes, you can't hal-ass something like this and blame it on lack of road
paint, it would be too dangerous (you know, with airplanes, how they're so
safe because otherwise they'd be so dangerous).

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maxxxxx
Driving in LA I often have trouble finding the lane. Either there are no
markings or there are several markings of different fadedness. In rain it's
even worse. You just take your best guess :-)

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manigandham
Where in LA are you driving? It definitely isn't that bad to be "often"...

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maxxxxx
405 north in the rain is fun. Even better in the dark :-). Or just 5 north all
through the LA area.

~~~
mdorazio
Most of LA in the rainy dark is absolutely terrible. There are no raised
markers or reflectors for lane dividers, so combined with the often faded
lines and reflections of headlights, it's impossible to tell where the lanes
are. Most drivers (myself included) just kind of slow down and say "this seems
like about the right place...".

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eyeinthepyramid
I personally wouldn't want to be in a car that didn't work if the lane lines
were faded. Apparently all terrorists will need in the future to cause mass
mayhem is a can of paint.

~~~
nucleardog
Why wait for them to fade when you can cause much more directed mayhem by
painting new lines that lead the vehicle somewhere unsafe.

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colanderman
How can you head a multinational automobile engineering company and _not_ be
aware of this most basic shortcoming of your product?

~~~
icebraining
Who says he wasn't aware? Most likely, he wasn't aware that the specific place
where they were planning the demo didn't have markings.

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Cshelton
Uhh...many HUMAN drivers are confused by U.S. roadways...I've been in many
places where the lane is more about following the car in front of me as there
are no well visible markers. Kind of like when it snows, the lane is the two
tire tracks, who cares where the actual lane is haha.

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rconti
Here's a tweet I sent to the City of San Carlos about 4 weeks ago. Fortunately
they've since remedied it. This is Holly (Redwood Shores Parkway) looking west
towards an overpass over 101.

If it's not clear, 2 lanes come over the overpass towards where I shot the
photo from. An offramp from 101 North terminates where the white pickup is.

This has always been a _terrible_ merge. 2 lanes come across the freeway, and
the offramp is a new 'added' lane, but the striping/bott's dotts between the
#1 and #2 lane coming down from the overpass are virtually nonexistent. There
are cracks in the road (the dark marks) where the lane markings should be.

It was always a big risk because cars in the right lane coming over the
overpass used to just drift over into the offramp's new lane, and half the
cars coming down the offramp didn't know they had a new lane, so they'd just
STOP at the end of the ramp.

THEN the City, in its infinite wisdom, decided to fix _none_ of these
problems, but instead add a striped bike lane that cuts across the offramp.
Absent lane markings to follow, drivers in the right lane would just follow
the dashed bike lane and force themselves into the offramp's new lane. I
witnessed at least 5 near collisions in the several minutes I was there taking
photos.

They've since SOMEWHAT improved the markings between #1 and #2 lanes, but the
bike lane markings are much more substantial and people still tend to follow
them. Also, it still tends to confuse people using the offramp.

But this is an endemic problem; I bike commute and often a bike lane _switches
sides of a car lane_ in the middle of an intersection. It's the traffic
version of "Step 1: right lane. Step 2: ??? Step 3: Profit!" Or "good luck,
hope you come out on the other side of the intersection alive.

[https://twitter.com/reidconti/status/705866795417075712](https://twitter.com/reidconti/status/705866795417075712)

~~~
cballard
To be clear - this is a bike lane on a road with _onramps_? Uh, what? There
aren't even bollards (in the part without an onramp, obviously) or any
semblance of protection.

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maxerickson
It's the surface street side of the ramp there in the photo. Here's the approx
location:

[http://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=37.51639&mlon=-122.25424#...](http://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=37.51639&mlon=-122.25424#map=17/37.51639/-122.25424)

The photo is taken looking towards the freeway, showing the offramp.

A typical bike lane in the US is made out of paint, the lack of protection
isn't noteworthy.

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jakelarkin
at a certain point, fast approaching, we should start optimizing road markings
for electronic sensors over human sight. How costly would it be to strip the
middle of every lane with a small magnet or RFID that could detected by
vehicles and even convey static metadata, such as mile maker, speed limit,
number of lanes, distance to next stop light etc.

~~~
gozur88
I would think radio towers with GPS-like positioning information would be
cheaper and better, particularly since they could include other information
like road conditions.

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liquidwax
If they are confused by US roadways, they'll melt when they come to India and
see this -
[http://www.thehindu.com/multimedia/dynamic/00397/20080331593...](http://www.thehindu.com/multimedia/dynamic/00397/2008033159380401_397767e.jpg)

~~~
sumedh
Survival of the fittest.

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smackfu
I saw this in Honolulu last week:
[http://i.imgur.com/WIdrgiG.png](http://i.imgur.com/WIdrgiG.png)

I assume the extra "markings" are related to a road repair, but I couldn't
imagine a worse situation for a self-driving car.

~~~
erentz
That looks like it's maybe this:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowel_bar_retrofit](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowel_bar_retrofit)

~~~
smackfu
Thanks! Even includes a section on confusion with pavement markings.

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e40
Ha! I was waiting for this! I was on a multi-lane road recently and I couldn't
see the lane delimiters. They had faded to the point they were no longer
visible. It required a lot of concentration to avoid hitting cars near me and
it was quite disconcerting.

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derekp7
The solution to this problem, at least for the foreseeable future, is to have
the autopilot only active when the car is on a certified autonomous road. This
would have to be a legal definition, in which road construction would de-
certify that road section, and the certification continuously updated via the
autonomous cars themselves. As soon as cars start seeing degraded conditions
they update a central database, which alerts other cars to switch to manual
mode well before entering that road section.

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pm24601
O.k. so lets say the roads got nice stripes. What about:

1) Under rainy conditions?

2) Heavy snow fall?

3) Incompletely plowed roads?

4) Roads under construction - i.e. partially striped and the little flags that
haven't been completely moved around between road realignments?

Do you mean to tell me Alpha Go can beat a human at Go but can't be trusted
not to drive a car into a ditch?

It is nice to know that the way we avoid the singularity is with confused road
markings :-)

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peterwwillis
Seriously? Just use all the sensors you've got to determine the edges of the
road, divide the width of the road in half, and the right-half is the
direction you're traveling in. Based on the size of this half, determine
number of lanes. Create a virtual box so the car stays in the space of where
the right-most lane should be. No need to read road markings to stay in lane.

 _edit_ Nevermind, I forgot that not all roads have an even number of lanes in
both directions (even considering single turning lanes and medians). But
absent a median or any markings at all, the above is a relatively safe bet.
I'm sure they could build a set of heuristics to accommodate the exceptions.

Humans have spatial vision, so we should also be able to create cameras that
can make out objects floating in free space (such as traffic lights), piece
out their components, and compare them to a set of common criteria to
determine its intent, the way humans basically do.

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droithomme
Companies using inadequate software and sensors blame roads for engineering
failure.

~~~
fndjdh
I'm not sure that's the case. In the greater Seattle area, roads have
deteriorated to the point where it can be difficult to spot road markings even
as an experience driver, and it's not unheard of for the markings to be
completely worn away. I'm not sure about the rest of the country, but roads
are painfully underfunded here.

~~~
mchahn
> roads have deteriorated to the point where it can be difficult to spot road
> markings even as an experience driver

Yes, but apparently self-driving systems are doing a worse job than humans.
But this only means the AI isn't quite there yet. I say AI, not sensors,
because their vision is probably already better than human's.

~~~
DanFeldman
It's a combination of sensors and AI. You'd be surprised by how low quality
(wrt framerate & resolution specifically) the sensors used in production
autonomous features/vehicles are. See mobile-eye's papers and products:
[http://www.mobileye.com/wp-
content/uploads/2011/09/StereoAss...](http://www.mobileye.com/wp-
content/uploads/2011/09/StereoAssist.pdf)

~~~
mchahn
The newest reference date in that paper is 2009 so I suspect the paper itself
is a bit old. I really doubt that video would be other than state-of-the-art
when the whole system is so expensive.

Edit: Also that company makes add-on collision detection products. That is a
different application than auto-driving.

~~~
DanFeldman
I worked on these cars this summer at GM. I can't say what model of camera
sensors we used for obvious reasons, but the resolution and framerate were not
too far off from what Mobileye has in that paper!

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justaaron
so that's even in a fairly rich "developed" country...hello the rest of the
worlds roads aren't generally any better...

this is exactly the moment when I ponder "why the hell is this whole
automatic-self-driving-car thing being pushed so hard generally?"

it seems like a rather absurd and silly effort to begin with... what's wrong
with a bloody system of maglev propelled capsules being shot through tubes, or
the train, or a normal car you drive with a steering wheel, accellerator
pedal, and brakes?

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npunt
This is why we need self-driving road paving trucks first. Kinda serious,
especially for filling potholes.

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csense
I want to know how they plan for self-driving cars to work in snow.

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intopieces
Tesla's system uses the information about the road gathered when the snow was
not present. Teslas are very popular in Norway.

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thrownaway2424
Notably absent from cast of complainers: Google.

~~~
Bjorkbat
At the same time I'm pretty sure they also commented that self-driving cars
might be 30 years away during an event at SXSW this year.

~~~
semi-extrinsic
I really liked the Rolls Royce CEO's comment on their self-driving tech: "Oh,
we invented that 111 years ago. We call it a chauffeur."

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2015-01-06/rolls-
royce-...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2015-01-06/rolls-royce-ceo-
record-sales-year-may-spur-suv)

