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basically, for automated cars to become widespread, means manual driving will need to be curbed. What good is a fleet of automated cars, if a human driver can introduce chaos by being unpredictable?
I'm more concerned about the other end of the spectrum: a bunch of automated cars driving around. Let's face it, going to speed limit on some backroads is painstakingly slow. These auto-cars will travel at or below the speed limit everywhere. And people like me will be stuck behind them road raging at some jerk leaning back, browsing tinder on his phone.
This is why you extensively alpha test software. Google will fix the bug and it won't happen again. I'm rolling my eyes at the "this is why automated cars will never be possible" crowd. It's coming. I think that a decade from now, there will be dedicated automated car lanes in rush hour where the self-driving cars zip along bumper-to-bumper at 60 mph while the stoooopid humans are in stop & go traffic because everybody has their nose in their smart phone. After a year of that, any commuter is going to switch to the self-driving car so they can zip along at 60 mph and get to work in a fraction of the time. There will eventually be one lane for the low income people who can't afford the automated cars that crawls. Traffic problem solved. We don't need to build or widen highways to deal with the congestion.
This is why you extensively alpha test software. Google will fix the bug and it won't happen again. I'm rolling my eyes at the "this is why automated cars will never be possible" crowd. It's coming. I think that a decade from now, there will be dedicated automated car lanes in rush hour where the self-driving cars zip along bumper-to-bumper at 60 mph ...
I think a decade is too optimistic. It's well known that Google's current testing is only on flat, dry roads. They've not done any testing in hard rain, snow, or ice.
That's rather odd. Never heard of a bus having right of way over normal traffic, not a lot of busses in my area though. In this case it did have the right of way as it occupied the lane the Google car was trying to merge into, doesn't really matter that it was a bus, any vehicle in its position would have had the right of way.
Being very familiar with that intersection, having driven through it almost daily for 15 years when I lived in Mountain View, here is what I think caused the crash.
That intersection has three through lanes of traffic and one left turn lane. The far right lane is shared by cars going straight, and cars turning right. The drivers going straight usually move to the left side of the lane, the drivers turning right on the red light, use the right side of the lane. The Google cars do the exact same thing depending on if they are going straight, or turning right. The VTA Line 22 and 522 busses are going straight, but they are always in the right lane. Since they have to serve the bus stop on the far side of the intersection.
So I suspect that the Google car turning right, was sharing the lane with the VTA bus which was going straight. The Google car would have moved to the right side of the lane in preparation to make the right turn, while the bus would have been in the left half of the lane to continue through the intersection and stop at the bus stop. Normally this would be uneventful. Except this time the Google car unexpectedly encountered the sandbags, so it had to very slowly start edging it’s way back to the left to get around the sandbags. It missed the first two cars, but then sideswiped the much wider bus.
I suspect the Google car would not have hit the bus, if the bus had been in a different lane. But I think they were in the same lane. The car is programed to follow the lines, never cross a double yellow line, and cross a broken white line only after yielding to traffic in that lane. But when they are in the same lane with no lines between them, the car didn’t know if it had the right away or the bus had the right away.
These self-driving cars are really not as smart as people give them credit for. They just follow the lines. Human drivers can drive without lines, but self-driving cars can’t. Which is why they will aways be useless in any place that gets snow, or they can’t see the lines on the road for any reason.
This is why self-driving cars will never be common on the roads,
If City-Data is still around in 20 years, you can come back here to be proven wrong.
I don't understand how people can't comprehend the advancement in technology and refinement that will come about. Each mistake is an opportunity to improve.
I think that a decade from now, there will be dedicated automated car lanes in rush hour where the self-driving cars zip along bumper-to-bumper at 60 mph while the stoooopid humans are in stop & go traffic because everybody has their nose in their smart phone.
Keep dreaming. Self-driving cars will never be allowed to travel bumper to bumper at 60 mph. Even with a computer they will still require safe stopping distance. Or else one thing goes wrong, and the passengers of every car in line will be killed instantly.
This whole self-driving car utopia thing, is nothing but a fantasy. This incident just proved it.
If City-Data is still around in 20 years, you can come back here to be proven wrong.
I don't understand how people can't comprehend the advancement in technology and refinement that will come about. Each mistake is an opportunity to improve.
Yeah, self driving cars will be one of the best things to happen to people driving in the western world and eventually the entire world.
If and when all cars are autonomous the upsides are more than amazing.
Just like airplanes we freak when there's a rare crash. Cars crash every day and 30k people die a year from accidents (in the US alone), but no one really bats an eye.
This technology is in its infancy, there are going to be bumps, and we won't truly see the benefits until human drivers are off the road and the technology continues to advance.
This is why you extensively alpha test software. Google will fix the bug and it won't happen again. I'm rolling my eyes at the "this is why automated cars will never be possible" crowd. It's coming. I think that a decade from now, there will be dedicated automated car lanes in rush hour where the self-driving cars zip along bumper-to-bumper at 60 mph while the stoooopid humans are in stop & go traffic because everybody has their nose in their smart phone. After a year of that, any commuter is going to switch to the self-driving car so they can zip along at 60 mph and get to work in a fraction of the time. There will eventually be one lane for the low income people who can't afford the automated cars that crawls. Traffic problem solved. We don't need to build or widen highways to deal with the congestion.
I think you're absolutely right, except that it will take longer than 10 years. But it absolutely will happen at some point that every one of us will be riding around in an automated car/bus/van/scooter/whatever.
If City-Data is still around in 20 years, you can come back here to be proven wrong.
I don't understand how people can't comprehend the advancement in technology and refinement that will come about. Each mistake is an opportunity to improve.
I can comprehend advancements in technology. I can also comprehend the limitations of advancement in technology.
Self-driving car technology has been predicted for the last 60 or 70 years. After all this time, and with six years of development by Google, it’s still at a point where the car can't navigate around an unexpected obstacle in the street without crashing into the side of a bus.
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