Once self driving cars reach a certain penetration level I wonder how long it'll take the remaining human drivers to start taking advantage of that fact by assuming most cars will automatically stop for them when they try stupid maneuvers like this one.
I commute on foot in Boston and I regularly witness pedestrians cross streets in front of traffic when they know they can get away with it, for example, when they're part of a crowd of pedestrians or the traffic is moving slowly. Every time I see that I wonder how much worse it'll be when they don't have to worry about being hit. Our sidewalks are narrow and crowded, will pedestrians just move to the streets?
Based on our geography, drivers and pedestrians I fully expect my city to pioneer the field of taking advantage of self driving car's automated accident avoidance systems.
> Once self driving cars reach a certain penetration level I wonder how long it'll take the remaining human drivers to start taking advantage of that fact by assuming most cars will automatically stop for them when they try stupid maneuvers like this one.
I don't understand this argument. If you do something abusive in front of me ... I will do what a robot will do. I will stop. Because I don't want to crash. I might open the window and yell some profanities at you ... but I can do that anyway, regardless of who triggered the stop, whether it was me or the on-board computer.
If you're arguing that the on-board computer has better reflexes and therefore people will engage in even more demented behavior ... that penetration level would have to be 99%. If it's something like 90%, then 1 out of 10 times you do something that abusive will result in a crash and you'll die.
By the time penetration reaches 99%, you essentially have all cars with automation built in and it's likely that using that automation will be mandatory. Cars that aren't automated will be illegal on public roads exactly because of this problem.
> I commute on foot in Boston and I regularly witness pedestrians cross streets in front of traffic when they know they can get away with it, for example, when they're part of a crowd of pedestrians or the traffic is moving slowly. Every time I see that I wonder how much worse it'll be when they don't have to worry about being hit. Our sidewalks are narrow and crowded, will pedestrians just move to the streets?
Once upon a time, streets were for people. And then the automotive industry coined the term jaywalking...
I don't know about about your city, but I would expect drivers to stop for pedestrians even if they are crossing in the middle of the road. The reason I never cross in front of a moving car is a matter of courtesy and not wanting to break the law, not out of fear of being run over.
That would be awesome. The streets can return to belonging to pedestrians instead of to cars. We could get rid of crosswalks and crosswalk lights and just let the automated cars deal with it.
The automated cars will all be taking video of the incident, recording speed and direction info from radars and lidars, and transmitting all the data to some cloud server. At the cloud server, license plates will be read, driver faces identified, and the relevant info forwarded to law enforcement, insurance companies, and, of course, Youtube.
Boston is special. You know how sometimes pedestrians will cross on red and when they see a car and make eye contact with the driver they will turn their head the other way to make sure that the driver understands that they aren't looking in their direction and is forced to slow down? Yeah, Boston is the only place on the planet where I've seen actual drivers do the same thing. Unbelievable.
Isn't one of the ideas of self-driving cars the idea that they'll reduce overall congestion and traffic volume? It might become pretty reasonable to step off into the street, because there won't be much traffic there to inconvenience.
Although it would definitely be a habit that'll end up killing someone.
It's very likely that once self-driving cars reach a certain penetration, we'll see continuous-flow intersections where no human driver would dare try and cross.
"Our sidewalks are narrow and crowded, will pedestrians just move to the streets?"
I hope so. If drvierless cars allow pedestrians to safely reclaim the streets that, as you point out, have marginalized them for so long, then that's fantastic.
The thing that strikes me in that video is that the Tesla is driving really fast considering the right lane is completely stopped.
A human driver would never be driving that fast. Taking into account familiarity with typical human behaviour, if you're in a lane that is moving well, you will expect at least some drivers from a slow lane to try to squeeze their way into the faster moving lane. Not to mention watching out for facial expressions on drivers in the opposite moving lane, hoping to take advantage of slow traffic to make left-turns into oncoming traffic. A focused human driver will be taking all these things into consideration when operating the vehicle.
I can easily imagine a scenario where a car turns into Tesla's lane and the Tesla not having enough reaction time to avoid collision.
Bottom line is, what I'm seeing in this video is a Tesla autopilot not being smart enough to regulate its speed according to conditions on the road and having to resort to some emergency braking maneuver to avoid a potentially catastrophic collision.
> A human driver would never be driving that fast.
They totally would. I see it... not infrequently. Basically any scenario where people in the right lane are there for a reason (e.g. taking an overburdened exit on a highway, turning right waiting for crossing pedestrians off of a main drag, HOV traffic vs non-HOV traffic etc.) I'll see traffic going by completely stopped traffic as fast as 60mph in the adjacent lane, and be the odd one out going by "slowly" at 40mph or so. Which looks to be about the same ballpark as in the video (which the description suggests was <45mph) and many surface streets (where you're passing parked cars.)
A human driver would never be driving that fast. Taking into account familiarity with typical human behaviour, if you're in a lane that is moving well, you will expect at least some drivers from a slow lane to try to squeeze their way into the faster moving lane.
Well, I guess the devil's advocate argument is that what you say may only be true for a human driver.
After all, this video demonstrates the vehicle has the ability to rapidly react to a situation like that. So maybe the vehicle is driving at a safe speed for the conditions given what a computer is capable of.
Maybe I am a bad driver then, but that is exactly the speed I would have been traveling in those conditions. And that is how the average driver in my area would also be driving. The right lane is not completely stopped where the Tesla is, and it has plenty of room in front of it. I would have been aware of that car attempting to turn, but definitely not expecting it to. I have doubts as to whether I, or an average driver, would have reacted fast enough to them actually turning so suddenly. The Tesla however did react in time and not have a collision so it did what was expected of it.
You make an interesting point but I have to disagree. You can see at the very beginning of the video the traffic is still moving in the right lane and the buildup is just beginning. As far as we know the Tesla could have already begun decelerating to account for the change in condition in the right lane. Even if it's not, going at that speed in the left lane is not what I'd consider abnormal.
Additionally, what's not safe for a human driver might be safe for an automated one which knows it can react very quickly to a dangerous situation.
Have you not seen human driving? A lot of people will go that fast compared to.stopped traffic.
More seriously theres no details, but i suspect the guy just chooses that speed is right, you're supposed to keep your hands on the wheel and change speed/etc as needed by the conditions
This was a human driver, Tesla's don't have a real autopilot system that can literally drive the car for you. The "autopilot" feature is just to avoid collisions, so in this case it just applied the breaks when it detected the car moving in front of it.
In addition, the right lane probably had so much traffic because it was an exit. In this case no one in that lane is going to suddenly hop into the left lane (they would obviously miss their exit if they did). In that situation it's really not that ridiculous to be driving that fast.
Agree the speed differential was too much. It's dark, wet, with stationary vehicles and there's a junction (?)
It's cool to see how quickly the car stopped, but I think I'd be on edge about more neck jarring autopilot incidents in the future if I had been in the car
>if you're in a lane that is moving well, you will expect at least some drivers from a slow lane to try to squeeze their way into the faster moving lane.
Wait what? The car that squeezed in was from the the opposing lanes of traffic. In other words you are suggesting that the driver that almost caused the accident basically figured "oh no my lane is too slow, I guess I better go back in the opposite direction"? That makes no sense whatsoever.
I think it is an over-statement to claim that "Most modern cars come with similar collision avoidance systems."
Many have collision WARNING systems (i.e. no auto-braking), and even then only on the highest trims or with an expensive options package ($3K+).
However collision avoidance systems do exist, and manufacturers like Subaru have made them so inexpensive that there's little excuse to not buy it (e.g. Subaru Legacy Premium W/Eyesight is $25-26K, similar to a mid Camry or Accord, and those lack CAS at that price point ($30K+ Limited trim to get CWS in other cars, let alone CAS)).
Aside from the luxury market (which Tesla is in) a lot of cars lack CAS or make it so expensive that they may have well. Subaru is the only manufacturer that makes it within the realm of your average joe (e.g. sub-35K).
From the source on TMC the user in question that posted this said he was using AP at the time. While the final braking was AEB I'd still say the title is fair.
I'm not convinced that this is an instance of autopilot "saving the day", as the title of the driver's video would suggest.
The driver states in his video description that he was "watching stopped traffic to my right". Think how you would react were you in full control of a car in that instance. You have a virtually stopped lane of traffic to your right, you see cars braking about 100 ft ahead of you. Wouldn't you start slowing down? I would, as clearly travelling as fast as the driver is where all surrounding traffic is slowing or stopped doesn't make sense, however the driver doesn't appear to slow down at all, by his own admission focused on the cars to his right. Was he legitimately distracted by cars to his right, or was he depending on the car's situational awareness? I'm leaning towards the latter, what I believe is an affordance offered by autopilot systems.
I think we'll start hearing and seeing many such "success" stories of close calls involving autopilot, but I'm not sure how many of these will be incidents of autopilot truly saving an otherwise attentive driver by reacting faster/better than the attentive driver. It seems to me that autopilot is going to be both cause and saviour in far too many cases.
The advantage of the autopilot is that its reproducible, 100% of the time. When something could have been done better given a situation, the code is fixed and the autopilot will handle the situation better every single future time.
Humans arent as reliable. And then of course theres perfect collision course distance calculations and millisecond reflexes.
Google has posted some interesting situations where their cars have predicted other driver behavior and avoided accidents in situations where it is quite possible an average human driver would not have been able to make the same prediction and avoided the accident. I agree that not every situation like this would have resulted in an accident for certain, I also strongly suspect the computers are much better at avoiding these types of accidents more consistently than humans.
I watched the video for the first time full-screen, as if I was driving, and tried to stomp my foot when I would have applied the brakes. I would have been in an accident.
I've always thought drivers of automatic transmissions seem less aware of what is happening around them, because they don't have to pay as much attention.
Since joining the 3 pedal master race, going back to an auto definitely doesn't engage me as much as manual.
The NHTSA is talking about requiring at least radar-controlled braking on new cars in a few years.[1] It's been working well in high-end cars, and it's not that expensive. It can't prevent all collisions, but it will almost totally prevent rear-ending the car in front in traffic. Most of the major automakers are on board with this.[2]
Earlier thinking was only to apply the brakes automatically as a collision-mitigation strategy, so that there would still be a collision, but a less severe one, after which the air bags would probably fire. But the technology got better, and now it looks reasonable to go to automatic braking sooner and prevent many collisions entirely.
This will increase freeway capacity. The biggest cause of freeway delay is accidents, most of which are rear-end collisions.
I want the car to avoid the collision, record the whole incident, and submit it as evidence to penalize the other driver.
The penalties could take the form of a lawsuit. Or could take the form of tagging the incident, and submitting the video where the other person's insurance company can automatically pick it up, examine the evidence, and then change rates.
That way we not only prevent accidents, but we start to address the minority of reckless drivers that put all of us at risk.
This is where autopilot (and self-driving car technology in general) really shines: faster-than-human reaction time. The driver didn't have enough time to even honk, let alone stop the car.
My car was totaled in a near identical situation last month. And this was avoided with only automatic emergency braking... I long for the day when fully self-driving cars are the norm on roadways.
What kind of Uber driver owns a Tesla? Is the guy just doing it for fun/to meet people or is it actually feasible to make payments on a Tesla with an Uber driver's salary?
Neat. Question: what happens if there's a car in back of the Tesla? Does does the Tesla disregard him and whether or not he has time to stop as well?
Edit: Certainly the top priority is avoiding the car in front of you, and you should slam on the brakes to do it. However, once you stop, the Tesla should release the brakes (if there's an imminent collision from the rear) to minimize the impact to the Tesla driver and the car slamming into the back of him. Would be cool if the Tesla engineers added this (if feasible).
It mentions in the video that the weather was dry. Is weather a variable that the autopilot system takes in to account? For example, if it was raining would the car have slowed down to a speed where it knows it can avoid obstacles taking in to account the extra stoppage distance required?
I wonder if all of this tesla-autopilot hype might increase their chances of being in a collision? At least initially.
I (regrettably) found myself leering over into a tesla driver's console the other day as he drove past to see if he was using autopilot or not and started to think of how dangerous it probably is to have everybody around you looking at you and not the road.
I guess at the very least tesla's autopilot will have some good practice early on.
I know I would definitely have been unable to prevent the accident. I didn't see the car until it was on the road.
Reminds me of the couple of close ones I had either in my car on motorcycle. On the moment you don't think, you just do but after it's a very chilly feeling of realizing that your life was just being played over a couple of seconds.
I know it's not in HN nature, but I absolutely loved the fact one of the top comments on youtube is: "FU YEA TECHNOLOGY!". It actually means that people outside tech environment appreciate course of events that is happening in the tech industry.
:sarcasm: Nothing to see here just some sensors, actuators and few lines of embedded code in action. Thousands of kids do it with Lego mindstorm every days.
[+] [-] pivo|10 years ago|reply
I commute on foot in Boston and I regularly witness pedestrians cross streets in front of traffic when they know they can get away with it, for example, when they're part of a crowd of pedestrians or the traffic is moving slowly. Every time I see that I wonder how much worse it'll be when they don't have to worry about being hit. Our sidewalks are narrow and crowded, will pedestrians just move to the streets?
Based on our geography, drivers and pedestrians I fully expect my city to pioneer the field of taking advantage of self driving car's automated accident avoidance systems.
[+] [-] maratd|10 years ago|reply
I don't understand this argument. If you do something abusive in front of me ... I will do what a robot will do. I will stop. Because I don't want to crash. I might open the window and yell some profanities at you ... but I can do that anyway, regardless of who triggered the stop, whether it was me or the on-board computer.
If you're arguing that the on-board computer has better reflexes and therefore people will engage in even more demented behavior ... that penetration level would have to be 99%. If it's something like 90%, then 1 out of 10 times you do something that abusive will result in a crash and you'll die.
By the time penetration reaches 99%, you essentially have all cars with automation built in and it's likely that using that automation will be mandatory. Cars that aren't automated will be illegal on public roads exactly because of this problem.
[+] [-] warfangle|10 years ago|reply
Once upon a time, streets were for people. And then the automotive industry coined the term jaywalking...
[+] [-] obastani|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] calpaterson|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rayiner|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Animats|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anthonybsd|10 years ago|reply
Boston is special. You know how sometimes pedestrians will cross on red and when they see a car and make eye contact with the driver they will turn their head the other way to make sure that the driver understands that they aren't looking in their direction and is forced to slow down? Yeah, Boston is the only place on the planet where I've seen actual drivers do the same thing. Unbelievable.
[+] [-] pavel_lishin|10 years ago|reply
Although it would definitely be a habit that'll end up killing someone.
[+] [-] omegaworks|10 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pbAI40dK0A
[+] [-] jnty|10 years ago|reply
I hope so. If drvierless cars allow pedestrians to safely reclaim the streets that, as you point out, have marginalized them for so long, then that's fantastic.
[+] [-] mladenkovacevic|10 years ago|reply
A human driver would never be driving that fast. Taking into account familiarity with typical human behaviour, if you're in a lane that is moving well, you will expect at least some drivers from a slow lane to try to squeeze their way into the faster moving lane. Not to mention watching out for facial expressions on drivers in the opposite moving lane, hoping to take advantage of slow traffic to make left-turns into oncoming traffic. A focused human driver will be taking all these things into consideration when operating the vehicle.
I can easily imagine a scenario where a car turns into Tesla's lane and the Tesla not having enough reaction time to avoid collision.
Bottom line is, what I'm seeing in this video is a Tesla autopilot not being smart enough to regulate its speed according to conditions on the road and having to resort to some emergency braking maneuver to avoid a potentially catastrophic collision.
[+] [-] MaulingMonkey|10 years ago|reply
They totally would. I see it... not infrequently. Basically any scenario where people in the right lane are there for a reason (e.g. taking an overburdened exit on a highway, turning right waiting for crossing pedestrians off of a main drag, HOV traffic vs non-HOV traffic etc.) I'll see traffic going by completely stopped traffic as fast as 60mph in the adjacent lane, and be the odd one out going by "slowly" at 40mph or so. Which looks to be about the same ballpark as in the video (which the description suggests was <45mph) and many surface streets (where you're passing parked cars.)
[+] [-] zzalpha|10 years ago|reply
Well, I guess the devil's advocate argument is that what you say may only be true for a human driver.
After all, this video demonstrates the vehicle has the ability to rapidly react to a situation like that. So maybe the vehicle is driving at a safe speed for the conditions given what a computer is capable of.
[+] [-] Bedon292|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jliptzin|10 years ago|reply
Additionally, what's not safe for a human driver might be safe for an automated one which knows it can react very quickly to a dangerous situation.
[+] [-] jessriedel|10 years ago|reply
I don't think it's clear at all that the car is driving faster than a typical human driver in this condition.
[+] [-] azernik|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zobzu|10 years ago|reply
More seriously theres no details, but i suspect the guy just chooses that speed is right, you're supposed to keep your hands on the wheel and change speed/etc as needed by the conditions
[+] [-] Analog24|10 years ago|reply
In addition, the right lane probably had so much traffic because it was an exit. In this case no one in that lane is going to suddenly hop into the left lane (they would obviously miss their exit if they did). In that situation it's really not that ridiculous to be driving that fast.
[+] [-] andrewchambers|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aidenn0|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arprocter|10 years ago|reply
It's cool to see how quickly the car stopped, but I think I'd be on edge about more neck jarring autopilot incidents in the future if I had been in the car
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] anthonybsd|10 years ago|reply
Wait what? The car that squeezed in was from the the opposing lanes of traffic. In other words you are suggesting that the driver that almost caused the accident basically figured "oh no my lane is too slow, I guess I better go back in the opposite direction"? That makes no sense whatsoever.
[+] [-] ctz|10 years ago|reply
Most modern cars come with similar collision avoidance systems. Volvo introduced it first(?) in 2008.
[+] [-] Someone1234|10 years ago|reply
Many have collision WARNING systems (i.e. no auto-braking), and even then only on the highest trims or with an expensive options package ($3K+).
However collision avoidance systems do exist, and manufacturers like Subaru have made them so inexpensive that there's little excuse to not buy it (e.g. Subaru Legacy Premium W/Eyesight is $25-26K, similar to a mid Camry or Accord, and those lack CAS at that price point ($30K+ Limited trim to get CWS in other cars, let alone CAS)).
Aside from the luxury market (which Tesla is in) a lot of cars lack CAS or make it so expensive that they may have well. Subaru is the only manufacturer that makes it within the realm of your average joe (e.g. sub-35K).
[+] [-] vvanders|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beeboop|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mirzmaster|10 years ago|reply
The driver states in his video description that he was "watching stopped traffic to my right". Think how you would react were you in full control of a car in that instance. You have a virtually stopped lane of traffic to your right, you see cars braking about 100 ft ahead of you. Wouldn't you start slowing down? I would, as clearly travelling as fast as the driver is where all surrounding traffic is slowing or stopped doesn't make sense, however the driver doesn't appear to slow down at all, by his own admission focused on the cars to his right. Was he legitimately distracted by cars to his right, or was he depending on the car's situational awareness? I'm leaning towards the latter, what I believe is an affordance offered by autopilot systems.
I think we'll start hearing and seeing many such "success" stories of close calls involving autopilot, but I'm not sure how many of these will be incidents of autopilot truly saving an otherwise attentive driver by reacting faster/better than the attentive driver. It seems to me that autopilot is going to be both cause and saviour in far too many cases.
[+] [-] zobzu|10 years ago|reply
Humans arent as reliable. And then of course theres perfect collision course distance calculations and millisecond reflexes.
[+] [-] ensignavenger|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] facetube|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arprocter|10 years ago|reply
Since joining the 3 pedal master race, going back to an auto definitely doesn't engage me as much as manual.
[+] [-] Animats|10 years ago|reply
Earlier thinking was only to apply the brakes automatically as a collision-mitigation strategy, so that there would still be a collision, but a less severe one, after which the air bags would probably fire. But the technology got better, and now it looks reasonable to go to automatic braking sooner and prevent many collisions entirely.
This will increase freeway capacity. The biggest cause of freeway delay is accidents, most of which are rear-end collisions.
[1] http://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/2015/06/08/n... [2] http://money.cnn.com/2015/09/11/autos/automatic-braking-nhts...
[+] [-] btilly|10 years ago|reply
I want the car to avoid the collision, record the whole incident, and submit it as evidence to penalize the other driver.
The penalties could take the form of a lawsuit. Or could take the form of tagging the incident, and submitting the video where the other person's insurance company can automatically pick it up, examine the evidence, and then change rates.
That way we not only prevent accidents, but we start to address the minority of reckless drivers that put all of us at risk.
[+] [-] jdiez17|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ohitsdom|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] roymurdock|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SovietDissident|10 years ago|reply
Edit: Certainly the top priority is avoiding the car in front of you, and you should slam on the brakes to do it. However, once you stop, the Tesla should release the brakes (if there's an imminent collision from the rear) to minimize the impact to the Tesla driver and the car slamming into the back of him. Would be cool if the Tesla engineers added this (if feasible).
[+] [-] SlashmanX|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simonswords82|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thinkcontext|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GigabyteCoin|10 years ago|reply
I (regrettably) found myself leering over into a tesla driver's console the other day as he drove past to see if he was using autopilot or not and started to think of how dangerous it probably is to have everybody around you looking at you and not the road.
I guess at the very least tesla's autopilot will have some good practice early on.
[+] [-] shin_lao|10 years ago|reply
Reminds me of the couple of close ones I had either in my car on motorcycle. On the moment you don't think, you just do but after it's a very chilly feeling of realizing that your life was just being played over a couple of seconds.
[+] [-] eddd|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chinathrow|10 years ago|reply
Edit: It's the emergency break feature - not the autopilot.
[+] [-] jksmith|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] noipv4|10 years ago|reply