Google's driverless cars designed to exceed speed limit

[georgemcbay]

Good.

It would be stupid not to, especially during the transition phase where driverless cars are the minority.

YMMV depending upon local standards but here in San Diego, CA it is extremely common for the flow the traffic to be going 5-15 miles above posted speed limits and the cops do not care. Having a car going significantly slower than the flow of traffic is much worse than exceeding the speed limit.

Also there are sometimes situations where very temporarily exceeding the limit is the best option (eg. you're at the speed limit and someone cuts into your lane toward the back of your car, potentially shunting you and you have no clearance on the other side, but do have room up front). Driverless cars with full 360 (or close to it) lidar would be ideal for dealing with this situation (as opposed to a human driver that is unlikely to even see the other car in his/her blindspot) but if they are capped at the speed limit their options for resolving the situation safely would be severely curtailed.

[josephschmoe]

Definitely. I wouldn't want my car driving in an unsafe manner just to follow local ordinances.

I'd be very curious if I could sue those local governments for endangering me if my vehicle is forced to follow their rules and gets in an avoidable accident because of them. It would be an eminent domain defense, in the sense that government can't deny me of my property without a justifiable (public safety) reason for doing so.

And forcing my computer to behave in a certain way that causes it to potentially harm itself is definitely a denial of property.

I'm sure they'll just write me a ticket though - and if no one has gotten out of that by citing statistics on road safety, my autonomous car won't be any better off.

Hopefully, this will all be resolved reasonably with a national law and a nice bug report interface on Google's part.

[allochthon]

but here in San Diego, CA it is extremely common for the flow the traffic to be going 5-15 miles above posted speed limits

Same here in the Bay area. It would be unsafe to drive no faster than the speed limits in some conditions of traffic. (Some drivers do this, and you have to change lanes on short notice to remain at the same speed as the rest of traffic.)

[Chinjut]

"Google's self-driving cars are programmed to exceed speed limits by up to 10mph (16km/h), according to the project's lead software engineer. Dmitri Dolgov told Reuters that when surrounding vehicles were breaking the speed limit, going more slowly could actually present a danger, and the Google car would accelerate to keep up."

Clicking through to the source: "Google's driverless car is programmed to stay within the speed limit, mostly. Research shows that sticking to the speed limit when other cars are going much faster actually can be dangerous, Dolgov says, so its autonomous car can go up to 10 mph (16 kph) above the speed limit when traffic conditions warrant."

[sbierwagen]

I'm a dilettante hypermiler, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy-efficient_driving) which is mostly about driving slowly. And wow, it's amazing how mad some people get when you drive the posted speed limit.

[jfuhrman]

Going the speed limit or lower in the passing lane, especially in rush hour is dangerous and probably causes more accidents than just going a bit faster or moving over to the other lanes when someone gets too close.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2016721/Slow-drivers...

[talmand]

For all that is holy, stay out of the left lane.

Even if it's clearly marked HOV, you need to make a left turn, or it's a single lane you'll still somehow be a danger to society.

[lucb1e]

Are you going the actual limit, or do you drive on the gauge? Because there is quite a big difference in many cars. Many new ones here seem to indicate 8km/h more than you're going, and with all the people that don't have cruise control this means you're doing 70 when you could be going ~85 before any traffic camera would pick it up.

Actually most people drive ~100km/h on the road I have in mind so 80 is annoying to some already, but I try to never tailgate anyone into driving faster. Only when someone does ~72 because they think that's what they are allowed to drive... such a small difference and yet so annoying.

[lsh123]

Just curios if Google is going to pay the ticket if a cop stops the car.

[talmand]

I've seen similar questions arise from the thought of accidents. If a self-driving car causes a crash, who's responsible? The owner or the manufacturer?

Another random thought: do the cars respond to a police officer trying to pull them over?

[deepsun]

If driver manually overridden the speed setting, then yes.

In case of other accidents -- pays insurance (and their pricing will be the best indication of how safe these cars are).

[praptak]

I admit I'm not keeping up with the news but doesn't the law still require that a human driver be present in the car?

[Aldo_MX]

Not likely

[luos]

Would these cars overtake others, for example if there is a car towing an other on a one lane (each way) road going significantly under the speed limit?

[helpbygrace]

Is this speed measured by GPS or vehicle?

In my experience, even though speedmeter in the instrument panel shows 10mph over, actual GPS speed is around speed limit.

[jimmcslim]

According to the Wikipedia page on speedometers, under the Error heading...

'Vehicle manufacturers usually calibrate speedometers to read high by an amount equal to the average error, to ensure that their speedometers never indicate a lower speed than the actual speed of the vehicle, to ensure they are not liable for drivers violating speed limits.', although no citation is currently provided.

Error is introduced by tire diameter being different than what was assumed for initial calibration... i.e. wear on the tires or tires that are under/over-inflated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speedometer

[Someone1234]

Civilian GPS alone isn't accurate enough to be believed to within 10 MpH. Even with the fuzzing gone:

http://www.maps-gps-info.com/gps-accuracy.html http://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/performance/accuracy/

[ewoodrich]

They really shouldn't differ by that much, your car likely has a speedometer that is out of calibration.

[ianstallings]

But how do you know the actual speed you're going to gauge the accuracy? Have you timed this over a set distance or something?

[elwell]

> when surrounding vehicles were breaking the speed limit ... the Google car would accelerate to keep up

  for n, neighbor of neighbors
    if neighbor.vel > @vel # TODO: add something like: " and @vel < maxVel"
      @vel += 1

Just don't forget to grep for "TODO".

[rumbler]

If Amazon were to make a driverless car, I'd worry.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2384102,00.asp

[allochthon]

This link got thumped way down really quickly. And it's an interesting one.