Automated vehicles - how soon is now?

[Chilli.s]

A car that could just stick to the speed limit would be nice.

 

[coley]

Huge swathes of human society are over confident at judging their driving skills/likelihood of not having an accident. For one thing you alone are not in control as on any given journey your safety in part depends on the behaviour of every other driver in your proximity throughout (clearly a greater factor in a country with denser, [potentially] faster running traffic). Once fully automated vehicles are demonstrably far safer then it will be game over (outside of niche areas) and just a question of the least messy way to manage the transition. Though given the rate of evolution of the tech this might just happen near seamlessly, in practical terms on the road anyway (question may be more apposite for society).

Totally agree, just I'm of a generation that will be uncomfortable in a mobile box that drives itself it will happen, and in a much shorter timescale than many imagine.

 

[Crispy]

I can imagine the first real roll-out will be for the city limits of a 50,000 population californian town.

200,000 population Arizona suburb actually

Fully driverless cars could be months away

 

[beesonthewhatnow]

200,000 population Arizona suburb actually

Fully driverless cars could be months away

A fiver to the server fund says no.

 

[Crispy]

A fiver to the server fund says no.

By the end of this year? I will not take that bet. Next year? Sure.

 

[Yossarian]

A fiver to the server fund says no.

Yep, the same story says there have been "major problems" with the technology during testing in Chandler, including difficulties with elft turn.

During the year and a half that Waymo’s self-driving cars have been tested on the streets of Chandler and nearby suburbs, they’ve sometimes had to stop trying to make left turns because the software wasn’t safe enough,” the magazine reported, based on comments from someone said to have access to information on Waymo’s operations.

Waymo's cars have had persistent problems navigating left turns, according to Efrati, especially when there's no left-hand turn arrow to control oncoming traffic. Waymo cars struggle to navigate cul-de-sacs. Large mall parking lots also pose a challenge, since these private properties might not be well represented in Waymo's 3-D maps.

That's not good news for the self-driving project, especially since cul-de-sacs and mall parking lots probably make up about 90% of the environment in suburban Phoenix.

 

[beesonthewhatnow]

By the end of this year? I will not take that bet. Next year? Sure.

I wouldn't be too hopeful about next year either.

£5 server fund bet, viritual handshake

 

[Crispy]

I wouldn't be too hopeful about next year either.

£5 server fund bet, viritual handshake

Done

 

[2hats]

Alphabet’s (Google’s) Waymo automated car division is now going to trial their cars on public roads without a safety driver at the wheel and with members of the public on board - they are launching a free, commercial, driverless public taxi service using them in Phoenix, AZ (they have actually already been running the cars without the safety driver at the wheel on public roads in Arizona for the last few weeks).

More here.

e2a:

200,000 population Arizona suburb actually

Fully driverless cars could be months away

Weeks?

A fiver to the server fund says no.

Lucky server fund.

 

[Silas Loom]

The moral of the story: driving in Phoenix is considerably less complicated than in urban metropoleis or the countryside.

 

[Crispy]

Perfect place to start. Just watch the scope of this creep outwards over the coming year or two.

 

[cybershot]

We were in an accident during an automated driving tech demo

 

[Crispy]

We were in an accident during an automated driving tech demo

An accident that could have been avoided if the emergency auto-braking system in that car had been enabled.

 

[mauvais]

An accident that could have been avoided if the emergency auto-braking system in that car had been enabled.

Yeah, and had, you know, worked.

but it was disabled for the demo because it had been throwing too many false positives and was undergoing tuning

 

[2hats]

We were in an accident during an automated driving tech demo

From that article:

the Automatic Emergency Braking system would’ve normally engaged at that point and prevented the collision, but it was disabled for the demo because it had been throwing too many false positives and was undergoing tuning … [the driver’s] manual disengagement, which resulted from pressing the brake pedal to the floor, as you can see in the video, didn’t occur fast enough for us to shed all our speed.

So not actually (fully) automated and the crash occurred when the (human) driver failed to understand the situation, overrode what automated systems were ticking over, and didn’t react fast enough.

 

[Crispy]

Yeah, and had, you know, worked.

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