Self-driving cars

[kkt]

What's the point of even having car insurance with a self-driving car?  The current purpose of car insurance is to protect other people in case you cause an accident.

That's only for liability insurance.  A lot of people also have uninsured/underinsured driver insurance in case another driver is at fault for an accident you're in, and comprehensive insurance for damage to vehicle from your own fault, or natural or unidentifiable causes.

I'd expect the driver to continue to be responsible if their self-driving car causes an accident.  They are responsible for maintaining the self-driving system, and responsible for being ready to take over if the self-driving system is doing the wrong thing.

Perhaps use of a self-driving car would make you eligible for lower premiums.

[Molandfreak]

In order to work as intended (eliminating accidents), all human-driven cars would have to be eliminated. As someone who loves to drive, fuck that.


iPhone

[vdeane]

The real issue, for many, would be whether you actually have to drive yourself to count a route transit as a clinch.  The data entry aspect is fairly simple:  by the time self-driving cars are reality, the clinch mapping sites will almost certainly have been upgraded to accept and interpret GPS tracks generated by a smartphone or other device carried in the car.

What about "how to get the self-driving car to go on every millimeter of state highway"?

If self-driving cars really lead to a massive reduction in road casualties, insurance would presumably become much cheaper.  There would still be an element of comprehensive insurance that is necessary to cover weather-related damage such as hail.  I think auto insurance would become more like health insurance only if, as part of the regulatory tradeoff for allowing self-driving cars, basic maintenance operations were required to be carried out by personnel covered by a certification scheme.  DIYers of whatever skill level have the potential to be squeezed out by a shift toward self-driving cars.

I'm pretty sure the purpose of requiring insurance is to protect people in the event of an accident.  If all the cars were self-driving, that goes away.

That's only for liability insurance.  A lot of people also have uninsured/underinsured driver insurance in case another driver is at fault for an accident you're in, and comprehensive insurance for damage to vehicle from your own fault, or natural or unidentifiable causes.

I'd expect the driver to continue to be responsible if their self-driving car causes an accident.  They are responsible for maintaining the self-driving system, and responsible for being ready to take over if the self-driving system is doing the wrong thing.

Perhaps use of a self-driving car would make you eligible for lower premiums.

I would not want to be responsible for the results of the inevitable software bugs that will show up.  Doing that would be a good way to make me give up the car entirely.

If self-driving cars are as reliable as people claim, then the only unexpected damage should be weather-related.

Also note that Google's current prototype self-driving cars have no option for the driver to manually take over at all.  There's not even a steering wheel.  Plus what's the point of even having a self-driving car if people have to be ready to take over at any time and need to be as focused as they are now?  Taking away the actual driving but still have people maintain the awareness is a sure fire way to lead to boredom, distracted "driving", and disaster if it's relied upon.  We already see it now, with cars automating so many things that people get tempted to text and drive.  We'd see a lot less distracted driving out there if automatic transmissions were outlawed, for example.  The solution is not to enable the behavior without accommodating for it.

[Brandon]

In order to work as intended (eliminating accidents), all human-driven cars would have to be eliminated. As someone who loves to drive, fuck that.

Agreed, but I'm going throw a lot of cold water on this.  I do not think self-driving cars will be ready for prime time for a very long time, if ever.  There are far too many variables, IMHO, other than simply just a map and other vehicles on the road.  There are animals, especially larger animals like deer, elk, moose, etc, that cannot be accounted for and cannot necessarily be predicted properly by software.  Even currently, humans driving can hit them.  What about software that requires the driving environment be predictable?  Then we have bicyclists and pedestrians whose actions cannot always be accounted for by software.  Even radar and other identification systems cannot predict what they may do.

I sincerely doubt we'll see viable self-driving vehicles for a very long time.  We may see some functions taken over a la autopilot, but autopilot still requires the pilot to monitor it.

[J N Winkler]

What about "how to get the self-driving car to go on every millimeter of state highway"?

By the time self-driving cars become market reality, I would expect route selection and programming to be more sophisticated than Google Maps click-and-drag.  You would almost certainly be able to program a self-driving car to do an U-turn in front of an Army post gate as required for a successful clinch, because there are plenty of foreseeable applications (not related to correcting navigational errors) where the ability to U-turn would be useful in a self-driving car.

I'm pretty sure the purpose of requiring insurance is to protect people in the event of an accident.  If all the cars were self-driving, that goes away.

Not really--the typical passenger aircraft in revenue service is far less likely to be involved in an accident than the typical car, but the airlines are still liable and I am pretty sure they set aside funds to self-insure if they don't actually buy insurance from another company.

However good self-driving technology becomes, I highly doubt that it will ever reduce accidents all the way to zero.  There are just too many variables to monitor and designers can't just throw sensors and monitoring circuitry at every possible source of failure because then failure of each sensor or its circuit, as well as random bit flip due to cosmic radiation, has to be catered for.  At best it's a process of pulling the drawstring on a haversack, by eliminating common causes of failure in favor of far rarer ones.

If self-driving cars are as reliable as people claim, then the only unexpected damage should be weather-related.

If such claims are being made--even if by entities that aren't actually involved in developing self-driving cars--then they are not credible and should not be believed.

Also note that Google's current prototype self-driving cars have no option for the driver to manually take over at all.  There's not even a steering wheel.  Plus what's the point of even having a self-driving car if people have to be ready to take over at any time and need to be as focused as they are now?  Taking away the actual driving but still have people maintain the awareness is a sure fire way to lead to boredom, distracted "driving", and disaster if it's relied upon.  We already see it now, with cars automating so many things that people get tempted to text and drive.  We'd see a lot less distracted driving out there if automatic transmissions were outlawed, for example.  The solution is not to enable the behavior without accommodating for it.

I disagree that automatic transmissions enable distracted driving on any significant scale.  In fact you could easily argue that it is manuals which cause distracted driving in cities, because the added task load of upshifting and downshifting as required to maintain the correct gear means reduced cognitive effort is available to focus on the traffic environment.  This is comparable to the argument that rigorous enforcement of speed limits is bad because it leads to drivers constantly checking their speedometers instead of what the other traffic is doing.

The real problem with distracted driving in the current generation of new cars has more to do with in-car entertainment systems that absorb far too much cognitive effort, in combination with the "always on" mentality of new drivers.

I don't think Google's non-provision of controls in their latest prototypes is necessarily reflective of the direction continued development will take.  It has also been noted in the technical press that Google's self-driving cars have no ability to "read" the traffic environment (a cognitively complex task that even intelligent and educated adult humans occasionally struggle with) and are dependent on very highly detailed three-dimensional photo mapping that right now is pretty much limited to the Bay Area.  It makes no sense to take the controls away when the underlying software can't cater for "here today, not here yesterday" conditions that by definition are not mapped, such as potholes that appear overnight, signs that go away when the sign crew comes by, etc.

[J N Winkler]

There are far too many variables, IMHO, other than simply just a map and other vehicles on the road.  There are animals, especially larger animals like deer, elk, moose, etc, that cannot be accounted for and cannot necessarily be predicted properly by software.  Even currently, humans driving can hit them.  What about software that requires the driving environment be predictable?

A common observation about self-driving systems is that they have no "common sense," as that rather uncommon blend of intuition and experience is known.  For example, if a ball bounces into the street, then the self-driving car won't "know" to expect a little kid to come chasing after it.  Of course, software can be developed to cater for this specific case, but that is an ad hoc solution and traffic is full of ad hoc cases.

[jeffandnicole]

There are far too many variables, IMHO, other than simply just a map and other vehicles on the road.  There are animals, especially larger animals like deer, elk, moose, etc, that cannot be accounted for and cannot necessarily be predicted properly by software.  Even currently, humans driving can hit them.  What about software that requires the driving environment be predictable?

A common observation about self-driving systems is that they have no "common sense," as that rather uncommon blend of intuition and experience is known.  For example, if a ball bounces into the street, then the self-driving car won't "know" to expect a little kid to come chasing after it.  Of course, software can be developed to cater for this specific case, but that is an ad hoc solution and traffic is full of ad hoc cases.

OK, but has there ever been cases where those stated things have occurred, and what happened when it did occur? Or are we just trying to make stuff up again, and potential conditions such as these were thought up already many years ago?  I would think if someone asking for permission to test a self-driving car said "Yes, our car can drive itself, but if your 4 year old daughter walks out in front of it she's going to get creamed", that was be an instant disapproval of the test.  I'm sure the questions have been asked, and the technology has been created, for such an event.

[J N Winkler]

OK, but has there ever been cases where those stated things have occurred, and what happened when it did occur? Or are we just trying to make stuff up again, and potential conditions such as these were thought up already many years ago?  I would think if someone asking for permission to test a self-driving car said "Yes, our car can drive itself, but if your 4 year old daughter walks out in front of it she's going to get creamed", that was be an instant disapproval of the test.  I'm sure the questions have been asked, and the technology has been created, for such an event.

"Ball bouncing into the street" is not a manufactured hypothetical.  It is mentioned specifically in a rather long New Yorker article on the Google self-driving car that appeared, I think, in 2013.  The article (if memory serves) notes that giving the brain of a self-driving car the "common sense" required to address such situations is a still unsolved problem.  At the time the article was written, Google was using highly modified production cars as prototypes but they still had their controls, as well as a red console button that was pushed to take over manual operation.

I have not delved into the detail of current licensing arrangements for self-driving cars, but I suspect they are still based on the "driver in charge" doctrine and have gone forward largely on the basis that supervised self-driving (the only kind of self-driving that would have had anything like a track record when California and Nevada made self-driving cars legal) had a crash rate lower than ordinary driving.

[Brian556]

Quote from J N Winkler:

disagree that automatic transmissions enable distracted driving on any significant scale.  In fact you could easily argue that it is manuals which cause distracted driving in cities, because the added task load of upshifting and downshifting as required to maintain the correct gear means reduced cognitive effort is available to focus on the traffic environment. 

Thank You. I fully agree. This is one of the reasons that I hate manuals. I feel that they greatly increase the chance of an accident for this as well as a host of other reasons, including the difficulty of taking off front a stopped position a hill without rolling back.

I think that the fact that I have Asperger's made learning to drive manuals much more challenging for me than for other people. I found it odd that people that had a significantly lower IQ than me were able to master the skill while I struggled.

[Molandfreak]

Quote from J N Winkler:

disagree that automatic transmissions enable distracted driving on any significant scale.  In fact you could easily argue that it is manuals which cause distracted driving in cities, because the added task load of upshifting and downshifting as required to maintain the correct gear means reduced cognitive effort is available to focus on the traffic environment. 

Thank You. I fully agree. This is one of the reasons that I hate manuals. I feel that they greatly increase the chance of an accident for this as well as a host of other reasons, including the difficulty of taking off front a stopped position a hill without rolling back.

I think that the fact that I have Asperger's made learning to drive manuals much more challenging for me than for other people. I found it odd that people that had a significantly lower IQ than me were able to master the skill while I struggled.

WHAT?!?! No, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's just part of the operation of the vehicle that should be second nature to someone with experience. No increased chance of an accident at all. Pop the clutch if you don't want to roll back.

[signalman]

Quote from J N Winkler:

disagree that automatic transmissions enable distracted driving on any significant scale.  In fact you could easily argue that it is manuals which cause distracted driving in cities, because the added task load of upshifting and downshifting as required to maintain the correct gear means reduced cognitive effort is available to focus on the traffic environment. 

Thank You. I fully agree. This is one of the reasons that I hate manuals. I feel that they greatly increase the chance of an accident for this as well as a host of other reasons, including the difficulty of taking off front a stopped position a hill without rolling back.

I think that the fact that I have Asperger's made learning to drive manuals much more challenging for me than for other people. I found it odd that people that had a significantly lower IQ than me were able to master the skill while I struggled.

WHAT?!?! No, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's just part of the operation of the vehicle that should be second nature to someone with experience. No increased chance of an accident at all. Pop the clutch if you don't want to roll back.

I agree that a lot of it has to do with experience.  Granted, that takes time and there's a first time for everyone.  I have been driving a manual for so long that going through the gears ( both up and down) is almost second nature.  I've come to find that I'm more likely to make a mistake (letting the clutch out too fast, a bit herky-jerky with a gear shift, etc.) when I am really thinking about what I'm doing.  As for hill starts, I would not recommend "popping" the clutch.  That will wear one out fast and they aren't cheap to repair.  Instead, I'd recommend using the emergency brake trick; where the driver releases the brake when they begin to feel the clutch grabbing.  With enough practice without using the emergency brake and no one behind you to roll back into, one will get good and hardly roll back an inch by just taking your foot off the brake and quickly moving it to the throttle.  Again, this takes practice...but like I noted, everyone has to start somewhere.

[Brandon]

Quote from J N Winkler:

disagree that automatic transmissions enable distracted driving on any significant scale.  In fact you could easily argue that it is manuals which cause distracted driving in cities, because the added task load of upshifting and downshifting as required to maintain the correct gear means reduced cognitive effort is available to focus on the traffic environment. 

Thank You. I fully agree. This is one of the reasons that I hate manuals. I feel that they greatly increase the chance of an accident for this as well as a host of other reasons, including the difficulty of taking off front a stopped position a hill without rolling back.

I think that the fact that I have Asperger's made learning to drive manuals much more challenging for me than for other people. I found it odd that people that had a significantly lower IQ than me were able to master the skill while I struggled.

And I call bullshit as I do have a manual, and I find it infinitely easier to use in an urban environment than a slushbox.  I have a rather high IQ, and had no struggle whatsoever.

[Zeffy]

One time at a Dave and Buster's, they had an arcade racing machine that featured a 6-stick with a clutch. I tried it, failed miserably, and figured if I sucked that hard at a video game, I could never do it in real life. Besides, I have no problems with automatic anyway.

[jeffandnicole]

One time at a Dave and Buster's, they had an arcade racing machine that featured a 6-stick with a clutch. I tried it, failed miserably, and figured if I sucked that hard at a video game, I could never do it in real life. Besides, I have no problems with automatic anyway.

If you base all of life's experiences on the first 60 seconds you tried something, you would have never started walking when you were about 1, you would have never eat, as young kids are prone to missing their mouths, you would never have printed or wrote anything, you would have never typed, etc, etc, etc.  On video games that require you to race vehicles, have you ever crashed into something?  That didn't stop you from driving a car, did it?

I don't drive a stick either, but I wouldn't base my skill level on an electronic game where I am racing at 150 mph.

[J N Winkler]

I think arcade games are profoundly unrepresentative of real-life driving, so I wouldn't declare myself incompetent to learn a driving technique simply because I messed up at the arcade.

There are many different styles for driving automatics and manuals, so it was actually my intention to refute suggestions that drivers should be required to use one or the other for any reason--to reduce task loading, to reduce distracted driving, or whatever.  Each driver should be free to use whichever of the two is most comfortable for him or her and that permits him or her to devote the appropriate amount of attention to the key elements of the roadway environment.

I agree that it takes a considerable amount of skill-building to drive a manual with good vehicle sympathy.  However, I think drivers used to manuals tend to underestimate the extent to which driving an automatic with good vehicle sympathy also requires skill, not just at the pedals but also under the hood where it is sometimes necessary to adjust the inputs the transmission receives.

[Zeffy]

Okay fine, that's not the only basis for staying with automatic. I like keeping things simple, so automatic just works the best for me. Plus, while I can drive just fine without my adderall, I could easily envision myself forgetting to shift gears. My attention is on the road, and anything in the car that isn't the brakes and gas pedals mostly gets shunned so I can focus on driving.

[Duke87]

With regards to transmission types, it's a question of what you're used to. A lot of knowing how to drive a car is motor memory. If it's possible for someone to know when to hit the gas and brake without really thinking about it, it's also possible for someone to work a clutch and stick without really thinking about it. But in order to do it without really thinking about it, you have to be used to doing it.

I've made some attempts at driving stick whenever my cousin who owns one decides to give me a shot at it. But this ultimately means doing it for 10 minutes once every couple months, and of course I always suck at it because every time I attempt it it's a departure from the norm and I need to think about it.

It's kind of like with languages - if you study a foreign language a little bit here and there but then go back to speaking English for everything important, you're never going to pick the language up. But if spend some time in a country where it's the predominant language and you're forced to use it on a regular basis, you will learn by immersion.

This, I assume, is also key to learning how to drive stick. It can't be a here and there thing, it has to be learned by immersion. My cousin learned by buying a manual transmission car and forcing himself to drive it on a daily basis.

[triplemultiplex]

I think there is an assumption among some that a self driving car is going to simply follow a GPS trace to get around.  But in reality, they will be loaded with sensors that will identify an object moving toward the vehicle's predicted path and make corrections to avoid a collision; even severe braking and steering movements if necessary.  It will probably even get to the point where the computer will recognize the difference between a garbage bag blowing in the wind and an animal wandering onto the road and adjust its corrective action accordingly.

As with crashes involving other vehicles, animal strikes will be dramatically reduced (humans included).  Not only will the vehicle be able to avoid hitting an object better than a human driver, but it will be able to communicate to the vehicles around it that this car needs to do something drastic and they will be able to adjust their speed and steering before the occupants of those vehicles are even aware there is a problem.  With the obstacle cleared, the vehicle can automatically report to some maintenance authority that there is a piece of truck tire or wildlife activity at coordinates X:Y.  I predict it will eventually be such that a human could put on a blindfold and casually wander across the busiest multi-lane road of automated vehicles and be completely unharmed.  And on top of that, the flow of traffic will be affected in only a minor way.  That is how quickly the systems will be able to adjust to a dynamic obstacle.

I think we are a lot closer to self-driving cars technologically than many people may think.  It very reasonable to me to say that some on this forum will be driven home from their retirement parties by an automated vehicle.

[kkt]

Okay, but you can try walking across a busy multilane street blindfolded first

I think you're very idealistic.  If we can't even get oil pipelines to work without spilling tens of thousands of gallons, is there really hope for a sophisticated piece of tech like a self-driving car to work anywhere near as well as you say?  I swear, I spend over 10% of my days just fighting with computers and printers, and they are much simpler in comparison to what you're expecting a self-driving car to do.

[bugo]

Quote from J N Winkler:

disagree that automatic transmissions enable distracted driving on any significant scale.  In fact you could easily argue that it is manuals which cause distracted driving in cities, because the added task load of upshifting and ownshifting as required to maintain the correct gear means reduced cognitive effort is available to focus on the traffic environment. 

When you get used to driving a stick, it simply becomes part of driving. You don't think about it, you just do it. It's no more distracting than braking and accelerating because you have to use two pedals or a steering wheel is because it is round.

[bugo]

I don't want a self-driving cars for a myriad of reasons, the least not being carsickness. I get horrible vertigo and nausea if I'm not able to look forward in a car and control the driving. If I'm a passenger and the driver makes a sudden move that is unexpected, I get immediately sick. No matter how insignificant the move. A similar thing happened a few years ago while flying into Chicago: the plane slowed way down unexpectedly while it was getting ready to land and I came this close to throwing up. I still can't believe I was able to keep it together. During my Chicago layover I ate something and took a handful of Dramamine and I didn't have any problems for the second leg of the flight.

[slorydn1]

I have always said that they will have to pry my steering wheel out of my cold dead hands (borrowing a phrase from the gun lobby).

I do, however, agree with those who think we are closer to self driving cars than many people realize. The basic routing functions could be handled by the driver programming in waypoints similar to what a pilot has to do on his FMC in the cockpit. They pretty much have everything from the time the plane goes wheels up to the point they reach decision height on the final approach programmed on those things ahead of time, including all the turns to follow the various noise abatement procedures at the different airports they fly to. I would think it would be possible for a driver to program the car to turn at A Street instead of B street to go to work because they want to make a right turn into the parking lot instead of a left, for example. I believe that with proper pre-trip planning that we roadgeeeks would be able to tell the car the route we want it to take, versus whatever route the Goog or Garmin wants us to take.

I am also sure that the cars would have to have something akin to the TCAS systems that passenger airliners already have that would be able to sense and avoid possible conflicts with other vehicles and pedestrians (etc). I am sure they can make it all work-just as soon as they make my printer work every time I hit the print icon, LOL (I apologize for stealing someone else's comment on computers).


Back to us actually driving the cars ourselves, I wholeheartedly disagree with those who say that a manual transmission is distracting. There is alot more that goes into properly driving a vehicle with a manual transmission  that the only way to do it right is to actually be paying attention to what the other vehicles are doing around you. You have to be paying attention to the cue of traffic ahead of you as it slows down so that you don't find yourself still in 6th gear at 25 mph, lugging the engine all the way.


When I still had my F150 (and a Blackberry that actually had, oh the horror, buttons) I was occasionally guilty of answering a brief text message with a short answer while driving. Not anymore, the combination of a manual transmission and smartphones with touchscreens has me far to busy to think about sending a text message. At least my car will read the message to me in it's own crazy SYNC sort of accent, LOL. If its important enough to answer I have my car call the person who texted me and I speak to them, hands free. Driving a manual transmission has made me so much more aware of what is going on beyond the windshield.


As for driving on hills, my 2014 Mustang has hill assist, which has been an absolute Godsend. If the car senses that the rear end of the car is lower than the front end when I release the brake with the clutch engaged the brakes stay engaged until the car senses that I have begun to press the gas pedal. Rolling back is a thing of the past!


When I drive my wife's 2012 I still have to do it the old fashioned way, and with a little practice I have found that I can keep roll-back to a minimum without frying out the clutch.

[US 41]

Let me ask this question. How lazy are people these days? How is it possible that someone is just too lazy to drive their own car? If you have to sit behind the wheel in a self driving car anyways, why not just drive the stupid thing? The first time one of these self driving cars causes an accident and kills somebody I guarantee their popularity will go way down.

[US 41]

I'll put it this way too. When I'm driving on lets say a Mexican libre highway. I am smart enough to know that I should slow down to around 5 mph when I'm going over a tope (speed bump). However my self driving car might go over it at 24 mph (40 kph). True there is autopilot on planes and such, but there isn't as much planes in the sky as there are cars. Also 7 miles in the sky you don't have to worry about potholes and such either that will tear up your car. What if there is flooding? Will it be able to see that? What about powerlines / treelimbs laying in the road. IMO the best drivers will always be a human driver that is paying attention, not some computer.

[empirestate]

I have always said that they will have to pry my steering wheel out of my cold dead hands (borrowing a phrase from the gun lobby).

Well, I don't think it will ever come to that; you'll be able to hold on to your figurative steering wheel for as long as you wish with nobody compelling you to give it up...until it just comes to pass that there are no longer such things as steering wheels. (And yeah, I'd bet that everyone here will be long dead before that comes fully to fruition.)

Back to us actually driving the cars ourselves, I wholeheartedly disagree with those who say that a manual transmission is distracting. There is alot more that goes into properly driving a vehicle with a manual transmission  that the only way to do it right is to actually be paying attention to what the other vehicles are doing around you. You have to be paying attention to the cue of traffic ahead of you as it slows down so that you don't find yourself still in 6th gear at 25 mph, lugging the engine all the way.
... Driving a manual transmission has made me so much more aware of what is going on beyond the windshield.

Absolutely with you there. Driving a manual has made me far more aware of what my car is doing and what's happening around it (terrain, traffic, etc.).

I'll put it this way too. When I'm driving on lets say a Mexican libre highway. I am smart enough to know that I should slow down to around 5 mph when I'm going over a tope (speed bump). However my self driving car might go over it at 24 mph (40 kph). True there is autopilot on planes and such, but there isn't as much planes in the sky as there are cars. Also 7 miles in the sky you don't have to worry about potholes and such either that will tear up your car. What if there is flooding? Will it be able to see that? What about powerlines / treelimbs laying in the road. IMO the best drivers will always be a human driver that is paying attention, not some computer.

I think it's a misconception that fully automated cars will jump right in and operate along our existing infrastructure. Along with cars becoming autonomous, the roads they use will also be modified to accommodate this kind of traffic. In other words, they won't have to deal with speed bumps on Mexican roads, because either the road will have been rebuilt so that it doesn't have speed bumps, or else the cars won't operate autonomously along that road.

I think certain unexpected events, like flooding or downed powerlines, will always pose a certain hazard, just as they do today. The risk from such hazards may in fact be greater with self-driving cars than it is now, but the overall risk of driving in general will be far, far less.