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A comment on Google’s Self-Driving Car Project Is Losing Out to Rivals. Parent comment

Re:Google’s Self-Driving Car Project Is Losing Out to Rivals by mason240 on Monday September 12, 2016 @11:03AM (#12480265)
I think these "attentive driver systems" like lane assist, auto braking, ect, are eventually going to get banned by the DOT because they seem to be causing people to over rely on them and drive distracted. They keep causing high profile fatal accidents, like the recent one where a guy was watching a movie with lane assist on and his car plowed right into a the back of a semi.

It's going to get to a point where they say it's all or nothing, we can't rely on people to stay attentive when the car is doing 90% of the driving.

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Re:Google’s Self-Driving Car Project Is Losing Out to Rivals by spullara on Monday September 12, 2016 @11:16AM (#12480399)
1 crash is literally all of them. Also it was a truck passing across the path of tge vehicle.
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Re:Google’s Self-Driving Car Project Is Losing Out to Rivals by makomk on Monday September 12, 2016 @02:22PM (#12482269)
1 crash is more than the expected number of crashes for that amount of highway driving, at least from the stats I've seen, and driving at full speed under a truck despite having more than enough time to break is a really nasty failure mode.
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Re:Google’s Self-Driving Car Project Is Losing Out to Rivals by krapp on Tuesday September 13, 2016 @05:49AM (#12486670)
>Also it was a truck passing across the path of the vehicle

That is exactly the sort of situation self-driving cars are expected to be perfect, or at least superior, to humans at handling. If they're no better than a human driver or even a bit worse when edge-cases occur than what's the point?

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Re:Google’s Self-Driving Car Project Is Losing Out to Rivals by encoderer on Monday September 12, 2016 @11:36AM (#12480604)
People drive more safely on roads without guardrails, but that is not a good enough reason to ban guard rails. On the contrary, you've already seen Mercedes add these features to every one of their new cars sold, it's only a matter of time before all automakers do the same.
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Re:Google’s Self-Driving Car Project Is Losing Out to Rivals by mason240 on Monday September 12, 2016 @12:16PM (#12480961)
When people drive on roads with guard rails, they don't think "hey, I have more time to send this text because the rail will stop my car from going over the cliff."
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Re:Google’s Self-Driving Car Project Is Losing Out to Rivals by DubiousPusher on Monday September 12, 2016 @12:41PM (#12481211)
But they will take a corner faster because they don't feel as vulnerable.
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Re:Google’s Self-Driving Car Project Is Losing Out to Rivals by et-al on Monday September 12, 2016 @02:58PM (#12482596)
Yeah, ever since they put a divider (the "Zipper") on the Golden Gate Bridge drivers have been speeding more [0], but it's still better than having some plastic sticks separating opposing lanes of traffic.

[0]: http://www.mercurynews.com/2015/01/23/chp-tackles-surge-in-s...

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Re:Google’s Self-Driving Car Project Is Losing Out to Rivals by nil_is_me on Monday September 12, 2016 @11:23AM (#12480475)
Right, 1 accident. Have we banned air travel due to all of the crashes?
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Re:Google’s Self-Driving Car Project Is Losing Out to Rivals by throwaway7767 on Monday September 12, 2016 @11:27AM (#12480515)
The statistics aren't in yet, and it's too soon to make a reasonable comparison.

That said, I think GP will be proven right in time. Risk compensation[0] is a well-documented phenomenon and this seems highly likely to trigger that sort of behaviour.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_compensation

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Re:Google’s Self-Driving Car Project Is Losing Out to Rivals by greeneggs on Monday September 12, 2016 @11:37AM (#12480612)
As the system gets incrementally better, paradoxically it could get less safe, because drivers will get more used to relying on it and stop paying attention.
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Re:Google’s Self-Driving Car Project Is Losing Out to Rivals by brianwawok on Monday September 12, 2016 @11:47AM (#12480695)
Except the less human drivers the safer the overall system. Less people to crash into others.
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Re:Google’s Self-Driving Car Project Is Losing Out to Rivals by mason240 on Monday September 12, 2016 @12:28PM (#12481080)
Right, but the problem with these partial systems is that they still require the driver to be fully attentive.
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Re:Google’s Self-Driving Car Project Is Losing Out to Rivals by mason240 on Monday September 12, 2016 @12:15PM (#12480950)
I only gave one example of the most recent one, there have been others.
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Re:Google’s Self-Driving Car Project Is Losing Out to Rivals by ufmace on Monday September 12, 2016 @02:38PM (#12482433)
Such as?
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Re:Google’s Self-Driving Car Project Is Losing Out to Rivals by BurningFrog on Monday September 12, 2016 @03:10PM (#12482715)
> They keep causing high profile fatal accidents

One of the biggest mistakes you can make is to believe that the news is an accurate reflection of reality. The opposite is actually true, in the sense that what makes it to be high profile news is something unusual and surprising.

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Re:Google’s Self-Driving Car Project Is Losing Out to Rivals by maxerickson on Monday September 12, 2016 @11:53AM (#12480749)
Various DOTs will likely examine before and after statistics, and consider the statistics compared to vehicles without assist systems.

They might get political pressure to consider high attention events instead of the statistics, but they are partly in the business of pushing back against that kind of pressure.

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Re:Google’s Self-Driving Car Project Is Losing Out to Rivals by cLeEOGPw on Tuesday September 13, 2016 @05:33AM (#12486637)
> we can't rely on people to stay attentive when the car is doing 90% of the driving.

Make the autopilot ring alarm when uncertainty reaches some point and that's it. Tesla already can do it, but doesn't do it for some reason.

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