"Even harder for autonomous cars to master are local quirks; things like "the Pittsburgh left." That's a custom unique to the city that allows the first driver trying to make a left turn to do so before oncoming cars pass through an intersection. It's one thing that Emily Duff Bartel says Uber's fleet of self-driving cars won't be programmed to practice. "We're following the rules on this one," she says."
https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2017/04/03/52...
This way, no-one cuts across lanes where traffic has a green light.
They work even better with dedicated bike infrastructure as depicted in the diagram about half way through this article: https://www.vox.com/2015/8/12/9139771/protected-intersection...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yh92LirlCf8
My wife used to drive in the Melbourne CBD daily for work, but would always go around the block instead of attempting one.
In "normal" fashion, you'd have to stay on the left of your lane, and wait for the traffic coming in front of you to die down before you can cross. That puts you straight in the middle of the intersection for some time, which is dangerous.
With a hook turn, you go and wait along with the traffic coming from the east to the west. They are stopped, so they are not a danger to you. When the east-west traffic light finally turns green, you won't be crossing anyone's traffic, and you'll be already standing on the rightmost part of your new road.
This is known in the right-hand drive cycling world as a Copenhagen left, and many consider it to be bad infrastructure design.
http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2010/07/not-really-so-g...
The traffic is a single lane, and you want to turn left. Light turns green, and you wait for the oncoming traffic to clear. All traffic behind you is stopped on a green because they can't get around you.
And I’m sure the risks associated with the “Pittsburg left” are significantly mitigated when everyone expects it.
Typically, the "Pittsburgh left" is used in places where there should be a protected left turn as part of the signal cycle, but there isn't, and at times of high traffic flow it's the only way for any traffic to complete the turn (since waiting for oncoming traffic to clear on a green essentially means waiting until the multi-hour-long period of high traffic is over).
My point was, why do you need to do that when you can just enter the intersection during the green light and complete your turn once the light turns red?
Then the laws in Pittsburgh are just bad. Not a design question at all.
Here you oull into the intersection on green, turn slightly ti a big white cross on the road for exactly this purpose and go when it is clear. This happens when the oncoming side has red, but before the crossing cars have green. The time between red and green is long enough for all two or three cars to clear the intersection.
Get better laws i guess?
Which is why you need to move onto the intersection as the light turns green -- you've now passed the traffic light, so once the oncoming traffic gets the red light, you are clear to turn.
As someone else pointed out, you can do three right turns instead.
The behaviour you just described is what everyone does in Michigan. The Pittsburgh left sounds friendlier, but more risk prone to people who don't expect it or respect it.
Urgh, that's something missing from the other comments. Now it makes sense to me.
The Pittsburgh left sounds like a recipe to get T-boned by an inattentive driver. Pulling into the intersection, and making a left turn when it is safe is a much better alternative.
a) Just sit there, in the middle of the intersection, blocking traffic.
b) Attempt to back up, hoping there are no other cars behind you in the left turn lane blocking your path.
c) Continue through the intersection.
Unless the law says "never stop in the intersection in the first place", I can't imagine it enforcing any option other than c.
Most states say it's OK if you enter the intersection on yellow, but a handful (not including WA, but including neighboring OR) require that you clear the intersection before the red appears.
I've sometimes wondered if "entering the intersection" includes entering the crosswalk adjacent to the intersection.
https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/57ajjq/til_w...
Wait, why? No new car should enter the intersection when the lights turn to yellow. The yellow light should last long enough for everyone to be able to safely drive off the intersection, in orderly manner.
Cars will obviously enter the intersection under a yellow. It's why we have a yellow.
Even if everyone wanted to stop for every yellow, at 35 mph with average reaction time, cars will travel a minimum of 100 feet after the yellow phase starts. Some of those cars will enter the intersection.
With a typical 4 second yellow, some drivers don't even choose to stop for the first half of the yellow, of course.
In driving school I was taught to generally be ready to brake when approaching a light, but to also then pick a reasonable point of no return (depending on speed, maybe a couple dozen meters before the light) beyond which I would not be braking, no matter what the light does. That way braking should never ever feel anything close to emergency braking you do when there‘s an actual unforeeen obstacle. It should always be smooth.
Also, when making a left turn at an intersection in Germany you drive into the intersection and then you wait for the oncoming traffic to clear. At this point you cannot even see the lights. The only thing that is relevant for you is to wait for oncoming traffic to clear up (or if you obviously see they have stopped since the light has since turned red and have verified optimally by eye contact that you are free to go).
Other traffic from left and right obviously have to wait until you have cleared the intersection even if they have a green light.
Likewise, it's illegal to enter an intersection, going straight, when there isn't enough space in your lane, for the back of your car to clear the intersection. Doesn't stop people, though.
[0] https://dmv.ny.gov/about-dmv/chapter-5-intersections-and-tur...
> RCW 46.61.202 says "no driver shall enter an intersection or a marked crosswalk or drive onto any railroad grade crossing unless there is sufficient space on the other side of the intersection, crosswalk, or railroad grade crossing to accommodate the vehicle he or she is operating without obstructing the passage of other vehicles..."
Some people bring out the following passage to be in conflict with it, but I strongly disagree.
> RCW 46.61.190, which says drivers must stop at a marked stop line or "at the point nearest the intersecting roadway where the driver has a view of approaching traffic on the intersecting roadway before entering the roadway, and after having stopped shall yield the right-of-way to any vehicle in the intersection or approaching on another roadway so closely as to constitute an immediate hazard..."
The 'intersecting roadway' obviously refers to the crossing street, not the lane you want to turn into. Therefore, if you can see oncoming traffic without pulling into the intersection, then crossing past the white line, and waiting there is illegal.
The second point is irrelevant, as it pertains to stop/yield intersections, which are not being discussed here.
Edit: oh sorry misunderstood what pittsburg left meant. I was describing situation when both cars turn left. There are 2 options: cube path, that is paths cross, cars pass one by one, or 2 arc paths not intersecting.
I can't imagine how this is a Pittsburgh quirk; its the obvious thing to do when the option is available
I think we should be targeting self driving for long-haul freeway scenarios where the rules are relatively simple and predictable. Trying to control for the infinite number of scenarios in cities is a nightmare which will ultimately bog down the development of any company which makes that its goal.
It's also possible that human/pedestrian behavior will adapt to the consistent behavior of driverless cars.
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/4/2/automated-vehic...
There's something about driving that turns ordinary people into assholes. I've observed it in myself. Bus passengers are much more considerate, and I think that passengers in self-driving vehicles will behave like passengers, not like drivers. So if a pedestrian cuts them off they'll just shrug and keep playing their game or whatever they're doing.
I hope.
On freeways the same is used by cars coming from the opposite direction if there's a radar ahead.
Still, in peak hours pretty much everyone is a dick, even usually chill Uber drivers.
Edit: it's also used as a "sorry" signal too.
Also, this is not local. I've seen it used all around the country.
We use headlights to warn of friends waiting on the other side of the bush though.
In a state known for Massholes it’s surprisingly unjerkish.
Game theory with no further interaction so no consequence to defecting other than the immediate.
The problem is that there is always somebody willing to be a jerk to save 2 minutes since nobody wanted to be stuck in traffic. The only defense against that is "Do unto before done unto" and that turns everybody into jerks.
The scenario you're describing, OTOH, feels even more alienating than what we're already suffering. What in the hell gives you, sitting on a seat in a car, more right to travel through a space than a walking human being?
Eh, as a pedestrian, I hate that. I have to conscientiously turn my back to avoid impeding the traffic when I don't want to pass!
Still, I agree with you; self-driving cars that can't be trusted to slow down and stop for pedestrians should not pass the licensing requirements. And not just for humans, either; we're not going to teach other animals to follow traffic laws any time soon. I've already seen too many cats killed by assholes speeding over the limit on residential streets.
A pedestrian may illegally have entered a road, but still have right-of-way, and self driving cars will need to account for that.
However, protesting self driving cars will not change whether walking in the street is legal, since it already is not.
Therefore, whether you do so and get fined by police is entirely up to their discretion, which could change at any time for any reason.
If you want it to be legal, protest the illegality, not the car company.
If the law itself is unjust or inappropriate, protest the law.
Otherwise, enforcement is spotty at best, because the police have better things to do, such as ticket parked cars with expired tabs or meters.
If there were a sudden uptick in pedestrian-car collisions, you can bet they'll crack down.
None of the above addresses whether the law SHOULD be on the books, which is what people should put their efforts towards changing, if they feel is unjust. Protesting car companies that make self driving cars because they don't like an already existing set of laws is just misguided at best, and intellectually dishonest at worst.
That said... I think passengers in self-driving cars will learn to be more patient and we can allow self-driving cars to yield to pedestrians more often.
Pedestrians have "adapted" to just expect everyone to brake always on most college campuses.
If you treat a factory floor or intermodal facility like a collage campus nobody will be surprised when someone has to use a garden hose to wash you off of whatever multi-thousand pound metal thing you got in the way of.
As soon as self-driving cars learn local customs, the customs will have been changed. Self-driving cars will always be 3 years away.
We may have to tweak the car’s software to be assertive, bordering aggressive, in busy neighborhoods, if the car is to make progress at all.
This revolution should have started with mundane tasks, such as city street sweepers and perhaps garbage trucks. Vehicles that move slow on a predefined path in the night. Then advance to faster moving objects like taxis.
Just like the DARPA Grand Challenge that started this mess. Many of those vehicles were industrial usage, not consumer.
No, you've got it backwards. The point of all of the above comments is that driving in cities and densely populated areas is a much more difficult challenge than driving down a straight open highway in the middle of nowhere. That's the easy part, the hard part comes when there are humans and all sorts of obstructions and road/land features to deal with.
Freeway driving is pretty straight and forward. If you can't keep from running into a stationary object, you probably can't drive in the city either.
If an object appears on the road, the autonomous vehicle can easily calculate whether it's safe to steer left, or right, or hit the breaks. A human will make a roughly random choice.
Autonomous cars don't have an advantage because they don't exist. They may have an advantage one day when they are finally ready (but that may always be 5 years away)
> If an object appears on the road, the autonomous vehicle can easily calculate whether it's safe to steer left, or right, or hit the breaks. A human will make a roughly random choice.
Even with a 360 degree view, it still has to recognize the object, classify it correctly and make a decision. All tasks which are difficult for a computer to perform reliably enough to be allowed on a public road.
The Uber car had a 360 degree view but it still ran over Elaine Hertzberg, and as far as we know didn't even stop after it hit her. The Tesla Autopilot has 360 degree view but still tends to crash into barriers, tractor trailers, street sweeping trucks and fire trucks.
Fast driving necessitates predictability. Unrestricted stretches of the autobahn are not killzones because the speed breeds discipline: lanes are changed with indicators on more often than without (barely, but still..), passing lane rules are followed almost religiously, compared to what you see in America (even though drivers constantly complain about imperfections) and so on. The fastest roads of any jurisdiction would its easiest for a robot car or truck. Slow environments on the other hand are full of ad-hoc improvisation and weird traffic participants like the occasional flock of sheep, horse team or a biathlon squad on rollers.
Honestly I would think that automating a slow moving vehicle in the city would be a much harder engineering challenge. City driving can be a lot messier than driving on the freeway.
As the recent Tesla crash showed, even on a divided highway there are plenty of opportunities to cause death and mayhem to the autonomous car and the surrounding vehicles.
Garbage trucks are big and heavy, so if things go wrong they can go badly wrong, such as the incident in Glasgow that killed six people[1].
It has. The EasyMile EZ10 (a passenger shuttle) has already been deployed in a lot of places, for example.
Autobahn might actually be derived from Eisenbahn in that Wikipedia says some group choose it because of the similarity, but it only works because Bahn is the more general concept.
I sometimes do the "walk up to the lane and wait" thing, but I always look up and make eye contact with the driver to communicate that I know they exist and I'm not walking out in front of them. And when I'm driving and someone is walking up to my lane, the presence of their gaze is what I use to decide whether to continue (cautiously) or slow down and be ready to stop.
I know that CV as a field has pretty advanced gaze/attention detection (e.g. see faceid), but I wonder if it's actually a part of self-driving car tech yet.
Detecting the difference between a hustle, a saunter, and a day dream might be a tad more difficult.
I think you really mean if you don't make eye contact.
Eye contact is a two-person activity. How does an autonomous car make eye contact with a person?
To me this is an example of the overwhelming importance of locale-specific context. When I'm near UW, my driving behaviour changes significantly even though the laws do not.
To me this is the incredibly danger of road and our current reliance on cars. Should it be ok to be killed if you aren't paying attention.
It’s sort of analogous to how wagon roads were different until fast cars required some standardization. The new technology shapes expectations for what normal means in Tempe and in NY and in Pittsburgh.
The prssent cultural context assumes that a human brain is driving a car. Take the brain away, and the context has already changed.
couldn’t resist.
P.s. standardization has beaten back the whimsical variability of culture in fast food, housing, cars, most clothing, computers, phones, etc. I want more whimsical stuff.
In this case normalizing means running people over less and less?
It's a nice change from the horsepower arms race of the past.
A car won't get through a block as quickly as it could if it merely obeys the laws makes sure it doesn't run into anybody. I'm sure this will cause great joy among people crossing the street and consternation among other drivers but the problem isn't a blocking one as long as the car can actually avoid hitting people - even if it's more cautious than it needs to be.
At this point, "it's easy for a person to do it" is probably better evidence that it's a hard problem in AI.
In this case, I believe it's an inverse learning problem. We observe other agents acting in an environment, deduce their policy, then implement that policy ourselves.
A self-driving car that can reconfigure it's software to mimic the behavior of other cars it observes, sounds difficult to me.
This is essential, especially internationally. If you're an American you think it's perfect normal to be allowed to turn right even when the traffic light is red. You don't get told not to do that when you hire a car in Italy. Now an automatic car can be programmed with different rules depending on which country it's in, but even in the same country, you wouldn't enter a box junction when the exit isn't clear, at least in most places. Turn up in rush hour London and you find there's no way to actually get through the junction unless you do that, because others fill the junction so when your light is on green, the exit isn't clear.
I remember pulling upto a red light late an night. Empty road, but the red light only goes green when it detects a car. It didn't. What would a fully automatic car do in that case?
Never is a long time, but I don't see self driving cars coping well when traffic is coming the wrong way down the street, let alone when cars are driving along the sidewalk
Though I don't know the NYC traffic code. In California, I believe 21950 paragraph C applies... the pedestrian that stops just before walking into the path of the car might be violating paragraph B since the driver may reasonably expect the pedestrian to continue walking.
(b) This section does not relieve a pedestrian from the duty of using due care for his or her safety. No pedestrian may suddenly leave a curb or other place of safety and walk or run into the path of a vehicle that is so close as to constitute an immediate hazard. No pedestrian may unnecessarily stop or delay traffic while in a marked or unmarked crosswalk.
(c) The driver of a vehicle approaching a pedestrian within any marked or unmarked crosswalk shall exercise all due care and shall reduce the speed of the vehicle or take any other action relating to the operation of the vehicle as necessary to safeguard the safety of the pedestrian.
NYC would not function with actual adherence to the law.
There is never a break in pedestrians long enough for a car to turn in a fully legal fashion at most intersections, which is why human drivers wait for the largest mass of the built-up crowd to go and then inch their way through the stream of those just arriving at the intersection (with pedestrians seeing what the car is going to do and then flowing around the car). Technically, the pedestrians have the full right of way.
On the pedestrian side, blocks are short, and if you don't jaywalk it would take forever to walk up/downtown.
And if you were to fully split pedestrian and vehicle phases (and get New Yorkers to start adhering to it), you'd just grind the city to a halt because you're moving less people/cars than the "maximum throughput" flows than we have now.
It used to be that cars, trains (and horses) traveled at just over walking pace, pedestrian crossings (and jaywalking) didn't exist, pedestrians crossed the street anywhere.
https://youtu.be/aohXOpKtns0?t=4m4s
Though I guess today's traffic densities wouldn't allow for slowly meandering through traffic.
Always-on cameras in self-driving cars will help protect the innocent (assuming the footage is saved and available through subpoena, otherwise, like police dash and body cams, few people will let their own camera prove them guilty)
We don’t have to convince the public to accept more enforcement, that’s not how traffic laws are made or enforced.
What we have is a system of cultural attitudes that’s bad for us. People are dying all the time because of lax attitudes. What you’re advocating is status quo. Why? Is it a good thing that a lot of people in NYC who choose to jaywalk get hit by cars?
I’m not on a mission to change things, I don’t care that much if people jaywalk. I’d prioritize speeding enforcement far above jaywalking. I’m just pointing out the obvious — that fretting over how safe it is for autonomous cars to obey the law is just “enculer les mouches”, to use the French term. It’s nitpicking the tiniest of margins while ignoring the primary cause of the problem.
Jaywalking was @Sangermaine's straw man issue, not mine. I was thinking more about speeding and aggressive driving than about what pedestrians do.
Your comment seems to indicate you might not know how traffic laws are made or enforced. They are rarely touched by elected officials.
I honestly don't know why I'm getting such vigorous push-back here. My original comment was about safety and nothing more. People hate speeding and seat-belt laws too, yet it's a fact that lower speed limits and mandatory seat-belts save lives.
Near where I live there was a bridge that lorrys kept getting stuck under, and the local council were very confused.
Then measured it, and found the warning sign wasn't right -- it said 15' but it should actually have been 14'.
They changed the sign, and the accidents reduced dramatically. Having a lower limit reduced accidents.
Unfortunatly someone looked at the statistics and thought "we're still getting accidents. Last time reducing the sign on the bridge by 1' caused them to go down, lets reduce it further and save even more lives!"
So the sign was reduced to saying 10'. And accidents went up because people ignored the signs.
Lower speed limits may save lives in some circumstances, but in the UK the safest roads are the fastest roads, which seems to contradict your statement.
If you put a 30mph limit on the motorway, it will cost more lives 1) It would be ignored by many, so difference in speeds will be higher 2) People would route down more dangerous back roads rather than staying on the safest roads 3) The extra time spent on the motorway has a cost too. The average life is say 40 million minutes long. If your speed limit adds 40 minutes to 1 million people's day, that's 1 life a day you're costing
You could argue that we should stop all vehicles, but then the economy collapses and you end up with civil war as we can't support this population level with an agrarian society
― George Bernard Shaw
In other words, you're assuming a massive (no, even "10 000 cars" is not "massive"), coordinated, correct deployment. I'd like a pony and world peace while we're in fantasyland.
I can't find a source for this, but I imagine they are not ever making net profit on tickets when a trooper makes 75k per year minimum not including overtime or benefits[1] plus 60k+ for a new cruiser[2] plus all other training and administrative overhead (dispatcher etc).
[1] https://www.criminaljusticedegreeschools.com/state-trooper-r...
[2]http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-cop-cars-2015...
Why would they need to make a net profit? That standard isn't applied to anything else the police do. We already have traffic enforcement as well as many other police services paid via taxes. The argument that it costs too much to increase enforcement in any way doesn't really hold much water. Whether people want enforcement is a different story, but the point I brought up that you responded to is purely one of safety. We can debate all the myriad reasons why we can or can't change our cultural attitudes, but it's still true that increased enforcement of human drivers would have a far greater impact on overall safety than fine-tuning autonomous cars to break certain laws in certain locales.
Letting driverless cars break some laws or have "aggressive" driving profiles will never happen anyway, so it's moot. It would be too much liability for the car manufacturers. So how would you make roads safer?
Fair point.
>Why would they need to make a net profit?
At the end of the day the resources either come from somewhere else or it costs more taxpayer money. Yes, I agree it would improve safety.
>The argument that it costs too much to increase enforcement in any way doesn't really hold much water.
It does though because it is the only solution and the fact that is costs too much is the main reason it isn't done already.
>So how would you make roads safer?
That isn't my job and it isn't a pressing political issue in most places. If autonomous cars exacerbate the problem, they should lobby the state and local government to spend more on traffic enforcement to enable them to operate safely.
More spending is not the only solution. And cost is not the only reason we're not doing more. Despite my suggestions to increase fines, the people making and enforcing traffic laws are not out to make a profit, and they are sensitive to the costs to drivers.
Where I live, the state lawmakers mandated raising speed limits in opposition to the Highway Patrol's safety recommendation for lower speed limits and increased enforcement. The speeding laws and their enforcement are lax here because of politicians, regardless of the known safety consequences, and not because of costs.
> That isn't my job and it isn't a pressing political issue in most places.
This is a thread about car safety that we both chose to participate in. I would hope that in doing so, all participants might be willing to offer constructive ideas and not just criticism.
@Rotdhizon offered an idea, as did I. Since you suggest mine won't work, it's fair game to ask you for alternatives, isn't it?
FWIW, in my mind some kinds of "increased enforcement" don't involve punitive measures. "NSC estimates traffic fatalities in New York fell 3 percent last year and have dropped 15 percent over the last two years. Safety advocates say the decline may be due to New York City's push to eliminate traffic deaths by lowering speed limits, adding bike lanes and more pedestrian shelters." https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/14/traffic-deaths-edge-lower-bu...
Establishing spaces for peds & bikes is something that factors into the existing costs, and doesn't necessarily mean any more spending at all. The increased safety means that the state gets back some money that was spent on emergency services. Lowering speed limits doesn't cost anything.
"Your comment seems to indicate you might not know how traffic laws are made or enforced. They are rarely touched by elected officials."
>I would hope that in doing so, all participants might be willing to offer constructive ideas and not just criticism.
People try to dismiss criticism by saying "well do you have a solution?" but that is fallacious and you can make a valid point without offering a different solution that addresses that point
> On the contrary, in Tempe, a pedestrian starting to do the exact same thing as above is likely much more a case of them not realizing your car is coming at all, in which case slamming on the brakes is appropriate.
And in many SEA country you're expected to just drive around a pedestrian crossing the road (or a cow lying on it).
Cultural context definetly matters, but for none of the reasons you've mentioned.
Writing specific use cases is insane for more reasons than I should have to point out to you. What if someone from tempe is on vacation in NY, should they be in danger because they follow a different culture?
You need to rely on universal rules and implement the most cautious strategies.
Pedestrian shows up at the curb, slow to a speed in which you can safely stop on a dime, resume cruising speed when the pedestrians intent is known.
To take another example, it's pretty well accepted that it's entirely your fault if you drive into the path of an oncoming train and get killed. Then why does it seem so controversial that the driver should not be at fault if you get hit because you didn't look and just stepped into the road expecting the oncoming car to avoid you?
(Anyone else want to explain the downvotes?)
Humans have that awareness and lack on visibility (you can't see 360degrees, you can't see a wide range, you can't see beyond your car Caracas...). The awareness was enough to let us move but the lack of visibility did certainly kill people.
The best we could have done today was a system that helps human visually. Then the system reports back how human interacted with that particular situation (ignore, brake, etc...) Then maybe 5 years later of work we could have had something.
Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/transport/2009/11/in_defe...
I had this same thought. You could theoretically have a universal rule where the self-driving car stops 100% of the time if it detects an object that is determined to be a pedestrian. But there are unforeseen problems with this approach. What if the model is overly cautious and there are many false positives? That could be extremely dangerous too, if a self-driving car is constantly stopping and going.
However, I suspect a car may be aware a person has stopped significantly before a person would enter their lane. At 30 mph a car takes ~2 seconds to physically brake and at an average walking speed a mph moves 9 feet in 2 seconds. However, to stop before entering the cars lane they would need to start slowing down even sooner.
So, I guess you really need videos with calculated velocities of people jaywalking to really tell if this is going to be a problem or not.
For example, in NYC, there's nothing at all uncommon about a pedestrian beginning to cross the street in front of you and approaching the area of your lane where you will shortly be. Pedestrians typically then stop about a foot away from your lane, let you drive past them, and then continue walking. If a car slammed on the brakes in this situation, it would likely cause more accidents than not braking would cause.
On the contrary, in Tempe, a pedestrian starting to do the exact same thing as above is likely much more a case of them not realizing your car is coming at all, in which case slamming on the brakes is appropriate.
This isn't to defend Uber, clearly their car did do the wrong thing in the Tempe situation (though I make no judgment on who was at fault). And clearly cars need to be able to handle the variety of unwritten, localized driving quirks different regions have. But it seems like a very non-trivial problem to do this correctly.