New GM Cruise Self-Driving Video Shows More Mastery of SF Roads

https://www.driverless.id/news/video-analysis-new-gm-cruise-self-driving-video-shows-more-mastery-sf-roads-0176178/

by wonderhowto • 9 years ago

186 170 9 years ago

wyldfire• 9 years ago

The Cruise car makes a left turn and then gets stuck behind a delivery truck. It waits as a couple of other vehicles overtake it

I suppose I'd probably notice if I was a semi-engaged driver, but not as much if I considered myself "just a passenger" in an autonomous vehicle. It looks like barely more than 30s elapses there.

markkanof• 9 years ago

I'm not sure I would have done anything different than the computer did. I'm a cautious driver and have been in similar situations where I felt it was prudent to take a moment and really try to see past the truck to look for any oncoming traffic. I've then had an impatient driver behind me decide to zoom around.

dmix• 9 years ago

This is a good point, I'd want my car to be more like you than me, where I'm the guy impatiently going around people who hesitate for too long.

Just because it took it's time to navigate the problem it doesn't mean the decision was wrong. If you're in a rush you could easily take over the auto-drive feature. But otherwise let it auto drive in cautious mode for 99% of the time.

freehunter2• 9 years ago

I used to be the type of driver who would impatiently zoom around, until one day I noticed several deer beginning to cross the freeway. I slammed on my brakes, but the driver behind me honked and swerved around me and, at over 80mph, took two of the deer with him. He left the scene in an ambulance and his car went to the scrapyard on a flatbed. No one ever told me what happened to the man, but while we were waiting for the ambulance and while he was being loaded, I never saw him even wiggle a toe or blink an eye. He was breathing but completely unresponsive. I don't know if he survived or not.

It's moments like that one that can change your outlook on life in an instant. That was four years ago and I haven't intentionally broken the speed limit since then. Even if it means other impatient drivers are zooming around me. I have, however, been rear-ended twice since then.

Zaheer• 9 years ago

How does this compare to other players right now (ex. Waymo, Tesla, etc)?

Animats4• 9 years ago

Car and Driver says Waymo is way out in front.[1] The 2016 California DMV autonomous vehicle disconnect reports are out, and Waymo is doing three orders of magnitude better than the others in miles between disconnects. Waymo is up to 5,000 miles between disconnects, out of 600K miles driven. Waymo reported zero disconnects on interstates and freeways in the last year. For Waymo/Google, this is about 2x better than last year. That was 2x better than the previous year.

Everybody else is reporting orders of magnitude more disconnects per mile.

[1] http://blog.caranddriver.com/in-the-self-driving-race-waymo-...

luminiferous• 9 years ago

I'm not sure it's necessarily a good comparison, though. As I recall, Waymo's testing is mostly freeway and suburban driving. I'd be curious to see how much of their testing is done in a heavily urban environment, such as downtown SF or Oakland, and how it affects their disengage numbers.

Fricken2• 9 years ago

That's pretty cool, it's great to see GM not sucking at bleeding edge software. They're getting their money's worth out of that billion dollar acquisition last March. I think Kyle Vogt is GM's MVP.

Looking at the 2016 California DMV disengagement reports, Cruise is at 181 disengages in 9,776 miles of testing in California for 2016. This can be compared crudely to Waymo's 124 disengages in 635,868 miles for 2016.

Waymo's operation is 2 orders of magnitude more advanced than Cruise, but in terms of video demos, we haven't seen much of the environments Waymo's cars are capable of navigating. Waymo has only revealed their cars driving on suburban roads, it seems only Cruise is tackling hectic downtown driving head-on.

GM, with their Lyft partnership and Orion assembly plant is, I think, in a great position to deploy early fast with 1st gen robotaxis.

pb• 9 years ago

I suspect the Waymo miles are not really comparable to the Cruise miles since Waymo seems to mainly test around Mountain View vs Cruise in SF.

bastawhiz• 9 years ago

I suspect Waymo doesn't plan to launch in a very large city.

notahacker• 9 years ago

The other reason is that the stats focus on disengagements as a result of technology failures or immediate safety concerns, and don't show the "routine" disengagements where the driver switches out of automatic mode for a period to avoid running the autopilot in situations it isn't test-ready for. Different manufacturers will likely have different standards for ruotine engagements/disengagements, and may also have different standards for what they consider a safety concern.

beamatronic• 9 years ago

Waymo cars frequently drive the same routes several times a week. In fact if you go to certain intersections such as El Camino Real and San Antonio Rd, during the work week you only have to wait a few minutes to see one or more go by.

Fricken2• 9 years ago

Do you (or anyone) ever see Waymo cars downtown?

mcpherrinm• 9 years ago

I think this is true of most of the self-driving cars. Certainly I've seen Uber self-driving cars doing the same routes over and over. And I think I see GM Cruise cars in the same part of town, but they may just be based nearby.

unprepare• 9 years ago

Do you think the routes are designed so that the car encounters specific obstacles the teams are working on, or do you think its more like they are doing extensive mapping of an area to make the autonomy a bit easier?

PetorianBlue• 9 years ago

Cruise is at 181 disengages in 9,776 miles
Waymo is 2 orders of magnitude more advanced than Cruise

Not to say that Waymo isn't ahead, but if you look at a graph of Cruise's disengagements vs miles over time, they experienced a rapid improvement. By November of 2016 they were at about 2.6/1000 miles. Better than the total would show, but still an order worse than Waymo though.

sf_rob• 9 years ago

This article aggregates the miles/disengagement in a nice table at the bottom. Definitely worth a glance. Waymo is 8x better than the nearest competitor (which, as mentioned, is probably an unfair comparison since we don't know enough about comparibility of those miles driven) https://www.wired.com/2017/02/california-dmv-autonomous-car-...

monk_e_boy4• 9 years ago

A lot of the roads near me are two lane, but have cars parked on both sides. This requires a lot of hand gestures out of the window to other drivers as we negotiate the roads.

We also have a lot of single track roads with passing places. This also requires a lot of non-verbal communication between drivers.

Are there any videos of self driving cars attempting this sort of road?

a_t482• 9 years ago

Couldn't this be solved with an LED sign or something? Even if not, true self driving cars aren't coming for a while - they will still disengage and force the driver to take control in some situations. I'd be interested in seeing what happens in those situations, too - if you live near CCSF in San Francisco there are a bunch of these roads.

imaginenore2• 9 years ago

Why do you have to negotiate anything? If you're driving, you're higher priority than the car trying to leave its parking spot. It's their problem to squeeze into the traffic.

encoderer• 9 years ago

I can see us having a lot fewer problems like this in a world with far fewer parked cars.

If you drive around 30mph on average, and hit 100,000 miles after 6 years, your car has spent over 90% of its life parked somewhere.

shubhamjain• 9 years ago

They're getting their money's worth out of that billion dollar acquisition last March. I think Kyle Vogt is GM's MVP.

Many people, including me, were critical of the acquisition; acquiring an year-old company barely having any technological breakthrough for a billion dollars sounded like a folly. Slowly, it has become clear that the impetus behind the deal wasn't necessarily acquiring the technology but bring an ardent person on board who can accelerate GM's self-driving efforts. I have a feeling this deal would cast itself as one of the pivotal moments in the company's history.

falcolas5• 9 years ago

So, silly question - why are these technologies not being made broadly available as driver assist tools while we work our way up to L4 driving automation?

If we're really concerned about making driving safer, this seems like a good compromise until we get to broadly available (and affordable) L4.

gumby• 9 years ago

So, silly question - why are these technologies not being made broadly available as driver assist tools while we work our way up to L4 driving automation?

Well, they are. Lane departure warnings, auto braking, self parking are all incremental automation/assistive technologies that have been rolling out slowly and will continue to.

Advertising stuff now is a kind of marketing aimed at hiring and in building enthusiasm for a company like GM that as seen as a has been (not picking on GM, they are simply the topic of this article!).

I think your real question is, "why aren't I seeing these features on current model year cars?" It's about the structure of the car industry. For example, when I worked with <car company X> on brake-by-wire in 1996 it was for the 2004 model year. They had a team with functional steer by wire -- I still haven't seen it in production! This is a combination of historical industry practice, a focus on safety, and regulatory constraints. A mixture of good and bad.

falcolas5• 9 years ago

I think your real question is, "why aren't I seeing these features on current model year cars?"

Or as 3rd party modules which can be installed by a moderately competent mechanic.

And while yes, some of these are being offered, they are far from freely available and affordable - two things which would seem to me to be important for full blown automation.

drcoopster• 9 years ago

They had a team with functional steer by wire -- I still haven't seen it in production!

Infinity has steer-by-wire in production now.

alkonaut• 9 years ago

We have the basic optical and radar lane assists and similar on current models, but as long as I have to keep my hands on the wheel I'm not going to want to have (or pay for) spinning lidars and other expensive tech that I assume this requires.

empath75• 9 years ago

I think having partially self driving cars that require active driver engagement are a huge safety problem, because if drivers are able to just sit there and not doing anything 90% of the time, they just aren't going to pay attention ever. Some driver aids like automatic braking are probably fine, but 'getting from a to b' is probably something that shouldn't be available until it's as reliable as a human driver.

falcolas5• 9 years ago

I'm thinking less "90% automation" and more "Jeeves from Ironman's Suit". Something to help make the driver aware of anomalies from when they're normally under highway hypnosis or futzing around with the radio.

After driving around in Montana today, I'd love for something to be able to tell me with a high degree of confidence if that's really water or ice on the road. Or what speed that car in front of me is going - have they decided it's ice and are driving 30mph slower than I am? Or is that car disappearing into my blind spot going to merge right into me?

The answers were, mostly water (thankfully, see 2 and 3), yes they do think its ice, and yes, he is going to.

jfim2• 9 years ago

This is also an issue for other autonomous systems where there's a human in the loop. The solution for that is well known: dial down the automation every once in a while and ask the human to do something, so that they stay aware of their surroundings and don't doze off.

Unfortunately, a car that turns off the cruise control, asks you to recenter the car in the lane or increase the distance with the car ahead wouldn't sell that well, as people would consider it defective.

jacobkranz• 9 years ago

Isn't this sort of the Tesla approach where they slowly increment improvements in certain settings?

Years back when Google started testing its cars it gave their employees the chance to use their very preliminary technology during their commute. They made it explicitly clear that the driver still had to be ready to take absolute control of the car at any moment but what they found was that their employees were doing the absolutely the opposite: playing on their phones, reaching into the back seat, etc. That's why Waymo has been adamant that they'll only release their tech when it's 100% ready.

ndh22• 9 years ago

Misconception 1: Driver assistance systems will evolve gradually into fully autonomous cars
[...]People often argue that such assistance systems need to be supervised by the driver. This makes sense for assistance systems that operate for a few seconds or minutes (such as a parking assistant) but it can not work for systems that drive continuously. Humans are not capable to maintain the state of alert for hours and hours which would be required to immediately counteract possible deficiencies of a driver-assistance system or to take over from it in a split-second.
We can only entrust the driving task to a driver assistance system when we are sure that this system can handle all situations which arise suddenly and require immediate reaction. This means that driver assistance systems operating continuously on a highway need to be able to cope with rare situations including pedestrians and bicyclists on the highway (they do appear sometimes on highways), accidents unfolding, animals, sudden rainfall etc. Gradual evolution of such systems is impossible; they need to be extremely capable from the first day on which they are put into operation.

http://www.driverless-future.com/?page_id=774

falcolas5• 9 years ago

I'm not expecting them to evolve - I'm wanting those technologies that exist today to be used to help drivers today - not when "we are sure that this system can handle all situations which arise".

SilasX• 9 years ago

I assume there's a cost issue? This stuff was expensive to develop, and kind of a luxury, so they probably want to charge as much as possible, which then delays adoption.

digitalneal• 9 years ago

I wish they released a realtime cut of this. I feel like some of the quirks have been obscured with sped up footage.

1024core• 9 years ago

This is still pretty simple stuff it has to deal with. If you really want to test Cruise, try driving in downtown SF on a weekday around 5pm.

chomp• 9 years ago

Or any other location in the US also! Try a Boston winter, or Houston's unending road construction. It feels like we're creating self driving cars that are experts at driving in SF.

seanmcdirmid• 9 years ago

Gotta take the first steps. Its ok to keep raising the bar.

NiceBoots2• 9 years ago

NuTonomy is currently testing their self driving cars in Boston.

tropo2• 9 years ago

Let's do a small road trip around CA starting and ending in SF, avoiding the tolls and seeing some nice scenery.

Head north over the Golden Gate Bridge, immediately losing cell service. Decide at that time (no cell service) to make a stop at the Nike missile launch site, passing through the long single-lane tunnel w/o crashing into an oncoming car. Head back to 101, continue north, driving through 3 trees: Chandelier Tree, Shrine Tree, Klamath Tree. Yes, actually drive through each tree. Go back south to Redwood National Park, and then head east on Bald Hills Road, half of which is a gravel road. Pass through Hoopa. Make an unscheduled stop at the overlook to the original Hoopa campsite. Head to Weaverville, pass by the trailhead to Mount Lassen, then to Reno and on to Lee Vining. Stop at Mono Lake, in the dirt "parking lot", for one of the canoe trip tours. Head back north to Topaz Lake, then head west down US 4. Try not to get run off the 1.5-lane road by a logging truck. Head to San Jose and then north up to SF, neatly avoiding the bridge tolls.

For bonus points, do this when the state mandates snow chains for Lassen and/or US 4.

dsfyu404ed4• 9 years ago

For bonus points, do this when the state mandates snow chains for Lassen and/or US 4.

If anything that will be easier for the AI. People are the hard part. Fewer people around = easier.

If the AI is tasked with "go there" in deep snow, sand or whatever, it'll do better than your average person because your average person has no idea how to drive on anything but clear pavement whereas the guys writing the code are gonna get the input of experts as well as a bunch of testing and refinement.

a_t482• 9 years ago

From what I know, they do. They are located in SOMA and I believe do tests at most parts of the day.

acchow2• 9 years ago

I'm not sure humans are very good at that either - there are lots of fatalities downtown SF...

rhcom2• 9 years ago

Seeing a firetruck in this made me wonder, how do self driving vehicles deal with emergency services behind them? Detect the flashing lights?

cr0sh• 9 years ago

Maybe the real question is "do they?" - maybe they don't? Or maybe it's a problem being worked on. I can't say I've heard of anything in this domain; it might be one of those problems/challenges which could be worked on, a paper written up, and some kind of solution presented that might net a win for whomever tried.

jboggan2• 9 years ago

Given all the crazy corner cases I know they have covered I cannot imagine they don't deal well with emergency vehicles. For example, I know Waymo has put a ton of work into just covering the cases when motorcycles are lane-splitting and overtaking them at high speed [0]. I'm sure they deal with ambulances just fine.

0 - http://extremepowersportssa.com/google-self-driving-car-proj...

scurvy4• 9 years ago

Not to be pedantic, but it's lane sharing, not lane splitting. Lane splitting, aka riding the dots, is illegal even in CA

NAHWheatCracker• 9 years ago

At around 1:54 in the video, it comes to a stop light that is in front of a Shell station's gas price board. It actually took me a second to notice the stop light. There is another light on the left side of the screen, but it still made me think.

Is it likely just using some image recognition and a confidence level to determine when it is safe to go?

If so, could the system be fooled by a sign that is meant to always look like a red light? Or worse, a green light to trick the system to run a red?

ghughes• 9 years ago

Wouldn't the average human be fooled by those things?

joering2• 9 years ago

Please don't get driver's license.

jrlocke• 9 years ago

The system is likely capable of distinguishing a lit green light from a sign painted like one. If you're simply asking "would the system be fooled if someone nefariously hung an always green light where a red one should be" surely that is a circumstance that would fool a human as well.

zardo• 9 years ago

The system is likely capable of distinguishing a lit green light from a sign painted like one.

I doubt it. It's not even clear that it shouldn't treat a painted green dot like a green light.

semi-extrinsic• 9 years ago

I'm not convinced it would distinguish the two.

Perhaps the most concerning thing is that someone could create a nefarious image that's not obviously nefarious to humans. I mean, we've all seen the very slight adjustments required to trick state-of-the-art image classification systems into thinking a cat is really a crocodile.

elihu2• 9 years ago

Eventually, I expect we'll have some national standard for wireless transmitters on traffic signals, so they can send a message (timestamped and cryptographically signed with the state's department of transportation's public key) to the cars to tell them unambiguously when to stop and when it's safe to go.

(This could help human drivers too; just add a red/yellow/green light to the car dashboard for those times when you can't see the actual light because there's a big truck in the way, or the sun is directly behind the traffic signal.)

I also expect that by the time this sees near-universal adoption, we'll already have the image recognition corner cases mostly worked out.

greeneggs2• 9 years ago

Las Vegas has some communication from traffic signals to vehicles [1]. I can't tell from the article how it is implemented; it might just be that the city's traffic control computer sends traffic light information out, instead of individual lights communicating.

[1] http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/12/13923254/audi-v2i-las-veg...

GordonS• 9 years ago

A nitpick, but you would sign with the private key, and verify with the public key.

autotypo2• 9 years ago

How about "Signal Ahead" light boards on the back of semi trailers, which relay the traffic signal to the cars behind. Like Flashing Rear End Devices on trains, which operate by telemetry and function as red signals.

Ought to be maintenance free and a nice way for the big trucking lines to differentiate their public face - similar to those aero ground effects that are showing up on trailers.

prawn• 9 years ago

Possibly, but I imagine the incentive isn't really there. Someone intentionally doing that would be penalised and for minor gain. Someone could do it now to fool human drivers and it hasn't really happened.

e.g., stand in hi-vis at an intersection holding a "Slow" sign regardless of the red light above.

refurb• 9 years ago

Another good question is what does the car do if the stop sign or traffic light is obscured by trees?

I swear to good the city of San Francisco could car less about this issue. I've gotten to the point where I look for the painted STOP on the road, rather than the stop sign.

I assume either the computer could recognize the painted letters on the road (they are often in bad shape) or the GPS would inform the computer that a stop sign exists? So it doesn't have to look for it?

fuzzythinker2• 9 years ago

At 1:04 [1], it stops for a few seconds before the intersection. Seems to be due to the white car that is parked in opposite direction as all other cars so it waited for ~20 seconds to confirm that the car is indeeded parked? Should a no-motion indicates it's not moving? Why wait for so long?

https://youtu.be/Vfgjemwc9NU?t=63

Roedou• 9 years ago

They marked it with the 'Scheduled Stop' in the top left, and it seems like the passenger is fiddling with some controls as well? I assumed this was to simulate a pick-up/drop-off, or was just a waypoint in the trip?

henshao• 9 years ago

They included an annotation that says that it was a "scheduled stop".

fuzzythinker2• 9 years ago

Duh, didn't see the big "Scheduled Stop". Thanks for the replies.

wapz2• 9 years ago

I was looking at that too until the others mentioned the scheduled stop! I thought it was because the car thought the pedestrian was too close or something and wanted to wait until she crossed the road.

golfer2• 9 years ago

That video was impressive. It shows great situational awareness.

Here's what I wonder about the future. Is there a point in which consolidation will take place in the auto industry as a result of superior self-driving performance and capabilities? Meaning -- can the value created by self-driving software be more of a factor than the other existing assets of a GM, Ford, Chrysler, Toyota, etc?

gizmo2• 9 years ago

I predict that self-driving technology will become a commoditized box + sensors for use by different car brands. It will very quickly reach the point where one autonomous driving engine will not be noticeably better or worse than any of the others on the market.

golfer2• 9 years ago

Interesting. So price will not factor in? And, will a luxury car be expected to have better self-driving awareness/features than a cheaper car?

And before it hits commodity state, what if Waymo's Chrysler minivans and GM's Chevrolets are far superior self-drivers than say, BMWs & Mercedes? How much does that alter the demand curve?

Apocryphon• 9 years ago

Given GM's partnership with Lyft, makes me wonder if Uber should be concerned.

ndh22• 9 years ago

While certainly impressive, keep in mind that it's only one video showing one of possibly thousands of trials with possibly thousands of difficult corner-case situations where the car got stuck or acted improperly. One video doesn't prove anything, especially not one with a person ready to take over at any moment.

cbhl• 9 years ago

Voluntary data of corner-cases where the car got stuck or acted improperly are available from virtually every company in the self-driving car space except Uber. See the "Vehicle Disengagement Reports" at the DMV's website: https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/disen...

dmritard96• 9 years ago

Looking at this space, I honestly expected more drive by wire and remote VR pilot type intermediary solutions than full autonomy. I wonder if remote control will be completely bypassed or if certain sectors will still benefit from this.

nojvek• 9 years ago

I think GM is in a great position to compete with Uber and tesla if they capitalize on the tech.

As a customer I'll still be happy with multiple choices driving prices down and offering a better service than buses and taxis.

God I hate buses in the US. Public transport is very broken.

segmondy2• 9 years ago

I'm sad to say this, but I think GM is going to crush Tesla in the long run. GM knows about building cars, tech becomes cheaper and available over time. It will take Tesla longer to learn how to build and mass produce at a cheap price than for GM to have all the tech they need to match up with Tesla. Initially I was worried that Honda would be the one, but they don't seem to be taking the electric and self driving car serious. GM has their volt/bolt with decent range, I happen to work at a company that shares a lot with some of the auto manufacturing suppliers for American car companies, and I see them testing their self driving cars sometimes. Oh and they have a bunch of Teslas for inspiration I suppose. :)

Animats4• 9 years ago

I think GM is going to crush Tesla in the long run.

Maybe in the short run.

Jan 2017 EV sales:[1]

    Chevy Volt:         1611
    Toyota Prius Prime: 1366
    Chevy Bolt:         1182
    Tesla Model S:       900
    Nissan Leaf:         772
    Tesla Model X:       750

The Bolt has only been shipping since late December. That's just getting started.

[1] http://insideevs.com/monthly-plug-in-sales-scorecard/

marricks2• 9 years ago

I think one of the more depressing things is that (potentially) many driver-less cars will be gas powered. Does anyone know if Waymo is going to be used on any electric cars?

There doesn't seem to be any reason driver-less cars have to be electric, but if big companies pushed the tech onto electric cars it'd be a nice way to speed up their adoption and infrastructure for them.

dsfyu404ed4• 9 years ago

I think one of the more depressing things is that (potentially) many driver-less cars will be gas powered. Does anyone know if Waymo is going to be used on any electric cars?

It's not like the software isn't portable or that GM has any aversion to building electric if market conditions are favorable.

marricks2• 9 years ago

Of course not, but having the tech tied to an electric push I think makes the whole package more attractive to consumers. Perhaps I'm too tied to a Tesla mindset on this though, of course self driving cars offer a bunch of advantages on their own.

adrianmacneil• 9 years ago

The Cruise cars are already built using the Bolt electric vehicle.

amelius• 9 years ago

At 00:49, shouldn't the car have yielded to the car coming from the opposite side of the street?

spullara• 9 years ago

Since the GM Cruise car was at the stop sign first, no.

pfarnsworth• 9 years ago

Very impressive, I'm wondering how it was able to get around the white truck that was double-parked? Does it have sensors on the mirrors and point straight out? I imagine it would have no information as to oncoming cars, with the truck blocking almost everything, so I wonder what the algorithm is for that.

Fuzzwah2• 9 years ago

Tesla posted about updates to their auto pilot system which included bouncing radar under the car in front of them.

https://www.tesla.com/en_AU/blog/upgrading-autopilot-seeing-...

bsaul2• 9 years ago

Anyone knows how those technologies work at night time ?

dkonofalski5• 9 years ago

Shouldn't make a difference as, as far as I know, none of the tech they're using is visually based except for a few of the cameras. Most of the primary systems are LIDAR, RADAR, or some other tech that doesn't rely on perfect visual detection and even the ones that do have a mode for "night vision" or a modifier to allow a similar type of function.

wapz2• 9 years ago

Is the tesla "auto-pilot" visually based? From what I recall the fatal accident was because the trailer was a similar color with the sky or something like that so it was not detected as an obstruction.

bsaul2• 9 years ago

Even lane detection ? I don't see how signs and paintings could be detected with radars

joakleaf3• 9 years ago

What about street signs, road markings, and even signals? That must be visual, and they certainly look different at night

Can you create a "normalized" image (hardware- or software-wise) that is independent of the time of day? Is that what you mean by "night-vision" and "modifier"?

I would still imagine that certain light conditions (i.e. just around sunset) could make things difficult.

Would be interesting if anyone knows how they handle this.

monk_e_boy4• 9 years ago

American roads look really unfamiliar to someone from the UK. You stop a lot! So many stop signs.

acchow2• 9 years ago

Yeah, we don't really have roundabouts or yield signs at intersections. Though, in SF there's enough cars and pedestrians that I'm not sure either of those would be faster anyway.

dsfyu404ed4• 9 years ago

That's what you get when the local concerned mothers association sends a weekly flood of crap to the local politicians and newspaper about how "cars go too fast on a particular road... something something, think of the children". How much of that crap is present varies a lot from city to city and town to town. Generally speaking, the poorer the town and the lower the population density the fewer "resident sponsored improvements" to traffic flow you'll see.

greeneggs2• 9 years ago

There isn't really any planning. San Francisco never removes stop signs, but just adds them steadily as neighborhoods request them. Eventually they are turned into traffic lights. (I imagine "traffic signals installed" must be a performance metric for someone.)

A downside of having stop signs at almost every corner is that drivers seem to forget how to drive in areas without them. They assume that if they approach an intersection without a stop sign then they can drive through it at full speed, instead of looking for cross traffic and pedestrians.

dbg314152• 9 years ago

Looks like the car cuts off another other driver here?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vfgjemwc9NU&t=0m42s

dripton• 9 years ago

Looks like both cars have a stop sign, and this one got there first.

dbg314152• 9 years ago

My driver's ed teacher would have dinged me if I pulled that. True the car got there a smidge after the POV car, but when turning and going through another car's lane you should always yield to that car before going into the intersection. I think a human driver would have said, "Yup, I got here 0.5 seconds before him... but I'll let him go before I attempt the turn."

dorianm• 9 years ago

As in the first video there is a ~30s delay when stuck behind a truck. Which I think is reasonable and most human drivers take far too many risks. Seems to be than humans will learn to drive better thanks to self driving cars :).

karpodiem2• 9 years ago

Until I see autonomous vehicles testing in blizzard conditions, or even a moderate snowfall, it's relegated to the West coast. This eliminates nearly 2/3 of the US population (who live in areas where snowfall occurs).

We're at least 5-7 years away from them testing in these conditions.

Jimpulse• 9 years ago

Surprisingly, they are already testing in snow conditions.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3399315/The-d...

karpodiem2• 9 years ago

That 'testing' is taking place on the University of Michigan's M City track. I'm looking forward to testing during these conditions, in the real world, with someone behind the wheel acting as backup.

I'll revise my 5-7 year comment then - I think it will this amount of time (if not more) for these autonomous vehicles to move beyond testing (prod) in winter climates.

Driving on the interstate in a snow storm with semi trucks is no joke - there might actually be a threshold in which pulling over is the best option.

justin66• 9 years ago

Pretty sure Volvo is testing in Gothenburg right now. (also, it's snowing there right now)

Aoyagi• 9 years ago

Is this going to be Cadillac's "Supercruise"?

Corrado• 9 years ago

As I was watching this video I thought about how much further along with self driving cars we could be if the data was open source. Sharing this type of information between companies would increase everyone's velocity and get us that much closer to real world driverless vehicles.

At some point the vehicles will have to talk to each other anyway (ie. car-to-car network), so we might as well formalize it.

New GM Cruise Self-Driving Video Shows More Mastery of SF Roads

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