Google's driverless cars designed to exceed speed limit

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-28851996

by lsh123 • 12 years ago

31 59 12 years ago

bbc.com

lsh1232• 12 years ago

Just curios if Google is going to pay the ticket if a cop stops the car.

praptak• 12 years ago

I admit I'm not keeping up with the news but doesn't the law still require that a human driver be present in the car?

Zitrax• 12 years ago

According to Wikipedia some laws even require a passenger: "Nevada's regulations require a person behind the wheel and one in the passenger’s seat during tests".

Aldo_MX• 12 years ago

Not likely

talmand7• 12 years ago

I've seen similar questions arise from the thought of accidents. If a self-driving car causes a crash, who's responsible? The owner or the manufacturer?

Another random thought: do the cars respond to a police officer trying to pull them over?

krapp2• 12 years ago

If a self-driving car causes a crash, who's responsible? The owner or the manufacturer?

My two cents: if the car has the capacity for manual override, the owner (negligence) otherwise the manufacturer.

do the cars respond to a police officer trying to pull them over?

Legally, humans are supposed to, so why would it be different for self-driving cars (which can at least be programmed to give control over to a third party when requested?)

bsder• 12 years ago

If a self-driving car causes a crash, who's responsible? The owner or the manufacturer?

Manufacturer.

However, what's going to eventually fall out is that self-driving cars are going to be SO much safer, that insurance companies eventually won't let YOU drive.

deepsun• 12 years ago

If driver manually overridden the speed setting, then yes.

In case of other accidents -- pays insurance (and their pricing will be the best indication of how safe these cars are).

georgemcbay• 12 years ago

Good.

It would be stupid not to, especially during the transition phase where driverless cars are the minority.

YMMV depending upon local standards but here in San Diego, CA it is extremely common for the flow the traffic to be going 5-15 miles above posted speed limits and the cops do not care. Having a car going significantly slower than the flow of traffic is much worse than exceeding the speed limit.

Also there are sometimes situations where very temporarily exceeding the limit is the best option (eg. you're at the speed limit and someone cuts into your lane toward the back of your car, potentially shunting you and you have no clearance on the other side, but do have room up front). Driverless cars with full 360 (or close to it) lidar would be ideal for dealing with this situation (as opposed to a human driver that is unlikely to even see the other car in his/her blindspot) but if they are capped at the speed limit their options for resolving the situation safely would be severely curtailed.

josephschmoe• 12 years ago

Definitely. I wouldn't want my car driving in an unsafe manner just to follow local ordinances.

I'd be very curious if I could sue those local governments for endangering me if my vehicle is forced to follow their rules and gets in an avoidable accident because of them. It would be an eminent domain defense, in the sense that government can't deny me of my property without a justifiable (public safety) reason for doing so.

And forcing my computer to behave in a certain way that causes it to potentially harm itself is definitely a denial of property.

I'm sure they'll just write me a ticket though - and if no one has gotten out of that by citing statistics on road safety, my autonomous car won't be any better off.

Hopefully, this will all be resolved reasonably with a national law and a nice bug report interface on Google's part.

allochthon2• 12 years ago

but here in San Diego, CA it is extremely common for the flow the traffic to be going 5-15 miles above posted speed limits

Same here in the Bay area. It would be unsafe to drive no faster than the speed limits in some conditions of traffic. (Some drivers do this, and you have to change lanes on short notice to remain at the same speed as the rest of traffic.)

sbierwagen• 12 years ago

I'm a dilettante hypermiler, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy-efficient_driving) which is mostly about driving slowly. And wow, it's amazing how mad some people get when you drive the posted speed limit.

jfuhrman• 12 years ago

Going the speed limit or lower in the passing lane, especially in rush hour is dangerous and probably causes more accidents than just going a bit faster or moving over to the other lanes when someone gets too close.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2016721/Slow-drivers...

maxerickson• 12 years ago

I think this is a weird reply to make to a comment where someone identifies as a "dilettante hypermiler".

They are much more likely to be highly aware of how they interact with traffic than they are a dangerous, oblivious obstruction.

greiskul• 12 years ago

He didn't say anything about the passing lane in his comment.

talmand7• 12 years ago

If a person is obeying the speed limit in the left lane and a crash ensues, it is not the fault of the person obeying the speed limit. They may be guilty of obstructing traffic in some way depending on the situation and the local laws dictating the proper usage of the left lane, but not the accident.

Going slower? Possible, depends on how much slower.

thenmar• 12 years ago

Mind linking to the first hand source, or at least something with a better reputation than Daily Mail?

lotsofmangos• 12 years ago

According to the Mail, wi-fi (in schools, no less. Just think of the poor tumorous children) causes cancer - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-456534/The-classroom... - so I would take their advice on danger with a pinch of salt, although according to the Mail, that will also give you cancer, so be careful.

dragonwriter5• 12 years ago

Going the speed limit or lower in the passing lane

Except when a special designation is made (common on, e.g., two lane highways that have a stretch where a third lane is added to one or the other side expressly for passing), no such thing exists in many US jurisdictions. There are some US jurisdictions where the leftmost lane is by default reserved for passing (or passing and allowing traffic to merge in the other lane), but that is the exception, not the general rule.

talmand7• 12 years ago

For all that is holy, stay out of the left lane.

Even if it's clearly marked HOV, you need to make a left turn, or it's a single lane you'll still somehow be a danger to society.

Houshalter2• 12 years ago

The speed limit applies to the left lane too.

lucb1e• 12 years ago

Are you going the actual limit, or do you drive on the gauge? Because there is quite a big difference in many cars. Many new ones here seem to indicate 8km/h more than you're going, and with all the people that don't have cruise control this means you're doing 70 when you could be going ~85 before any traffic camera would pick it up.

Actually most people drive ~100km/h on the road I have in mind so 80 is annoying to some already, but I try to never tailgate anyone into driving faster. Only when someone does ~72 because they think that's what they are allowed to drive... such a small difference and yet so annoying.

elwell• 12 years ago

when surrounding vehicles were breaking the speed limit ... the Google car would accelerate to keep up

  for n, neighbor of neighbors
    if neighbor.vel > @vel # TODO: add something like: " and @vel < maxVel"
      @vel += 1

Just don't forget to grep for "TODO".

rumbler• 12 years ago

If Amazon were to make a driverless car, I'd worry.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2384102,00.asp

Turing_Machine2• 12 years ago

Despite the title, that's not an "Amazon algorithm". That's two third-party sellers operating buggy software.

helpbygrace• 12 years ago

Is this speed measured by GPS or vehicle?

In my experience, even though speedmeter in the instrument panel shows 10mph over, actual GPS speed is around speed limit.

ewoodrich• 12 years ago

They really shouldn't differ by that much, your car likely has a speedometer that is out of calibration.

jimmcslim• 12 years ago

According to the Wikipedia page on speedometers, under the Error heading...

'Vehicle manufacturers usually calibrate speedometers to read high by an amount equal to the average error, to ensure that their speedometers never indicate a lower speed than the actual speed of the vehicle, to ensure they are not liable for drivers violating speed limits.', although no citation is currently provided.

Error is introduced by tire diameter being different than what was assumed for initial calibration... i.e. wear on the tires or tires that are under/over-inflated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speedometer

Someone1234• 12 years ago

Civilian GPS alone isn't accurate enough to be believed to within 10 MpH. Even with the fuzzing gone:

http://www.maps-gps-info.com/gps-accuracy.html http://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/performance/accuracy/

ianstallings• 12 years ago

But how do you know the actual speed you're going to gauge the accuracy? Have you timed this over a set distance or something?

luos• 12 years ago

Would these cars overtake others, for example if there is a car towing an other on a one lane (each way) road going significantly under the speed limit?

Chinjut• 12 years ago

"Google's self-driving cars are programmed to exceed speed limits by up to 10mph (16km/h), according to the project's lead software engineer. Dmitri Dolgov told Reuters that when surrounding vehicles were breaking the speed limit, going more slowly could actually present a danger, and the Google car would accelerate to keep up."

Clicking through to the source: "Google's driverless car is programmed to stay within the speed limit, mostly. Research shows that sticking to the speed limit when other cars are going much faster actually can be dangerous, Dolgov says, so its autonomous car can go up to 10 mph (16 kph) above the speed limit when traffic conditions warrant."

allochthon2• 12 years ago

This link got thumped way down really quickly. And it's an interesting one.

Google's driverless cars designed to exceed speed limit

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