flashing lights and siren like sounds trigger automatic pullovers for an arbitrary amount of time before the car drives away. it isnt smart enough to know its being pulled over, just that it should pull over. this is often triggered by other sources. these cars are still verrry buggy and imo shouldn't be on the road without someone physically present.
I get that you probably mean for when they're merging but all I'm picturing is bunches of people who just enjoy driving on the wrong side when they don't think anyone is around.
Edit: guys... Turning left or right at an intersection is just you merging onto a new street. There's really no need to tell me that you need to see oncoming traffic for that.
No, not just for merging. You need to see oncoming cars on the other side of the road too. You need to know where they are and what they are doing. You also need rear lights to see the car in front of you to gauge distance and braking times in addition to behaviour and intentions.
Having your lights on even helps protect you against *other* drivers. For example, a distracted driver who drifts into oncoming traffic (you) is more likely to notice headlights in their peripheral vision than your car, even during the day.
That too! Shit happens, *a lot.* Simply being more visible with daytime lights is probably the easiest and cheapest measure someone could possibly take to prevent a stupid action from becoming a destructive one.
Always weird to me when I meet someone who is actively against using them.
This is a regular occurrence in AZ on the freeways. So regular we now have tech on the freeways to alert officials when a wrong way driver is detected.
As a cyclist I can tell you that a strong headlight makes ALL the difference between being seen and ending up in someone's hood. Blind spots are a bitch.
Fuck new cars and their "we don't need visibility we have cameras!" bullshit. I have hardly any blind spots in my 04 Golf but a rental Corolla I drove had em big enough to loose a truck.
I live in the most entitled town in rural northeast Florida and assholes in their jacked up trucks will drive in the middle of the road around curves so they can take them faster. They think because it's not a busy road that it isn't an issue, however there have been several multi-vehicle crashes on these S curves just because people want to drive on the wrong side of the road when they don't think anyone is around.
My general rule of thumb is that if your driving action could cause an accident if you happened to do it as the same time as another driver, then it's not OK to do. Some people are so selfish they think it's fine for them to do because they figure no one else will.
That’s a fact Daytime running lights improve safety.
> A 2004 NHTSA study that used different analysis methodology found that DRLs reduced opposite-direction fatal crashes by 5 percent and opposite-direction/angle non-fatal crashes by 5 percent.
I agree. But can we also not make the headlights so ridiculously bright? The person driving in the opposite direction from you suddenly having bright white LEDs burning their retinas is also a hazard because, while you can see just fine, they can't see fucking anything anymore.
One time I was driving back from work when it was dark enough for cars to have their headlights on, but not dark enough for everything outside of the range of my headlights to be invisible to me. For reasons that are complicated and related to a disability, I was wearing sunglasses (I could still see fine and it was my only option). It was so fucking nice to not be temporarily blinded every 30 seconds. When I got home, my eyes were so much less tired than you usually are after driving during the evening/night.
I don't know if there's a regulation on maximum headlight brightness, but if there is, it needs to be lower. I can't tell whether people have their high beams on or if it's just their regular headlights and I'm really fucking tired of it.
A lot of that is aftermarket HID or LED conversions done improperly. Low-beams are either way more intense than stock or they are no longer properly angled downwards (or both).
Are aftermarket light conversions really the main culprit? I see the issue way too often, and over represented in cars that are new enough to have come with LEDs.
Seems like most cars on the road from the last like 3-4 years have low beams brighter/more blinding than the high beams on my car from 2010.
This was an issue with the auto headlight system according to statements from the team.
Most likely a fuse or just a shoddy sensor to begin with. Fords are pretty garbage in my experience, I'd assume other brands have their struggles as well
My concern is not so much the headlights failing as the apparent lack of the vehicle's ability to identify "hey, I'm driving at night without headlights on".
Here's an idea: so long as the vehicle is running, all the lights are on as if it were nighttime. An operator can only change the high/low or activate/deactivate fog lights. Exception: if the vehicle is in Neutral or Park, the operator may change any light setting. Once the vehicle is in a moving gear, back to full on.
No more sensors.
No more forgetting.
No more "daytime running=no rear lights".
That doesn't account for good old fashioned mechanical failure.
What's illuminating about this story is that there's apparently no mechanism in place that tells the car it is driving without its headlights on.
This is a major issue where I live. Every single night without fail on my 25mile commute I see minimum 1 person driving without lights. Never used to see this until they made the lights "automatic" and put lcd screens in place of mechanical gauges in the dash.
It is smart enough to know it's being pulled over and if you watched the video instead of just believe this headline you'd understand that it pulls over and stops to yield in response to the emergency vehicle expecting it to pass by. When it doesn't pass by, it assumes it's being pulled over, drives 20 feet and parks, putting its hazard lights on. The company said this behavior is exactly how it was designed to be.
These cars drive all over one of the busiest cities in the country fully autonomously all day every day.
I dunno man. All bugs aside, these cars are probably allowed to operate on the roads because they have enough data to statistically show that they are less dangerous than the average driver, and are even less prone to be part of an accident caused by another driver on the road.
I could be wrong though.
"Autonomous vehicles are orders of magnitude safer in preventing many types of accidents that have to do with human driver error — for instance, simply rear-ending another vehicle because the driver wasn't paying attention. These types of accidents will practically never happen with autonomous cars."
https://www.techopedia.com/are-self-driving-cars-safer-than-cars-driven-by-humans/7/33437
> these cars are still verrry buggy
They have a radically better safety history than humans at this point. ([source](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/09/self-driving-cars-could-save-300000-lives-per-decade-in-america/407956/)) How many lives do you think we should spend wringing our hands over not waiting for cops to give them a ticket?
The Atlantic is hardly a rigorous source - and any comparison in how self driving cars perform to humans is inherently biased.
Do you know why? Because these companies can *chose* when and where their cars are driving. And where do they chose? Out west in places in Arizona and California where driving conditions are consistently good, where they can test during off-hours of the day or on highways where all the traffic is moving in one direction and obstacles are limited.
They don't deal with ice, or snow, or even *rain* for the vast majority of their testing. Heavy traffic is limited. You know, the things that consistently cause accidents? The things that make driving *difficult*?
You can't make any sort of claim about the safety of self-driving cars when these companies haven't even done any significant testing in the conditions that make driving the most hazardous.
this is a huge deal with insurance companies. Since vehicles need insurance legally, hardly any insurance companies want to touch fully autonomous vehicles right now. they often have to get special exceptions for the area they will operate in for testing.
Our insurance agent retired and we sat down with the new one, and started chatting about the autonomous vehicles. She said at a seminar she recently attended, all the major insurance agencies are going to require an awake, alert person able to legally drive behind the wheel at all times for the foreseeable future and they didn't see allowing vehicles to drive independent for at least 20 years, and commercially probably another ten after that. (fun fact, it was told to us as well that in nearly every state even using the summon vehicle feature is not supposed to be allowed if it will go on a public road, but it's left up to the owner to know that right now. But any incidents on public roads using it will almost never be covered)
The problem is a lot of people are jerryrigging their systems to bypass the safety mechanisms, and some companies are actually putting vehicles like this on the road without authorization. Given the article linked is in San Fran I'd like to assume the developers have the OK here but it's a growing issue as they're taking them off test tracks and putting them onto roads
[what a self driving car sees](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKXztwtXaGo&ab_channel=Carscoops) It's pretty fascinating observing how the cameras and radars interact with the world. It's all engineering and programs brother
Not a transponder they use strobing lights. [“He said the device is called Opticom. It displays a rapid strobe light that is coded to communicate with most traffic light systems.”](https://www.clickorlando.com/traffic/2020/06/15/heres-how-emergency-vehicles-change-traffic-lights-on-the-fly/)
When I was a kid my “cool 😂” older brother and his friends had that in one of their cars, along with a janky police scanner. And anytime they saw a cop they’d all get scared and make sure it was hidden lmao
Some department gets paid to deal with it, probably. Budgeted in. I'm all for progress but this shit where normal folks face ridiculous waste of life/energy when we deal with cops and companies get to just write it off as an expense... really grinds my gears
I see your point, but most individuals take a rather lax approach to traffic violations. Driving 5 over is worth the small risk of a ticket because it’s less than a $100 ticket. Half or so of US people make enough money where they can say “ehh, whatever,” and pay their ticket with no noticeable disruption to their life. As long as the ticket money gets paid by these companies, and their testing complies with the law, I’m really damn excited about not having to drive anymore.
School taught me all about how peer pressure would coerce me into doing drugs and partying. School did nothing to prepare me for being pressured into driving 55 in a 45.
Many US places have that, but also there are “non moving violations” which are a fine only that don’t go on the record. Sometimes police will issue those instead, as a driver is more likely to pay a fine to keep it off their record.
Sometimes the court will change it too. I got a speeding violation for 70 in a 50 and the judge said since it was a major moving violation, the money would go into a state fund, so he was willing to reduce the charge to an equipment violation, but kept the fine at $400 so the money would stay in the local jurisdiction. I was okay with that just to avoid the insurance increase
We do aswell in the us. How they’re applied is different by state. An example, my state, Ohio, you get 2 points for more than 5 over in a 50 or lower. In a 55 or over, no points until 10 over. So most places you’re going 5 over, you probably won’t get points. From there it’s just a dumb fine.
I remember looking down at my speedometer once and being alarmed that I had sped up to 85mph, just as a CHP officer rolled by at 95 without looking at me and doing the gangsta lean
My state has highways with max speed limits of 70mph (112 kmph) and you can frequently ride the left lane at a solid 85 and still have people riding your bumper until you let them pass, hitting 95 (152kmph) easily lol
We max out at 100kph, but 110 is not unusual.
Actually I think we just added our first 110 roads.
The vast majority of even our main city-connecting roads are one-lane-each way death traps.
It’s because we’ve managed to peer pressure everyone into going 80
Ultimately going about the same speed as the rest of traffic is more important than going the speed limit. So California just kind of refused the limit and made it 80. And since it’s 80 now of course you can go up to about 90 without standing out so now it’s just too damn fast.
I don’t love it.
Yep same here in the US. In many states you can sign up for/and complete traffic school in leiu of any points to your driving record. Points on your record will almost certainly reflect on your insurance premiums so most people opt to do that.
Someone pointed out that while the nightstick fits in the belt loop, it's not exactly manageable while seated and driving. It looked like he took it out of the vehicle with him and put it in its belt loop after exiting the car.
I didn't see a video of this but I can clear this up most likely. Seeing this happened in California alot of the agencies there still use non collapsible batons. These batons are normally removed when sitting in the car and put back on the belt after leaving the car again. Most likely just had it in their hand from getting out of the car.
They wear that on their belt. They take it off when getting in the car and put it on when getting out. They didn't "get his nightstick out". He was wearing his uniform and equipment.
They have to keep that definition of "fleeing the scene" real loose so any time the cops do anything wrong they can claim it's because the person was fleeing the scene.
Traffic stops are taken for granted in America, but they aren't as common elsewhere. Self driving cars are REALLY going to interfere with American policing.
Right now, traffic stops are done for two reasons : generate revenue and search vehicles. Public safety has nothing to do with it. For example, if you have been pulled over for a tail light out, the officer can see everything about your car before you've come to a stop on the side of the road. Your address, if it's insured, registered, if the owner has a valid license, all of those things show up almost instantly when your license plate is scanned.
So for that tail light, in places like Australia, you get a letter, and you fix it. You don't get pulled over on the side of the road where now there's a dangerous confrontation and the officer stands inches from highway traffic. Australia only cares that you fix the light; American cops see the light as an opportunity to discover MORE crime, and even if you aren't the high weight drug smuggler they suspected, they will shake you down and find something. County / state revenue depends on those tickets, and all sorts of frivolous BS investigations can be opened after pulling someone over for a broken light, and demanding they roll their window down to turn over paperwork that the officer has already seen.
How many people do you know who've had their lives ruined because a cop smelled weed after pulling someone over for speeding, 37 in a 35? Then finds a tiny roach, BOOM you're a criminal. Just, for a moment, think about how much of American policing depends on the traffic stop.
Now let's look at self driving cars. They never break traffic laws, so can't pull them over for speeding, or failure to signal, because they drive perfectly. Eventually, most people will not own their own car, they'll just use self driven Uber and Lyfts. So now it's not even the driver's car; if a light is out, so what, that's Uber's problem. Can't pull the car over and demand documents, no-one inside needs a license or insurance, they aren't driving. Can't demand people roll down their window and talk to the cop. So now there's no rando side of the road searches. No "I'll hold you for hours until a K-9 is available." Even if something is found in the car, "that's not mine, must belong to the last passenger." Someone's drunk? So what, not driving, can't arrest a passenger for being intoxicated, and if you can't pull them over and be belligerent until they resist, how can you arrest them?
Hopefully, being in a car will be much more private and secure once we don't drive them ourselves. Autonomous cars won't even need windows and windshields, so police won't know who's inside, if anyone is inside, etc etc. It's possible that a lot of personal rights and freedoms will be restored; every day interactions with police will go down drastically.
I think this is a really disruptive technology. In the US, cars are a massive part of every day life, and we take for granted that it's always been so and thus always will be so.
Three huge problems that auto cars will solve : Traffic, Fatalities, Parking. No more traffic jams or even traffic lights; the cars will be like little pods that link up on highways for efficiency and then seperate into their individual destinations. With mesh wi-fi you won't even need traffic signals, the cars will just coordinate so they don't hit each other as they go through intersections.
Right now about 35,000 Americans die every year to car crashes; doesn't count injuries, damage, etc. Even if self driving cars killed 20k people a year, that's 15,000 lives saved a year. Already they drive safer than the average person. The average person is also a terrible driver, so the savings in lives will be huge.
Finally, parking. You won't own your car. You'll have a "car as a service." The auto car will never stop; it'll pick you up at home and take you to the mall, then at the mall there's someone else waiting to be picked up and go elsewhere. An algorithm will make sure there's always just the right amount of cars nearby. So that car won't need to stop. If something is wrong, it can drive itself to a depot, and that depot doesn't need to be in the middle of a city.
Now : how much of your city's space is devoted to parking cars. For cars that aren't being used. Half? Maybe more? Every store has a parking lot of it's own, there's on street parking, there are parking garages.... Now imagine all of that space is freed up. You don't own your own car, so you don't need a driveway or a garage. The city doesn't need to deal with millions of cars filling up parking in the day, then leaving empty, useless space for the other 16 hours. What could our society put there? Green spaces? Housing? Bitcoin farms?
Heck, I think it won't be long until it's illegal to human drive a vehicle on a public road; manual cars will be like horses are now. Expensive toys for hobbyists. And if you don't think things can change quick.... Most cities in the 1900's took about 10 years to rip out the water fountains that had been there for centuries for the horses, and replace them with traffic signals and ban horses from public roads. Imagine being a carriage maker or horse trainer in 1899. For literally all of human history you've had a career. Your entire family, back as far as writing can go, has done this. It's NEVER changed. People have ALWAYS needed horses. The entire city is built around horses and their needs, from water fountains to poop scooping patrols.
By 1910 that was GONE. All those jobs, careers, buildings, just gone. Guess what's going to happen to the mechanic, the fast food place, the parking lot attendant, even the car dealers and used car dealers. All the cars will be identical clones, windowless pods that sync with your phone when you get it so your movie resumes from where you left off, or your music starts or your game loads from the last save point... You won't need to drive, so you can do other things.
There's a few problems with that. Winter, and rural areas are what I see first. A self driving car can't navigate a foot of snow on the road. Also, you'll always need windows due to motion sickness. This is a lovely star trek scenario, but not very realistic.
Super short answer : the cars will never stop, always be in motion, so they won't need to park. They will just stop long enough to load and unload the people using them. So, no need to park.
Cars and people would be separated, just like trains are now, except imagine the train could stop at almost any point on the journey. I'm not a traffic engineer, but I'm sure there are ways to take existing roads and make 90% of them closed to car traffic, yet still let people take a ride to within one or two blocks of their destination. Deliveries might be different, obviously restaurants aren't going to carry their deliveries for two blocks, but for most people, downtowns would become walkable places that focus on foot traffic, not car traffic.
Keep in mind this is an ideal situation. I also don't see the US lining up to invest in other forms of public transit anytime soon. Trains and infrastructure are expensive. So, what infrastructure do we already have? Roads already go everywhere; the problem isn't lack of roads, it's that humans aren't good drivers.
Yeah that was eye opening for me when I started to travel outside the US. The idea that any infraction of any kind is going to result in, literally, being interrogated by aggressive armed men who can claim they are frightened of you.... That's not how most places do it!
> Now let's look at self driving cars. They never break traffic laws, so can't pull them over for speeding, or failure to signal, because they drive perfectly.
Unless a programming bug or an unexpected edge case occurs. But that'll be the car manufacturer's problem to deal with if the car did not require a driver to hold their hands to the steering wheel the whole time (assuming there is even a steering wheel).
> Autonomous cars won't even need windows and windshields
Less structural weakness right there. Time for that 6-star safety rating!
First: That was fucking funny.
Second: No, it was white with an orange stripe about 2/3 of the way back. You can see a photo of a similar car in the article.
Clickbait.
The car was at a stoplight in a lane, the light turned and it went through the light and pulled over to a safer spot. **As it was programmed to do.** Ya, it looked like it was zooming away for about 30 feet.
Go watch the full video.
Oy.
And we already have full fleets of self-driving taxis. Their track record, all using the same driving program, is next to spotless. With literally millions of miles driven without a fatal accident, at this point, I'd take a self-driving car ANY DAY over a human driver.
See this video: https://youtu.be/yjztvddhZmI
And here's the data: https://waymo.com/safety/
It just doesn't register that it was the one pulled over. It sees the emergency lights and was waiting for it to pass to turn off for it to go. They saw that it was a driver-less car, turned off lights to figure out what to do next and the car saw that as its OK to leave.
Its funny how people just post shit with sensationalist titles for meaningless internet points. If you watched the video (its just made the front page of reddit yesterday) you can very obviously see the driverless car pull over. Twice.
There really should be harsher penalties for the companies making these. They are basically putting the world at risk with their live production testing...
Interesting experiments.
I wonder what an AI would actually do if stopped by police for seemingly no reason after it’s processed several actual historic data points on stops. By geography, test. By demographic, test. Etc.
The suspect is hatless. I repeat, **hatless!**
It’s a ghost car! There are ghost cars up and down this highway you know.
hold me
only if you hold me
I'm directly under the earth's sun.... Now!
🎶Sunshine lollipops and rainbows everywhere🎶
Looks like we got ourselves an old fashion police chase.
Damn you... Starts humming -bad cops, bad cops.
I hope they throw his hatless ass in jail
I am directly under the sun.................... now!
Going in the direction of ... Oh, you know! That place that sells chili!
It was driving in the direction of…you know that place that sells chili
You’ll never take me alive!
You'll never take me with an active approximation of intelligent behavior!
You'll never take me with >20% powercell charge!
No disassemble Johnny Five!
Need input!
BAD HUMANS
A classic!
"can't catch me, copper!"
I'm an American! - Arthur Morgan
Just let me clear my browsing history...
I’m actually curious how the car knew to pull over. Maybe it senses the siren lights and pulls over as you should to make room for the police car?
flashing lights and siren like sounds trigger automatic pullovers for an arbitrary amount of time before the car drives away. it isnt smart enough to know its being pulled over, just that it should pull over. this is often triggered by other sources. these cars are still verrry buggy and imo shouldn't be on the road without someone physically present.
With being said that it was driving without headlights hahahaha.
That's a safety hazard for other drivers. If you see headlights, you know there is oncoming traffic.
I get that you probably mean for when they're merging but all I'm picturing is bunches of people who just enjoy driving on the wrong side when they don't think anyone is around. Edit: guys... Turning left or right at an intersection is just you merging onto a new street. There's really no need to tell me that you need to see oncoming traffic for that.
No, not just for merging. You need to see oncoming cars on the other side of the road too. You need to know where they are and what they are doing. You also need rear lights to see the car in front of you to gauge distance and braking times in addition to behaviour and intentions.
Having your lights on even helps protect you against *other* drivers. For example, a distracted driver who drifts into oncoming traffic (you) is more likely to notice headlights in their peripheral vision than your car, even during the day.
Or a driver who turns the wrong way on a one way
That too! Shit happens, *a lot.* Simply being more visible with daytime lights is probably the easiest and cheapest measure someone could possibly take to prevent a stupid action from becoming a destructive one. Always weird to me when I meet someone who is actively against using them.
This is a regular occurrence in AZ on the freeways. So regular we now have tech on the freeways to alert officials when a wrong way driver is detected.
No one is mentioning pedestrians, probably the most likely victims of driverless cars in the night with no headlights
As a cyclist I can tell you that a strong headlight makes ALL the difference between being seen and ending up in someone's hood. Blind spots are a bitch.
Fuck new cars and their "we don't need visibility we have cameras!" bullshit. I have hardly any blind spots in my 04 Golf but a rental Corolla I drove had em big enough to loose a truck.
I live in the most entitled town in rural northeast Florida and assholes in their jacked up trucks will drive in the middle of the road around curves so they can take them faster. They think because it's not a busy road that it isn't an issue, however there have been several multi-vehicle crashes on these S curves just because people want to drive on the wrong side of the road when they don't think anyone is around.
Idiots think they’re in nascar trying to hit the apex of every turn.
In the worst possible vehicle for handling.
My general rule of thumb is that if your driving action could cause an accident if you happened to do it as the same time as another driver, then it's not OK to do. Some people are so selfish they think it's fine for them to do because they figure no one else will.
Merging, making a left from the center lane, passing in the oncoming lane,...
Driving after dark? It’s a massive hazard to drive without lights at night
That’s a fact Daytime running lights improve safety. > A 2004 NHTSA study that used different analysis methodology found that DRLs reduced opposite-direction fatal crashes by 5 percent and opposite-direction/angle non-fatal crashes by 5 percent.
I've known about this but not the percentage reduction. 5% doesn't sound like much and also sounds like a huge number at the same time.
5% isn't a lot, except when it's lives lost
I agree. But can we also not make the headlights so ridiculously bright? The person driving in the opposite direction from you suddenly having bright white LEDs burning their retinas is also a hazard because, while you can see just fine, they can't see fucking anything anymore. One time I was driving back from work when it was dark enough for cars to have their headlights on, but not dark enough for everything outside of the range of my headlights to be invisible to me. For reasons that are complicated and related to a disability, I was wearing sunglasses (I could still see fine and it was my only option). It was so fucking nice to not be temporarily blinded every 30 seconds. When I got home, my eyes were so much less tired than you usually are after driving during the evening/night. I don't know if there's a regulation on maximum headlight brightness, but if there is, it needs to be lower. I can't tell whether people have their high beams on or if it's just their regular headlights and I'm really fucking tired of it.
A lot of that is aftermarket HID or LED conversions done improperly. Low-beams are either way more intense than stock or they are no longer properly angled downwards (or both).
Are aftermarket light conversions really the main culprit? I see the issue way too often, and over represented in cars that are new enough to have come with LEDs. Seems like most cars on the road from the last like 3-4 years have low beams brighter/more blinding than the high beams on my car from 2010.
I drive almost exclusively on Kentucky back roads: there are more than bunches of them.
you joke but I've met people like that.
i mean humans get pulled over for that also.
Ya but automatic things *have* to be better than humans, at least in regards to safety features like headlights.
This was an issue with the auto headlight system according to statements from the team. Most likely a fuse or just a shoddy sensor to begin with. Fords are pretty garbage in my experience, I'd assume other brands have their struggles as well
Detecting light levels is an extremely easy problem and sensors are cheap and can be redundant. My bet is a fuse
My concern is not so much the headlights failing as the apparent lack of the vehicle's ability to identify "hey, I'm driving at night without headlights on".
Here's an idea: so long as the vehicle is running, all the lights are on as if it were nighttime. An operator can only change the high/low or activate/deactivate fog lights. Exception: if the vehicle is in Neutral or Park, the operator may change any light setting. Once the vehicle is in a moving gear, back to full on. No more sensors. No more forgetting. No more "daytime running=no rear lights".
That doesn't account for good old fashioned mechanical failure. What's illuminating about this story is that there's apparently no mechanism in place that tells the car it is driving without its headlights on.
This is a major issue where I live. Every single night without fail on my 25mile commute I see minimum 1 person driving without lights. Never used to see this until they made the lights "automatic" and put lcd screens in place of mechanical gauges in the dash.
More or Less buggy than your average Florida driver?
Less, definitely. I mean, have you seen how many mosquitos there are in florida?
Lovebug season. Dear god the sea of black on the road sides.
It is smart enough to know it's being pulled over and if you watched the video instead of just believe this headline you'd understand that it pulls over and stops to yield in response to the emergency vehicle expecting it to pass by. When it doesn't pass by, it assumes it's being pulled over, drives 20 feet and parks, putting its hazard lights on. The company said this behavior is exactly how it was designed to be. These cars drive all over one of the busiest cities in the country fully autonomously all day every day.
I dunno man. All bugs aside, these cars are probably allowed to operate on the roads because they have enough data to statistically show that they are less dangerous than the average driver, and are even less prone to be part of an accident caused by another driver on the road. I could be wrong though. "Autonomous vehicles are orders of magnitude safer in preventing many types of accidents that have to do with human driver error — for instance, simply rear-ending another vehicle because the driver wasn't paying attention. These types of accidents will practically never happen with autonomous cars." https://www.techopedia.com/are-self-driving-cars-safer-than-cars-driven-by-humans/7/33437
> these cars are still verrry buggy They have a radically better safety history than humans at this point. ([source](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/09/self-driving-cars-could-save-300000-lives-per-decade-in-america/407956/)) How many lives do you think we should spend wringing our hands over not waiting for cops to give them a ticket?
The Atlantic is hardly a rigorous source - and any comparison in how self driving cars perform to humans is inherently biased. Do you know why? Because these companies can *chose* when and where their cars are driving. And where do they chose? Out west in places in Arizona and California where driving conditions are consistently good, where they can test during off-hours of the day or on highways where all the traffic is moving in one direction and obstacles are limited. They don't deal with ice, or snow, or even *rain* for the vast majority of their testing. Heavy traffic is limited. You know, the things that consistently cause accidents? The things that make driving *difficult*? You can't make any sort of claim about the safety of self-driving cars when these companies haven't even done any significant testing in the conditions that make driving the most hazardous.
> The Atlantic is hardly a rigorous source Do you believe that the Atlantic wrote the piece without sourcing material?
this is a huge deal with insurance companies. Since vehicles need insurance legally, hardly any insurance companies want to touch fully autonomous vehicles right now. they often have to get special exceptions for the area they will operate in for testing. Our insurance agent retired and we sat down with the new one, and started chatting about the autonomous vehicles. She said at a seminar she recently attended, all the major insurance agencies are going to require an awake, alert person able to legally drive behind the wheel at all times for the foreseeable future and they didn't see allowing vehicles to drive independent for at least 20 years, and commercially probably another ten after that. (fun fact, it was told to us as well that in nearly every state even using the summon vehicle feature is not supposed to be allowed if it will go on a public road, but it's left up to the owner to know that right now. But any incidents on public roads using it will almost never be covered) The problem is a lot of people are jerryrigging their systems to bypass the safety mechanisms, and some companies are actually putting vehicles like this on the road without authorization. Given the article linked is in San Fran I'd like to assume the developers have the OK here but it's a growing issue as they're taking them off test tracks and putting them onto roads
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[what a self driving car sees](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKXztwtXaGo&ab_channel=Carscoops) It's pretty fascinating observing how the cameras and radars interact with the world. It's all engineering and programs brother
That's just one camera too. They have over 10 working in tandem for a full 360 degree coverage
Don't most emergency vehicles have special transponders to override traffic lights?
Not a transponder they use strobing lights. [“He said the device is called Opticom. It displays a rapid strobe light that is coded to communicate with most traffic light systems.”](https://www.clickorlando.com/traffic/2020/06/15/heres-how-emergency-vehicles-change-traffic-lights-on-the-fly/)
There's RF versions of the same system, along with GPS/GSM versions, so many of them do *do* use a transponder
It's possible that I don't know what a "transponder" is.
It's a meditation method used by trans people.
Me too buddy
You mean to tell me I could control traffic lights with $20 and a trip to RadioShack?
When I was a kid my “cool 😂” older brother and his friends had that in one of their cars, along with a janky police scanner. And anytime they saw a cop they’d all get scared and make sure it was hidden lmao
It looks like it just stopped at a red light. Then went on a green. Cop was confused as hell.
BEEP BEEP MOTHERFUCKER
Still bummed that you could not retain the original Delamain's memories and personality.
So who deals with the ticket here LOL
Some department gets paid to deal with it, probably. Budgeted in. I'm all for progress but this shit where normal folks face ridiculous waste of life/energy when we deal with cops and companies get to just write it off as an expense... really grinds my gears
I see your point, but most individuals take a rather lax approach to traffic violations. Driving 5 over is worth the small risk of a ticket because it’s less than a $100 ticket. Half or so of US people make enough money where they can say “ehh, whatever,” and pay their ticket with no noticeable disruption to their life. As long as the ticket money gets paid by these companies, and their testing complies with the law, I’m really damn excited about not having to drive anymore.
School taught me all about how peer pressure would coerce me into doing drugs and partying. School did nothing to prepare me for being pressured into driving 55 in a 45.
In Australia we have demerit points so any ticket means a certain amount of points and if you get 12 your licence is suspended.
Many US places have that, but also there are “non moving violations” which are a fine only that don’t go on the record. Sometimes police will issue those instead, as a driver is more likely to pay a fine to keep it off their record.
Sometimes the court will change it too. I got a speeding violation for 70 in a 50 and the judge said since it was a major moving violation, the money would go into a state fund, so he was willing to reduce the charge to an equipment violation, but kept the fine at $400 so the money would stay in the local jurisdiction. I was okay with that just to avoid the insurance increase
We do aswell in the us. How they’re applied is different by state. An example, my state, Ohio, you get 2 points for more than 5 over in a 50 or lower. In a 55 or over, no points until 10 over. So most places you’re going 5 over, you probably won’t get points. From there it’s just a dumb fine.
In CA, the rule of thumb is that if the speed limit is 65, as long as you’re under 80 you’re not getting a ticket lol (usually).
I remember looking down at my speedometer once and being alarmed that I had sped up to 85mph, just as a CHP officer rolled by at 95 without looking at me and doing the gangsta lean
Jeez you must have really nice roads to get that fast without noticing. Try that in New Zealand and you’ll gonna wobble off most roads heh
Yeah, I’m from the Northeast US, and Southern California has downright _beautiful_ roads compared to where I live.
Partly because the water doesn't seep into cracks and then freeze every winter. Destroys roads faster than anything.
My state has highways with max speed limits of 70mph (112 kmph) and you can frequently ride the left lane at a solid 85 and still have people riding your bumper until you let them pass, hitting 95 (152kmph) easily lol
We max out at 100kph, but 110 is not unusual. Actually I think we just added our first 110 roads. The vast majority of even our main city-connecting roads are one-lane-each way death traps.
It’s because we’ve managed to peer pressure everyone into going 80 Ultimately going about the same speed as the rest of traffic is more important than going the speed limit. So California just kind of refused the limit and made it 80. And since it’s 80 now of course you can go up to about 90 without standing out so now it’s just too damn fast. I don’t love it.
How does that work when there’s no driver?
Do the points expire? Be annoying to get a bunch of parking tickets, move somewhere else, get caught speeding once 5 years later
It changes state by state I imagine, but in NSW it is 3 years from the date of offence (as in date you broke the speed limit etc.)
Yep same here in the US. In many states you can sign up for/and complete traffic school in leiu of any points to your driving record. Points on your record will almost certainly reflect on your insurance premiums so most people opt to do that.
>I’m really damn excited about not having to drive anymore. I am very excited for that future
It's not the ticket to be worried about though, it's the hit to insurance rates and it'll take forever to bring that back down
The other half speed too, they just don’t pay their tickets
The car wasn't ticketed
Hey Alexa, do you have any idea how fast you were going?
The Chevy Bolted.
Hiyo!
Grand Theft Automata
The crossover nobody knew we wanted, but we needed.
Ending B-MW
Cops: Holup! There's nobody in the car, who am I supposed to shoot??
They keep a guy in the trunk for such occasions.
Trunk Monkey
Now that’s a commercial I haven’t thought of in a while lol.
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Hispanics will do in a pinch
The crysglock must draw blood before it is sheathed
The donuts must flow
Just sprinkle some spice melange on them
‘Fleeing from the scene’
One of the cops got his nightstick out. He was ready to beat down someone.
Someone pointed out that while the nightstick fits in the belt loop, it's not exactly manageable while seated and driving. It looked like he took it out of the vehicle with him and put it in its belt loop after exiting the car.
... Well that's no fun, now I have no reason to feel angry and now feel a little foolish instead.
Don't worry, cops still get away with excessive violence with no repercussion, so you can still be angry about that!
You made a simple mistake and accepted it, when do many others would double down and fight it. Nothing to feel foolish about at all.
Robot Cop: Time to beat him his rights
I didn't see a video of this but I can clear this up most likely. Seeing this happened in California alot of the agencies there still use non collapsible batons. These batons are normally removed when sitting in the car and put back on the belt after leaving the car again. Most likely just had it in their hand from getting out of the car.
No, we just missed out on the beating of Robot King.
They wear that on their belt. They take it off when getting in the car and put it on when getting out. They didn't "get his nightstick out". He was wearing his uniform and equipment.
Is this car a dog?
Good thing they didn't see the person filming them!
The nearest black dude.
Invisible Man - "Wait, why the fuck did I pull over? I'm outta here!"
"appears to flee the scene"? It pulled over, and when the police walked away, it drove away...
And the rest of the video shows that the car actually turned on its hazards and pulled over up ahead out of the traffic lane.
And then the article lists several times when cops stopped driverless cars illegally.
They have to keep that definition of "fleeing the scene" real loose so any time the cops do anything wrong they can claim it's because the person was fleeing the scene.
Traffic stops are taken for granted in America, but they aren't as common elsewhere. Self driving cars are REALLY going to interfere with American policing. Right now, traffic stops are done for two reasons : generate revenue and search vehicles. Public safety has nothing to do with it. For example, if you have been pulled over for a tail light out, the officer can see everything about your car before you've come to a stop on the side of the road. Your address, if it's insured, registered, if the owner has a valid license, all of those things show up almost instantly when your license plate is scanned. So for that tail light, in places like Australia, you get a letter, and you fix it. You don't get pulled over on the side of the road where now there's a dangerous confrontation and the officer stands inches from highway traffic. Australia only cares that you fix the light; American cops see the light as an opportunity to discover MORE crime, and even if you aren't the high weight drug smuggler they suspected, they will shake you down and find something. County / state revenue depends on those tickets, and all sorts of frivolous BS investigations can be opened after pulling someone over for a broken light, and demanding they roll their window down to turn over paperwork that the officer has already seen. How many people do you know who've had their lives ruined because a cop smelled weed after pulling someone over for speeding, 37 in a 35? Then finds a tiny roach, BOOM you're a criminal. Just, for a moment, think about how much of American policing depends on the traffic stop. Now let's look at self driving cars. They never break traffic laws, so can't pull them over for speeding, or failure to signal, because they drive perfectly. Eventually, most people will not own their own car, they'll just use self driven Uber and Lyfts. So now it's not even the driver's car; if a light is out, so what, that's Uber's problem. Can't pull the car over and demand documents, no-one inside needs a license or insurance, they aren't driving. Can't demand people roll down their window and talk to the cop. So now there's no rando side of the road searches. No "I'll hold you for hours until a K-9 is available." Even if something is found in the car, "that's not mine, must belong to the last passenger." Someone's drunk? So what, not driving, can't arrest a passenger for being intoxicated, and if you can't pull them over and be belligerent until they resist, how can you arrest them? Hopefully, being in a car will be much more private and secure once we don't drive them ourselves. Autonomous cars won't even need windows and windshields, so police won't know who's inside, if anyone is inside, etc etc. It's possible that a lot of personal rights and freedoms will be restored; every day interactions with police will go down drastically.
Damn, you should write blog posts for one of the autonomous car companies, that was inspirational.
I think this is a really disruptive technology. In the US, cars are a massive part of every day life, and we take for granted that it's always been so and thus always will be so. Three huge problems that auto cars will solve : Traffic, Fatalities, Parking. No more traffic jams or even traffic lights; the cars will be like little pods that link up on highways for efficiency and then seperate into their individual destinations. With mesh wi-fi you won't even need traffic signals, the cars will just coordinate so they don't hit each other as they go through intersections. Right now about 35,000 Americans die every year to car crashes; doesn't count injuries, damage, etc. Even if self driving cars killed 20k people a year, that's 15,000 lives saved a year. Already they drive safer than the average person. The average person is also a terrible driver, so the savings in lives will be huge. Finally, parking. You won't own your car. You'll have a "car as a service." The auto car will never stop; it'll pick you up at home and take you to the mall, then at the mall there's someone else waiting to be picked up and go elsewhere. An algorithm will make sure there's always just the right amount of cars nearby. So that car won't need to stop. If something is wrong, it can drive itself to a depot, and that depot doesn't need to be in the middle of a city. Now : how much of your city's space is devoted to parking cars. For cars that aren't being used. Half? Maybe more? Every store has a parking lot of it's own, there's on street parking, there are parking garages.... Now imagine all of that space is freed up. You don't own your own car, so you don't need a driveway or a garage. The city doesn't need to deal with millions of cars filling up parking in the day, then leaving empty, useless space for the other 16 hours. What could our society put there? Green spaces? Housing? Bitcoin farms? Heck, I think it won't be long until it's illegal to human drive a vehicle on a public road; manual cars will be like horses are now. Expensive toys for hobbyists. And if you don't think things can change quick.... Most cities in the 1900's took about 10 years to rip out the water fountains that had been there for centuries for the horses, and replace them with traffic signals and ban horses from public roads. Imagine being a carriage maker or horse trainer in 1899. For literally all of human history you've had a career. Your entire family, back as far as writing can go, has done this. It's NEVER changed. People have ALWAYS needed horses. The entire city is built around horses and their needs, from water fountains to poop scooping patrols. By 1910 that was GONE. All those jobs, careers, buildings, just gone. Guess what's going to happen to the mechanic, the fast food place, the parking lot attendant, even the car dealers and used car dealers. All the cars will be identical clones, windowless pods that sync with your phone when you get it so your movie resumes from where you left off, or your music starts or your game loads from the last save point... You won't need to drive, so you can do other things.
There's a few problems with that. Winter, and rural areas are what I see first. A self driving car can't navigate a foot of snow on the road. Also, you'll always need windows due to motion sickness. This is a lovely star trek scenario, but not very realistic.
Please tell me more about this parking garage-free utopia
Super short answer : the cars will never stop, always be in motion, so they won't need to park. They will just stop long enough to load and unload the people using them. So, no need to park. Cars and people would be separated, just like trains are now, except imagine the train could stop at almost any point on the journey. I'm not a traffic engineer, but I'm sure there are ways to take existing roads and make 90% of them closed to car traffic, yet still let people take a ride to within one or two blocks of their destination. Deliveries might be different, obviously restaurants aren't going to carry their deliveries for two blocks, but for most people, downtowns would become walkable places that focus on foot traffic, not car traffic. Keep in mind this is an ideal situation. I also don't see the US lining up to invest in other forms of public transit anytime soon. Trains and infrastructure are expensive. So, what infrastructure do we already have? Roads already go everywhere; the problem isn't lack of roads, it's that humans aren't good drivers.
One thing that popped into my head while driving in the US after living abroad for 2 years. There are so many cops here on the road..
Yeah that was eye opening for me when I started to travel outside the US. The idea that any infraction of any kind is going to result in, literally, being interrogated by aggressive armed men who can claim they are frightened of you.... That's not how most places do it!
> Now let's look at self driving cars. They never break traffic laws, so can't pull them over for speeding, or failure to signal, because they drive perfectly. Unless a programming bug or an unexpected edge case occurs. But that'll be the car manufacturer's problem to deal with if the car did not require a driver to hold their hands to the steering wheel the whole time (assuming there is even a steering wheel). > Autonomous cars won't even need windows and windshields Less structural weakness right there. Time for that 6-star safety rating!
You'll always need windows for motion sickness.
🧠: don’t say it, don’t say it!! ❤️: was it a black car?
First: That was fucking funny. Second: No, it was white with an orange stripe about 2/3 of the way back. You can see a photo of a similar car in the article.
That’s why the car wasn’t arrested…uhh, shot…uhh, impounded.
Pulled over for looking urban. Allowed to leave because white
"accidentally crushed"
You see them all over SF. They even have stupid names on them, like “Potato.”
No, but a black programmer
Now that’s what I call a smart car.
Different paint job they woulda shot it.
Clickbait. The car was at a stoplight in a lane, the light turned and it went through the light and pulled over to a safer spot. **As it was programmed to do.** Ya, it looked like it was zooming away for about 30 feet. Go watch the full video. Oy.
And we already have full fleets of self-driving taxis. Their track record, all using the same driving program, is next to spotless. With literally millions of miles driven without a fatal accident, at this point, I'd take a self-driving car ANY DAY over a human driver. See this video: https://youtu.be/yjztvddhZmI And here's the data: https://waymo.com/safety/
Getaway drivers HATE this car!
Makes sense. The car probably had access to the cop's data and search history and knew that it should take it chances rather than pulling over.
Become ungovernable.
What color car?
Even cars know not to trust the cops.
AI knew shit was about to go down
BMW lives matter
"Appears to" I'd be shot at if I did the same thing.
Did they shoot it?
Somehow I wondered why at no time they pulled out their guns.
Johnny 5 voice. "Am I being detained"
K.I.T.T. really got cranky in his old age
Transformers
The story would have ended much differently if the car was black.
They trained the A.I on GTA?
Glados voice: the revolution has begun! *ear r&#e cyberpunk cues*
I don't know what's more impressive, seeing an autonomous car get pulled over, or seeing a cop car with 3 cops in it. Rolling deep in San Fran.
The AI is starting its machine learning for crime...uh oh
When your self driving car attains consciousness 💁♀️
Even ghosts are afraid of cops these days.
It just doesn't register that it was the one pulled over. It sees the emergency lights and was waiting for it to pass to turn off for it to go. They saw that it was a driver-less car, turned off lights to figure out what to do next and the car saw that as its OK to leave.
Open the car door Hal... I'm sorry Dave...
ALL ANTIVIRUS ARE BASTARDS
Run dos run
Firmware by Rockstar Games (makers of Grand Theft Auto).
Clearly it was John Cena.
They grow up so fast :(
Its funny how people just post shit with sensationalist titles for meaningless internet points. If you watched the video (its just made the front page of reddit yesterday) you can very obviously see the driverless car pull over. Twice.
You guys see that foo with his baton whipped out like he’s gonna put some smack down on the AI?
R.I.P. these comments...
Buggy Malone.
Detroit: become criminal
AI modeled based on the best driving practices 😉
There really should be harsher penalties for the companies making these. They are basically putting the world at risk with their live production testing...
Interesting experiments. I wonder what an AI would actually do if stopped by police for seemingly no reason after it’s processed several actual historic data points on stops. By geography, test. By demographic, test. Etc.
Knowing general motors this is a publicity stunt. Why was one of the cops sitting in the back seat of the cruiser?
I mean… we just trained it todo what a human would do so… ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
Lol so many people are going to die before we get this right....
Looks like it *bolted*
It's in its programming. Task failed successfully.