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GOOGLE RECENTLY TAUGHT its self-driving cars an important lesson about buses: they’re less likely to yield.
That’s the company’s conclusion after one of its autonomous vehicles crashed into the side of public transport bus in Mountain View, California, prompting it to make “refinements” to its software.
“From now on, our cars will more deeply understand that buses (and other large vehicles) are less likely to yield to us than other types of vehicles,” the company writes in its monthly autonomous vehicle report for February.
This was the first accident where Google admitted that its self-driving car was at fault, rather than the accident being caused by other human drivers. Nobody was injured from the crash as the car’s speed was less than 3kmh while the bus’s speed was 24kmh.
The incident in question occurred on Valentine’s Day after Google’s car had followed the “social norm” of pulling to the rightmost side of its lane to prepare for a turn.
However, the car discovered sandbags blocking its way in front of a storm drain, so it needed to merge back into the center of the lane. In slowly doing so, it hit the bus, according to the DMV traffic report Google about the crash.
Google says its test driver had allowed Google’s car to make the move despite seeing the bus coming, because he or she expected the bus to slow or stop.
“Our car had detected the approaching bus, but predicted that it would yield to us because we were ahead of it,” the report said. “Our test driver, who had been watching the bus in the mirror, also expected the bus to slow or stop. And we can imagine the bus driver assumed we were going to stay put”.
Our test driver, who had been watching the bus in the mirror, also expected the bus to slow or stop. And we can imagine the bus driver assumed we were going to stay put. Unfortunately, all these assumptions led us to the same spot in the lane at the same time. This type of misunderstanding happens between human drivers on the road every day.
This is a classic example of the negotiation that’s a normal part of driving – we’re all trying to predict each other’s movements. In this case, we clearly bear some responsibility, because if our car hadn’t moved there wouldn’t have been a collision. That said, our test driver believed the bus was going to slow or stop to allow us to merge into the traffic, and that there would be sufficient space to do that.
“This type of misunderstanding happens between human drivers on the road every day,” Google writes.
The company says that it hopes that the refinements it made to its software will help it “handle situations like this more gracefully in the future”.
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If the bus had also been driverless it would have been programmed to let the car merge in. The world will be a whole lot safer when we get driverless buses.
Driverless Luas would be even easier to implement. 24hr service, No strikes.
And youll be allowed to eat bananas on driverless buses too
Eugene – what’s the context there? Sounds like a story?
Eugene, I couldn’t possibly say. The PC brigade and more would maul me . But we’ll still be able to eat bananas with a bit a luck
Google cars need to learn buses do whatever the f they like. Middle of the road at rush hour? Perfect place to stop and let this old lady off and then pull out without bothering to look.
This is a non story, why are we trying to find ways of talking this tech down. People are getting worse at driving – we need this.
People are getting worse at driving? What? where did you pull that one out of?
Well they aren’t getting better. Put down your phone / makeup/ smoke / food/ paper and look around. They are getting worse
Actually if the bus had been automatic and the rules of the road followed this wouldn’t have happened.
Road fatalities are going down year on year. 166 in 2015, 193 in 2014. There was 415 in 2000 and has gone down gradually every year since? Stats don’t lie, your wrong no matter how much you ‘look around’. That’s just the fatalities I can pop out the collision stats to prove its not just down to car safety either.
# Rothar Man… Drivers & Cyclists getting worse…. cyclists need to also pay attention and learn how traffic lights work…. a red exists meaning stop!!
Whats that? Silence? Could also be a man on a bike cycling furiously away from the facts.
People are getting better at driving, hence the decrease in road deaths
I can’t wait for this technology to become available. Just think. It’s Christmas. You’ve been shopping. It’s teaming with sleety rain and you’ve walked 20 mins from your car but alas you call your car to you while you have a coffee. Brilliant. That said if I was a bus driver or taxi driver I would find them as a threat to my job and run them off too.
Not to mention the car could probably detect a driver having any type of health matter. Automatically contact 999 and bring the now patient to the hospital. Or you had an accident up the mountains and can’t drive and lost your phone in the accident. Chitty chitty can get you home safe or to a safe place. Brilliant. The possibilities are endless.
It will be the resurrection of the rural pub too.
you forgot to mention that someone could hack in to it and hold you to ransom and drive you to god know’s where unless you pay a ransom
..only above 55mph though, otherwise it’s not likely…… :)
not likely means there is a chance and the technology is not readily available when the guys that can do this have time to scrutinise one in the flesh it could be a different ball game
The human supervisor got it very wrong but an automated car should not be programed to play chicken with a bus.
I like their deflection, we bear ‘some’ responsibility. Taking chances is the definition of bad driving, you wait for a gap or for someone to actually stop. (or if no one lets you out, inch a bit to close the gate after a good while). Maybe the bus driver stopped and then said feck it but they did not say that.
That car is bigger than I thought. I thought they were using tiny looking mini yokes
They have them too….
Need a bit of code change. Bus Driver = No Merge
….or, car meets sandbags = stop.
Smashing news
# Rothar Man… Drivers & Cyclists getting worse…. cyclists need to also pay attention and learn how traffic lights work…. a red exists meaning stop!!
The robot car has not been taught the very first rule of driving:
“Always assume that the other driver is an idiot”.
(Translation: Never assume that you know what the other vehicle is going to do next).
.
Google will need to write a LOT of more code.
In reality,the whole concept of driverless cars is dumb. All it takes is a lack of maintenance, software failure, hardware failure and the result is monstrous pile ups on the worlds motorways.
It’s similar to the old idea that one day we would all be flying around in personal helicopters and the like. Can you imagine the results of flying hoons, mechanical failure etc with that sort if stuff, it beggars belief
The computers that currently control cars have software and hardware failures all the time. They require defragging and a full reboot that takes upwards of 8 hours every day. If they don’t receive this – or even if they are not appropriately stimulated – they are prone to shutting down completely while in control of a vehicle. They are poor at judging speeds, can only deal with extremely limited amounts of data and, because they are made of meat, their reaction times are shockingly slow.
All these failure in the current generation of car-controlling computers cause perhaps a million fatalities a year.
In a motorway pile up it is of each individual drivers responsibility to keep a safe distance behind the vehicle in front to be able to stop and avoid rear-end collisions. If there were no tailgaters there would be no pileups.
Ah Shawn what Stephen is talking about is if all cars are driver less you have no control over the distance they are apart they do
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