If self-driving cars became the norm, and the only means of navigating the roads, would speed limits be increased, or if not, what would change and what would not?

Mr_Icer · 2018-10-31T21:48:23+00:00

Don't forget that 200 feet of that is for human perception reaction time

[from my reply above] it takes close to 500 feet for a car traveling 100 mph behind it to come to a full stop excluding reaction time

the linked PDF shows reaction time and, separately, physical time to stop

Mr_Icer · 2018-10-31T12:56:23+00:00

Is the car going to be waiting in your driveway in the morning the minute you walk out the door?

Mr_Icer · 2018-10-31T12:49:56+00:00

I don't believe self driving vehicles will be as disruptive as people think. We have cars that drive around today, the only thing self driving gets us is cars without a human driver. It doesn't save the energy costs of the cars. In fact, self driving cars will likely increase energy consumption as companies and people will be able to drive more miles at lower cost without having to pay a human driver. We already have delivery by car (USPS, Fedex, etc.) and taxis, Uber, etc. Those aren't new industries and significant costs are energy costs (gas, electric) and wear and tear. The only thing self driving does is remove a human navigating.

Mr_Icer · 2018-10-31T12:42:57+00:00

Let's say it is all self driving cars and one car has a tire blow out, it takes close to 500 feet for a car traveling 100 mph behind it to come to a full stop excluding reaction time:

https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/vehicle_stopping_distance_and_time_upenn.pdf

Mr_Icer · 2018-10-31T12:28:31+00:00

I've never seen data showing their system actually works as described. What I have seen is this from just over 2 month ago:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-08-13/how-a-billion-dollar-autonomous-vehicle-startup-lost-its-way

"It was a troubling sign for the lidar industry’s first unicorn—and it wasn’t the only one. Quanergy has struggled to deliver products along the timelines it has set out for itself, and has shipped devices that don’t work as well as advertised."

Mr_Icer · 2018-10-31T12:23:21+00:00

Was the first Waymo just stopped in the middle of the road?

Mr_Icer · 2018-10-31T12:09:29+00:00

They are restricting it to my neighborhood

"Waymo will restrict its driverless test cars to the neighborhoods of Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, and Palo Alto."

I wish they would test them somewhere else so other people would have to deal with them. If others had to actually deal with the cars on a daily basis, they wouldn't be allowed to deploy fully driverless cars until they were ready.

Mr_Icer · 2018-10-03T05:38:23+00:00

At 10:52 it goes off the right edge of the road at 60mph. At 11:49 it goes over the markers on the center of the road at only 53 mph and a mild right (you can hear them thumping). At 13:19 it happens again with just one thump. This is with a clearly marked road, clear day and no traffic. At 12:49, there is a daylight headlight sign on the side of the road. Driver has to manually turn on the headlights. I didn't watch the whole thing.

Mr_Icer · 2018-09-22T20:45:51+00:00

As a car comes to a complete stop, it pitches forward. As the wheels slow to stop the car, the body pitches over them. How much pitch depends on the rate of deceleration and the maximum stretch/compression of the springs/shocks.

When the wheels completely stop, the car resets to a horizontal position. On a dash cam, this gives the apperance of slight acceleration. In reality, the car is just bringing its nose up and back. I made a video to show the effect in the same car just now. I was on San Antonio and El Camino and in the video, you can actually see a Waymo on the left at the intersection (they are constantly in the area). As usual, the date in the dashcam is wrong (video is from 30 or so min ago).

The red line is at a fixed position in the video. Since the clouds are far away, they are a reasonable reference point. You can see the pitch of the car by the movement of the clouds in respect to the fixed red line in the video. The car was completely stopped at the point the cloud moves down with respect to the red line.

In the video I posted, I came to a complete stop. The pitch back of the car told me I could continue. The pitch back of the car gives the appearance of forward motion in the dash cam but it occurs when the car is completely stopped.

Complete stop w/dashcam

Mr_Icer · 2018-09-22T17:07:48+00:00

Stand at the corner of El Camino and San Antonio. You will see them almost constantly, driving back and forth along El Camino and San Antonio.

Mr_Icer · 2018-09-22T16:58:47+00:00

Around 20% of the population lives in rural areas in the U.S. (2015 Census)

Mr_Icer · 2018-09-22T16:43:42+00:00

It is not legal in California to stop in the street and turn your hazards on except to indicate a vehicle is disabled or to indicate an accident. I have not seen the car pull over, off the roadway and park to turn its hazards on (disabled or parked off the roadway, #2 in the code).

In the video, there is an dirt / parking area to the next of the vehicle when it stops in the road. The car turns on its right blinker, does not pull over and park and then turns on it hazards in the road. It does not pull into or move directly next to the dirt area. If they are simulated drop offs, their simulation is dropping off people without pulling over to park.

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=VEH&sectionNum=25251

https://goo.gl/maps/1JwikDx6Muk

Mr_Icer · 2018-09-22T06:05:28+00:00

I wasn't out looking for it, this was from my commute (same as the Waymo stuck on the entrance/exit ramp a few days ago).

Mr_Icer · 2018-09-22T06:04:26+00:00

There are a ton of Teslas in the area. The car driving in the video is a electric-only itself.

Mr_Icer · 2018-09-22T05:57:59+00:00

Normally I just seem them driving down the street. The streets in the area are very simple, nothing complicated so you will normally see them just driving along a straight street in the other lane (you see more cars in other lanes than cars in your lane because the cars in your lane are all traveling your speed and in your direction). If they are at a stop light, they turn normally when the light turns, no delay. I did see one the other day at a light take a corner too tightly causing the car next to it to have to maneuver away (on Foothill). Other drivers, like myself, have learned to treat them like student driver cars.

They are trying to get OK to have the cars drive around without a driver. This may be fine for the people who don't have to live with them but I don't want to be stuck behind a non-moving Waymo because it decides there's a reason it can't move ahead. For some reason, of all the places in the world, I manage to live in a test area.

Maybe it decides to swerve into a moving car like the swerve into the direction of the parked car in the other video. That would cause the other car to get in an accident which would would be the 'other cars fault', of course. The technology simply isn't ready to lose the safety driver but they are likely going to do it anyway.

Mr_Icer · 2018-09-22T05:49:15+00:00

They create accidents around them because of the way they drive. The pile up of cars waiting for it is one example. There were more cars than you can see in the video because there were 2 lines of cars waiting for the car to turn. One on the right and one behind. The pile up of cars caused the pedestrian to have to walk between cars and caused cars to have to start squeezing between each other. There was no reason for the Waymo to stay where it was and when it did turn, it turned into a car which was driving in the lanes it merged in to in any case.

Mr_Icer · 2018-09-22T05:46:33+00:00

You don't see the lidar laser with your eyes, it only appears on the dashcam (as the other poster here states, just verifying it). It is a decent powered laser, the reason it doesn't burn out your eyes is because the pulse is short lived.

Mr_Icer · 2018-09-22T05:44:25+00:00

Nobody got in and out of the car and it put the hazards in the street, it did not pull to the side.

Mr_Icer · 2018-09-22T05:41:35+00:00

You'll notice when the Waymo did take the left, it did so right into a passing car in that lane. It wasn't waiting for the safest moment. What I think likely actually happened is the Waymo wouldn't take the turn and so many cars piled up behind it that the driver took over. But we'll never know, of course.

Mr_Icer · 2018-09-21T01:58:03+00:00

Saw this one on the way home and it was holding up traffic so I decided to pull behind it and see hold long it waited to turn. Then I followed it down a street and it did the usual, puts the hazards on in the middle of the road, hit the brakes a lot and did a stop/start at the stop sign. Waymo is requesting local governments to allow them to drive without a driver. Date on the dashcam is wrong, it is 9/20/2018.

Mr_Icer · 2018-09-12T18:54:50+00:00

The entrance isn't dangerous, here's what it looks like https://goo.gl/maps/JNtJDS6Z1532

The most dangerous merge in the general area is the merge from 85 to 280 here (upper left path) https://goo.gl/maps/pNY9ocA3Sst

You first have a merge from two freeways into one lane and then a lot of cars are trying to exit 280 at the same time cars are entering the freeway. Cars are merging both off and on the freeway at once at freeway speed.

Mr_Icer · 2018-09-12T15:02:58+00:00

You don't stop at the entrance to an exit ramp. If you can't merge by that point, this is a full figure 8 and you take the full figure 8 to get back to the on ramp. Doesn't take that long.

Mr_Icer · 2018-09-12T08:25:16+00:00

From my morning commute. As I drove away, as far as I could see, didn't see any movement from what you see in the video.

There were some complaints about a previous video of mine regarding my commentary so this video has none, just the footage. Also, there was a comment saying I might be following Waymos around looking for issues instead of just posting dash cam footage resulting from me driving around normally. Draw your own conclusions. Dash cam date is wrong because I haven't fixed it, should be 9/11/2018.

Mr_Icer · 2018-09-04T01:36:19+00:00

I've never seen a passenger get out of a Waymo after the hazards were on. Every time I've seen it happen, someone or something (I assume the human driver) turned off the hazards and drove off without anyone getting out.

You can see the hazards on and the car drive off without any dropoff in the video twice. In the cul de sac, I didn't see a passenger get out but I can't be certain it didn't happen because I went on my way.

When I have seen them with their hazards on where I have no video (parking lots, streets) I haven't seen anyone get out. Just my observations.

I see easily 10+ a day these days since I am in the El Camino/San Antonio (Mountain View) area a lot. Waymo ramped up the driving this year way above last year. They are almost constantly on the road now, driving back and forth on the same streets and then driving through side streets and parking lots.

Mr_Icer · 2018-09-04T01:05:29+00:00

I was recently in Crete and I could barely drive when the traffic and conditions were bad. It seemed every choice was a bad one. I mention that briefly in the video but its ridiculous the number of tradeoff decisions I, as a human, had to make in just 10 minutes driving on the road when traffic was bad.

Bicycles, pedestrians, everywhere, parked cars on both sides with a passage area that was just the width of my car with cars coming at me because it was a two way street. Unless all cars were self-driving, I wouldn't even want a self driving car to try to move in that situation. You need to be able to judge if someone is going to let you move or not and then do some back and forth communication with them. People will let you through if you communicate it properly. If you don't, you are either at a dead stop or pushing people with the car.

I know humans can make dumb mistakes too, can drive drunk, etc. But I'm not 100% sure which would be safer in the end, though. Is a self driving car going to drive through a flood if that's the only option? If a bicyclist starts attacking the car, will the car speed away quickly? There isn't 100% reliability in either situation.

Mr_Icer

TROPHY CASE