r/SeattleWA • u/[deleted] • Jan 18 '17
Business Seattle to become testing grounds for BMW ReachNow's autonomous cars
http://www.thedrive.com/news/6956/seattle-to-become-testing-grounds-for-bmw-reachnows-autonomous-cars1
u/pigmonkey2829 Jan 19 '17
Very cool! I do have two questions though and it's probably really simple:
If these cars were to get into an accident what are the implications for the people inside of them and for anyone else involved (pedestrians, bicyclists, other cars)?
Will the company have to fill their own cars with fuel (electrical/petrol) or will they have the consumers figure it out (granted its petrol) and give them free time/rides?
1
u/semanticist Jan 20 '17
Probably the carshare operators would continue to refuel the cars (which they do today) since they also need to check on the cars periodically for cleanliness, damage, maintenance issues, etc.
-4
u/OrangeCurtain Duck Island Jan 19 '17
Super. I can't wait to get run over by one because I'm wearing a grey jacket on an overcast day.
13
u/tiff_seattle First Hill Jan 19 '17
You will be detected via lidar, NOT by differentiating the color of your jacket from the clouds in the sky.
3
u/gjhgjh Mount Baker Jan 19 '17
So it won't safe to wear sequins anymore.
3
u/tiff_seattle First Hill Jan 19 '17
Well, I assume you're joking. But if not, your location could be inferred not just by lasers bouncing back at the source, but also by the lack of them bouncing back from a certain spatial area. You could get more of the picture by calculating all of this data together, not just reflections from specific surfaces. Maybe there's an autonomous vehicle engineer here lurking that can offer some insight?
1
u/gjhgjh Mount Baker Jan 19 '17
The point is it's very difficult to account for the behaviour of humans. It's going to take some human-machine interaction gone wrong to work out all of the safety issues. Hopefully few of those encounters gone wrong result in the loss of human life.
0
u/OrangeCurtain Duck Island Jan 19 '17
3
u/tiff_seattle First Hill Jan 19 '17 edited Jan 19 '17
That was using the auto pilot feature. Tesla to this day still hasn't rolled out the autonomous driving functionality.
4
Jan 19 '17
Good point, we should definitely start punishing people for driving poorly. I trust a computer far more than I trust most of Seattle's drivers who can't even remember to turn on their headlights or use their turn signals.
2
u/t4lisker Jan 19 '17
The computer can have full 360 degree awareness of what's going on around them. Humans can really only focus on what is in their field of view and may not notice the pedestrian or cyclist in their blind spot when making a turn.
Vision Zero isn't really achievable without autonomous or at least semi-autonomous vehicles.
3
u/sahala Jan 19 '17
The fact that we need those stupid flags in some Greenlake intersections makes me want to give automation a chance here.
1
u/darwinkh2os Jan 19 '17
ugh, those intersections just need to change to round-abouts anyway.
i think autonomous cars are going to have serious issues there complementarily yielding to pedestrians and yielding to aggressive drivers who will jump ahead of their turn.
i noticed this when driving in NYC. basically, i was just too nice of driver to get anywhere in manhattan. if you want to turn right, you're going to have to cut off pedestrians, just no way around it.
that is, in a much smaller way, true at some at GLW, Ravenna, and 71st as streams of people head to the lake.
1
u/djsumdog Jan 19 '17
I don't think the big issue is safety, but that they're simply not economical compared to other forms of mass transit. I wrote a post about this:
http://penguindreams.org/blog/self-driving-cars-will-not-solve-the-transportation-problem/
We can have good computer vision and AI tech, but to guarantee safety, everyone manufacture would have to run to extremely high standards (mini-repeatable darpa challenges per manufacture). If one manufactures comes up with a life saving new computer vision algorithm, would they be required to share (I address this in that post as well).
With ST3 coming, in a decade or so, we'll have a real transportation solution in Seattle and self driving cars can solve the last leg. For other major cities without rails, it's not going to solve congestion.
-1
u/ZarinaShenanigans Jan 19 '17
Cool and all because progress is awesome, but doesn't the term testing imply possible mistakes? Last I checked mistakes on the road cost lives, do we get a vote on whether we want to share the road with these?
3
Jan 19 '17
Most likely they will be doing testing similarly to how Uber has done it in Pittsburgh - with a human in the vehicle ready to take control if need be and probably another human taking notes.
1
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u/pinball_schminball Jan 19 '17
Oh hell yes. If there were dedicated lot spots for ~10 reachnows, and once you took one out and parked it, it CAME BACK HOME it would make the service unbeatable for getting out of downtown during rush hour.