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The UK government is to outline measures to permit driverless cars to use public roads by next year.
Currently, autonomous vehicles are only allowed on private roads.
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CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Debate!
"UK to allow driverless cars on public roads"
(116 posts)-
Posted 9 years ago #
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Maybe there could be a fleet of them practicing in Holyrood Park - keeping to the speed limit...
Posted 9 years ago # -
In keeping with the time honoured CCE fashion of thread drift... Mr MeepMeep and I were doing laps of Arthur's Seat on Monday evening and were witness to a roadie on a TT bike overtaking a VW Golf that was probably hovering around the 20mph speed limit.
Weeeellll, I say "speed limit" but really mean that the driver was going slower than every other driver around that
racetrackratrunpark.Posted 9 years ago # -
Oh - if the real variety of driverless cars can be programmed with cyclist awareness and consideration functionality, I'd take them over oblivious, careless and/or aggressive drivers any day of the week.
Posted 9 years ago # -
"thread drift... Mr MeepMeep and I were doing laps of Arthur's Seat"
Posted 9 years ago # -
Alas, no. We managed four before the light went (/we lost interest)!
Posted 9 years ago # -
I feel safer already.
Posted 9 years ago # -
@MeepMeep - Oh but they are
http://googleblog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/the-latest-chapter-for-self-driving-car.html
<voiceover-voice> Imagine a world where cars don't overtake on blind bends, speed, fail to see you, ignore give way signs and red lights, slowdown in bad conditions and catastrophic driver error only results in the car refusing to move...</voiceover-voice>
Th thing is that there will be disasters and people will be killed and injured but it is very likely that the rate will be hugely reduced but will people accept this?
The roads will be very different in 20 years time I suspect.
Posted 9 years ago # -
The argument google makes for autonomous vehicles is that driver error kills more people than anything else and that their systems are more reliable than humans. After a recent visit to the computer history museum in Mountain View I was impressed by the Google car exhibit. There is a believable vision system for identifying peds and cycles. Unlike modern vehicles they are designed purely for transport and are deliberately limited in performance--the ride feel is genuinely boring. Wouldn't it be nice if Jeremy Clarkson were forced to ride in a google car for the rest of his days. I wondered though if they have properly prepared for someone who dresses up in a tarmac coloured suit and flattens themselves to the pavement in an attempt to be the first suicide by google car.
Posted 9 years ago # -
Apparently on certain single track roads in Sweden everyone drives a Volvo at 56mph exactly two chevrons apart from each other and if a mad Brit comes along going faster, they pull over to the hard shoulder and let him / her past. I will try to establish if there is truth in this. If so it would seem that there are cultures that go for safety rather than speed? I should check out road fatalities in Sweden too if this argument is to get anywhere.
Q why can't we be more like the Swedish/Dutch/Danes ?
A we are not like the Swedish/ Dutch/Danes?
Posted 9 years ago # -
Imagine a world where cars don't overtake on blind bends, speed
Wrong.
Google cars have been designed to speed so they can "keep up" with other traffic.
Posted 9 years ago # -
@Min - Wow. That says a lot about attitudes to road safety. Not too surprised as I have had people argue with me that a car which does not allow the driver to exceed the speed limit (an obvious extension of the warnings that are currently issued by some cars) would actually be _more_ dangerous, mainly in the context of overtaking.
I had no idea that such wrong headedness was actually making its way into design specs :-(
Posted 9 years ago # -
It is really depressing isn't it? :-( And there was me hoping that driverless cars might slowly bring an end to speeding. (no pun intended)
Posted 9 years ago # -
I would think that design decision would be fairly easy to challenge in the courts, after all, it's purposely breaking the law so surely the designer will be liable for any speeding offences, or indeed all of them!
Posted 9 years ago # -
@Min I was all for them until you said that. I'm flabbergasted.
Posted 9 years ago # -
In much the same way as both the instructor and driver as liable when the driver only has a provisional licence perhaps it should be both the person in the car and the designer who get the speeding ticket.
And as the car is smart perhaps when they are writing the regulations it could be forced to report itself to the authorities whenever it breaks the law.
Posted 9 years ago # -
Safety benefits are always absorbed as performance benefits. When seat belts became mandatory, drivers (subconsciously or otherwise) took greater risks - rear seat, motorcyclist, pedestrian & cyclist fatalities/injuries rocketed.
When ABS and later traction control were introduced, drivers simply went slightly faster round corners, particularly in the wet. Same for crumple zones, side impact beams, airbags, improved tyres, adaptive cruise, lane departure warning...
So the 'safety benefit' of autonomous cars will become a performance benefit - they will travel faster, closer and more.
See "Death on the Streets" for more info: http://rdrf.org.uk/death-on-the-streets-cars-and-the-mythology-of-road-safety/
Posted 9 years ago # -
So the 'safety benefit' of autonomous cars will become a performance benefit - they will travel faster, closer and more.
The difference with them however is that nothing is subconscious. They will only travel faster if deliberately programmed to do so.
Posted 9 years ago # -
@eddie_h, I have that book at home. It's definitely recommended reading!
Posted 9 years ago # -
@crowriver - yes, I've been reading it. It is pretty heavy going and sometimes difficult to understand/follow.
But it's really good.
The biggest revelation for me is that they've known about 'this stuff' since the 1930s!
Posted 9 years ago # -
Attitudes have changed a bit over the years. I passed my driving test about 25 years ago...speeding even slightly was viewed as an instant fail. I passed my advanced driving test about 10 years ago and 'keeping up with the flow of traffic' and 'making good progress' were basically phrases which were euphemisms for 'it's ok to speed, sometimes by quite a bit'. That's still not something I subscribe to. Apparently I drive like the proverbial nun, but hey, driving always seems rather fast if you spend most of your travel time cycling.
Posted 9 years ago # -
Did my advanced motorcycle test 5or6 years ago ish! and speeding was an immediate fail. You should be able to make good progress inside the limits, otherwise the view was that you were clearly not at the required standard.
I have to confess I agree with that opinion.Posted 9 years ago # -
"...otherwise the view was that you were clearly not at the required standard"
Perhaps they need to explicitly call it "driving as fast as possible, technically within the speed limits, though perhaps not always strictly in the safest possible manner" rather than just "advanced" if "making progress" is just a euphemism for "reducing journey time".
Posted 9 years ago # -
Agreed Smudge. To be more precise, I noticed a disconnect between the training (from 'civilians', where the above quotes were quite common) and the actual test, where the police examiner did take a no nonsense approach. Which actually just highlights the societal attitude problem to speed.
Posted 9 years ago # -
Wingpig, I think some of these phrases do get (mis)used in the way you mention. But I'd certainly defend the overall advanced driving curriculum for its emphasis on safety, despite the instructors being human and thus as tainted by the deity of speed as many are. Doing the course will make almost anyone into a much safer driver. I'll certainly make my kids do it if they want to drive my car!*
*assuming driverless cars have not taken over Edinburgh by that point. Although I'm not sure there's an AI vision system out there that can cope with some of our junctions :-)
Posted 9 years ago # -
@Winpig, no, safe progress was without fail put before speed. If the training is presented in the way you suggest then it does not follow the IAM policy I have seen.
That is not to say that there are idiots within the scheme, however I have to defend the scheme and it's aims overall.Posted 9 years ago # -
Well Robert Davis, author of "Death on the Streets", has a lot to say about the advanced driving test (and the ordinary driving test too).
The advanced driving test works to create a sense of pride, elitism, privilege and a sense of the right to drive fast.
Whereas what is really needed among motorists is a a sense of humility i.e the feeling that you are in charge of a machine with the capacity to create a lot of harm, and you should tread carefully around everything and everyone.
Pride comes before a fall and all that.
Posted 9 years ago # -
@Smude What if there was no safe opportunity to overtake anything during the test period? Would the test continue indefinitely until a safe opportunity to overtake became available, in order to be able to prove the ability to legally make good progress relative to other non-Advanced traffic, if that's a tenet of the system?
Posted 9 years ago # -
I will admit that the one place where I do deliberately exceed the speed limit is the outside lane of a motorway, where I aim for about 70 - 75 mph. My feeling is that given that "most" people are doing 80 and a considerable number are going even faster, doing 70 or less is more of a hazard, whatever the legalities. Others may disagree. I'm happy to be disagreed with in this instance! (I suppose my other option is to not use that lane - sometimes that is what I do.)
Posted 9 years ago # -
@eddieh,that is not my experience at all. Others may of course have different experiences.
@winpig, if the vehicle you are following is making any sort of reasonable progress then there is no need to overtake. If it is going particularly slowly then it is very unlikely that a safe opportunity wouldn't present itself during an assessment which could easily last an hour. The assessor could always choose to change their route to avoid an obstruction.
There appears to be a slight disconnect here. The IAM assessment, certainly when I did the training and test, was to assess your ability to drive safely, and to make reasonable progress, ie not hold up other traffic unnecessarily. As I said, any breaking of the speed limit was viewed as unacceptable, and the posted limits as absolute maximum, not targets to be achieved!An interesting side effect of training for the test was 10mpg better and unchanged journey times, along with a realisation that round here the majority of motorway traffic sits about 60-70mph, if you'd asked me before I would have sworn it was nearer 80... Funny thing my/our perception of others!
Posted 9 years ago #
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