Driverless vehicles - Will they change cycling in any ways?

[ebikeerwidnes]

My new (to me) car has lots of automatic bits and pieces - and some of them are worrying if you think about teh car being out of the direct and immediate control of a human

The most worrying is the lane tracker
If it sees you drift out of lane without signalling then is gently pushes the steering wheel to put you back in lane
very gentle so you can feel it but if your hands are on the wheel then it takes almost no effort to ignore it

BUT if I take my hands off the wheel and let it drift slightly (on an empty road - obviously - then it is enough to bring the car back into lane

which is good - except that it sometimes mistakes a tarmac repair or a white marking in the lane as the edge of the lane and moves you in the wrong direction
which could be a serious problem if a driver was not holding the wheel properly!


I presume a proper modern automatic system would have abetter system
but it does worry me

 

[Mike_P]

I have visions of a driverless vehicle encountering a newly opened up gypsum hole in the Ripon, of course it would stop..

 

[icowden]

I presume a proper modern automatic system would have abetter system
but it does worry me

In a word yes. Most lane keeping systems are pretty basic. Tesla is leading the world at the moment. If you try Tesla Enhanced Autopilot and compare with just about any other EV* it's out of this world

*I understand that Mercedes have a pretty good system

 

[I like Skol]

In a word yes. Most lane keeping systems are pretty basic. Tesla is leading the world at the moment. If you try Tesla Enhanced Autopilot and compare with just about any other EV* it's out of this world

*I understand that Mercedes have a pretty good system

Just going to throw this out there, but how about the driver stays in charge of piloting their
Vehicle?

 

[Bristolian]

Just going to throw this out there, but how about the driver stays in charge of piloting their
Vehicle?

Far too radical to ever get accepted

 

[Fastpedaller]

I think the undoing of the autopilot cars will be the legal one......... Crash situation - Car driver responsible, or car manufacturer (or indeed seller) and will insurance pay. To many issues without an answer (even in court)

 

[Ming the Merciless]

From July cars sold in EU will need to have a speed limiter. We need to see things like this up and running long before anything remotely fully autonomous gets out there.

 

[mjr]

The most worrying is the lane tracker
If it sees you drift out of lane without signalling then is gently pushes the steering wheel to put you back in lane
very gentle so you can feel it but if your hands are on the wheel then it takes almost no effort to ignore it

Could it discourage drivers crossing into the righthand lane to overtake?

 

[icowden]

Just going to throw this out there, but how about the driver stays in charge of piloting their
Vehicle?

Why would you want a slow processing erratic emotional human being in control? We aren't actually good at that stuff. It takes around 120ms for light to go into the eye, get processed, our brain react and get our muscles to do stuff. That's really slow compared to an AI brain.

Tesla data shows that Autopilot is 10x safer than the average US human and 5x safer than a Tesla with no AP tech enabled (Tesla has some inherent tech like collision avoidance and mirror cameras that reduce collisions). And this is just Autopilot - not FSD.

 

[mjr]

Tesla data shows that Autopilot is 10x safer than the average US human and 5x safer than a Tesla with no AP tech enabled

I think the first word there is a conflict of interest problem!

 

[DRM]

From July cars sold in EU will need to have a speed limiter. We need to see things like this up and running long before anything remotely fully autonomous gets out there.

The problem with this is automatic speed limit vehicles, mixed up with vehicles without, for example smart motorway, speed limit changes, car slows down quite quickly, following car driver stamps on brake pedal causing panic braking all along motorway, or overtaking a long row of HGV’s all nose to tail, when a police car/ambulance is behind with blues & two’s on you can’t pull in as there’s no room as far as you can see, and you can’t go above 70 Mph as Mr Police man is a foot from your back bumper weaving about in that aggressive get out of my way manner, yet you can’t do anything to get out of the way, good idea in parts, but still full of pitfalls

 

[Alex321]

The problem with this is automatic speed limit vehicles, mixed up with vehicles without, for example smart motorway, speed limit changes, car slows down quite quickly,

Why would the automated car slow down any more quickly than a human driver?

following car driver stamps on brake pedal causing panic braking all along motorway, or overtaking a long row of HGV’s all nose to tail, when a police car/ambulance is behind with blues & two’s on you can’t pull in as there’s no room as far as you can see, and you can’t go above 70 Mph as Mr Police man is a foot from your back bumper weaving about in that aggressive get out of my way manner, yet you can’t do anything to get out of the way, good idea in parts, but still full of pitfalls

You are not allowed to break traffic laws in order to allow emergency vehicles through, so you aren't supposed to go above 70 in that situation.

And I have never come across a situation where the other traffic would not let you in when there was and emergency vehicle with blues on trying to get through. Though usually the traffic in the RH lane just pulls as far over to the right as they can, while traffic in the next lane over pulls as far left as they can, and that gives enough room.

 

[mjr]

Why would the automated car slow down any more quickly than a human driver?

Because most human drivers are tailgating daffodils.

You are not allowed to break traffic laws in order to allow emergency vehicles through, so you aren't supposed to go above 70 in that situation.

But in any case, because the speed limit detection is not infallible (as I mentioned, we once had a car that incorrectly read the speed limit sign in a roadside car park), there's always an override, whether a pushbutton or something like the kickdown used to override some automatic gearboxes.

This "can't speed to get out of the way" seems to be an invented problem. If you want to deliberately break laws, you still can, but I expect the car computer will record the decision and it will be held against drivers if they're investigated. That's what they really fear.

What I'd really like is an adaptive cruise control that figures out X mph is sufficient to reach the back of the next queue just as it clears to that speed, then aims for that speed, similar to the modern train driver aids that calculate the speed required to reach the next signal at its permitted speed as it clears. Then it would reduce fuel consumption and pollution from going faster than needed and unnecessary braking.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

following car driver stamps on brake pedal causing panic braking

Only if people are tail gating. My experience of speed limited auto cruise so far is that the slowing down is actually fairly gentle.

 

[DRM]

Why would the automated car slow down any more quickly than a human driver?



You are not allowed to break traffic laws in order to allow emergency vehicles through, so you aren't supposed to go above 70 in that situation.

And I have never come across a situation where the other traffic would not let you in when there was and emergency vehicle with blues on trying to get through. Though usually the traffic in the RH lane just pulls as far over to the right as they can, while traffic in the next lane over pulls as far left as they can, and that gives enough room.

Because in the event of the signs on the gantry changing it will brake quicker than a human can react, and believe me I’ve had the stupid things go from NSL to 50 or 40 Mph in the blink of an eye as your about 200 yards away, and I’ve also had a stupid Police car right up the Harris of my speed limited van, whilst passing two lanes of HGV’s , all nose to tail without a gap to pull into , whilst this Richard Cranium is aggressively dropping back a smidge, then accelerating hard towards me, as well as weaving about, despite the “This vehicle is limited to 70 Mph” Sticker on the back, and there was me under the misapprehension that that they’re observational skills were top draw, an absolute liability to everyone around them.