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news
Renault driverless car (image taken from YouTube video).jpgRenault chief exec takes swipe at cyclists after calling them ‘one of the biggest problems’ for driverless cars
Renault's chief executive, Carlos Ghosn, says the first semi-autonomous vehicles will appear this year with a fully autonomous car expected to be on the market by 2020. However, he also said that cyclists were proving one of the biggest stumbling blocks when it came to refining the new technology.
"One of the biggest problems is people with bicycles, because they don’t respect any rules usually,” said Ghosn.
He told CNBC that cyclists ‘confuse’ driverless cars. “From time-to-time they behave like pedestrians and from time-to-time they behave like cars.”
In August, a cyclist doing a trackstand paralysed a Google self-driving car as it struggled to judge whether the rider was in motion or not. If in doubt, the car remains stationary, leading to a bizarre standoff between the two.
Google patent reveals how driverless cars recognise hand signals
Jason Torrance, policy director at Sustrans, reminded Ghosn that it was Renault’s responsibility to develop a product fit for use.
"Advocates of driverless cars often forget that people live next to roads and use them regularly, so safety must be prioritised, especially when normal unpredictable and legal human behaviour comes into contact with driverless machines."
One of the main issues with driverless technology thus far has been the degree of caution which is necessarily built into the software – the incident involving the cyclist above being a case in point.
Volvo to accept full responsibility for collisions caused by its driverless cars
A recent study by the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute concluded that accident rates are twice as high for driverless cars as for regular cars, but the majority of incidents involve the driverless car being hit from behind in a slow-speed crash by a human driver unaccustomed to a vehicle being driven so cautiously.
There has even been a case of one of Google's cars being pulled over for driving too slowly – moving at 24mph in a busy 35mph zone, traffic was backing up behind.
Dmitri Dolgov, principal engineer of Google’s driverless cars project says the firm is now looking to make its cars more ‘aggressive’ while still operating according to traffic laws. He argues that this is necessary so that they can fit into traffic more naturally.
via Bikebiz
Alex has written for more cricket publications than the rest of the road.cc team combined. Despite the apparent evidence of this picture, he doesn't especially like cake.
Latest Comments
- imajez 1 hour 18 min ago
Nothing new about zebra [or light controlled] crossing on roundabouts. Sheffield has had them for decades, possibly since the 1970s.
- David9694 2 hours 48 min ago
Herefordshire man fined after throwing parking ticket...
- OnYerBike 4 hours 8 min ago
I'm sure that sort of thing will come sooner or later. But presumably a key ingredient (and why you'd turn to a big brand like Fizik) is knowing...
- muhasib 4 hours 13 min ago
"the cost to rebuild the M25 junction 10/A3 Wisley interchange is £317 million. The project is expected to be completed in 2025. "
- mark1a 4 hours 37 min ago
I think they did, from memory back in the 70s/80s... haven't seen one for years though, our current milkman uses a standard van, albeit hybrid.
- kingleo 5 hours 51 min ago
I believe that straight forks that are used on carbon frames are more dangerous than the old steel forks because they are more rigid, the old steel...
- S.E. 6 hours 23 min ago
Yes, sleep apnea produces more CO... I'm not aware of any doping effect but what do I know....
- Gd29 8 hours 32 min ago
That's true enough. But doesn't address my point that the chainset you get as a replacement will not physically fit chainrings from the chain set...
- brooksby 9 hours 2 min ago
In all fairness, it almost certainly NEVER happened…
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39 comments
This is merely an admission that Renault still have fundamental gaps in their detection and avoidance algorithms. I would hope that a fully autonomous vehicle would be able to detect and avoid anything that a human driver could. By this I mean ridiculously random items left in the road (invent your own list) as well as the more likely such as animals, cyclists, potholes, pedestrians, 'things off the backs of lorries', bollards, traffic cones etc. The Mark I human driver is a hard thing to replace.
The reported comments by the Renault chief merely reflect the view by the vast majority of non-cyclists that there are either cars or there are pedestrians. That others should just keep off the road.
Perhaps car engineers need to invent a new category for the car computer to search for "CYCLIST" and identify their characteristics. Maybe they'll need to invent driverless bicycles.
In any case, how are driverless cars going to react to other road features? e.g. animals
- if a big animal (cow, camel, elephant, big dog) stop.
- if a small animal (mouse,frog, bird) don't stop.
- what is the minimum size at which the car won't stop? say a small dog or cat? How about a 2-year old child that has escaped his garden?
- I long to see how they will handle kangaroos and sheep in Australia. Camels in North Africa, and deer all over Europe will be interesting too.
Adrian
It's a curious example of art mirroring life, because one of the biggest problems for cyclists are cars with drivers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2RCPpdmSVg
i'd love to see how a driverless car deals with the Arc De Triomphe roundabout!
That's only an issue as France has two kinds of priorities with roundabouts. Sometimes it is like here where you sesnibly wait until there's a gap before you pull onto roundabout and sometimes like the Arc de Triomphe, roundabouts still use the bonkers prioté a droite system. This is where you give way to traffic from the right which as can be seen from the video means roundabouts do not work very well.
France needs to repeal the archaic law and then life will be much simpler.
I don't get why autonomous vehicles get so many nay-sayers. For them to be practical, they just have to be safer than the average driver and that's a low bar to get over. Even though they aren't as good as people in identifying unusual situations/vehicles, they make up for that with constant vigilance, unwavering attention and incredibly quick reflexes.
I would have thought that a lot of the time, the autonomous vehicle can assume that the cyclists are trying to not collide with anything, so as long as they're given enough room there shouldn't be too much problem. In an extreme case of a cyclist heading straight towards them on the wrong side of the road, the car simply has to (maybe) slow down and provide enough space for the cyclist to pass by. With all the instrumentation/cameras on autonomous vehicles, it should be simple to provide law enforcement with whatever they need to track down the dangerous road users.
I honestly can't wait for our benign robot car overlords.
I don't think that's the case. To be *practical* (ie. widely-accepted and legal) they have to be MUCH safer than the average driver. Humans are known to be fallible, and we rely on a single driving test plus laws and vehicle and infrastructure for safety. But legally and practically, we accept that "accidents will happen" because most of us want to drive and can't set the bar too high.
When the machine is doing the driving, the standard must be much, much higher, and much more consistent. We can't have AVs that are great most of the time but which are known to get confused by a few odd circumstances. Manufacturers would be liable for massive legal action.
We're going from a situation where responsibility is spread among individuals whose shortcomings are accepted to quite a high degree (as well as being difficult to prove) to a position where manufacturers (or tech firms?) are liable for almost every mistake because they'll be systemic, rather than ad hoc.
It's a bit like us demanding far higher standards of safety from our employers, airlines, etc. than we ever bother with at home. It's irrational (although a very human thing to so).
It's an interesting debate, and one that I don't think anyone has the answer to yet. But it may prevent fully-AVs coming to pass any time soon.
I think that money/profits will prevail and autonomous cars will arrive before they're perfect. There's so much money to be made with commercial vehicles not needing a driver to sleep and insurance costs will become a lot lower for autonomous vehicles (if they have less accidents) so that eventually it'll just make economic sense. It'll also be much safer.
I've said this before on other threads about driverless cars but the only way they can work to anywhere near their full potential is in controlled environments where every car is autonomous and they can all blat along at 100mph inches apart and never crash.
That'd be fine on a lot of existing motorways but in urban environments, it's too cluttered and there are too many variables. Pedestrians, cyclists, animals and things like subtle gestures, "in-turn" merging, a flash of the headlights etc.
The temptation for a cyclist, pedestrian, other driver to simply cut up an autonomous car knowing that it'll hit the brakes pretty much guarantees that selfish human nature will take over. You could play some great games in the street couldn't you?!
I can see a future for autonomous cars where the road would be similar to the Jubilee Line extension where the track is fully enclosed by barriers at stations. Same here, you'd have to have full barriers on the roads, special "boarding points" and no pedestrians, cyclists etc. Worrying.
Easier on motorways where you could start with "autonomous car only" lanes with a higher speed limit.
You could, until the passenger in the car (or even the car itself) pushes the "Report Idiot" button and auto-uploads a high-res video of the incident complete with GPS location, time etc direct to the Police. I'm sure it won't be long before messing with Driverless Cars becomes utterly pointless.
Even though I have no doubt that the Police would welcome another way of fining cyclists, I doubt even they could be bothered to police a system like this.
The bastard mode made me laugh,
. Seriously though I think if they get this right cycling could become a whole lot safer by programming cars to always obay traffic law and not having an idiot in control who hates cyclist or is just a bit dopey in general
As a driver i can often anticipate if someone is about to do something stupid, e.g. run across a road without looking, or suddenly swerve right etc. I doubt driverless cars can tell a drunk pedestrian, or a bloke on a bike cycling with one hand, talking into a mobile phone, and about to swerve to avoid a pothole he hadnt spotted.
I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't let you open the pod bay doors.
“From time-to-time they behave like pedestrians and from time-to-time they behave like cars.”
Sorry Mrrs. Renault, do you mean to say that they behave like cyclists? How surprising! Wow! So insightful!
PS: I'm the biggest advocate of technology you'll ever meet, but driverless cars are just a blindingly daft idea, in my opinion. Have the technologists simply ran out of things to do? How about developing driverless roller skates? Safer, right?
Doesn't really matter whether he meant 'lawless' or just 'hard for AI to predict', but either way it adds to my apprehensions about driverless cars - that once they arrive the pressure to remodel the entire environment to make things easier for cars will get worse, rather than better.
Yup. Every country wanting driverless cars will introduce jaywalking laws so you have to cross the road at fixed points. And I still suspect that some idiot politicians will try to ban cycling on roads. After all driverless cars are going to save the world. Or the commuter. Or the car manufacturers. Or something. And we can't hold up progress now, can we?
I think it will be better with driverless cars, googles made great strides in thier cars towards pedestrians and cyclists. As for remodeling the environment I dont think that will be needed either, the cars use GPS amoungst other things the theyve all ready got a massive map of the network. You would probably get better moving traffic with driverless cars as well, especially if the operate on a mesh network so ecery other car in the area knows what every other car is doing, i.e. distance speed road position, cars would be able to move in unison closer together increasing road space.
You also woudnt have cars blocking and driving in bike lanes.
@chanceronabike - Hmm, that's interesting. Everyone talks about the challenges of the AI rather than meatsack drivers, but not localisation issues. You could end up with certain makes being better at driving in certain countries. And what of governance input - would all makes be forced to adapt to a uniform set of parameters?
Driving in Paris is SO relaxing, because all the cars and motorbikes and scooters ALL follow the rules ALL the time...
I cycle in Paris at times and it's so much better than anywhere in the UK. Why? Despite the general madness, the drivers do like cyclists. Waaaaay more than they do other road users. I'm always surprised at how few cyclists there are there though.
It would be interesting to see how Renault's programmers would cope with the French driving style. I live in Toulouse and hardly anyone follows any normal rules
A progammer wouls have a job reading cars who do not indicate, 270deg round a roundabout in the outside lane with no indication of intention or exit indication, cutting across all the traffic as the other cara can't be arsed to queue. Bon chance Renault, cyclists are the least of your worries
in my experience one of the biggest problems with Renault is reliability...add in more eletronics and there should be little to worry about in terms of time on the road ..
Can someone explain to the guy from google that perhaps we should make human drivers less agressive rather than driverless cars more aggressive.
Incidentally, it appears that Renault's diesel cars do not respect the rules on emissions. 15,800 Captur cars are being recalled, and fraud investigators recently raided Renault's factories.
Does anyone know what the outcome is when an accident occurs with a driverless car? Does the owner waive their rights when they purchase the vehicle - as is with most software. Does the victime have sue someone - the manufacturer, software supplier, sensor supplier?
It depends. Good news if it's a Volvo... http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/volvo/93595/volvo-to-accept-liability-if-au...
There was an agreement to look in to this last year a lot of car makers said they would assume liability for any accidents, not sure how they will stick to that if/when the time comes.
Cyclists behave like *human beings* - i.e. not always predictable or according to consistent rules. For that reason, and because of the built-in caution and predictability that driverless cars will need to have, there's a reasonable chance that they'll never really become widespread, however technologically advanced.
Transport (including walking and cycling) still controlled by devious humans could 'bully' driverless cars: their impotent passengers will be enraged by being cut up yet again by old skool motors forcing their way in at junctions, school kids walking down the middle of the road and cyclists cyling three abreast along A-roads. For those reprobates, there'll be no fear of punishment passes or that "maybe he (i.e. it) won't actually brake".
Maybe someone will hack the software to install a "Bastard" mode, to instil the fear in other road users that driverless cars might just behave like the old-fashioned ones?
Sorting the technology is one thing. Implementation's going to be a massive challenge if they're brought in piecemeal to mix with human drivers. They might be much safer and more efficient but all it'll take is a few negative headlines in the usual rags and the usual brainless politician response to give their use a real kicking.
Much easier to bring them in 'big bang' where humans aren't allowed to drive anymore, so they're only interacting with each other - but I can't see how that'll be accepted either...
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