Driverless cars and snow

My neighbor was driving in our small neighborhood she was going around a turn, which happened to be covered in fresh ice, her minivan slid and ended up stuck in her front yard. I saw this and avoided the curve as I could tell by the snow marks what had happened.

How on earth will driverless cars make those kinds of decisions? Will there just be a big o'l pile of cars in her front yard?

There are so many nuances to driving in our area, deer jutting out at you, farm animals, very slippery hills, logs falling on roads.
I just can't see driverless cars in these areas, maybe highway, but these backroads seem to need instant human decision making.

a reply to: JAGStorm

The f117 was not able to fly without a computer making it possible.
A human could not fly the thing because it's shape made it unstable.

Maybe a computer will be able to control cars better too.


Cars already use computers for traction control it avoid slipping.

a reply to: JAGStorm

I've been there. We had this country road that had a steep camber. Even with heavy rain, you could drive in a straight line, but the minute it was covered in ice, you had to have snow chains on your tyres and drive less than 10 miles/hour and absolutely not make the slightest turn.

a reply to: JAGStorm

The computer will have a feel for what the car is doing beyond a human. It will feel tires slipping etc and use a velocity to match what it feels.

The question will be who does it kill. The driver or three pedestrians.

a reply to: Bluntone22

Maybe a human brain grade computer.

Even then, it lacks human instinct, like noticing a ball roll across the street, with the kids blocked from view getting ready to run out.

Or riding a bike in circles in the driveway, making a handlebar turn into the road.

It's a nightmare waiting to happen. It would take a supercomputer in thr car, and overhead satelite surveillance at the same time.

Which would be great for a distopian Tron world of no choice and routing through the grid controlled by your overlords.

LIDAR in combination with machine learning will avoid any of these obstacles.
Once one car sees that pile of snow it will recognize it, informing itself and every other car in the vicinity.
Same goes for slippery roads, detected by your ABS system. Once detected every car knows at what time, under weatherconditions and where it is slippery. Every other car will tap into that information instantly when approaching such road and conditions and act accordingly.

That's how these cars are being developed.
You can look it up.

a reply to: Mandroid7

Actually it will notice those things.

a reply to: luthier

No it won't

a reply to: Mandroid7

It already does. Sonar radar etc..have you looked at the systems?

a reply to: Daalder

So the kid only get's run over once, all the rest will swerve around the body?

a reply to: JAGStorm

That's something I never thought about. Sure, you could have almost every conceivable problem and solution programmed in, but driving on ice and snow requires intuition and being able to actively judge your surroundings from second to second.

Maybe the snow mode in driverless cars will be a manual mode?

Testing by GM was approved for this winter in Detroit.

a reply to: luthier

How will it differentiate a car that slipped into the front yard vs a car that someone is just parking there.

a reply to: luthier

Car is driving, kid pulls out, motorcycle next to car, distance closer than brakes can stop, no escape route because of parked cars. Which target does the car hit?

It's going to take many years before these things are all worked out. I expect autonomous driving will be rolled out as technology improves. The first place will be the open highway and cities. I'm sure there will be many mishaps and a lot of learning from experience.

Can't remember when but there was a Tesla driver that decided to go into autonomous mode and the car ended up t-boning a semi. The computer took the white trailer to be a cloudy sky.

I enjoy driving so I'll be one of the last to buy something that drives itself.

a reply to: underwerks

The systems have cameras, sonar, etc in places you can't even see as a driver. Once they get the algorithms it will be better than humans in almost every situation.

a reply to: Daalder

The conditions here change by the minute. One minute the snow is melting, the next it is freezing. Some areas get a little sun, then the clouds cover another area. Maybe I'm being old and sceptical but I think it is going to be a disaster, at least at first.

a reply to: JAGStorm

The cars will sense weather changes, temp, humdity, etc better than the driver.

There will be some things the intuition of a driver will be better for but by majority a definite improvement

The future is not perfect for snow driver self-driving cars yet but this article (a bit out-dated from 2016) explains how they handle winter weather. I think I will pass on getting one of these cars for a few dozen years.

readwrite.com...

originally posted by: Mandroid7
a reply to: luthier

Car is driving, kid pulls out, motorcycle next to car, distance closer than brakes can stop, no escape route because of parked cars. Which target does the car hit?

Yes that is an issue.

How about people driving while on cells

Drunk drivers

tired drivers

Which situations happen more often?