Self-Driving Cars Confused By Shabby U.S. Roadways

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This had to be embarrassing. There you are, in front of thousands of people and the media, and your semi-autonomous prototype car won't move because the road it is trying to navigate has faded lines. It would seem that it is easier for humans to navigate crappy roads while self-driving cars are apparently having a much harder time. Score one for the humans.


Shoddy infrastructure has become a roadblock to the development of self-driving cars, vexing engineers and adding time and cost. Poor markings and uneven signage on the 3 million miles of paved roads in the United States are forcing automakers to develop more sophisticated sensors and maps to compensate, industry executives say.
 
It's too bad Google didn't take scans of roadways while driving their cars all over the world taking pictures.
 
Even when the paint isn't faded, there can be problems. Where I live, a construction wall is taking half the right lane on a 2-lane each side + turning lane road. Someone half-ass painted new stripes part of the way down, but don't have markings showing everyone that they need to move over 5 feet. You pretty much just hope that whoever is in the left lane doesn't follow the original lines and drive you into the concrete barrier.
 
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Cars won't work in Canada during the winter. Too much snow covering everything on the roadway. Score another one for the humans. :)
 
Around here the joke is we have two seasons, winter and road construction. Can't see either one being good for any self-driving car that relies on being able to "see" the lines. Faded lines is the norm on the rural roads with some of them having no lines, especially when they put the tar & pea gravel on the road to resurface it.

Even if they did take scans of the road, they wouldn't be accurate for very long and they'd still not help with construction. I swear my parent's GPS started sounding confused when it thought we took a page out of the Dukes of Hazzard and took off cross-country when the reality was road construction had moved the onramp.
 
Scizyr said:
It's too bad Google didn't take scans of roadways while driving their cars all over the world taking pictures.
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That wouldn't work in Chicago-land. Lane markings, if they exist, are inconsistent. Best chance a Google car would have is to drive on the sidewalk.
 
This is one reason I can't back the Google idea that autonomous vehicles shouldn't have controls in them for driving. What happens when there aren't lane markings? What happens when it snows? What happens when the road is strewn with potholes? Semi-autonomous vehicles are great because who really wants to drive in rush hour traffic? But I don't want to get stranded in the store parking lot because it snowed while I was shopping and now my car refuses to move because it can't see the lines on the asphalt.
 
There will never be perfect road markings on every road.
Just a couple of reasons why: Markings fade and have to be repainted, roads that have higher usage will trump less used roads.
Private roads such as parking lots and large private complexes with their own system of roadways
Driveways both long and short. Hell, I have some customers that have over a mile long driveway.
Unpaved roads, both private and state/fed maintained.
 
I always wondered if they scout out roads that are perfectly marked with no construction. That and limiting them to 25mph. No wonder they claim they have such a "good" driving record, but that doesn't really count as driving since nobody really drives like that. They also need to go out and scout roads with no sandbags ;)

I also wonder about them following sand trucks instead of go around them so your paint and windshield don't get sandblasted. Or construction trailers with rocks falling off of them to avoid a busted windshield. Do they drive around potholes like I do, or drive through them and blow out tires? That is common here. Just a few of the trillions of unknowns that I seriously doubt they can program for.

I just don't see autonomous cars taking off unless all roads are built in tubes. Then there is the difficulty of navigating parking lots, plus ones that don't even have marked parking spots. Will they park in handicap spots? I really can't comment on that since I don't know if they do any of that or not.
 
I live in the mountains above a city and tourists often drive up there. There are no lines and half way up the road become a dirt road with tunnels. People driving have difficultly, I can't imagine what would happen with an autonomous vehicle. Plus the snow etc in the winer, yikes!
 
Without driving controls, how'd you get into the parking lot to begin with? There's not many parking lots I know of that have any sort of line to follow for people driving in, just lines for the parking stalls. If the car relies on seeing the middle lane line, it's going to stop on the edge of the lot, go "here be dragons" and refuse to move.
 
I read more of the article. So they are blaming the government that their cars are failing? LOL
So let me guess. They will be raising our taxes so these autonomous cars have perfect line markings? Better have autonomous lane marking painters, because humans make mistakes, right? ;) One mismarking and you will have an autonomous car pileup. haha. We better start painting dirt roads and snow so they can navigate those. :)
 
I can't believe they actually are trying to make the cars navigate using the lane markings.

Lane markings are almost a convenience feature. If humans couldn't get down the road without seeing the lane markings then how in hell would anyone of us be able to drive when snow covers the roads?
 
Honestly, partial self-driving cars that actualy work well are at least 10-20 years off and the type that people really want, there you can do other things while the car chauffeurs you around are a lot further out than that. These shabby roads just make this harder and push those dates out further.
 
Good idea google but it's a fail so spend money on something more useful and viable to us, like quantum computing.
 
Just for the record, I do like the idea of autonomous cars. Who here wants to have to always have to ride in a Johnny Cab? I just don't see how it could ever happen unless they have tubes to drive in. I believe it would definitely help out traffic and everyone's fuel economy as it exists now. People have a hard time and is the main cause of my frustration of driving nowadays. :(

So where are all the pro-autonomous supporters? hehe :)
 
Im starting to get this companies are deeply believing their data is everything mantra. Even believing they can help shape civil wars haha haha haha haha.
 
Self-driving cars need pavement markings? Don't exist on most roads up here. Google, not all the world is California. Go do your homework.
 
ShagnWagn said:
Just for the record, I do like the idea of autonomous cars. Who here wants to have to always have to ride in a Johnny Cab? I just don't see how it could ever happen unless they have tubes to drive in. I believe it would definitely help out traffic and everyone's fuel economy as it exists now. People have a hard time and is the main cause of my frustration of driving nowadays. :(

So where are all the pro-autonomous supporters? hehe :)
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I like the idea, but the less positive articles are making see the tech might be limited to assistance for decades.
 
For autonomous cars to work, you need uniform and universal roads that don't break down as often.

So there are 2 strong barriers to this:

1) This would require a massive infrastructure overhaul, costing billions of dollars.
2) Politicians and Unions of major cities would be strongly against this, as broken roads are actually used as currency to keep union members employed, and with better roads, more union workers would be out of a job, leading to less control on them from the politicians. While retraining might be possible to service the newer roads, politicians and teamsters won't be willing to trade what they already have currently for what they might have in the future for the sake of "progress", when the politicians and teamsters now already have "power" and "clout". In other words, until unions are a thing of the past or at least no longer have the say in a state's infrastructure, this and things of this scale are never likely to happen.
 
ShagnWagn said:
Just for the record, I do like the idea of autonomous cars. Who here wants to have to always have to ride in a Johnny Cab? I just don't see how it could ever happen unless they have tubes to drive in. I believe it would definitely help out traffic and everyone's fuel economy as it exists now. People have a hard time and is the main cause of my frustration of driving nowadays. :(

So where are all the pro-autonomous supporters? hehe :)
Click to expand...

I'm still all for it. Honestly by and large Hardforums is full of mostly a bunch of conservative and/or middle aged individuals. So few people are going to jump into this little thing you have going here where all of you are patting each other on the back and telling yourselves it's fruitless.

As far as I see it, this is just a current limitation of the tech. And likely to be a short-lived one. It's quite obvious that the best and brightest minds in the world want to make this technology happen, and by and large have proven that it mostly works fine. The Google car has driven without incident for quite a long time before finally getting to its first issues (mostly of the harmless sort). I mean, do you think humans make mistakes at a lower rate than this thing or something? Are we trying to say that just because the computer CAN occasionally make misjudgments or errors that suddenly it's not road-worthy? To me that's a "like hell!" declaration. Frankly the only reason every little mistake these things make is being headlined is because people are skeptical and have some nonsensical fear of the vehicles. Except they have to address the issue: who makes errors at a higher rate: humans or autonomous cars? Just because everyone in the thread is a so-called driving expert that never makes mistakes... what are many other people?

This is the way I see it: these cars can all be patched. Bugs can be fixed. Human stupidity sometimes or generally cannot be patched. And it may only be fixed through death.


.... plus I want someone to chauffeur me around because I hate driving. I feel like it's something that requires a great deal of my attention and every day I lament the amount of productive things that I can be doing during that time rather than paying attention to a bunch of idiots trying to kill me while I attempt to get somewhere.
 
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DKS said:
Self-driving cars need pavement markings? Don't exist on most roads up here. Google, not all the world is California. Go do your homework.
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If they can make cars that can drive everywhere in California, then the rest of the country should be a piece of cake.
We have the most pot holes per miles, the worse traffic and overall worse roads in the country.
They would rather spend tax dollars on carpool lanes and the worthless high speed train to nowhere than fix the problems with the roads.
 
Zion Halcyon said:
For autonomous cars to work, you need uniform and universal roads that don't break down as often.

So there are 2 strong barriers to this:

1) This would require a massive infrastructure overhaul, costing billions of dollars.
2) Politicians and Unions of major cities would be strongly against this, as broken roads are actually used as currency to keep union members employed, and with better roads, more union workers would be out of a job, leading to less control on them from the politicians. While retraining might be possible to service the newer roads, politicians and teamsters won't be willing to trade what they already have currently for what they might have in the future for the sake of "progress", when the politicians and teamsters now already have "power" and "clout". In other words, until unions are a thing of the past or at least no longer have the say in a state's infrastructure, this and things of this scale are never likely to happen.
Click to expand...


You also forgot about traffic tickets.
If the cars are programed to follow the law, there will be a huge drop in the number of traffic tickets written.
How are cities supposed to raise revenue if they can't write $500 tickets?
 
Sorry if I sounded like I hate the idea of a car that would drive itself. I don't. I think it's a cool idea. What I have trouble with is what appears to be a lack of looking at how things actually are when it's getting in the way of having self driving cars in the very near future. Reality is often a big, wet blanket over really cool ideas but it's one you have to account for, even though it might mean your really cool idea has to wait for technology or the base conditions you're relying on to change.

When you write code, do you expect users to input everything correctly or do you at least try to code for what they're actually going to do and put in error checking?
 
StoleMyOwnCar said:
I'm still all for it. Honestly by and large Hardforums is full of mostly a bunch of conservative and/or middle aged individuals. So few people are going to jump into this little thing you have going here where all of you are patting each other on the back and telling yourselves it's fruitless.

As far as I see it, this is just a current limitation of the tech. And likely to be a short-lived one. It's quite obvious that the best and brightest minds in the world want to make this technology happen, and by and large have proven that it mostly works fine. The Google car has driven without incident for quite a long time before finally getting to its first issues (mostly of the harmless sort). I mean, do you think humans make mistakes at a lower rate than this thing or something? Are we trying to say that just because the computer CAN occasionally make misjudgments or errors that suddenly it's not road-worthy? To me that's a "like hell!" declaration. Frankly the only reason every little mistake these things make is being headlined is because people are skeptical and have some nonsensical fear of the vehicles. Except they have to address the issue: who makes errors at a higher rate: humans or autonomous cars? Just because everyone in the thread is a so-called driving expert that never makes mistakes... what are many other people?

This is the way I see it: these cars can all be patched. Bugs can be fixed. Human stupidity sometimes or generally cannot be patched. And it may only be fixed through death.


.... plus I want someone to chauffeur me around because I hate driving. I feel like it's something that requires a great deal of my attention and every day I lament the amount of productive things that I can be doing during that time rather than paying attention to a bunch of idiots trying to kill me while I attempt to get somewhere.
Click to expand...

Safer roads could be accomplished with far better driving training laws and MUCH stricter licensing requirements plus superior public transit and ride services. Just imagine if the average driver was as good as an F1 driver and anyone incapable of that had to take the bus, how safe roads would be. I'd sooner have that than a robot suddenly killing my family because of a software glitch, firmware update, hack etc. I service tech at work every day. Stuff breaks.
 
VIC-20 said:
Safer roads could be accomplished with far better driving training laws and MUCH stricter licensing requirements plus superior public transit and ride services. Just imagine if the average driver was as good as an F1 driver and anyone incapable of that had to take the bus, how safe roads would be. I'd sooner have that than a robot suddenly killing my family because of a software glitch, firmware update, hack etc. I service tech at work every day. Stuff breaks.
Click to expand...

Then you would find maybe a majority of the population suddenly unable to drive. That wouldn't fly at all. Driving exists for a reason, and excluding the majority of the population is not it.

Also, so you'd rather find your (using you here but not necessarily you; it could be anyone) family dead because of one of your glitches? I talk to people all the time. Their heads "break" all the time. They make tons of mistakes. Hell in the distracted driving thread you have people posting anecdotal evidence of distracted driving causing them to do all kinds of crazy and/or stupid things. Computers can have glitches, but they at the very least can never be distracted. They're programmed to do exactly one thing. They seek no pleasure from the ride, they have no vices, they have no partiality. It's simply their duty to transport you from point A to point B, as safely as possible.

People are scared to place their lives in the hands of something they don't understand. As opposed to themselves, because they have this silly little notion that they really fully understand themselves and their limits (something that would actually be nice if ever true)... but the fact of the matter is you're flinging yourself into chaos every day. I think most people have much less control over the external world and what happens to them in it than they think. Supposing you have a well tested piece of software, a glitch or malfunction is like any sort of freak accident that's out of your control. It'll happen regardless of who's driving.
 
nutzo said:
You also forgot about traffic tickets.
If the cars are programed to follow the law, there will be a huge drop in the number of traffic tickets written.
How are cities supposed to raise revenue if they can't write $500 tickets?
Click to expand...


Very good point. A lot of small corrupt downs depend on that as a source of revenue.
 
VIC-20 said:
Safer roads could be accomplished with far better driving training laws and MUCH stricter licensing requirements plus superior public transit and ride services. Just imagine if the average driver was as good as an F1 driver and anyone incapable of that had to take the bus, how safe roads would be. I'd sooner have that than a robot suddenly killing my family because of a software glitch, firmware update, hack etc. I service tech at work every day. Stuff breaks.
Click to expand...

That is a good point. Not only software glitches/crashes, but you have hackers. Imagine a whole network of cars getting hacked and going on wrecking sprees.
 
I don't know who comes up with these bullshit articles. There are numerous roads that have no road markings at all. That's why autonomous cars don't rely on road markings for navigation. They just use it as a visual aid, to adhere to traffic laws.
And guess what if the road markings are fucked up then humans are confused by them too. It happened to me to, when the road had multiple contradicting markings, because the road workers failed to properly erase the old obsolete markings.

So by naysayer logic human driving on roads is at least decades away. Oh wait, we were driving for over a hundred years now.
 
I don't see why this is a surprise. Self driving cars has many years of development until they work well enough. I wouldn't be surprised if eventually they are better than human drivers, but it won't happen in a few years.
 
ShagnWagn said:
That is a good point. Not only software glitches/crashes, but you have hackers. Imagine a whole network of cars getting hacked and going on wrecking sprees.
Click to expand...
Oh come on, cars are already controlled electronically and they can be hacked, as numerous tests have shown. If you want to hack a car you can do it right now on many modern vehicles. In some cases even remotely trough the internet from the other side of the world. So why aren't cars being hacked by the thousands right now then?
 
StoleMyOwnCar said:
I'm still all for it. Honestly by and large Hardforums is full of mostly a bunch of conservative and/or middle aged individuals. So few people are going to jump into this little thing you have going here where all of you are patting each other on the back and telling yourselves it's fruitless.

As far as I see it, this is just a current limitation of the tech. And likely to be a short-lived one. It's quite obvious that the best and brightest minds in the world want to make this technology happen, and by and large have proven that it mostly works fine. The Google car has driven without incident for quite a long time before finally getting to its first issues (mostly of the harmless sort). I mean, do you think humans make mistakes at a lower rate than this thing or something? Are we trying to say that just because the computer CAN occasionally make misjudgments or errors that suddenly it's not road-worthy? To me that's a "like hell!" declaration. Frankly the only reason every little mistake these things make is being headlined is because people are skeptical and have some nonsensical fear of the vehicles. Except they have to address the issue: who makes errors at a higher rate: humans or autonomous cars? Just because everyone in the thread is a so-called driving expert that never makes mistakes... what are many other people?

This is the way I see it: these cars can all be patched. Bugs can be fixed. Human stupidity sometimes or generally cannot be patched. And it may only be fixed through death.


.... plus I want someone to chauffeur me around because I hate driving. I feel like it's something that requires a great deal of my attention and every day I lament the amount of productive things that I can be doing during that time rather than paying attention to a bunch of idiots trying to kill me while I attempt to get somewhere.
Click to expand...


First problem. It's not a limitation of the tech, it's the approach of the developers.

What stands out for me is that they are approaching this problem of navigation as if someone said make the machine drive the car and so they studied how they perceive humans do this like an algorithm for making a peanut-butter sandwich.

They needed to start from an entirely different perspective. Humans see the entire roadway and can follow their "slice of it" even absent being able to follow painted lines, medians, or shoulders in horrible visibility, a human can still make it down the road.

These developers have to open up their perception, navigate by the stars if they have to. But they can't be restricted to something like lines of paint on the road. They have to teach their systems to perceive their environment as a whole and chose a proper path.

Self driving pickup truck can't pull back to the barn for a load of hay.
 
M76 said:
Oh come on, cars are already controlled electronically and they can be hacked, as numerous tests have shown. If you want to hack a car you can do it right now on many modern vehicles. In some cases even remotely trough the internet from the other side of the world. So why aren't cars being hacked by the thousands right now then?
Click to expand...

That is exactly my point. Cars of the future won't be networked with each other? I'm a forward thinker. Most people can't think 5 minutes ahead of themselves. Cars aren't hacked by the thousands because they aren't networked enough... yet. The Nissan Leaf is vulnerable, among many others. I work in IT. It's very easy. You know TVs can be hacked? You don't think cars can, too?

M76 said:
I don't know who comes up with these bullshit articles
Click to expand...

Who comes up with them? The CEO of Volvo. Did you even read the article? Need more be said?
 
ShagnWagn said:
That is exactly my point. Cars of the future won't be networked with each other? I'm a forward thinker. Most people can't think 5 minutes ahead of themselves. Cars aren't hacked by the thousands because they aren't networked enough... yet. The Nissan Leaf is vulnerable, among many others. I work in IT. It's very easy. You know TVs can be hacked? You don't think cars can, too?
Click to expand...
I just pointed out that cars can be hacked right now. They don't need to be self driving. So I don't know what are you trying to argue.

And no I didn't read this article, because I'm sick and tired of the BS machine. I don't need to read it to call out it's nature. And I don't care who gives their name to the bullshit, it doesn't change that it is bullshit. I just pointed out in the last news piece trying to discredit self driving cars, that prominent scientists can be wrong too. Besides the CEO of VOLVO is a business man, and doesn't have any experience with the technologies involved in self driving cars, or programming. The only non-business job on his resume is being the head of basic engine development at Scania, before Y2K. All his other work experience is in management. So his two cents on self driving cars, is about as insightful as asking the shop attendant on the corner groceries store.
On the other hand I've been working in the mapping industry using the exact technology that is being utilized by self driving cars, and I have experimented with machine learning algorithms and pattern recognition, and automated feature detection.
 
StoleMyOwnCar said:
I'm still all for it. Honestly by and large Hardforums is full of mostly a bunch of conservative and/or middle aged individuals. So few people are going to jump into this little thing you have going here where all of you are patting each other on the back and telling yourselves it's fruitless.

As far as I see it, this is just a current limitation of the tech. And likely to be a short-lived one. It's quite obvious that the best and brightest minds in the world want to make this technology happen, and by and large have proven that it mostly works fine. The Google car has driven without incident for quite a long time before finally getting to its first issues (mostly of the harmless sort). I mean, do you think humans make mistakes at a lower rate than this thing or something? Are we trying to say that just because the computer CAN occasionally make misjudgments or errors that suddenly it's not road-worthy? To me that's a "like hell!" declaration. Frankly the only reason every little mistake these things make is being headlined is because people are skeptical and have some nonsensical fear of the vehicles. Except they have to address the issue: who makes errors at a higher rate: humans or autonomous cars? Just because everyone in the thread is a so-called driving expert that never makes mistakes... what are many other people?

This is the way I see it: these cars can all be patched. Bugs can be fixed. Human stupidity sometimes or generally cannot be patched. And it may only be fixed through death.


.... plus I want someone to chauffeur me around because I hate driving. I feel like it's something that requires a great deal of my attention and every day I lament the amount of productive things that I can be doing during that time rather than paying attention to a bunch of idiots trying to kill me while I attempt to get somewhere.
Click to expand...
On one hand you talk about human error and on the other hand you suggest technology will rise to the task despite the fact that programming is done by humans. Consider how complex a program for a self-driving car will be and than compare that program with an existing program of comparable size and complexity and evaluate that program for "bugs". Gaming software, Operating System, Accounting software are all buggy messes relatively speaking and software for a self-driving car needs to be reliable and robust or people will die in fiery crashes.

One must also consider Human Psychology. There is a massive car culture that will fight self-driving cars tooth and nail. Unless self-driving cars are initially introduced and integrated successfully there is liable to be massive resistance to the technology that will make the resistance to Google Glasses seem trivial.
 
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