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Self-driving cars might face a wee bit of a challenge in Boston
By adamg on Fri, 06/09/2017 - 9:34am
Zoe Piel sketches out the problem with self-driving cars in Boston (See it larger).
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A graphic comparison of New York and Boston street layouts.
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Comments
You know what will kill self-driving cars in Boston?
It won't be the streets. It will be the pedestrians.
The moment Bostonians figure out those things are programmed to stop if you walk in front of them, there will be self-driving cars stuck at downtown corners for MONTHS.
And that moment will come how quickly?
Oh, about six seconds after the driverless cars.
I think the key will be to
I think the key will be to get the technology to communicate well so we have driverless cars and pedestrianless shoes. Then the shoes can just walk me around wherever I need to go while I play on my phone or nap or whatever. Plus, when I am not wearing my shoes, they can be deployed to walk other people around, thus saving important space in my closet.
And...
...this is the way we want it.
Well, off to the races.
I think it should pointed out
I think it should pointed out that this guy is neither an engineer nor a computer/data scientist.
O RLY?
Johnny, tell him what he's won.
Okay, smahtypants
Please explain why Google Maps will change the route that it is trying to send you just about every block in the city during rush hour?
If I followed the navigation clues at 4pm on a weekday, my route would be actually worse than the one depicted.
Self-driving cars just follow orders after all.
Been there!
Coming back from Jersey City a few weeks back, Google maps kept rerouting me, and like a fool I followed it. (Until we were out in the middle of friggin' nowhere and I just wrestled control back from the bot and guessed my way back to a real highway.)
Here's someone who is:
https://xkcd.com/277/
Bonus: Randall is also from
Bonus: Randall is also from Boston (or around).
One problem
When they actually DO have a real engineer do all these things at an intersection any where in the Boston area, please tell us about it! It seems to me they just have Joe DP Wohhhooo click an automatic signal and go.
Hi, I'm an engineer who works
Hi, I'm an engineer who works on signal timings in the Boston area.
Can you point out an example
Can you point out an example of a string of signals in the Boston area where the timing makes sense? Either one that you designed, or another that you're familiar with.
Send 'em out on the Jamaicaway
around 4:30 on a Friday. I'll believe self-driving cars are a thing once I've seen one figure out what to do when oncoming traffic is half in your lane, there's a biker illegally driving in the right-hand lane, and someone is angrily leaning on the horn behind you for not going 20MPH over the speed limit.
Hold on a second, a "biker
Hold on a second, a "biker illegally driving in a lane"? If they going the opposite way than they should be ticketed. Otherwise, they have as much of a right to be there as you do.
Uhh... no.
"You may ride two abreast, but must facilitate passing traffic. This means riding single file when faster traffic wants to pass, or staying in the right-most lane on a multi-lane road."
http://www.massbike.org/laws
There's nothing in that
There's nothing in that description that indicates that it's illegal to ride in the right-hand lane on the Jamaicaway.
Bicyclists have always been advised NOT to ride
Bicyclists have always been advised never to ride on the Jamaicaway or the Riverway...and with good reason; It's an extremely curvy road, and the cars drive extraordinarily fast on those roadways...way too fast, in fact.
All the usual bickering about
All the usual bickering about bikes aside, I can't even get out of my neighborhood without a bus pulling fully into my lane to swerve around a double-parked truck, having to reverse up a one-way to escape an oil delivery truck that's going to be blocking the entire street a while, scootching over in the unmarked sections where the consensus is that there's room for two lanes so who cares about the actual law, avoid a few lanes that are supposed to have the right of way because they get backed up for left turns and people swerve around them at high speed... and that's just the other vehicles.
If these things are programmed to stop dead instead of or before putting wheels over the painted line, it will be 24/7 gridlock. Nooooo thank you.
And when there's construction or detours marked only by crudely spray-painted plywood? When signs get knocked off their poles and the city takes months to fix them? When somebody doesn't put their flashers on because they're "just" running in to dunk's with the car running in the middle of the lane? When a cop is directing traffic with desultory finger-waggles in between chatting with a pal who just stopped and rolled their window down to shoot the breeze? Can the algorithms interpret all the subtle little hand-wave codes that keep things running smoothly?
Sure it will happen eventually, but it will take massive infrastructure changes and cultural shifts, not just some tech bro with a camera and a laptop.
Look closely
You'll see the turkey crossing the street below the over-turned car.
shh....
Our cameo is supposed to be subtle.
Self-Driving Cars are Inevitable
It will happen sooner than most people think or want.
It's not inevitable if they
It's not inevitable if they're made illegal.
"I am inevitable, my existence is inevitable...
"Why can't you just accept that?"
What a non-starter
I hope it blows up in Uber's face like a trick cigar.
Does it make me a good or a bad Bostonian...
...to admit that I laughed out loud, and that my laughter included more than a small measure of pride?
Icing on the cake is that the turkey just don't care, honey.
It would be so cool if GPS
It would be so cool if GPS had an outage one day and everyone suddenly had to find their way around using paper maps.
Then they could rely on our
Then they could rely on our well designed wayfaring signage.......oh!
already here
Self-driving cars are already here being tested in the Seaport.
If most cars are self-driving,
The directions of streets (one-way, no left turn, no right turn, no turns, etc.) could be altered. Perhaps all the time, perhaps during certain times of day, etc.
So long as the rules are clear to cyclists and peds are protected, there's no reason to think that we won't (a) eliminate most on-street parking (the car can drive to a parking garage somewhere), and reorganize our street configurations in significant ways.
There is no parking garage in
There is no parking garage in many neighborhoods. So the car would have to drive miles away to the nearest public garage, which would charge who knows how much.
Changing the direction of streets every day is a terrible idea. How do you make sure every self-driving car gets the update? And what about all the human-driven cars -- they're not going away. The only place this works is special lanes on limited access highways, and they need to install a whole lot of changeable signage.
Is that routing totally fake?
Is that routing totally fake? I don't see how it's possible to follow that route in either direction, without going the wrong way on State, Purchase, or Pearl.
I suspect the first places
I suspect the first places initial self-driving cars will succeed is in dedicated lanes that are already segregated such as the HOV highway lanes where there are no expected distractions such as pedestrians, etc.. There would need to be some type of seamless way for the driver to resume control of the car though once they re-entered traffic at the point where I-93 has its HOV lanes vanish for example.
There will always be cars you'll drive yourself though. There are entire car manufacturers that have built their brand around this and every other manufacturer has at least one model that's geared to the driving enthusiast.
But in a place like Boston you could motivate people to go to a self-driving car by having dedicated self-driving lanes which should then be faster, excluding such cars from a central congestion charge (think London), offering tax rebates on the property tax or insurance discounts once these cars have been proven to have a lower rate of accidents.
Eventually the whole system will organically change over to a majority of self driving cars with a remaining infrastructure for human operated vehicles.
If You Cannot...
...simply admit that this driverless vehicle crap has different variables which make Boston a less than ideal place to have them, you are a stubborn, stuck to your Iphone, tech relying moron. Maybe while these stupid driverless cars wait for countless pedestrians, it can be an excuse to physically get out of car with a sign like a crossing guard. Listen, the Boston charm exists for a reason. We arent Yourdumbcity, USA so go eat a pile of shit