Observed a driverless car making a mistake today

Every day in Southwest Florida. People wait for 15 seconds when the light turns green to avoid getting T-boned. Sarasota area has red light cameras. My SIL found out the hard way she was running reds. 3 camera tickets in 3 weeks.

3 red light tickets in one week? Oh my. Here in San Jose sheā€™d be looking at $500 each, or a total of roughly $1500 in fines and penalties for those three. Plus higher insurance rates. Hopefully there it isnā€™t as big of hit. A lot of people donā€™t earn that much take home pay in a month. We donā€™t have red light cameras here though.

I hope that changed her behavior. One day running a red might mean an accident that could kill someone. I had a couple neighbors in the old neighborhood that died when they turned left and were hit by someone running a red light.

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I think the $450 in fines in one month has changed her behavior! She stopped getting fines long before she stopped working in Sarasotaā€¦ thank goodness!

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Suppose you encounter a driverless car misbehaving in a parking lot. Suppose you had a tarp handy. Suppose you throw that tarp over the car and immobilize it.

That is EXACTLY what I see at every intersection in same situation in the Boston area.

Another data point, I spotted another driverless* car today ā€¦ 35 mph 3 lane in one direction road. I followed it for a couple miles. It was doing pretty good for the most part. One good point, it was staying almost exactly in the middle of the lane. Other cars nearby were biased considerably in their lane, left or right. I did notice a couple of driving peculiarities though

  • as it approached an intersection in the left hand lane prior to making a left hand turn, it failed to turn on its blinker, and only turned the blinker on after it had already pulled into the left hand turn lane and stopped, awaiting the left turn light.

  • it was dithering the brakes, briefly on and off, much more than the other cars, as if it couldnā€™t decide how fast to go to remain in position w/traffic.

ā€œ*ā€ The driverless car had all the high tech gizmos and gadgetry bolted on, but there was somebody inside; they appeared to just be monitoring the progress.

As far as I know - no state has approved a driverless car without someone in drivers seat to take over in an emergency. As far as I know the earliest thatā€™s scheduled to happen is 2025 (in a very narrow limited area).

California planned to allow totally driverless cars this year, but it is unclear if there are any actually on the road. The driverless car accident reports seem to have put the kibosh on the Calif plan for now. To date Ive never seen one w/out somebody inside monitoring.

June 1, 2018

" the California Department of Motor Vehicles allowed autonomous vehicle testing on public roads in April, though it didnā€™t exactly go as planned. Only a single unnamed company applied for the requisite permit from the DMV"

Strange new world.

Iā€™m wondering (Itā€™s going to happen if it hasnā€™t, already)ā€¦
Since California has these Sanctuary Cities, what happens if thereā€™s a legal illegal alien, unemployed homeless person, without a driver license in a driverless car, and the car makes a ā€œmistakeā€ and breaks the motoring lawsā€¦

Whoā€™s responsible? :thinking:
:evergreen_tree::slightly_smiling_face::evergreen_tree:
CSA

Only you could make a stupid political analysis of a driverless car.

In all cases every single driverless car manufacturer has said they would take responsibility. Since you obviously would never drive in a sanction cityā€¦why should you care?

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Political? Thatā€™s not my intention at all. You brought it up.
Stupid? Thatā€™s fairly crass, but I certainly wonā€™t keep you from an opinion. Nor will I engage in that type of personal attack.

The original ā€œquestionā€ mentioned an illegal maneuver made by a driverless vehicle in California and a discussion involving driver responsibility ensued.

Adding to this theme I was simply pointing out some of the complexities involving driverless cars, added to existing onboard data recorders, video cameras, radar guns, red-light cameras, uninsured drivers, unauthorized motorists, etcetera ( Iā€™m sure Iā€™ve left some things out.).

I mentioned this because Iā€™ve been driving for 5 1/2 decades now and it was much, much simpler when I began.
:evergreen_tree::slightly_smiling_face::evergreen_tree:
CSA

Cut it out, CSA. You knew exactly what you were writing, and it is political commentary. Take it somewhere else.

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Agreed with Mike and JT, though I wouldnā€™t use the word stupid.

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I have been driving in a sanctuary state since 1987. Iā€™m reasonably certain California is also a sanctuary state.