Level 3+ Self Driving Banned in BC

[Cannon Fodder]

well...Albertan drivers do have a reputation for being bad. they don't know what to do with turns and curves!

Yeah, whether it's deserved or not, I HAVE heard that many times over the years, and personally witnessed some of it too. I still recall one time, years ago, our family was coming out to BC, from Manitoba, going through the mountains, and while on a 2 lane portion of the highway, some clown COULD NOT wait to get to a passing area, and ended up passing several people on a wider portion of the loose gravel on a curve in the road, with a substantial drop off the side, down to the river below..... the moron was fishtailin' it to get by everybody, and his license plate was Alberta.

As someone living in Alberta who frequently drives in northwest BC I can tell you they are FAR worse there. Literally no one drives the speed limit. There is one area specifically where it it has a 70kmh limit coming out of a small town. A 2nd lane opens up for trucks leaving the weigh scales. In the 500 or so times I've been there there I can count on my hands how many people have no passed me when I stick @ 70.

you want speeders? was going from Calgary to Edmonton for a wedding and sticking with the flow of traffic we were going 150kph and still being passed by traffic to the left of us!

Well, there's plenty of that to go around - on the Lougheed Hwy., at the eastern side of Maple Ridge, here in the Lower Mainland, the speed limit is 80km/h, and that has become, over the past 10yrs., or so, nothing more than a suggestion. I used to do 90 most of the time, and now I most often do 100, but even that's too slow for the majority of people - while doing 100, I'm, more often than not, the slug driving in the slow lane. Oddly enough, I've found that the stretch of the #1 Hwy. between Abbotsford & Chilliwack has a disproportionate number of people that drive BELOW the speed limit..... it's very strange to be driving on the highway, at, or slightly above the 100km/h speed limit, and passing a LOT of people doing 80......

 

[Sagath]

It would be interesting to see the numbers correlating human error vs computer error in related scenarios.

Waymo’s driverless cars were involved in two crashes and 18 “minor contact events” over 1 million miles

Waymo says human drivers are mostly to blame.

www.theverge.com

Lots of data out there about it. The above article has 1.6 million KM of data. Two 'required by law to report' accidents. One of which the vehicle was rear ended by a, you guessed it, person on their phone.

There were 18 minor accidents (not required by law to report) in the same time period;

"Waymo says 55 percent of these minor contact events involved another driver colliding with a stationary Waymo vehicle"

The remaining 45% were things like "a portable plastic sign stand getting blown by the wind into the vehicle".

 

[lowfat]

I've been thinking about adding L2 self driving to the Crosstrek w/ a Comma.ai but its so damn expensive. Like almost 4090 expensive.

 

[JD]

It's a shame Canada isn't at the forefront of some of these innovations. Clearly transportation is a big one, our major city centers are becoming extremely congested as there's a reluctance to build mass transit, huge costs involved, lengthy project timelines, etc. Coupled with the fact that a lot of people don't find it convenient enough either as it's not "door to door" service.

Toronto had a brief robotaxi pilot project (which was still manned with an operator), and it had ran into a tree, so the whole program was cancelled and I think a ban was put in place as I haven't heard of any pilots since.

The Waymo data seems to suggest the technology is fairly mature and safe now, so it seems an odd time to suddenly ban it. Wonder if other provinces will follow...

 

[Lysrin]

It's a shame Canada isn't at the forefront of some of these innovations. Clearly transportation is a big one, our major city centers are becoming extremely congested as there's a reluctance to build mass transit, huge costs involved, lengthy project timelines, etc. Coupled with the fact that a lot of people don't find it convenient enough either as it's not "door to door" service.

Toronto had a brief robotaxi pilot project (which was still manned with an operator), and it had ran into a tree, so the whole program was cancelled and I think a ban was put in place as I haven't heard of any pilots since.

The Waymo data seems to suggest the technology is fairly mature and safe now, so it seems an odd time to suddenly ban it. Wonder if other provinces will follow...

And there have been city planning studies that have shown consistent flow of traffic, even at slower overall speed, results in less traffic congestion and reduces the stop-and-go. An driving AI would calculate that flow and spacing much better than the human drivers. But you likely need the vast majority of cars being AI driven to have the desired effect. Someday...

 

[JD]

And there have been city planning studies that have shown consistent flow of traffic, even at slower overall speed, results in less traffic congestion and reduces the stop-and-go. An driving AI would calculate that flow and spacing much better than the human drivers. But you likely need the vast majority of cars being AI driven to have the desired effect. Someday...

I'd envision a future without any traffic lights as the cars would simply communicate with each other. But of course that would mean no human drivers.

As a starting point, I could see something like when you enter the highway, your car takes over and places you in a dedicated with all the other self-driving cars. They could follow closely and maintain a higher average speed. You'd punch in your exit into the GPS and the car would know when to leave.

 

[Lysrin]

I'd envision a future without any traffic lights as the cars would simply communicate with each other. But of course that would mean no human drivers.

As a starting point, I could see something like when you enter the highway, your car takes over and places you in a dedicated with all the other self-driving cars. They could follow closely and maintain a higher average speed. You'd punch in your exit into the GPS and the car would know when to leave.

I'd be up for that! There are times when I do enjoy being the driver, along a nice scenic route for example, but I would gladly give that up when long distance travelling or commuting for a system like this that made it all that much smoother!

Maybe then I could actually come closer to reading all the books on my "to-read" list from @lowfat 's posts!