On Fri, Jul 13, 2012 at 1:27 PM, Jed Rothwell <[email protected]> wrote:
See: > > > http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/07/13/eric_schmidt_on_self_driving_cars_biggest_problem_they_obey_speed_limits.html I was having a conversation with some colleagues about the speed algorithm of the Google cars. Anyone who drives near where I live will probably agree that the matter of driving above the speed limit is not really one of convenience. It's quite dangerous when nearly everyone within sight is driving 10 miles per hour over the speed limit on a curvy highway, and then you come up to someone in your lane who is driving significantly slower than everyone else. You do whatever you can to get into another lane before you're trapped behind the car and will have a hard time safely changing lanes because of the quickly passing traffic. It was in light of this kind of traffic in heavier metropolitan areas that we wondered whether there was a carefully-worded "safety" filter applied to the algorithm which would cause the Google car to adjust to the traffic around it. Apparently not. Eric
