Highway merging rant

[mielock]

I guess I’ll never stop being amazed how most people merge onto highways from on-ramps. It practically never fails – here I am almost exclusively in the right hand lane, where I’m legally supposed to be pulling @ 60 mph, approaching an on-ramp, watching the cars coming about to merge and they aren’t looking at my slow-going 50 feet + mass taking up the very lane they wish to occupy until they are in the shadow of my rig. What to do? Well, you could easily step on this thing called the accelerator and take advantage of the several hundred feet left of your merge lane and be on your merry way (believe me, there is ALWAYS space ahead of me when you drive at my speed), but no, you must slam on your brakes (creating a dangerous situation with others trying to merge) and go all the way around me eventually passing me up on left hand side. Oh, by the way, it’s almost always impossible for me to simply “move over” to the other lane, clearing the way for these merging folks.

When I’m merging while not pulling, you better believe I’m scoping the traffic flow and if I see some honking semi or RV rig moving along in my merge lane, I’m making sure I’m positioned in a way that will benefit me and avoid being stuck broadside with these type of vehicles.

Now look – I know there are times when traffic is bad enough this method is not possible. And yes, I know there are some without the flexibility in their necks to allow this “look over the shoulder”. These situations are exempt. But I’m not talking about these! I’m talking about 80% of the people merging onto the highways when traffic allows them to completely avoid this. It happens time and time and time again, over and over.

Considering most everyone reading this pulls something or operates a large vehicle - you MUST see the same thing I’m expressing here…

[DiskDoctr]

ok, time to get down to brass tax on this computer driven car subject.

As someone who has used and written AI programs, here is my insight (FWIW)

There are a couple of very real and very serious limitations to this technology.

Of course, programming, hardware, and OS reliability are a must. In today's world the quality mostly stinks. Resolvable, but requires real effort and *real* programmers, not just OO scriptors 😉

Interraction with other objects, which may change their location, speed, and other parameters is the biggest challenge. It isn't like a UAV where you usually have 'lots' of space available around you.

Assuming you can have a perfect prediction and resolution routine (no small challenge!), you still have the problem of asynchronous event and action cycles.

Simply put, unless you establish a fixed timing (think pulse) for a given path, even the best systems will fail when Vehicle A makes an adjustment in the middle of Vehicle C's Decision-Action process. If they are both operating on the same timing, a conflict can be resolved.

Think of it as mid-cycle processing. If you have a rogue process that makes a change on the data you are currently processing, you cannot stop until you complete one cycle, whatever that may be.

Inside a computer, these items can be handled in a number of ways, including interrupts (that interrupt a process/cycle for some reason)

Simply 'Navigating' by computer is easy. Sit in your car and sleep. But actual 'Driving' where the vehicle must anticipate and adjust to weather, traffic, other drivers, other automated cars, system failures, timing failures, logic failures, and many more items is a very different story.

Without an electronic roadway with OOB hard limits (like a CNC), we are a REALLY LONG way from having a reliable driverless car on standard roadways, intermingled with standard traffic and drivers.

This is a very brief comment that barely touches on a few issues I wanted to point out. There are a lot of others.

And if you are thinking of adaptive programming, I've had my share of experience with authoring and using those, too. They can be very good, but aren't the holy grail, either.

Besides, aren't we talking about California? I seem to recall reading about efforts they were making to allow flying cars, back when the tri-engine version was announced by...was it Mueller? It's late and I don't feel like looking it up.

Hype isn't always reality 😉

[Terryallan]

Yes It will be worse. You know, and I know. The folks with the self driving vehicles. Will be asleep 15 min after they start the trip. they will be in no state of mind to take over when the computer runs the vehicle off the road.
Airline pilots do it sometimes now. Read a few months ago about a plane flying past the destination, because the pilots were asleep. You really think Joe Blow is going to stay awake.

[2oldman]

shakyjay wrote:
As I listen to some of the talk on this subject it is very similar to what occurred when we went from horse and buggy to automobile.

Pretty much the same, yes. And always will be.

New things, especially computer things, are expected to be perfect. Never mind that the current system of manual human driving puts you at the mercy of drivers who are drunk, stoned, in a heated argument with their spouses, driving without a license, talking on the phone ( I see it every day), texting, playing with the radio, eating, and drivers who are too scared to accelerate on an on ramp. Yeah, why on earth would we want to give that up?

Seems to me if computers are capable of running Wall street, building cars, solving crimes, flying airplanes and almost too many other thing to list, they ought to be able to drive a car. Just not today, and not perfectly. Of couse there will be a few problems, but jees, compared to what we have now, could it be worse? I doubt it.

[shakyjay]

I have been in the real world and understand what you are saying. Most of what you are describing however is hardware failure of some sort. The X,Y, or Z axis does not just go somewhere it is not supposed to. If you were to troubleshoot you would more than likely find that the computer followed it exactly as it was reported to it. Now the dirt on a sensor can cause a false report and from yours and my viewpoint the computer went somewhere it shouldn't. I probably don't explain it well but the computer did what it was told, that is all it can do. It is just like the old phrase garbage in garbage out. Somewhere along the line it got fed garbage, your speck of dirt for instance.

You say that if something goes wrong with a human driving that there is a good chance they can compensate. Maybe yes maybe no. There are accidents every day that prove this. Will computer operated vehicles be any worse or better? Only time will tell.

Don't get my wrong. I am not saying that computers should be driving our cars. I have a lot of apprehensions about the technology, but reality is that they are here. They are currently licensed for testing and on the roads in California as well as a couple of other states. Yes they have an operator that can hit that red button you alluded to earlier. I can't see us giving up that ability, nor do I think we should.

As I listen to some of the talk on this subject it is very similar to what occurred when we went from horse and buggy to automobile.

[RoyF]

The computer-driven automobile is in the early experimental stage. I don't expect to see it anytime soon. At this this time, commercial airliners can be flown by computer and even landed by computer. BUT, airline pilots have to be ready to take control when something goes wrong. Future drivers will have to do the same. The worry will be that drivers fail to maintain enough competence to take over in an emergency.

Example: a few years ago there was an Air France flight from South America to Paris that was lost over the Atlantic. Analysis of the accident concluded that the computer dropped out when the air-speed sensors failed. The pilots focused on trying to restart their computer instead of flying the plane, which stalled and crashed into the ocean. (The correct action to avoid the stall was to pull the nose up by 15 degree and reduce engine power to 80% to let the plane drop to thicker air.)

[Terryallan]

shakyjay wrote:

Terryallan wrote:

shakyjay wrote:

Terryallan wrote:

2oldman wrote:

Terryallan wrote:
IF you had ever ran machines that are ran by computers. You wouldn't say that

What kind of machines (and when) are you talking about?

The vehicle you drive right now is 'ran' by computer.

But not driven by computer, and the machines I run, are state of the art. Some even prototypes, And they all have a mind of their own. I would not trust a computer to drive me down the road. They don't always do what you tell them to.

They do things they aren't supposed to, and when they do. The designers tell you. It cannot do that. But it did.

People don't always do what you tell them to do. While computers may not do what you expect them to do, they are only capable of doing what they are told. Ultimately it is or was a human who provided the instructions. They have no mind of their own, whatever mind they have is what is provided to them via human instruction.

Spoken by someone who appears not to run CNC machines. Yes they do, do things they are not told to, and sometimes even travel in directions computers don't travel in. And when they do. They do not care what / who is in the way. It's one of the reasons for the BIG RED button. I see it every rotation. It wasn't supposed to do that, or, it can't do that. But it did. And sometimes people are seriously injured, or even worse when they do it.

Don't misunderstand. CNC machines are marvels. They can make adjustments to ONE tiny Micron, a measurement so small you can't see it. But they will still do things they are not supposed to. You do not want one driving your car.

Spoken by someone who understands computers and code. I understand that from your perspective the machine does something it is not told to. Reality is that a computer is incapable of doing anything it is not told. Computers simply carry out instructions, humans write those instructions and occasionally they don't get it right. That is when the computer does something that we think it is not supposed to. It would be more accurate to say it does something we did not intend for it to do.

No they do things the engineers say is impossible for them to do. Come into the real world, I'll show you. Theory is only theory. Action is truth.
The machine is running fine, following the program to the letter, and second. Suddenly the X,Y, or Z axis goes somewhere it was not programed to go. The move is not in the program. But it goes anyway. Maybe a piece of dirt on a sensor, or a faulty switch gets made, Maybe it even loses hydraulics, or air. Maybe a drive overheats, a fuse, or breaker trips Result. Big boom. Now suppose it was driving your car. Suddenly it did something that is not in the program. Result. Possible death.
However. If a human had been driving the vehicle, and a switch goes bad, or a drive over heats, pressure is lost, or any of a million other things happens. There is a very good chance, a human driver could compensate and safely stop the vehicle. Computer? No, It don't know anything is wrong. It's switches are telling it, Everything is good to go. Right off the road.

[shakyjay]

JJBIRISH wrote:
So all of these interruptions that are intermittent, are planned events, were written into code for the computer just to keep us on our toes…

Would need more information as to what interruptions. But to generalize yes some of it is written into code. An interruption could be a coding error, programming errors happen. Even with testing it is difficult to anticipate every scenario. It could also be intentional coding to react to some sort of event. That event could be something like a hardware failure for instance.

[et2]

shakyjay wrote:

Terryallan wrote:

shakyjay wrote:

Terryallan wrote:

2oldman wrote:

Terryallan wrote:
IF you had ever ran machines that are ran by computers. You wouldn't say that

What kind of machines (and when) are you talking about?

The vehicle you drive right now is 'ran' by computer.

But not driven by computer, and the machines I run, are state of the art. Some even prototypes, And they all have a mind of their own. I would not trust a computer to drive me down the road. They don't always do what you tell them to.

They do things they aren't supposed to, and when they do. The designers tell you. It cannot do that. But it did.

People don't always do what you tell them to do. While computers may not do what you expect them to do, they are only capable of doing what they are told. Ultimately it is or was a human who provided the instructions. They have no mind of their own, whatever mind they have is what is provided to them via human instruction.

Spoken by someone who appears not to run CNC machines. Yes they do, do things they are not told to, and sometimes even travel in directions computers don't travel in. And when they do. They do not care what / who is in the way. It's one of the reasons for the BIG RED button. I see it every rotation. It wasn't supposed to do that, or, it can't do that. But it did. And sometimes people are seriously injured, or even worse when they do it.

Don't misunderstand. CNC machines are marvels. They can make adjustments to ONE tiny Micron, a measurement so small you can't see it. But they will still do things they are not supposed to. You do not want one driving your car.

Spoken by someone who understands computers and code. I understand that from your perspective the machine does something it is not told to. Reality is that a computer is incapable of doing anything it is not told. Computers simply carry out instructions, humans write those instructions and occasionally they don't get it right. That is when the computer does something that we think it is not supposed to. It would be more accurate to say it does something we did not intend for it to do.

Actually they're correct. I've been around cnc's for over 30 years and what they explained happens more often then you think. Machines that make the same part over and over and over, just one day decides to take a different path. No change in the program. Electronics fail. Some operators tell you there machines are haunted because they have a mind of their own occasionally without human input. Usually the end result is a scrapped part, or broken machine.

[JJBIRISH]

So all of these interruptions that are intermittent, are planned events, were written into code for the computer just to keep us on our toes…

[shakyjay]

Terryallan wrote:

shakyjay wrote:

Terryallan wrote:

2oldman wrote:

Terryallan wrote:
IF you had ever ran machines that are ran by computers. You wouldn't say that

What kind of machines (and when) are you talking about?

The vehicle you drive right now is 'ran' by computer.

But not driven by computer, and the machines I run, are state of the art. Some even prototypes, And they all have a mind of their own. I would not trust a computer to drive me down the road. They don't always do what you tell them to.

They do things they aren't supposed to, and when they do. The designers tell you. It cannot do that. But it did.

People don't always do what you tell them to do. While computers may not do what you expect them to do, they are only capable of doing what they are told. Ultimately it is or was a human who provided the instructions. They have no mind of their own, whatever mind they have is what is provided to them via human instruction.

Spoken by someone who appears not to run CNC machines. Yes they do, do things they are not told to, and sometimes even travel in directions computers don't travel in. And when they do. They do not care what / who is in the way. It's one of the reasons for the BIG RED button. I see it every rotation. It wasn't supposed to do that, or, it can't do that. But it did. And sometimes people are seriously injured, or even worse when they do it.

Don't misunderstand. CNC machines are marvels. They can make adjustments to ONE tiny Micron, a measurement so small you can't see it. But they will still do things they are not supposed to. You do not want one driving your car.

Spoken by someone who understands computers and code. I understand that from your perspective the machine does something it is not told to. Reality is that a computer is incapable of doing anything it is not told. Computers simply carry out instructions, humans write those instructions and occasionally they don't get it right. That is when the computer does something that we think it is not supposed to. It would be more accurate to say it does something we did not intend for it to do.

[jesse_m_jm]

64thunderbolt wrote:
This is why when in city traffic I move the the center or left lane and flow with the traffic. idiots are everywhere and I'm not gonna stress over them.

Cummins12V98 wrote:
When traveling thru areas with a lot of on ramps I will usually tow in the second lane if there are 3 or more lanes. Saves a lot of head aches.

If you watch the truckers they usually move from the right lane when they approach an on ramp.

Really no big deal if you plan ahead.

Air horns are my friend!

Well, it took 3 pages before I found the solution that I use... Lets people moving fast go around me on the left, lets idiots on the right figure out how to merge, and I just keep on trucking at my speed with one less thing to have to worry about. Driving a big rig leaves enough of those on your mind, no need to add any extras that are easily solved. Of course, when you are on two lane freeways, then you are back to square one.

[Jarlaxle]

EsoxLucius wrote:
After 43 years of driving I'm no longer amused by those who think they can successfully merge onto a 65 mph facility going 50 mph.

My Genesis is lugging 28,000lbs with 200HP. My work truck is lugging 33,000lbs with 250HP. One truck I drove was lugging 73,000lbs with 190HP. Please expolain, in detail, EXACTLY how I am supposed to accelerate any of those vehicles to 65MPH on a ramp. Be specific.

[Terryallan]

shakyjay wrote:

Terryallan wrote:

2oldman wrote:

Terryallan wrote:
IF you had ever ran machines that are ran by computers. You wouldn't say that

What kind of machines (and when) are you talking about?

The vehicle you drive right now is 'ran' by computer.

But not driven by computer, and the machines I run, are state of the art. Some even prototypes, And they all have a mind of their own. I would not trust a computer to drive me down the road. They don't always do what you tell them to.

They do things they aren't supposed to, and when they do. The designers tell you. It cannot do that. But it did.

People don't always do what you tell them to do. While computers may not do what you expect them to do, they are only capable of doing what they are told. Ultimately it is or was a human who provided the instructions. They have no mind of their own, whatever mind they have is what is provided to them via human instruction.

Spoken by someone who appears not to run CNC machines. Yes they do, do things they are not told to, and sometimes even travel in directions computers don't travel in. And when they do. They do not care what / who is in the way. It's one of the reasons for the BIG RED button. I see it every rotation. It wasn't supposed to do that, or, it can't do that. But it did. And sometimes people are seriously injured, or even worse when they do it.

Don't misunderstand. CNC machines are marvels. They can make adjustments to ONE tiny Micron, a measurement so small you can't see it. But they will still do things they are not supposed to. You do not want one driving your car.

[Cloud_Dancer]

I choose not believe there's a driverless Google car running around on public streets. But, I would like to know if there's a state that has already announced a procedure for licensesing a driverless car.