Apple records first-ever accident in self-driving car program [u]

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Comments

  • Reply 21 of 63
    davidwdavidw Posts: 2,036member
    nunzy said:
    You don't merge at 1 MPH. You merge at the speed of the traffic you are joining.

    Unless you are an old lady who never has merged before. Then you cause accidents.
    Well, it would also depend on the car you're driving. For sure I couldn't safely begin a merge into traffic, at 1MPH, with my mini van. It would take me 4 to 5 secs just to get up to 45MPH, providing its level. But if I was driving a Tesla Roadster and merging at 1MPH, I could be doing 45MPH in 1 sec and 60MPH in less than 2 sec. I would have to be careful not to rear end the car in front of me, once I have a gap to merge. 

    Not sure if its like this now, but back in the 90's, went to Oklahoma City, OK, several times for on work related business. Over there, they have a Stop sign right before the merge lane begins. You have to stop, wait for a gap and then go and it's a short merge lane. But over there, the drivers are more polite and won't try to beat you to the end of the merge lane, when they see you entering the freeway. They just slow down and let you in. Never had a problem, even in heavy traffic and driving a slow-ass Ford Escort rental car.

    Over here in urban areas of CA, nearly every driver will step on it, to try to get in front you, before the end of the merge lane, as soon as they see you trying to merge into the gap in front of them. So it's almost impossible to safely merge into moving traffic while moving at 1MPH, unless traffic is moving at 5MPH or there is no traffic.  
    edited September 2018 nunzy
  • Reply 22 of 63
    DAalseth said:
    nunzy said:
    You don't merge at 1 MPH. You merge at the speed of the traffic you are joining.

    Unless you are an old lady who never has merged before. Then you cause accidents.
    Unless you are waiting for a hole in traffic. 1mph is essentially stopped. It was waiting for an opening.

    Exactly. I do the merge almost daily where the Apple car was hit. If it was during commute time, then a driver in that lane is looking back at a solid procession of cars traveling at 45-55 mph. The "merge" lane is tiny and uphill, so you really aren't going to have a chance to accelerate to 55 mph in that short distance unless you're putting the pedal to the metal.

    Pure speculation based on what I've seen human drivers sometimes do: if the car made it half-way down the merge lane and then detected that it wouldn't have an opening and then slowed to basically a stop (1mph) then a driver approaching the merge lane might be focused on looking left for an opening and not notice the car now effectively stopped in front of it.

    Ah and some other silly articles say that this was near Apple's HQ in Cupertino. No. This was ~ 1 mile from their new leased Sunnyvale campus (the one that looks like a scaled down 3 ring version of the spaceship HQ). That new Sunnyvale campus seems to have had its big employee move in day last week, I noticed caravans of moving trucks clogging the major road leading into it.



    bb-15GeorgeBMac
  • Reply 23 of 63
    jcs2305 said:
    Stop this crazy Apple cheerleader madness!! Please!! It's all day every day! Hahaha wow man...

    If you want real cheerleader madness AND self-driving cars then why not head on over to a Tesla forum. There is plenty of it there.

    nunzy
  • Reply 24 of 63
    nunzy said:
    You don't merge at 1 MPH. You merge at the speed of the traffic you are joining.

    Unless you are an old lady who never has merged before. Then you cause accidents.
    Wrong!
    If there's no opening -- you slow and WAIT!   (because you do not have a right of way you yield to those who do.)

    And, that is exactly what the Apple Car did!   It obeyed the law.
    tommikelenunzy
  • Reply 25 of 63
    lkrupp said:
    Every blip, every incident, every close call, every crash, anything to do with demonizing self-driving technology will be used to turn the general public against it, just like nuclear energy. Personal injury lawyers are salivating over the deep pocket possibilities. Heck, the news media is already working to turn people against smartphones as dangerous to your personal mental health. Technology is under attack from all directions. All I hear in my social circles is how proud someone is that they don’t have a smartphone and how they wouldn’t drive on the same road with one of those “computer” cars. 
    That's a good analogy (to nuclear power).

    Both technologies have the possibility for doing some extreme good or, if implemented poorly, a lot of bad.
    The problem with nuclear was it was turned over to for-profit enterprises competing with one another and, instead of safety, we got expediency.   Fukushima was good example:   The design was incredibly stupid when viewed from the standpoint of safety:   Built on the edge of the ocean with an inadequate sea wall (2 errors) then they put the control systems down in the basement where they could easily flood - which they did and thus caused the meltdown.  (3 errors).   Those were all errors of expediency that it doesn't take an engineer to know were stupid.

    Hopefully, self-driving cars are done better with somebody putting safety ahead of expediency and profit.
  • Reply 26 of 63
    asdasd said:
    lkrupp said:
    Every blip, every incident, every close call, every crash, anything to do with demonizing self-driving technology will be used to turn the general public against it, just like nuclear energy. Personal injury lawyers are salivating over the deep pocket possibilities. Heck, the news media is already working to turn people against smartphones as dangerous to your personal mental health. Technology is under attack from all directions. All I hear in my social circles is how proud someone is that they don’t have a smartphone and how they wouldn’t drive on the same road with one of those “computer” cars. 
    All technology has some problems.

    Apple is after all trying to reduce phone dependency with iOS 12. And as for self driving cars, they really can't afford to have any bugs. If you are waiting for version 2.0 for stability its a failure. 
    Well, no...
    Bugs are not the failure of the technology but of the people behind that technology.  Bugs are the result of pilot error, not the airplane.
  • Reply 27 of 63
    The Nissan that rear ends the Apple Car is at fault.

    I cannot imagine any reason for rear end ending another car in front of you while going 15 miles per hour.
    Even if the person cuts you off, you are at always at fault for rear ending.

    At 15 miles an hour, you have to wonder if it was done on purpose.

    I say make that Nissan Leaf's insurance pay for all the expensive Velodyne LiDAR sensors.  Could easily cost $100,000 or more in damages.


    Don't be too hard on that Leaf driver.   That situation is a common source of accidents:   A car in front is starting to merge but realizes it doesn't have the room or and an opening to merge into so it slows or stops yielding the right of way.   Meanwhile, the driver behind is looking back trying to find his own opening and doesn't realize the car in front has slowed or stopped.  So  BANG!

    Very common.

    It was noted though in another article that some self-driving cars have contributed to accidents by being TOO cautious -- and human drivers misinterpreted their actions and hit them.   We have no way of knowing if that happened here.
    DAalsethHypereality
  • Reply 28 of 63
    Soli said:
    Even if the person cuts you off, you are at always at fault for rear ending.
    That's not even close to be accurate, and is the most illogical thing I've read non this forum in a long time.
    "Even if the person cuts you off, you are at always at fault for rear ending."
    Unfortunately, it is often pretty accurate.   Not from an ethical standpoint, but a legal & insurance standpoint:  If you rear end somebody the assumption will be that it is your fault until and unless you can prove it was the fault of the car you hit.   And, that burdon of proof would be pretty high.
    tommikele
  • Reply 29 of 63
    nunzy said:
    You don't merge at 1 MPH. You merge at the speed of the traffic you are joining.

    Unless you are an old lady who never has merged before. Then you cause accidents.
    If you are stuck on an entrance ramp waiting for a gap to fit into, 1 MPH is exactly the speed you should be moving at if you were moving at all. Would you suggest it would have been better for the Apple test car to read end the car in front or to force its way into traffic flowing at a very high rate of speed? You couldn't possibly be that dumb, could you?
    edited September 2018 nunzyGeorgeBMac
  • Reply 30 of 63
    larryjwlarryjw Posts: 1,031member
    nunzy said:
    You don't merge at 1 MPH. You merge at the speed of the traffic you are joining.

    Unless you are an old lady who never has merged before. Then you cause accidents.
    If you rear-end someone, you're always at fault. You don't rear-end grandma just because she's going too slow for you. 
    tommikelenunzy
  • Reply 31 of 63
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,176member
    MacPro said:
    gatorguy said:
    "On August 24th at 2:58 p.m., an Apple vehicle in autonomous mode was rear-ended while preparing to merge onto Lawrence Expressway South from Kifer Road. The Apple test vehicle was traveling less than 1 mph waiting for a safe gap to complete the merge when a 2016 Nissan Leaf contacted the Apple test vehicle at approximately 15 mph. Both vehicles sustained damage and no injuries were reported by either party."
    Isn't it normal to attribute  a quote or were you the writer?
    It came from the California DMV report that Apple is required to file.  Apologies, I thought that was evident. AI mentions the source at the end of their article. 
    edited September 2018
  • Reply 32 of 63
    dewme said:
    The Nissan that rear ends the Apple Car is at fault.

    I cannot imagine any reason for rear end ending another car in front of you while going 15 miles per hour.
    Even if the person cuts you off, you are at always at fault for rear ending.

    At 15 miles an hour, you have to wonder if it was done on purpose.

    I say make that Nissan Leaf's insurance pay for all the expensive Velodyne LiDAR sensors.  Could easily cost $100,000 or more in damages.


    I seriously doubt that the faulty party (or their insurer) would have to pay for anything beyond the damage to the vehicle itself. If you get rear ended while carrying a $30 million dollar piece of art in your trunk would the offender be liable for the $30 million dollar work of art. Nope. They'd pay for your bumper and crumpled truck and you'd be SOL unless the $30 million dollar personal property was separately insured against accidental damage.
    Not exactly correct Applesauce. Your "serious doubts" are legally and factually incorrect. The circumstances of the accident would determine negligence factors. If the other driver is found at fault (has ZERO to do with "no fault" insurance rules) they certainly do have responsibility for property their at fault actions damaged or destroyed. In most cases, a driver rear ending someone is usually found to be 100% responsible for the accident unless they have a video showing the guy in front put his car in reverse and hit the gas or that they rolled backwards not him. Where the other person is SOL, is with the limitations of the other parties insurance coverage. They would have to sue the other party to get the difference and it is unlikely they would have the $29 million their insurance company wouldn't have to pay or that they would have sufficient assets to get your hands on.
  • Reply 33 of 63
    M68000M68000 Posts: 719member
    Where to begin?...  first and foremost - this "fascination" and possibly "obsession" with getting a computer, GPS and sensors to "drive" a vehicle is just amazing and troubling.  Yes,  it's a science project that certain forces\companies insist on proving that it can be done.  Who is going to cover insurance for such vehicles "IF" they ever become useable?  The companies that make such vehicles?    As somebody who loves to drive, I hope i am never to lazy to drive my own car and want such a robot vehicle.  I also do not want an "Apple car" whether it drives itself or not.  I really love the iPhones and Mac computers I've had,  Final Cut Pro and OS X in general.   I love Apple for what it is and should be - Apple is a computer company, they have no business being in the automotive industry, no matter how many $$ billions they want to throw around.  Sorry,  I don't want to drive an Apple computer on wheels, or worse yet, have an Apple computer on wheels drive me around.   If "autonomous" vehicles become mainstream,  we risk people losing the joy of driving.  We have seen GPS replace people knowing how to read a map and now we risk having vehicles replace people knowing how to drive.  A future where people don't know how to do anything, a scary future.
  • Reply 34 of 63
    dewme said:
    The Nissan that rear ends the Apple Car is at fault.

    I cannot imagine any reason for rear end ending another car in front of you while going 15 miles per hour.
    Even if the person cuts you off, you are at always at fault for rear ending.

    At 15 miles an hour, you have to wonder if it was done on purpose.

    I say make that Nissan Leaf's insurance pay for all the expensive Velodyne LiDAR sensors.  Could easily cost $100,000 or more in damages.


    I seriously doubt that the faulty party (or their insurer) would have to pay for anything beyond the damage to the vehicle itself. If you get rear ended while carrying a $30 million dollar piece of art in your trunk would the offender be liable for the $30 million dollar work of art. Nope. They'd pay for your bumper and crumpled truck and you'd be SOL unless the $30 million dollar personal property was separately insured against accidental damage.

    This reminds me of an old episode of Married With Children. Als dodge car was stolen and so he informs the insurance company jewelry, cash, paintings, and a salami sandwhich were in the trunk of the car in an attempt to scam thousands of dollars.
  • Reply 35 of 63
    macxpressmacxpress Posts: 5,801member
    Soli said:
    Even if the person cuts you off, you are at always at fault for rear ending.
    That's not even close to be accurate, and is the most illogical thing I've read non this forum in a long time.
    "Even if the person cuts you off, you are at always at fault for rear ending."
    Unfortunately, it is often pretty accurate.   Not from an ethical standpoint, but a legal & insurance standpoint:  If you rear end somebody the assumption will be that it is your fault until and unless you can prove it was the fault of the car you hit.   And, that burdon of proof would be pretty high.

    This is why dash cams are so popular. Then you can prove the person in front of you caused the accident with a video. 
  • Reply 36 of 63
    DAalsethDAalseth Posts: 2,783member
    M68000 said:
    Where to begin?...  first and foremost - this "fascination" and possibly "obsession" with getting a computer, GPS and sensors to "drive" a vehicle is just amazing and troubling.  Yes,  it's a science project that certain forces\companies insist on proving that it can be done.  Who is going to cover insurance for such vehicles "IF" they ever become useable?  The companies that make such vehicles?    As somebody who loves to drive, I hope i am never to lazy to drive my own car and want such a robot vehicle.  I also do not want an "Apple car" whether it drives itself or not.  I really love the iPhones and Mac computers I've had,  Final Cut Pro and OS X in general.   I love Apple for what it is and should be - Apple is a computer company, they have no business being in the automotive industry, no matter how many $$ billions they want to throw around.  Sorry,  I don't want to drive an Apple computer on wheels, or worse yet, have an Apple computer on wheels drive me around.   If "autonomous" vehicles become mainstream,  we risk people losing the joy of driving.  We have seen GPS replace people knowing how to read a map and now we risk having vehicles replace people knowing how to drive.  A future where people don't know how to do anything, a scary future.
    Let me state for the record that I look forward to self driving cars.
    In my younger days I loved driving. I had motorcycles, and sports cars, and would often just drive around for the fun of it. But I've done that. It's not interesting any more. I just don't find it fun any more. I would love to be able to get in a car and just say "Take me to work" and then not have to hassle with it. What's more, looking around at the other drivers, eating, reading, talking on the phone, whatever I suspect a lot of them don't either. It's just not fun to drive, especially commuting.
    As far as who will insure a self driving vehicle, there has been a lot of interest from the insurance industry. They have seen that even in testing, the millions of miles on real roads that Google and others have put in, the accident rate is lower for self driving cars. Sure the press makes a big deal about the accidents, but the rate and severity is much much lower than manually driven cars. So who will insure them? Regular insurance companies. What's more it has been speculated that rates could be lower for self driving cars. Once a majority of cars are autonomous you may end up having to pay a Manual Driving Surcharge. 
    As far as Apple being a computer company. Apple is now a phone company. Apple is a watch company. Apple is a music company. Apple is now a TV production company. Apple has grown far beyond "the computer for the rest of us".
    StrangeDays
  • Reply 37 of 63
    dewmedewme Posts: 5,332member
    tommikele said:
    dewme said:
    The Nissan that rear ends the Apple Car is at fault.

    I cannot imagine any reason for rear end ending another car in front of you while going 15 miles per hour.
    Even if the person cuts you off, you are at always at fault for rear ending.

    At 15 miles an hour, you have to wonder if it was done on purpose.

    I say make that Nissan Leaf's insurance pay for all the expensive Velodyne LiDAR sensors.  Could easily cost $100,000 or more in damages.


    I seriously doubt that the faulty party (or their insurer) would have to pay for anything beyond the damage to the vehicle itself. If you get rear ended while carrying a $30 million dollar piece of art in your trunk would the offender be liable for the $30 million dollar work of art. Nope. They'd pay for your bumper and crumpled truck and you'd be SOL unless the $30 million dollar personal property was separately insured against accidental damage.
    Not exactly correct Applesauce. Your "serious doubts" are legally and factually incorrect. The circumstances of the accident would determine negligence factors. If the other driver is found at fault (has ZERO to do with "no fault" insurance rules) they certainly do have responsibility for property their at fault actions damaged or destroyed. In most cases, a driver rear ending someone is usually found to be 100% responsible for the accident unless they have a video showing the guy in front put his car in reverse and hit the gas or that they rolled backwards not him. Where the other person is SOL, is with the limitations of the other parties insurance coverage. They would have to sue the other party to get the difference and it is unlikely they would have the $29 million their insurance company wouldn't have to pay or that they would have sufficient assets to get your hands on.
    I'm not questioning who is at fault, I'm questioning whether the liable party is in any way responsible for damages to expensive aftermarket equipment that's been bolted to the damaged vehicle. If you hit an exterminator truck with a huge fiberglass bug on the roof and the bug loses a leg, are you responsible for the leg? What you are saying is yes, but collecting for the personal property damages may be a challenge.

    Okay, I learned that my serious doubts are wrong. I'm surprised that insurance scammers and opportunists don't take advantage of this. Maybe we should be storing our difficult-to-liquidate priceless artifacts in the trunks of our cars and hoping for the best.

    As far as who is responsible for causing a rear end collision there is little doubt in this case. One aspect of fender-bender rear end collisions that always surprises me is that if you get rear ended and as a consequence you rear end the car in front of you, in many cases you are also found liable for the secondary accident if the cops determine that you failed to maintain proper/assured distance between yourself and the car in front of you. I see this almost weekly with stop light related accidents, usually in a line of cars waiting to make left hand turns. The car in front starts the turn, stops suddenly, and boom boom boom, two or three cars in a row are rear ended. 
    edited September 2018
  • Reply 38 of 63
    SoliSoli Posts: 10,035member
    Soli said:
    Even if the person cuts you off, you are at always at fault for rear ending.
    That's not even close to be accurate, and is the most illogical thing I've read non this forum in a long time.
    "Even if the person cuts you off, you are at always at fault for rear ending."
    Unfortunately, it is often pretty accurate.   Not from an ethical standpoint, but a legal & insurance standpoint:  If you rear end somebody the assumption will be that it is your fault until and unless you can prove it was the fault of the car you hit.   And, that burdon of proof would be pretty high.
    I remember having this discussion since middle school. I know you're not 12yo so you can be so daft as to make a blanket statement that if your front end is damage and their back end is damaged it's your fault from a "legal & insurance standpoint"?

    I've even personally encountered such an incidence a couple decades ago where I was in a parking lot with plenty of room between me and the car in front (may 20 feet), but he decided he wanted to get to a parking spot he missed or wanted to let another car out so he could then take their spot. He backed up, and despite my honking he backed up way to fast without looking and rammed his back bumper into mine. I couldn't back up to counter his movement because I looked in my review mirror and saw that there was a car behind me. Guess who was at fault? Hint: It wasn't mine.

    Another one hat I witnessed is a semi-tractor driver going 55 MPH (he couldn't go faster because of the governor) with a sufficient amount of room between him and the car in front of him. Some dickwad in tricked out Honda Civic, as I recall, decided to change lanes into the space between. For some reason the car in front tapped their brakes and the dickwad overcompensated (I'm assuming) so even those the semi driver saw the braking ahead of time since he's up higher the dickwad braked far too fast for the road conditions and the semi hit and demolished the car. I stopped because I witnessed most of it. The semi driver was not ticketed.

    There are countless scenarios where your clam is legally false because society is a little more sophisticated than "who was in front?".
    edited September 2018
  • Reply 39 of 63
    wizard69wizard69 Posts: 13,377member
    lkrupp said:
    Every blip, every incident, every close call, every crash, anything to do with demonizing self-driving technology will be used to turn the general public against it, just like nuclear energy. Personal injury lawyers are salivating over the deep pocket possibilities. Heck, the news media is already working to turn people against smartphones as dangerous to your personal mental health. Technology is under attack from all directions. All I hear in my social circles is how proud someone is that they don’t have a smartphone and how they wouldn’t drive on the same road with one of those “computer” cars. 
    Well the news media has taken an extreme turn to the left so it is no surprise that they are trying to demonize something new.   

    The flip side here is that AI tech and sensor tech is no where near good enough to allow self driving cars on the road!   It will get there eventually but we are talking decades and more than a few breakthroughs in AI processors and software.  Manufactures of such cars need to be held to the same high standards as civil engineers.   That means AI systems must be far more reliable and robust than they are now.  Dont fool yourself into believing that self driving cars are safe today or will be in 5 years.  

    As for not using a cell phone i can state with high confidence that many lives would be improved if the smart phones where left at home from time to time.   Owning a smart phone or not should not be a measure of anything.    It is what you do with it as an individual that defines the value of that cell phone.   
  • Reply 40 of 63
    wizard69wizard69 Posts: 13,377member

    asdasd said:
    lkrupp said:
    Every blip, every incident, every close call, every crash, anything to do with demonizing self-driving technology will be used to turn the general public against it, just like nuclear energy. Personal injury lawyers are salivating over the deep pocket possibilities. Heck, the news media is already working to turn people against smartphones as dangerous to your personal mental health. Technology is under attack from all directions. All I hear in my social circles is how proud someone is that they don’t have a smartphone and how they wouldn’t drive on the same road with one of those “computer” cars. 
    All technology has some problems.

    Apple is after all trying to reduce phone dependency with iOS 12. And as for self driving cars, they really can't afford to have any bugs. If you are waiting for version 2.0 for stability its a failure. 
    One of the things that bug me is you see too many people with the Silicon Valley mentality to software development in these projects.    What would impress me is if they hired engineers with avionics experience or from some other high reliability software environment.  We would then start to see more realistic timelines for systems maturity.  
    GeorgeBMac
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