Google Favors Less-Regulated UK For Self-Driving Car Development (telegraph.co.uk) 82
An anonymous reader writes: According to documents obtained by The Telegraph, Google considers the UK a key market for development of its self-driving car program. In one of the five meetings the documents describe, Sarah Hunter, head of Google's experimental SDV division, commented that the company is "very positive about the non-regulatory approach being taken in the UK [which] places the UK in a good position and could be seen as an example of best practice." Google has also escaped excessive regulation in the area of drone development by pursuing Project WinG in the easier regulatory climes of Australia.
Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
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The UK as a less regulated environment? Is this April first, or did I accidentally get to the Onion?
North America is horrifically regulated by comparison. Look at the taxi protests in Toronto against Uber. you know what the taxis are really protesting about?
The police and city council say they are unable to enforce the regulations and bylaws on taxis because they are too complicated.
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There was a similar thing in London about a month ago. The real London, not the one near Detroit.
Uber is just another private hire firm (Score:2)
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Indeed, while there is little law governing self driving cars there are some guidelines in place that you think would put them off, like requiring passengers to pretend to drive by holding a fake wheel so as not to surprise real drivers. Considering that Google's cars don't even have steering wheels...
There is also the extremely poor state of UK roads, basically third world quality for the most part. I suppose in that sense it is probably a good testing ground for sensors, to check that they can distinguish
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Couldn't be any worse than down here in New Orleans.
Hard to speed in many places down here, as that the entire city is one big speed bump....
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There is also the extremely poor state of UK roads, basically third world quality for the most part.
Also the fact that UK roads (like the country as a whole) are desparately overcrowded, narrow, traffic jams everywhere, traffic lights and roundabouts (often combined these days) everywhere, anomalous speed restriction policies, and local council traffic officers' crackpot scheme pet ideas*. I am often confused myself at unfamiliar junctions which traffic light head applies to which lane. I would have though a nation of more wide-open roads would be a better starting ground.
* Take a look at this lunacy
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I dare say that I speak from a position of authority when I state that the roundabout is sheer lunacy. Having reviewed the process at depth, I can assure you that a standard roundabout would have worked had they simply made it large enough AND with routing the left-turning traffic around the roundabout to avoid needing to account for it in the throughput-limited roundabout. Not only would it have been simpler but it would have been safer. Yes, some land would have had to have been taken for this but they'd
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That junction looks complicated, but results in traffic passing through the junction faster than the alternatives and with fewer accidents. The 4-way stop, on the other hand,
It's a 5-way junction actually, which makes me wonder about the reliability of your other assertions and whether you could call up citations. But do go on .......
You seem to be talking about a 4-way crossroads (as we'd call it in the UK, and ignoring the 5-way issue FTTB) - ie a plain simple orthogonal 4-directions junction, with or without traffic lights. But the sensible alternative to the Swindon Magic Roundabout (in my link) would be a plain roundabout, not a "4 [or 5]-way stop". I'm not sure they ha
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Could you find some way to turn this into a pro-feminism argument?
You usually manage it.
Try this :- The removal of the steering wheel and other controls is to be celebrated as it removes any indication of relative status among male and female passengers, the bias of which is usually to the male.
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I think you'll find that most US roads do not use concrete, not even as a base. They should, but they do not.
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The UK as a less regulated environment?
I think Google do not understand how the UK legal system works. It is negative rather than positive in that it says what is not allowed rather than what is allowed. On the face of it this is less restrictive (temporarily) because there are no laws against anything that did not occur to the original lawmakers. In fact there are a lot of laws about what is not allowed in driving, but driverless cars were never imagined by the lawmakers, so no particular restrictions currently apply to them. Nevertheless t
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I think Google do not understand how the UK legal system works. It is negative rather than positive in that it says what is not allowed rather than what is allowed.
Is there a legal system in the world which is not this way? The US system certainly is.
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The UK as a less regulated environment? Is this April first, or did I accidentally get to the Onion?
I think Google meant "less stupidly regulated". The UK doesn't mandate tyre pressure monitors because it expects people to be able to check their tyres on a regular basis on their own. Little things like that.
Also the UK has much better (read, trained and predictable) drivers than the US.
Wait what (Score:2)
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If your not passing port to port, your doing it wrong ;)
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If your not passing port to port, your doing it wrong ;)
All European nations drove vehicles on the left until the French Revolution. The practical reason was that, as most carriage drivers held their whip in their right hand, it made the whip less likely to get tangled in the hedge or hit pedestrians.
OTOH pedestrians walked on the right, a rule that still applies in the UK to roads without pavements (=US sidewalks). This was so that they could see carriages approaching them on their own side and could jump into the hedge or ditch if the driver did not look
Only because... (Score:1)
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The UK is only less regulated because they don't have the OUTSTANDING government infrastructure that we have here in the good 'ol USSA. Europeans in general are slightly less risk averse as we are here in nannyland...
If the government of USA weren't nannyland it'd go Lord of the Flies in a week.
Your other left! (Score:1)
That'll work well (Score:1)
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Just like every other company says (Score:4, Insightful)
"Don't regulate us, it's better if you just let us monitor ourselves. Don't worry, you can trust us to do the right thing."
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Keep telling yourself that, in the meanwhile the manufacturing left for other countries. Regulations are taxes and prohibitions, USA was supposed to be an environment with minimal intervention by any government, that's what the point was, that's why people came to the country after leaving their own, not for more government and regulation and taxes and oppression, for less of that same shit.
Beside that, what the fuck is 'the right' thing exactly? Are you telling me USA government knows right from wrong?
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Keep telling yourself that, in the meanwhile the manufacturing left for other countries. Regulations are taxes and prohibitions, USA was supposed to be an environment with minimal intervention by any government, that's what the point was, that's why people came to the country after leaving their own, not for more government and regulation and taxes and oppression, for less of that same shit.
And would you actually want to live in any of those "other countries" to where the manufacturing has fled and which apparently have a regulatory environment more in line with what you believe in?
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Of-course, USA used to be the country with the least regulations, taxes and generally government oppression and millions came over.
That migration was not a coincidence, people move to where there is more economic activity, not where the economy is oppressed, restricted and destroyed by the oppression of the collectivist or any other form of authoritarian government.
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Of-course, USA used to be the country with the least regulations, taxes and generally government oppression and millions came over.
That worked when it consisted of lots of little self-regulating high-minded communities like the Pilgrim Fathers and the present-day surviving Amish. Breaks down soon after that. Good job the government does not leave it to individuals to decide which side of the road to drive on.
That migration was not a coincidence, people move to where they imagine there is more economic activity, not where the economy is oppressed, [blah blah blah etc]
Correction in bold font for you.
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Britain's manufacturing is all but non-existent vs pre-Thatcher. The US is still one of the world manufacturing powerhouses.
Oh come off it. I am in the UK and must admit I do have an American car, but earlier this week I bought a box of Xmas crackers and was a very proud Englishman to see that they were "Made in Britain". Who said Britain could not make anything any more? Oh, and Scotch whisky (until Scotland breaks away). Let me find some other examples ......... er .......... I'll get back later.
Only if you spell "favour" properly. (Score:1)
Dam yanks ;)
Yaayyyy for the metric system (Score:2)
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The USA uses the Imperial System.
We (the UK) use Imperial for road signage and that's about it. Metric for industry, science, education, we even sell petrol in Litres but oddly still use Miles per Gallon for fuel efficiency, probably to obfuscate how much we pay for fuel here.
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The USA uses the Imperial System.
No, we don't, you ignorant git.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The US gallon is, for example, 128 fluid ounces, whereas the Imperial gallon is 160 fl oz which equals 153.7 US fl oz.
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So US system took all the names of an old system and gave them new definitions? How is that better?
I don't think that hearing people from the USA refer to Feet, Pounds, Ounces and Gallons and thinking that maybe they're using the system I've been taught those measurements derive from.
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You crazy Brits think that a hundredweight weighs... 112 pounds.
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No one uses hundredweight in the UK any more, I used to teach Maths and not even I was aware of 112lb in a Hundredweight. We "weigh" ourselves in Kilograms (regardless of that being a unit of Mass not Weight) now but the previous generation is still using Stones, it's getting less and less common though. At school the imperial system is now completely gone from the curriculum except Miles to Kilometres and a few other memorable conversions such as 60kg is roughly 9 Stone if a students asks.
I wonder if they have seen our roads (Score:5, Insightful)
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Its almost certainly all those real world examples and more (box junctions, pulling out into a queue of traffic if no one wants to let you in etc) that are going to show that self driving cars are a LONG way from prime time use except on a motorways where everyone is going in the same direction and large US style roads without awkward interchanges.
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The problem with your 4-way stops is they are fucking as dangerous as hell. You could hardly design a less safe junction if you tried. Introducing a roundabout has been proven may times over to lead to around a 90% drop in fatality rates at junctions.
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The roundabout has also shown itself to increase throughput, too - more cars can get through a roundabout than a 4-way stop in a given period of time. (And 4-way stops aren't the only configuration - there are the oddball 5 way stops as well.)
In Canada, the sig
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Citation for that 90% figure? I am a huge fan of roundabouts (rotaries) and am responsible for a whole slew of 'em but I do think you're probably making up numbers without actually thinking someone here might be fluent in these numbers - albeit a bit dated.
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There's going to be some hilarious exception handling code
If Road.Class=='DirtTrackInTheMiddleOfFuckingNowhere' & OncomingVehicle=='PolishTruckDriverBlindlyFollowingHisSatNav' {
CollisionAvoidance.DiveIntoDitch ();
Horn.Beep (1000);
}
Best practice? (Score:2)
Translation: "We can test our car beta software on real roads. Who cares about the risk to other road users when billions are to be made from this and Larry and Sergei will be able to buy themselves another Yacht (with a human captain naturally)?"
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Hmmm, every Ford I ever owned had that feature.
Self-driving punters (Score:2)
There should be a law that the voices on all GPS systems in cars have a working-class Scottish accents.
"YA MIST THAT LAS' RIGHT TURN YA FOOKIN' COONT MIND YER FOOKIN' DRIVIN OR YER OAN A BURST MOOTH!"
https://youtu.be/vPKhhne8mCs [youtu.be]
Attractive choice (Score:1)
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"Almost everywhere is really crowded"? Nonsense. The cities are, yes, but there is plenty of sparsely-populated land in the UK. Loads of it. Like, more than densely-populated land.
In other news... (Score:2)
Britons Favour Less-Regulated UK.
photo speeding tickets (Score:2)
Will google pay them or try get out of them with some kind of EULA?
UK vs US road systems, A Nightmare. (Score:1)
I've lived in both UK and Canada and also the US. Ironically I lived in London Ontario for half a year then London UK for a year, and have lived there other times.. There’s almost no comparison between the two systems.
Firstly US and Canadian roads are built on what are essentially grid systems so almost all junctions are 4 way, there are very few curves, and the wholes system is generally a lot simpler. On the outer rural grid systems the Canadian US system works great, and for the most part that I've