[Animats]

Nice. It's annoying that they provide only 10x sped up video. Watching this slowed down is helpful.

Notes:

* There are frequent steering twitches to the left. This may be associated with passing parked cars. There are similar twitches to the right when in the left lane of a one-way street.

* Crosswalk behavior when turning needs some work. The vehicle enters the intersection, then stops in the intersection before the crosswalk with people in it. This is a hard problem, because the system needs to recognize people waiting to cross but not yet in the roadway. When the light turns green, both the pedestrians going straight and the turning vehicle can enter the intersection, the pedestrians having right of way. The pedestrians now block the vehicle, and the vehicle blocks the bike lane.

* Left turns into multi-lane streets are too wide and into the wrong lane.

* On two occasions, the vehicle is stuck behind a doubly-parked vehicle engaged in loading. The options are to wait or to cross a double yellow line. There's a delay of several seconds, then forward movement. Suspect manual intervention.

[bbananas]

> The pedestrians now block the vehicle, and the vehicle blocks the bike lane

Entering the bike lane appears to be legally-required [1] behavior for a driver turning right across a bike lane in California. Entering the intersection, however, i'm not sure about.

Illustrated here: https://www.sfbike.org/news/bike-lanes-and-right-turns/

[1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...

[Stratoscope]

What is scary is how few drivers in California know about this rule or the reason behind it, which is for the safety of the bicyclists.

Near my home there are several intersections with bike lanes, and I estimate that perhaps one driver in 10 enters the bike lane to make the right turn as they are required to.

In fact, I sometimes get surprised or even dirty looks from drivers making illegal right turns when I do move into the bike lane to make the turn. I guess they think I'm trying to get ahead of them and cut them off, but I'm not, I'm simply following the law and improving bicycle safety.

[phil21]

When only 10% of drivers apparently know the correct way, the problem is with the system not the drivers.

Better signage and more consistent (state to state) rules that make common sense would go a long way.

Keeping in mind what is common sense to a biker is many times counter-intuitive to a driver. I hate the unprotected bike lanes on the right - as a driver you simply are not expecting people to be passing you on the right, on what effectively "feels" like a shoulder. It amazes me there are not more deaths due to this, to be honest.

After I spent some time in the Netherlands and Belgium I realized this was not just me. Those systems actually work and are designed with "road sharing" in mind. Everyone gets where they need to go, and even a dumb foreign tourist who knew nothing of local traffic laws could operate a vehicle safely amongst cyclists.

[apendleton]

> It amazes me there are not more deaths due to this, to be honest.

Intersections are the most frequent place for cyclist/driver collisions, and "right hooks" (where a driver fails to merge or yield and turns right into a cyclist trying to continue straight through an intersection) are the most common kind of intersection collision, so your instinct is spot on. Your perception that there aren't that many fatalities is probably partly because traffic deaths don't get reported on much, and partly because collisions involving turns tend to take place at relatively low speed, so fewer of these collisions are fatal than might be the case under other collision circumstances, as speed of the car is by far the strongest predictor of death in a cyclist/driver collision.

[MaulingMonkey]

> I hate the unprotected bike lanes on the right - as a driver you simply are not expecting people to be passing you on the right, on what effectively "feels" like a shoulder

Having driven for a bit in California I'm now used to expecting people to be passing me on the right, on the left, between lanes - everywhere - thanks to a combination of legal and illegal lane splitting by motorcycles and mopeds.

[abalone]

I counted 30 seconds of being stuck behind the unloading van with no way to pass without crossing double yellow. I didn't notice the autonomous green light turn off though. Possibly the algorithm is, if you're stuck then certain rules become flexible.

Worth mentioning, 30 seconds would feel like an eternity inside a car.

[Animats]

I assumed the "autonomous green light" was added in post-production, along with the timer and the company logo.

Google had another crash last month.[1] As usual, it was probably the other driver's fault. Other driver apparently botched a left turn in a two-lane left turn intersection at Rengsdorf and El Camino. Google drives in traffic on the SF peninsula every day, and we know exactly how many times they've crashed. It's reassuring seeing all those miles with only the occasional fender-bumper. It's not like Tesla slamming into something on a freeway at full speed. Three times.

Still waiting for the CA DMV to post the 2016 autonomous vehicle disconnect reports. Those cover December through November and are due Jan 1st, so DMV should have them up by now.

[1] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/3d358211-3f0c-430e...

[bluejekyll]

> It's not like Tesla slamming into something on a freeway at full speed.

To be fair, Tesla is not selling a fully autonomous vehicle, yet, people are treating it like one.

[swsieber]

And Tesla had encouraged that perception.

[greglindahl]

Tesla appears to be extremely clear to users as to the current state of the system. Have you actually used Tesla autopilot? What did you think of it?

[TheSpiceIsLife]

It's called "autopilot".

Too many people, myself included, that's all that matters.

They need to stop calling it "autopilot" until you can get in and fall asleep in the back seat.

[Animats]

Tesla was selling something which is marketed as being able to handle freeway driving under good weather conditions. It can't be trusted to do even that right. The "rams into vehicle stopped at left of roadway" feature is unacceptable. That's an expected possibility on a freeway. Users would legitimately expect auto-braking to activate for that.

[oxymoron]

Tesla's system has an order of magnitude or two of more miles driven than anyone else though, so I think it's unfair to speak of a higher risk based on current data.

[yhager]

wow, this document is redacted quite poorly

[nlawalker]

>> Worth mentioning, 30 seconds would feel like an eternity inside a car.

Would it, when the car is driving for you and you're free to putter about with a phone or laptop or book?

I always figured that this would be one of the greatest benefits of autonomous vehicles - perhaps the car isn't as aggressive as the human it's driving it would be, or as quick to get "unstuck", but the human won't care too much because they're too busy on their phone. In most cases, what's a few extra minutes when you're no longer actually driving the car?

[Eridrus]

I think you're completely right from a rational perspective, but I've definitely sat in the back of an Uber wishing the guy would drive more aggressively since I was running late.

[CamelCaseName]

The solution is simple. Screen a drag race across the interior windows of a self-driving car.

[Xunxi]

All the points you make are heavily characteristic of NYC as well as double parking, rampant cabbie pickups and drop offs, midtown crosswalk blockade by heavy pedestrian traffic, etc

I would love to see how the self driving contraptions handle this city at rush hour.

[zeroer]

Fuck. I can't handle your city at rush hour.

[ghaff]

Dealing with pedestrian crosswalk behavior is, in some ways, in the same class as left hand turns across unregulated traffic in the sense that both are situational. What I mean by that is that with few pedestrians/light traffic, it's appropriate to just wait it out. But there are definitely circumstances in cities where a bit more aggression is called for. I don't mean cutting right in front of a car or sending pedestrians scattering but you do sometimes need to take your space and go or you'll sit there for a very long time with horns blaring behind you.

[STRiDEX]

At one of the red lights it comes to a complete stop then crawls forward. 0:49 Maybe because of the cars turning left. That stood out to me

[Animats]

That happens more than once. Google cars sometimes do that when they don't have a good view of cross traffic due to corner obstructions. It's the right thing to do, but it's resulted in Google cars being rear-ended at very low speed several times.

[agumonkey]

Ha, I interpreted the yellow line crossing as a timed fallback.

[ajmurmann]

Some of these issues sound more like issues with the traffic in SF than with the car. Maybe the cars highlight that issues to us and we can fix it instead of work around it. Bicycle lanes turning into turning lanes leads to accidents and aggression between cars and bikes. Trucks shouldn't be allowed to double park. Maybe self driving cars are like there be dev on the team who points out all the shitty code that you've gotten used to.

[chipperyman573]

I agree with you, but in order for a car to be truly self-driving, it must be able to handle these situations. Just because they're illegal doesn't mean it won't happen

[ajmurmann]

Totally agree. I just am somewhat hopeful that something positive might come from it.

[calt]

Traffic in SF is traffic that works imho. I love the nuance and judgment that drivers are forced to use. I feel safer walking/bicycling/motorcycling here than in any other city, and that speaks volumes about the city's livability. Density creates these problems, and density is good for other reasons. It's only in suburbs and rural areas that every store can have a loading zone, but then no one can walk anywhere.