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news
Driverless car close pass.pngVideo: Nissan driverless car in cyclist close pass
A journalist from France has caught on camera the moment a Nissan driverless car passes a cyclist without leaving enough space.
Petite vidéo de la conduite autonome. #electrytheworld J'en ai mis une autre sur Instagram. C'était topissime. pic.twitter.com/1xJI0g40jd
— Korben (@Korben) March 4, 2017
The video, shot in London as Nissan showcased its driverless progress, shows how the car’s console registers the cyclist, but then fails to move over to give him space.
Tetsuya Iijima, global head of autonomous drive development at Nissan, is behind the wheel, but fails to over-ride the car and move out either, the video, spotted by BikeBiz, shows.
One of the French journalists in the car can be heard saying: ”I was a little scared for him" in French.
Last year we reported how Adrian Lord, of the transport consultancy Phil Jones Associates, fears that once technology that prevents pedestrians and cyclists from being hit by vehicles makes it to our roads, it opens the door for vulnerable road users to take advantage of the impossibility of being injured.
He said: "Once people realise that an autonomous vehicle will stop [automatically], will pedestrians and cyclists deliberately take advantage and step out or cycle in front of them?
“If that’s the case, how long would such a vehicle take to drive down Oxford Street or any other busy urban high street?”
Meanwhile professor of transport engineering at the University of the West of England, John Parkin, told the Financial Times (link is external) that much of the infrastructure that's being implemented to keep bikes and cars apart in inner-city environments, will be made redundant by autonomous technology reaching maturity.
"When fewer cars are driven by humans, in cities at least," the professor said. "There would be less need to segregate cyclists from traffic. This would allow roads to be designed as more open, shared spaces."
Latest Comments
- Cugel 34 min 32 sec ago
Are you saying, then, that the rule of law concerning motoring (and perhaps anything else) is a waste of time? We should just adopt the, "That's...
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You're probably going to have to split the chain anyway, what are the chances that the person who installed a chain like that managed to get the...
- brooksby 47 min 48 sec ago
Note as well how the council has felt that they need to put double yellow lines between the cycle lane and the main carriageway…
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It can be 50/50 whether the articles are paywalled or not, even one that looks free can disappear, but you can switch between the EADT &...
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What do they expect to achieve on one day a week? Not much, which is exactly what they want.
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I have been using a Tickr for years, multiple battery changes with no problem at all Same with Polar H10.
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The comparison was between two things never intended to be used on a bike.
- chrisonabike 13 hours 20 min ago
Well, send us a review when you've cycled it!...
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47 comments
An opportunity for a test case here perhaps - if the cyclist decides to report the close pass, who will be prosecuted - Nissan, or the person in the driving seat who did not take control?
Surely that's a trick question... the answer to the question "who will be prosecuted?" is almost bound to be "no-one"!
I assume driverless cars will stop to avoid collision with a person, or anything bigger than the car/or truck being driven - e.g. elephant, cow, donkey but what about smaller things? goat, large dog, medium size dog, small dog, cat, bird, mouse, frog - where is the cutoff point? How about a young toddler, say 18 months - about as big as a mid-sized dog - or if she trips over maybe a small dog or large cat. How about kangaroos - a driver has a chance to see them coming from the side before they cross - maybe there will be predictive course analysis built in - I wouldn't bet on it since they have trouble doing this even for planes and ships.
Another point - who gets to face court if the automated car does something wrong - The computer programmer? the car manufacturer? or the driver who has to stay alert all the time with his hands on the controls and might as well be driving anyway.
who faces court if your tumble dryer bursts into flames and burns down a block of flats?
Driverless cars won't have steering wheels etc., that's the point of them. Everyone in the car will be a passenger.
as for things coming from the side, maybe the designers have thought of that, and will put sensors there. Jeez. The driver has two eyes at best, two ears and one brain which are collectively dealing with a whole lot more than just driving. Driverless cars don't need these limitations, and only have to think about driving, not hitting stuff, and getting out of the way of kangaroos. The reason planes and ships have problems with this is the dearth of Australian megafauna at sea and in the sky; Oxford Street is obviously different, there are unpredictable Antipodeans bouncing about all over the bloody place.
They will also be recording everything all the time for use in evidence. A law will be made to make it illegal deliberately to obstruct the highway, if such a law doesn't already exist, and the car will have you bang to rights.
There's also this gem with a Tesla supposedly on autopilot that nails a construction barrier.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQxIhMBKblY
Just as with this article's video, what the hell was the "driver" doing?
There's another video I've seen where the car doesn't recognise a street sweeper in the lane ahead and the driver has to take control to prevent a crash.
If I understood the displays correctly, the car was only doing 32-37 km/h, so perhaps the pass wasn't as frightening as all that. But is should still leave min 1.5m in case of the cyclist needing to swerve.
No offense Professor John Parkin, but this: "There would be less need to segregate cyclists from traffic. This would allow roads to be designed as more open, shared spaces."
Is complete bo11ocks! Roads ARE open shared spaces, which are dominated by bullying self entitled people driving cars. When the robots are driving we aren't suddenly going to be able to have picnics on them and I seriously doubt people will be any keener to cycle/walk in close proximity robots at high speed than they are being close to traffic at the moment.
Robots in factories have protective guards around them and they still go wrong (e.g. the robot that killed a worker in a VW factory recently), why would we risk asses them differently when they are loose on the highway.
Stick to the numbers John, or become a humanity professor where ideas and unsubstantiated opinions are welcome...
Private motor vehicles should not be allowed on "Oxford Street or any other busy urban high street". Problem solved.
Considering that this took place in London will the Met accept this as video evidence of (at the very least) careless driving by Tetsuya Iijima?
Looks like the Nissan software engineers have faithfully replicated the programming found in many human drivers' heads:
if (cyclist.inBikeLane == true) {
passingDistanceMeters = 0;
} else {
passingDistanceMeters = 1;
}
If only drivers did think in C!
I think that's Javascript. In which case, we're all dead.
[Engage geek mode]
Its definitely not C -- there's an object.attribute reference in the test condition, could possibly a C++ code fragment but Java or JavaScript more likely
[Engage cynic mode]
Treating humans on bikes as an object is about right, but there's a bug - the program should read as follows if replicating human driver logic:
} else {
passingDistanceMeters = 0.5;
[Disengage cynic mode]
(Can't disengage geek mode unfortunaley!)
Don't know what the hubbub is about, Nissan got this one spot on, no? The computer is adapted perfectly to the UK style of driving, all working as intended.
Bit too much chuckling going on for my liking
Agreed... obviously non-cyclists.
However, this is a blip soon to be a non-story. In 10 years these cars will be the norm and I'm happy to predict, close and punishment passes will be long forgotten. (Except for those that have not gone full auto yet)
Yeah....Fuckin hilarious when that happens
Not if I hide the batteries.
But the truth is that robots will soon be impregnating your wife. Sex and procuration will be done artificially.
And not before time, if I may say so. When I reached the age where my sex drive throttled back it was like being unchained from a maniac.*
*I stole that but it is so accurate.
"I agree with Mungecrundle, this is obviously far from ideal but once the engineers are.aware.of the issue and fix it all autonomous Nissan will pass safely."
That presupposes Nissan engineers recognise it. The engineer at the wheel could have taken over and steered the car around, but chose not to. So I don't see him seeing anything wrong with the car's behaviour that needed correction...
The engineer in the car might have missed it but there will be a whole army of them poring over the data from every journey.
The fact that most newspapers have sent reporters for a ride around London in the new Leafs suggest a huge PR exercise is also underway. Negative coverage will be monitored very closely.
I very much doubt this will remain an issue for long.
On one tv news item there was another example where the car aproached what I think was a narrow pavement/street sweeper vehicle (travelling, not sweeping) and the driver had to intervene and made some comment. A little worrying he didn't intervene in the cycling case, but yeah, I'd expect a whole lot of engineers will be looking at driving data.
I agree with Mungecrundle, this is obviously far from ideal but once the engineers are.aware.of the issue and fix it all autonomous Nissan will pass safely.
Given that this trial has only just started it's not surprising that there are a few teething difficulties.
Nissan hope to have this perfected by 2020 so hopefully the days of close passes are very much numbered.
I hate geeks and their robotic fantasies.
And yet your entire world is stuffed full of robotic devices and computer controlled systems that you probably take for granted or are just unaware of.
Nobody seems to have a problem in buying a car that has essentially been built by robots but autonomous operation of those same machines seem to strike at the heart of the male ego in particular.
He says on the internet....
I probably _am_ a geek, but I still half-agree.
Techno-evangelists get on my nerves a bit. Socio-political problems require socio-political solutions. Technology changes problems but doesn't necessarily solve them.
You'd better go and live in cave, since all the technology you use and rely on every day is design and developed by 'geeks'.
The difference is that the autonomous driving algorithm has the potential to gather data and effectively learn from every single scenario. More importantly it has the capacity to share those learnings with all vehicles using the same algorithm.
Having experienced no fewer than 3 dangerous passes on the club ride this morning, I'd far sooner take my chances with software being in control.
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