Cyclists are a lot smaller and a lot less predictable than cars - so obviously harder for the algorithms to hunt down and hit - but they are improving.

That's why they score the big points. People and animals, of course, score even higher!

My Kia has an excellent pothole and bicycle finder. It seems to be mature technology, designed to benefit undertakers, bicycle and tyre sales.

And this is newsworthy because?

These are L2 vehicles at best, but appear to be L3/4/5 tests.

The point is we are further away from autonomous vehicles than the hype machine would have you believe.

These systems are not designed to be autonomous — other systems are. You might as well check three types of hotdogs and declare they are not proper hamburgers.

Only a fool would think hotdogs are hamburgers. It's "meat", with the bread product wrapped around it.

Clearly hotdogs are tacos.

Depends what you read and believe from this mythical hype machine.

In certain situations (and I'm thinking motorways predominantly here) I am fairly confident that we can have higher level autonomy in a reasonable timescale, one of the biggest challenges will be working out how to safely return control to a disinterested meatsack (either in the event that that's needed en route, or more typically at slip roads). In neither case will "drop control at the human" be sane.

In certain other situations (emergency braking) they are already a great help (though much of that is, as is typical with safety improvements) being absorbed by drivers relying on it - risk homeostasis.

The "hype machine" isn't mythical.

The question is what do /real/ people (not tech experts) expect out of cars and car makers, and how they react.

I know a person who as a teenager believed the news reports that "self driving cars are just around the corner!". She poo-pooed her driver's ed, and is now a very inept 23 year old driver, because those self-driving cars didn't show up on time.

We have people believing their damn Teslas can drive themselves WITHOUT supervision -- take a look at your average Tesla driver on the highway -- assuming they haven't tinted the heck out of their windows, they are often seen reading stuff on their phone or tablet, not even pretending to look out the window or being ready to take over.

"they are often seen reading stuff on their phone or tablet"

Non-Tesla drivers do the same. Since bicycles became more popular due to the pandemic, I have seen bicyclists doing it!

I'm thinking motorways

Of course, if you're only thinking motorways, you would put the smarts into the road as well as the car - it would be doable for such a limited network and it would solve all sorts of otherwise difficult problems. You could even couple your vehicles up into virtual trains.

And for the remaining roads, a simple speed limiter is probably all you need to significantly improve safety.

I think the "autonomous driving" crowd need to decide whether they're attempting to eliminate the cost of taxi drivers or improve the efficiency and safety of road transport. I suspect there's far too much emphasis on the former when the latter is much more tractable.

Of course, if you're only thinking motorways, you would put the smarts into the road

I don't know whereabouts in the world you are but here in the UK they've been turning motorways into "Smart Motorways" for the last decade or more and have generally caused complete chaos in the process. If you over look the fact the whole smart motorway dream has been a fiasco the sheer disruption and cost of the work has been excessive.

How much more disruption and cost do you think re-engineering the motorway system to help autonomous vehicles would cause? 10 times as bad? 100 times? Besides what ever tech we embed in the road system will be out of date before they've even fitted a 25 mile section of the M1.

To work well in practice you'd need an international agreement on how the tech would work, most countries would need to sign off on the same spec so good luck to you there.

And the next contestant is a_yank_lurker, specialised subject "The Bleedin' Obvious".

Please go and say that on a Tesla forum. They will not like it one little bit.

The Tesla cult/disciples are all in on Full Self Driving and RoboTaxis.

I think that you are 100% correct. The legal things alone will take years to sort out. Tesla will not want to have the liability for each and every crash that one of their cars is involved in unless Elon buys major insurance companies in every country where this is allowed.

Exactly my thoughts.

I cannot open PDFs so I don't know if the AAA tests were rubbish or this article is, but most definitely these are not, as the article misreports, "autonomous vehicles".

As you state, they're level 2 systems that seem to perform as described in the manual (I have an L2 myself).

Fully autonomous driving *is* hard, which is why we don't have L4+ cars on the road yet, but this test / article says nothing about the capabilities of L4-L5 platforms.

Possibly. But it says a lot about the likelihood of having L4+ cars soon ever.

If it were even possible to engage these L2 systems in a non L2 environment then surely the systems should be outlawed. If the system is only capable of operating with any level of safety within tightly controlled usage cases it needs to be possible to only engage them in those limited situation.

If the technology worked then the companies creating the driver-assist mode would be able to create an operating system and web browser that we could all use without any risk at all of getting infections ... oh wait, are they writing the driver-assist code in Java?

Java's perhaps not the trendiest framework at the moment. All the cool manufacturers are using Flutter or Python.

Heck, British Leyland and Fiat were way ahead of the curve... even in the 1980s, they were shipping cars built with Rust...

There are a lot of them, hundreds or thousands mixed in with cycles and even more motorcycle scooters and motorcycles. It seems works OK with scooters in the middle of very busy roads.

Having a lack of angry UK car drivers screaming "You don't pay road tax" seems to help.

Perhaps the scooterists take a less entitled attitude, and actively avoid other vehicles, instead of riding 3 abreast in the middle of the road?

I get stuck behind tractors and livestock a lot more often than cyclists. Are they entitled? Entitled cows.

No, I think it's always the motorists.

> "...instead of riding 3 abreast in the middle of the road?"

Welcome to the real world where cyclists are now advised to occupy more of the road to force cars to use proper overtaking manoeuvres and to reserve a little space for themselves..

The other day I was in a convoy following a bicycle doing 15 mph in a 50 mph zone. After several minutes we all (20 or so cars) managed to overtake it safely according to the new rules, then we got to traffic lights on red and the cycle went past all the cars on the inside to the front. We all then had to follow the cycle yet again for another mile or so after the lights changed with no chance to overtake again safely.

this is a bad thing?

The leading self-driving car system is Waymo, which has already sells a service with nobody behind the wheel. These systems are at best assisted driving.

Agreed, except for this bit:

> already sells a service with nobody behind the wheel.

Nobody *immediately* behind the wheel. But their cars are basically shadowed by a van with a field support guy and a spare driver, making them much more expensive to operate and not viable for mass deployment just yet (it is of course still amazing that they can do what they already do at all and it's a necessary step in the evolution of this field of technology).

Don't you know that's their plan to solve the housing crisis? Having the service people live in their vans, following around the automated vehicle that "replaced" them.

Does that not basically make it a remote control car?

But their cars are basically shadowed by a van with a field support guy and a spare driver...

I'm not sure if that's actually true anymore. I've watched YouTube videos (at least last year, maybe in 2020) of people in Waymo cars who had to wait for ages for someone to come and help when the car got stuck. They have support drivers available, sure, but I'm not sure they're following all their cars around these days. First line of support seems to be to a call centre these days.

Are there any tests of 'self driving' technology having to avoid pedestrians? (I have to declare an interest here, as I sold my old car for scrap last year.) If I recall correctly, one of the first fatalities was of a lady wheeling a bicycle across a road not recognised as such.

If it will hit a bicycle and an oncoming car, one can assume that pedestrians in its path should not feel at all safe as they are even smaller and slower moving.

Pedestrians walk facing traffic because drivers are terrible. Plus, in America, that gives you time to draw and put three rounds thru the windshield if they encroach on your right-of-way.

Indeed. In a country full of armed psychos (see the news, ad nauseam) it would be foolish not to go armed and blast anything that moves.

"Pedestrians walk facing traffic because drivers are terrible"

It's actually how you should walk on country roads, except when the means you are blind to the driver.

It's a two way thing. You can see them, they can see you.

Source: Me.

There was an article (here?) not long ago. Sort of a promo from one of the companies that make software. The code in Tesla and Toyota was not up to snuff. In all cases, the cars plowed through pedestrians in a crosswalk. The use case was the car had to avoid a stopped vehicle in front of them, swerving around. Not a good testament.

It appears *snuff* is exactly what they are up to. Soon they will jump the kerb and chase down the others.

We will have autonomous vehicles approved on expressways only for many years before they are allowed on city streets - i.e. we'll see autonomous long haul trucking years before autonomous taxis become common. No bicycles or pedestrians to hit, and you sure hope you never encounter an oncoming car!

As far as I'm concerned that's what I'd really want out of an autonomous car. I wouldn't mind at all having to drive it to my local interstate highway entrance then have it take over driving until I reach the exit nearest my destination. Even if I have to take over when switching from one interstate to another (it can be kind of complex as a human to interpret the signage and get into the appropriate lane) or in a construction zone having it take the wheel for 90% of the trip would be a big win. If I had the car drive itself I'd probably choose to take my car just about anywhere in the US (I'm fairly centrally located) instead of dealing with how terrible the flying experience is these days.

Self driving motorhome sounds more like your bag of fish :-) Travel with the seasons, or your general whims.

Sure... Here in the US we'll get right on that. We'll make separate roadways for the big rigs to self drive on. Right after we get done with light rail and more Amtrak.

Shouldn't it be the robot monitoring the human? DON'T rules are a lot easier to specify than fancy situation recognition. "If you speed once more Dave then you'll be reported to the police." "Why is your foot still n the throttle when there's red lights ahead?" "Get off your sodding phone." "You have noticed that Fire Engine with flashing blue lights haven't you?" But nag-bots aren't sexy. The UK government is in thrall to the hype.

My car automatically slows down when a slower vehicle is in front (and matches), or if it knows a junction/roundabout is approaching, or if it detects the speed limit has reduced. But I believe this is more to do with making the most of regenerative breaking and convenience rather than a safety/assist feature, and hence it never brakes enough to stop the car entirely (like the Subura/Hyundai)

cyclists are paedos.

Pedalphiles oerhaps

Woooossshhhhh.

That's the sound of the joke flying over their heads.

I’m waiting for predictive text to work still.

What do your meander? It works just finest.

Looking at your caption photo you've got to ask yourself how the cyclist got into this situation (OK, its obviously posed, but....). The only possible explanation is that the cyclist ran a stop sign and went into an intersection without looking. The cycle isn't really a cycle, either -- its obviously an electric bike or rather an electrically powered moped so you'd expect the rider to have at least undergone some training and be wearing minimal protective gear.

I drive a car but I also ride motorcycles and have a pedal cycle. All two wheeled vehicles deserve respect from their operator -- as soon as you go over about 12mph you've got enough kinetic energy to yourself or some other serious injury if you crash. So you have to learn how to ride responsibly. A lot of cyclists in our part of the world don't and given that their machines have relatively poor handling and flimsy brakes compared to a motorcycle and they carry little protective gear its no wonder that literally all of the serious accidents that have happened to people I know on two wheels have been on pedal cycles (mountain bikes are the worst -- even more things to hit when you come off). Pedal cyclists can help everyone, and themselves, by remembering that they're road users, too, and by at least carrying a mirror -- it might be OK for a slow moving vehicle to hold up traffic in hte UK but here if you've got more than five vehicles behind you as a slow mover you're obliged to pull over and let them pass.

...and expecting technology to save your butt if you don't ride defensively is wishful thinking.

If you seeing the same picture as me, it's most definitely a bike. Frame is too thin for an electric bike.

The cyclist could have been hit from behind and spun round, as is the case in nearly every bike / car collision.

Obviously a lot more work to be done... Most motorists wouldn't consider an autonomous vehice useful until they can successfuly hit at least 75% of cyclists.