Cyclists, here’s one for you: the Google cars will be more polite than the human drivers
As we progress in our technological symbiosis, we find out there’s more and more to learn about how we get along together – things that we’re already aware of, but we keep negotiating with because we’re humans and we can.
But what’s about to come has to be as accurate as neurosurgery, because the autonomous system does not have the capacity of making its own mind (thank God for that) yet. So the autonomous technology Google is playing with (and continuously upgrading) will be able to understand what cyclist are trying to communicate when they reach their arms.
Not only that the software can read cyclists’ hand signals, but it can also memorize the most recent cyclist’s hand signal to anticipate a rider’s turn. So if a cyclist is waving his/her hand way before a junction, the car will keep that in (its robot) mind until reaches the next intersection. And that’s not all.
Google states that its self driving tech will be able to anticipate other kinds of situations also – giving, for example, more leeway when the cyclist wants to pass a parked vehicle that has its door open. Also, the overtaking-a-rider-maneuver is programmed in such a way that gives “ample buffer room.”
I don’t know, maybe we – human drivers – can learn some things from this, too. According to NHTSA, in 2014 there’ve been 726 deaths and around 50,000 injuries among cyclists involved in accidents. Hats off to Google and Tesla for their involvement in autonomous driving!