DeepTraffic is a gamified simulation of typical highway traffic
selfdrivingcars.mit.edu
selfdrivingcars.mit.edu
EDIT: And for anyone looking for more info, this seems to be a more useful page: http://selfdrivingcars.mit.edu/deeptraffic/
It does seem like a good idea to me.
http://jalopnik.com/5501615/left-lane-passing-laws-a-state-b...
(and among those that don't 1/2 of them still have laws about obstructing traffic)
You should only go into the outer lanes to overtake traffic, and then move back in once you've passed. It's not just the law, it's a good idea...
That's not about passing on the right.
At a base level, given more than 2 lanes, there is a difference between "stay out of the left lane unless passing", and "stay out of the left and right lanes unless passing", as it gives drivers twice as many options for passing.
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/inside...
(I made that assumption before noting the .uks in their profile...)
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/motorways-253-t...
> Rule 264 You should always drive in the left-hand lane when the road ahead is clear. If you are overtaking a number of slower-moving vehicles, you should return to the left-hand lane as soon as you are safely past. Slow-moving or speed-restricted vehicles should always remain in the left-hand lane of the carriageway unless overtaking. You MUST NOT drive on the hard shoulder except in an emergency or if directed to do so by the police, traffic officers in uniform or by signs.
Where are you getting the impression that speeding is allowed anywhere?
One reason is that in many places in the US, the normal traffic speed exceeds the legal posted limit by 5-15 miles per hour. If the law requires a driver travelling at the legal speed limit to stay out of the "passing lane" so that other drivers can pass, this would imply that the law condones speeding, since only a driver moving faster than the legal speed limit can make use of that lane. If the law was not intended to encourage exceeding the speed limit, it likely would have been written as something like "any driver moving less the legal speed limit must avoid the passing lane".
Another reason is that some US states make exceptions to the normal speed limit when passing another vehicle on a two lane road: http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattle911/2014/10/10/can-i-speed-..., http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2012/03/traffic_talk_com.... While one could argue that it's not "speeding" if it's not illegal, it's not unreasonable to interpret such laws as "allowing speeding" to pass.
That's not how it works. The law is "stay right except to pass". This is true regardless of speed. Speeding is still illegal in any lane. The "stay right" rule is about not obstructing the flow of traffic, it has nothing to do with the posted speed limit.
e: To clarify many people drive below the speed limit, in this case it is possible to pass them in a lane to the left without exceeding the speed limit.
I agree, but the crux is whether one is prohibited from obstructing just the legal flow of traffic, or from obstructing any flow of traffic. Different states define this differently. Indiana, for example, recently reworded their law to require you to allow any one to pass you even if they would be breaking the law to do so: http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/new-ind.... While this doesn't make speeding legal, it strongly implies that drivers who wish to illegally exceed the speed limit in Indiana have a right to do so.
The law is about reducing the hazards on the road. Impeding traffic flow is extremely dangerous, more so than most people seem to realize [2]. These laws also apply in cases where the passed vehicle is traveling below the speed limit.
The "stay right" rule is about not obstructing traffic because doing so is very dangerous. If that traffic is speeding then yes, they are also technically in the wrong but it is important to also stay right and not create an even more hazardous situation.
This also means the "cruise control pass" where one car slowly overtakes another is also illegal if it is delaying anyone else from passing.
Washington State has a similar law [1] as does Idaho I believe.
Retric 6 minutes ago | parent | flag | favorite | on: DeepTraffic is a gamified simulation of typical hi...
It's much safer for a few semi's to block all lanes while going the speed limit than to let people pass at 80+MPH. So, moving to the right lane has little to do with safety just enabling speeding. In heavy traffic police will sometimes do this at below highway speeds which can create a huge net benefit.
Further, lane changes are dangerous and should be minimized.
It's hardly safe if the natural speed of traffic behind the semis is x+5 and the semis are going x. Then you have a constantly growing number of cars trying to fit in the same amount of space, and density seems way more dangerous than speed.
I don't understand why some drivers feel the need to control every other driver behind them. As other commenters have said, it is more dangerous (and less efficient) to create a backup than to just let faster traffic pass, regardless of the numbers printed on the signs.
It is not your job as a driver to police other drivers. Maybe your bald all seasons on your cheap sedan can only go 55 in a 70 in the rain, but that other car has rain tires and traction control that could handle 110, so they are safe at 70 in a 70. Preventing them from passing is unsafe and deeply impolite.
I got my drivers license in Idaho then moved to Seattle years later. Washington took one look at my Idaho license and handed me a Washington license. There were no questions asked about traffic laws or anything.
This city has grown substantially in the last 10 years and it's starting to show in the traffic. We have big backups but we aren't at capacity, drivers are just very inefficient in their habits. Last year there was a push from the DOT to encourage zipper merging to more efficiently use our roads. I try to follow that advice but drivers aggressively prevent the merge at the merge point, probably because it seems to them like I am "cutting" in line.
I think we could make big improvements just with some education. Self-driving cars will help but making people better (even a little bit) will help. And if human drivers follow the rules more reliably that has to make the self-driving car's job easier during the long transition from all human to all AI controlled.
Sure, if we accept the current reality that many drivers drive faster than the law allows, it likely improves overall public safety to allow them to do so unimpeded. My preference would be that we either enforce the existing laws, or change the laws to match the norm. But although there are many situations where the chance of immediate harm would be reduced by avoiding confrontation, I think it's rare that citizens are legally required to accommodate law breakers.
For example, while it may reduce the risk of bodily injury to peacefully turn your keys over to a carjacker, it's unlikely that we would criminalize refusal. I presume this is because society tolerates (accepts, condones) speeding in a way that it does not tolerate carjacking. At the least, I think it implies that laws are divided into (at least) two classes, laws that individuals must allow others to break, and those that they are allowed (or encouraged) to attempt enforcement.
Can you give other examples of illegal activities where third parties are required to take positive action to allow? And where there isn't widely considered to be a "right" to break that law? I'm sure they exist, but I'm not coming up with them.
> At the least, I think it implies that laws are divided into (at least) two classes, laws that individuals must allow others to break, and those that they are allowed (or encouraged) to attempt enforcement.
Maybe I misunderstand what you mean but I'm not aware of any situation where private citizens are encouraged to enforce the law. That's a recipe for disaster and is where road rage is born. Should I drive around and tailgate everyone in the left lane to teach them to drive on the right? What's the difference?
e: The "drive right" rule is not about allowing speeders, it is about not impeding the flow of traffic. It's similar to "yield to the right", the rules of the road are designed to allow all of us to use a shared resource efficiently.
That said, I am philosophically troubled by a law that legally requires me to take a positive action that benefits those who choose to ignore the law. I'm not sure what the parallel would be to your "yield to the right" example --- perhaps requiring that the driver with the legal right of way check first that no one has chosen to ignore the yield sign?
I would be interested in better parallel examples where positive action is mandated to improve public safety in the event that another party is breaking the law. My guess is that degree of comfort with similar laws show a strong urban/rural split, based on the degree to which "leave the policing to the police" is feasible.
(note that I'm not questioning the general principal of "slow traffic keep right", only the corner case where all traffic is already moving at the legal speed limit)
The law says to stay right regardless of speed so there is no corner case based on traffic moving at the legal speed limit. Your obligation to stay right exists at all speeds.
The purpose of the law is to improve safety by enabling smooth traffic flow and creating a predictable environment on the road. This is the parallel with "yield to the right". Communication between drivers is difficult so we have a set of rules to guide us in situations where the next action may otherwise be unclear.
If two people meet in a hallway they can look at each other and say "excuse me" or "go ahead". This is not possible on the road. In the same way I can walk up behind someone on the sidewalk and say "excuse me" and walk around them. In a car this is not possible so we agree in advance (or rather, we are told by the authorities) what to do to avoid the situation and how to reconcile it.
In some jurisdictions the purpose of the left lane is explicitly passing, you have no right to drive there unless you are passing someone else. In this case your obligation to stay right has nothing to do with the existence of a speeder or even your rate of speed.
I am not defending speeding because it does increase risk and reduce safety on the road but it becomes much more dangerous when other drivers are also not following the rules. Breaking the speed limit while someone else violates the lane occupancy laws creates a compounding risk for everyone on the road. This is why we have rules against both.
I would turn your request for parallel examples around and ask you for examples of a situation where it is ok to break the law to prevent someone else from doing the same. How do you justify such an action and is there a calculation as to how far to go? Is it ok to jaywalk to stop a robbery? Is it ok to murder someone to prevent jaywalking? When is vigilantism justified?
My premise is actually a little different, which is that a keep-right law without an exclusion for vehicles travelling the speed limit implicitly condones speeding. I'm questioning the intent of the lawmakers, not suggesting that the state laws should not be followed as they currently exist.
The law says to stay right regardless of speed so there is no corner case based on traffic moving at the legal speed limit.
Well, except (as best as I can tell) for Alaska, Arkansas, Maryland, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, and South Dakota, plus a couple more that make an exception if you are travelling faster than traffic flow: http://www.mit.edu/~jfc/right.html.
Interestingly, though, it looks like the current trend is for states to move away from this approach that I feel is more logical, and switch to a blanket "keep right except to pass" that you seem to prefer. This would suggest that my concerns are becoming less widely shared by others.
I would turn your request for parallel examples around and ask you for examples of a situation where it is ok to break the law to prevent someone else from doing the same.
This is a question that does trouble me, but I'll start by reiterating that I'm not encouraging people to ignore this law. Rather, I'm more interested in whether laws of this sort have an overall positive effect for society.
But answering the question, I think nonviolent actions such as taking someone's car keys to prevent them from driving while intoxicated might be justifiable. I think there are cases where releasing classified documents showing illegal government activity is morally justifiable. And there are times when I'd approve of stopping a violent crime in progress using otherwise illegal force against the perpetrator.
Is it ok to jaywalk to stop a robbery?
Yes, although I guess you'd have to weigh the chance that the jaywalking would endanger others.
Is it ok to murder someone to prevent jaywalking?
Apart from contrived cases involving extremely fat pedestrians and runaway trolley cars, I have trouble coming up with a case where this would be appropriate.
How do you justify such an action and is there a calculation as to how far to go?
Personally, I don't know, but I read this article earlier today and thought it had a good overview of some different societal approaches to the problem: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2718211.
It points out that common law systems (most of the US) typically have few requirements for citizens to prevent or report third party crimes, while citizens in civil law systems (some of Europe) often have a greater legal obligation to do so. Generally this obligation is satisfied by reporting to the police, but in some jurisdictions (Israel) there is a further legal obligation "to use all reasonable means to prevent the commission" of any felony.
Pretty much all the laws don't say "but if you're driving the speed limit, you can stay in the left lane". It's all more like "keep right except to pass slower traffic". It's pretty clear.
>While this doesn't make speeding legal, it strongly implies that drivers who wish to illegally exceed the speed limit in Indiana have a right to do so.
No, it doesn't. It says that both speeding and blocking speeders by loitering in the passing lane are both traffic violations. If you want to drive legally, stay under the speed limit and out of the left-most lane (except when necessary to do so for exiting, passing, making way for emergency vehicles, etc).
It's not that complicated.
Forgive me if you are in a left driving country but since this is a conversation about US State traffic laws I think you meant keep right except to pass.
There's usually a clause in traffic ordinances that state something along the lines of "regardless of any of the other laws here, drivers have a duty to avoid collisions if they can."
Some states do not permit undertaking.
Others do.
I get the argument for staying over to the left (in the UK). I'm not convinced that it's 100% rational though.
Picture a normal scenario with 3 lanes and on/off ramps coming in from the left.
With light traffic, all vehicles can keep to the left, over taking can happen in the middle lane and there's space for vehicles joining via the on-ramp. Fine.
With really heavy traffic, you normally end up with 3 lanes of traffic moving at increasing speed to the right and all the lanes are utilised. Everyone seems happy. Fine.
What happens with the murky space in between? If you try to stack everyone in the left lane they need to keep making space for people joining from the ramps. Also, some people will be moving faster than those in the far left, so they're effectively overtaking, but then where do you draw the line where they have to pull back to the left again (only to move out to overtake in another minute)? You could say that the moment there's any space to the left you move into it, but you just end up with lots more lane changes - which, at some point, becomes more dangerous than everyone just staying in the same lane.
There's a balance to strike between changing to satisfy the rule and staying the course to decrease the amount of changing. For different people that line is in different places and for a lot of people I know who grew up in the UK, if they place your behaviour on the wrong side of that (arbitrary) line, there will be hell to pay.
As a once foreigner it's all quite interesting.
the law on the autobahn/multi-lane streets is: change to a lane on the left (a faster lane) only to overtake (except for special conditions, i.e. traffic jams/very slow moving).
mostly south of vienna, the system is different though. due to the high amount of traffic from eastern neighboring states, with different rules and different speed limits (austrias autobahn speed limit is 130km/h, while in the east it's sometimes 120km/h, i'd guess), it's usually:
* right lane (slowest): trucks and slow moving vehicles ~80-100km/h
* middle lane: normal traffic, depending on weather ~110-120km/h (with sometimes up to 130-140km/h if traffic permits, usually not for long though)
* left lane (fastest): traffic going faster (130km/h+)
you choose the lane appropriate for your speed. overtaking strictly on the left.
this is, strictly speaking, not legal. if the slower lane is free you have to change, even if you're going top speed.
in the beginning i've been complaining about people not observing the local laws, but nowadays i have to admit that i think the eastern system works better.
Also, your facts are wrong. You are required to practice on your highway skills and you will almost certainly go on a highway (if location permits) during your test. I'm almost happy we don't train our newer drivers on the motorway, honestly, I'm not sure I would trust them not to mess up even with an instructor joining them. We do have debates about whether to let newer drivers go on the motorway [1], but people bring up the point that they're normally incredibly busy and a single mistake could kill 5+ cars travelling at 70mph.
Also, you say we can't call the outer lane the "fast" lane? It is fast when compared to the other lanes, but this doesn't mean we need to drive without care or attention! I think you don't understand that "fast" is a relative term and does not mean you can break the speed limit.
A couple of other points:
- You can't undertake normally, only in specific circumstances such as in queues or in separated traffic situations (like one-way traffic). You are NOT allowed to undertake on a motorway.
- "Many UK people even deliberately obstruct other road users" has never happened to me in my life but, I've heard others talk about doing it to others when they're not being considerate to others (for example when two lanes go to one, and a car thinks they can speed down the fast lane to overtake everyone and just bully their way into the left lane).
- "Pure bliss by comparison", really? Italy is notoriously bad at driving, Spain and other places also have similar problems with them. Generalising the entire continent to be perfect doesn't work.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r... [1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38464776
Usually when I see people comparing the UK to continental Europe like that, they're really talking about northern Europe, and conveniently ignoring Spain and Italy.
It's like that here in the US: any time we say something positive about our country, we're usually ignoring the existence of the South.
This is not true. A small, highly annoying, minority drive in the middle lane regardless. Most people drive reasonably.
My least favourite thing is in these new 50mph limits on the motorway, where people will sit in the fast lane doing exactly 50, holding others up. They wouldn't do it on a regular section of motorway with a 70 limit, why do it in a 50?
I would guess because 70mph is the default speed on a motorway, and the highest speed limit possible, and it's generally accepted that people often drive faster than that on motorways in the UK. Whereas 50mph is unusual and thus seems more intentional, and thus more likely to be enforced.
The number of people who blast through those sections well in excess of 50mph never ceases to amaze me.
I can only assume they don't understand how average speed cameras work.
And my point was nothing to do with the speed camera. My point was that you have no right to sit in the fast lane holding other people up, regardless of what the speed limit is. Get out of the way if you're not overtaking.
EDIT: This isn't directed at you, just a general rant.
Highways with THAT many lanes typically have exits on both the right and left side. People will typically be on whichever side their exit is going to be on.
In practise though, people go slow in the right lanes and are not considerate of other drives. Some even think they have the right to prevent others from speeding and deliberately do 5-10km/h under the limit.
The thing is, by not following the practise you cause other impatient drives (rightly or wrongly) to weave in and out of lanes passing on both sides which increases chances of an accident - due to the increase number of lane changes.
By contract, the cars in the simulation seem to change lanes and velocities all willy nilly. All of them flip my bozo bit and my intuitive reaction would be to position myself to take the closest possible exit ...
tailgating? yep cutting into traffic? yep randomly slowing down and speeding up? yep
I could probably write a book about defensive cycling; the amount of times drivers would have turned into me if I wasn't predicting it is probably over 50... it's the most common way to be killed.
Because that's closer to how humans drive. As infuriating as it is, midwest-USA traffic follows almost no rules about what the left lanes are for.
And if you need to exit the road. Or if you think you need to Soon (tm).
As someone else already put: in Europe you need to drive at the outer lanes (usually right, UK left lanes) if you're slow, and if you want to overtake traffic you move inward (usually left, UK right lanes) after which you should ASAP move back to the outer lane.
Its logical that people from MIT try to emulate US traffic or even Massachusetts traffic though.
Not in the US AFAIK (or does it vary by state?). My understanding and experience is that driving in the lane of your choice, and "undertaking" (overtaking on the inside) are both legal and common practice.
Here's a summary of the law, by state. http://www.mit.edu/~jfc/right.html
In America the accepted answers are "none" and "no". Also a 7-lane road is a terrible idea.
I read the documentation and watched the first video and read all of the lecture slides but I haven't really grasped any of the concepts. Like, is 400 num_neurons a lot? Not a lot? Why would looking backward help at all? Why have that as a variable? It suggests to increase the train_iterations from 10000. Does that mean 15k, 100k, 1000k? Was that the point of the exercise, just to get comfortable with making changes and running simulations or should I have come away with a deeper understanding?
If anyone feels like they could teach me I'd be willing to pay $100 for a half hour of your time, skype or Cambridge/Boston if you are local.
The input layer was large but the hidden layer was only 12 neurons.
I'm still learning myself so i wouldn't be able to teach you. There are some great courses online.
To be fair the net i created could only handle human faces correctly oriented and only at a single low resolution.
The output actions are 5 so that is the size of the output layer.
You can change the number of nodes in the middle layer but you can also cut-and-past that code to add additional layers.
I think you probably need at least two layers, the first to determine which lanes are clear and the second for figuring out how to maneuver into the desired lane.
With such a large network, training will take longer so stick with the default iterations until you feel like you need more fine tuning.
Once you are satisfied with a model, change one thing and see how much of an improvement you get, but it is a time-consuming process. I have not fiddled with any of the "opt." options yet.
case 'fc': this.layers.push(new global.FullyConnLayer(def)); break;
case 'lrn': this.layers.push(new global.LocalResponseNormalizationLayer(def)); break;
case 'dropout': this.layers.push(new global.DropoutLayer(def)); break;
case 'input': this.layers.push(new global.InputLayer(def)); break;
case 'softmax': this.layers.push(new global.SoftmaxLayer(def)); break;
case 'regression': this.layers.push(new global.RegressionLayer(def)); break;
case 'conv': this.layers.push(new global.ConvLayer(def)); break;
case 'pool': this.layers.push(new global.PoolLayer(def)); break;
case 'relu': this.layers.push(new global.ReluLayer(def)); break;
case 'sigmoid': this.layers.push(new global.SigmoidLayer(def)); break;
case 'tanh': this.layers.push(new global.TanhLayer(def)); break;
case 'maxout': this.layers.push(new global.MaxoutLayer(def)); break;
case 'svm': this.layers.push(new global.SVMLayer(def)); break;Spoilers: I tried to encode this idea by setting the inputs to be just tall enough to learn the safety system and wide enough to cover all lanes with no forward visibility. This learns an aggressive lane switching algorithm that lets you hit around ~70mph though not for the reason I thought. Also needed a few more hidden units/layers to make it work.
Individualistic driving leads to worse overall performance for everyone. One of the things I'm most looking forward to in an all-code-controlled driving future is seeing efficient highway traffic moving fast and smoothly.
(And yes, clearly there's a long transition period where some cars are controlled while others are still human-driven.)
That's not how the world works though. The only thing you can control is your own actions. Trying to control other people's actions is a recipe for failure.
Trying to control other people’s actions is called a law.
After that transition period, the automobile designers will start to optimize for a use case where the majority of the traffic is autonomous and agree on standards of how to align the different designs' goals.
It seems like that tipping point is so far away as to not make sense spending time on now. And I imagine even a century from now you will still see some vehicles driven by humans. There will always be exceptional transportation use cases, including cases where the autonomous vehicles forfeit control because of confusion or material defect (bad sensors, weather, etc).
Try driving in 2 lanes with random people switching lanes in front of you, people randomly blocking your lane to turn, etc, also make sure you get into your destination on time