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Comment by huangc10 | Hacker News Reader

I live in Mountain View and I see Google self-driving cars around all the time (day and night). My personal feel is that they look "different" and my attention will deliberately focus on them (which may or may not affect my driving when I'm around them).

Why not test with cars that look "normal" (think early 2000s Corolla). Wouldn't this further decrease the chance of possible accidents?

I guess what I'm saying is, who's decision was it to make it look like a toy car and not just an actual regular car that doesn't divert my attention off the road?

*edit for better readability

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They want to get people used to the idea of sharing the road with self-driving cars. People will be a lot more comfortable with them and have a lot fewer misconceptions if they've seen and recognized enough of them for it to stop seeming noteworthy.

Is this really the case though? Wouldn't you want to produce results, facts, and data first?

My sense is, prove it's safe first, then mass produce something that IS safe in the design you want.

After all, once something is mass produced then people adopting it would be quick. No?

Marketing. You want people to notice and think, "Hey, that's one of those self-driving cars, that's cool!"

I believe you're correct in that marketing did have a strong sway in the decision.

But the fundamental principle behind Google has always been engineering and especially for something as crucial as safety, they should have stuck with something bland and nonchalant imo.

The little Google cars (not the Lexus SUVs) were specifically designed for pedestrian safety in case of a collision, which can hardly be said about any other car, aside from Volvos.

pretty much every modern car is designed with pedestrian safety taken into account, that's why they all look so goofy now

Understanding is that cars are designed for passenger safety, not so much pedestrian safety. What are you saying?

That cars are designed with pedestrian safety taken into account? :)

I don't know if you've noticed but cars tend not to have noticeable front bumpers these days. Some cars also now have deformable bonnets, or bonnets that pop up if they detect somebody rolling on to them. (If you want to know how this works, you'll have to ask somebody else. I have no idea.) This is all to limit the damage cars cause to people when they hit them.

Euro NCAP has a section in its current ratings where they assess how good the car is at hitting people without injuring them too much, giving manufacturers of vehicles in many sectors an incentive to design with this in mind. See http://www.euroncap.com/en/vehicle-safety/the-ratings-explai....

Supposedly the Dacia Duster's rather poor Euro NCAP rating was predominantly due to its ropey score on the car-hitting-person section: http://www.euroncap.com/en/results/dacia/duster/10968

Interesting, safety is usually not mentioned from the articles I've ready about the driverless car design. The two articles below kind of skimp about safety. Well, hopefully you're right and safety within the design was (and in my opinion should) be the first goal in mind.

http://www.fastcodesign.com/3031342/top-car-designers-critiq...

http://www.wired.com/2014/05/the-major-design-flaws-in-googl...

The little cars have soft foam front-ends and the windshields are made of flexible plastic instead of glass.

google is only capable of designing things that look they were made by and for 5 year olds

True statement for some Google products but not necessarily all.

In this case the more non-threatening the cars are, the more likely people are to accept them.

True, my 5 year old cousin loves using google inbox to improve his productivity.

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