Canuck
Well-Known Member
Lawyers will be involved when those self driving machines are involved in accidents.
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Self-Driving Car: Is it a big deal?
- Thread starter apacheguy
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Lawyers will be involved when those self driving machines are involved in accidents.
When I was learning to drive in the late forties of the last century, I knew where all the immediate cars were at all times and at 12 or so was getting my Mom's car out of snowbanks when we lived in Minnesota. Now, not so much, as I am 78. I suspect by 80 there will be restrictions on my driving. A self-driving car might be desirable for someone like me with old-timers' disease. I am haunted by the memory of a little-old-lady driving on the wrong side of the road a few years ago, and then in my rear view mirror she turned left into a four lane road continuing on the wrong side. I've always wondered what happened to her. Further, the mother of an acquaintance at 92 committed unintentional suicide under the wheels of a ten wheeler a few years ago.
We do have a growing and dangerous aging population, but self-driving cars can't be the only solution.
Another thought. We have examples already of self-driving cars. Isn't that what Uber is about?
We do have a growing and dangerous aging population, but self-driving cars can't be the only solution.
Another thought. We have examples already of self-driving cars. Isn't that what Uber is about?
So when I'm not using my car, can I send it out on autonomous 'Taxi Duty" and have it earn its keep?
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Sure! Uber will be happy to sign you up... as long as your car is clean and not too old, anyway. Don't plan on using your ancient Model S!
Haha!!
How about schedule a service in the middle of the night. The car opens the garage door drives to the service centre and comes back by morning
Raffy.Roma
Rome (Italy)
callmesam
Member
Can't wait to trade my current $1500/year insurance for a $100/year 95% autopilot. 5% manual (human) policy.
Can't wait for self-parking.
Can't wait for sleeping on long trips.
Can't wait for reading a book on long trips.
Can't wait for a black box which will reveal human error in the event of accident.
Can't wait to summon a car to pick up my kids from school, take them to piano practice and then pick them up, all WITHOUT ME IN THE CAR.
Full driverless vehicles (a la Google) are the 3-5 year future.
Autopilot will arrive by 2015.
Can't wait for self-parking.
Can't wait for sleeping on long trips.
Can't wait for reading a book on long trips.
Can't wait for a black box which will reveal human error in the event of accident.
Can't wait to summon a car to pick up my kids from school, take them to piano practice and then pick them up, all WITHOUT ME IN THE CAR.
Full driverless vehicles (a la Google) are the 3-5 year future.
Autopilot will arrive by 2015.
MassModel3
Member
And all it's going to take is some idiot high schoolers and some RADAR jamming devices and the whole house of cards comes collapsing to the ground.
For truly autonomous vehicles it will have to be a pseudo-public run infrastructure. And almost surely on dedicated infrastructure.
For truly autonomous vehicles it will have to be a pseudo-public run infrastructure. And almost surely on dedicated infrastructure.
callmesam
Member
What's amazing to me is to see just how innumerate some people are with regard to the actual risks of driving.
Driving is already the most dangerous activity most humans will ever participate in.
I'd love to read some articles you've written about the dangers of humans behind the wheel and how much trust we should put in them ;-)
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Sorry but this is totally wrong. Radar is a single data input. Google (for example) uses radar, Lidar, GPS, map, cameras. So even in your "radar jamming" hypothetical, the car would still have 4-6 different data streams to allow for continued driving.
But assume that the radar is essential, the car will fail and pull over. Not sure how that's different than any other system failure in a car that can cause a shutdown.
Hey, I've heard that people are able to bring cars to a complete halt with this thing called "broken glass" . . . maybe we should be driving around on solid tires because, you know . . . teenagers.
Yes but GPS/map isn't really useful in autonomous driving. Cameras are the best solution as they are hard to interfere with discretely.
But having more than a couple of cars pull over at the same spot due to 'conflicting information' will bring the whole road to a slow crawl.
The other issues are legacy vehicles, pedestrians, and cyclists that all use the same space. And other road hazards. Dedicated infrastructure isn't a stretch for fully autonomous vehicles.
I'm a technology believer and advocate, but have to be realistic about how long it takes a technology to mature.
I've had autocorrect on my phone for years... it is trying to do a fairly finite thing, and still gets it wrong an amazing amount of time. I can tell when TMC posters are using tapatalk: "break" for "brake". Will probably be useful and mature in another decade. On the other hand, auto-suggest is extremely helpful shortcut to typing today.
I'm a fan of assist today, would not be an early adopter of autonomous. Unfortunately, I do not get a choice. Driving is a community sport, and if others are adopting it, I'm adopting it by just being on road with them. Mature or not.
And, do I trust our NTHSA or other government agency to be a good judge of "mature enough"? Do I trust my fellow drivers to understand their role in a new autonomous or semi-autonomous world? No and no. Wish there could be beta roads that I could opt out of, but that's impractical.
bonnie
I play a nice person on twitter.
If I could have handed my parents the keys to a self-driving car instead of taking away their car keys and freedom, I would have been grateful.
Self-driving cars will change the way we age, in a very positive way. Instead of becoming isolated because of lack of transportation options, people will still be actively engaged in life. Society will look back and see self-driving cars as far more disruptive than electric cars. Think of the bolus of baby boomers about to hit (or who have hit) retirement age and think about what that means in 20 years.
Self-driving cars will change the way we age, in a very positive way. Instead of becoming isolated because of lack of transportation options, people will still be actively engaged in life. Society will look back and see self-driving cars as far more disruptive than electric cars. Think of the bolus of baby boomers about to hit (or who have hit) retirement age and think about what that means in 20 years.
chickensevil
Active Member
Stunt drivers do crazy things all the time, and it states in the video that they disabled some safety features of the car in order to allow them to do this stunt. If someone wants to recreate this, I say go for it, since that would just be darwinism at work. Not many (smart) people would do something so reckless.
callmesam
Member
You should probably read up a bit more on how these are used.
The GPS gives a location to compare against camera data and maps data. These provide something called redundancy. This allows the computer to have a greater degree of confidence with regard to safety and are ESSENTIAL.
Your example is still identical to broken glass. One car drives over the glass, pulls over. Next car, same. How are we going to deal with this growing glass-splosion?
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Like being a pedestrian or on a bike?:wink:
It's all statistics and probability. And there are things you can do to mitigate that risk. If I surfed and skied as much as I drove, those activities would be on par with the danger involved in driving.
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