Self-Driving Cars

[hljockey]

http://www.foxbusiness.com/industries/2 ... omous-car/

According to this article Cadillac will have one for sale in 2016.

I remember listening to Paul Harvey quite a few years ago while he was telling a story about a teenager whose parents bought him a van equipped with a refrigerator and he wrecked it the first time out. The reason was because while he was driving down the freeway he decided to put it on cruise control while he went back to get something out of the refrigerator, ending up very surprised that the cruise control didn't work the way he thought.

Well, apparently it does now.

This ranks as one of the things I thought maybe I might see in my lifetime (I'm 65) but I would never have predicted as early as the year 2016.

[dualstow]

This is one of my favorite topics -- I hate driving -- and I hadn't seen this story.
You will see plenty in your lifetime.
I'm a little jealous of... let's say 3 generations from the millennials, because it'll be virtually all self-driving cars by then.

[Reub]

I like the idea of self driving cars.......As long as everyone else is driving them.

[Libertarian666]

I like the idea of self driving cars.......As long as everyone else is driving them.

Could you explain?

[Reub]

Sure. I have the utmost confidence in my own driving ability but little confidence in the driving skills of others. So if everyone else was in a self driving, robotic type of driving mode then I could drive worry free and enjoy myself with less risk.

[dualstow]

Hello from Lake Wobegon, where all the children, stock pickers and drivers are above average.

[Benko]

Am I the only one concerned about computer problems i.e. crashes?  OTOH brings a whole new meaning to blue screen of death. 

[dualstow]

Am I the only one concerned about computer problems i.e. crashes?  OTOH brings a whole new meaning to blue screen of death.

That comes up a lot, but I think it should be more along the lines of mission critical, NASA-type programming than Windows 2000. In test after test, computer-driven cars are shown to be less likely to crash than humans.

On top of that: no more road rage. No more fatigue. No more distractions.

[Kshartle]

Am I the only one concerned about computer problems i.e. crashes?  OTOH brings a whole new meaning to blue screen of death.

That comes up a lot, but I think it should be more along the lines of mission critical, NASA-type programming than Windows 2000. In test after test, computer-driven cars are shown to be less likely to crash than humans.

On top of that: no more road rage. No more fatigue. No more distractions.

Also think of all the valuable time saved by people who basically now will have their own personal driver. Middle-class people will now enjoy what used to be the privilage of the wealthy. This will add years to people's lives that othwise would have spent that time driving, now they can do other things.

Eventually all cabs, and many other driver-based labor will be freed up also.

The only problem I'm sure police will be able to zap you to pull over or just be able to lock you in and drive you straight to jail, minority report style 

[Mountaineer]

Also think of all the valuable time saved by people who basically now will have their own personal driver. Middle-class people will now enjoy what used to be the privilage of the wealthy. This will add years to people's lives that othwise would have spent that time driving, now they can do other things.

More polyphasic sitting time for the middle-class so they can ponder "where is that override button?" so they can teach their vehicle of choice to be aggressive and ace out all the other dumber cars at the traffic light (if there is one).  I'm going to mount an automated M60 on mine that spews forth Bible verses with every tenth round.  VIOLENCE RULES! 

... Mountaineer

[Kshartle]

Also think of all the valuable time saved by people who basically now will have their own personal driver. Middle-class people will now enjoy what used to be the privilage of the wealthy. This will add years to people's lives that othwise would have spent that time driving, now they can do other things.

More polyphasic sitting time for the middle-class so they can ponder "where is that override button?" so they can teach their vehicle of choice to be aggressive and ace out all the other dumber cars at the traffic light (if there is one).  I'm going to mount an automated M60 on mine that spews forth Bible verses with every tenth round.  VIOLENCE RULES! 

... Mountaineer

What we both wrote is grossly incorrect.

Thanks to Dear follower and people of his ilk and the morality that installed him, there won't be a middle class.

We'll have to see how the driverless car revolution is handled in more capitalist countries like China. 

[moda0306]

Also think of all the valuable time saved by people who basically now will have their own personal driver. Middle-class people will now enjoy what used to be the privilage of the wealthy. This will add years to people's lives that othwise would have spent that time driving, now they can do other things.

More polyphasic sitting time for the middle-class so they can ponder "where is that override button?" so they can teach their vehicle of choice to be aggressive and ace out all the other dumber cars at the traffic light (if there is one).  I'm going to mount an automated M60 on mine that spews forth Bible verses with every tenth round.  VIOLENCE RULES! 

... Mountaineer

What we both wrote is grossly incorrect.

Thanks to Dear follower and people of his ilk and the morality that installed him, there won't be a middle class.

We'll have to see how the driverless car revolution is handled in more capitalist countries like China. 

I'd laugh at your jest, but I know you're dead-ass serious about the China/capitalism thing.  You should start us a new thread describing your thoughts on that in more detail. I still don't get it.

[Libertarian666]

Hello from Lake Wobegon, where all the children, stock pickers and drivers are above average.

Exactly. Personally I would love to have a self-driving car so I wouldn't have to spend hours in a state of maximum alertness to reduce the probability of being killed. It could also detect insane behavior on the part of other vehicles and react much more rapidly than I could no matter how alert I was.

[Benko]

Am I the only one concerned about computer problems i.e. crashes?  OTOH brings a whole new meaning to blue screen of death.

That comes up a lot, but I think it should be more along the lines of mission critical, NASA-type programming than Windows 2000.

1.  "mission critical, NASA-type programming "
I dont know the details of what went wrong, but NASAs track record over the last what 10-15 years is not exactly optimal.

2.  how often does the word class enter your mind?

[l82start]

if you go the self driving rout why limit yourself to the ground? or mess with maintaining all the support infrastructure like roads.. if i have to upgrade to self driving i want a self driving drone to fly me to my destination...

[Mountaineer]

if you go the self driving rout why limit yourself to the ground? or mess with maintaining all the support infrastructure like roads.. if i have to upgrade to self driving i want a self driving drone to fly me to my destination...

Good grief!  You want the prez to be flying you around? 

... Mountaineer

[l82start]

if the prez can bomb any american anywhere any time, and dominoes/Google and amazon can deliver a package to any door it makes me suspect the autonomous drone technology may actually be ahead of the self driving car technology, some of the best stuff is probably tied up as military secrets at the moment but if the future is now then why not skip a step and go airborne..   

[Libertarian666]

The Hazards of Going on Autopilot

In this respect, Flight 3407 followed a long-established trend. A 1994 N.T.S.B. review of thirty-seven major accidents between 1978 and 1990 that involved airline crews found that in thirty-one cases faulty or inadequate monitoring were partly to blame. Nothing had failed; the crew had just neglected to properly monitor the controls.

The period studied coincided with an era of increased cockpit automation, which was designed to save lives by eliminating the dangers related to human error. The supporting logic was the same in aviation as it was in other fields: humans are highly fallible; systems, much less so. Automation would prevent mistakes caused by inattention, fatigue, and other human shortcomings, and free people to think about big-picture issues and, therefore, make better strategic decisions. Yet, as automation has increased, human error has not gone away: it remains the leading cause of aviation accidents.

Ok, human error remains the leading cause of aviation accidents. However, that doesn't say anything about the overall incidence of aviation accidents: have they gone down in severity and/or frequency with increasing automation? If so, the automation is still worthwhile.

[rickb]

The Hazards of Going on Autopilot

In this respect, Flight 3407 followed a long-established trend. A 1994 N.T.S.B. review of thirty-seven major accidents between 1978 and 1990 that involved airline crews found that in thirty-one cases faulty or inadequate monitoring were partly to blame. Nothing had failed; the crew had just neglected to properly monitor the controls.

The period studied coincided with an era of increased cockpit automation, which was designed to save lives by eliminating the dangers related to human error. The supporting logic was the same in aviation as it was in other fields: humans are highly fallible; systems, much less so. Automation would prevent mistakes caused by inattention, fatigue, and other human shortcomings, and free people to think about big-picture issues and, therefore, make better strategic decisions. Yet, as automation has increased, human error has not gone away: it remains the leading cause of aviation accidents.

Ok, human error remains the leading cause of aviation accidents. However, that doesn't say anything about the overall incidence of aviation accidents: have they gone down in severity and/or frequency with increasing automation? If so, the automation is still worthwhile.

Exactly.  Self-driving cars don't have to perfect - just better than human drivers and human drivers don't set a very high bar.  You may not text or talk on the phone while driving, or drive after you've been drinking, or drive when you're sleepy - but lots of other drivers on the road do and you may very well be who they run into.  The number of fatalities from car accidents in the US has been decreasing, but it's still over 30,000 per year.  See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_m ... S._by_year

[hljockey]

Am I the only one concerned about computer problems i.e. crashes?  OTOH brings a whole new meaning to blue screen of death.

The main thing I wonder about is how the computer could know certain things, like the fact that there is a big curve of X degrees up ahead and I therefore need to slow down to Y miles per hour in Z feet. I'm sure they have some technology that does this somehow but I can't help but wonder how foolproof it is. Presumably it's been tested on mountain roads.

(And when I say "foolproof" I'm partly thinking of people intentionally trying to fool it like a whole new kind of hacker).

[dualstow]

Some important questions and issues have been raised here.

1. Human override -- this could definitely be a problem if it's allowed. Yes, a lot of airliners have crashed because the human pilots panicked and tried to override the (correctly flying) autopilot.

2. NASA's record - well, faulty O-rings are not the programmers' fault. There will still be mechanical difficulties even if the cars are being steered and braked properly by machines.

3. Why not fly instead of drive? See #2 above. ;-)

4. Will Big Brother be able to remotely stop your car?   If Big Brother is going to be a problem, it's going to be a problem. If cops are pursuing you and want you to pull over, you probably don't want to flee even if you've done nothing wrong. So, unless you plan to be a fugitive, I don't see why this is a problem.

5. We might have an ugly transition period that lasts decades or generations, especially in the U.S. where a lot of people like to drive their own cars. I've always thought that things will progress in train-friendly Europe first, or in Japan.

Once we get to the point where people are born into the system, never having driven, it should be pretty smooth. Yes, we will have lost something, just like we may have lost something by moving from horses to cars. But what we will gain is a smooth ride with vastly fewer incidents and accidents.

Parking lots may disappear, the space reclaimed by more greenspace, homes and markets. After all, you can summon your car when you need it, or perhaps hop into the next available empty car buzzing around the city.

[l82start]

5. We might have an ugly transition period that lasts decades or generations, especially in the U.S. where a lot of people like to drive their own cars. I've always thought that things will progress in train-friendly Europe first, or in Japan.

interesting you mention trains and train culture, i cant recall where i saw it. but one of the models for self driving cars involves having them being able to link up and form trains, with each car being able to connect and disconnecting from the train when it needs to, i think the reasoning was mostly fuel economy and safety.. i wish i could remember were i saw it, i wonder if it was realistic and beneficial or one of those brainstorm ideas that never got anywhere..   

[dualstow]

5. We might have an ugly transition period that lasts decades or generations, especially in the U.S. where a lot of people like to drive their own cars. I've always thought that things will progress in train-friendly Europe first, or in Japan.

interesting you mention trains and train culture, i cant recall where i saw it. but one of the models for self driving cars involves having them being able to link up and form trains, with each car being able to connect and disconnecting from the train when it needs to, i think the reasoning was mostly fuel economy and safety.. i wish i could remember were i saw it, i wonder if it was realistic and beneficial or one of those brainstorm ideas that never got anywhere.. 

Interesting! Maybe they could do it with magnets, but it seems impractical no mattery how they do it.

What I have seen is the proposal that cars link up, but not physically. They would talk to each other and maintain the exact speed if it was known that they had the same road to travel for a while, even if the final destination might not be the same. A kind of communal cruise control.

I guess the lead car could also send a signal if there was trouble ahead, like a fallen tree or some object that that the lead car had just run over.

[hoost]

5. We might have an ugly transition period that lasts decades or generations, especially in the U.S. where a lot of people like to drive their own cars. I've always thought that things will progress in train-friendly Europe first, or in Japan.

interesting you mention trains and train culture, i cant recall where i saw it. but one of the models for self driving cars involves having them being able to link up and form trains, with each car being able to connect and disconnecting from the train when it needs to, i think the reasoning was mostly fuel economy and safety.. i wish i could remember were i saw it, i wonder if it was realistic and beneficial or one of those brainstorm ideas that never got anywhere.. 

Not sure if this is what you had in mind or not, but reading your post I was reminded of this article and one of the ideas featured in it.

http://arstechnica.com/cars/2014/06/ide ... r-commute/

The team from Berlin had a similar type of idea, although it doesn't seem any hard details are fleshed out.

Berlin's plan took inspiration from the microscopic transport networks within our cells that move proteins around. In this system, the "cargo" gets moved by proteins called kinesins that travel along structures called microtubules. The kinesins can be coupled and decoupled from their cargo, and team Berlin’s idea, therefore, is to decouple the passenger cabin of future cars from the bits that handle propulsion. It also wanted to take a leaf from the way ants communicate with pheromone trails that reinforce with lots of traffic, replacing the ant pheromones with data culled from Foursquare.

That quote is toward the bottom of the page.  Sounds like they're supposed to vote on a winner this fall, so maybe there will be more to it coming soon.

[Benko]

2. NASA's record - well, faulty O-rings are not the programmers' fault. There will still be mechanical difficulties even if the cars are being steered and braked properly by machines.

Forget O rings.  If you include non-manned things, NASA had a string of screw ups in a row e.g. satellights which did not respond, etc.