Driverless cars could change everything
 

Thought this article was cool to think about.

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-28376929

Driverless cars could change everything


For now, it seems like a novelty - cars that can operate independently of human control, safely cruising down streets thanks to an array of sensors and pinpoint GPS navigation.

But if the technology avoids getting crushed by government regulators and product liability lawsuits, writes the Federalist's Dan McLaughlin, it could prompt a cultural shift similar to the early 20th century move away from horses as the primary means of transportation.

First and foremost, he writes, the spread of driverless cars will likely greatly reduce the number of traffic accidents - which currently cost Americans $871b (£510b) a year.

"A truly driverless road would not be accident-free, given the number of accidents that would still be caused by mechanical and computer errors, weather conditions, pedestrians, bicyclists, motorcyclists and sheer random chance," he says. "But it would make the now-routine loss of life and limb on the roads far rarer."

Computer-operated cars would eventually reshape car design, he says, as things like windshields - "a large and vulnerable piece of glass" - become less necessary. Drivers will be able to sit wherever they'd like in their cars, which could make car interiors more like mobile lounges than like cockpits.

The age required to operate a driverless car is likely to drop, he says. There could be an impact on the legal drinking age, as well, as preventing drunk driving was one of the prime justifications for the US-wide setting minimum age to purchase alcohol at 21 years old.

There's other possible economic fallout, McLaughlin contends, such as a restructuring of the auto insurance industry, the obsolescence of taxi drivers and lower ratings for drive-time radio programmes.

The high-tech security state will also get boost, he writes, as GPS-tagged cars will be easier to track, making life difficult for fugitives and car thieves. Police will also be able to move resources away from operations like traffic enforcement.

Of course, he writes, the towns that rely on speed traps to fund their government services will be facing budget shortfalls. Privacy advocates could also get an unexpected boost, he notes, since traffic stops are one of the main justifications for police vehicle searches.

Finally, there's the prospect of the as-yet-unrealised futurist dream of flying cars. With computer-controlled vehicles that strictly follow traffic rules, McLaughlin says, "the potential for three-dimensional roads becomes a lot less scary and more a matter of simply solving the technological challenge".

Where we're going, we may not need roads after all.

Impossible. If a robot golfer can't break par, there is no way it will ever be able to drive a car as well as a human.

Just thinking through it, these things WILL get figured out in the next couple decades. It could happen very quickly, or it may take a while, but it'll get done. The technology is already too close to a reality for it not to happen.

So given that, the implications are incredible to think about. Off the top of my head (and summarizing some from the article and elsewhere), here are a few. These are all, of course, purely theoretical depending on how things work out.

• Cars could take kids to and from school on their own, freeing up parents.
• People who are visually impaired would have a way to get around much more.efficiently, potentially increasing the portion of blind people who can reasonably work.
• Traffic congestion could be reduced dramatically, as human reactions are the cause of a huge amount of it currently.
• Drunk driving could be reduced dramatically.
• Car sharing could become the norm since you could potentially have a huge fleet of cars-on-demand to show up when you need them.
• The elderly could stay mobile much further in their lives, improving longevity and quality of life dramatically.

It's fascinating to consider all the possibilities. If it works perfectly, I think it could be as big of a cultural revolution as the internet.

Just make sure they have bumpers on them..like the bowling alley. Those kind of bumpers. But it sounds like a good idea as long as they're eco friendly.

Perhaps not yet. But Google's car has logged 700k miles with the only accident being rear-ended by a human. It's gonna get there.

I COUND DO ANYTHING, ANYTHING FOR YOU

On the "not so happy" side, this would cause a ton of industries to be completely and totally screwed. Truck drivers immediately come to mind.

I've always thought the cars in iRobot are a pretty good idea of what we'll see in the future. Other than the manual override mode though. No way any they would let you override a car when it's going 100-200 MPH which is what I think the speeds would be like on highways. Maybe on side roads and normal streets, but never on highways IMO.

I was actually arguing that if a Google car level effort would be put forward on building a robot golfer, that it would be able to shoot 36 to 45 for 18 holes. Some were saying that the best robot that could be built would struggle to break 100.

Roadside hotels would go out of business, because all of the cars would have places to sleep. Maybe all of the cars would be small RVs for that matter.

Since you can sleep in the car, more people will take long road trips, which means the lines at Disneyland will get longer.

Pizza delivery will go away because you'll just send your car to pick it up.

Cars could come with buttons with pre-set destinations like "home" and "park" and "office". Dogs could be trained to push those buttons so they can travel around and stick their heads out the window or play in the park any time they want.

On the downside, cats won't get to live out their dreams:

http://31.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ma...h3b7o1_250.gif

Google has been running driverless cars for several years now with great success. Wait until they reduce the production costs enough to mass produce these cars/trucks/etc.

They'll have to pry the keys to my Trans Am/Camaro out of my cold dead hands!/ CP

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/1dq17-kXWYA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

The tech is there. Has been for awhile.

The big thing in tractors is that the lawyers won't let a machine run unattended.

I assume that's the way it is with cars also. There's no one to sue if the car crashes itself.

Yeah, the regulatory side of it will be the thing that slows it down. Even if they prove that it's 100x safer than having human drivers, people will still be freaked out by having a machine in control like that. And then the issue of liability will get to be really complicated given where we'd be starting from. The entire insurance industry would have to be re-invented in a different form.

I want one now.

**** this bullshit. If you're not capable of operating a motor vehicle in a safe and efficient manner you can stay the **** off the roads.

Think of all the parking issues that would get solved.

I cound use this technology. I have a four + hour road trip planned for our family vacation this Thursdee. I'd rather poop and sleep than drive. Although, I'm wary of the potential malfunctions.

I owned a Toyota Avalon that had radar proximity cruise control, it was unbelievable. I could set the speed and it would slow down and speed up to keep the speed I set or the car length I picked behind traffic. Truly remarkable tech, and it felt impossible to wreck into the back of someone, it would stop the car like an impenetrable cushion of air in front of you.

This technology is light years beyond that, it's already a reality, just have to fight through lobbyist and bureaucratic bs.

Think of all the sex you could have on the way to your destination.....

Booty calls would be much more prevalent. Imagine leaving the bar and stumbling into the car and saying "jenny's house".

Another really cool thing is that it could replace day care. When you go to work, you just put your kid in the car, turn the air conditioning on, and have the baby take a nice long drive in the country, returning at 5:00.

Sold.

Jalopnik has had a few columns over driverless cars in the past (I've been busy so haven't been keeping up with the site).

Most of the writers speculate that driving what we think of as normal cars will become an enthusiast hobby similar to karts or track cars.

I wonder how they'd go about "phasing out" old fashioned cars that need drivers. For awhile at least you'd have both kinds, and eventually I'd guess it would become illegal to own a "drivered car".

I'd probably be one of the asshole holdouts...

No more DMV? Sign me up.

http://i61.tinypic.com/2s81gm8.gif

I'm not familiar with that address, would you please repeat the destination?

Once they get it perfected, you know what will happen next. They'll start selling different models of cars:

The Baseline BMW X5 - "Gets you where you want to go. Top speed of 30 mph, and you'll always be courteous to other drivers as you remain within the right-hand lane."

The Classic BMW X5 - "With a top speed of over 60 mph, you'll arrive at your destination quickly and safely. The Classic BMW X5 will move to the left lane to pass any and all Baseline vehicles."

The Executive BMW X5 - "This premium model can go up to 90 mph, and will consistently shift lanes to pass slower vehicles. It will also run yellow lights and ooze through stop signs."

The Rich Jerk BMW X5 - "The RJ Model has a top speed of 150 mph. It tailgates, cuts off other drivers, and has an automated middle finger attachment to show your disdain for others. The RJ features built-in communication software that will override Baseline and Classic Vehicles and force them to pull over to the side of the road as you streak by. If you drive an RJ, you'll own the road."

Does it come in apricot?

That's the only color it would come in.

Driverless cars = The driverless car bomb.

Good bye revenue from traffic tickets...

Wait... what's that? Government doesn't easily give up revenue sources and takes steps to cut it off at the knees?

The Government is already listing that as a reason why we shouldn't move to this.

Driving a car is infinitely easier than hitting an 80.

I live in Los Angeles, and let me tell you, it cannot get much worse. The amount of stupid shit I see on my daily commute is staggering. Texting while driving, driving while on the phone, doing 45 in the fast lane on a freeway where the speed limit is 65, making right turns from the far left lane in the middle of heavy traffic. I mean to be honest, a four way stop sign is more than most of the drivers around here can figure out, so I absolutely think that if it could be a really good thing to take the human equation out of driving.

I do believe however that there should be a manual override in case of emergency.

While I agree with your statement 100%, unfortunately the law doesn't. We have a no texting while driving law here in California, but you can't roll past a police car with out seeing them on their phones.

Being conscious is barely a prerequisite to being given a drivers license.

DFW is the exact same.

**** them.

I think I would be a little nervous about the driver-less Semi Truck and Dump truck.

Hopefully everyone in OP gets one. Finally be able to pass on the left for once.

FYP

... And all the drunken psycho stalker exes.

*stumbling out of the bar into the car*

"Drive by Jenny's house 14 times."

Eh, it takes more look ahead, but I think it's doable.

The real problem with all of this is sensor calibration/testing. Our combines allow you to monitor freaking everything. But you still have to get out and check periodically to determine if sensors are working properly. I'm sure they can make it more user friendly, but calibrating the damn gps is substantial. It's not terrible difficult, but there are also some real dumbasses on this earth that feel it requisite to drive. Improper calibration of GPS or collision avoidance would be catastrophic.

Also, if the machine is going to execute unaided driving, some real time kinematic sensors would be necessary. That will require some fairly significant infrastructure and would be expensive in rural areas.

Airplanes are in the beginning phases of ADS-B which will eventually self sequence the planes (as long as the ADS-B is functioning and all aircraft are so equipped). I think it would move ahead faster if the vehicles were capable of some sort of hover mode. The next step up from bullet trains, that could overfly interstate routes (although overpasses would be a potential hazard!). I suppose instead of HOV lanes they could institute driver-less vehicle lanes where the speed could be increased until you needed to reintegrate with the normal traffic and off ramps. That would drive sales for commuters.

Would probably be safer than you think. Driver-less trucks don't have drivers that have been awake and on the road for 20 hours. And with Radar and GPS, they could probably be a lot safer than the status quo.

Probably a lot less of this happening. Warning; Terrible Event

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=954_1378470863

Biggest problem with this driver-less thing is that the first accident that happens, people will scream about how unsafe they are, when, as the articles states, currently loss of life and limb is a daily occurrence and no one even blinks an eye at it, and moving to driver-less would have a huge impact on reducing those numbers, but people won't care about that.

Yep. Humans have an inherent need to blame someone when things go wrong, and even if it's clear that computers care considerably safer than humans, there will still be lots of angst if they can't blame someone.

That's an interesting point. I wonder if every car would have multiple sensors, and when more than one of them starts disagreeing, the car drives itself to the dealer and gives them your credit card number.

Now that I think about it, they could build maintenance checks into the system. At 3 o'clock in the morning, your car opens the garage door and drives itself in for a checkup once every three months.

Plus you wouldn't have to worry about logging hours with a driver-less semi-truck. You could just make it so they run overnight all at the same time.

You could link them up into convoys pretty easily, too. Put them one car length apart and roll them all together. You'd just have to put all braking controls under the first truck.

The occasional wreck would be pretty spectacular, but they'd be rare.

First the robots take our jobs, then they take our hobbies. Now they take our excuses for being late to things.

Self-Driving Cars: Google cars go over 300,000 miles with no accidents.

http://buff.ly/1odFkBv

I'd say the technology is getting pretty close.

Car theft would drop dramatically as well. Press the home button on your fob, and it returns to you. Hell report it stolen and the man knows the location of it from its GPS.

A bad week for driverless cars. Maybe the AI needs to learn more?

Self-driving car company Cruise cuts its fleet in San Francisco by 50% after a Thursday night accident involving a firetruck; city voted two weeks ago to allow Cruise and Waymo to operate autonomous cars around the clock

San Francisco Robotaxi Expansion: Cruise Crash Injures 1 and Other Mishaps

At least three traffic incidents involving robotaxis occurred in San Francisco this week, according to multiple news and social media reports, shortly after the state granted approval for autonomous vehicle companies to expand their operations throughout the city and start charging money for rides.

One crash Thursday night injured a passenger inside a Cruise driverless car at Polk and Turk streets. The robotaxi was hit by a fire engine as it entered the intersection on a green light at around 10 p.m. Thursday, according to a tweet from Cruise early Friday. The fire engine was on its way to an emergency scene. Cruise's tweet said the injuries were not severe, but the robotaxi passenger was taken to a local hospital.

In a separate blog post, Cruise said their car detected that an emergency vehicle was approaching and began to brake, but was unable to stop before the fire truck crashed into it.

The San Francisco Fire Department declined to comment.

A second crash happened in the Mission at 26th and Mission streets early Friday, according to Cruise and San Francisco police.

In response to the crash, a Cruise spokesperson said, “Last night one of our vehicles was proceeding through a green light at 26th and Mission in San Francisco when it was struck by another vehicle running a red light at a high rate of speed. The AV detected the vehicle and braked, but the other vehicle made contact with our AV. There were no passengers in our AV and the driver of the other vehicle was treated and released at the scene.”

San Francisco police also confirmed the crash and said that they responded to a report of a crash at 26th and Mission at 12:19 a.m. Friday. There, they found an adult male driver, a passenger, and their car as well as an autonomous vehicle. The driver was treated for non-life-threatening injuries by medics, police said.

Police said there was significant damage to both vehicles after the crash and said that the male driver was at fault, but that drugs or alcohol did not appear to be a factor.

Separately, another Cruise vehicle also drove into wet concrete in a construction area and got stuck on Golden Gate Avenue between Fillmore and Steiner streets in the Western Addition on Tuesday, according to SFGATE.

Cruise acknowledged the incident in a tweet Thursday.

There have been other high-profile incidents with Cruise robotaxis prior to this week.

Just a day after the state approved the expansion of robotaxi services in the city, nearly a dozen Cruise vehicles stalled and snarled traffic in San Francisco's North Beach and near Outside Lands music festival. Cruise blamed the music festival for the snafu.

https://sfstandard.com/2023/08/18/cr...ent=newsletter

Could finally loosen the airlines grip on travel - I'd more likely take a day and a half to travel in a car if I didn't have to constantly pay attention

Just a thought, but you might want to read the article in the post just above yours.
I probably should have started a new thread but this one had popped up in my search.

Automatic cars are still the future. The only reason this accident made the news is because it was between an automated vehicle & a manual one. How many manual cars crashed that day across the country?

Consider how much better a calculator performs simple functions relative to a human, and that the AI in this collective swarm of cars is learning at an exponential rate over time while a human's ability to drive deteriorates with experience.

What am I going to do when the AI driven automatic car always drives through Popeyes and orders me a chicken sandwich?

Joking- but there is so many new ways to make money here- even starting with new free time and decisions to make when you’re in the car. And so so many ways for the government to tax this activity. Trust me, they will more than make up for there loss of revenue from traffic tickets, etc.

I was just saying I'm tired of the airlines bullying people around...the whole "hidden city" ticketing thing has me annoyed as hell - I don't do it but why shouldn't people be allowed to do it?

I see, and understand. I pretty much quit flying years ago due to lack of control. They treat you like a herd of cattle and it is understandable.

We did recently fly to the east coast and the cashless airports were just another reason not to do it for me, damn I was pissed.

I have been driving long distance for years, but now my daily limit has gone down to 600 miles. Our family is spread out all over the country, so I get a lot of practice.

Do you think they will ever be able to teach one the difference between wet and dry concrete?

Your calculator comparison is flawed. Math does not change, it is what it is.

Driving conditions? Not so much, too many variables.

So the cab company cut it's fleet in half, just maybe they are getting the picture?

Cant expect perfection. What we are looking for is safer across the board. Accidents will always happen. The rate of accidents, especially fatal ones is what we are trying to prevent.

yes. already smart transmissions can do a better job of sensing slipping and shifting into all-wheel drive than humans. And, shifting back into 2wd for fuel efficiency.

it's not a matter of IF it is a matter of WHEN.

I don't mind driving but 800 miles is about my limit. Denver to Vegas and Denver to KC. I have driven all the way to Fresno once - that took a couple of us to complete.

This is already happening.

I get it. Drove from San Jose to Wichita in my 30s non stop, over 1600 then Virginia Beach to Chicago non stop 1000 in my 50s but now 600 is pushing it.

I doubt if I would have been able to relax for 60 seconds in a driverless car on any of these trips.
Do you think you would trust them enough to relax and enjoy the trip like in airplane or bus?

Your uncle molesting you doesn't count

With human-driven cars we have accidents and crashes that are caused by human error one way or another. With network driverless cars I can wreck all the cars at once

You make a great point, just another step towards nefarious control.

It would be interesting to see the percentage of driverless car issues in relation to the number on the road compared to human operated cars with that number on the road.

I am going with the human drivers myself.

Driverless cars will eventually be the norm, and of course many people who grew up with manually-driven cars will be skeptical and fearful even after such fear is unwarranted.

Instead of bumping this old thread, I actually considered starting a new one in D.C. ROFL

In theory driverless cars would reduce the douchey accidents like tailgating.

The test should be whether driverless cars are safer than human driven ones.

But driverless cars could have one tenth the fatality rate and many people would find that unacceptable.

This is a concern.

This is a nightmare.

When driverless cars drive 3 miles an hour on icy streets instead of 30 mph, commuters are going to scream and are going to go back to their own dangerously driven cars.

Actually, if I owned a fleet of driverless cars, I'm not sure I would even rent them out in snowy, icy conditions.

If somebody rear-ends your vehicle, the amount you get paid doesn't cover all the losses. Loss of use of vehicle, employee time to get vehicle repaired etc.

Interesting bump. It seems like a lot of AI technologies (driverless cars, ChatGPT, etc.) are able to go from 0% awesome to 95% awesome pretty quickly, but that final 5% is super important yet difficult to achieve.

We've come a long way since this thread in terms of designing cars that can stay in their lanes and not hit anything in front of them, but things are still a little iffy in terms of being able to literally never have an active driver.

I still think we'll get there eventually, but it may still be a bit before we start removing steering wheels from cars.