41–50 of 80 posts
You don't quite appreciate how dangerously most people drive until you're a split second from being killed by any one of them.
Industry standard is to drive 10mph over the speed limit so unless self-driving cars are allowed to break the law they may make traffic even worse. Maybe they would be good for drunk drivers and emergencies but I can barely stand letting my wife drive so self-driving cars may be too agitating for me.
I'm pretty sure self-driving cars will make traffic better, because it has been shown that most traffic jams are caused by and exacerbated by poor driving habits.
I'd like to see the data that the NHTSA used to conclude that the risk of a malfunction is higher than the risk of human error. Millions of crashes each year result in tens of thousands of deaths [1]. Humans drive while tired, drunk, or simply distracted, and of course, tend to have slower reflexes than computers. Even if the technology isn't ready for mainstream adoption today, I bet we'll look back in horror at the…
[1] http://www.nhtsa.gov/staticfiles/rulemaking/pdf/Automated_Ve...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_2009_Washington_Metro_tra...
I'd like to see the data that the NHTSA used to conclude that the risk of a malfunction is higher than the risk of human error. Millions of crashes each year result in tens of thousands of deaths [1]. Humans drive while tired, drunk, or simply distracted, and of course, tend to have slower reflexes than computers. Even if the technology isn't ready for mainstream adoption today, I bet we'll look back in horror at the…
My friend got a G1 "learner's license" in Ontario (which requires only a multiple-choice test). When he moved to New York, he "traded in" the G1 for a full license. I guess that's the exchange rate.
Given how bad humans are at driving cars safely, it is unfortunate that we are holding self-driving cars to a higher standard than we hold humans. It will cause needless loss of life.
Regardless of how bad I or someone driving around me is, I would rather have complete control. If I'm going to relinquish that control, then the alternative better be superb. This is one of those paradigms where we need software engineering to be flawless, which history can tell us, is never the case. Not disagreeing with you just offering an opinion which is more centered and cautious.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is my biggest fear with automated cars. Snow, ice, and animals are problematic and having the car drive all summer means poor winter driving[1]. I still worry about how it figures what is safe to push through versus what will cause an accident. The constant flurries / drifting is also going to be a huge sensor problem. Car companies are pretty bad about winter driving as is[2][3], so I expect we will have a lot…
Animals: Google driverless car has already been shown to avoid collisions with unexpected animals (like, say, a deer). Snow and Ice: the sensors about wheel rotation and speed used in fancy automatic suspensions are more than able to control for slippage. I'm willing to bet that once prepared, a driverless car could deal with these hazards with much more finesse than a human pushing a pedal with no idea what kind of…
If Google (or anyone else) starts testing in the northland, I will be convinced, but I don't think it is a very easy problem to solve.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There will be two big, competing points regarding automated vehicles in the public eye: * Automated vehicles can save a lot of people a lot of money, save lives, and completely transform the way transportation operates (and perhaps even how cities and suburbs look. See, for example, the vast swaths of parking lots in much of the United States, and think how utterly unnecessary they'll be in a world of fully autonomou…
> See, for example, the vast swaths of parking lots in much of the United States, and think how utterly unnecessary they'll be in a world of fully autonomous vehicles. I don't know that it would make that much difference. Most people want to drive at the same time to get to work and few people seem likely to want to have their car do an extra commute so that it can park up at home. Couple that with the fact that a ca…
For example, consider how many families today have 2 cars. Right now if the husband drives to work at 7AM and the wife at 9AM, this necessarily requires two cars. In an autonomous car world, the car would just drive back home to pick up the wife, instead of sitting in a parking lot for 9 hours. Now, extrapolate this to an apartment complex: What if part of the renters agreement is access to one of their 20 autonomous cars. Its very rare that at any given moment every single occupant of an apartment complex is using the car, so this would be totally feasible. In fact, it would be feasible today with normal cars except that when one person takes the car, they block access to that car for more time than they are actually using it. A 15 minute drive to the grocery store blocks usage of the car for up to 2 hours since it can't go back and service other members.
Also, driving in the snow and ice safety is about 3 orders of magnitude more difficult to do than driving on dry pavement. There also needs to be an indicator: "It's snowing, please wait until the road is warm and dry, or have the carbon unit take over". But that's no good, we have to get to where we are going, so tens of thousands of people, who havn't been practicing driving AT ALL for about 8 months now dust off t…
What makes you think computers will be worse than human drivers at driving in poor conditions? I'd think it'd be the other way around.
Ice and snow are real issues for, say, the Google car. Driving at night is pretty good because its sensors can still see things better than the human eye.