Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

BMW shows off 'drifting' self-drive cars

bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 144 posts

Re: BMW shows off 'drifting' self-drive cars

#101

Post by weaksauce »

ableal wrote: post #34
Volscio wrote: post #5

Here's a promo video of it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IL_enMPWT7s

I think I spotted an overturned cone at the 55 second mark ... Wired magazine had a small piece about the presentation, including that video: http://www.wired.com/autopia/2014/01/bmw-builds-self-driftin...

a lot of time in racing with cones they will lay one down next to another to indicate which direction to go.

source: I did a lot of autocross racing.

edit: looking at it again I'd be extremely surprised if it was anything but a direction marker.

Re: BMW shows off 'drifting' self-drive cars

#102

Post by raldi »

jrockway wrote: post #67
dcc1 wrote: post #16

This is bad news (despite being a BMW owner) In future driving will no longer be fun, if you want to drive "non-automated" car or disable "auto-pilot" your insurance company will automatically jack up your premium, since they would consider self driving cars "safer"

Considering insurance companies already insure airplanes, and you can turn the autopilot off without losing insurance, I somehow doubt this future. Airplanes are both more expensive and cause more damage when you crash them, and yet, you can rent them and insure them all the same.

As I understand it, most car accidents are caused by driver error, and the belief is that self-driving cars will have a better miles-driven-to-accidents ratio.

However, I'm not aware of the same being true for airplanes, plane crashes, and autopilot systems.

Re: BMW shows off 'drifting' self-drive cars

#103

Post by joosters »

theatraine wrote: post #90
joosters wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When did people leave cities then? Which cities were shrinking but now aren't?

This article gives a good overview in the USA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_cities_in_the_United_St...

I can't see any cities there that significantly shrank and then grew again. Care to name some if you know of any?

Re: BMW shows off 'drifting' self-drive cars

#104

Post by darklajid »

I thought about this over and over. As it is usually the case with these articles (same with Google cars etc.) there's a group of supporters, usually with the 'It will be safer for the whole mankind' argument, sometimes with more mundane 'I would like to work in my car and let the thing drive itself' car-as-single-person-bus thrown in. And a group of people that firmly believe that this development takes away their freedom to (drive|steer|joyride).

I guess I should've put a disclaimer that states that I sympathize more with the latter kind of people, but try hard to find out why that is the case. For me, assisted driving is a no-brainer. My wife hasn't ever driven a car where the steering wheel is unsupported. Nor a car without ABS and related/improved technology. In my world that's a good thing. The car already, today, decides that it has to take control in a number of ways.

Further down in this thread I described my company car and its assistance systems. Most of those are nice to have and useful. I configured that car myself and included all those 'Let me help you here..' systems. This is not a matter of pride, no 'People that use assistance systems cannot really drive a car' attitude.

I guess for me the conflict starts when we talk about giving up _all_ control. For me the perfect solution would feel like a car today. It behaves as I expect it to, if I kick down the car responds. BUT I would be totally fine with more and more assistance systems that prevent me from screwing up. Not the 'Let the car drive' future, but rather a 'Let me drive (potentially optional), but step in if necessary'.

The result is more or less the same, but one feels like giving up something (a freedom, a privilege, a thing I enjoy), the other sounds like a reasonable and intriguing improvement.

I don't really want a self-driving car. I want an intelligent car that prevents me from causing trouble.

Re: BMW shows off 'drifting' self-drive cars

#105

Post by TeMPOraL »

sukuriant wrote: post #100
rayiner wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a BMW owner myself, I say: "good riddance to driving being fun." I used to get a kick out of it when I was younger, but now that I'm married with a kid it's just an exercise in paranoia and frustration. People are fucking nuts in the way they drive. My friend just got T-boned hard enough to flip his car 360 degrees a couple of months ago, by some asshole speeding in the shoulder as traffic was backed up. I see an…

"by some asshole speeding in the shoulder as traffic was backed up." fun driving and reckless endangerment of the people on the road around you, including aggressive disregard for the rules of the road, especially driving on the shoulder are two very, very, very different things. Raise the speed limits and make fines and enforcement more frequent for not using turn signals, aggressive lane-changing where other people…

I'd say lower the speed limits. And implement ANPR systems on every straight part of every road, make them enforce those limits in a ruthlessly automated way. That should finally let traffic engineers do some real work optimizing the road network.

And then of course ban non self-driving cars from public roads the moment it becomes feasible.

EDIT: disregard the "lower the speed limits" part. I'm not sure why I wrote it (it was a long and tiring day...). Speed limits are mostly fine, but adherence to them is not. I stand by the rest of the comment.

Re: BMW shows off 'drifting' self-drive cars

#106

Post by TeMPOraL »

m4x wrote: post #79
bdamm wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think part of the safety boost of self-driving cars is that they don't get impatient, and neither will you since you're reading a book/email/facebook/whatever. Self-driving cars ought to also be capable of driving like grandmothers. That's part of why I expect them to be safer. The idea that you can drive a car to the brink of a high-speed collision and then magically expect it to out-react a seasoned driver into a…

There's no reason why you can't drive it to the brink of a crash and then have it recover for you. The 'brink' in this case is the latest the computer can reliably recover - not a point 100ms before an unavoidable collision.

But why would you want that? Why wouldn't you want to use a system that can get you to your destination much faster, cheaper and safer[0], only because you want to experience the "fun" of being in a traffic jam?

[0] - self-driving cars constantly talking with each other could drive much closer to each other than current "safe distance", much faster, while utilizing aerodynamic effects to conserve fuel, and that system would still in principle be safer than human drivers.

Re: BMW shows off 'drifting' self-drive cars

#107

Post by randallsquared »

Pxtl wrote: post #63
imgabe wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to have fun, there will no doubt be private tracks where you can go and drive in a fun way. As someone who just gave up commuting about 1 traffic-laden hour each way, driving stopped being fun long, long ago. Too many of my commutes were made an unnecessary 50% or more longer because of drivers who were probably having a lot of fun until they caused an accident and backed up the road for everyone else.

At the same time, the entire continent is finally pushing back on that 1-hour commute. People are returning to cities, transit and infill and dense construction are becoming political issues, etc. Part of the impetus for this re-urbanization is the misery of commute. Beyond commuting woes, density is also more efficient for providing services and for environmental concerns. So I'm slightly worried that a move towards…

Backslide, or return to making forward progress against crowding? ;)

Re: BMW shows off 'drifting' self-drive cars

#108

Post by bane »

darklajid wrote: post #104

I thought about this over and over. As it is usually the case with these articles (same with Google cars etc.) there's a group of supporters, usually with the 'It will be safer for the whole mankind' argument, sometimes with more mundane 'I would like to work in my car and let the thing drive itself' car-as-single-person-bus thrown in. And a group of people that firmly believe that this development takes away their f…

I'd rather have a car I can drive if I want to, or hit a button and have it just autopilot there instead.

Re: BMW shows off 'drifting' self-drive cars

#109

Post by UnFleshedOne »

peterwwillis wrote: post #32
dcc1 wrote: post #16

This is bad news (despite being a BMW owner) In future driving will no longer be fun, if you want to drive "non-automated" car or disable "auto-pilot" your insurance company will automatically jack up your premium, since they would consider self driving cars "safer"

I don't think this will be the case. Automated driving is only useful if you know where you're going. If you're on a leisurely ride through the country or are looking for a place with no address, you can't use automated navigation. So disabling it would be a necessity for a variety of driving purposes. As an aside, motorsport enthusiasts would be up in arms if they had to pay a premium just to be able to drive their…

Insurance won't necessarily go up for manual driving. At least at first, it will be lower for automated cars (once insurance companies have enough data). Assuming sufficient competition, insurance companies charge just enough to cover their costs plus some profit. Statistically safer cars means fewer claims, and lower cost. A good opportunity to undercut any competitors not on the same page.

Sure you would pay more than owner of automated car, but probably not more than you are already paying. People on bicycles don't pay any insurance at all, I don't see anybody complaining about them (for that reason anyway).

Re: BMW shows off 'drifting' self-drive cars

#110

Post by sukuriant »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #105
sukuriant wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"by some asshole speeding in the shoulder as traffic was backed up." fun driving and reckless endangerment of the people on the road around you, including aggressive disregard for the rules of the road, especially driving on the shoulder are two very, very, very different things. Raise the speed limits and make fines and enforcement more frequent for not using turn signals, aggressive lane-changing where other people…

I'd say lower the speed limits. And implement ANPR systems on every straight part of every road, make them enforce those limits in a ruthlessly automated way. That should finally let traffic engineers do some real work optimizing the road network. And then of course ban non self-driving cars from public roads the moment it becomes feasible. EDIT: disregard the "lower the speed limits" part. I'm not sure why I wrote i…

Roads are already engineered in the general case for faster than the speed limit. Why do you want them to go even slower?
Post reply on HN