Anybody know if self-driving cars can distinguish between safe and unsafe object; say a big stuffed animal, and a rock in the middle of the road. Would they make big maneuvers to avoid both?
Or a rock inside a big stuffed animal?
BMW shows off 'drifting' self-drive cars
111–120 of 144 posts
Re: BMW shows off 'drifting' self-drive cars
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
You're right; I'm not sure why I wrote about lowering them.
Re: BMW shows off 'drifting' self-drive cars
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
They will go down for manual drivers, too. If you hit your brakes now, you get hit from behind. If the car behind you is a robot, it will come to a stop at 5cm from your car. Unless, of course, the manual drivers counteract by driving more dangerously. Why stop for a red traffic light if all other cars are driven by computer? Can you try and get an autonomous car to drive into a ditch by moving your car very close to…
It might work out better than you think in your last paragraph. Auto routed vehicles will reliably choose the 'main' route through an area (instead of whichever they feel is fastest), so segregated routing should work better (and with little additional physical infrastructure you can have one way rush hour streets and such).
In many old city centers, there isn't much room for segregated routing.
Also, why would pedestrians or even cyclists care about one way streets? Even if they do, consider the case where streams of cyclists enter a one way street just in front of an automatic car. That could easily happen in Amsterdam (for an impression, see http://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2013/03/28/amsterdam-bicyc... or http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/21/world/europe/a-sea-of-bike...)
Re: BMW shows off 'drifting' self-drive cars
#114This 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"
Is the cost to society (in lives lost) worth the cost to individual enjoyment?
Life becomes less valuable when you can do less with it. In the extreme case, we could all spend our lives in styrofoam boxes hooked up to feeding tubes, but what sort of life would that be? I would argue, a valueless one.
Is a collective devaluing of human life worth saving a few individual lives?
Consider if we cut down all trees within a dozen or so meters of roads, and installed guardrails everywhere. We could probably save many lives, but at the cost of devaluing the beauty of the countryside. Everyone's lives would become just that much more depressingly monotonous and sterile, for the sake of a preventing a few roadside deaths.
Safety should not be our society's primary concern. Quality of life is a much better thing to strive for.
Re: BMW shows off 'drifting' self-drive cars
#115Last time I checked this was Hacker News, not Reddit, and I am getting sick of articles like this making it to the front page (as I am aware other commenters have noted). I didn't even need to click on the article (but did in a vain hope) to know that there was absolutely no information as to what they actually did from a technical perspective that deserves notice on HN. The most technological it gets is "Using 360-d…
You have some control over this, by the ability to upvote stuff on the 'new' page, helping the sorts of articles you like to appear on the front page.
I try to run through it once a day. Then, whenever a story I upvoted makes it to the front page, I get a small sense of satisfaction.l
Re: BMW shows off 'drifting' self-drive cars
#116Insurance won't have higher premiums for manually driven cars, because in the future, manually driven cars will be banned.
It's absurd to insist that some people's enjoyment of driving overrules others' right to life. If you want to enjoy driving, you can do it on a private track where you only risk your own life and the lives of others who want to drive for fun.
Re: BMW shows off 'drifting' self-drive cars
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who says it doesn't scale linearly? That certainly can't be concluded from the sentence you cited. Are you assuming that self driving cars result in 0 fatalities?
Roughly, yes. I'm assuming that at 100% autonomous cars there will be ~0 fatalities. From the article, at ~0 autonomous cars, there are 50,000 fatalities annually. I guess I'm just curious as to the curve that dictates the relationship between autonomous car adoption rate and annual vehicular fatalities. I found the study referenced, but I haven't quite found their methods. http://www.enotrans.org/wp-content/uploads/…
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Re: BMW shows off 'drifting' self-drive cars
#118I 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.
I am all for this system as well. I don't think you and the grandparent are in disagreement, either. It looks like what they're saying is "give me varying levels of automation, including but not limited to full automation --- as long as I can have as much control as I want at the time." similar to a car with an option to disable traction control.
Re: BMW shows off 'drifting' self-drive cars
#119I 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…
At some point, your suggested improvements will result in a car that only gives you the impression that you are driving.
Re: BMW shows off 'drifting' self-drive cars
#120I 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…
At some point, your suggested improvements will result in a car that only gives you the impression that you are driving.
I agree. This is a slippery slope that I (think I can) accept. Perception matters. And that way the car (uhm - the technology?) gains trust slowly - and adapts to our preferences. It's one thing to talk about assistance systems taking more and more control (but being helpful in general, leaving me in control most of the time so far). It's a different thing to talk about self-driving cars that are tested today (even if they're far from ready yet). I don't want to hand over my current car tomorrow and enter a kind of cab that goes 130 max even if there's no traffic. Where I am nothing but a guest.
Do these lines converge? Possibly. Or certainly, even. But that needs to be a loooong process in my world and I prefer the route I described: By making the car I know and like smarter. Not by replacing it outright with a one-wagon-train or automated cab.
(and that's from someone that considers anyone not driving automatic already being much further down the road)