21–30 of 322 posts
It seems like a mistake to remove manual controls entirely, not necessarily because of safety concerns, but because there are a fair number of times when you need the car to go somewhere without having a route. I'm thinking of things like: Moving your car ten feet so somebody else can get out of the driveway; handling double parking during alternate side parking hours; moving the car because you were waiting to pick…
- Self driving cars would be awesome, for well known reasons.
- We have to use a lot of good sensors to make this work.
- It's an interesting problem.
It seems like a mistake to remove manual controls entirely, not necessarily because of safety concerns, but because there are a fair number of times when you need the car to go somewhere without having a route. I'm thinking of things like: Moving your car ten feet so somebody else can get out of the driveway; handling double parking during alternate side parking hours; moving the car because you were waiting to pick…
I agree with you, perhaps in the context of a personal vehicle there does need to be manual control. However I can see these more as a form of private public transit, a fleet of driverless google cars cruising around and anyone with a subscription a la zipcar can hail them and go. Perhaps in this context, Google could operate parking garages where they can be recharged and cleaned while keeping them off the street an…
In any case, they will probably not start by having a huge fleet, but by selling them as personal vehicles.
When the man with glasses gives his perspective, the enablement hits you. If you've any humanity, you feel the potential this technology brings to so many.
I can relate to this. Anyone who has ever had to take a family members car away from them as they get older can as well. When someone has driven most of their life, losing the ability to drive can be a very difficult. To them its losing their independence. Self driving technology is very much about enablement.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, that's is a very interesting point. I would think that, long term, the only manual control a self driving car really needs is a "kill switch." How long will it be after self-driving tech goes mainstream until people simply don't know who to drive? I can see my kids now, "I remember when I was a kid, my mom/dad actually had to control the automobile. Archaic!" Not too long ago my friend's son asked me why my phon…
There's a funny mention of this problem in "I, Robot". When will smith takes the wheel he is scolded for taking such a completely irresponsible risk. Given how those robots drive versus how he drives, we likely will have to agree with this at some point. I wonder if real life will play out the same way : will controlling a car the human way become an unacceptable risk, and how fast will this happen ? Because we're li…
I'm very glad that California has legislation in place to allow this already, and think it's going to pay off in spades to be a leader in this area. My bet is that insurance will be baked into the price of the first generation of cars (ie subsidized by the manufacturers), liability rates will be extremely low, and there will be an avalanche of consumer switching over a fairly short period of 10-20 years.
It seems like a mistake to remove manual controls entirely, not necessarily because of safety concerns, but because there are a fair number of times when you need the car to go somewhere without having a route. I'm thinking of things like: Moving your car ten feet so somebody else can get out of the driveway; handling double parking during alternate side parking hours; moving the car because you were waiting to pick…
Forgive my crankiness, but: Does this say anything that the casual follower of self driving cars doesn't already know? All I got out of this was: - Self driving cars would be awesome, for well known reasons. - We have to use a lot of good sensors to make this work. - It's an interesting problem.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with you, perhaps in the context of a personal vehicle there does need to be manual control. However I can see these more as a form of private public transit, a fleet of driverless google cars cruising around and anyone with a subscription a la zipcar can hail them and go. Perhaps in this context, Google could operate parking garages where they can be recharged and cleaned while keeping them off the street an…
That sounds cool, although most cities already have something similar in the form of buses, which are cheaper and more efficient than what you're talking about. In any case, they will probably not start by having a huge fleet, but by selling them as personal vehicles.
I think the biggest news was this sentence: If all goes well, we’d like to run a small pilot program here in California in the next couple of years. This is the next step in their very slow but, apparently, very steady march towards real self-driving cars that anyone can buy.