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Why your self-driving car won’t have a steering wheel

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Why your self-driving car won’t have a steering wheel

#2
Here are the sentences:

> Research that Stanford has done shows that drivers resuming control from Level 3 vehicles functioning in autonomous mode take 10 seconds just to attain the level of ability that a drunk driver possesses. And to get back to full driving competence takes 60 seconds.

So they're assuming that one cannot improve at this task, taking over control from the self-driving car, with practice? They could even test this ability.

Re: Why your self-driving car won’t have a steering wheel

#4
> The problem with including a steering wheel in a self-driving car is that human drivers can’t be trusted to effectively take over in sticky situations. So the makers of driverless cars can’t responsibly include a steering wheel.

Excellent. The thing that scared me was the idea of sitting in a car with the wheel moving by itself, trying to constantly guess if it was doing the right thing. I want to just sit down and go.

> “A huge fraction of the time, nothing bad will happen because the vehicles really are reliable, hundreds of kilometers at a time before something really terrible happens,”

Hundreds of thousands I hope that means, unless their cars cause a catastrophe every few trips. Or have I completely misunderstood that?

Re: Why your self-driving car won’t have a steering wheel

#5
That's correct for highway speeds....

What happens when I'm stuck in a ditch or sand or in a rut and need delicate manoeuvering? Maybe I'm out in a field in the middle of nowhere. No roads, just open field with seasonal hazards.

I still want a way to guide the vehicle manually without having to call someone with a winch.

Re: Why your self-driving car won’t have a steering wheel

#6

Here are the sentences: > Research that Stanford has done shows that drivers resuming control from Level 3 vehicles functioning in autonomous mode take 10 seconds just to attain the level of ability that a drunk driver possesses. And to get back to full driving competence takes 60 seconds. So they're assuming that one cannot improve at this task, taking over control from the self-driving car, with practice? They coul…

The difficulty lies in having to be instantly available, fully aware, and alert enough to pick up driving at a moment's notice. Basically, you have to be mentally "driving" already, by which point why bother having a self-driving car at all?

Re: Why your self-driving car won’t have a steering wheel

#8

Here are the sentences: > Research that Stanford has done shows that drivers resuming control from Level 3 vehicles functioning in autonomous mode take 10 seconds just to attain the level of ability that a drunk driver possesses. And to get back to full driving competence takes 60 seconds. So they're assuming that one cannot improve at this task, taking over control from the self-driving car, with practice? They coul…

How often do you practice emergency driving situations in your car? I could go out every weekend on the skid pan, or have someone throw paint randomly over the windscreen every so often, or get someone to hide amongst parked cars and push some unlucky sucker out in front of me, but I don't. These are all things that I could practice, that would make me much better able to handle a driving emergency, that I already don't do. Why would I practice taking over from the self-driving car?

Re: Why your self-driving car won’t have a steering wheel

#9

Here are the sentences: > Research that Stanford has done shows that drivers resuming control from Level 3 vehicles functioning in autonomous mode take 10 seconds just to attain the level of ability that a drunk driver possesses. And to get back to full driving competence takes 60 seconds. So they're assuming that one cannot improve at this task, taking over control from the self-driving car, with practice? They coul…

Not a difficult assumption to make. If the goal is to do as the self-driving car in Demolition Man did, by relinquishing control to the driver at the end of a freeway, then sure. It's a normal situation, you have ample warning beforehand, it's expected.

If the goal is to include a steering wheel so that one can swerve to avoid an accident, then no, it can't be improved to that level. If you are going to have to keep that level of attention, a self-driving car improves nothing.

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