Yes. One day, in the not too distant future people will look back aghast at how we tolerated the number of deaths on our roads.
Google wants driverless cars, but do we?
11–20 of 40 posts
Re: Google wants driverless cars, but do we?
#12Yes, yes we want them. Idiotic things like this in the article miss the point: > And yet this trend has never been voted on or discussed seriously by our politicians We already voted with our dollars and will continue to do so (and our politicians suck). The article also has stupid shit like: > The truth is, no one knows for sure how many lives could be saved by driverless cars, because data on the role of human erro…
>> And yet this trend has never been voted on or discussed seriously by our politicians
> We already voted with our dollars and will continue to do so (and our politicians suck).
No doubt. Why in the heck would I need a politicians to vote and discuss such a thing? We decide and they get their butts in gear getting the regulations to work or we vote them out of office. They are supposed to represent the will of the people, not be our parents.
Re: Google wants driverless cars, but do we?
#13> The types of accidents we’ll face in this automated future, in which these cars are meant to run together in proximity at high speed, may be fewer, but they’ll be new, different, unpredictable and, on occasion, larger and more grisly than the ones we know today. There's absolutely no evidence to support this, is there? How would self-driving cars result in larger and more grisly accidents?
Not defending the argument, but I suspect the author was referring to the reduction in safety equipment installed on autonomous vehicles leading to more grisly accidents. From the article: "One of the claims made for autonomous cars is that they can be lighter, shedding heavy metal crash cells and expensive safety gear, like airbags, saving fuel."
I thought Google wanted to use redundant engines, like in planes...
Re: Google wants driverless cars, but do we?
#14Literally ever single one of his points could be made about any other technological innovation, ever. (Obviously a bit of a hyperbole, but it's not far off from the truth. Try replacing driverless cars with seatbelts, and it reads remarkably similarly.)
Re: Google wants driverless cars, but do we?
#15> The types of accidents we’ll face in this automated future, in which these cars are meant to run together in proximity at high speed, may be fewer, but they’ll be new, different, unpredictable and, on occasion, larger and more grisly than the ones we know today. There's absolutely no evidence to support this, is there? How would self-driving cars result in larger and more grisly accidents?
The suggestion I've seen repeatedly is that self-driving cars can travel faster with smaller gaps between vehicles due to strong coordination between them and near-instant response time in processing compared to a human. The article also suggests safety equipment in the vehicle would potentially be lessened as well. (Google's little koala cars would crush like tin cans, for example.) Of course, when something goes wr…
I would hope that we spend some years not packing the cars together before we have a decent set of data on the performance under nation-wide, real world conditions.
If we expect to get to that level, then the crash investigators better be closer to airplane crash level care then our current level of investigation.
Re: Google wants driverless cars, but do we?
#16Yes, yes we want them. Idiotic things like this in the article miss the point: > And yet this trend has never been voted on or discussed seriously by our politicians We already voted with our dollars and will continue to do so (and our politicians suck). The article also has stupid shit like: > The truth is, no one knows for sure how many lives could be saved by driverless cars, because data on the role of human erro…
Government mandates have done a lot to drive other safety features. Many people didn't start wearing seatbelts until it was a ticket:
Re: Google wants driverless cars, but do we?
#17In case you were wondering which hack wrote this hit piece.
> Jamie Lincoln Kitman, a lawyer, is the New York bureau chief for Automobile Magazine.
So, no surprises here.
Re: Google wants driverless cars, but do we?
#18> The types of accidents we’ll face in this automated future, in which these cars are meant to run together in proximity at high speed, may be fewer, but they’ll be new, different, unpredictable and, on occasion, larger and more grisly than the ones we know today. There's absolutely no evidence to support this, is there? How would self-driving cars result in larger and more grisly accidents?
I think the point is if trains of several autonomous vehicles becomes common suddenly crash is worse than just one vehicle; more mass more energy.
The sensible thing would be to build the train based on the performance characteristics of the vehicles. An algorithm will probably do a better job of this than human tailgaters presently do.
Re: Google wants driverless cars, but do we?
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
The suggestion I've seen repeatedly is that self-driving cars can travel faster with smaller gaps between vehicles due to strong coordination between them and near-instant response time in processing compared to a human. The article also suggests safety equipment in the vehicle would potentially be lessened as well. (Google's little koala cars would crush like tin cans, for example.) Of course, when something goes wr…
I would hope that we spend some years not packing the cars together before we have a decent set of data on the performance under nation-wide, real world conditions. If we expect to get to that level, then the crash investigators better be closer to airplane crash level care then our current level of investigation.
Packing cars together and synchronizing them is probably the safer way. Less chance that a car, person or animal will get between two cars if the space between them is less.
How many pedestrians are killed by jumping between two train wagons?
Re: Google wants driverless cars, but do we?
#20Every point made by this article made me angry.
Some of the points made by the article:
-We don't know exactly how many people will be saved each year!
-We might make fewer cars!
-Our politicians haven't decided whether or not we want them!
-We can just disable phones in moving cars so people don't drive distracted!
Jamie Lincoln Kitman, you make me angry.
[Edit: formatting]