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Nevada passes law authorizing driverless cars

blogs.forbes.com

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Re: Nevada passes law authorizing driverless cars

#191

Post by yardie »

sbierwagen wrote: post #165
cachemoney wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are afraid of planes because if the power goes out, you die. On the ground, if the power goes out on your driverless car, you cruise to a stop.

And if you cruise to a stop in the middle of a train crossing? Or if the steering shuts down while on a long curve next to a cliff?

Trains travel slower through populated areas. If you're stuck on a crossing jump out. Chances are the train will stop if the driver sees you in time and has the distance to stop (about 1mi/1.6km).

Steering doesn't shut down, it just goes from easy to hard. If the car is in motion it requires very little energy to turn.

Re: Nevada passes law authorizing driverless cars

#192

Post by varjag »

mortenjorck wrote: post #170
joelthelion wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that's why no one uses their products.

Google is good at entering a market just as it's catching on with a meaningfully-differentiated product, and the product markets itself. See Search, Gmail, and Maps. When Google doesn't do this, they have to rely on marketing. See Wave or Buzz.

Every big company has its string of failed products. I'm not convinced that Google is really worse in this regard than Apple, Microsoft or Yahoo.

Re: Nevada passes law authorizing driverless cars

#193

Post by varjag »

nooneelse wrote: post #152
bh42222 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why you're being down-voted, it's a valid question. Computers have eliminated a lot of jobs over the last 30 to 40 years. For example VisiCalc, did a lot of what many tax accountants charged for. It used to be that humans, mostly women, switched (or routed if you will) phone calls. Automation certainly does eliminate many jobs. But interestingly it also seems to make previously impossible things possible…

Personally, I look forward to self-driving sleeper cars and a new type of motel that is little more than a secure parking lot plus some nice bathrooms. What is the feeling of "where you live" if you switch cities each time you sleep? Also, in your hypothetical, if we are all routing calls as our day job, doesn't that mean that at any one time, 1/3 of humans are asleep, 1/3 routing calls, 1/3 possibly on calls. With a…

Switching is hierarchical, so for every non-local call placed there would be several human operators involved.

Re: Nevada passes law authorizing driverless cars

#194

Post by [deleted] »

IsaacL wrote: post #184
mkr-hn wrote: post #6

I think driverless cars could be the future of public transportation. Instead of big trains and buses with limited reach, we would have thousands of public vehicles that take you where you need to go when you need to be there. It eliminates the big barriers to public transport--the lack of personal space, timing, and reach. No car? Just hop on the municipal/county dispatch website, request a car, pay your fee, and wa…

These are also known as "taxis".

[deleted]

Re: Nevada passes law authorizing driverless cars

#195

Post by varjag »

Cushman wrote: post #175
roc wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Communally shared cars would still have the problem that a large number of those personal cars are spending the same 90% of their time sitting in a parking space. Everyone's leaving for work at 8, leaving for lunch at noon and leaving for home at 5. You'd still need roughly the same number of 'communal' cars during those peak times. Though people may be more likely to car-pool. Even the trivial variation of most US '…

That's true currently— but I think you're neglecting the possibility that widespread use of robotic cars could effectively eliminate rush hour. If that hour and a half commute starts taking the twenty minutes it should, two hours is time for a bunch of round trips. Of course there will be some limit to capacity, as with any public transportation. But having to wait a bit for a car isn't going to put off commuters who…

That's not even mentioning you can actually do useful stuff sitting as a passenger during the commute.

Re: Nevada passes law authorizing driverless cars

#196

Post by dhyasama »

minikomi wrote: post #177
bh42222 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why you're being down-voted, it's a valid question. Computers have eliminated a lot of jobs over the last 30 to 40 years. For example VisiCalc, did a lot of what many tax accountants charged for. It used to be that humans, mostly women, switched (or routed if you will) phone calls. Automation certainly does eliminate many jobs. But interestingly it also seems to make previously impossible things possible…

Presumably cities will need to be rethought too. Cars and trucks will become more systematic in their movements.. Will most streets as we know them become grassy walkways for human transit? Do we really need everyone to have a car, and thus access to their building by a street? Just imagine a city like new york with next to no (large vehicle) traffic.. smaller vehicles to ferry packages from larger vein streets..

I love your vision of New York, but it's dangerous to use New York as a model. The population density of New York makes it unique (at least in the US).

Re: Nevada passes law authorizing driverless cars

#197

Post by Estragon »

gsoltis wrote: post #41
uuilly wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you rent your car out to the grid rather than park it. Like air-bnb for cars.

See getaround.com. They are doing something like this already.

getaround.com looks interesting. Shame they require a facebook account.

Re: Nevada passes law authorizing driverless cars

#198

Post by ciphergoth »

monkeypizza wrote: post #172

from an open letter to the French Parliament in 1845: "We are suffering from the ruinous competition of a rival who apparently works under conditions so far superior to our own for the production of light that he is flooding the domestic market with it at an incredibly low price; for the moment he appears, our sales cease, all the consumers turn to him, and a branch of French industry whose ramifications are innumera…

NB to the casual reader: the above was always intended as satire.

Re: Nevada passes law authorizing driverless cars

#199

Post by Aloisius »

nitrogen wrote: post #169
rmason wrote: post #128

My state of Michigan is known as the birthplace of the automobile. We had the first stretch of paved road in the world as well as the first stoplight. But we've abdicated our leadership in the automotive industry by turning our back on this development. Michigan rightly should have been the first state to legalize this technology. It seems as if the auto technology breakthroughs are coming from Silicon Valley. Bob Lu…

We had the first stretch of paved road in the world What qualifications are you adding that exclude stone-paved streets in ancient South America, Europe, and the Middle East?

I imagine the poster meant paved with asphalt which in the US is called pavement.

Re: Nevada passes law authorizing driverless cars

#200

Post by akgerber »

roundsquare wrote: post #185

Interesting that the limited the law to highways (edit: the law limited the use of autonomous vehicles to highways) (section 2, paragraph 1). I suppose it makes sense since highway driving is more predictable but its also higher speed and thus accidents are more dangerous. Also, this limitation would require the presence of a human driver to get the car to the highway.

Note that US traffic law generally uses the term "highway" for any public road.
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