Great. They taught computers to drive like a dick as well now...
BMW shows off 'drifting' self-drive cars
31–40 of 144 posts
Re: BMW shows off 'drifting' self-drive cars
#32This 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"
I don't think this will be the case.
Automated driving is only useful if you know where you're going. If you're on a leisurely ride through the country or are looking for a place with no address, you can't use automated navigation. So disabling it would be a necessity for a variety of driving purposes. As an aside, motorsport enthusiasts would be up in arms if they had to pay a premium just to be able to drive their expensive sports sedan the way they want on a closed track.
What will probably happen is a black box will record if the car was in automated mode when a crash occurs. If it was driving itself, the manufacturer will probably be at fault and forced to pay the insurance company. If you were driving it, the standard rules apply.
I have to say though, automated drifting is really depressing. I used to drive a Toyota MR2, which is an ass-heavy car that was very susceptible to snap oversteer. Unlike most other cars, if you felt like the car's rear end was about to slide out of control, you had to PUNCH the gas to get traction back. You basically have to fight all your instincts and do something crazy in a split second or end up spinning backwards towards god knows what. It's the most exciting thing i've ever experienced in a car (even more than sitting in on hot laps with an indy driver in a Lexus IS-F), and I would never get to experience it with automated driving.
As for non-drifting, automated driving is definitely an amazing and useful feature. Writing code on my way to work sounds like fun. And I know it sounds controversial, but if there was some way to couple a breathalyzer with automated driving, we might be able to use our cars as taxis that pick us up and drop us off without us having the ability to drive. But perhaps that's hoping for too much...
Re: BMW shows off 'drifting' self-drive cars
#33This 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"
As a BMW owner myself, I say: "good riddance to driving being fun." I used to get a kick out of it when I was younger, but now that I'm married with a kid it's just an exercise in paranoia and frustration. People are fucking nuts in the way they drive. My friend just got T-boned hard enough to flip his car 360 degrees a couple of months ago, by some asshole speeding in the shoulder as traffic was backed up. I see an accident at least once a week commuting into Philadelphia. Teenagers (16-20) just plain shouldn't be on the road the way most of them drive. It's no wonder that traffic accidents are the leading cause of death for people 5-35. The government should ban non-self-driving cars as soon as feasible. If you think about it: it's utterly ridiculous that a publicly-funded infrastructure with a crucial utilitarian purpose should be used for "fun."
Re: BMW shows off 'drifting' self-drive cars
#34Here's a promo video of it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IL_enMPWT7s
I think I spotted an overturned cone at the 55 second mark ...
Wired magazine had a small piece about the presentation, including that video: http://www.wired.com/autopia/2014/01/bmw-builds-self-driftin...
Re: BMW shows off 'drifting' self-drive cars
#35This 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"
If you want to have fun, there will no doubt be private tracks where you can go and drive in a fun way. As someone who just gave up commuting about 1 traffic-laden hour each way, driving stopped being fun long, long ago. Too many of my commutes were made an unnecessary 50% or more longer because of drivers who were probably having a lot of fun until they caused an accident and backed up the road for everyone else.
As someone with a similar commute, I lament I can only upvote this once. Every time I-95 severely backs up because some asshole managed to crash on a day with perfect weather and visibility, I think to myself: "I hope it was worth it."
Re: BMW shows off 'drifting' self-drive cars
#36Wonder when Google will have their self-driving fleet taking people from the Las Vegas airport to their hotels during CES? It would be a great publicity stunt. "Currently California, Florida and Nevada have licensed autonomous vehicles to be tested on their public roads, and Google's fleet of 24 robot Lexus SUVs (sports utility vehicles) have clocked up about 500,000 miles of unassisted driving so far without any rep…
Can you imagine the emergency procedures they have in place to cover up any mishaps?
A few payoffs here, a few altered records there... no mishaps!
Re: BMW shows off 'drifting' self-drive cars
#37If a car company has their own self-driving technology, will they ever pay Google for theirs?
Google has various patents on self-driving car technology.
Re: BMW shows off 'drifting' self-drive cars
#38This 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"
You'd pay a premium over those that exclusively use auto-pilot. That premium should still be lower than what you pay now. Reason being, you'll still be driving yourself, but now you're surrounded by auto-pilot vehicles. Therefore, you should be involved in less accidents as auto-pilot cars react faster to your mistakes, avoid following you too close, avoid merging into your lane, backing into you in a parking lot, etc. So, driving on auto-pilot might be 90% safer, and driving without auto-pilot, in a world where the majority use auto-pilot, you might be 60% safer than today. Either way, less accidents, safer roads, lower insurance.
Re: BMW shows off 'drifting' self-drive cars
#39This 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"
I can't see any reason why we can't have both; you control the car until it detects a dangerous situation and then takes over. Sounds ideal really, you could go faster than you can now, safe in the knowledge that if things go bad the computer will kick in and take over.
I think part of the safety boost of self-driving cars is that they don't get impatient, and neither will you since you're reading a book/email/facebook/whatever.
Self-driving cars ought to also be capable of driving like grandmothers. That's part of why I expect them to be safer. The idea that you can drive a car to the brink of a high-speed collision and then magically expect it to out-react a seasoned driver into avoiding an essentially unavoidable accident is juvenile fantasy.
Re: BMW shows off 'drifting' self-drive cars
#40This 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"
Why the scare quotes on "safer"? If self-driving cars prove objectively to have fewer accidents and resulting injuries and deaths, wouldn't that just make them a superior technology? In that case, why shouldn't insurance charge more for traditional driving if self-driving were available on your car? That's just how insurance works, nothing new there.
A self-driving car system might be statistically safer than a human drivers in overall conditions, and still be prone to failure in an exceptional situation a particular driver wouldn't have been. If you have the potential to be that driver in that situation, I could understand feeling the scare quotes are warranted. Which percentile of the population does an automated system need to outperform to be safer rather than "safer"?