91–100 of 269 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They do now. Doesn't necessarily mean that in 5 years they still will.
Do unions still hold significant political sway these days? I can definitely see truckers pulling their weight to keep those laws on the books for commercial freight at least long enough to stay employed 'til retirement.
What happen if I have a accident in the car? Will Google pay my damages if it's the car's fault? How quickly will we adapt to the car?
Currently, the person who is operating the vehicle is responsible for what the car does.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought they were limited to driving on the highway in the empty parts of nevada?
I drove behind one yesterday as it returned to Google HQ in Mountain View. It was pretty exciting. It was also rush hour, and people didn't like that it tried so hard to give a safe amount of space in front and behind itself - it ended up being a little bubble of lane-changing space that moved slower than the rest of traffic. Not that I hold any of this against the car - it was clearly doing the intelligent thing. Bu…
Anyway, I wanted to say that I read an article about a guy in Seattle that always kept a couple car lengths ahead of him. I seem to remember the article saying he was able to get home quicker that way than by behaving like the rest of the cars on the road.
I'd love to live in a world where roads were full of auto-driving electric cars that automatically went to recharge and were replaced by fleet cars, and stopped at various points for people to load up. Like personal, on demand busses.
That use a heck of a lot more gas ;)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought they were limited to driving on the highway in the empty parts of nevada?
I drove behind one yesterday as it returned to Google HQ in Mountain View. It was pretty exciting. It was also rush hour, and people didn't like that it tried so hard to give a safe amount of space in front and behind itself - it ended up being a little bubble of lane-changing space that moved slower than the rest of traffic. Not that I hold any of this against the car - it was clearly doing the intelligent thing. Bu…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What I’m interested in is whether they counted hypothetical accidents. As far as I know, there always has to be someone in the driver’s seat, ready to step in at any time. How often did that person have to step in? Now that would be an interesting metric, especially when plotted over time. As is, it should be pretty unlikely for the autonomous cars to cause accidents, even if they were much less reliable than human d…
Agree. Did humans step-in when they noted conditions which they believed the car unable to handle and perhaps prevent the majority of likely accidents?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Autonomous cars are the next big tech that changes the world - I put them up there with computer, Internet, and smart phone. I wouldn't be so sure. Yeah, it might prove to be a very good thing for the United States, but for the rest of world there's first Europe's public transport networks (I'm 31, don't have a driver's license, I live in Europe, I'm doing perfectly fine, thank you), and short of us reaching the Si…
Not having to own a car opens up more options Want a big car for a family trip? Just order one and it turns up where you are, ready to take you where you want to go. A sleeper car for two? A flash sports car for the afternoon? A van for the day? Pay-as-you-go personal transport from anywhere to anywhere where you can still be productive during the journey... Sounds pretty revolutionary to me.
See the following sites for examples of car share schemes.
Too bad it doesn't mention if this is better than a human or not. So, I decided to figure it out... 2.9 trillion miles driven in 2009 http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/tvtw/09dectvt/09dectvt.pdf 10.8 million traffic accidents in 2009 http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s1103.p... If my math is correct the average american can expect to get in an accident every ~250,000 miles driven, (NYC to LA 90 times) s…
I don't know much about this google project. Can autonomous cars (i) drive on the highway (ii) drive at night (iii) drive in snow or rain?
How would it react to a roadway that's covered in several feet of water due to flooding (and poor road design)? Or sinkholes? One-way streets? Freeways which change directions at different times of day? Dirt roads? (Can we make it autonomously offroad?) How will it react during an earthquake or tornado? How will it react to a bicyclist running a red stoplight and into the car's path, when the car has a green light? When the car comes across kids playing football/street hockey/baseball in the street, will it stop for them? How far out of the way will the kids have to move before the car thinks it's safe to go past?
Will these cars have systems to react when they take damage?
The cars still need to learn how to handle snow-covered roads That is going to be hard to pull off. For places that get a lot of snow, often you can't even be sure if you're on the road or not.
This brings up another question: How will these cars react when a street is blocked and unpassable, due to heavy snowfall (unplowed), heavy rainfall over the street, mudslides & rock slides, etc? What about where a street has parked cars on both sides and just enough room for one car to go through the middle of the street - one of the narrow city streets where drivers have to wait in the intersection for oncoming car…
More importantly - who will be maintaining all the traffic changes? An example - a section of Interstate or road is closed for months, whether by damage or construction. And then, when it's clear again?
I'm interested in seeing how these things play out.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You could also hire a limo. I suppose in the future you'll be able to rent a google car for a day, but you don't have to wait for self-driving cars. They're here today, the self just happens to be a human.
That's not really reasonably cost effective for most people.