Autonomous cars: Which drivers are most ready for this?

[Bbb34]

Originally Posted by nicknaz

.....Well, anyway, I am in the line for a Tesla 3, hopefully will be closer to autonomous when it actually comes out.

Fair enough, all valid points. I'm very interested to see how will Tesla 3 turn out, given the challenges they are facing.

I don't know, I mean, it's great that you made that shift in your mind and you're actually looking forward to this. I haven't, not yet, not sure if that'll change. My mindset is more along the lines, "hey nicknaz, you own M3 use it every chance you get". I mean, yes my car is a tool for me and my family, but I also chose this particular one, because I enjoy it. If driving was just annoying chore or me Camry or Impala (no disrespect meant to owners of these fine vehicles) would do just fine, and would save me money too. I guess I just love driving, and wouldn't want to limit it to weekends and/or track only.

One thing is for sure, it will be interesting to follow the development of autonomous cars.

[COKen]

Originally Posted by nicknaz

This AM I used the 20 minutes to check in with my "offshore delivery center" colleagues. Using 2016 tech, I was limited to bluetooth audio. It would have been cool to "facetime" and use screen sharing software at the same time

This PM I used the 20 minutes to catch up with a colleague who had been on vacation. This was simpler because we were riding in the same car, but using 2016 tech it was voice conversation while I drove. It would have been cool to look at photos and have a drink at the same time

Well, anyway, I am in the line for a Tesla 3, hopefully will be closer to autonomous when it actually comes out.

This, distracted driving, is exactly what autonomous cars are designed to fix. Not sure if it will work or not. We may just be trading one problem for another.

[RoundelM3]

Perhaps all you "autonomous" fans should read the article about the fatal accident this past July where a Tesla driver was killed because the "autopilot" failed to "see" an 18-wheeler with a white trailer against a bright sky pulling across the road he was traveling on. The Tesla hit the trailer square in the middle and went underneath, which likely decapitated the driver. Had the "guidance system" reacted properly or had the driver been paying attention, this fatality would not have happened.

It goes to show that this whole "autonomous" concept has a LOT of work remaining before it's considered "safe at all speeds". Ralph Nader is probably spinning in his grave.

[casualDIYer]

Originally Posted by Dan203

The Google car can handle most of this already. They've been working on it for about 15 years now. It can handle most common road situations. Although it uses a very expensive lidar system to read everything around it, so it's got way more information then the sonar/camera systems used in most systems actually on the road. (like the one in Tesla)

Yeah and Google's top car guy just quit a while back. Not sure if that's a blow for autonomous cars or Google or .... Both

[COKen]

Originally Posted by roundel335

Perhaps all you "autonomous" fans should read the article about the fatal accident this past July where a Tesla driver was killed because the "autopilot" failed to "see" an 18-wheeler with a white trailer against a bright sky pulling across the road he was traveling on. The Tesla hit the trailer square in the middle and went underneath, which likely decapitated the driver. Had the "guidance system" reacted properly or had the driver been paying attention, this fatality would not have happened.

It goes to show that this whole "autonomous" concept has a LOT of work remaining before it's considered "safe at all speeds". Ralph Nader is probably spinning in his grave.

The only problem is that the Tesla is not an autonomous car. The driver is still in charge and obviously this one was not paying attention.

[Dan203]

Originally Posted by roundel335

Perhaps all you "autonomous" fans should read the article about the fatal accident this past July where a Tesla driver was killed because the "autopilot" failed to "see" an 18-wheeler with a white trailer against a bright sky pulling across the road he was traveling on. The Tesla hit the trailer square in the middle and went underneath, which likely decapitated the driver. Had the "guidance system" reacted properly or had the driver been paying attention, this fatality would not have happened.

It goes to show that this whole "autonomous" concept has a LOT of work remaining before it's considered "safe at all speeds". Ralph Nader is probably spinning in his grave.

Nader is still alive, FYI.

Tesla uses a cheaper sonar system along with cameras to do it's autopilot. That's why it failed in this case. The sonar was positioned too low and went under the truck and the camera couldn't see the white trailer against the bright sky. Goigle's lidar system would have seen the tuck just fine.

[RoundelM3]

I didn't know Ralph was still kicking around...he and my mother went to High School together.

Nonetheless, whether or not Tesla is an "autonomous" car, the whole "autopilot" thing obviously isn't completely developed yet. Having been in the software world for many years, I've seen systems developed and released where there were "cases" that weren't considered and the system would fail. It's difficult to think of all the possibilities out there. So far, only supercomputers have been able to demonstrate any semblance of human intelligence, and one of those won't quite fit in the average car.

So there are two trains of thought - one that tries to emulate human senses (cameras for eyes, etc.) and the other that says there needs to be sensors in the highways themselves with connectivity between the cars and the highway infrastructure. But there will be cases where even with all that, something will go wrong and the result will be catastrophic.

[COKen]

I agree. If you look at large airliners, most of them can fly themselves (autopilots) and have been doing that for years, but they all still have humans who can take over when things go wrong. Except for landing, I imagine, that autonomous flying may need to deal with many fewer situations than autonomous driving. I don't expect to see large scale use of fully autonomous cars for many years to come, if ever.

[ptack]

Ultimately it will happen. Lot's of people want it, the technology is available and the shift will start to happen once it becomes clear that driverless cars are safer in aggregate than people driven cars. That's probably about 10 years from now. One probable good thing is that this will take most of the clueless bad drivers out of the left lane and keep their distracted bubbles in the slow lane.

[jpnh]

Originally Posted by ptack

Ultimately it will happen. Lot's of people want it, the technology is available and the shift will start to happen once it becomes clear that driverless cars are safer in aggregate than people driven cars. That's probably about 10 years from now. One probable good thing is that this will take most of the clueless bad drivers out of the left lane and keep their distracted bubbles in the slow lane.

If you can't operate a vehicle safely then you shouldnt have a license....period

You should be relegated to public/other transportation....end of story

"autonomous driving" systems are just another way of driving up costs on vehicle and increasing the amount of control exercised over people.

This is just another example of modern progressivism and tyranny

“The essence of modern Democratic progressivism is: “You will participate in what we have created for you, and you will comply with the law’s demands.”

In other news there's been a little more natural selection in the field of "Autonomous Driving".....

Tesla fail again
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-n...-tesla-8791671

[Bbb34]

Originally Posted by jpnh

...."autonomous driving" systems are just another way of driving up costs on vehicle....

Exactly. Software will need constant, never ending updates, will be sold with what's safe to assume some sort of subscription fees. Better/safer/more secure versions will be offered for even more money. Complexity of said cars will grow and lifespan of cars, software and hardware will likely be reduced (think how out of date is 5 year old processor/operating system/display is). Infrastructure financed by tax dollars will need to follow all these updates too. It'll be very interesting to follow attempts to find solutions for many issues facing fully autonomous driving.

[jpnh]

Originally Posted by Bbb34

Exactly. Software will need constant, never ending updates, will be sold with what's safe to assume some sort of subscription fees. Better/safer/more secure versions will be offered for even more money. Complexity of said cars will grow and lifespan of cars, software and hardware will likely be reduced (think how out of date is 5 year old processor/operating system/display is). Infrastructure financed by tax dollars will need to follow all these updates too. It'll be very interesting to follow attempts to find solutions for many issues facing fully autonomous driving.

The ultimate goal for some car manufacturers is to follow the iphone model where phones have to be replaced every few years and you can only utilize approved components (app store)

there are already crony gov/business efforts taking place to mandate various functions like back up camera's, avoidance systems and other functions that OVER RIDE the drivers input....autonomous driving systems are just the next step beyond this

leftists would like nothing more than to be able to control where you go and how you get there....the single biggest threat to freedom is tyranny under the name of progressivism

[Outlaw 06]

Question: Which drivers are most ready for autonomous cars?

Answer: All of those who possess the (XX) driving chromosome.

[catchm3ifyoucann]

One importance piece that we have to keep an eye on his own to create an autonomous system that can understand ethics in terms of driving.

Example: Is it ok for computer to say I will move to the shoulder and drive potentially over the lane divider in order to create a space distance from bicyclists on the shoulder.

Also there was a great article on the development of battery technology for these cars. Essentially R & D on batteries to make more efficient, long lasting, and reliable would cost over $500 million and most companies that are researching this have budgets of $10 million. In order for there to eventually be a 500 mile range vehicle it would have to be a collective development between multiple manufacturers.

I welcome the technology. I drive close to 3 hours round trip a day.....

[jpnh]

Folks ought to look at what folks like Steven Hawking are warning about AI and "Autonomous Systems"

this is bad juju and the autonomous driving systems to date have proven that they do not belong on public roads.....Tesla, Google and others are putting all of us at risk by doing so......these vehicles keep crashing and burning.....quite literally and are harming others and causing property damage in the process.....something the media likes to overlook

[David70]

Originally Posted by Dan203

I agree. For long, mind numbing, drives I'd be happy to pass off the driving to a computer. I already sort of do with the adaptive cruise control. I want to be in control for the fun parts.

Would also be nice to be able to go out to a bar without worrying about having a DD or staying under the limit. Just have fun and the car will drive you home. (the technologies not there yet, I know)

Agree, about 70% of my driving I would be happy with being driven by someone or something else. I cover 13 states for work many times driving most of the day and then getting work done at night, would happily pass over the driving during the day and be done with everything when I get to my destination. Or have the car drive all night and show up somewhere in the morning.

Originally Posted by roundel335

Nonetheless, there are situations where the "guidance system" isn't going to be able to cope with the unpredictability of human drivers. As I said before, unless there's communication between all vehicles and the roadway infrastructure, there are going to be more accidents than there are now.

Every decision currently made by the driver is made from what he can hear and see and there is no communications between cars now, not sure how you figured out that we can never develop better than the driver without cars being able to "talk" to each other.

Originally Posted by roundel335

Perhaps all you "autonomous" fans should read the article about the fatal accident this past July where a Tesla driver was killed because the "autopilot" failed to "see" an 18-wheeler with a white trailer against a bright sky pulling across the road he was traveling on. The Tesla hit the trailer square in the middle and went underneath, which likely decapitated the driver. Had the "guidance system" reacted properly or had the driver been paying attention, this fatality would not have happened.

There are roughly 30,000 deaths in cars each year (averages about 82 a day). How hard would we have to look to find a death caused by a driver that failed to see something?

I agree the current systems aren't autonomous yet and shouldn't be used this way but finding a case where a system doesn't work when the alternative is massively far from perfect also doesn't mean we can't develop a better system in the future.

[MightyMouseTech]

Originally Posted by tturedraider

I hate it, hate it, hate it!!

I think it's awesome, just not for me. Hopefully it will get those idiots that merge at half the speed of highway traffic behind the wheel of one and they can get the f%^*k out of my way.

[Bbb34]

Originally Posted by David70

There are roughly 30,000 deaths in cars each year (averages about 82 a day). How hard would we have to look to find a death caused by a driver that failed to see something?

This is unfortunate, but call me cynical, I doubt saving lives is what's driving autonomous car development. I can just "see" army of lawyers in the future trying to shift responsibility from hardware to software to tires, to road conditions, to driver not being alert, not performing software upgrades on time, to insurance policy...etc.

No software is ever perfect, not even when you have fully controlled set of input parameters and clean requirements on exactly how to handle them. Yet traffic as we know it today is hardly predictable, highway flowing traffic maybe to some extent. Hope you see where I'm headed with this, and why I feel it's going to be very difficult to get this right.
Some of this tech. will hopefully make driving safer in form of aids to the driver, but fully autonomous driving will take a while I think.

[Fahrvergnügen]

I am in Strategy consulting working with automotive OEMs and technology companies and autonomous vehicles along with electric vehicles and MaaS are all major topics on all of their agendas. At the rate of change we are seeing in technology these days, it is truly a race to come up with the next renaissance in automotive and mobility technology. BMW, along with every major OEM, would be stupid not to invest in automation, alternative energy, and various avenues of mobility (i.e. car sharing, automated taxi fleets, drone delivery, etc.) unless they want to see revenue and profit drop and they become a niche player. Electric and alternative fuel (fuel cell) will most likely be widely incorporated into premium cars (BMW, Lexus, MB) in the next gen of cars and make its way down to non-premium in two generations. Autonomous vehicles have much further to go due to the complex situations it will encounter but as deep learning research and more $$$ increase, we will see more. Social changes seen in the younger generations will continue to push sharing platforms and less and less ownership.

This all sucks for the enthusiast minded individual but in the grand scheme of things we are a very small cohort often overlooked as companies strive for more revenues and higher profits. I wouldn't be surprised if race tracks become the only place to drive what we think of cars today once AV tech becomes fully integrated.

It's coming and it will be disruptive.