Oh HELL no... no, no, no (auto-driving cars)

[serialk11r]

Originally Posted by Rampage

While I agree that most kids (defined as anyone under 30) these days are much less interested in cars, I do not see them riding buses (gawd forbid!) or trains. I see them bumming rides from friends that do have cars and their parent's SUV. The cool kids ride bikes or take taxis. Most the buses around where I live drive around all day nearly empty burning up the governments mass transit grant money. They have been doing that for decades. Even $4+ gasoline prices does not get people on them.

Yep, this is pretty much it. Most people my age who buy cars try to buy something that holds a lot of people so they can drive their friends around (the altruistic ones and ones with parents who spend money on them buy cars, everyone else bums rides lol). The yuppie kids who have jobs take taxi everywhere. For them cars are already automated, they never have to drive lol.

In the city, public transit is sometimes nice. The east half of SF has pretty good public transport, but at 2 dollars for a short bus ride + a few more dollars for a muni or bart ride, I'd rather just drive, spend the same money or less, and get there faster. This doesn't work in certain areas where there is basically no parking, but it mostly works. In smaller suburbs, they have buses that come by once every hour or something like that, no one in their ride mind would take that when you can walk faster than that.

Also I think people underestimate the difficulty of getting this kind of AI stuff to work. Computers won't be able to decide "moral" issues anytime soon, automated evasive maneuvers/lift throttle oversteer correction are extremely difficult as well. Hell, getting a computer to recognize objects through cameras isn't even well understood yet. The self driving cars that Google has are just like your typical driver who is ignorant about these things as well, except they go the speed limit instead of over and keep recommended following distance and such.

[SirBrass]

My fear is that certain folks who love tech but have zero capacity to think critically (think most members of Congress & the nation's young people) will see this tightly controlled "success" and demand or legislate this tech in everything in a few years. They do it already with new impossible & industry-choking CAFE standards, and they'll do it here if enough people orgasm over it publicly enough.

And the pressure will result in the prototype idiot computer that can drive the limit & keep spacing for normal conditions to be the production code, or something only a little improved upon it.

Overly gushing this early when it still needs plenty of independent engineer evaluation, testing, improvement, rinse & repeat is bad for development.

Because most people who can put economic & political pressure to standardize this have no ability to think critically but see shiny new object & think "our prayers of the boring drive are answered".

Can this be made smarter & safer in ten years? Sure, if engineers with safety, stability, and little bureaucratic/managerial micromanagement get to it. Probably sooner, but that's not going to happen.

And let's take that average failure rate & multiply it by cars on the road. How many incidents due to something that might not be caught in the code for years (if it was just a minor variable offset error or something) b/c it's so well buried. For a laptop, who cares. Computers sometimes crash.

When that happens with a 1.5 ton vehicle, that's not acceptable. I'd say that the level of assurance required for aircraft safety critical software (RTCA document DO-178 revB ) is a good baseline, b/c these cars will share a much more crowded road than commercial airlines share the skies. Those stringent mtbf requirements should be the minimum for auto-drive software b/c of the much reduced skill of a driver than an airline pilot & the much closer relative following room cars have between them than airliners & cargo aircraft do.

On phone I am. Therefore, if mistakes I make, Frank Oz blame you should.

[Frost]

Originally Posted by SirBrass

My fear is that certain folks who love tech but have zero capacity to think critically (think most members of Congress & the nation's young people) will see this tightly controlled "success" and demand or legislate this tech in everything in a few years.

I don't know what you consider young but I'm 32 and hopefully still "young" lolz.

But I agree with your comment about lack of critical thinking. I think the internet has taken a lot of what used to be critical thinking and foreplanning and reduced it to "Google it when I'm at that bridge". In my line of work, there really isn't a step by step playbook - sure there are usual avenues I go up and down when troubleshooting but for most part, the equipment is never the same but the philosophy in troubleshooting it and viewing it through the customer's eyes are still the same.

I've met programmers who had to be told specifically what to do and others who just tell me "Ah then just don't use that function".

Programmers get inherently lazy due to deadlines and pressure to "GET IT DONE". I do give them the benefit of the doubt since no program will ever be 100% bug free or at least have all possible scenarios played out. I used to be a tester for such programs and it's FAR EASIER to break a program (what I effectively did) then it is to build one.

That's the struggle I face at work everyday - management doesn't understand programming and its limits but yet we keep pushing and pushing for faster execution with more complex products.

I don't feel too badly for car companies when I hear recalls with their VSC issues like Lexus had with their SUVs rolling over due to VSC error. Until we create true artificial intelligence, humans need to use their brains.

I always tell new hires or people I work with the following: "We don't hire you for what you know, we hire you for what you can learn and solve." People always want to brag about what they know but the really good ones are the ones who you can paradrop into an unknown problem and they can come back out with a resolution and a root cause of the issue.

[SirBrass]

I'm 30, so...

And I'm an avionics systems engineer. I see even million dollar test benches break

On phone I am. Therefore, if mistakes I make, Frank Oz blame you should.

[Rayme]

Considering drunk driving, texting, the human error, sudden physical illness, distraction, inexperience and just general bad driving. I don't think it's a big challenge to program a car to drive better than a human and more reliably considering potential computer glitch (it's not like normal cars are immune to breakdown in dangerous places anyway). Looks like google already proved it.

[SirBrass]

It actually is, because the car has to be programmed with pseudo "intuition" to be able to avoid these things.

Unless ALL cars are computer driven, the unimaginative computer has to out predict & intuitively drive defensively against bad drivers or just the unexpected road hazard.

How many times have you had the intuitive sense that the guy on your front left bumper is not drifting in his lane but executing a slow unsignaled lane change? Or instinctively dodged what turned out to be a road hazard? Or a million other things that we do so routinely we don't think about them yet are far beyond a computer's ability because all computers are dumb as bricks.

What computers suck at and what humans are good at accounting for is unpredictability. This is especially true in the road environment.

On phone I am. Therefore, if mistakes I make, Frank Oz blame you should.

[strat61caster]

http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/27/57...lf-driving-car

Bump

[Pete156]

If you can't drive, take the bus. Please

[n2oinferno]

Originally Posted by Pete156

If you can't drive, take the bus. Please

The self-driving bus!

[n2oinferno]

So this is the picture of Google's self-driving car.



And this is what I predict the car will look like, six months to a year after being released to the public.

[codesplice]

Originally Posted by n2oinferno

And this is what I predict the car will look like, six months to a year after being released to the public.

such stance

[f0rge]

I did a 72 hour test drive of a 2014 BMW 750i xdrive about a month ago. That car could almost already drive it self.

The active cruise control accelerates, brakes and even comes to a complete stop and starts up again, all without the driver touching anything. In stop and go traffic getting out of the city I just put the system on and I barely had to do do anything other than the odd steering input.

It also has lane departure warning and blind spot warning, both of these doing the exact same thing, they vibrate the steering wheel and actually try to stop you from turning if you're leaving the lane or if there's a car beside you.

On the highway, you could probably read a book and drive this thing at the same time.

[n2oinferno]

Alright, I'm ready for the self-driving cars. Not for me, but for every oncoming dumbfuck asshole too busy with their face buried in their goddamn phone that has crossed into my traffic lane. Seriously like six in the past several weeks. It's just a matter of time until one of those shitheads cause an accident.

[stugray]

Originally Posted by n2oinferno

So this is the picture of Google's self-driving car.

Well that explains it! If those were the only cars on the road, then how much damage could one do if it ran amok?
If it starts acting up you just get out and flip it over like a turtle (smart-car:-).