Quote:
Originally Posted by OldBiker
I believe the whole "self driving" experiment is doomed to failure, at least in the US. There are quite a few situations where a given vehicle cannot (without hindsight) avoid an accident... whether the cause is an unpredictable person, animal, traction issue, or just another vehicle. Given the litigious nature of our society, the default deep (very very deep) pocket will be the manufacturer... which will withdraw the feature after a few good legal shellackings. Now we were also promised flying cars... and self-driving auto-pilots should work fine, just as soon as we get anti-grav levitation down... Er, I mean UP.
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Flying cars are more likely never to be a "thing", and if they are they will have to be autonomous in any quantity. It's not possible to design something that is equally good at being a car and a plane. You can design something that is better at one than the other, or bad at both, but not good (never mind exceptional) at either, at least not until we figure out antigravity.
As far as self-driving, it's already here and working relatively well. Maybe not full level self driving but GM Cruise is doing well in it's restricted areas.
(and before you start pulling up the accident links, yes I know they've reported 3 rear-end crashes resulting from the car responding to traffic ahead of it causing someone behind them to hit it.)
That said, I'm not a customer for that type of self-driving either. If I'm in a car I will have ultimate control.
I spent 200 miles this weekend driving a Cadillac LYRIQ, and about half of those miles was playing with SuperCruise. On it's mapped roads, including 2-lane traffic, it worked flawlessly. This include passing slower cars on a 4-lane highway, and recognizing situations where someone pulled in front of us, are made a quick turn. Honestly on the roads where it works it is some sort of black magic.
I was a nervous wreck mind you, at least on the 2 way traffic roads, but I never had an issue. Why? Because the system makes small corrections to keep centered and away from other traffic. Those corrections were unnerving since I wasn't the one doing them. Again, the system worked fine but it doesn't drive like me, so it takes some getting used to.
It also performed several slower car passes from the right lane in relatively heavy traffic. It changed lanes, moved around the slower car, then moved back multiple times while driving.