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

[stugray]

One thing to keep in mind: If all cars on a particular highway were automated and communicating with each other, then they could interact perfectly harmoniously.

There would be no swerving, cutting off, or jamming on brakes.
Nothing would happen without warning & communication except the unforseen events (tree falls over, or deer runs out).
And even the oddball events, could probably be handled by the computers better than some people.

I have considered a peer-peer network between vehicles traveling together for years, long before we even imagined autonomous driving.
Messages could be sent up & down the highway so that all cars know what is up ahead.
An example would be a stretch of ice detected by the TC/ABS system in the lead cars. The cars behind would be warned and driving parameters updated to compensate (increase intercar spacing, reduce speed, decrement braking gain parameters, etc.)

[reni]

Originally Posted by Rampage

Americans will never buy into mass transit like trains or buses. The government has been trying to push that for year but it is too inconvenient and too structured for us "born free" types. At least, we live in that illusion (or is it delusion?).

This was true up until about the 1990s. More recently there has been a massive cultural shift in the opposite direction, especially among younger people, there is just much less interest in cars and driving and much more interest in urban living than the past couple generations.

[SirBrass]

Originally Posted by reni

This was true up until about the 1990s. More recently there has been a massive cultural shift in the opposite direction, especially among younger people, there is just much less interest in cars and driving and much more interest in urban living than the past couple generations.

Which is a travesty.

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

[reni]

Originally Posted by SirBrass

Which is a travesty.

No, it's fucking brilliant.

Remember the episode of Top Gear with the GT-R race. Jeremy is expecting Tokyo to have the worst traffic -- IN THE WORLD -- only to find there actually isn't any, because everyone is on the train.

Places where are car is optional can be great for car enthusiasts, because all the ****wads who would be left lane camping or swerving into my late for no reason probably wouldn't be on the road in the first place. Also I'd rather save the wear and tear instead of commuting in traffic which is boring as fuck anyway, and just enjoy driving on weekends when I can have fun and go wherever I want.


EDIT: So on this forum I can say fuck, shit, piss, rape, or ass, but d-i-c-k is censored? Seriously?

[fang_gt86]

I'm not complaining. Now you can get wasted and still get home safely with a touch of a button!

[Purdue FR-S]

Originally Posted by Rampage

I do not want a self driving car for around town or local trips but for long vacation trips where they just control the boring highway driving? Bring them on!

Engage cruise control and auto-pilot!

^THIS


The only time where the car might as well just drive itself; boring long-haul interstate drives through northern Ohio.

[chrisl]

Originally Posted by SirBrass

Actually, it's ability to react to immediate conditions is something I'm alright with. Problem is that there's not really any way to tell if it selected the correct countermeasure to the problem.

Example: a generic Google DriveMe (speculative name invented by me right now) unit which can be used in FF, MR, RR, FR, and AWD vehicles, is driving along at speed, and suddenly traction is lost. Depending on the slide, traffic around, etc., it can select an action... except it can't be specifically tuned for THAT CAR, which a human would instinctively know how to do if he or she was a good driver (note that I don't use "driver" and "operator" interchangably, and "operator" is not a nice term by me in this context). DriveMe does the normal numbskull thing and voila back end steps out further.

OR, it's in a curve and an emergency maneuver is needed and the car is a MR car or a car setup for minor oversteer like ours (a proper car). Throttle lift, brake on... hello snap oversteer.

No way for the computer to know. It only knows based on the aggregate input from all kinds of cars driving in normal traffic and a selection of maneuvers for stopping in a straight line. True this is what is mostly used in emergency freeway maneuvers is it in any sense the only kind of emergency maneuver a driver should be prepared for.

It also has access to vehicle yaw rate, individual wheel speeds, steering angle, and a large number of other sensors, and it will probably be able to individually brake single wheels to help control the car. It will also have a reaction time measured in milliseconds (or microseconds), and the ability to control inputs faster than any human ever. I would bet that you could easily design a modern autonomous control setup that would catch oversteer, make emergency evasive maneuvers, and handle a wide range of car setups much better than 99.9% of drivers on the road right now (probably including you). It would also be able to drive closer to the limit during the evasive maneuver, allowing it to evade things that you probably couldn't. If you put a substantial amount of design and expense into making an autonomous driving system that was very good at driving on the limit, you could probably change that number to 100% - I doubt even a world class racing driver could keep up with an autodrive designed for fast driving on the limit.

Also, what makes you think that an autonomous car wouldn't have its software adapted for the car type? I would tend to think that cars would come with the capability to drive autonomously built in - it wouldn't be some sort of aftermarket "generic" thing.

Originally Posted by SirBrass

Also, let's say that it can tell that something that is outside its bounds is happening and operator needs to take back manual control. Well, if the operator is being his or her normal operator self and reading the news on his/her smart phone or tablet, sipping $tarbuck$ and listening to the blather on the radio, he or she will be totally caught unawares when the computer politely says "auto drive disengaged. take back manual control". Seconds matter, and the operator not paying attention is going to take a LONG time relatively to effectively do so. Crash has already happened.

Presumably, the tech wouldn't be approved unless the chances of this sort of thing happening are MUCH smaller than the current crash rates with human drivers. Also, if the computer needs you to take back control, why would it politely and quietly state it? Cars are already very good at making annoying alarms and noises for irrelevant little things - for something as major as auto drive disengaging without user input, you'd want a very loud, obvious alarm.

Originally Posted by SirBrass

Because this tech promotes complacency. Partly a training issue (compared to airline pilots who generally both have the time and altitude to assess and regain control, and are also not supposed to be very distracted while overseeing flight director/auto-flight's control of the aircraft), but do you see driving requirements suddenly go to the kind of level airline pilots need to fly commercial airliners? Yeah right. And even if they do, it's not going to be a very good program b/c big government is not very good at these things. And those inclined to good driver education (like... drivers, not operators) won't want these things anyway.

At least with AT and cruise control, one must still pay close attention (in some cases closer attention than with hand near shifter and foot controlling throttle) to the road and to traffic. Even if the law says that a person must still pay attention while being in the driver's seat of an auto-drive car, do you think most people inclined to the tech will do that? They'll LOOK like they're attentive, but I doubt it. Most who hate driving will be zoned out, and totally unsuited to the operation of a motor vehicle if the car suddenly surrenders control (if it surrenders control).

And then there's the assimov speculations. What if the car decided that letting you crash into the wall and die is safest b/c then only YOU die, not others. And what if that code got inserted during an update without your knowledge (Go watch the Doctor Who multi-part episode about the Sontarans and the ATMOS control system in vehicles.... ), oops.

So now we're going to get our info on how an auto-driving car would work from Dr Who? Excuse me while I go get rid of all of my angel statues...

Originally Posted by SirBrass

The only way for cars to be safe is for the driver /operator to be alert at ALL times and have full access/override authority to the controls. This defeats the actual purpose of auto-drive, except as a kind of safety net (which really isn't a bad idea... except if it has gone truly into the crapper, I doubt anything other than the AI based on the combined skills of Mario Andretty and Ayrton Senna could recover control effectively or safely), which we already have in some "let me drive you" numb-me-up-scotty road-going tubs.

Biased? Oh hell yes. Maybe a little too cynical? Yup. Doesn't mean I'm entirely wrong either.

You're missing the fact that an auto drive system doesn't need to be perfectly safe. It just needs to be safer than the current average driver. That really isn't that hard.

[SirBrass]

SO much missing the point that I can't even pick where to start. Okay, I can.

Approved by whom and by what standards?

And you really want a computer to decide to take over the ecu? We already know that the nannies in our car currently exhibit really bad judgement at driving limits already, and those are programmed by auto engineers. You want GOOGLE having even more access? I don't. I don't trust computers to do these kinds of things when lives are on the line. I've had too much experience with them wigging out and screwing up.

[n2oinferno]

While I don't like the idea of self-driving cars forced upon all of us, because I love driving, that's honestly the best way to ensure that everything stays safe. Computers, for the most part, are predictable because they're stupid. In case of X, do Y. Humans are batshit crazy. That's the computer's, and their programmers', biggest challenge. Making up for the lack of skill prevalent in most human drivers.

[Tt3Sheppard]

"At a precise 35mph"...awesome. Can't wait to be stuck behind these during the morning/afternoon commute.

[Rampage]

Originally Posted by reni

This was true up until about the 1990s. More recently there has been a massive cultural shift in the opposite direction, especially among younger people, there is just much less interest in cars and driving and much more interest in urban living than the past couple generations.

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.

Eh, sorry for the thread drift. That Google technology might be pretty useful in some instances. Just do not shove it down my throat!

[strat61caster]

Originally Posted by Tt3Sheppard

"At a precise 35mph"...awesome. Can't wait to be stuck behind these during the morning/afternoon commute.

Oh you mean cars going the speed limit and not clogging up the passing lane? Still sounds like a win for me considering how many times I run into people doing 5 under in the left lane trying to figure out what street they're looking for or putting on makeup on the freeway.

Originally Posted by Rampage

Most the buses around where I live drive around all day nearly empty burning up the governments mass transit grant money.

http://www.humantransit.org/2013/02/...ith-video.html

[SirBrass]

I'd much rather them be going 5-10 over in the left lane than be doing the limit in the left lane. A car going 35 in the left lane in a 35 zone is just rude.

[Frost]

I am very conflicted over automated cars.

I come from a technical job that requires programming, hardware and actual heavy machinery and I know for a fact that a minor lapse in programming can result in a catastrophic failure that only happens 1 out of a 10,000 times. The question is: is it worth the risk?

If you haven't had a 5 ton press bang itself WHILE UNDER COMPRESSION because the programmer didn't see ten simultaneous inputs that caused the perfect storm to brew - you believe in software too much.

On the other hand, I also favor progress but at what cost?

I think we are taking the lazy way out - instead of improving or making the driving qualification process more stringent, we decided to assume all people are idiots and let the machines do the thinking. Problem is: it's still a person writing the code and my motto when it comes to automation is that "Automation speeds up things that you would otherwise do manually".

So if the code is written very well, it will do it fast and well EXCEPT until the conditions precipitate to cause an incident. That's when it will keep doing that incident VERY FAST until someone pulls the plug (Skynet yo!).

So while I agree with OP's rants on this being very scary, I think that has a little bit of paranoia involved. Airplanes have a much higher danger factor due to the occurence of the incident likely in a 3D space versus cars in a 2D space. Planes also carry more people per vehicle usually.

So yes, you just read through my post and arrived to no conclusion lolz.