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When the horse and buggy was on its way out, many people argued against the idea as well. Will there be a few mistakes along the way? I'm sure. But when this is a reality none of us will miss driving to work.
Also, if something goes wrong with the system I wouldn't assume it would simply pull over. More likely it would stop dead in the middle of the freeway.
Nothing like cruising at 70 and all the sudden brake check and the car decides it's time to stop and your limp seating sitting self goes right into the steering wheel.
I feel like auto driving cars are 50 years or more away. Atleast ones that won't have too many hiccups.
I have been had a number of close calls over almost 40 years of driving and I would say less than half of them involved simply hitting the brakes. Some involved hitting the gas to get out of the way as well as making a number of decisions about where to steer the car. I don't think people realize how many decisions the brain can make in a split second. Every situation in a car is unique and new.
Unless every single vehicle on the road is self driving and has the same operating system and can communicate with each other as well as tons of information outside the car I just don't see it.
What really fascinates me though is that so many people like this idea of not actually having to drive the car. I don't get it. The idea of driving down the road staring out my windshield with nothing to do. Looking over and seeing someone reading a book. Honestly the whole thing freaks me out.
I was reading about the cars that Google is testing in CA. They drive around and map info and let the car go back and forth from auto to manual and log all kind of info. The head of the division said they had a number of slow speed accidents. But they were the fault of other drivers running into them. He said they had a surprising number of people rear end them. I wasn't surprised to hear that at all in fact it seemed obvious to me that would be the case.
In fact. It turns out that these self driving cars are 2 times as likely to be involved in an accident than regular cars. Interestingly the problem is that other people are hitting these cars. Apparently the cars are too timid. Then are fine in a very controlled situation. But in the real world they are scared and unsure what to do, so they just stop or slow down and wait to see what all the other moving things are going to before they make a decision. Think of an 89 year old driver who no longer has any business driving.
Traffic came to a stand still one time. I look in the rear view mirror and see this semi just haulin ass. I'm like oh shit and run right off the road. Look to my right and he came to a stop where I was sitting and narrowly missed the car that was in front of me.
That takes some good code to write to get a car to respond like that. But it could be done. How do write an algorithm to make that many decisions. Well first it's gotta sort through all of them. And find the right one. That's a lot of if then statements to cycle through. But technology is pretty sweet. It can be done. He'll look at Watson playing jeopardy. That was cool.
I think about road rage also. People freaking out because the car isn't doing what they think it should. Or people in regular cars losing their minds because the auto car is going to slow getting in the way, being to cautious and causing a dangerous situation. I read some politicians went for a ride with some auto pilot car company in Washingtion DC. It got on the on ramp then had to negotiate three lanes of traffic and exit on other side of freeway. The car couldn't deal with it and signaled for the driver to take control.
Another big problem they talked about was how the Google cars are programmed to follow all speed limits and rules of the road. The car can only think and drive from this point of view so it cant make a decision to break the speed limit or cross a double yellow line or any other thousand of things. So they are saying somehow they need to program it to make decisions of how and when to disregard the rules of the road so that it can operate in the real world. So how do you program a computer to use common sense ?
This stuff is brand new and obviously its possible take it a whole lot farther. I don't know shit about the technology but I know about driving and human behavior and I can just see so many issues with it.
I guess I really struggle with the why. Sure there is many people that see a great opportunity to do work and make use of their time management I guess. I see millions more people that will lose jobs. To the people in Silicon Valley these jobs might not be important but to the people that lose them they are everything. It sounds like one of Googles plans is to put millions of Google taxis on the road which I guess would put the Uber guys out of work.
How about the trucking companies. They deliver the product with no driver but who unloads it ? I guess they make Google robots ? Crazy shit.
What if your in a situation you need to evacuate your house quickly because a fire is coming and your car takes it time to get safely down the road. Or you need to rush someone to the Hospital. Can they program a urgency button ? Probably not because it would be used by everyone everyday.
Im older and admit I do not like a lot of new technology and can see negative impacts in a lot of things that I think other people dismiss. I realize Im probably in the minority and that will be the case more and more every year. But this car thing I believe will result in disaster before it get very far.
Anyway it will be interesting.
Also how are current cars communicating with each other now. Are you talking about communication as it applies to operation on the road.
Transportation needs to evolve like everything else. Especially considering how much time we waste in traffic.
I did read some about the V2V, etc. Mostly what I read was prototype testing stuff the bigger car Manufactures were doing. I didn't know what they actually had already operating on the road other than the obvious stuff like like sensing front end collision. I guess once they have the platform or infrastructure or whatever they call it in the car they can update software on the fly. I guess that's already happening. Looks like the car Manufacturers are looking at it from V2V communication as critical, and Google is focused on building maps of the physical world currently driving cars around Mt. View CA. mapping everything including sidewalk heights, etc.
Seems like some of the car Manufacturers are a bit pissed at Musk and think he was jumping the gun with the way he put out the Auto Pilot thing and the death of the guy that hit the truck might set things back with regulators. The car Manufacturers seem more conservative than the tech guys like Musk and Google. Makes sense I guess sense they know first hand about class action liability law suits and working with regulators on these things.
Seems to me that there would have to be some kind of consistency with the operating programs of all Manufactueres for this to work. Im sure that would happen some way thru the regulation over the years.
Pit Row
They going to say the Tesla didn't recognize it?
How will it deal with terrible weather conditions ? Like a blizzard white out. Or torrential Down pours ?
I had no clue that there was any car currently on the market that was fitted w/auto pilot.
I feel safer with the autonomous system than I do with 75% of people I see on the road. Between the elderly, distracted driving (texting, on the phone, yelling at the kids), and just poor drivers I'm all about the changeover.
In fact, try to fast forward to a point where this system is integrated and functional everywhere. Similar to a taxi or uber, you walk out of your house and the car you 'requested' is waiting to take you. You jump in and away you go - there is no driver and you simply wait doing other things (work, phone, etc) until you get to your destination. Then you get out, the car leaves to pickup someone else.
It will be a whole fleet of 'transportation robots' as opposed to personal vehicles. No maintenance, no changing tires, etc - it's all handled by the transportation industry - similar to trains or aircraft
The car returns to some garage to plug in when no one is requesting it. No more drunk driving, no more traffic jams...
Is there the potential for a big brother takeover where you can't get anywhere unless "they" say its OK - Absolutely. That scares me more than the basic idea of autonomous driving. I'm trying to stay positive tho
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