It may be possible to mod an older car into a self-driving car fairly inexpensively. But yes, it is a money commitment.
I never said that. What I meant was that these self-driving cars would only be able to drive themselves reliably on roads with additional infrastructure enabling self-driving. This is true even today. Tesla’s autopilot only works on roads with brightly painted lane markers under pristine conditions. Also, for true autonomy, the vehicle would have to be able to be able to know the rules of each road it’s on, which might not always be visibly available.
I’m not suggesting that we rip up all the roads and replace them with train tracks or whatever, but instead that there be existing infrastructure that assists self-driving cars and unburdens both the operator (supervisor?) and the car itself. I’m not asking for big sweeping changes overnight, just little improvements that we all know need to be rolled out. I consider GPS an infrastructure need, and clear lane markers as well. Without these and similar things, a self-driving car can function, just not as well.
There’s also partly self driving cars out now using systems like Eyesight that can’t navigate yet but will drive itself in a down a road stopping and accelerating on its own.
I don’t think self driving cars are going to be a reality outside of certain special circumstances (warehouses, farm machinery) because I don’t see how you can solve the Trolley problem in a way that doesn’t cause problems.
Unless you’re in a controlled environment the car will eventually come upon a situation where it will have to choose between potentially killing someone in the car or potentially killing someone outside the car (pedestrian, other car user, etc). This is going to have to be addressed in the software design, and does that make the car manufacturer liable?
Mm. Disagree. I already drive like an autonomous car (albeit not as well in most use cases) and it doesn’t take that much time extra. Riding the bus does take that much time extra and the benefits of doing my own thing for the commute would have me riding the bus even if it added twenty minutes to my commute.
Unfortunately the bus doesn’t go even half way to my current job or I’d take it four out of every five days at least.
I admit I’m an edge case in the bus thing but I’m not on the other part.
Commuting eats up eight hours of my week. Switching it to almost eleven hours but letting me do whatever I want with that time sounds like a selling point to me.[quote=“strugglngwriter, post:8, topic:97867, full:true”]
I was thinking about autonomous cars yesterday. I bet people will find all kinds of “interesting” ways to mess with self-driving cars in a mixed environment of self-driving and human driven cars.
[/quote]
Like carrying a stop sign with you when you cross the road? XD
could it be that part of the problem stems from people holding up traffic by testing rumors that the cars will actually stop. Reviews describe scenarios that beg exploring. Why not just stick to conventions that have worked for centuries?
Could someone explain to me what problem self driving cars are going to solve? What is the question to which the answer is self-driving car.
The places I am familiar with mostly in Europe suffer from one problem and that is congestion. How exactly are self driving cars going to increase the road surface i.e. space available for cars or reduce the number of vehicles?
The urban transportation problem was solved a long time ago and it looks like this:
or a more modern version which looks like this.
In an urban environment lots of people are trying to travel in similar directions. Business areas during the week; Green / leisure space on the weekend . Could someone explain to me the physics that says that if their are lots of self driving cars aimlessly circling around town trying to pick up passengers somehow magically that results in less cars and more passenger travel miles.
Absolutely makes no sense. Capitalism killed the tram. And now, when capitalism is eating itself by its orange behind, it’s about time to revive this noble and efficient form of urban transport.
First, most accidents are due to driver error. Eliminate driver error, and you eliminate many accidents, saving a bunch of lives (plus reducing congestion caused by accidents).
Second, self-driving cars, programmed well, can drive better than humans can. A human needs to leave two seconds’ worth of a gap in order to have enough reaction time in case the car ahead brakes; a self-driving car might need a tenth of that. Similarly, what is now a three-lane highway might be able to fit four cars side-by-side since they won’t have to worry about lane drifting.
Third, self-driving cars can work together better than humans can. They can be programmed to zipper merge all of the time, to know that the car two kilometers up the road is braking suddenly to avoid a squirrel and that, if they reduce speed by 10% now, the deer will be off the road by then and they won’t have to decelerate further. With accidents, inefficient merging, and reaction-braking taken out of the equation, traffic should rarely have to slow down on a highway, which should take care of a lot of the congestion.
Although I agree, mass transit is a better solution, which just needs to figure out a better way to solve the last-mile problem.
governemnt funded public transit infrastructure in the US? Yeah that’s not a solution that’s happening in the next hundred years.
Also the US and Canada is considerably bigger than European cities and the structure of cities is quite different. Much congestion can be solved by simply eliminating rubber neckers on highways as a simple example.
[quote=“strokeybeard, post:24, topic:97867”]I don’t think self driving cars are going to be a reality
[/quote]
They already are a reality.
The Trolley Problem assumes there are no brakes on the trolley. Cars have brakes.
I’m not saying that there aren’t potentially interesting ethical problems for autonomous vehicles, but for the most part just coming to a stop prevents most problems.
Actually that’s another place where self-driving cars can help; a fleet of self-driving vehicles that can take people that last mile at a low cost, or a mass transit system based on smaller self-driving vehicles that that can be programmed to particular destinations, could both fix mass transit’s biggest problems.
There seems to be an assumption that jay walking is an offence. This is true only in a minority of countries.
As far as I recollect, in the UK pedestrians have right of way everywhere except motorways and areas explicitly declared to be off limits for pedestrians. Of course a pedestrian still commits an offence if they cause an accident but the mere act of walking across the road is not one.
Of course I haven’t searched for documentation on this; perhaps someone with more enthusiasm and time on their hands could do a survey.
I suspect that laws will be changed to favour vehicles in many jurisdictions.
Yeah, I wondered about that as well. Cory having lived in London (I think) though probably implies he means people crossing the road outside of pedestrian crossings.
I’ve noticed many drivers around the UK accelerate at crossing pedestrians and I’ve also noticed those same drivers, who (surprisingly) were not bent on vehicular homicide, brake so as to avoid hitting me when I don’t run out of the way.
Drivers waiting at cross walks will also occasionally rev their motors and inch forward suddenly as you walk past.
I foresee an arms race where companies vie to find out the exact threshold at which murdering their potential customers outweighs the market benefits of outdoing their competition.
“Our car brakes for only 782 out of a thousand jaywalkers, unlike some other luxury brands which seem to value their lives over your punctuality”
Then the car manufacturer will be liable for all those cases of self-driving vehicles mowing down elderly or disabled people who are crossing the road slowly.
Reminds me of that lyric from Taxman by The Beatles when it says " I’ll tax your feet "[quote=“Grey_Devil, post:9, topic:97867”]
i don’t see why it’d be any different in the future with foot traffic if it were to be a problem.
[/quote]
I have nothing against that, especially if the things that are improving self driving performance also actually make it clearer for human drivers (more consistent sineage, repaint faded lines, and such).
