Ooh Ooh and then it pulls up to one of those self plugging in Tesla chargers, takes off again. Automatically deducting from the guy’s bank account… keeps driving f.o.r.e.v.e.r…
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Why are you a non-driver? Big city/don’t need it?
I never thought of screwing with other drivers… OK now that sounds like fun.
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…but forbidden in rain, where there’s snow on the ground, in construction zones, on gravel roads…
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Why am I anticipating a Wile E Coyote scenario, where the dude wakes up as he’s sailing through the air because he slept past the “Bridge Out Ahead” sign? 
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Even in the South?
All those conditions are where self driving cars will exceed their human passengers abilities.
I’m thinking of fully self-driving cars in the Washington, DC area. Someone’s going to get blasted because their car tried to merge with a Presidential motorcade.
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So excited!
I cannot wait to hit snooze, climb in the car, and wake up as I pull into work.
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Nope. These are conditions where the car can’t detect where the edge of the road is, or where the lane divider is.
Not sure what the current limits are if that is true or not, but those all sound like easily solvable issues.
a mix of being in several accidents when i was a kid that made me fear getting my license and learning, plus a desire to live a bit greener once i got older, and now i live where it’s not really necessary for me to have one.
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True, reasoning AI would do it, but I we’re not close to there yet.
Snow is particularly bad, because the edges of the road are vague, constantly changing, misleading when there’s a rut leading off or where someone previously passed, and the lane indicators are all invisible.
You can rely more on your stored 3D map of all the road-side objects (you need it regardless), but those snow banks can get pretty tall and will change often. Confusing both the vision system and the LIDAR.
Dunno if it’s changed yet, but as of a year ago when you heard about the millions of miles that Google Cars had driven, it was mostly all on the same small area of roads. With every object 3D mapped out (including the traffic lights overhead so the car would spot them) and high connectivity for the cloud-based back end. And not in rain or snow.
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Don’t these cars have Tesla coils in their seats?
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Aren’t some of the cars they are working on use types of radar to gauge where other drivers are etc? Shouldn’t that also help know where the road it?
At any rate, considering how far we have come since the first DARPA contest where no one could even finish the course, I am not really being optimistic but more of a realist that it isn’t that far off.
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Dunno how good radar is at penetrating snow. And it may still have trouble where there’s no clear 3D topography (curbs) beneath the snow. There’s a few neighborhoods here in town like that.
But it brings me to another concern: Has this been tested with large numbers of self-driving cars AT ONCE? That is, if you have heavy traffic, the RADAR and LIDAR from 50 cars all bouncing back from the same objects, will they effectively jam each other?
Will the LIDAR from 50 cars a minute passing your office window cause eye strain problems?
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I’m waiting for all the “ghost ship” narratives to get translated over to autonomous cars. Plus, updated Dracula: an autonomous big-rig carrying a coffin and some dead maintenance guys across the country…
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They will be talking to each other. Those will be the easiest to “see”.
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From a recent clickbait article:
In 1923, jockey Frank Hayes won a race at Belmont Park in New York despite being dead — he suffered a heart attack mid-race, but his body stayed in the saddle until his horse crossed the line for a 20–1 outsider victory.
Guess his heart wasn’t in it.
ahem
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