Hands Free/Self Driving Cars

[GhostOutlaw]

While there has been a lot mentioned here about the downsides of driverless vehicles, I'm under the impression there are also sensors in the BACK of the vehicle to help prevent collisions as well.

This means if a driverless vehicle detects an object coming from behind it at high speed, it should try to get out of the way.

Whether there is a proper human driver in the high speed object behind it, it doesn't check for that.

Basically, this will keep people who are too dumb to drive properly from getting behind the wheel. Imagine all the texters, talkers and doot do doo's in one single lane...the right lane?

Also, for every 1000 deaths by human caused accidents, the robots will have caused 1...so yea, win-win.

[Norm Peterson]

Originally Posted by SinginHawk

Nobody is going to force you to drive with any automation in the near future.

I asked if he was volunteering to accept dumbed-down driving. Not the same thing as asking if he thought that everybody should be forced to accept it. Not the same question.

That's like saying that people are being forced to have cell phones, while the technology just provides convenience.

With convenience comes popularity, with popularity comes the way following products are designed, and with that things get squeezed out in the process.

... and we shouldn't be afraid of the advancement of technology just because it will change our culture.
Of course it will, but as the times change hopefully so can we.

Serious question. Has advancing technology taken - or started to take - anything away from you that you really don't want to give up?


Norm

[Norm Peterson]

Originally Posted by GhostOutlaw

Also, for every 1000 deaths by human caused accidents, the robots will have caused 1...so yea, win-win.

Although I'm sure that the proponents of autonomous cars want everybody to thinking along similar lines, it's way too early in the game to make (or blindly accept) any such prediction.


Norm

[GhostOutlaw]

Originally Posted by Norm Peterson

Although I'm sure that the proponents of autonomous cars want everybody to thinking along similar lines, it's way too early in the game to make (or blindly accept) any such prediction.


Norm

Actually, it's not.

A lot of these cars have already done hundreds of thousands of miles of testing. FAR more then the earliest cars ever received. And in some cases, that's farther than a lot of people drive in a life time.

And it's not a matter of thinking along those lines. Let's say this as an option saves 10% of road deaths, instead of 99%? Isn't that a step we should be taking anyway?

It doesn't come at a cost, driving is a privilege, not a right.

[Rusty35]

Originally Posted by GhostOutlaw

Actually, it's not.

A lot of these cars have already done hundreds of thousands of miles of testing. FAR more then the earliest cars ever received. And some cases, that's farther than a lot of people drive in a life time.

And it's not a matter of thinking along those lines. Let's say this as an option saves 10% of road deaths, instead of 99%? Isn't that a step we should be taking anyway?

It doesn't come at a cost, driving is a privilege, not a right.

Lets say, instead of preventing 10% of road deaths it actually causes 1% more deaths for the first 10 years of testing?

How can you be sure that the woman that died in Arizona was going to die in a car accident no matter what?

[GhostOutlaw]

Originally Posted by Rusty35

Lets say, instead of preventing 10% of road deaths it actually causes 1% more deaths for the first 10 years of testing?

If that was the case, it would be a bad move. But the mileage, on roads, in real driving conditions these cars have already done doesn't correlate with that. The opposite, in fact.

How can you be sure that the woman that died in Arizona was going to die in a car accident no matter what?

That's not how statistics work.

[Rusty35]

Originally Posted by GhostOutlaw

If that was the case, it would be a bad move. But the mileage, on roads, in real driving conditions these cars have already done doesn't correlate with that. The opposite, in fact.



That's not how statistics work.

Ok, how many of these cars are in full service actually doing the job they are intended for, and how many deaths so far?

I know how statistics work, that is what is wrong with this program, people become statistics.

To the program, the woman that died is a statistic, to her family she was a person that statistically would have lived to be 100 yrs old had an unproven automated test car not killed her.

[GhostOutlaw]

Originally Posted by Rusty35

Ok, how many of these cars are in full service actually doing the job they are intended for, and how many deaths so far?

Because of the nature of the way these driverless vehicles can communicate with eachother, the more of these that get on the road, the better they preform. But to answer your specific question, they’ve had enough testing where the data is beyond scaled enough to account for any variance.

I know how statistics work, that is what is wrong with this program, people become statistics.

To the program, the woman that died is a statistic, to her family she was a person that statistically would have lived to be 100 yrs old had an unproven automated test car not killed her.

People were already statistics, before we tried to automate driving, before we invented cars. Don’t play that card because it’s convenient for your argument now. The fact is, over 40,000 people died last year in auto accidents. The same the year before that. How many of these people would have lived to be 100 yrs old had the automated car been able to save them?

[Norm Peterson]

Originally Posted by GhostOutlaw

It doesn't come at a cost, driving is a privilege, not a right.

A privilege that you should have the right to earn. Or keep, as the case may be. Limiting the availability of human-driven cars by any logic would certainly be a cost to those who want to do their own driving and are legitimately capable of doing so.

Your 1000:1 ratio is still a WAG - possibly inflated for effect - that is intended to convert people over to accepting the notion of autonomously driven cars being the default option (kind of like automatic transmissions and air conditioning is today). Some might call it fearmongering.


Norm

[Rusty35]

Originally Posted by GhostOutlaw

Because of the nature of the way these driverless vehicles can communicate with eachother, the more of these that get on the road, the better they preform. But to answer your specific question, they’ve had enough testing where the data is beyond scaled enough to account for any variance.



People were already statistics, before we tried to automate driving, before we invented cars. Don’t play that card because it’s convenient for your argument now. The fact is, over 40,000 people died last year in auto accidents. The same the year before that. How many of these people would have lived to be 100 yrs old had the automated car been able to save them?

I have heard that testing hasn't been as successful as they say.
Seems the only way to get real world numbers is to get the laws changed so they can let the cars go with out drivers onboard so they can see what accidents are going to happen because they are having a hard time predicting every scenario.

The fact is driverless cars are not going to remove cars from the road, it is going to add cars to the road.

The 40,000 number didn't go down with the woman's death in Arizona, it went up.

[Norm Peterson]

Originally Posted by GhostOutlaw

Because of the nature of the way these driverless vehicles can communicate with eachother, the more of these that get on the road, the better they perform.

So when that V2V and V2I communication bogs down or stops completely for only a moment or two, as electronic communications do from time to time, then what? I can't even begin to imagine how much computing power this is going to require, let alone the matter of keeping it all - as in all of it - running smoothly without interruption.


Norm

[GhostOutlaw]

Tons of really cool stuff here.

A privilege that you should have the right to earn. Or keep, as the case may be. Limiting the availability of human-driven cars by any logic would certainly be a cost to those who want to do their own driving and are legitimately capable of doing so.

Yea, not saying it should replace human driving. I'm very much in favor of making the driving test harder and reoccurring because I believe there are a lot of people that drive who should not be. Not when we get driverless cars, but yesterday.

Your 1000:1 ratio is still a WAG - possibly inflated for effect - that is intended to convert people over to accepting the notion of autonomously driven cars being the default option (kind of like automatic transmissions and air conditioning is today). Some might call it fearmongering.

Yea, I don't have an exact number but there are a lot of models that have different predictions. The only exact figure I have right now is that approximately 100% of the deaths on the roads now are caused by humans driving.

So when that V2V and V2I communication bogs down or stops completely for only a moment or two, as electronic communications do from time to time, then what? I can't even begin to imagine how much computing power this is going to require, let alone the matter of keeping it all - as in all of it - running smoothly without interruption.

Not exactly how this works, but I get the concern, and it doesn't need to be completely uninterrupted. V2V communication doesn't need to be constant and perpetual. It really just needs to occur at certain times, when certain actions are occuring. And that communication is maintained internally, it doesn't need to use cell phone networks or anything like that. Each car can give off it's own wifi to handle this. And it's backup for if that doesn't work is the sensors that detect if the lane change is safe, which it needs to do for non-communicating vehicles anyway. The V2V communication is actually a backup system for the sensors and functions in duplicate with an early warning system for say an accident a mile down the road and all traffic needs to be in the left lane. This can smooth out traffic immensely , if not eliminate it. This level of communication, though, could be handled by adding the equivalent of a raspberry pi to a car. So really not a lot of computing power involved, at it's core.

I have heard that testing hasn't been as successful as they say.
Seems the only way to get real world numbers is to get the laws changed so they can let the cars go with out drivers onboard so they can see what accidents are going to happen because they are having a hard time predicting every scenario.

The fact is driverless cars are not going to remove cars from the road, it is going to add cars to the road.

The 40,000 number didn't go down with the woman's death in Arizona, it went up.

And in the time we've been discussing this one woman in arizona, over 150 other people have been killed in traffic accidents. Where's the crusade for them to remove human drivers from the road?

[SinginHawk]

Originally Posted by Norm Peterson

I asked if he was volunteering to accept dumbed-down driving. Not the same thing as asking if he thought that everybody should be forced to accept it. Not the same question.

Your question presupposes that the advancement of autonomous vehicles requires that he make this "black or white" decision in his lifetime, which simply isn't true.

Human-driven cars aren't going to be removed from the roads until they stop running, the logistics of doing so before then won't allow it. You will always be able to buy a used car to your liking. New cars will increasingly have these features available as options, not as the only choice. It will take decades for autonomous vehicles to become the norm, especially since their accessibility will be gated behind the cost of a new car thanks to the way the industry has set itself up.

Originally Posted by Norm Peterson

With convenience comes popularity, with popularity comes the way following products are designed, and with that things get squeezed out in the process.

Serious question. Has advancing technology taken - or started to take - anything away from you that you really don't want to give up?

Since you are making the claim, I am under the impression that the burden of proof is on you to provide examples of how technology has taken anything away from us. It is not hard to imagine examples, BUT I would be surprised if you could find a case where there wasn't a net-positive gain in the process.

Originally Posted by Norm Peterson

Although I'm sure that the proponents of autonomous cars want everybody to thinking along similar lines, it's way too early in the game to make (or blindly accept) any such prediction.

All we need is a track record of human drivers and their average capabilities to project what it might take for a computer and its sensors to do a better job. Whether or not we have a computer capable of doing so is not up for debate as we humans, with the limitations of our bodies, have set the bar very low.

Originally Posted by Rusty35

Lets say, instead of preventing 10% of road deaths it actually causes 1% more deaths for the first 10 years of testing?

How can you be sure that the woman that died in Arizona was going to die in a car accident no matter what?

There is no indication that autonomous vehicles would increase road fatalities. If there were ANY indication of that, the industry and pioneers of the technology would be well aware, and you might then have actual statistics to back up your hypothetical scenario.

However, there ARE indications that people aren't going to collectively become better drivers anytime soon.

Originally Posted by Norm Peterson

A privilege that you should have the right to earn. Or keep, as the case may be. Limiting the availability of human-driven cars by any logic would certainly be a cost to those who want to do their own driving and are legitimately capable of doing so.

Your 1000:1 ratio is still a WAG - possibly inflated for effect - that is intended to convert people over to accepting the notion of autonomously driven cars being the default option (kind of like automatic transmissions and air conditioning is today). Some might call it fearmongering.

Industries do not shift often by force. They give options and the options take over in popularity on their own, just like the automatic transmissions and air conditioning that you reference. Having an automatic transmission or air conditioning in your neighbor's car has not stopped you from owning a manual with no A/C. If you fear that the options won't be sold by automakers in the future, then you are free to buy used cars.

You do realize that the new generations of people will take things like automatic transmissions, air conditioning, and driverless cars for granted just as they do cell phones and social media now? The average age of the people who are buying new cars isn't going to drop under 50 any time soon, but there will be new 50 year olds sooner than you think and their priorities will be different from your own for better or for worse.

[Wizard1183]

So much for street racing and gunning the pedal. Fun or freedoms taken away piece by piece. Chipping away until WE are 100% controllable robots....