Someone forgot to put up the "warning: NYT (free reg. req. bla bla bla)" thingy. Now I wasted 4 secs on a registration dialog hehehe =).
Could be good for safety
by
erick99
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I like the idea of a car that can intervene to prevent an accident. The lane changing technology mentioned in the article sounds great. I wonder, though, if you are already doing an emergency maneuver that makes it look like you are unsafely changing lanes, would the car put you back into the lane? Possibly in harms way? Perhaps there is a way to override some of these systems. In terms of fully automatic driving, the world is such a complex place and a lot of decisions seem like they would exceed what software can (at leastly currently) provide. However, in terms of safety, I can see where this technology can save lives.
Happy Trails!
Erick
-- http://www.busyweather.com/
Re:Could be good for safety
by
iminplaya
·
· Score: 4, Funny
If it detects your age and automatically turns off the blinker if you're older than say 65, it's ok with me.
-- What?
Re:Could be good for safety
by
thedillybar
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Also, the anti-slide feature puts a lot of stress on the transmission, and decreases its life.
Where did you read that? Most traction control systems either
1) Adjust the throttle position so the wheels don't spin more than 5mph (i.e. if the gas is on the floor and the drive wheels are on ice, they only spin slowly).
or 2) They brake individual wheels to gain traction. This isn't stressing the transmission any more than normal driving. The differential is simply distributing more torque to the other wheel. And there's no way to do this without traction control or a limited-slip/locking differential. So it's not always a bad thing.
I can just see it now. People will start hacking into cars' computer systems... you'll start seeing random crashes, or cars doing 360s constantly. Or driving off cliffs.
Not to mention that the market for off-road vehicles will either boom or bust if self-driving cars become a standard.
Though I imagine that most of America will hate the cars anyway. How will people possibly deal with their road rage?! (And don't tell me that people won't have road rage if cars are self-driving. Don't you ever get the urge to just ram old ladies off the road just because?)
Ok, so YOU'RE the one who blows by at 85 on the highway, takes off-ramps on two wheels, tailgates me, nearly takes off my front end running a stale yellow-then-red light, and nearly runs me over when I'm walking?
-- ...
What does this mean?
by
ttldkns
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
So now kids will effectively drive themselves to school?! There are lost of uses for this but the emergency reaction times will never be as good as a human.
the technology needs to be made fool proof before it can be set loose on the roads.
-- How many computers are too many?
Re:What does this mean?
by
damiam
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Machines have far better reaction times than any human. This technology has a lot of downsides, but that's not one of them.
-- It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Re:What does this mean?
by
Timesprout
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
There are lost of uses for this but the emergency reaction times will never be as good as a human
Superman is that you? Loads of machines adjust faster then me about every computer known to man can react faster than I can. As for the technology needing to be foolproof before it can be set loose on the road what about all the accidents and deaths caused by 'foolproof' drivers not paying sufficient attention or doing dumb things like speeding and insane overtaking manouvers.
-- Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth What truth? There is no dupe
Re:What does this mean?
by
CosmeticLobotamy
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Human reaction time can be negative. A computer probably won't be making any decisions regarding the guy who's swerving in and out of lanes six cars up who might run someone off the road until the guy one car up has already started braking like crazy. Probably.
Re:What does this mean?
by
RobinH
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
There are lost of uses for this but the emergency reaction times will never be as good as a human.
Hmmm, I'll tell you what... do you have a car with cruise control? Next time you're on the highway, set it, and watch how closely it's sticking to the set speed, even when you go around bends in the road, up and down hills, etc. Now try staying that close to one speed without the cruise control...
The cruise control operates by measuring the actual speed, comparing it to the desired speed, and controlling the throttle. It can react to small changes in speed MUCH faster than you can.
If you gave it some kind of sensor to anticipate slope changes before they happen (laser range finders perhaps?), then it would be almost perfect.
-- "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Re:What does this mean?
by
Mal-2
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
A human being can see the car running the red light at an intersection. The radar-based system wouldn't even know about the other car until right before it sideswiped you (if they even bothered to mount a lateral detector).
A fully autonomous system damn well better have a 360 degree field of vision. That said, it still could miss the car running the red light if that car is screened until it pops out a lane to pass the guy who DID stop... but a human would most likely fail to spot them as well.
Advantage: Computer, because it doesn't have to turn its head to look.
A human being knows whether its safer to swerve into the lefthand lane or off the road.
Agreed, but not all humans pay attention closely enough, or at least not all the time. I know when I drive I always keep an eye out for which side has free space should I suddenly need it. Then if something DOES happen, I don't have to waste that fraction of a second looking around before making a move. Joe Cellphone probably isn't doing that.
Advantage: Human, under ideal circumstances. The best workaround for this is to not let the computer tailgate in the first place. It's probably a wash against real drivers in real conditions.
A human being can hear someone else honking his horn.
Computers can hear too, and parsing a honk is much simpler than parsing speech. Most of the car horns I hear on the road aren't directed at me, and the few that are have a variety of meanings. Could be a buddy in the next lane, could be someone telling me I left my turn signal on, could be someone is mortally offended by the bird shit on my car. If the computer can't figure it out, it could always ask the driver.
Advantage: none really. If the computer can't figure out how to respond, it will have made such a determination long before the human has had a chance to figure things out. At the very least, it'd be nice if the car automagically lowers the volume of the radio when people start honking.
A human being can see a "Deaf Child" sign.
ID tags or beacons can be placed under or near roads to serve as electronic signs for the car. They could even be mounted to the same poles as the human-readable signs just to keep things neat. Sure they don't exist now, but it's hardly a technology problem. Even simpler, we could just paint barcodes right on the street, which the car scans as it rolls by. Paint them in infrared and the humans don't even have to deal with them.
Advantage: none. Both human and computer should be able to figure out where they are and what they are supposed to be doing, if appropriate markings are in place.
A human being can tell whether the road is wet.
So can electronics. Detecting water is something they're reasonably good at. A diligent monitoring of ground and weather conditions could even keep the car watching out for black ice, which tends to sneak up on even the best drivers.
Advantage: Computer. A human in a heated cockpit simply will not know when they go from a road warm enough to maintain rain or slush to a road cold enough to sustain ice. Even without an autopilot, a friendly warning that icing conditions are present would help an awful lot of people.
Mal-2
-- How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Re:What does this mean?
by
awtbfb
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Human reaction time can be negative. A computer probably won't be..
Actually, the next generation of adaptive cruise control (or intelligent cruise control, depending on the marketer) is cooperative cruise control. In this mode, cars communicate in real time within their local area on traffic conditions, braking rates, speed, etc and adjust cruise control accordingly.
This has other benefits beyond emergency situations in that this sort of tech will suck up shockwaves in traffic, thus improving dense driving for everyone. There was a simulation paper on this a few years back that showed you didn't even need a majority of the cars to have this for these results.
Re:What does this mean?
by
Ironica
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I think the idea is a person can be imprisoned, executed, whatever... whereas a computer is not motivated by punishment.
That's a point, but... a computer is not "motivated" by *anything*. This is the part I never get about people who freak out at the idea of speed cameras: you'd rather have a human being come up behind you, run your plate, and then based on the type of car you're driving, what you look like, and whether anything interesting comes up there, decide whether or not to give you a speeding ticket... than making sure that *everyone* who is speeding gets one? (Which, by the way, is the fastest way to ensure we get good speeding laws...)
Same goes here. A computer is not motivated to tailgate the blue-hair in front of it because she's going "too slow." A computer is not motivated to cut the asshole in the Lexus off. A computer is not going to get in an accident because it was distraught over breaking up with its girlfriend.
But you have a point. We like revenge in our society. When someone hurts you, you want them to *pay*. If a computer hurts you, there's no way to make it pay... it doesn't care if you turn it into scrap.
-- Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
Is it legal to let the car drive if you're drunk?
by
Mal-2
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Are you still considered to be in the care and control of the vehicle, or are you demoted to just another passenger? Will the worst consequence of driving drunk be to end up in the wrong place?
Mind you, that would be bad enough -- to punch in the wrong coordinates, and wake up in the truly seedy part of town to find dwarves stealing your wheels -- but it's certainly an order of magnitude less severe than killing someone unlucky enough to be sharing the road with you.
Mal-2
-- How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
This is supposed to be slashdot! There's supposed to be some sort of description of the project on the front page.
More importantly, there's supposed to be some sort of biased opinion along with the story. Stuff like:
DarkHelmet writes That asshole Darl McBride is saying that linux is a bastardization of unix. You can see what he's saying here [insert link]. When will he stop? Is he hellbent on taking over the world? I think so. You should too"...
Come on! Us slashdotters want to be TOLD what to think, not make opinions for ourselves... Bastard...
</sarcasm>
-- /^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
The sensors aren't good enough yet
by
Animats
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Automatic driving is still sensor-limited. The
current generation of millimeter radars can see other cars, but not smaller obstacles like children. No way can they see a pothole. Vision systems are good enough for road following, but reliable obstacle avoidance still seems out of reach.
We, of course, are working on fully automatic driving. We have both a visual road-follower and a millimeter radar. That's not enough.
Even line-scanner laser rangefinders are too limited. We need a true 3D device. Such things have been built, but the market is so tiny (and they're so big and clunky) that they're all one-offs. It's clear that the problem can be fixed, but the market isn't there yet to do it.
Road support for robot cars?
by
Mnemia
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Somehow I think fully autonomous cars won't happen very soon unless we upgrade the road system to provide navigation support for these cars. I don't see cars being able to find their way from one place to another given the myriad of road configurations out there unless there are actual beacons and stuff embedded into the road to help them find their way. It wouldn't too hard (ok, it would be, but not impossible) to write software that could pilot a car down an interstate highway with no human intervention. But I somehow think city driving might be a lot bigger challenge, considering that even human drivers usually have to stay very alert in these situations.
I suspect that many will not like self-driving cars because they will not drive agressively enough. For example, many dislike the automatic speed-matching systems that maintain a "safe" distance to the next car because they leave too much distance to the next car. Tailgaters honk at the automated cars because they wont close the gap and the others cut into the large gap created by these systems. What the system (and safety experts and the car maker's insurance companies) consider "safe" is too tame for most drivers.
While many drivers are comfortable in taking risks, the corporate creators of these systems will be risk averse. That excessive risk averseness will hinder public acceptance.
-- Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
A highway full of automated cars could run with very short car-to-car distances and good safety. Highway capacity could easily triple. And millions of people could commute to work doing something useful/pleasurable rather than cultivating fury and frustration. This could be a very substantial improvement in happiness and civility.
-- Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
A highway full of automated cars could run with very short car-to-car distances and good safety.
And then you have the opposite problem from the parent poster: people are terrified to speed down the freeway only five feet from the car in front of them.
How do we know this? Because there's a stretch of Highway 8 in San Diego County where they're testing magnetic guidance for this exact purpose. They have a "platoon" of cars with sensors under them, and little hockey-puck sized magnetic guides embedded in the pavement. Sometimes early on Sunday mornings you can see them whipping by at 60 mph with five feet between them.
But when they put humans in the cars, they panic.
-- Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
From the article - Like, what will lawyers do if self-driving cars get in accidents?
Your car will eventually become an internet device (like everything else). Then, ad-push technology will sense your next collision, and with lightning speed emblazon the logo of Dewey, Cheatham & Howe across the airbag rushing toward your face.
Re:Is it legal to let the car drive if you're drun
by
Ieshan
·
· Score: 4, Funny
If you read the story, you have to take a breathalyzer test before you get in, fingerprint yourself, take a urine sample, submit DNA, and answer a Terrorism survey.
If you fail, it drives you to the Ashcroft.//made that up.
This has been a vision for at least 40 years. They had "prototypes" or "models" or what-have-you -- mock-ups, yeah, that's the ticket -- at the NY World's Fair in 1964. IMO there's another 40 years to wait for this. Artificial intelligence has advanced in fits and starts over the decades, but has a long way to go. Safety concerns are real and no insurance company is going to write policies unless and until thay are at least as safe as what's on the roads today. Infrastructure is another hurdle. In the U.S. there's a huge highway spending bill -- $250 Billion U.S. over 5 years -- pending that represents a hige investment in getting current roads up to snuff. How much would it cost to equip the highways for self-driving cars? A trillion $ U.S.? And that's not going to happen until there's a standard to follow. Even adter the technology has been perfected it will take another decade for pilot programs of competing standards to decide a "winner".
To get really tin-foil-hattish about it, I imagine once self-driving automobile technology is perfected it will be really, really safe. Really safe. To the point where there will be so few accidents that it will result in insurance companies having to lower premiums drastically. To the point where they won't be able to rake in the dough like they do now on auto insurance. My hat is telling me these companies will work behind the scenes to prevent this technology from maturing any time "soon". Once it gets to the point of being usable and practical they will attempt to buy legistlation that outlaws it. In the U.S. anyway. Like I said, I don't expect any of this for another 40 years or so, and by then the techniques of hyper-lobbying (read: legal bribery) will have advanced to the point where today's legislation purchasers (MS, Adobe, RIAA, MPAA, etc.) will look like pikers by comparison.
What pisses me off (sometimes) is all this stuff we were promised as kids. Well, where is it? I don't see any of it.
Cars too safety conscious?
by
wornst
·
· Score: 4, Funny
Obligatory Joke: "That means microprocessors can take control of the most basic driving functions, like steering and braking. "I detect with my "seat scale" that you are overweight and are steering the car to a McDonalds drive-thru. This I cannot allow. Think of your heart."
Re:Screensavers?
by
pontifier
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I'm sorry, but I was there at the DARPA QID. I saw the problems they were having, and I think that next years challenge will be amazing. This field is going to advance rapidly.
I don't want to wait untill every road in the country is retrofitted with magnetic spikes to have my car drive me around. By the time that happens that tech will be obsolete anyway. Also, that kind of "smart road" is actually realy dumb... imagine the mayhem if a malicious prankster dug up the magnets and moved them.
Does it have "Asshole mode" so that if the car is actually a Dodge Ram Truck, it will tailgate your ass with aircraft-landing-light-intensity headlights for several dozen freeway exits?
Does it have "soccer mom mode" so it will go 40 MPH over speed bumps for the 200 feet from the grocery store to the bank? Will it then be sure to park itself in two spaces so Mrs. Suburbia can spend 20 minutes getting her family of eight out of the car again so they can all go into the bank?
Does it have "lawn-mower-with-headlights dad mode" so SUVs will cruise at 75MPH on four-lane city streets and accelerate 0 to 60 in 5.5 seconds from every stoplight?
Does it have "Ms. Too-cool-for-you mode" so it will birddog people around corners and then swerve into the next lane at 65MPH so she can get to the next stoplight 2.3 seconds earlier?
If not, why, people might start driving with their heads out of their asses. Imagine that!
-- Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Re:I hate human drivers.
by
goon+america
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
If cars drove themelves than maybe people would see them less as a source for feelings of power, then maybe we would see people starting to drive sensible cars for their uses rather than the modern behemoth and the corresponding social costs of oil dependance.
.... naw, just wishful thinking.
Car Ownership
by
emacs_abuser
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
If a fully automatic car was developed, I think that could spell the end of individual car ownership.
I know we all love our cars, but we build way too many of them. Most of them sit parked 90% of the time. A fully automatic car could come to us when we need it. With just a fraction of the cars we have now, a car could reach anyone in under a few minutes. You would just push a button and get a fully fueled and serviced SUV or compact as needed.
When did Slashdot degrade to one-liners? I expect some kind of summary so I can post my uninformed opinion without actually reading the article!!!
Pretty lightweight article
by
serutan
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I was expecting some new information, but this article seems to have been written by someone who just became aware of the idea of self driving cars, and assumes the reader likewise knows nothing about it.
My prediction is within 10 years manufacturers will get beyond the toe-in-the-water stage and fully robotic cars will be approved for highway use. At some point someone will realize that a robotic car need not sit in the parking lot at work. It can drive home and chauffeur the rest of the family around, then return when it's quitting time. The saving on double car payments will far outweigh the cost of the additional trips.
The next step will be to ask why the car has to sit in the garage when it's not in use. Leasing companies will offer the use of their entire fleet of cars. Cars will become robot taxis, summoned by cell phone.
The next step after that will be to ban human-driven vehicles from the highways. When that's done, robotic cars will be able to travel at high speeds with less distance between them. Traffic jams will disappear. The annual highway death toll of 50,000 in America (consistent since the 1960's and half because of drunks) will plummet. I'm looking forward to all of this.
Some people don't think any of this will happen because people won't want to give up control of their cars. Driving a car is fun. Sure it, but so is riding a horse, and people gave that up when something better came along. Robotic cars are something better.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's a non-account link to the article. Robo-Cars Make Cruise Control So Last Century
- - - - - - -
"All hail the glory of the Hypnotoad."
Someone forgot to put up the "warning: NYT (free reg. req. bla bla bla)" thingy. Now I wasted 4 secs on a registration dialog hehehe =).
Happy Trails!
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
I can just see it now. People will start hacking into cars' computer systems... you'll start seeing random crashes, or cars doing 360s constantly. Or driving off cliffs. Not to mention that the market for off-road vehicles will either boom or bust if self-driving cars become a standard.
Though I imagine that most of America will hate the cars anyway. How will people possibly deal with their road rage?! (And don't tell me that people won't have road rage if cars are self-driving. Don't you ever get the urge to just ram old ladies off the road just because?)
So now kids will effectively drive themselves to school?! There are lost of uses for this but the emergency reaction times will never be as good as a human.
the technology needs to be made fool proof before it can be set loose on the roads.
How many computers are too many?
IN SOVIET RUSSIA...
no...nevermind. too easy.
Are you still considered to be in the care and control of the vehicle, or are you demoted to just another passenger? Will the worst consequence of driving drunk be to end up in the wrong place?
Mind you, that would be bad enough -- to punch in the wrong coordinates, and wake up in the truly seedy part of town to find dwarves stealing your wheels -- but it's certainly an order of magnitude less severe than killing someone unlucky enough to be sharing the road with you.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
This is supposed to be slashdot! There's supposed to be some sort of description of the project on the front page.
More importantly, there's supposed to be some sort of biased opinion along with the story. Stuff like:
Come on! Us slashdotters want to be TOLD what to think, not make opinions for ourselves... Bastard...
</sarcasm>
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
We, of course, are working on fully automatic driving. We have both a visual road-follower and a millimeter radar. That's not enough.
Even line-scanner laser rangefinders are too limited. We need a true 3D device. Such things have been built, but the market is so tiny (and they're so big and clunky) that they're all one-offs. It's clear that the problem can be fixed, but the market isn't there yet to do it.
Somehow I think fully autonomous cars won't happen very soon unless we upgrade the road system to provide navigation support for these cars. I don't see cars being able to find their way from one place to another given the myriad of road configurations out there unless there are actual beacons and stuff embedded into the road to help them find their way. It wouldn't too hard (ok, it would be, but not impossible) to write software that could pilot a car down an interstate highway with no human intervention. But I somehow think city driving might be a lot bigger challenge, considering that even human drivers usually have to stay very alert in these situations.
I suspect that many will not like self-driving cars because they will not drive agressively enough. For example, many dislike the automatic speed-matching systems that maintain a "safe" distance to the next car because they leave too much distance to the next car. Tailgaters honk at the automated cars because they wont close the gap and the others cut into the large gap created by these systems. What the system (and safety experts and the car maker's insurance companies) consider "safe" is too tame for most drivers.
While many drivers are comfortable in taking risks, the corporate creators of these systems will be risk averse. That excessive risk averseness will hinder public acceptance.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Your car will eventually become an internet device (like everything else). Then, ad-push technology will sense your next collision, and with lightning speed emblazon the logo of Dewey, Cheatham & Howe across the airbag rushing toward your face.
Seeing bad movies only encourages them. Watch responsibly
If you read the story, you have to take a breathalyzer test before you get in, fingerprint yourself, take a urine sample, submit DNA, and answer a Terrorism survey.
//made that up.
If you fail, it drives you to the Ashcroft.
This has been a vision for at least 40 years. They had "prototypes" or "models" or what-have-you -- mock-ups, yeah, that's the ticket -- at the NY World's Fair in 1964. IMO there's another 40 years to wait for this. Artificial intelligence has advanced in fits and starts over the decades, but has a long way to go. Safety concerns are real and no insurance company is going to write policies unless and until thay are at least as safe as what's on the roads today. Infrastructure is another hurdle. In the U.S. there's a huge highway spending bill -- $250 Billion U.S. over 5 years -- pending that represents a hige investment in getting current roads up to snuff. How much would it cost to equip the highways for self-driving cars? A trillion $ U.S.? And that's not going to happen until there's a standard to follow. Even adter the technology has been perfected it will take another decade for pilot programs of competing standards to decide a "winner".
To get really tin-foil-hattish about it, I imagine once self-driving automobile technology is perfected it will be really, really safe. Really safe. To the point where there will be so few accidents that it will result in insurance companies having to lower premiums drastically. To the point where they won't be able to rake in the dough like they do now on auto insurance. My hat is telling me these companies will work behind the scenes to prevent this technology from maturing any time "soon". Once it gets to the point of being usable and practical they will attempt to buy legistlation that outlaws it. In the U.S. anyway. Like I said, I don't expect any of this for another 40 years or so, and by then the techniques of hyper-lobbying (read: legal bribery) will have advanced to the point where today's legislation purchasers (MS, Adobe, RIAA, MPAA, etc.) will look like pikers by comparison.
What pisses me off (sometimes) is all this stuff we were promised as kids. Well, where is it? I don't see any of it.
Obligatory Joke: "That means microprocessors can take control of the most basic driving functions, like steering and braking. "I detect with my "seat scale" that you are overweight and are steering the car to a McDonalds drive-thru. This I cannot allow. Think of your heart."
I'm sorry, but I was there at the DARPA QID. I saw the problems they were having, and I think that next years challenge will be amazing. This field is going to advance rapidly.
I don't want to wait untill every road in the country is retrofitted with magnetic spikes to have my car drive me around. By the time that happens that tech will be obsolete anyway. Also, that kind of "smart road" is actually realy dumb... imagine the mayhem if a malicious prankster dug up the magnets and moved them.
-John Fenley
Does it have "Asshole mode" so that if the car is actually a Dodge Ram Truck, it will tailgate your ass with aircraft-landing-light-intensity headlights for several dozen freeway exits?
Does it have "soccer mom mode" so it will go 40 MPH over speed bumps for the 200 feet from the grocery store to the bank? Will it then be sure to park itself in two spaces so Mrs. Suburbia can spend 20 minutes getting her family of eight out of the car again so they can all go into the bank?
Does it have "lawn-mower-with-headlights dad mode" so SUVs will cruise at 75MPH on four-lane city streets and accelerate 0 to 60 in 5.5 seconds from every stoplight?
Does it have "Ms. Too-cool-for-you mode" so it will birddog people around corners and then swerve into the next lane at 65MPH so she can get to the next stoplight 2.3 seconds earlier?
If not, why, people might start driving with their heads out of their asses. Imagine that!
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
If a fully automatic car was developed, I think that could spell the end of individual car ownership.
.
I know we all love our cars, but we build way too many of them. Most of them sit parked 90% of the time. A fully automatic car could come to us when we need it. With just a fraction of the cars we have now, a car could reach anyone in under a few minutes. You would just push a button and get a fully fueled and serviced SUV or compact as needed
When did Slashdot degrade to one-liners? I expect some kind of summary so I can post my uninformed opinion without actually reading the article!!!
I was expecting some new information, but this article seems to have been written by someone who just became aware of the idea of self driving cars, and assumes the reader likewise knows nothing about it.
My prediction is within 10 years manufacturers will get beyond the toe-in-the-water stage and fully robotic cars will be approved for highway use. At some point someone will realize that a robotic car need not sit in the parking lot at work. It can drive home and chauffeur the rest of the family around, then return when it's quitting time. The saving on double car payments will far outweigh the cost of the additional trips.
The next step will be to ask why the car has to sit in the garage when it's not in use. Leasing companies will offer the use of their entire fleet of cars. Cars will become robot taxis, summoned by cell phone.
The next step after that will be to ban human-driven vehicles from the highways. When that's done, robotic cars will be able to travel at high speeds with less distance between them. Traffic jams will disappear. The annual highway death toll of 50,000 in America (consistent since the 1960's and half because of drunks) will plummet. I'm looking forward to all of this.
Some people don't think any of this will happen because people won't want to give up control of their cars. Driving a car is fun. Sure it, but so is riding a horse, and people gave that up when something better came along. Robotic cars are something better.