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Smart Cars to Save Stupid Drivers?
bl8n8r writes "Ford spokesman Mike Vaughn said they tested computerized optical scanning and a variety of warnings: a vibrating steering wheel, the sound of a car driving over rumble strips and a visual warning projected on the windshield. Researchers also tested a so-called "active" system in which the vehicle would actually adjust the steering automatically if it veered too far one way or the other."
How do they expect evolution to produce a better human species?
So when you swerve to miss the idiot ahead of you who's wrecking due to his smart car BSODing, your car will automatically adjust the steering so you plow head on into him. Where do I sign up?
Personally, I'd rather see smart drivers in stupid cars.
Really - the solution to drowsy drivers shouldn't be of a technical nature, but of educational nature. If you're drowsy don't drive the fsckin car .
"Smart Cars" programmed by "Stupid" programmers, killing smart drivers...
I think we can all enjoy the versitility of things like vinyl, analog devices and hacker friendly consumer electronics (see: all the support for the dreamcast in the Poll). I just fear that after a while cars might be restricting smart/clever driving with "safeguards" and eventually get some smart driver killed...
As long as you can shut off things here and there, this system sounds kind of nice...
You could say the same about anti-lock brakes. "What happens if the computer decides to release your brakes at the wrong time!!?".
The answer is that they asked that question early in design. It detects anomalies and shuts the system down. I expect it to be the same with "auto-steering".
To me, the most interesting part of the whole Smart Car debate, is the human facets of it, whereby humanity has to decide if they are going to relinquish control of their driving to a more automated system. The benefits are there, indeed, but some people just hate giving up power (which will cause the big problems, if you ask me). Eventually this will lead to a total-control model, whereby drunk driving would become a thing of the past, tickets would be a thing of the past, driving lessons would be a thing of the past, and speed limits would be a thing of the past. Accidents will likely still occur until the system had all the kinks worked out of it.
I'm trying to steer sharply away from the deer that just ran in front of the vehicle...
but the steering wheel gives me a giggle and turns me back into the poor creature now smeared all over my hood.
I'll pass.
Let's say it all works just exactly as advertised and is adopted.
It will make things safer for a short time. Then everyone will get less alert, because they'll expect the car to take care of warning them.
People will make their own decisions about whether they are too drowsy or intoxicated to drive, and if driving is a little easier they'll let themselves get a little drowsier or intoxicated than they would have before, and things will be just about as safe as they were before.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Your complaint appears to be a subset of a larger complaint, and of a larger debate. "Safe for wealthy drivers." Why should somebody (and his family) be safer on the road than you just because he can afford a Volvo, Saab, etc. while all you can afford is a used Ford Pinto?
Then again, why should somebody who makes more money be afforded superior health care just because he can afford to pay more for it?
Are you suggesting that if someone places less value on short term leisure and recreational activities, invests more in his education, works harder and longer, and as a result earns more money, that he (and his family) should be relegated to the same relatively unsafe car (and relatively unsafe medical care) as the person who invested and worked less?
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
I think everybody can agree that rumble strips on the side of roads are A Good Thing.
Unfortunately, it's the reaction that some drivers have when suddenly jarred awake that's the problem.
Not that the reactions of many drivers are much better when they aren't dozing. It amazes me no end how we give a person license to pilot a 5000-pound missle - day or night, and in all types of weather - when all they've proven that they can drive it around a small parking lot and answer a few questions.
Want to reduce accidents? Want to save lives? Mandatory driving skills and car control training before you get a license. As it stands, we're so concerned with car control here in the USA that you'll get a Reckless Driving ticket for doing donuts in a big empty parking lot while testing out the limits of your ride to see how it behaves in a skid condition.
Won't Somebody Think Of The Children?
Especially the 'auto correct' bit.
That means no erratic driving, and no way for a police officer to potentially head off an accident from a drowsy or drunk driver.
And I admit, I have been one of those people who have fallen asleep at the wheel, and have realized that I was in a different lane than I remembered having been in. I have probably been saved by the little rumble strips along the edge of the highway at least half a dozen times.
But I'm not comfortable with this if it means that drowsy people are more likely to drive, because their car will warn them if something might go wrong. And there's no way in hell that I want rich alcoholics having an extra excuse for throwing back a few extra before they hit the road.
In some ways, I'd almost prefer that they just took the driving completely away from humans. [well, all animals... I don't want there to be some monkey driving, even though I know in Cannonball Run [2, I think], he wasn't really driving]
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Teach people how to drive.
15 hours of how to move in traffic isn't driving instruction. People need to know what to do when they understeer and oversteer. They need to have done it before, over and over, so they learn how to react.
Controlling a car isn't hard, and the majority of times people think their car is out of control, its not so far gone a knowledgable driver couldn't recover safely.
We just don't teach anyone how to drive in this country. Fifty bucks and fifteen hours behind the wheel of a minimum wage driving teacher shouldn't cut it.
And here come the "+5, Funny" mods for tired old sexist jokes that aren't.
"Tee-hee! Women are bad drivers!" Which is of course why insurance premiums are higher for men.
Sure, it's a joke...but try that excuse on a black guy after telling a racist joke and see if you don't get punched in the face.
-Carolyn
Like Daddy always said: if you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit.
Exactly. These features will only encourage people to be more wreckless.
Someone who's right on the threshold of falling asleep at the wheel will rationalize in their completely irrational fatigued-mind state that they can "let go" and drift off for a moment because the car will stay on the road and come to a nice safe stop.
Please consider making an automatic monthly recurring donation to the EFF
Apparently only those wealthy enough can afford to be saved while the rest of the 1500 people a year that croak because of drowsy driving have to suffer.
Suffer? I hope this is in jest, because your current auto is no less safe tomorrow as it is today because of this technology. In addition, many safety items are first produced on high end cars because the cost is more easily absorbed by the purchaser. If the system works it will become a commodity item and become affordable for more people.
-- Solaris Central - http://w
Here's the right way to make driving safer:
1. No driving below the age of 18; if you can't be charged as an adult for a crime, you can't be given the responsibility of driving a vehicle that can kill if you're careless.
2. No driving until you've completed a TRUE driving school, one that teaches you accident avoidance and skid control, like motorcycle schools and high-performance driving schools currently offer.
3. No driving until you've learned to change a tire, check your oil and diagnose a broken fan belt...and until you know what every gauge in your car means.
4. If you want to drive a truck, SUV, or performance car, you have to take an additional course focusing on the specific dangers and control issues that these vehicles have before you can get license plates and/or permission to drive that class of vehicle.
5. Your license is a lifetime document, and after a certain number of points, you lose your license for good.
6. MUCH stiffer penalties for speeding and reckless driving*.
This will never, ever, ever happen, because people in the US for the most part believe driving is a right, not a privelege.
*in Chicago, speeding tickets were cheap, and you could get probation (to avoid the ticket showing on your record) even more cheaply. I sped more often than not. In Los Angeles, speeding tickets are a few hundred dollars, and getting traffic school to avoid the ticket showing on your record costs EVEN MORE. After my first speeding ticket in Los Angeles, I stopped speeding. Period.
Since the Earth rotates on its axis and revolves around the sun, which is itself revolving around the center of the Milky Way galaxy, which is itself moving relative to other objects in the neighborhood, time travel as depicted in the Back To The Future movies is necessarily also space travel. It can't be that hard to tweak the math a bit to make you materialize somewhere else on the planet, or even on some other planet.
(Someone once wrote a very short science fiction story based on that concept, that went something like this: "Doctor Soandso looked into the cameras and announced loudly: 'Behold! The world's first time machine! I shall now transport myself six months into the future!' He barely had time to smile at his success before he froze solid in the depths of interstellar space." Obviously, the original author did a better job of it.)
Ah, or to kill wealthy drivers.
Its a new murder method!
Just tweak the settings a bit, change the program slightly, and oops! It was an accident.
I wonder how traceable such changes would be.
Frankly, I wonder if you could do that now, with how automated cars are becoming....
Much subtler than doing something physically nasty to the brakes or whatnot...
No it's more like trickle down protection: While it's true that initially the wealthy will see more benefit than the poor, some of those current fatalaties were people hit by the driver of the other car falling asleep and crossing the median. So while it may be a long time before I can afford a car with sleep protection in it, my chances of dying in an "asleep at the wheel" incident will still be reduced. Meanwhile, if the technology is effective and becomes standard, it will eventually work its way into the used car population and everyone will benefit. If it's not effective, it will go the way of automatic seatbelts.
For a Boeing aircraft, the pilot is ultimately in control. As the plane nears stall the control mechanisms (even when fly-by-wire) generate stick shake in the column to make the pilot aware of the performance limit. The interface is very tactile (the large central control column.
For an Airbus, the machine has the final say. There is a less tactile sidestick controller and if the pilot pulls back too far, the control system will nose the plane down.
There are two schools of thought and I am sure different users would have a different preference.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
I think it is a good idea and it would be interesting to see it widely implemented. I'll be 21 not too long from now and still won't have a driver's license. I've failed the driving portion of the test twice in the past 4 months because my turns are too sharp. :-P
It's pretty amazing what kind of people are allowed to be on the road. The drunk or high guy I mentioned above was in the class for his 12th or 13th time, another was there for doing 80 in a 25 past an elementary school. At some point you have to draw the line and not give people another chance.
I think that's why most people call it cruise control now, instead of auto-pilot.
Well I don't remember it ever being called "auto-pilot", but let me expand on your point a little bit regardless (and using that analogy).
The problem that I see with systems such as this is that they teach you to be a lousy driver. Notwithstanding some of the comments posted here, having to drive manually pretty much forces you to be competent. If you're not a competent driver, eventually you're probably going to die. And a lot of people do, but the point is the vast majority of drivers do not die in fiery car crashes, because they have basic driving skills required for being on the road.
Now, with systems like the ones being talked about here, you really need to pay a lot less attention to the road because your car will warn you if anything is seriously amiss with your driving. Need to get that CD out of the back seat while driving 70mph on the highway? No problem! Just look/reach back and get it - your car will tell you if you've veered too far to one side. And the way things are going, eventually we probably will have full auto-pilot, which means you won't need to pay any attention at all.
There are many, many problems I have with this. For one thing, people will come to over-rely on systems such as this just like your poor elderly couple did. Can anyone argue that cruise control has actually increased road safety? I've seen plenty of statistics that say otherwise. For another, the systems themselves cannot be foolproof. What if, as has happened on airplanes, there's some other problem that one of these automatic systems masks while it's on? Say the car won't let you steer too quickly in any direction - there might be an underlying problem with the steering that this system would correct for until it got so bad that the system was forced to switch off, leaving you careening out of control at highway speed.
And third (not last, but the last point I'll make here), these systems require that people know how to use them. If people are bad drivers now - which is exactly what these systems are supposed to help - what makes anyone think they'll take the time to learn what these various signals mean? Somebody's steering wheel starts shaking - ok, you think they've read the stupid manual and will be able to interpret that? More likely they'll just slam on the brakes in the middle of the freeway.
No thanks. And this is one situation where what other people do actually does affect me, so it's not a case of "to each their own". I don't want anybody on the road around me to be equipped with anything like this. Hell, if it were up to me, everybody on the road would still be using manual transmissions - force them to really drive.
Notwithstanding some of the comments posted here, having to drive manually pretty much forces you to be competent. If you're not a competent driver, eventually you're probably going to die.
That's a silly position! I hadn't realized Luddites were allowed to use the WWW. As technology marches along, old skills like firebuilding, equestrianism, and Morse code are forgotten. Some people will always lament the passing of old ways, but those specializations are genuinely no longer needed.
(Side note: We're all going to die. Pointing out that someone is probably going to die proves nothing)
And the way things are going, eventually we probably will have full auto-pilot, which means you won't need to pay any attention at all.
This is a major inconsistency in your argument. Here you say there will be "full auto-pilot", but through the rest of the message only a minor driver-assist mechanism is assumed. Full autopilot is clearly the longterm objective (of both automakers and consumers), and it's the topic that deserves the most consideration. (Everything thing else is an intermediate transitionary stage, which isn't important in the long run)
What if, as has happened on airplanes, there's some other problem that one of these automatic systems masks while it's on?
What if any machine is built in a stupid way? It'll be dangerous! The fact that something can be done wrongly is no argument against it, because it's possible for a dedicated fool to screw up anything.
For another, the systems themselves cannot be foolproof.
More empty rhetoric. Nothing can be foolproof... does that mean we shouldn't do anything?
Automobile autopilot doesn't have to be foolproof to be worthwhile. It only needs to be better than the alternatives- and the alternative is human drivers, which (in the US) kill one person per 58,000,000 miles travelled.
The only good question is: Do you think that computerized car-drivers will kill people at a greater or lesser rate? Everyone must answer it according to her own optimism for technological improvement.
I certainly feel that within at most 30 years, computer software will have achieved a measurably lower deaths/mile rate than human drivers. At that point, it'd be foolishly unsafe not to use them (not to mention inconvenient)