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When an Algorithm Takes the Wheel
Wired has an interesting look at Jaguar's new automated driving dynamics system in their new XK convertible. From the article: "During an extreme test of the XK's handling capabilities, the car only fishtailed back and forth once after I jerked the steering wheel on a wet road around a 90 degree turn while driving at about 60 mph. The car's back wheels swung first left then right before the XK's sensors registered a difference in torque between the rear tires and, transparent to me, righted the fishtailing effect by a combination of de-acceleration, tire rotation and vehicle weight distribution control. More often than not, the sensation of flatness, as if there were a vertical force pinning the car to the road, was also felt then and when taking less extreme curves at high speeds."
This technology is great, but for the love of god, please let me be able to turn it off when I want to! If I want to give the car some extra gas through a corner and kick the back end out, don't interfere with me. Safety is a great goal, but I want to tell the car what to do - I don't want the car telling me what I can do. There are times when traction control gets completely in the way of non-spirited driving, too (like going up a snow-covered driveway).
Toyota/Lexus is horrible about this. They include intrusive control systems and don't give you any easy way to turn it off.
"More often than not, the sensation of flatness, as if there were a vertical force pinning the car to the road, was also felt then and when taking less extreme curves at high speeds."
Yeah, if only there was such a force...
I drive a 1999 Toyota Solara SLE V6. There is a switch beside the transmission to disengage the traction control systems. I absolutely agree with you that their traction control is awful on snow. Getting from my house to the main roads through the residential neighbourhood requires disengaging the traction control and manually shifting the transmission between 1st, 2nd, and automatic. Probably because I'm too cheap to buy snow tires. A 2006 Lexus IS I looked at recently had a 3 way traction control switch: On, Off, and Snow. Apparently, Lexus agrees with us you about their performance on snow. CS
But assuming that Da Gooberment has an obligation to obligate safer vehicles, where do you set the bar? If a "mesh-like material" is the difference between injury and Pedestrian Souffle', why not require such a system on all vehicles? Or do I have to cross my fingers and only step out in front of cars built by Jaguar?
When the costs of the increase in safety make it too expensive for the poor to afford even the cheapest "safe" car.
Blessed be he who reads this post, Cursed be he who tells my boss.
I think I might love this idea being fully explored. Add some more IA, a social conscience. The I-5 and I-405 will get much nicer.
Or,
Or,
To be honest, I still want control of my car. I'll drive, thank you. (Still don't trust ABS since I hit that deer.)
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
Well, the safest thing you can drive is probably an M-1 abrams tank, for $5,000,000, but I doubt many people would actually buy one of those even if they were available to the public :)
They are, they're called SUVs: same weight, same mileage, same damage to other cars in an accident, it just doesn't have the big gun and the tracks.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Examples include: Proper adjustment of the seat and headrests for best control and protection; proper wearing of the seatbelt; proper use of child-safety seats; keeping signal lights in proper function and using the turning signals; Taking new drivers on a real high-speed driving course where they actually do accident avoidance maneuvers; teaching new drivers how to recognize treacherous road conditions; more emphasis on cooperative driving instead of purely "defensive driving" (which quickly turns into a passive-aggressive "I can be in the left lane because I'm doing the speed limit" game).
Less is more.
Actually, what most Libertarians realize is that you cannot govern based on emotions, and that everything has a value.
For example, the latest just-approved medical treatment is usually very expensive (it may have cost $1bn to develop), while the treatments we had 10 years ago are cheaper, but not as effective. Should every medical plan have to cover the expensive option?
For a more stark example, six healthy British men nearly died while participating in a safety test for a new drug. Do you think it ok for drug companies (and indirectly, us consumers) to pay for people to risk their lives for this? Or is it wrong to ascribe a value to this?
I don't think that's necessarily true. I think that automated highways will eventually come to pass, but it won't be overnight. What will probably happen is that it will be a gradual process, driven by the fact that the automobile companies will want to make sure that accidents can't be attributed to their vehicles. You can already see it starting. First, we had cruise control. Then, we had adaptive cruise control. Now, we're seeing adaptive cruise control with the ability to brake, as well as cars which can parallel park themselves. As long as the manufacturers take baby steps, all possible scenarios will eventually be accounted for.
I think having the vehicle control emergency systems is a lot safer than having the car completely drive itself at this point. It combines the best of what people are good at, which is being able to physically identify where they need to be on the road and maintain basic control, and what a computer is good at: namely, crunching numbers.
Humans are worse at thinking logically in situations where they have to emergency brake, or steer, etc. and are more prone to panic. If the computer could figure out these functions for the driver, that would make driving a car a lot safer in hazardous conditions.
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
I will, slightly, agree with your contention that computer and human controlled vehicles will not co-exist on the same structure. However, there are already numerous examples of seperated roadways that carry automated vehicles. Las Vegas has just installed an automated busway where the buses have drivers, but in reality, the bus does 99% of the driving with the driver just there "in case" (really just there so the people on board don't freak out over no human driver). You also see more and more HOV lanes going in all over the country. It wouldn't take much to turn the HOV lanes into high-speed automated vehicle lanes.
All of the other points in your article are merely technological difficulties, and not particularly difficult ones to solve. Solving cost effectively right now is the issue, but as technology is improved in testing and the incremental cost comes down it is almost inevitable.
In addition, are you serious that you believe a human being in a car at night is more likely to notice a deer at the side of the road at highway speeds than a computerized hazard identification system? Let alone said human being able to take an appropriate action in sufficient time. Humans work on the order of seconds, while a decent control system will work on the order of milliseconds. This would make a huge difference in a lot of cases.
Add to this the fact that the vast majority of drivers would really prefer to be able to get into their car in the garage, tell it to take them to work, then sit and read the paper, talk on the phone, apply makeup, etc. and have the vehicle deliver them to the front door of their office in a fast, safe manner... then go park itself to wait until they needed it again. The representative audience of
Your contention that "something will go wrong, it will cost significant human life, it will be abandoned" is laughable. The system we have today kills over 45,000 americans per year. To me that's pretty significant loss of life, and not only do I not see people trying to abandon the system, I see idiots all over (in this discussion thread even) defending it in the name of "I should be free to drive like an asshat if I want to."
"Unheard of means only it's undreamed of yet,
Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar
> a locked tire will slow you down faster than ABS in many circumstances.
Not only wrong, but dangerously wrong. This is the kind of incorrect belief that can get people killed.
For car tires, static friction (i.e., when the tire is rolling) is almost always significantly higher than dynamic friction (i.e., when the tire is skidding). In other words, skidding tires brake slower than rolling tires.
ABS makes your car more controllable; it also makes your car stop faster. This is, in almost all situations, not a tradeoff---ABS is simply flat-out better than non-ABS in all meaningful ways.