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GM Says Driverless Cars Will Be Ready By 2018
Gregor Stipicic writes "Cars that drive themselves — even parking at their destination — could be ready for sale within a decade, General Motors Corp. executives say. 'This is not science fiction,' Larry Burns, GM's vice president for research and development, said in a recent interview. GM plans to use an inexpensive computer chip and an antenna to link vehicles equipped with driverless technologies. The first use likely would be on highways; people would have the option to choose a driverless mode while they still would control the vehicle on local streets, Burns said. He said the company plans to test driverless car technology by 2015 and have cars on the road around 2018."
No, the big question is whether General Motors will even exist in 2018.
...that someone will have to come up with maps that are accurate? I don't mean ones that have pinpoint accuracy on the locations of roads, but thoroughfares with special conditions. I'd hate to riding in a car in autopilot that decided it could turn the wrong way down a one way street because the map data didn't show it.
So, when a driverless car runs a red light, who gets the ticket? The owner? The manufacturer? The software company? Hell, they have automated machines that issue red light tickets now, so will one pile of metal and software issue the ticket to the other? Will the machines develop their own monetary system, will driverless cars figure out hacks to avoid the tickets, and will the robot machines have their own jails and prisons? Capital punishment = execution by power surge or by fatal software virus? This smacks too much of a bad Twilight Zone episode.
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
I'm not an attorney (I'm also not an acronym kinda guy) - But it seems by assuming control of the car GM would also be assuming responsibility for the occupants of the vehicle and any other involved in a collision.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
It seems to me the only way this technology ever winds up on the road is if the owner of the car signs a waver at the car dealership to hold GM harmless and assume all responsibility for driverless mode accidents.
Between texting, eating, putting on makeup, smoking, futzing with the radio, surfing the Internet for the nearest Burger Doodle, and so many other things to do in the car, driving is SUCH a distraction.
Even if the technical issues were all resolved (which is not guaranteed by any stretch of the imagination), what about the legal and insurance issues? Until the insurance companies jump on the bandwagon, this will go nowhere.
It's not like ALL the cars on the road will be driverless. Who is responsible for a crash that occurs while you aren't driving and are reading or asleep (why else would you want a driverless car)?
They might have better luck putting driverless "taxis" in crowded downtown areas where traffic moves slowly - that would reduce the damage and injuries associated with accidents at higher speeds.
Never let reality temper imagination
Never let reality temper imagination
I need a driverless car. I want to be able to sleep/study/play video games while on the road. I want the the perfect attention and instant response of a computer keeping me safe. And I don't want to pay someone to do it for me.
Seriously, how can you even ask this question? Have you ever heard of the broken window fallacy?
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
- It wouldn't race to the next red light, but infuriate you (like I do my passengers) by taking its virtual foot off the virtual gas pedal as soon as the light ahead turned red
- It wouldn't waste gas idling at the green light with its finger up its ass
- It wouldn't go east to get west (unless Microsoft made its nav system)
- It wouldn't pick the route with the most stop signs
You can already improve your mileage on the interstate (or autobahn) by using your cruise control.-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Ultimately, with a perfect system, it would:
* Make truckers obsolete
* Allow dropoff/pickup of children without you being present
* Allow pickup of groceries or other goods without you being present
* Make it so you don't need parking near your destination (vehicle can leave, park elsewhere, and return later)
* Greatly increase throughput (autoconvoying, reduction of drag, traffic-aware route scheduling, reduction of human error)
* More green space for a given amount of throughput (same)
* Greatly increase speeds (same)
* Greatly decrease fuel or energy consumed at a given speed (same), helping the environment.
* Decrease costs to consumers (as above) and thus opens up wider travel opportunities/deurbanization.
* Facilitate better integration of the vehicle and the road (example: bridges that know how much capacity they can support and vehicles that know how much they weigh so that they can be built lighter (and thus cheaper) while still being safe by never routing too much weight to be crossing a given bridge at once)
* No speeding tickets
* No drunk drivers
* No need to pay attention to the road -- but those who like to drive could still offroad, go to tracks, etc.
* Greater response time of vehicle and built-in system-aware hardware eases transition to new technologies, such as inductrac maglev roads, powered roads to recharge electric vehicles, or whatnot.
** Above technologies further increase speed, decrease energy consumption, boost economy, and decrease cost to consumers
* Greatly boost the economy (all of the above)
Next to my desk we have an Ire Extinguisher. Our boss is really assertive, so we like the idea of having it.
You forgot....
No need to pay attention to the road -- but those who like to drive could still offroad, go to tracks, etc.
I fully support your right to go have fun driving your vehicle if that's what floats your boat. You don't, however, have a fundamental right to use something constructed by lots of my taxpayer dollars (the public road system) as your personal playground and put me in unnecessary risk while on it. In such a future, if you wanted to drive for fun, you could easily go drive somewhere that's for people who want to drive for fun; however, our tax dollars weren't collected to build you a racetrack.
Next to my desk we have an Ire Extinguisher. Our boss is really assertive, so we like the idea of having it.
Rail, light rail, and busses simply are not general purpose solutions.
* Not door-to-door service. Rules out the weak, the disabled, many of the elderly, many of the young (safety), and the vast throngs of able-bodied people who, whether you think the reason is justified or not, simply don't want to walk a dozen blocks to make all of their connections every day because they:
* Have "better things to do" than spend an extra 5-10 minutes each way walking several blocks, or
* "Don't want to" walk several blocks
* Need to be transporting goods (dry cleaning, groceries, etc) long distances by hand. I'm in good shape, but even I'd hate to haul, say, a 40 pound bag of water softener salt plus a couple gallons of milk, a few quarts of juice, and all of the other stuff I might happen to pick up at a grocery store.
* Greatly increased travel time. I can drive to the grocery store in three minutes, but it'd take about an hour get there via bus -- at peak service times. Even if they 10xed funding to make busses run 10 times as often, it'd still take three times as long to get there. And this excludes the aforementioned time to walk to the bus stop. Busses, light rail, and rail are simply a poor fit for going from specifically point A to specifically point B. They do great on long stretches, but simply can't cater to the individual needs of their many passengers.
* Has economic penalties (greatly increased transit time is not free to an economy)
* Has leisure time penalties (as above)
* Lacks individualism (something Americans tend to prize)
* Lacks the ability to leave things of yours in a vehicle.
* Lacks the ability to maintain (or not maintain) the vehicle in the shape you find acceptable, or to modify it to your liking
* Lacks room for transporting goods -- both everyday goods (groceries, dry cleaning, etc) and non-everyday goods (a refrigerator, a desk, etc). Especially important on "goods" that aren't allowed to be transported in public transport -- pets, dangerous chemicals, etc.
* Requires a much greater degree of pre-planning for trips to get your route and timing down.
* Has serious time penalties if you miss a connection.
* Lateness (above) has serious economic and leisure-time penalties.
* Forces people to be in close proximity with other people (laugh if you want, but the hypochondriacs, agoraphobes, racists, and vast throngs of people who merely want to be left alone won't be laughing)
* Doesn't make use of our vast amount of existing infrastructure (only applies to rail and light rail, not busses)
The overwhelming majority simply won't vote for any candidate who would eliminate personal transportation for public, and any transportation proposal needs to deal with the reality that there are many, many reasons, both good and bad, that it's not a general purpose solution.
Next to my desk we have an Ire Extinguisher. Our boss is really assertive, so we like the idea of having it.
Excuse me but I pay a fortune to use the roads and should have the right to spend my normal 30-40 hours a week on the roads I paid for without inexpirienced idiots putting me in danger.
You know, you're right. You're right! You pay for it, you should be able to do whatever the heck you want with it. Speaking of that, I should go to an Air Force base and take a free ride on a jet fighter. Hey, I'm paying for it, right? Who cares what the "intent" of the program is. It's all about what "I want" to do with the program, right? Who cares whether the "intent" of the transportation budget is to move people and goods. If you want to use it for your own personal needs, screw the purpose of the transportation budget (moving people and goods), right?
The people who cause most accidents arnt truck drivers, taxis or couriers.
But they *do* cause accidents. Drunk drivers only cause ~40% of accidents. ~42,000 people die per year in auto accidents. Put 9-11, our troops lost in Iraq, and all of those sorts of things in perspective: 42,000 *per year*. Car accidents are the *leading cause of death* for people between ages 6 and 27. 394,000 large trucks were involved in crashes in 1999. 5,203 people died and 127,000 were injured. The economic damage of the accidents was a staggering $150 billion, just in 1999. Let's put that into perspective: Hurricane Katrina did only $81 billion.
This is not something trivial. You not only want the American public to pay for your entertainment, pay *huge amounts of money* for your entertainment, but you want to keep us in a system that injures half a million people a year, kills several tens of thousands per year, and does almost twice the economic damage as Hurricane Katrina each year. For your entertainment. Pardon me if I'm a wee bit hostile to the notion.
Next to my desk we have an Ire Extinguisher. Our boss is really assertive, so we like the idea of having it.
I know I've certainly been sitting around on a lazy summer evening and decided to go for a nice drive in the country with my wife, even going so far as to drive in a random direction to see what there is to uncover, several times even making a whole weekend out of the randomness of it. There's lots of great things out there to discover which a computer-controlled car will never find.
What, you don't think you'll be able to tell the computer where you want to go? Or give it commands like "turn left up ahead" or "stop here"? Personally I'd love to be able to really look at the scenery on those country drives rather than dividing my attention between it and the road, and then at the end of the day just tell the car "home, James" and sit back and snooze.
Hell, they could even put in a steering wheel and pedals so that you think you're in control, but the computer just takes those inputs as suggestions.
-- Alastair