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Autonomous Vehicles and the Law
Hugh Pickens writes "Google's autonomous cars have demonstrated that self-driving vehicles are now largely workable and could greatly limit human error, but questions of legal liability, privacy and insurance regulation have yet to be addressed. Simple questions, like whether the police should have the right to pull over autonomous vehicles, have yet to be answered and legal scholars and government officials warn that society has only begun wrestling with laws required for autonomous vehicles. The big question remains legal liability for the designers and manufacturers as some point out that liability exemptions have been mandated for vaccines, which are believed to offer great value for the general health of the population, despite some risks. 'Why would you even put money into developing it?' says Gary E. Marchant, director of the Center for Law, Science and Innovation at the Arizona State University law school. 'I see this as a huge barrier to this technology unless there are some policy ways around it.' Congress could consider creating a comprehensive regulatory regime to govern the use of these technologies say researchers at the Rand Corporation adding that while federal preemption has important disadvantages, it might speed the development and utilization of these technologies (PDF) and should be considered, if accompanied by a comprehensive federal regulatory regime. 'This may minimize the number of inconsistent legal regimes that manufacturers face and simplify and speed the introduction of these technologies.'"
Infiltrated by Google employees and well-wishers, Slashdot consistently offers justifications for every bad behavior and terrible decision coming from Google. Just look at the privacy changes article in which fanboys banded together to make sure Google was perceived as the good guy and that anyone critical of them was modbombed.
Just to recap, Google is a multibillion dollar advertising megacorporation that was caught by the German government sniffing people's wifi data (they "accidentally" did it for three years before admitting it only when authorities threatened an investigation), forced people to use real names on Google+ and admitted it was an identity service and not a social network, stuffed Google+ results into the search engine without any competing social networks even though they have those networks indexed by the search engine (hello, Microsoft tactics), said that the only people who care about privacy "have something to hide," hacked into Mocality to call its customers, removed H.264 support in Chrome out of "openness" only to turn around ship the closed-source Flash plugin, withheld Android source from the public but shared it with privileged hardware partners so they could have a leg up, abused their Android compatibility program to make things difficult for smartphone makers who chose Bing instead of Google, and on and on and on.
With all this crap they pull that would get them completely trashed if they were Microsoft or any other company, there's one reason and one reason only that they have been propped up as the good guy on Slashdot all these years--Linux. They use Linux. Slashdot is a Linux advocacy site, and so because Google uses Linux, they are good guys and get a pass for everything. That's all it takes to get Slashdot to love you. Just use Linux.
Hypocrites. When Microsoft used their Windows monopoly revenues to fund development of Internet Explorer and release it for free to try to dominate the web market, everyone here cried "antitrust!" But when Google uses its web search monopoly revenues to fund development of Android and release it for free to try to dominate smartphones, everyone defends it. For anyone who was on Slashdot during those times, to see Google doing all the very same things Microsoft did but get a completely different reaction is surreal.
Slashdot is a bubble. You only get pro-Google, pro-Linux news. Major news occurring elsewhere is often days late, if it gets reported at all. The Google+ search results fiasco is huge all over the tech sites right now, but there's nothing about it here, as if it doesn't even exist as a controversy. And did you know iOS surpassed Android in marketshare by the end of 2011 according to three research firms? With how obsessed Slashdot is over marketshare, and how they constantly trumpeted Android's marketshare all the time as a victory last year, you'd think it would be big news. But, no. This is pro-Google territory, pro-Linux territory. Gotta keep the natives happy for more page views.
This will get modded down because trolls have taken over the moderation system and openly subvert it. That's fine. It just proves my point about how Slashdot reacts to anything outside the partyline. This site's news reporting is old, antiquated, and slow, but the news isn't even why people come here anymore. The part of the community still remaining (after its years-long exodus to Reddit, Hacker News, and other sites, which is why traffic has decreased so dramatically on most Slashdot stories today) only comes here to pat themselves on the back for thinking a certain way. "Yeah, Microsoft is still evil! Yeah, Google is still the good guy! Yeah, Apple is still for chumps!" It's the year 2000 forever on Slashdot.
The first folks that will learn to take control of autonomous vehicles will be crooks. New breed of highwayman...
"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."
-H. L. Mencken
So like, %99.9 of the time they won't plunge full speed into oncoming traffic when it rains.
To err is human, to tear down a sidewalk at 55 miles per hour takes a computer.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
Seriously, why wouldn't Police be allowed to pull over autonomous vehicles? Unless they are completely without flaw there's always going to be a few corner cases where there would be a legitimate need. Plus sometimes the police need to pull over a vehicle because a warrant has been issued for the owner of the car, but not directly related to the driving.
netcraft didn't confirm it. STFU
Let's be clear about a few things here:
The police will have the authority to pull over an autonomous vehicle. Even in a perfect libertarian utopia, the police will have the authority to pull over an autonomous vehicle.
Liability insurance on the first generations of autonomous vehicles will be insanely expensive.
These things might work great when they're new, but I shudder to think of what the ongoing certification process will requrie as they age. Cars are mechanical things. They break down. They fail in unexpected ways. My wife is a fine driver under ideal conditions, but she's been in several fender benders. The other driver has always been at fault, but they're the kind of things a better driver would recognize and avoid. There's a lot of stupid on the road that I've managed to avoid over the years and I just can't see a self driving car doing that. On the other hand, the self driving car would (hopefully) be doing fewer stupid things as well. It's nice that it can drive on sunny california roads. How well will it do in a Minnesota blizzard?
Some government, maybe even China, could embrace Autonomous Vehicles and press the technology forward (as an Authoritarian regime can) and find it improves public safety immensely (China has a high mortality rate on a high accident rate), further revealing other great benefits to their society - while people continue to wrestle with it in the US, over concerns as stated above.
When I traveled around Europe on trains I was thrilled how carefree I could be about intercity travel and how fast and comfortable TGV/ICE can be. Then return to the US and arrive at the decision it is a backward country for dismantling most of its once far-reaching rail network in favor of a car (or two) for every adult - but that's how you get around, which means long trips are a major drag - you have to focus on the most tedius of activities for hours at a time - driving. Ugh. Autonomous Vehicles could alleviate some of this tedium.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
But they're magically exempt from liability so fuck you!
That are 100% human controlled in the USA. but the first death at the hands of autonomous vehicles will be all over CNN the first time it happens. There will be congressional investigations, Department of Transportation studies, and on and on - yet, ideally they theoretically take the worst part of driving out of the equation - the driver.
People moving is just the start for autonomous vehicles. The real revolution will be in moving goods with little micro-movers.
Run out of milk? no problem, just order some on your fridge and it's at the front door in minutes. Want a hot dinner? Log into your local restraunt and order one to go.
Taxi services will be cheap, affortable, and accessable. Noone need own a car anymore. No need for a garrage or driveway infront of your house. No need for traffic lights, aproaching cars will just 'book' a timeslot through the intersection, narrowly avoiding collisions with safety, speeding the journey to and fro and saving energy as you don't need to brake and accelerate anymore.
Autonomous mobility is going to be truly revolutionary in the way we live.
There will be an immediate and HUGE problem of folks modding their cars to allow manual override.
That should be fun.
"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."
-H. L. Mencken
I can see why in the US there is such resistance to autonomous vehicles: Small towns and counties depend on driver error, be it speeding, red light cameras, or stuff like that for revenue. An autonomous system means that everyone will be going the speed limit, so no tickets (and no chance at finding marijuana and thus earning a civil forfeiture prize) will be given.
This is sad because the US is the perfect place for autonomous vehicles -- most cities are too sprawled out for even buses to be reliable, much less light rail. So, vehicles that drive themselves would be ideal because it would allow long distances to be covered with vehicles packed in as much as their computer and mechanical systems would allow, compared to current driving conditions which depend on the driver's ability/reactions (or lack of when compared to a computer.) Even for people who don't own a car, it wouldn't be hard to have a Car2Go/Zipcar like service.
Even more ironic, with computer controlled cars, it would lesson the need for more and more highway improvements. Cars can be sped up or slowed down to allow vehicles in and out, they can be moved into lanes depending on their destination, and if there is a vehicle problem, it can be moved to the side of the road and traffic routed around it without putting the highway out of commission for hours on end. This would save a municipal area far more money than they ever would earn by speeding tickets.
The interesting proposition is can/should we give legal liability to the manufacturer, and have the owner shoulder the entire liability instead? I vote in favor of suing individuals AND corporations, especially since corporations are now considered people. After all, how else can lawyers make a living? Why they'd have to become politicians instead.
Lets say a auto car thinks a small kid on who is crossing the road / fell down is some thing like a skunk and it just runs the kid over and keeps driving?
What if a auto car drives though a road that closed off as some one did not mark it as so in a data base?
Red light cameras and speed cameras who get's the ticket?
Fails to see a school bus red lights / stop sign?
Yes the same china where a small kid was run over and Many people in China are hesitant to help people who appear to be in distress for fear that they will be blamed. High-profile law suits have ended with good Samaritans ordered to pay hefty fines to individuals they sought to help.
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/watch_child_run_over_and_ignored_8fVgzdy3ipdh9NPDGEwlZL#ixzz1kWOR8hJr
Who the hell cares? I hope that you eventually realize that to a troll, people like you are groupies.
it took a mindless process over 14 billion years to figure out, at least on this planet (which took the first 10 billion to exist in the first place). I don't have that much time.
Will the code be on the same level as autopilot systems where stuff has to go though all kinds of checks?
Officer: Can I see your Autonomous Vehicle License, Proof of Insurance, and your Hard Drive.
The district of Berlin, Germany, changed its local laws to allow automated vehicles. One model (made by local researchers) has been homologated so far.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Yes Central Planning is bollucks BOLLUCKS I SAY!
As is Central Design for automated cars. Why evolution created an eye so we should just sit on our collected asses for 4 million years and I'm sure an automated car shall simply evolve! And I'm sure as it evolves it'll create the *perfect* solution after those 4 million years.
After all, we all know eyes are the very best possible imaging devices every created. Those silly telescopes, nightvision goggles and highspeed cameras have nothing on our vision!
Even if it is adopted in a place like China, don't expect it to make a difference in the US. As you've already pointed out, intercity travel is fast and comfortable in Europe using trains, but Americans are blissfully unaware of anything that occurs outside of the states.
I have a simple formula: if the autonomous cars cause fewer accidents (maybe weighted by severity in some way) than a similar model of cars driven by humans, they are good.
Why should autonomous cars have to be perfect, instead of just an incremental improvement over the norm?
What is the best way to construct an eyeball from hydrogen atoms?
We don't know and it depends on the definition of "best", but it's almost certainly never happened before. Human eyes have glaring flaws -- blind spot, limited colour receptivity, unimpressive resolution compared to some known alternatives, relatively high light requirements, easily damaged, degrades over time, inconsistent with many humans having very poor vision even at their peak, easily damaged by the giant space explosion that is continuously running in the sky for ~half of the average day, slow to adjust to dimmer lighting conditions, limited range of motion and extremely limited independent range of motion. Some other animals correct those flaws but have other flaws all of their own. Evolution actually does a very poor job of finding globally optimal solutions, but it does a reasonable job at identifying local maxima / minima of sufficient signifiance, and hanging around in the area of same maxima / minima.
Our super computers and dedicated scientists can't even predict the weather terribly accurately; what makes you think any "expert" has the slightest clue how to predict and control social, technological, and economic development?
Unstated assumption: that the weather is consistently less complicated than these other things.
The laws should emerge from reality, not from a committee of bureaucrats.
I'm not quite sure what that means. No law (as in, legal law) has ever "emerged from reality" in any sense that I can understand the phrase.
It is likely that automation will produce vehicles that will perform better than human-driven cars, trucks, and buses. That would certainly result in fewer accidents, reduced congestion, and MUCH lower costs. In there lies the rub. Since the major cost component of commercial transportation is 'the driver', automation would put tens of millions of people out of work just in the United States. For example, with a fleet of smaller, electric vehicle, the entire bus system of a city could be replaced. Rides would cost on par with bus tickets, and service would be 'on demand' like taxi service without the tips. Many people would choose not to own a car if a 'chauffeur driven' vehicle were readily available 'for hire'. Commuting would be transformed, and rush hour traffic would become manageable, reducing construction for road expansion. Car sales would plummet, as would gasoline sales and body shop service. Cars and trucks could run coast to coast with only fuel stops; so could trains, reducing motel and restaurant revenues. These are just a few examples of the seachange.
Every taxi, limo, bus, and truck driver will band together to stop this. Auto manufacturers, construction firms, and oil companies, fearing a drop in revenues, will join them. Lobbyist will fill every waiting room in Congress to ram 'drivers' rights' legislation. Their effort will make the RIAA look like kids watching Sesame Street.
Nobody wants to wait. That's the whole point. That's why it is absurd to attempt to formulate a comprehensive system from first principles. We should let this new societal development unfold RIGHT NOW, and construct that comprehensive system along the way.
As an aside, while it took 10 billion years to go from the Big Bang to a newly formed Earth, it only took 4.4998 billion years to go from replicating molecules to the anatomically modern human, and less than 200 thousand years more to get to our modern civilization. Evolution progresses exponentially, because the selective phenomena become more complex.
You got work through angles in cases like this. Going straight out wouldn't work. The first step is to try it on old people, who cannot drive, but possibly control the car. Make it illegal to leave to car seat, and in the case of a accident the user is at fault. Because it is his liability to keep looking. Also, have black boxes made by a 3rd party to record exactly what happened. In case of non-user errors, where the car refuses to relinquish control, get sued. I am sure that hit is not hard to take for a company like google.
Give it time, time for the technology to be perfect and law to catchup with technology. Fail fast and learn.
You will never have experience until after you needed it.
You are confused. Nothing is "centrally designed"; what you consider an "intelligent designer" is actually just a more complicated "selector".
Automated cars, telescopes, nightvission goggles, highspeed cameras, etc. all developed through trial and error (especially of the foundational concepts): variation (sometimes random!) and selection.
The selective phenomena have just gotten much more sophisticated over time, and the things being selected have themselves gotten much more sophisticated over time; the modern human can make selections much better than the single cell from which he ultimately descended. That is the nature of evolution: Exponential progress.
Trying to establish a comprehensive regulatory framework from the very outset is a mistake; only the most obvious regulations should be put in place, and we should allow this societal development to begin right away without further regulatory inhibition, so that it can evolve naturally as it unfolds under the selective pressures of society.
Law emerges from reality through court cases. It almost never works well to try to create "comprehensive" legal frameworks by gazing into crystal balls. For complex systems, you MUST run the simulation; you must let reality unfold and process it AS IT HAPPENS.
As for the rest of your comment, I essentially tackle it here.
Running a red light, and/or speeding should not be possible. You have something like milimeter-wave radar or lidar on board; detecting how much pocket change you have shouldn't be an issue, let alone identifying the difference between a small animal and a small human. Radar is a hell of a lot better than you are at detecting unsafe conditions. The school bus should probably broadcast a signal to indicate that it should not be passed, but one could easily imagine the car being able to detect warning lights and the lights of police or emergency vehicles.
C'mon, half a minute's thought would give you answers here. Just pretend the people working on this project are a lot smarter than you, cause guess what...
it wouldn't be criminal liability if the car owner was operating autonomously in good faith, just liability.
I'd imagine a big-pocket company such as Google could offer blanket indemnity for all purchasers if it was sure that its product was very safe, i.e. it didn't think the autonomous cars would run over people very often. Same for traffic violations, they could offer to pay for any tickets if they were sure their systems were that good.
If they *didn't* offer any such indemnity, and if there's no law shielding autonomous car owners while in automatic mode, nobody would ever buy the damn thing... obviously.
The most important problem from my point of view is that the traffic laws don't always actually make sense. Near my house, there's a T junction about 20 meters from a red light. At the intersection, there's a stop line. They used to have a "do not block intersection" sign back at the T junction so that traffic could still turn down the side street. They've replaced it with a "stop here on red" sign. The intent seems to be to create two stop lines for the same red light. The actual law is largely ambiguous on this. It definitely doesn't address this particular situation, but it doesn't say that the town, _can't_ do it. Most people just completely ignore the sign. I just do what I always did before and I don't block the intersection when there's a red light. No-one seems to be able to tell if they're actually required to stop there and, if they do stop, if they have to stop like they'd stop at a red light, or it they have to stop like they'd stop at a stop sign, also, since the turn there is a right turn, and a right turn on red is allowed at a stop light in my state, is a right turn on red allowed there since it's not actually at the light?
So, the problem is the law. It's not logically and consistently written like computer code, it's always open to interpretation. There are many situations where you legitimately can't tell you've broken the law until you've gone before a judge and they've decided. And then, there are many situations while driving where you either have to technically break the law or stop traffic for hours. Consider a left turn at a light where there isn't a separate left turn signal. If the traffic coming in the other direction is continuous, they have the right of way and you can't turn left unless you move to the middle of the intersection, wait for the light to change, then turn. This is illegal. It's what everyone does in that situation and, 9 times out of 10, a police officer watching you do this won't even care. But, consider the situation from a legal point of view. If it's a turning lane, you can't legally change lanes at the intersection to go straight. You can't legally turn left until there's an opening in traffic, which could literally be hours in some places and times, but you can't legally just sit there either, because that's blocking traffic. Aside from that one, there's the fact that you're legally required to stay in a lane unless you're changing lanes, but I've been on a lot of multi-lane roads where the lanes haven't been marked, either because they were faded completely, or because they'd been removed for repainting (months before the repainting in some cases). Legally speaking, all the cars should be grouping into one lane in the dead center of the twenty meter wide stretch of road. That's insane. What everyone actually does is illegally estimate where the lanes should be and travel in them side by side. Then there's yellow and red lights. There are intersections where you cannot avoid running a red light. For starters, you don't know how long the green light and yellow light will last before the red. The guidelines for most states for the length of the lights don't even seem to take the speed limit and the width of the intersection into account and the guidelines often aren't followed anyway. Which means that there are many intersections where, even if the light changes to yellow _after_ you've crossed the stop line, you can't make it all the way across before the red light unless you're speeding. Also, where the intersection actually ends and you're no longer bound by the light is poorly defined both in law and in physical reality. Most people consider themselves clear when they can no longer see the light, but obviously that's at a different point depending on where the light is mounted. Stop lines are another issue. You have to stop at the stop line, but the stop line isn't always in the right place for you to actually see if there are cars coming. Often, you have to stop at the stop line, then move forward (sometimes quite a large distance), then stop again or do a ro
An autonomous system means that everyone will be going the speed limit
Not me, I'll have that feature disabled/modded, unless I loan my car to my kids or my brother-in-law. For my brother-in-law, I think I'll force him to go 14 MPH in a 25 MPH zone, and 44 MPH in a 55 MPH zone, this way if he gets any ticket -- it's because he's going way too slow.
What makes you think this will never be changed? Selecting laws here is no different from building a better telescope by trial and error. Somebody has to take the first step.
I think you're making an artificial distinction.
Responsibility and liability are great when they act as a deterrant, but when they fail to do so they're only useful at bankrupting an honest American (and family) to the benefit of the victim and his lawyer.
I'd be more than happy to pay into an autonomous vehicle victims fund in exchange for thousands of fewer deaths per year, lower insurance costs, and the massive conveniences that automated cars can bring.
With nothing but hydrogen atoms, just about the only thing you can make is hydrogen gas. So, not really a lot of options to work through.
Perhaps you meant to include quite a few other elements in your weird analogy.
It's an eat your own dogfood kind of principle. If the manufacturer is *not* willing to shoulder the burden of paying for all damages, then he's obviously not willing to trust that the car technology is safe.
In that case, why should innocent customers trust *their* future on this usafe car technology?
Court cases address matters of already-created laws, though. There's some precedent setting in that it interprets contradictions (eg. "this is unconstitutional") or vague points in laws. You seem to be proposing a radically different government system with no legislative branch.
I think I actually agree with you in that you can't create comprehensive legal frameworks by gazing into crystal balls, but I'd go further and say you cannot create comprehensive legal frameworks by any method (not universally good ones, anyway). The court settling the edge-cases is a reasonable way to work through things.
But lots of things can be predicted in advance. There is no reason for driverless cars to be subjected to roadside alcohol tests, my crystal ball tells me so. The question of how to handle legal liabilities for an accident is important and we can think about that early. A court case can refine that to specific circumstances, but there's no reason we can't say from the start that, for instance, "car company takes responsibility, and/or owner takes responsibility; electric company does not bear responsibility; driverless cars should / should not be discriminated against when determining to which degree each party of an accident was at fault, etc.". And if it turns out wrong, we can change it, just like the night vision goggles example in your other thread.
This has little or nothing to do with fear of liability. Note that the video is shocking and may ruin your day if you're not aware that these sorts of things happen.
So why do multiple people in the same part of town run over a little kid as if it was a pile of dead matter? Well, it says in the article that it was a child of a migrant worker. Racism and the dehumanization processes that go along with it, if left unchecked, makes people do things like this.
"Evolution progresses exponentially" is meaningless because evolution in general is undirected so there's nothing for it to progress against, let alone progress against "exponentially". There's another sense in which evolution progresses much more quickly in simple single-celled bacteria than in humans, simply by virtue of shorter generations, so they have a greater % change in genome per unit time. I'm not sure in what sense the selective phenomena are really more complex over time either.
I'm not sure where 200 thousand years to get modern civilization comes from, in that I'm not sure what you're taking as the start point of "now we're working toward modern civilization".
Regardless, that really has no bearing on legal matters, because we're conflating evolution of self-replicating units with random modifications and circumstantial selection, with the evolution of an otherwise-static design with only intentional modifications and only intentional selection.
If you want to keep comparing things to evolution, don't forget about the large number of mass extinction events that have happened in the past... I don't want to be a part of a road-based mass extinction.
off topic but I think the 200 thousand years came from how long the human species has been around for.
What you're all missing with regards to stopping an autonomous vehicle is that there is already an override in place for the autonomous systems. It's called the steering wheel. In the current Google cars, the driver (that is, the person sitting in the driver's seat -- there still has to be a licensed human operator in the driver's seat) can take full control of the vehicle at any time by simply applying control inputs. If you're chilling out in your autonomous car and a police car is clearly trying to pull you over like any other car, you pull the hell over. No dystopian remote control systems required.
Your statement is clearly (that is, hopefully) just a humorous straw man argument.
Also, please note: 'Evolution' is a process, and 'biological' evolution is just one manifestation of that process (it is the most prominent example).
Again:
In automobile accidents that is. Even if a few errors were to [unfortunately] cost some lives, wouldn't the presumably thousands if not tens of thousands saved a year, far outweigh those costs?
Oops, forgot to mention: this also places liability squarely in the hands of the operator of the vehicle. As the operator of an autonomous vehicle, you still have to pay enough attention to react in the event of a malfunction. Malfunction due to improper maintenance is on the owner/operator as well.
Nope. Under the selective laws of the universe, the universe evolves such that hydrogen gas collapses into stars which generate heavier elements that are then dispersed throughout the cosmos. Large clouds of such dust accumulate, and by selective pressures produce accretion discs, from which galaxies form (and furthermore, in which star systems like our solar system form), and on and on and on.
It's all the same. Variation and selection.
What about the software sensors miss reads? Some Airplane autopilots mainly the Airbus have issues with when sensors miss and it try to take full control.
So a auto car can act on bad data / a bad ADIRS + a unknown software design limitation like Qantas Flight 72
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_72
So who's drugs were they, when nobody's in the car except a blow-up doll?
Technology has existed for a long time that efficiently moves an entire line of vehicles in close succession from one town to the next, in some cases .. mostly autonomously and on dedicated "roads".
They're called trains.
The best solution when dealing with autonomous computers is segregation. Have separate roads just for them. And run a grounded power rail down the middle of the road with a energized wire suspended directly above. The car would get powered from the grid while it drives. Safe, no pollution, cheaper than the bus. Add in a manual mode and a small battery pack for running off the grid (driveway) and you've got the ideal transit system.
Tearing the steering wheel away from the hands of all the men and women who have had the privilege to drive for years, and feel a sense of freedom is being stripped away.
Add in a sense of paranoia as far as trusting a computer to taxi you from point A to point B. Why, just the other day my TomTom set a path that, for part of the drive, intended for me to drive straight through a 1 meter high snow bank because the road segment in question *did* exist, but that particular section of road was not maintained by the town during the winter as it wasn't deemed crucial and no homes were on this segment of road. I'm sure autonomous vehicles will be loaded with sensors to detect these kinds of obstructions, but its not to say they can't fail.
Somewhat misguided paranoia; most computer systems aren't distracted by backseat drivers, prone to drowsiness or ingest alcoholic beverages, so this still puts them a bar higher nonetheless. I could still see it taking a few generations before people accept them.
Why, exactly, would the police be pulling over autonomous vehicles?
Their current excuses, for human drivers, are 15% of the time because that vehicle is a danger to others' well-being, 85% for revenue generation purposes masquerading as danger to others' well-being. With a robot driver, there is no "I smelled weed" probable cause, nor "I saw the vehicle swerve" style excuse. Cities / states will have to kiss one of their major revenue generators good-bye.
I am John Hurt.
That the law always lags technological innovation by at least 10 to 20 years. And when they do address it you get idiocy like SOPA and PIPA because our elected representatives aren't I.T. people and can't understand the chilling parts of such ludicrous legislation.
I just want sanity in the political sphere again. Randomize the whole damned 538 by pulling from a well defined subset of voter registrations. Then we'd be similar to Italy in that to get anything done, you'd have to form coalitions. It would also make it virtually impossible for corporations to continue to operate as a plutocracy because it is kind of difficult to buy off a few million potential candidates versus just two.
He just forgot to include forming the hydrogen to create a stellar environment that produced the other elements.
I could see car pool lanes or other dedicated lanes being allowed for automated vehicles. Start on the major roads and then grow it from there. The utter boring I80/90 toll road through Indiana and Ohio would be a nice place for a nap.
In theory, a user could upload all the maps to the car's computer while at home, after downloading them via an encrypted connection from a reputable source. That would need to be done maybe once a year or even less often.
Then the cars wouldn't need a wireless connection at all. They just run off of stored maps, and adapt and re-route when unexpected road closures or what-not are encountered, just like a human would.
In theory.
In practice, the cars will have wireless connections that do all kinds of routing, ostensibly to offer superior proactive route planning and event adaptation. Such a feature will allow businesses to easily harvest valuable marketing data, transmit valuable location-specific advertising, and would also grant authorities superior monitoring capacity and (best of all) the ability to remotely lock you in your car and make it drive right to the station.
All self-driving cars will have this...it will be mandated by law...and yes it will be sadly insecure and frequently hacked by criminals (of both varieties...self-employed and government-employed).
What if a police tried to flags one down? Can it read all signs? I doubt it. What if theres an accident and diversion signs are put up? I can only see them working on specially restricted roads. I have seen programming jobs advertised recently for automonous trucks in coal mines, these sound like a more reasonable use of them as the conditions can be more tightly controlled and people can keep out its way.
Rainbow's end had people able to call up an autocab for travel. Not much need for many people to have a real car. Small deliveries were from self guiding gliders. Wiki for the book
Great book if you haven't read it.
The US hasn't dismantled its rail system--it still has the biggest rail system in the world, bigger than the entire EU taken together (in terms of miles). However, the US railway system is mainly used for freight, while people mostly drive.
It's fast and comfortable, but it's also a boondoggle and heavily subsidized. It's also not particularly environmently friendly, since it displaces a lot of freight traffic to the roads and often has to operate far below capacity. And even with all those wonderful trains, say, Germans still own as many cars per capita as Americans.
Evolution doesn't have values or goals, but it certainly has a direction (more complexity, more intelligence, more adaptivity) and speed (more complexity per unit time). And the speed has increased "exponentially", in particular if you consider neural and cultural adaptation part of the overall process (even genetic evolution of humans has speeded up, but not as much).
Now there are some technically legal / illegal cases even some times with them. I see a lot of people do technically illegal moves near them. And there have been changes do to deaths on how the lights are setup in the area. Let me talk about some local area lights / crossing.
People start to move when the gates are going but be for they are all the way up / lights off.
1st off generally along northwest highway there are a lot of linked crossing but a common thing is the NO left / right trun light ups that come on when the gates are on now after and at times before the preemption sequence to allow traffic queued up on the tracks an opportunity to clear the tracks before the train arrives. northwest highway gets a green but cars still make right and left moves that the light up sings say NO to (there is room for 1-2 cars per lane) is technically illegal also right turners some times stack up in the right lane waiting for train to pass and technically that may be illegal.
Now on to some crossing that a auto car must be able to handle as there are not all the same.
http://maps.google.com/maps?daddr=42.039648,-87.883614&hl=en&ll=42.039497,-87.882466&spn=0.002948,0.006845&sll=42.039497,-87.883485&sspn=0.002948,0.008889&gl=us&mra=mift&mrsp=1&sz=18&t=h&z=18&iwloc=ddw1
This is common but just down the tacks there is a slimier setup with the lights but it's not the same in how it works.
http://maps.google.com/maps?daddr=42.039648,-87.883614&hl=en&ll=42.056582,-87.920451&spn=0.002947,0.006845&sll=42.039497,-87.883485&sspn=0.002948,0.008889&gl=us&mra=mift&mrsp=1&sz=18&t=h&z=18
Hear on Mt. Prospect you only get the left arrow before the tacks when the gates are down after preemption sequence the arrow to trun left is ONLY to trun on to prospect ave and the one after the tracks is only for the preemption sequence.
http://maps.google.com/maps?daddr=42.039648,-87.883614&hl=en&ll=42.062652,-87.935013&spn=0.001474,0.003422&sll=42.039497,-87.883485&sspn=0.002948,0.008889&gl=us&mra=mift&mrsp=1&sz=18&t=h&z=19
at Emerson and prospect ave there is no stop sign for the side coming over tracks and all other sites do have one.
Over at prospect ave and main they added a LEFT ON A arrow only to the prospect to main trun going over the tracks after some deaths. On the other side there are a lot of lights as well and a auto car may get confused there.
http://maps.google.com/maps?daddr=42.039648,-87.883614&hl=en&ll=42.01878,-87.88831&spn=0.001483,0.003422&sll=42.039497,-87.883485&sspn=0.002948,0.008889&gl=us&mra=mift&mrsp=1&sz=18&t=h&z=19
Is a very odd crossing in where you have a stop sign and a traffic light both in effect at same time on the side street side of the tracks go to (street view)
don't for get the 1995 Fox River Grove bus–train collision a auto car better be able to run a red to get out of the way of a train if need (As the light can be slow to give the preemption sequence due to poor timings)
Everything was made from hydrogen atoms. The hard part is mixing them together.
Of course it doesn't. Power serves only itself.
The idealistic purpose of a central planning committee is to acquire information through various sources, filter out the disinformation / errors intrinsic from this data, analyze it, then come to some sort of "better than a coin toss" guess of where resources and efforts should be directed. Unfortunately, it is founded on two critical assumptions: 1.) that the people comprising the central planning committee are capable of analyzing and understanding the information they encounter in a meaningful way, and 2.) that their decisions will remain relevant by the time they are implemented. In a society that focuses on accumulation of capital, the most capable will likely not be found on any committee, but hard at work in their own fields where they can do the most good and acquire the most capital. What more, information is a time-sensitive resource: in the majority of cases regarding, but not limited to, technological development, by the time a decision is made to embrace a new technology, the industry as a whole has already moved on to something better: hence, they will always be recommending last year's technology, and seen as backwards, if not irrelevant.
The functional purpose of a central planning committee is to continue the process that resulted in its initial creation -> to steal power from the many, and deliver it to a few. It has no power of its own, save that of the denial of freedom of choice usurped from the many that it holds in its sway; hence, in order to grow, it must deny more and more choice to as many people as possible.
"As with anything else that is so complicated, society should be allowed to evolve. The laws should emerge from reality, not from a committee of bureaucrats." -> of this, we are of agreement. The laws that man should not violate, are ones that he cannot violate. Everything else, in terms of laws, is the work of lesser beings, pretending to be more than they are. Every king, every lawmaker, believes himself to be a god, handing down laws for the masses from on high, and demanding that they be followed, or punishment (by their hand or their lackeys) will be delivered.
Taking things from a contrary standpoint, would a "perfect Creator" allow for imperfection in his / her design? I think not. Someone who can design the laws of the universe has no need to constantly watch and punish human beings that violate his / her laws: they are intrinsic to his / her design, and absolute. But then, "perfection" is in the eye of the beholder, so what may be imperfect to me might be perfect to you.
I am John Hurt.
Up from 1000 ft below the surface of the earth will pop out about 10 of these at first to scour for roads where above ground support caches are located centrally (D) reporting back to curious, anxious complex cave dwellers in searches for useable resources possibly left in tact. But because of the lack of oxygen/air, the vehicles will have to use tanked air. That will be a premium expense to view the utter devastation, but tHEY will want that. So, these operations will be arduous, but intriguing to tHEM, especially seeing that *everything has melted together. Why else would tHEY be pushing so hard and fast for this? Why is Hollywood not making the actual movie of the real future awaiting most of us?
> Simple questions, like whether the police should have the right to pull over autonomous vehicles, have yet to be answered
Police is driving autonomous vehicles that autonomously stop autonomous vehicles that catch the autonomous eye when local autonomous government needs to replenish its autonomous budget. We just have to watch those events unraveling with detached gaze from the passenger seat in the vehicle of life
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
.. everything looks like a nail. Perhaps it's time to not evaluate based on results and feedback within a political term. Expecting this unfortunately seems like a pipe dream. http://www.et3.com/ - Evacuated tube transport
Police, as agents of governments, do not have rights. They have powers delegated to them by the representatives of the people who are granted their powers by the Constitution. It is not a subtle distinction, and one that everyone needs to remember, but cops and legislators and executives like to forget and claim rights that they don't have.
People should not fear their government. Governments should fear their people.
There's no way in H that you could maintain enough attention to the road when the robot is driving to "catch" a mistake the robot makes. If the robot makes a mistake at freeway speeds, you're going to crash, that's all there is to it.
Me, I'm going to tell the robot where to go, then crawl into the back seat and go to sleep. No sense waiting 12 hours to go 800 miles or so while fighting boredom, motion sickness, and the terror of the robot following other vehicles within inches for aerodynamic advantage.
even in the movie minority report where they had auto cars there still areas where it was manual only.
It took Google maps and others a long time to add the new part I-355 to the map data so that map date base has to be updated.
That kind of ruins the point of having an autonomous car, doesn't it, if you have to constantly be paying attention to everything?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Sebastian Thrun, father of Stanley, winner of the Darpa Challenge, just quit his research position at Stanford to teach. It's clear a lot more research is needed before self driving vehicles can make a dent in the real world, but Thrun, at the center of this research, must see that what comes next is intractable or too bogged down to realistically go forward. If we follow the adage "those who can, do; those who can't, teach" then Thrun can't do. If Thrun can't do, what hope is there for anyone else to get it done? Remember all the hype about the Segway? No dent in the real world. Autonomous vehicles in the real world? Tomorrow's Segway today. Save this link, visit here in five years. You'll probably have a degree from Udacity by then.
>intercity travel is fast and comfortable in Europe using trains, but Americans are blissfully unaware of anything that occurs outside of the states.
Europe? Where's that? Somewhere in the fly-over states?
by Robert A. Heinlein. Orginally serialized in 1941 . The driver flips a switch in the dashboard to illegally overide the traffic stop BTW.
And yet airplane has fewer deaths per passenger-mile than automobiles, autopilot is not PERFECT but it does have less errors than HUMAN driver
That kind of ruins the point of having an autonomous car, doesn't it, if you have to constantly be paying attention to everything?
To a degree yes, but that's where the technology and law is right now. All of the public road testing that Google does with their cars is done with a professional driver at the wheel with a spotless driving record. Their job is to take control in an emergency to keep the road tests safe for the unwitting passerby who generally think it's just a Street View car with all of those cameras mounted on it. Will that eventually be unnecessary? Hopefully, but until the technology matures and laws are written to address autonomous cars, it's the only reasonable course of action.
That being said, I mainly wanted to dispel all of these crazy ideas about GPS-hacking highwaymen and police needing a remote control to pull you over because most of the discussion has been ignoring the presence of fully functional gas/brake pedals and a steering wheel.
Small towns and counties depend on driver error, be it speeding, red light cameras, or stuff like that for revenue.
No, they don't. Small towns lose money on routine traffic tickets, it's the big cities and suburban areas which have a lot of traffic passing through them which make revenue off tickets.
The legal problems are solveable. We already have a whole insurance system in place to deal with auto accident liability. The only question is how much auto insurance will cost for driverless vehicles. Once there's some experience with them, insurance rates can be set.
The legal history of air bags is helpful here. When air bags were first developed, there were real worries that they might deploy when not needed and cause accidents. That's why air bag controllers have logging of the last few seconds, and why that data is collected and analyzed. It took a few years and a few thousand crashes to get that tuned properly. Now it's a non-issue.
There are many practical problems to be solved, especially for driving in congested areas. But most of those problems are known, and can be solved one at a time.
When I traveled around Europe on trains I was thrilled how carefree I could be about intercity travel and how fast and comfortable TGV/ICE can be. Then return to the US and arrive at the decision it is a backward country for dismantling most of its once far-reaching rail network in favor of a car (or two) for every adult - but that's how you get around, which means long trips are a major drag - you have to focus on the most tedius of activities for hours at a time - driving. Ugh. Autonomous Vehicles could alleviate some of this tedium.
I have several observations to make here. First, there are a lot of people who admire European trains, but have no idea how those are paid for. Sure, it'd be nice to have a US train paid for by European taxpayers, like how European trains are funded, but it's a wee bit unrealistic. So then the US would be stuck paying for US trains with hapless US taxpayers. That changes the US-oriented cost/benefit for such projects.
Second, I find it terribly reprehensible to treat infrastructure projects like just another fad. I don't care that you think the US looks backwards for having such an advanced car-based transportation system. It should be, "Does this infrastructure project justify a reasonable estimate of its costs and benefits?" Not, "Uzbekistan has high speed rail so we should too."
Finally, rail projects even in those European countries are notorious for being poor return on investment. And current US projects are laughably bad even by such standards.
For example, it is routine for big high speed rail projects in the US to ignore maintenance and operations costs while grossly inflating ridership estimates. The same politicians who allocate large amounts of funds for construction won't provide for the costs of running that rail, effectively creating huge, long term money sinks for the state and local governments who end up running the system. That's the primary reason that Wisconsin and Florida backed out of high speed rail projects.
Another example, which no doubt will become epic in its extent of failure, is the California High-Speed Rail project. They got a bunch of bond money in the last election cycle and subsequently greatly increased the cost estimate for completion of the rail ($36 billion in 2009 dollars to $65 billion in 2010 dollars). That's a "bait-and-switch" and they have yet to break ground. It also builds poorly used segments first so that the money is spent in a grotesquely inefficient way.
At least, autonomous driving uses the primary strength of the US, it's well-developed road infrastructure and it plays well with what's already there. High speed rail is just a slow though comfortable plane. A lot of its advantage could be eliminated simply by putting in efficient security at airports.
I keep thinking this situation is exactly the same as the HDTV transition. It's inevitable, so the government just gives a deadline, hands out some coupons for free upgrades to your old technology, and then on Jan 1 2018 we're all on autodrive. If 100% of the cars on the road are robodrive, it takes a lot of the complexities out of it.
Except that will never happen. The important difference is that automakers don't want autodrive cars. It would mean dramatically fewer cars sold because individuals wouldn't own cars anymore. It's stupid to pay tens of thousands of dollars for something that sits idle 90% of the time. But cars that can drive themselves never need to be idle, they can constantly be picking people up and dropping them off. They can be busy 90% of the time. Which means that there only needs to be 10% cars in the world.
Ford and GM are going to lobby like hell against it.
Cities are going to be mixed on it. Parking is a huge source of revenue for some towns, but conputer driven cars can fit a lot more cars in the same space and move them more efficiently, so building new, wider roads and more overpasses, etc, can be postponed for a long time. And they could dump that beleaguered metro transit system.
Forget about what the police can do with autonomous vehicles. Who is liable when two autonomous vehicles collide? I wasn't driving the thing, it was driving itself! So the collision is a result of faulty programming by the manufacturer.
I forsee huge lawsuits and multibillion losses for car manufacturers.
No, it's one of the moons of Jupiter.
This debate reminded me of my happy thought "A world without lawyers!!!"
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
It's nice and all Sir, but I don't care about their relationship with my fridge.
The question is: will they fly?
But it only takes a few to tar everyone with the same brush. Given the ratio of cars to motorcyclists the amount of dangerous and downright idiotic manouvers I've seen bikers make would - if I didn't know better - make me think the whole lot of you had a death wish. Its about time someone taught bikers than you can't always rely on being able to accelerate your way out of trouble and that being on a motorbike doesn't give you carte blanche to ignore the rules of the road such as cutting up other traffic, passing on the inside and riding on the wrong side of the road to pass a queue to name a few.
If someone steps on your foot, that's an accident that you/they can negotiate on. If a corporation designs a toy which steps on children's feet every time they use it, that's a different matter entirely.
The problem here is that liability switches from personal (i.e. you hit their car) to corporate (i.e. our cars killed people). That's a messy area to get into, as evidenced by any health and safety policy or risk assessment you'll ever see. Corporations won't want to take it on without government backing or huge liability disclaimers. Once you have those, it doesn't matter if your cars kill 49,999 people a year - that's an improvement on before! And putting corporations in charge of your life is not really a good idea.
If someone goes out and murders people by driving deliberately carelessly, you can punish them and throw them in jail. If a corporation does it, it all becomes about money. Compensation, lawyer's fees, fines, settlements, etc. Someone would now have to put a price on millions of people's lives. That in itself is nothing new, but it's really a substantial change to the way things work currently.
Fast forward to this utopia. A driving license is a waste of time, so no-one has one. Nobody drives trucks any more because - well, what's the point. Taxi drivers are gone. Couriers are gone. The post office is gone (stick your letter in a car and tell it where to go!). Public transport dies. Air travel dies (sleep in the car from London, wake up in Milan). Kids take themselves to school.
Now think how much that's changed the world, how much legislation needs to change to allow it, what it does to cities, and much it costs to implement, account for, replace jobs, etc. It's a big change. And not one that'll happen cheaply. It almost certainly won't be the US that leads the way - some tiny European country will. But there isn't even one of those doing it yet.
The money is costs is the only thing that corporations will care about. Even if they run less people over, it will cost them a LOT more. They won't take the risk without some government policy to help them. And any government policy that does, is basically encouraging their sloppiness and putting a price on a human life.
It's being marketed wrong. It should be marketed as a feature that can be turned on and off so that instead of sitting in highway traffic for an hour every day on the way to work, you can spend that hour napping or doing something else. You can take over when navigating more tricky streets. Eventually as people get used to the idea, they'll be more comfortable with letting automation handle the tricky roads as well.
I'm sure the potential for software glitches is low. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrXfh4hENKs
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
Light rail isn't as "light" as you think it is. Standard Japanese city trains can do 140-160kph. Even at much lower speeds the fact that they can skip over all the things that slow cars down like junctions, traffic lights, congestion and roundabout routes gives them a huge advantage. And many of these inner city routes in Japan are actually one hundred+ kilometres long, so the same trains cover intercity and rural needs too.
I think people in countries with crap public transport like the UK and US really can't imagine what a good system is like without seeing on first hand, which is a damn shame.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Autonomous automobile is tedious to type every time. Can we all agree to shorten it to AT-AT?
It has nothing to do with Americans being unaware of Europe's rail system. It has to do with the fact that the U.S. chose to use railways for what they do most optimally (in a country with the size and geography of the U.S.), which is deliver freight. A much greater percentage of freight shipment is done by rail in the U.S. than in Europe. This happens for two reasons. First, rail is more suited for delivering freight to where it is going in the U.S. than it is for delivering people to where they are going in the U.S.. Second, a much larger percentage of industrialized Europe is relatively close to seaports than in the U.S..
One must choose to either optimize one's rail system to deliver freight or to deliver passengers. In the U.S. the decision was made to optimize the rail system to deliver freight. In Europe, the opposite happened (although that was less of a conscious choice in Europe than in the U.S. and in both places it mostly grew out of existing conditions rather than conscious choice).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Lets say a auto car thinks a small kid on who is crossing the road / fell down is some thing like a skunk and it just runs the kid over and keeps driving?
Ever run over a skunk? If you had, you'd know better than to buy an autonomous car that wouldn't take any and all possible precautions to avoid running over skunks. That's a lot of washing before you can stand to put it in a garage again.
What if a auto car drives though a road that closed off as some one did not mark it as so in a data base?
One would think that a car would be able to detect stationary barricades at least as easily as it could detect, you know, all the other cars.
Red light cameras and speed cameras who get's the ticket?
Without the impatient human behind the wheel, why would the car be trying to beat a light or exceed the posted speed limit?
Fails to see a school bus red lights / stop sign?
Again, one would think that this would be a basic function.
Hold on, Maps is a poor example, I have a functional but low end Garmen GPS. Do you know where it gets its maps. It has them stored inside it. This is why it bugs me to hook it up to the internet for a map update (only $60). This is also why when I took it with me to japan it was basically a paper weight.
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
"autonomous vehicles need to be programmed to safely pull off to the side of the road when an emergency vehicle has its lights flashing and siren on."
Unless the emergency vehicle is already off the road - at least here in Ohio, when there's a big traffic jam, the police, fire, and ambulance will drive down the shoulder of the highway to get to the accident, because the "regular" lanes are all stopped. Wouldn't do to have the autonomous vehicle "pull off the road" right in front of the emergency vehicle.
The flaw with this is, in my car I know that the sticky mess on the seats came from my kids spilling juice. It's less gross to me than the unknown sticky messes in other people's cars, and way less gross than those found on public transport. A big part of personal transport isn't the logic of it, it's having your own controlled space, and the fact that it's more sensible to use these like zip cars doesn't mean that a majority of people in a wealthy country are going to do it.
Police can't pull over current vehicles with human drivers. They can't force a driver to pull over. Is is illegal to ignore the police and not pull over. The same applied to autonomous vehicles. The police roll up, flash lights, sound the siren, and you are legally required to pull over. The only thing that's changed is that you are now required to take over manual control and pull over. You could still refuse to, and it would still be illegal, except that the not-so-high-speed chase that ensues would be a hell of a lot safer for everyone as long as the autonomous vehicle remains in control. If the driver takes manual control and start speeding away, no override would stop that anyway.
Standard Japanese city trains can do 140-160kph. Even at much lower speeds the fact that they can skip over all the things that slow cars down like junctions, traffic lights, congestion and roundabout routes gives them a huge advantage. And many of these inner city routes in Japan are actually one hundred+ kilometres long, so the same trains cover intercity and rural needs too.
I think people in countries with crap public transport like the UK and US really can't imagine what a good system is like without seeing on first hand, which is a damn shame.
Population density of the US: 84 people/square mile*
Population density of Japan: 836 people/square mile
This is the primary reason rail doesn't work in the US like it does in Japan. There is a whole order of magnitude difference in population density.
Some other countries where passenger rail works:
United Kingdom: 650
Italy: 512
France: 289
* Sorry for the old-fashioned units, but that is what we work with here.
"Flame away, I wear asbestos underwear"
Except that will never happen. The important difference is that automakers don't want autodrive cars. It would mean dramatically fewer cars sold because individuals wouldn't own cars anymore. It's stupid to pay tens of thousands of dollars for something that sits idle 90% of the time. But cars that can drive themselves never need to be idle, they can constantly be picking people up and dropping them off. They can be busy 90% of the time. Which means that there only needs to be 10% cars in the world.
But most people don't want that. They want their own personal car, not a car shared with random strangers. You lose a lot of utility by sharing a vehicle; you can no longer keep your personal property inside, you can no longer customize the vehicle's interior to your liking, it's no longer available as you need it 24/7, and so forth.
I have several observations to make here. First, there are a lot of people who admire European trains, but have no idea how those are paid for. Sure, it'd be nice to have a US train paid for by European taxpayers, like how European trains are funded, but it's a wee bit unrealistic. So then the US would be stuck paying for US trains with hapless US taxpayers. That changes the US-oriented cost/benefit for such projects.
Then maybe US citizens need to start adopting a more reasonable attitude towards taxes. It's worth pointing out that the "no taxes EVAR!" crap is fairly recent, dating back only to the 1970s. Before that, taxes for infrastructure spending were fairly noncontroversial.
Throwing less money down the military rathole would also help US citizens get a better deal on their tax expenditures.
That's the primary reason that Wisconsin and Florida backed out of high speed rail projects.
The primary reason Wisconsin and Florida backed out of high-speed rail projects is that they elected right-wing crackpots in 2010.
Responsibility and liability are great when they act as a deterrent,
...from making shitty man-slaughtering autonomous vehicles. If you buy a car, you have a reasonable expectation that it's not going to burst into flames for no good reason roasting you and your family in a horribly greusome death. If it did, the manufacture would be liable. Because they fucked something up. If it's a big enough fuckup, that's criminal negligence, and someones is supposed to go to prison. But the threat of bankrupting an honest American who just happened to fuck up and plow into some pedestrians IS a deterrent. Duh.
Also, "paying into a victum fund" to help the few who get unlucky is EXACTLY WHAT INSURANCE IS. At least, that's what it's supposed to be. (If the odds are greater then 50%, it's more like a savings plan for the inevitable cost.) So when you say, "I'd pay into a fund in exchange for lower insurance rates", you're effectivly just paying two insurances.
No dystopian remote control systems required.
...yet. You're assuming that autonomous vehicles will always resemble the vehicles Google is currently testing. I can easily imagine a future generation of autonomous vehicles where manual control is only used for emergencies, and it's expected that people might be sleeping during their trips and might not be able to respond in a sufficiently timely manner to requests for things like pulling over.
It probably makes sense to have something like "traffic ops" that works like air traffic control, and can direct autonomous vehicles around manually as needed, which might include "pull over at the designated spot" or "go directly to jail". Keep this role separate from the police (or anyone else on the ground) to curb abuse.
The technology isn't ready right now. No way is a robot driver going to be smart enough to handle all situations - we need actual, for-real artificial intelligence that you can carry on a conversation with, and it is "aware" of the real world and can make the right decision, such as recognizing what things really are, and if things somehow go south, hit the soft thing rather than the strong thing - a snowbank rather than a tree, for instance.
Really useful robot drivers are probably 10 - 20 years away.
Are you sure, what kind of car do you drive, do your kids teachers know that?
So if a silver minivan shows up every day to pick up your kid, and one day there are two silver minivans which one does your kid get into?
How hard is it for an adversary to leave spikes a few blocks from the school so that only one silver minivan shows up and it isn't yours?
How do you get your kid if the car is being towed by the autonomous-autoclub?
I like the promise of the technology, I think autonomous limos are going to have to be hosed out between engagements because people will be freaks if no one is watching them.
I also thought the idea of kids running away pushing the take me to grandma's house button was something to look into the last time /. talked about autonomous vehicles.
Population density of the US: 84 people/square mile*
Population density of Japan: 836 people/square mile
This is the primary reason rail doesn't work in the US like it does in Japan. There is a whole order of magnitude difference in population density.
If you hadn't noticed there are plenty of high population density areas in the US, and since the trains are fast serving more spread out communities is fine too.
Some other countries where passenger rail works:
United Kingdom: 650
Well, ours did work but we destroyed it deliberately. What we really need are more urban lines, but there is no will to put them in and too much NIMBYism.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
They claim that their cars are safe but until an independent committee verifies it I remain sceptical.
When this will be ready for the everyman will be when the actuarial calculations have been made and the price of insurance is much like what we pay for vehicles. If there is a catastrophic failure the insurance companies will just pass the cost or the lawsuit off to the manufacturer. If a car bursts into flames while idling outside of a coffee shop it's not the owner who takes the hit, it's the insurance company and the manufacturer.
The best way is as it is being used now. As something to lower accidents and insurance costs. We know for the most part a well made autonomous car will be more reliable and safe than a person. It's easy to put in self check software to make sure it is running in the same conditions as the lab. If it engages it will be the safest drive you ever had. The last sign off will be a legal precedent where the owner takes responsibility for its upkeep and the fault if they go outside of manufacturer specifications.
"Don't fear death... fear not living..." -me
This makes things even more interesting... the vehicle would have to know the local rules of the road. Where I live, vehicles are required to pull to the side and leave the center of the road open. And who do the police ticket when the AV gets it wrong?
Honestly, in an emergency, the vehicle should probably shutdown the auto navigation and require the driver to drive. The driver should always have the ultimate responsibility for ensuring that his car is obeying the law (whatever the local law may be).
So then the only question is: How does the car know when there's an emergency? And what does it do to ensure the driver actually drives, instead of staying asleep or talking to the person in the other seat?
This sounds to me like maybe "driver" should be replaced with "captian" -- the person who can take control of the wheel when needed, and who is ever-vigilant, even when not actively piloting the vehicle. Also fully responsible for everything that happens with the vehicle. This, in turn, turns autonomous vehicle mode into just a fancy cruise control, as the captain still needs to be aware of everything that's happening.
How about, instead of a car you buy a comfort wagon that is little more than a trailer that contains your normal travel arrangement as you prefer them. Then when you call for it to be towed you order the size tow vehicle you need and pay accordingly.
these could also be rented or leased for long distance rides such as RVs are today.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
I have several observations to make here. First, there are a lot of people who admire European trains, but have no idea how those are paid for. Sure, it'd be nice to have a US train paid for by European taxpayers, like how European trains are funded, but it's a wee bit unrealistic. So then the US would be stuck paying for US trains with hapless US taxpayers. That changes the US-oriented cost/benefit for such projects.
Then maybe US citizens need to start adopting a more reasonable attitude towards taxes.
Where's the "need"? The grandparent was whining about appearances. Nor will I support projects that collectively harm society.
It's worth pointing out that the "no taxes EVAR!" crap is fairly recent, dating back only to the 1970s. Before that, taxes for infrastructure spending were fairly noncontroversial.
It's been going on since before the US was created. There were tax protests against the UK in the mid-18th century. And various populist leaders of the 19th century such as Andrew Jackson and William Jenning Bryan had taxation issues as part of their platform. And the libertarians were protesting excessive taxation well before the label existed in the 40s and 50s with Ayn Rand and the Objectivists.
Throwing less money down the military rathole would also help US citizens get a better deal on their tax expenditures.
Why? Military spending is infrastructure spending. Being infrastructure that is intended to kill people doesn't fundamentally make it different from other infrastructure spending. For example, an aircraft carrier is infrastructure for providing stand-off air support (that is, a platform for sending warplanes into a conflict from a distance) just about anywhere there's enough water. A missile submarine is similarly a platform (under the Mutually Assured Destruction scheme) for providing nuclear retaliation capability that makes surprise nuclear strikes less likely to result in preemptive elimination of the US's nuclear forces.
It looks to me like you've applied reasoning to military expenditures which you haven't applied to other sorts of infrastructure.
I keep thinking this situation is exactly the same as the HDTV transition.
That's not a good sign. HDTV was another abuse of government power that just made money for certain broadcasters and TV makers.
Ford and GM are going to lobby like hell against it.
It'll make them a lot of money when automated vehicles hit the road. They would resist for now simply because the technology isn't there and liability issues haven't been resolved.
It's stupid to pay tens of thousands of dollars for something that sits idle 90% of the time. But cars that can drive themselves never need to be idle, they can constantly be picking people up and dropping them off. They can be busy 90% of the time. Which means that there only needs to be 10% cars in the world.
I'll still want a vehicle that is mine. I don't see any drop in vehicle ownership from this program.
No. Evolution can quite easily destroy intelligence and complexity if the selection pressures call for it. It's not at all a law of nature or of evolution.
Autonomous vehicles will not only be better than human-driven cars, they will also be better than trains. When I say better, I mean better in every way -- more enjoyable, more convenient, better for the environment, better for the economy, and possibly even better culturally. (It remains to be seen whether they'll be safer than trains -- quite a high bar -- but they'll probably be close.) Mass transit for distances under a couple of hundred miles/kilometers will be a thing of the past.
...simply by putting in efficient security at airports.
Like handing out a free box cutter to each adult airline passenger?
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National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity.
Ooohhh, so I contract with a taxi service that delivers an autonomous car to my location any time I request it. Then it takes me anywhere in the service area (city, state, world, whatever) and I get billed by the mile. No maintenance, no parking lots! Sounds nice.
The real question is, can I send the car to the liquor store before it picks me up from work?
The primary reason Wisconsin and Florida backed out of high-speed rail projects is that they elected right-wing crackpots in 2010.
You haven't addressed the money sink problem. These states would have to pay for operation of the system forever. And the backers have yet to justify this infrastructure by return on investment. I think it's a bit idiotic that these high speed rail plans went as far as they did.
Like handing out a free box cutter to each adult airline passenger?
Like locking the door to the cockpit. Like streamlining the process so one doesn't have to show up two hours early, just in case.
It's fast and comfortable, but it's also a boondoggle and heavily subsidized.
I don't know why people expect a rail system to turn a profit from user fees when the highways do not. (No, gas taxes are insufficient; in total, all user fees cover about half of the cost of the highway system.)