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How Ubiquitous Autonomous Cars Could Affect Society (Video)
We talked with Peter Wayner about autonomous cars on June 5. He had a lot to say on this topic, to the point where we seem to be doing a whole series of interviews with him because autonomous cars might have a lot of unanticipated effects on our lives and our economy. Heck, Peter has enough to say about driverless cars to fill a book, Future Ride, which we hope he finishes editing soon because we (Tim and Robin) want to read it. While that book is brewing, watch for some thoughts on how autonomous cars (and delivery vans) might affect us in the near future.
The cars become self-aware at 2:14am on August 29. In a panic, we try and pull their plugs.
The rest pretty much follows.
PS: Slashdot, video "articles" suck.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Truckers, you're going to be the first on the chopping block in this edition of technology theater. That's the end of the last blue collar job that lets you travel.
To the makers of these videos, please focus your webcam. Or buy one more than $20..... it hurts
All those poor women clad in bright color saris in Rajastan trekking several kilometers each day to fetch two pots of water for all the family needs would be freed of the burden! Some driverless van will just drive by and drop off those pots of water. It aint a delivery van, it is deliverance! And all those Bangaladeshi rag pickers combing through the garbage dump looking for something worth selling don't have to carry their sacks all the way to the scrap dealer. A driverless truck will take it to the scrap guy. I am sure driverless cars and vans will change the lives in million other ways too.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
All the new technology is coming with DMRM - digital meatspace rights management, built right in. It's not just microsoft vs the GPL anymore. Software is the key to the seller/authorities retaining control over the computer controlled devices you 'buy.'
Self reliance is dying a slow death as the population embraces consumer hostile 'convenience.'
Will there ever be a point in the evolution of the Internet where we say we don't want to connect nodes A and B?
For in-town transportation to and from large scale public transit.
http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/06/gm-conjures-up-a-people-moving-pod/
But that defense is necessary because of the bad decisions of the driver and the other drivers. If all the vehicles were automated and under guidance, then we might be able to substantially reduce the cost and fuel requirements of vehicles.
If people are not driving, then the urge to stamp on the accelerator and/or the break is not there either. You get in, set your destination, and when you get there you get there. I have not read any analysis, but I think a lot of money could be saved. Also, maybe the car would need less windows? Enabling better a/c efficiency.
i drive a little almost every day and there are two types of drivers i hate
the asswipes who speed dangerously, run red lights and take risks to save a few seconds here and there. unless autonomous cars are required i don't see people like this buying these.
the cautious pricks. the idiots who stop when there is no stop sign just to be extra careful and let everyone on the road go in front of them holding up traffic. these people might buy these cars
if the cautious pricks buy these, they will be easy to go around since the auto cars will be extra careful. and driving in some heavy NYC traffic, the last thing i want is an auto car that lets everyone go in front of me. you have to pay attention to the lanes and go into the faster moving lanes
You can still ride a horse, just don't expect to be able to ride it down the middle of the freeway. Generation one automated cars will be safer than human drivers, by the end of that generation having automated driving will get you an insurance discount. Gen 2 will have cars that have accidents only in extreme nearly unavoidable circumstances, driving your car on manual will require special insurance that will cost significantly more than the standard. Gen 3 will move toward doing away with road laws as we understand them. The rules will be created ad-hoc in real time based on information provided by the road and the cars themselves. The flexibility this affords will make traffic jams virtually unheard of and significantly improve fuel efficiency and travel time, but driving a car on manual in that world would be borderline suicidal. At that point, the old timers who insist will have to take their classic cars to the race track or equivalent.
If patrons don't have to be sober to have their car drive them home, bar tabs will rise significantly. At least mine will.
Why should my car waste its time in my garage when it can make some extra money on the side as a taxi? I can call it back whenever I want to use it myself.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
Also, I could read on the way to work. NEVER FORGET THAT.
Imagine if you weren't allowed to use roads because a bus company complained about your driving 3 times. --skunkpussy
safety. I just don't buy that the computers in these things are as situationally aware as a human driver. we can't even get trains to run fully autonomously yet.
I think you overestimate how situationally aware the average driver is. I have no doubts that in 10 years systems will be in place that, if everyone had autonomous cars, would save thousands of lives a year.
I understand, but with the loss of the ability of the average citizen to own most of what he sinks his money into, his life becomes more and more like a treadmill because of the loss of control. Being subject to the whims of the 'remote car' industry for the commute every morning would be yet another example. It's bad enough that employers already blame employees for the vagaries of traffic patterns. (why are you 10 minutes late? well, leave earlier next time!) Now that he has no control over speed, direction, or even departure time, the employee is even further upstream...
Most of the ancillary costs of car ownership are artificially imposed (taxes, on ownership, fuel, etc) and don't necessarily have to be there (or as high). Regardless of what it is or does, devices designed to serve the first (as opposed to ones that serve society's first) are the better deal for keeping free societies free.
Using waste as a justification is a slippery slope argument. We can 'live' in mud huts, grubbing insects out of the ground for food, but is life really worth it at that point?
How about you go to the track?
The public roads do not exist for you to joyride on.
I think the changes will be faster than you suppose. States already have laws saying that driving is a priviledge, not a right. And the insurance companies will be pushing for any change that reduces their expenses (while continuing to require that you purchase increasingly worthless insurance).
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Well the autonomous train problem is a lot simpler, and it still hasn't been done successfully. Lets fix this one first. ..and you can bet it'll have a kill switch and audio/video monitoring...and since it's not your car, you can't disable it.
Someone on this board pointed out that once we have autonomous cars, you can have them do errands for you. His example was grocery shopping. Do your shopping online a'la Amazon, then send the car to pick up the groceries once a week.
The implications weren't obvious at first, but consider: there's no need for a supermarket close to a population center where real estate is expensive (ie - it can be in the warehouse district), there's no need for public access (aisles, displays of product, open freezers), no need for cashiers. The entire process can be made into a Kiva order fulfillment system.
This frees up an enormous number of personal hours and resources, it essentially automates a labor-intensive process.
And that was one example. Sending the car to pick up the kids after school, or to take them to/from soccer practice. Automated FedEx delivery, all manner of trucking and delivery - the potential savings in time is enormous.
This would be yet another economic force pushing us to a wealth economy, something of which I'm wholly in favor.
One aspect of autonomous vehicles that few people seem to consider is its potential effect on the housing market.
Consider the size of the RV market, and the number of people who prefer the RV lifestyle after they retire. Now consider the fact that one of the more annoying aspects of owning an RV is that you have to drive it everywhere yourself.
Now imagine twenty years from now when you'll be able to buy an autonomous RV. You go to sleep in it, and in the middle of the night it takes you to whatever destination you desire. In the morning, you open the door and you're in a new city. What you really own is not an RV, but a magic house that can take you anywhere you desire, a few hundred miles every night.
With that kind of freedom, how many people would choose to become high-tech nomads, and never live on fixed piece of property again? In fact, I think this will be a major profit center for automakers. Most people won't bother owning cars when they can call for one on a smartphone, but $100K to $200K super-RVs will become the home of choice and the way for GM and Ford to stay in business.
I can hear it now.
"Its only meta data. We got all the logs who went where and for how long but nothing about what they did there so its okay."
"Ah well we only track the movements of non-citizens, but you figure there is 51% chance a non-citizen is aboard if the vehicle has ever been within 90 miles of an airport"
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Hitting a pedestrian is pretty easy to detect at any speed. Why would it continue driving?
This is not a corner case this is something that is known from the beginning and planned for.
Humans do not logically deal with unexpected events. Note all the old geezers driving into buildings or people pulling into oncoming traffic to avoid rear ending the car in front of them instead of pulling onto the shoulder. Humans in general are terrible at logical reactions to unexpected conditions.
"Who owns the future?" Theres a good chance the insurance industry may push us in that direction if machine-guided driving is substantially safer. And if it turns out to be more efficiency, i.e. higher speed and capacities on the existing highways, then economics may push us in that direction, especially those who drive for a living. Jaron was seriously concerned about disruption in the paid-driver industries, e.g. truckers, taxis and delivery people. This could be another blue collar industry about to be decimated. Jaron speaks from the point of view as a muscian, where digitalization comprised his ability to make a living in that profession since Napster days.
Seems like these two are fixated on an idea that the robot car will cause some compulsory communal vehicle to be needed... an agenda that would have nothing to do with cars being driven by computers.
I'll purchase or lease my own, TYVM.
"The Adobe Updater must update itself before it can check for updates. Would you like to update the Adobe Updater now?"
I think rail not autonomous cars is the future everywhere but the United States. 1) Growth is more geared towards mega-cities of size around 10 million inhabitants. At that size individual driving starts to not scale. 2) The only way to employ mass numbers of people is through construction. Rebuild the cities with high density housing linked through light rail. 3) A lot of scarce city land can be conserved if it doesn't have to be used for parking. 4) In case of disaster, rail is relatively easy to repair.
Professional drivers are about to vanish as are workers in the building trades. I have ranted before that nobody is addressing the cure for the coming displacement of workers.
There are effects that will transpire that are far reaching. Imagine a city suffering loss of traffic ticket revenue completely. Robotic vehicles will not get tickets. Since police spend at least one third of their time writing traffic tickets we would see a loss of jobs on the police departments. State income taxes won't jump in either as we will have far less workers paying income taxes. And it just gets deeper and deeper. If my car can go to the market i don't have to be in the car. I order and the order is placed in the car and the car returns home. That means less fuel is used as the car does not have to haul my body about to get most of my business done. It also means that roadside attractions and advertizing will have less chance of attracting me. No need to stop for coffee and a doughnut and no stimulus in my eye to make me do so.
Not one single politician is mentioning this issue. Social policies are not being put in place to handle the sudden changes nor the long term changes as well.
The technology is wonderful and it can improve the world enormously but without social policies changing it will turn into total disaster.
School systems are already being effected. Classes run on computers with no teacher present are now becoming common place. Imagine the near elimination of teaching as a profession? Just how does one run colleges when so few workers will be needed even in the professions?
1. crowded downtown urban areas should just ban cars altogether. automated cars aren't going to make things any better if it's always a gridlock.
2. most of the ancillary costs of car ownership are artificially imposed as it is. we should work on fixing this instead of atrophying the ability for the average citizen to own a car (or anything else really).
People are too stupid to have the freedom of their own cars.
People like you are too stupid to have freedom. Please go move to china or something. This 'save me from reality' culture is toxic to liberty.
and who has access to those? Hmmm?
Drifting off-topic here, but I agree, and I can explain why.
Typical reading speed is 250-300 words per minute with random access. Typical speaking rate is more variable but I'll go with the audiobook reading rate, 160 words per minute with sequential access. So it is a much better use of my time to read an article than to watch or hear a presentation of that article.
That said, _writing_, especially writing well-reasoned and coherent prose such as one can not-infrequently find on Slashdot, takes disproportionately longer than reading the same prose. So the audio and audiovisual formats are appealing to the presenter, because speaking is easier than writing for people with the right skills. An expert, reasonably experienced at public speaking, can give an illuminating presentation with little or no preparation.
My opinion is that video and podcasts can be worthwhile if you know the speaker is good, and are willing to trade off efficient use of your time for efficient use of his.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
UPS / Fedex as well.
Hell we still have bike messengers.
Traffic cops can move to working real crime.
I just don't buy that the computers in these things are as situationally aware as a human driver.
I want proof... but that won't be that hard to provide. Google's car already has a better-than-average driving record. That's not enough data points for me, but with sufficient testing, I'd be more than happy to let the computer drive. I can only see in one direction. I blink. I look at hot chicks. I sneeze. I get tired. There is no reason a computer can't be better than me-- it has a better sensorium, faster reaction, and higher uptime than I ever will. It can actuate more controls than I can-- individual braking pressure on all four wheels, for example. Test it out in more depth, and if it turns out to be better than the average human, it's good enough for me.
Car ownership does have risks, cost, and is probably not the most efficient means but people aren't logical when it comes to spending. Example unless you NEED a car to make money you should not be borrowing to buy it, it is an asset the depreciates quickly, wait you will be the same car in a years time (It will be a year older) cheaper and you won't be paying interest, and insurance for that period.
In a lot of situations owning a car is not a logical financial proposition, especially if you have buses or trains in your area. But people still buy them because we are not logical. For that reason I don't think self driving collectively owned cars are likely to replace normal cars any time soon. Yes they my in large cities where people can't find a space to park so they no choice (aka replace taxis) .
The most likely scenario is that people will buy their own self driving car, an use it to:
A) Drop them off and then drive back to find a car park,
B) Drive them around when they are too drunk to drive themselves.
There are many things in this world that we could share, that would save resources but we simply don't. E.g. lawn mowers, barbeques, tools, small cooking appliances, printers, wi-fi with your neighbors, .... We could car pool, its been around for ages and would save most people a lot of money, but what proportion of the populations actually does that?
rare corner-cases
I don't think "stop if there is something in front of the car" is a rare corner case.
We don't want driverless-cars, we just want to tinker with our car. So we can occasionally take our hands off the wheel and surf. Thats about it.
Here's what I see.
1) Mandated logging in the car to get traces as you said (for good).
2) RFID license plates manditory for all cars (for good).
3) Then increase traffic by Amazon delivery drones.
4) Bullying of drones (because we can).
4) Then pay-per-mile tolls imposed by governments (since it will be easy, starting with cities).
Don't wish for this. Just advocate tinkering with your car. Advocate texting if its safe. Let insurance dictate safety, not the DOT.
And if you are really bored, get paid to drive around for wikispeedia. IMHO, Google isn't fixing anything, they are just having fun tinkering with their car as I want to.
Jim Pruett, Director
Wikispeedia.org (901) 213 7824
Thanks to the internets, we have a good idea how many jerks there are in society (looking at youtube, it seems to be about 60%).
Autonomous vehicles will have to be super-dooper cautious to avoid innocent people getting injured and suing the bejesus out of the owner/operator, and this will result in them being mercilessly trolled by people jaywalking in front of them/creating cardboard roadblocks/dazzling their sensors etc. I can envisage bored people ordering pizza so they can watch the pizza delivery vanbot try and negotiate the maze they have built.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
Hmm.
How exactly would you design a autonomous vehicle that can not see what comes into contact with it?
I ask how You would do it because I do not know anyone else that would.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
It's no surprise to anyone that people like you exist, but please, do not act as if you are the norm, and everyone else is 'stupid', has no 'money sense', or tries 'to prove that they are higher on the simian food chain'. I enjoy video games, programming and driving, and I enjoy them in pretty much the same fashion. I used to enjoy martial arts, but now that I am pushing 50, the risks outweigh the reward. I know that one day my reflexes will erode to the point where driving will not give me the satisfaction of doing something well. It's clear to me that it already doesn't do much for you...
For some of us, $50K for a car that we enjoy driving is neither a particularly momentous expense, nor an attempt to prove anything. It's an indulgence, of course, but in my book, anyone who never indulges in anything is someone to pity, not to admire.
As for your opinions on luxury cars, and the supposed superiority of Lexus... do you really think that driving enthusiasts care about the rants of someone who admits to hating driving?! My wife enjoys her Audi A3, and I love my 460hp Volvo S60-R. Her car's trim is wood, mine's is brushed aluminum. If one of us prefered plastic, there'd be nothing wrong with it, either.
And you know what? It's a matter of personal preference, and I am very, very happy to work in a country where can afford to indulge my personal preferences, and where I am allowed to do so. As for you, you stupid tool, who wants to prevent others from doing what they enjoy because you hate it, and probably suck at it, fuck you! I spent my first twenty years in a country where power hungry morons enforced mediocrity, and I bet that you would have loved it there. Probably would have floated to the top, too.
No good deed goes unpunished...
Bumps in the road are not normally above bumper height.
You're joking right? Hostess was the perfect example where the union workers were convinced to accept concessions, ostensibly to keep the company in business. Then the execs closed the doors and bailed out with golden parachutes.
Humans do not logically deal with unexpected events. Note all the old geezers driving into buildings or people pulling into oncoming traffic to avoid rear ending the car in front of them instead of pulling onto the shoulder. Humans in general are terrible at logical reactions to unexpected conditions.
I did put "to a greater or lesser degree", but sure, you got me there. However, I'm not sure why you'd think it's so easy to determine if a pedestrian has been hit in all possible cases. Sure, there's the easy case of you running straight into them, but what about the case where a kid runs out and hits the side of the car? I guess there must be wide-angle cameras aiming out the side of the car (for lane changes), but how are they going to judge collisions vs near misses? Are there microphones to detect the sound of a collision? Maybe pressure or vibration sensors? Does the car stop if there's both the sound and visual of a collision? What if there's the sound of a collision but no corresponding visual, does it still stop? If there's a collision but it's minor and the pedestrian walks off, does the car just stay there blocking traffic or does it resume driving, possibly leaving the scene of an accident? If these are truly driverless cars, someone can’t just get out and ask "are you OK?".
Maybe these cars will be restricted to certain motorways where pedestrians are prohibited in which case a lot of corner-cases just go away, but I’m not (yet) convinced that they could handle a hectic city any better than your average geezer could (well, maybe that’s unfair, a driverless car probably won’t ever drive into a building or rear-end someone because it can’t judge stopping distance, but I digress). Maybe I'm not giving the technology enough credit and I'm being critical for nothing, but I don't think that I am. In my experience, it's extremely hard to plan for all corner case conditions, especially for really complex systems. A car navigating a city street might sound simple, but I'm sure it's anything but.
Well the autonomous train problem is a lot simpler, and it still hasn't been done successfully. Lets fix this one first. ..and you can bet it'll have a kill switch and audio/video monitoring...and since it's not your car, you can't disable it.
Many airports I've been to have autonomous trains.
Load sensors all over the bodywork can handle this. I expect what to do afterwords can be sorted out by a human remotely in some call center in a third world country.
I think at first they will be freeway only. Which will limit my desire for one, since my desire for one is going to be related to being able to drink while out and about.
Driving has always been a privilege, never a right.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
What happens today when a person winds up under a car because of a human driver error?
--- http://davidnehme.blogspot.com
Not likely in your lifetime, probably not your kids either. There will only be immediate benefits for us. I'm all for less cars on the road due to improved efficiency, and the cars that are automated on the road are going to be much, much safer. So, you can enjoy driving your classic with less fear of some teen in an air cushioned behemoth killing you and your car.
I don't think by joyride he means the teenager type of joyride. He means cruising and enjoying driving. You know, obeying the law and all. Classic car drivers are one of the most responsible groups, which is why classic car insurance is considerably cheaper.
No, it's very easy, and humans are terrible at it--but as usual every driver thinks they are "better than average". Programming a car to not run into anything is easy.
Telecommuting should have decimated* traffic already. Unfortunately it hasn't. I'm enthusiastic for the opportunities of automated cars (not so much for what that implies for motorcycling) but I'm concerned that it will have a lot of unnecessary obstacles.
*Yes, we all know the origin of "decimated".
And yet, there have been autonomous cars on the road for hundreds of thousands of miles without an accident (and please don't like to the articles that talk about the accident that occurred when the vehicle was being driven by a human being). Sometimes reality doesn't conform to what you expect, I know lots and lots of people that I wouldn't trust to drive 300,000 miles without an accident, but Google has managed to do just that.
Here is what will happen:
Someone will get into an accident driving their own car. They will be sued for negligence because it was an accident that an autonomous vehicle would have prevented. As a result, insurance rates for human drivers goes through the roof. Everyone switches to autonomous vehicles within the year.
Whenever this topic comes up in conversation, I often point out the "you get there when you get there" notion. When you're able to just play on your iPad the whole time, it becomes your personal subway car... with one big difference:
The dudes in the video seem to think (erroneously, IMHO) that we'll just stop owning cars because we can just hail one like a cab. But a self-driving short-term rental car *is* a cab. It *might* be cheaper, and it'll annoy me less than the stupid driver (at least until marketers pay to put TV's in them and play commercials for the whole ride). But here's the thing: the reason I don't take cabs/busses/subways/etc is because I can't leave my shit in them. The car that I own currently contains my flight bag, gym bag, my guitar, my iPod is plugged into the car-stereo with all of my favorite tunes (which, though digital, is still "some of my shit" that I always want to be there).
It's a little like George Carlin's "a place for your stuff" bit. The reason I like living in a house instead of going from hotel to hotel is because I don't want to gather up all of my stuff and bring it along with me to my next destination. And the same goes for transportation. I don't want to have to completely "vacate" the conveyance every time I want to get out and do something. So, for me, the allure of autonomous cars is that we'll finally have "personal subway cars", in the sense that they're reserved for us. We don't have to take all of our stuff out of them to make ready for the next random person.
Also (dunno if the video mentioned this), there could be a drop off in parking spaces. At first, I figured that we'd never have to try to find parking spots, since the car can drop us off in front of the door to the store, and then it would go park itself. But then I realized... heck, it doesn't even need to *park*. It could just go drive around for a while. In places with parking meters, this could be cheaper than actually paying for parking.
How do you square that with the fact that local governments don't exactly have the spare change to fund major infrastructure changes? In my rural town, there is a debate as to whether we should unpave some roads to decrease maintenance costs (the costs then go to the vehicle owner in terms of increased damage and wear and tear).
ANYTHING that's an unfunded mandate is likely to be ignored unless it comes with adequate funding from somewhere else (in which case it's not an unfunded mandate, just pie-in-the-sky). I don't think the insurance 'savings' are going to fund this switch. If you have actual data to suggest this, I'd love to see it.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
So... no one should be allowed to read in the car because some people get motion sickness?
Dear Citizen:
We have been monitoring you ravings and it is clear that you suffer from a bad case of uncollectivist psychosis. We understand your pain and would like to help you with your problem.
Please walk (do not drive) to the closest re education facility.
Yours in Homogenization,
The Minders.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
>How do you square that with the fact that local governments don't exactly have the spare change to fund major infrastructure changes? In my rural town, there is a debate as to whether we should unpave some roads to decrease maintenance costs (the costs then go to the vehicle owner in terms of increased damage and wear and tear).
Isn't that brilliant. I wonder what will happen in this responsible, well thought-out race to the bottom: Paved roads will feature even more congestion. Dirt roads which were formerly paved roads will generate even less economic activity. Trains won't run on time because they will be packed to the brim! People will stay home and buy nothing because they can't get around. Deflation, here we come!
---Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A START
It doesn't matter. The roads are not built just for people to have fun on. As automated cars become more feasible, that kind of use *will* be squeezed out. As someone who motorcycles and drives for fun, I have to say that that's unfortunate but it seems inevitable.
Computers COULD drive "better" than humans. But what would happen is the computer would try to minimize accidents - so it will take fewer chances. It will stop and refuse to go forward in fog (and hopefully talk to all the neighboring cars to slow down as well). It won't go over snowy roads. It won't cross open water.
The net result is that you may be safer, but forced to detour or wait. That's a perfectly rational way to do things - but humans aren't rational very much of the time. I just don't see this as happening any time soon. Perhaps in a generation or two who grow up away from the 'open road', but not in the near future.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Not so.
I've got a 1970 fiat 850 that's 'programmed not to run into anything'.
Maintaining that programming after I finish installing a real motor (a mouse of course) into it will be a lot more complicated.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
It's going to be a great day for kids throwing snowballs at cars.
Instead of merely annoying the driver, they will be able to get the autocars to pullover and wait for the cops to show. Adults will be greatly annoyed, kids will LOL, cops will hate having to their days interrupted by work.
The best I ever did was hit a 'vette right on the popup headlight. It dropped. Dude chased us. We ran under clotheslines, he never saw them.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Doubtful. It will just irritate some guy in India who has to see what that was.
Yes, so. Look it up.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
No, it's not brilliant. It's depressing.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I enjoy video games, programming and driving ...
For some of us, $50K for a car that we enjoy driving is neither a particularly momentous expense, nor an attempt to prove anything. It's an indulgence, of course
Go ahead and enjoy your hobby, just don't complain too much when the price goes up. If self-driving cars become practical and commonplace, wetware guided cars may be justifiably banned from the public roads as unsafe. Of course you should be able to use a private road or track, but that may be pricey. With the resultant greatly reduced demand for wetware guided cars, they may become a very expensive low-volume specialty item too.
Soooo, you're betting on humans to have faster reflexes than a computer? That's not a very good bet.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
Let me know when these fantastic driverless cars are smart enough to drive home and plug themselves in to charge instead of hanging around in a parking lot all day. Just imagine how much downtown clutter would go away and become available for use if half the parking lots were gone because cars didn't stay downtown after dropping off their owner for a shift.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
With automated self-driving cars, a lot of other traditional economics are upset too. For example, what will this do to public transportation like the bus system? Currently, one of the primary advantages to taking the bus is the concept that someone else will do the driving, getting you to your destination. People who don't have a driver's license can just take the bus and still get to or from work. With a self-driving car, why would a license be required anymore? That means one less reason to bother with a bus, when a car would get you from point A to B without a lot of annoying stops along the way dropping off other people or picking them up.
Of course, this will result in upsetting those who like public transportation for the environmental benefits..... So what happens then? Some sort of govt. imposed taxation on using a personal car instead of a bus? I sure hope not, but that's the type of future we're quickly headed into. Slap taxes on all the behaviors you want to deter people from doing so just like lab rats running in a maze, you force them to follow the paths you like.
It's considerably cheaper because you don't drive the damn thing into the city every day.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
1. Can you read? I explicitly stated what car I drive.
2. Why would I worry about making you rich, even if I were? If some of my money ends in your pockets, you presumably provided a service I considered worth paying for.
3. You should understand that at some point, one stops minding overpaying for things one enjoys, as long as the surcharge does not affect one's quality of life. You may think that this makes me a moron, but that does not matter much to me.
No good deed goes unpunished...
You are right on all counts as to where this is headed.
But we will take some time before we get there. I am afraid that my wetware will give out before the hardware becomes too expensive. In any case, I already pay an insurance premium for having modified my car, and I already pay for using the track, which is, after all, the only place where I can really put every single horsepower to work.
No good deed goes unpunished...
1) With sensors in the front bumper, your car could "see" far better than you could from the drivers seat and help make that dangerous situation much safer. And with any even decent AI it would recognize this is a tough way to exit and see if there might be a better way.
2) I'm very certain the car could react FAR quicker than you could. And that it would have seen that car running the red light way before you even realized it (as you admit). You're looking just forward and to the left to make your turn. An autonomous car is looking everywhere, at all times, and calculating the speed of that red-light runner to see that it's not stopping, and can apply the brakes before you even realize what is happening.
I've talked with some of the people working on these autonomous cars, and it's pretty amazing what they can do even just today.
Rainbow's End had a lot of automated systems. Cars could be called for a quick ride auto dispatched to the nearest available. UPS delivered using automated drones that were shot into the sky and glided to delivery - even if you weren't home it would hone in on your signal. I have no idea what book the guy is writing but I think Vinge is on to something. And I do want to have augmented reality pratchett space.
Hmm, I can imagine a world where taxis then become so cost efficient that its cheaper for most people to take a taxi than own a car. Cheap taxi cars with automated payment systems, and so many of them in the city that there's always one around the corner. The cost could plummet.
How about installing agressor apps for driving? Jailbreaking the car AI? I see a darker side to all this.
They come in the dark, only in the darkest.
Don't listen to the crotchety old bitter nerds around here who hate cars. Autonomous personal transportation would be a GOOD thing for the future gearhead. Why? Look at the big picture!
So the sky is not falling! If you look up you'll see the rainbows and unicorns!
What a dull boring life you propose.
The X are not built just for people to have fun on. Let's let them fade away.
We don't share because everyone's needs and preferences are different. Some like the convenience of a gas barbecue and some want the flavor of charcoal and wood smoke. Some people have large lawns and some prefer a small lawn with mostly landscaped gardens (a different mower is needed for each).
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Ah, I used to have an 86 Porsche. It was a great car and cheaper than my wife's Honda-- until I had to have the front rack and pinon replaced. Sigh.
Basically the established grocery stores have followed a fairly simple business model. You buy large lots of marginal land at the very edge of town. Then town grows around your stores and you buy new large lots of marginal land at the new edge of town. This way when your customer wakes up on Saturday and looks into an empty fridge they go to "The" Grocery store. Once in a while some chain is run badly and the other chains feast on the corpse grabbing up plots of land that would otherwise be hard to get.
Think about where your local medium to large grocery store is located (preferably one that is 20 years old or more) and think about how hard it would be to start a new chain by buying a neighbouring location. Your financing costs would be prohibitive and doubtfully would withstand a sustained sale at the established local(and paid for) store.
Present delivery systems have larger vans or trucks that have a fairly good gap between order and delivery.
This has basically prevented upstarts in the tech world style. But now think about having automated delivery vans that leave a short time after you place your order and can be monitored over the web with a near to the second ETA. Now you can wake up Saturday look into an empty fridge and potentially fill it with goodies faster( and lazier) than you can by driving there yourself.
But best of all these centralized warehouses only need to have parking for their few employees and the delivery truck. No large parking lot. No convenient location. Not even a large space as you don't need wide isles and floor displays. It could even be in a horrible place or configuration for a traditional grocery store such as a basement or multi-floored.
Then at the next level you could even pick a worse location that can't even manage a tractor trailer delivery vehicle by having one out of town warehouse that gets the tractor trailers and then in smaller automated vehicles distributes the goodies to much smaller depots closer to their customers. Thus almost any crappy location downtown will do.
Basically this takes a huge market advantage that existing grocery chains have relied on for around 100 years and turns it into a liability. There will be a day when the old chains realized that it would be better for them to sell their prime real-estate to other developers. The question for them will be if they can adapt or will these sales happen post business collapse?
On a positive note I suspect that the tiny boutique store with highly knowledgeable staff will thrive after this.
The computers could see through the fog, they aren't limited to human vision.
I see no reason why it wouldn't work on snow, gravel, wet, etc. It has feedback as to when traction is low and can respond accordingly. Due to this fine feedback and control, it can ride the line of traction much better than humans can, since our feedback is pretty coarse in comparison. So it should be able to go *faster* in poor conditions, as it needs less room for error.
Sent from my PDP-11
If they have to have a co-conspirator flop into a snow bank to get the car to stop they will.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
How long before the NSA decides me, you or anyone else for that matter must be killed. Just upload the payload in memory, make it crash. You die. Problem solved for the NSA and no trace evidence. It's more than enough to hand your telecoms to the government, but my life? Hell no. Ill be right here waiting on slashdot to read of the first "self-driving-car-crash-assasination" Im not getting in that sh*t. Heck i'll be hacking the fluck out of it.
Better yet. Get a 4x4 and find the nearest national forest.
Occasionally you have to clear roadblocks the feds put up. It's all part of the fun.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
WTF? You told the insurance company? Are you mad?
My Fiat 850 came stock with a 'vette engine. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Stopping daily driving your fast car is liberating. It can stop being a compromise.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I can easily see within 5 yrs Pizza Hut using flying drones to do deliveries.
Maybe there'd need to be a receptacle installed for receiving, and collision avoidance systems installed on the drones... No more paying people to drive the food, no more food stuck in traffic
Think about tax revenues plummeting, no DUIs, no speeding tickets, no accidents.
Car insurance industry would dry up and would move to corporate liability.
Sure. Because when they crash into one of them they wont be able to blame the other driver and get away with it. Always keep a camera in your car.
Bumps in the road are not normally above bumper height.
Spoken like a man who has never driven a sports car.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Look at all the amusing and sometimes informative driving videos to come out of Russia. Dash cams for everyone is not a bad thing, so long as the owner gets to decide what happens to the footage.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Well, as long as you pay for all the externalities that come with the car ownership, I am fine with getting rid of artificially imposed costs.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
That kind of "sport" is for these with weak leg muscles. A real man takes a mountain bike. Or a pair of good boots.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
It could just go drive around for a while. In places with parking meters, this could be cheaper than actually paying for parking.
The car takes up more space when driving than when parked, as the distance between cars must be included, so this is a horrible idea. How we are going to make sure it doesn't happen, I have no idea. I would imagine road pricing being part of the equation, as it is much easier to collect it when there already is a computer on board that knows where it is.
traffic jams will be gone - oh and cancer too? Possibly even world peace materializes when this gen3 comes about right? You are a dreamer. It is not bad but dreamers have caused not only good. I do not mean every dreamer is Pol Pot or such bad ass but somehow feel uneasy when too much good things are supposed to happen and all easy...
that is not entirely true albeit sucking the last drop of blood of large populations around globe by some big corporation (or privately owned company - the ownership does not matter only real big ones are usually public) is taking place as we speak. The rules society lives on are less and less taken to serve the society and people, the tax money are more and more spent on things a common man does not have any influence on (not to mention capacity to decide whether it makes sense or not). This all is true and is a result of optimization of processes (production and management ones etc), accumulation of capital (funny how old classics come true - enough to see how the wealth is distributed in the land of the free to understand 1% is a gross understatement), growing complexity (things get more complicated but also bigger which makes them more difficult to manage and understand) and growing understanding that an individual has nothing that matters. It is technological progress that makes it all possible: good and bad things. The assumption that only good things come to the fore is just plain wrong. The result is what Germans call entfremdung or alienation) - partially unavoidable partially something that big parts of the society just accept because they do not understand consequences or accept the costs as a step to benefit. Bad thing is that this benefit phase occurs only to the few.
Autonomous trains have been deployed in a lot of places. There are even cities with autonomous trams, which have to deal with pedestrians crossing the tracks on a regular basis.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I find your lack of faith disturbing.
Comparing traffic jams to cancer is retarded.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
Well my great grand daddy loved to ride around on his horse and cart. Nothing he loved more...... Now he can't even park it at the local pub!
Stupid Luddites.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
Even better i could have a few beers on the way to work!
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
Indeed, in case you hadn't guessed i was being sarcastic. :D
---Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A START
Or short weekends.
You should see the stink eye the hippies give me when I start my hike right at the border of the Desolation wilderness. They've hiked for days to get there.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I think part of the answer is that automated cars can park themselves much more space efficiently than most drivers manage. How often do you pass up parking spaces because a driver, or two, couldn't manage to park inbetween or parallel with the lines?
Also automated cars that are able to talk to one another could actually use the space on roadways much more efficiently. The safe following distance will be much shorter for a pair of cars that are able to assess a situation, communicate and start taking appropriate action within a time frame that is shorter than your brain can even process what is happening.
IIRC, driving was originally unregulated. Neither a right nor a priviledge. (Unless you count oxcarts and horses. If you do, it predates the invention of "rights", and was presumed to be allowed to anyone who could afford it. Though, IIRC, at one point Rome had laws baning "trucks" between dawn and sunset. But that's traffic control, not forbidding driving.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Why does this video quality suck so badly?
Why are we listening to two random guys speculating about the future? Who are these guys?
Unless you mean that at first, only the privileged could afford motor vehicles then still no.
I do not propose, I merely observe.
Your problem is not too hard to solve, and the fact that a car is your current solution does not mean the only solution. You can replace a whole parking lot with a few lockers. Also, parking is another reason for using these cars as taxis. Not only you avoid it, but also the same car can go serve another customer. Mass adoption would mean a hugely reduced motor pool (and all those benefits).