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Concern Mounts Over Self-Driving Cars Taking Away Freedom
Lucas123 writes "Opinions in the blogosphere are building and run the gamut on self-driving automobile technology, but a survey supports the trend that most don't want their driving independence usurped by cameras, sensors and an onboard computer. The survey of British drivers last year commissioned by Bosch, a Germany-based supplier of automotive components, found that most would not buy a self-driving car. Only 29% of respondents said thay would consider buying a driverless car and only 21% said they would feel safe as a passenger in a self-driving car. David Alexander, an analyst at Navigant Research, pointed out that while driving yourself is often preferable, there's a lot of "grunt" driving that would be better handled by a computer. Navigant recently released a report stating that by 2035, 95 million autonomous cars will be sold every year."
I'm in.
I would pay a lot of money to be able to drive distracted, asleep, or inebriated legally. Right now none of those are legal and one isn't even possible.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Driving a manually operated car through a hoard of autonomous cars. Splitting two lanes, step on the gas. The autonomous cars detect your car impinging on their lane, so they move out of the way, and the sea of autonomous cars parts like a wave in front of you.
They'll need a lot of algorithms to deal with the unexpected, and people who deliberately want to mess with them, heh.
Freedom has become a nonsense word. It means whatever you want it to mean apparently. Might as well say shamalalalalala ding dong.
another thing to thank the knownothings for.
I love driving. Everything about it, but even I want it. Better driving from everyone. Safer, better traffic, and you can play board games with the family while driving down the road.
All around awesome.
I wouldn't feel safe. I know I would be safer, but at first it would feel dangerous. That's from years of driving and being driven.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I don't want to give up my driving freedom. Having seen how the rest of you drive, though, I want all of you to give up your driving freedom because I swear, I'd drive better sleepy, drunk, and texting all at the same time than some of you.
Giving up driving is a price I'm willing to pay if I don't have to risk my life on your competence behind the wheel.
...of drivers.
Not for current drivers. I imagine there was a large subset of oldies that didn't want to give up the freedom of riding their horse.
Except that self-driving cars are already greatly safer than those driven by humans. If such a car doesn't cooperate with government surveillance, it doesn't degrade your freedom -- and as an useful tool, actually improves it. You can do whatever you want when travelling...
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
As long as I have the option to take manual control at any time, I would LOVE a self driving car. I took mass transit for a year and LOVED being able to divert my attention away from where I was going for the duration. Reading, sleeping, or whatever would go over great in my self driving car. Like I said, as long as I can take over manually whenever I want.
3A 4E 22 05 C1 83 0B 7A
It's random, but my posting it here is probably considered illegal to someone.
Despite this technology not existing yet, it scares the shit outta me!
Can you imagine my self-driving car crashing? Next I would be loaded into a self-driving ambulance and taken to an automated hospital where a self-operating robot might cut off the wrong leg. I'll be right back, my Roomba is stuck in the corner again.
There are people who have medical or other reasons which make it so they can't drive. For them a self-driving car gives a huge amount of freedom: freedom to get yourself from point A to point B without relying on favors or public transit or taxis.
Just wait until insurance companies start requiring automated driving. That is likely to be decades away, but I think they will be a big factor in the push toward driverless vehicles. The irony of this is that ultimately the need for auto insurance will decline dramatically once accident rates plummet. At that point I think we're likely to see auto insurance become the domain of the auto manufacturers rather than the auto owners.
"War makes me sad." - Me
If I had a truly self-driving car, I would rent it out 23/7. My own personal taxi company. After all, I only need my car for about an hour a day on average. Maybe RelayRides will expand to accommodate this business model- I block out times when I need my car, and when someone books it for a ride, it drives off, takes them where they want to go, then comes back and parks in my spot. Or maybe I decide that since I only need a car for an hour a day, I personally don't need a car at all, and can rent one from the pool of public cars if I need to go somewhere.
We might not have flying cars, but the driverless car is now a legal problem, not a problem of unreasonable expense or technological ability. We have the technology to build them now, and mass-produced, probably for less than $60,000 a piece. We also have systems for issuing commands remotely over the internet ("car, come here") and systems for renting of personal vehicles (Relayrides, GetAround, Lyft). It is only a matter of time before someone ties them all together and forces the law to change, or the law changes and the floodgates open.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
It's mass transit without the masses. Imagine your own personal bus, taxi or train. Mass transit is good for many people because it enables travel without so much stress... or at least without the same type of stress and certainly less danger. But among the problems of mass transit is the crowding and congestion which often accompanies more dense populated areas.
I think having HOV lanes replaced with "Automated" lanes, self driving cars are likely to take you anywhere you need to go, respond to traffic problems by dynamically re-routing and generally even out the flow of traffic all over. Even if a driver decides not to participate in the use of self-driving cars, when there are enough self-driving cars, it will likely benefit the non-participants as well.
One caveat is the fact that non-participants will see it as a license to be an even bigger asshole than they were to "other drivers." They would be bigger because they would drive rudely around machines which would, ostensibly, not be offended... (the passengers might though... imagine cutting off a self-driving car and how it might respond)
There are probably a lot of scary scenarios which I haven't considered, but I recall batman movies and the self-driving batmobile and how that could be really useful. A car that will let you get out at your destination then drive away to park somewhere? Awesome... especially if you can notify your car that you are waiting to be picked up and have it arrive in a few moments. There's a lot of awesome there... and some scary.
Humans are simply not built for monotonous, repetitive activities. Driving is one of those. If you look at the main cause of accidents there is rarely faults in the machinery it's humans that are either sleepy, drunk or just plain dumb. I really do want to see smart roads and smart cars.
Ugh we really need to learn to let machines do the jobs that we simply can't do well in a consistent manner.
This reminds me of when the internet was new and my relatives were amazed when I told them I did most of my Christmas shopping online. They couldn't believe that I trusted web sites on the internet with my credit card number and they said they had absolutely no interest in doing that. The very next year, most of those same relatives were raving about how convenient it was to shop at home and not fight car and foot traffic to buy gifts. The point is, people fear new things that they don't understand, but once they see the benefits and convenience of new technologies, it usually isn't long before they consider life without that technology as primitive.
If you asked that question in the early 1950s, I'm sure it would have similiar results and apprehensions.
Are probably the idiots that shouldn't be driving anyhow!
If you can drive, for whatever reason, it seems to me that a self-driving car would be a godsend. Folks with visual impairment, seizure illnesses, physical challenges, etc. are suddenly able to go wherever they want.
Changing gears is so fun! Who can possibly buy a car that takes away the freedom of changing gears? Oh, wait...
In soviet russia the government regulates the companies.
I'm willing to get a driverless car........once it's been tested. A lot. Not before.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Of course it's going to happen. Especially in crowded traffic. In those circumstances I'd much rather my life depend on something with a reaction time that will make the moving cars seem almost stationary.
Here's how this should play out:
1) Smart people with lots of money start developing these (happening now)
2) In real life trials, they work, and are statistically safer than human drivers (looks promising...)
3) In time, they're indisputably a lot safer than human drivers (we'll see, but I think this will happen).
Once you get to 3, not switching to driverless cars becomes rather dumb.
As long as the self driving car only slavishly follows the ridiculously low speed limits in most of the northeast it will be more hazard to other drivers than benefit, and it will also be slower.
This reminds me of when digital cameras started becoming mainstream. A lot of people poo pooed them and said they would never replace real cameras. They had to be able to feel and hold pictures. Well, we see how Poloroid and Kodak fared. A similar attitude was had when automatic transmissions first appeared. People wanted the freedom to shift when they wanted and not when some mechanism decided it should be done.
I expect driverless cars to follow a similar path. Once available, they will slowly be adopted and then a tidal wave. There will always be the Jenny McCarthys of the world who have some freak incident and blame technology on their woes, but 99% of those who can afford a driverless car will use them 99% of the time.
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
Driving is a privilege, that you have to earn, and comes with a thousand point list of rules and regulations.
You can only drive when they want, where they want, and how they want. So were is there any freedom to loose?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
This was my point about the word "freedom" used in the headline...
How is one losing freedom? You're not losing any freedom to go anywhere. You are still determining the destination. It's different from public transport or being a passenger because you still going from point to point and through a route.
So what is the difference? You're losing the freedom to run someone off the road or get them into an accident. You will still be able to use your middle finger if you like..
1) not having to deal with others who are loud, smelly, or otherwise not decent company
2) going wherever you want, whenever you want
3) presumably, self driving cars will be better at driving than we are. If they aren't, we shouldn't adopt the technology and the whole argument is moot.
You wouldn't believe how many people I know were dead set against satellite navigation systems, how they would be forced on us, etc. Every one of those people now owns one, by their own choice.
I think people have a similar visceral reaction to autonomous vehicles, but once they experience not having to deal with the stress of everyday driving, will change their opinion.
Sent from my iPhone
If you reject it because driving is fun; your fun doesn't override others' need for safety.
If you are concerned they aren't safe; your concern does you credit, but will eventually be proven wrong.
If you are concerned that one morning, after a scathing tweet about the head of Coca-cola, your car will lock you in, black the windows, and drive you to a secret FEMA detention camp.... well, being paranoid doesn't mean you are wrong.
the freedom to be stupid and cause accidents/deaths? or the freedom to speed at ridiculous speeds(i like this one)? or even the freedom to keep score while running over grandmothers?
And that is all part of the plan. Freedom is outdated, haven't you heard?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It's interesting to watch tech trends change. End-user control used to be a priority; the Internet was built around it. With the rise of widespread connectivity, centrally controlled services have become much simpler and more popular. You don't update the OS on your phone, someone does it for you.
You lose the benefits of end-user control, which include more privacy, freedom (as in speech), openness and innovation. Who will track where you self-driving car takes you? On your iPhone, you only can use apps that Apple approves. Facebook was built on open technologies that emphasized end-user control; it allowed them to create something that the creators of the Internet technologies didn't envision and didn't have to approve; what will be built on Facebook?
I'm not against centralized services completely, and many of these issues could be mitigated if the service providers were motivated to do it, but I am concerned that it's a serious trade-off that's being made without discussion.
If you're offering it as a greatly enhanced 'cruise control' feature, then yes, I'd be OK with that; being able to take my hands off the wheel and feet off the pedals for a while on long stretches of highway so I can stretch my feet, legs, and arms, and maybe grab a snack or drink something without impacting road safety? Sure, that'd be great. Having manual control of the vehicle be an afterthought, or having no way to manually control the vehicle, or even not having immediate, non-countermandable manual override? Hell, no. I wouldn't accept a vehicle like that for free, even. Get in a cab that has no human operator overseeing the vehicle? I'd sooner play Russian Roulette for peanuts.
What if someday they make it mandatory? I'll be riding a motorcycle all year 'round again, then.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
The point of self-driving cars is to reduce accidents. If people won't actually let cars drive themselves because they are too hung up about fearing the very thing that the cars are supposed to prevent, then where do go from here? Just give up on the whole idea entirely?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Those things mostly don't go where I need to. When they do (buses), they take 3x as long because they're taking a herd of other people different places along the way. When they do, they don't take me to the actual destination, just to the nearest bus stop. I'd actually like to take public transportation, but it's so time-inefficient that I can't afford to.
I'd sure hate to buy a Google car and then find out that my town is having all of the streets automated by Microsoft. I wouldn't be able to get my car past the driveway!
-Glires
If you can drive, for whatever reason, it seems to me that a self-driving car would be a godsend. Folks with visual impairment, seizure illnesses, physical challenges, etc. are suddenly able to go wherever they want.
Age. My kids are ripped that they don't exist yet. They want to get off the school bus, hop in a driverless car, and get to my office, swim lessons, etc., not just sit home waiting for an adult to ferry them.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I see a time when there will be a push button on the flat panel display in my car, "Steering: Auto/Manual" The default will most likely start as Manual, but over the course of time become Auto.
You've missed the point here. They do have a specific "freedom" in mind here:
The freedom to break the rules of the road.
The people talking about self-driving cars taking away their "freedom" are afraid they'll no longer be able to drive 75 mph in a 55 mph zone, or run that red light, or tailgate that person who's got the sheer audacity to drive a few miles an hour under the speed limit when they need to get home to watch the game so close they leave paint on their bumper...!
In other words, they're afraid that if everyone's got self-driving cars, they won't be allowed to be assholes anymore.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
I want self-driving cars for everybody else.
You are welcome on my lawn.
...of drivers.
Not for current drivers. I imagine there was a large subset of oldies that didn't want to give up the freedom of riding their horse.
Horse goddamn it. What's wrong with the sedan chair?
when these cars kill people?
Nobody. just like when someone jumps in front of a train
Who went to prison for the Ford Pinto, Corvair or cars with rigid steering columns?
Is this really going to happen...Specially in crowded traffic...These ideas are too far fetched..
Most crowded traffic is the result of impatient drivers with poor reflexes constantly riding up the driver in front of them and then having to slam to a stop when the car in front of them brakes. This propagates backwards and creates traffic waves. Interestingly, all it takes is one driver to put an end to stop-and-go traffic.
Now imagine that 5% of the cars on the road were replaced with driverless cars that not only give the car in front of them plenty of room but also signal ahead to other driverless and safety assisted cars (e.g. ones with predictive braking) what they are about to do. Imagine that these cars didn't rubberneck or get angry and tailgate or cut people off without signaling first, because they don't have emotional humans driving them.
Imagine a world with no traffic jams thanks to driverless cars.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
What "freedom" would we _really_ be giving up, anyways?
It's a false freedom. It's much more a conditional contract.
By 1:) acquiring a drivers license, and 2:) manually piloting a vehicle on public roadways, you effectively enter into an agreement to adhere to an ever-increasing list of laws, lest they catch you and impose taxation and additional restrictions upon you.
Inevitably(?), we are prone to distraction, fatigue, and either bad luck - or bad decisions - that result in accidents and injury. --Rarely ever "our fault", of course - just look to the proliferation of the insurance industry and the perpetual influx of claims . The statistics speak volumes. Statistically, we suck at it.
With the 'safety first' attitude firmly entrenched and only growing stronger, effectively leading to more and more restrictive laws, what game are we playing here, really? Let's look at the modern experience of driving for the vast majority. Stay in the lines, keep the speedo needle on the line - no more, no less. And whatever you do, don't touch your phone - you just can't be trusted to do two things at once. Media will sell you the image of a fast car on an open road - but that's a rapidly vanishing illusion. Enticing areas of roadway are often patrolled from the sky for such antics. You can buy the dream, but don't you dare live it!
So really, we need to look at what we're really 'giving up' by handing control over to autonomous vehicles, vs what we'll be gaining.
I'm sure when the first 'horseless carriages' showed up, a lot of people didn't trust that idea either. But within two or three generations, riding a horse was relegated to little more than an antiquated hobby. Once the technology develops sufficiently, demonstrating safe and reliable transportation in a much more consistent & efficient manner, the appeal will grow. When cities begin to allow 'autonomous only' lanes - and it zips past standstill traffic at much greater speeds, who among us would rather sit in bumper-to-bumper rush hour traffic, vs pursuing other interests?
And consider this -- if cities were dominated by autonomous vehicles, perhaps all the traffic cops would actually have to chase down 'real crime'!
--
Society has traditionally always tried to find scapegoats for its problems. Well, here I am.
Take the kids to practice, school, wherever, come home. or wait for them to finish
Drop you off at work, then drive to the shop to get the tires replaced (or whatever)
Take you to your minor medical procedure that the hospital insists you have "a ride" for.
Picking you up/dropping off at the airport
Taking your motorcycle to the shop (drives to the shop, you ride/drive home in the car)
Deal with the boring interstate-through-Kansas part of you road trip.
I definitely wouldn't want a car that only had autonomous mode as an option. That sounds both dangerous and annoying - dangerous because what if it messes up, annoying because what if you know better than it does about what route you should take, or you really want to go faster than some BS speed limit?
On the other hand, when self-driving cars become reality, assuming there *is* a completely mechanical manual override as a failsafe, I would totally pay a huge pile of cash to own one, and would quite happily let it drive itself the vast majority of the time, happy knowing that I *could* pull the lever putting it back into fully non-autonomous mode, even though I wouldn't probably use it that often. (Though occasionally - as I said, I have seen a few instances where my GPS told me to use a stupid route, and a self-driving car would presumably act similarly.)
OK, I live in Chicago, and see all three in my 20 minutes per day each way (3 miles) drive, so which one isn't even possible? (Please note, I am NOT joking!)
We are a long way from jumping in the car, saying "work," and then reading or taking a nap on the way. We accept about 30 thousand deaths a year in the USA as normal. If the real bugs could be worked out, this number would go down.
"Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair" - George Washington
The next generation or two will come to consider self-driving cars and wide-spread surveillance and monitoring to be "normal." They won't have grown up knowing anything else.
They'll consider the elderly who rant about "freedom" to be just a bunch of pathetic old Alzheimer's-addled lunatics. :(
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I am in on this completely if car always remains under my authority. Driving is a waste of my life for the most part. I would not get upset at other drivers, I would not be aware of them. The parent is very right. However, being in a vehicle that can be taken over by government control makes me squirm. If the car only goes where I tell it and does not pull over for the police without my authorization, then the world will be great.
I also want to be able to drag a slider on the console that lets me optimize between trip duration and fuel efficiency. You could enable drivers very easily to radically cut their fuel consumption.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I think it's fairly clear to see that autonomous cars are advancing to the point where they're starting to look feasible in mass deployment. However, one area I still think they're severely lacking is parking. Good luck telling a car to go to the town centre, drive into a multi-storey car park, pay at the machine, and find a space. I'm not saying it's not possible, but I've never actually seen an autonomous vehicle dynamically search for and select a parking space.
I suppose you could still have a system where the "driver" pays at parking barriers etc. until a more autonomous system was produced.
At least, if they can sort out the artificial mess lawyers will make of it. In other parts of the world, most people don't even buy cars with automatic transmissions (it has been over 10 years ago I drived an automatic transmission myself, when I borrowed my fathers car) but do it manually. Those systems are cheaper and more robust anyway. Self driving cars are a big step further, which most people will not want to use.
Some people think that change is good for its own sake. That line of thought brought uw windows 8, Gnome 3 and Unity. Most people disagree.
You know, there are cameras that can see further than humans do. Especially at night.
Since the car will be physically able to see further than you can, why couldn't it predict just as far out as you can? Or further?
We already have HOV lanes, so why not just make those "AOV" lanes, for Autonomously Operated Vehicles?
1. Access would be strictly controlled. You can't get in unless our vehicle is AOV capable.
2. You pull into an entry lane and wait for the system to negotiate with your vehicle. Once the a connection is established, it takes control.
3. The system calculates when to start accelerating, and adjusts the existing traffic flow to create a gap for your vehicle. The vehicle starts moving and travels down the entry lane to merge with flowing traffic, which never stops, and only slows down a little bit.
4. Your vehicle stays in the flow until you reach destination proximity, and you get a choice between a rest area parking lot, or resuming manual control to drive on normal roads. If you're asleep or not paying attention, it simply parks your car in the rest area.
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Man you guys are living in ignorance city. I had the displeasure of working at a car lot for far too long. You guys just THINK Cars are safe, we had recalls all the time about things catching on fire or brakes failing and nobody knows about this except the owners who receive the letter in the mail to come get something important replaced. The manufacturer isn't going to tell you they knew about the issues and released a potentially dangerous product with potentially deadly flaws.
You actually think self driving Cars are going to be our savior? Then ignorance city fits you very well.
To the other guys who think Manual Transmissions are going away, no. Manual Transmissions are released with some of the cheaper model cars and sports cars as optional and are sold in limited quantity, have been for many years now since automatic engulfed us. But if you want it, you have to specifically ask for it. And by all means, you don't have to read a word I say, just wait for the bad things to happen when the time comes. Car crashes from computer error will become normal, just like stuck gas petals. Life will go on and nothing will change, just like it does now.
Isn't it something? How things so terrible, become the normal and acceptable. And nothing will ever change until people stop rationalizing things. Buckle up kiddies. That's actually or was, an inside joke once because of the number of early seatbelt failures.
What is "automatic breaking", an advanced form of planned obsolescence?
"braking", FFS.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
will most likely never learn to drive.
Fuck freedom.
Look at why we are now required to wear seatbelts despite the fact that air bags are the better reason why we don't get hurt in accidents as much as we used to. The 55 speed limit was all about saving oil. Now the speed limits are all about the safety.
It's all about the safety.
Bryan
I think what he's asking for is a proof of concept. Automate a train or a bus first and have it run without jumping the tracks or killing all the passengers, then he'll believe in an automatic car.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I'd really, really like to think this is change I could believe in. I hate driving with a passion and if I could afford a house a block from my office I'd have moved years ago. Being able to use that commute time for leisure instead of having to fight for survival with the millions of other commuters out there would be a godsend.
The reality, though, is that I'd get into the car and ask to be driven to a nightclub and get "I'm sorry Dave, but the Republicans running the state won't let me do that on a Sunday". Or I'd drive to a store in the next wet county over and the car would helpfully notify the local sheriff that I'm bringing alcohol back. Or I'd be stuck heading to a hospital at the posted speed limit while obeying all traffic laws, when there's a perfectly good shoulder right there to pass traffic on.
I'd pay whatever it takes to get a driverless car I could control. Without that control, you couldn't pay me to take one.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
"SiriMobile, outrun the cops following us"
Table-ized A.I.
Unless you're a sheep. It's already been proven that an ABS is hackable. Take a look at this report: http://www.autosec.org/pubs/cars-oakland2010.pdf Now you want the car to do all the work for you? That'll end well.
if median mileage before accident is 250k miles,
and average 1k miles/month
then every 250 man-months we have an accident.
250 months of insurance payments would be $12,500 at $50/mo (assume liability only and great rates) per accident
I guess that's not so bad then.
it'll happen
Send the car to pick up the kid from school, while I'm at work...
Buy something online at a local store, and send the car to pick it up, with a curb-side/drive-thru service.
Whilst I can imagine the utillity of autonomous cars, I take solace in the fact that nobody would ever buy an autonomous motorcycle
I wouldn't trust anything published by anyone named Lucas or a derivative thereof.
Have gnu, will travel.
it's not about our freedom to drive - it's about our freedom to be able to travel without yahoos trying to kill us on the roads. I would make driverless cars compulsory for under 25's, over 75's and anyone who's ever had a drink driving or dangerous driving conviction.
Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. -- Benjamin Franklin
Wait ... what?
- they will be networked, this will make them safer in normal use and you should get there faster
however that will provide the average prankster endless fun rerouting you or causing jams
- if some cars are manually driven, you will be able to drive them in such a way that makes an automatic car misbehave (stop) ignoring the safety bit here
Low reaction time without contextual awareness simply decreases the amount of time it takes to die. Considering the sorry state of IO and AI compared with humans, I'll take the sometimes inconsistent human over the dumbass johnnycab.
the jury's still out how legions of these things will actually perform on the road where they'll have to handle the unexpected.
Automatic trains have been working for years, fyi.
So much ignorance. I think you'll find that the Google car's "vision" is far superior to humans. It can see farther than humans, with greater accuracy, and there are even radar units in production which can see *through* the cars in front. They have better perception of their surroundings, and can act far quicker than any human. They also don't mentally drift off, or perform worse after a hard day's work or a beer at lunch time. I have no idea why you think your vision is better than a computerised laser system aided by radar, or why you think your reaction times are faster than a computer, when both of those things are easily (and, indeed, have been) proven false. Oh yeah - hubris. Grow up - you are not the perfect being you seem to think you are, even if your ego tells you so.
Volvo already have a car that can do just that. You get out, tell it to park, and it drives off, finds a space, and parks. It then lets you know via your phone where it is. You can then summon it back to you when you want. The payment issue is clearly trivial, as automatic toll booths have had that ability for years and years.
Something that drives without lapses of attention or road rage, and within posted speed limits would be awfully nice.
That plus turning self driving into auto-taxi service, which is the inevitable next step, frees up all sorts of wonderful urban space consumed by godawful street parking. Suddenly, room for bike lanes, broader sidewalks full of whatever... an urban landscape built more to people than machines.
I like to drive. But I also like to get things done. A two hour drive to my parents, (4 hours when you add both ways) seems like such a waste of time. There is so much I could do with my time. My kids are usually watching some Disney/Pixar movie that I can't watch. It would be nice to watch it. I usually want to write something (I am both an Author and a Software Developer so by write, I could mean code, blog article, or fiction). Also, I have five classes left in my Masters of Computer Science, so homework during driving time would rock. Even my ten minute commute to work each day (I know it is short) I could get a lot done.
I can think of a number of good things that can come from this:
If it becomes safe enough you can do away with things like seat belts and air bags. You could even have the seats face in any direction you like, so that you can all sit around a table in the middle of the vehicle playing games, having a party with drinks etc. You could have the windows blacked out so that no one can see in. You could put a bed in the car. You could turn the inside of the car into a small mobile office. The possibilities are almost endless.
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)
Driving is freedom, but with responsibility. Maybe that is the REAL problem people have with cars, they have to be responsible. If you are in stressful driving situations on a day to day basis, change something. Move, take a bus/train. Just don't blame cars.
I don't think either AvitarX pr Pieroxy are committing the Gambler's Fallacy; if anything, AvitarX is doing the exact opposite. He's looking at 500 die rolls, none of which are a "1", and concluding that there is a greater likelihood that the die is not fairly weighted.
Is there a word for this? I'm not strong on my statistics, but I hear a lot of people talking about Bayesian analysis being like this.
If nothing else, actuaries at insurance companies would agree with AvitarX that 250,000 miles of accident-free driving is evidence of him being a lower accident risk, and would give him a discount on his rates as a result.
Some of the other posts in this thread do a great job of explaining the Dunning–Kruger effect as related to driving, and it doesn't seem to me that AvitarX is suffering from that, based on his stated evidence and how circumspect he's being about calling himself a good driver.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
Who went to prison for Chappaquiddick? Oh, I forgot, Ted Kennedy was a Liberal Democrat. Being drunk and killing people is OK.
There actually are people actively campaigning for the speed limit culture in the U.S. to be changed. There's not a lot of support for it, but if you want to be part of the solution check out the National Motorists Association and join the cause!
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
I don't see any survey. Why are we seeing a /. post whose central tenet is suggested by a survey that isn't referenced?
Reminds me of the story about the Mercury astronauts. Originally, they'd just be cooped up in their tin cans with nothing to do. They insisted on having buttons to push, a joystick, levers to pull so they could be *pilots*, as they already were in their pre-astronaut careers. They got it, and it turned out to be useful. (At least, this is the story as told in books, movies and other sources.)
No one wants to do nothing, but we all want to be involved in some way, to have input, to have the means to push harder or more skillfully, and to be able to rescue ourselves from disaster in case the automated systems fail.
Another story, from the 1970s, science fiction but that's not important. Some characters wanted to go from ground to the top of some building or structure, not very tall, just a few floors. They had a choice: stairs or elevator? They took the stairs, because it feels like you're doing something, active, in a position of control and able to push a little harder if you want to get there sooner. Maybe the elevator would have been a bit faster, but the passive waiting, getting in, and then more passive waiting, is unpleasant to people who have things to do, goals, disasters to prevent. That insight from that one story has stuck in my mind ever since.
That said, of course, a four hour round trip as the one commenter described is wasted time that could go toward reading, sleeping, practicing guitar, answering question on internet forums, telling jokes or anything more fun than guiding a machine along an easy path.
To what degree? CMU had driven a bus cross country with very limited manual intervention when I was an undergrad nearly 10 years ago. The bus only worked on the highway and the "driver" told it when to change lanes and took over to exit the highway but it made most of the trip by itself. I heard this story from Takeo Kanade but unfortunately my Google-Fu is failing to turn anything up so it's possible I'm mis-remembering.
Google's self-driving cars have driven over 300,000 miles without causing accidents while in automatic mode. There are two accidents I'm aware of. One, the car was rear-ended while stopped at a red light. The other was when the Google car rear ended another Prius. In that incident the car was in manual mode.
Sorry, was completely taken in by your obfuscation. You're just too good at it.
The auto pilot so to speak, can be turned on or off. If most cars on the highways were capable of driving themselves, I'd bet we'd reduce the death toll and in injuries substantially as most are caused by the drivers. It might take me a while to trust it, but knowing humans were no longer in control "of those other cars" would make me feel a lot safer. OTOH these cars would need to be subject to the same kind of maintenance checks as aircraft to keep the control systems safe and that adds quite a bit to the operational cost. I'm all for it!