Slashdot Mirror
Dispatch From the Future: Uber To Purchase 2,500 Driverless Cars From Google
First time accepted submitter Dave Jurgensen writes "Uber has said it will be purchasing 2,500 of Google's self driving GX3200 cars to be used around America. They are hoping to have their first set of driverless cars on the road by the end of the year. From the article: 'Uber has committed to invest up to $375 million for a fleet of Google’s GX3200 vehicles, which are the company’s third generation of autonomous driving cars, but the first to be approved for commercial use in the U.S. The deal marks the largest single capital investment that Uber has made to date, and is also the first enterprise deal that Google has struck for its new line of driverless vehicles.'" Update: Yes, this is a piece of speculative fiction.
It's dateline is 2023. It's fiction. NOT news.
It's supposed to be completely automatic, but actually you have to press this button.
"What could possiblie go wrong?".
My question is, how do we give a car analogy when the story is already about a car?
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Unless TechCrunch has a time machine, this is a work of speculative fiction. The dateline of July 25, 2023 should be a dead giveaway, but since when did the Slashdot edittors ever RTFA?
Lots of things. And they will.
But statistically, it'll probably be better than having humans behind the wheel. Not that this will stop anyone the first time the car backs over a kid, despite their excellent safety record.
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
Given my experience with the idiot drivers on the roads, I'm going to say, "Not much that hasn't already."
It's bad enough to have April Fools come once a year and have to wade through the fake posts, but it's far from April 1st.
From TFA: "Dispatch From The Future: Uber To Purchase 2,500 Driverless Cars From Google July 25, 2023 "
My guess, the list of people waiting on organ donors will get longer.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Hello, I'm Johnny Cab, where can I take you tonight?
I think the GP is right. Reasoning is that if there's one accident where a human is killed the media will exploded with stories of how cars are coming to life and killing everyone that gets near them.
I can also imagine people who oppose driverless cars will be going to great expense to try and trip them up, causing accidents. There are some people, that no matter how extensive the evidence is that driverless cars kill fewer people by huge margins, are going to try and stop their adoption. So many people are killed by human error while driving it doesn't even make the news anymore, but I guarantee one driverless car accident will be international headlines. Like 3D printers being used to print guns. Forget the fact they can do anything else like printing organs, food or prototyping innovative ideas. OMG they print guns quick start the presses the masses must know of this injustice.
Agreed, 300,000 miles without an accident isn't that awesome.
I've probably come close to driving around 300k in about 16 years and I have yet to have an accident. I HAVE had a number of close calls, and I will admit every now and then one of those close calls would have been my fault had there been an accident (legally and realistically).
The technology Double Standard.
If a person does it, they have a particular fault rate, if the rate is low enough they get credited as really good job.
If a computer does it, and they have a fault rate that exceeds the human fault rate by good factors, and it still fails, the idea is a disaster.
In general people don't like giving up control, and doesn't like doing the math to see if they are better off.
The automated driver, has a key advantage, it doesn't get distracted from driving, its primary goal is to get you from point a to point b as safe as possible. It doesn't get distracted by those bad drivers it is just an obstacle to avoid, after it avoided it, it isn't getting all pissy from it. Or if it is stuck in traffic, it will just drive the same without getting stressed about getting late.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Not that this will stop anyone the first time the car backs over a kid, despite their excellent safety record.
The Google cars have backup cameras, radar, and bump sensors. They have been specifically designed and tested to not run over kids/pets while backing, under many different light and weather conditions. So your scenario is very unlikely to happen.
A much more likely scenario: After self driving cars are common, some human driver backs over a kid, and people ask why we should continue to allow humans to drive.
A quick search reveals this:
http://mashable.com/2012/08/07/google-driverless-cars-safer-than-you/
And their math says 165,000 miles per accident for a person.
This one below says 5.7 crashes per million miles driven for women and 5.1 crashes per million miles. That gives you 175K or women and 196,078 for men. A bit off from the first, but not too far off.
http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/19980516133725data_trunc_sys.shtml
There are a few other links. So while you say 300,000 miles without a single at fault incident is not that good, it is almost twice what people do from the articles I can find.
While having any accidents will trigger panic and people screaming how terrible this is and how it should be banned, if people examine the data it says that at the present 300K we would reduce accidents by nearly 30%-50%. If it goes to 600K without an incident, we just reduced accidents and deaths to 25-30%% of what they were.