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Google: Our Robot Cars Are Better Drivers Than You
An anonymous reader writes "At a robotics conference in Santa Clara, California, the head of Google's autonomous car project presented results of a study showing that the company's autonomous cars are already safer than human drivers — including trained professionals. 'We're spending less time in near-collision states,' he said. 'In addition to painting a rosy picture of his vehicles' autonomous capabilities, Urmson showed a new dashboard display that his group has developed to help people understand what an autonomous car is doing and when they might want to take over.' This follows another (non-Google) study earlier this week that found the adoption of autonomous cars could save thousands of lives and billions of dollars each year. Urmson also pointed out that determining liability for an accident is much easier using the data collected by the autonomous cars. At one point, a test car was read-ended, and the data showed it smoothly braking to a stop before being struck. 'We don't have to rely on eyewitnesses that can't be trusted as to what happened — we actually have the data. The guy around us wasn't paying enough attention. The data will set you free.'"
Have the Google robot take on the Stig round the top gear test track.
Thanks to our dear friends at the NSA, law enforcement will soon have the ability to override the destination selection of autonomous cars and have any driver/passenger they wish promptly delivered to a convenient jail or donut shop.
I love technology!
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
1. Will you still be drving drunk if you have your autonomous car drive you home after a night of drinking? 2. What if you are driving link and ass and rear-end someone, will they be able to use that data against you? What if both people are at fault? 3. Who's going to absorb the liability for these cars when something unexpected breaks? The large automotives are going to drag their feet for years on self-driving cars. Their will need to be a lot of testing in real life before they mass produce any cars.
Very few people, even those who enjoy driving, enjoy more than a tiny fraction of the driving they do. In these situations, I find that the best touchstone is asking what very, very wealthy people do. They have essentially unlimited options, and what they do is reflective of human desire not limited by constraints.
Overwhelmingly, they choose to be driven. They choose to fly private jets. If you could afford it, you would do the same thing most of the time, because most of the time getting there is just a task, not a joy.
It will be the same with regular people. Imagine what society looks like when there are zero deaths due to drunk driving, distracted driving, and falling asleep at the wheel. Imagine how much lower car insurance premiums are when the risk of an at fault accident is nearly zero. People will still buy cars, because they will want one customized to them, but imagine all the things that can change when a human pilot no longer has to be accommodated: cars set up so that parents and children can face each other and play games together while traveling, lay-flat seats for overnight driving. You can leave Washington after work on Friday and eat lunch in New Orleans.
Except, if you've read any of the news for the last few years, it IS changing. Young people aren't entering into the automobile culture the way their parents did. They are favoring bicycles, walking, public transit, and other non-car ways to get around. It's something the big car mfgs are worried about a lot because their customer base is rapidly aging.
http://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/5-reasons-young-people-are-not-buying-cars-or-getting-their-drivers-license/
And as a cyclist, I trust the self-driving cars *much* more than human piloted cars. I see drivers texting while driving every day, and I'm confident that a self-driving car will never be reading a break-up text from its boyfriend and plow into me while txting a reply.
Think of the case of a gravel truck that has a loose load.
The good driver would apply the brakes, gas and turn the wheel to make sure the gravel passes harmlessly over or under the car.
The better driver would remember that there was still traffic to the sides and behind him and, rather than hoping they all have better reflexes than he does in dealing with his own sudden braking/accelerating/steering, lets the rock chip the windshield, which is later replaced on-site within 30 minutes, with costs covered entirely by his insurer.
The best driver notes the standardized "STAY BACK" sign on the back of the dump truck and actually stays back.
Guess which one the autonomous system does!
revenue from traffic tickets would disappear. Now, many police departments rely on those revenues. So, will they shrink, or find some other source of revenue?
Conversely, city costs would shrink. There is a good deal of tax and ticket revenue money that goes toward special police traffic units, driver instruction, court costs, emergency services for accidents, highway signage, etc. that would decrease dramatically.
It's possible that auto-drive cars could actually save the city costs.