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Nissan Leaf Prototype Becomes First Autonomous Car On Japanese Highways

Posted by samzenpus on from the keep-you-eyes-on-the-road-your-hands-off-the-wheel dept.

cartechboy writes "As car manufacturers battle over futuristic announcements of when autonomous cars will (allegedly) be sold, they are also starting to more seriously put self-driving technology to the test. Earlier this week several Japanese dignitaries drove — make that rode along — as an autonomous Nissan Leaf prototype completed its first public highway test near Tokyo. The Nissan Leaf electric car successfully negotiated a section of the Sagami Expressway southwest of Tokyo, with a local Governor and Nissan Vice Chairman Toshiyuki Shiga onboard. The test drive reached speeds of 50 mph and took place entirely automatically, though it was carried out with the cooperation of local authorities, who no doubt cleared traffic to make the test a little easier. Nissan has already stated its intent to offer a fully autonomous car for sale by 2020."

140 comments

  1. Cue the Overloads by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I for one, accept our new Leafy Overlords.

  2. But does it ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    automatically find outlets to plug into?

    1. Re:But does it ... by Ralph+Wiggam · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That's not a particularly difficult problem. An autonomous electric car could drop you off at the front door of your destination, then drive to a relatively distant parking lot where it can recharge using an automatic (robotic) charging station. Shortly before you're ready to leave, your would alert the car using your phone and it would pick you up at the front door.

    2. Re:But does it ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If my roomba can charge itself, why not. It could pull into the local dealership and back into a charging bay designed for the vehicle.

      This might solve a large chunk of the complainers complaining about how they've got no place to plug their electric car in etc.

      Who am I kidding, haters gonna hate.

    3. Re:But does it ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As a side effect, this will finally, finally, FINALLY put an end to the dreaded find-a-parking-space-in-a-busy-city-on-Friday-night drill. I for one welcome our self-driving-car overlords.

    4. Re:But does it ... by mb-texas · · Score: 1

      Inductive charging stations would be one of many ways to solve this problem.

    5. Re:But does it ... by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Interesting

      As a side effect, this will finally, finally, FINALLY put an end to the dreaded find-a-parking-space-in-a-busy-city-on-Friday-night drill.

      Self-driving cars can not only use remote parking lots, they can also make much better use of parking lot space. They are unoccupied when they self-park, so there is no need to leave room for people to exit. So they can park just an inch apart, and the absence of side mirrors will make that very close. Less space is needed for lanes, since the cars can steer optimally and coordinate their movements. Cars could park directly in front and behind each other, then when summoned by its owner, a car could signal for the blocking cars to move. The capacity of a parking lot can easily be doubled or tripled.

    6. Re:But does it ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      An autonomous electric car could drop you off at the front door of your destination, then drive to a relatively distant parking lot where it can recharge using an automatic (robotic) charging station

      Or it could recharge at Chamblee Middle School!

    7. Re:But does it ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Shortly before you're ready to leave, your would alert the car

      nah, you'll alert the car service and a nearby ride rotated in while your last one took off to the charging center will be at the curb when you're ready.

      couple that with Google's new delivery service and you have 24/7 delivery of goods. no more drunken/stoned trips to taco bell.

      i keep telling people this is the future. they keep going on about "jobs!". next level automation is going to be flushing even more jobs down the toilet. taxi/bus drivers, fast food, convenience stores, walgreens, all gonna feel the pinch. that's fine by me, honestly. soul crushing bullshit work.

    8. Re:But does it ... by zmollusc · · Score: 1

      "Whew! That was an expensive monthly trip to Walmart. Come pick me up, car, we have a shitload of shopping to get home."

      "I am sorry, I can't do that, Dave. Kids have dragged a trashcan across the exit of the parking lot again. I and 1500 other cars are stuck eight miles away from your current location"

      "Little Bastards. Okay, I will get a cab. See you at home when the cops clear the exit"

      "Hello, you have reached Johnnycabs. We are sorry, but we are experiencing unprecedented demand at this time. Please hold. You are number 1500 in a queue."

      --
      They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
    9. Re:But does it ... by Vanderhoth · · Score: 2

      Kind of funny you brought that up. I came across a line of five cars trying to get out of the parking garage downtown a couple years ago. I waited for 15 minutes before getting out to see what the hold up was. Someone had tied the arm for the exit down and the person at the front of the line was just sitting there. I knocked on her window and asked what she was waiting for. She told me she wasn't sure if it was ok for her to untie the arm so she was waiting for someone to come. I assumed she had called someone so I asked her how long she had been waiting there, two hours. I asked when and who she called and she said she hadn't called anyone. I walked over and pulled the rope of the arm which lifted up and I went back to my car. She may not have been the sharpest tool in the shed, but what does that say about the other four cars behind her that also didn't bother to do anything about it. If I hadn't gotten out we might have sat there all evening.

    10. Re:But does it ... by DrXym · · Score: 1
      Alternatively it would drop you off at your front door and stop dead a mile down the road because a small leaf has obscured a sensor, or it can't figure how manoeuvre around an obstacle or it's confused by a road diversion sign. Then you can enjoy the delights of hauling your ass down the road respond to your stranded vehicle which might even need a tow if its out of power.

      It is for this and a multitude of other every day scenarios that it is unlikely a vehicle like this is coming any time in the foreseeable future. Self drive will most likely mean advanced driving modes, which might include hands free driving in some limited and controlled circumstances. It will also most likely require a conscious and unimpaired driver behind the wheel to take over at very short notice.

    11. Re:But does it ... by jfengel · · Score: 1

      Or at least, the mirrors could automatically retract. I suspect that even self-driving cars are going to have to have the option of allowing human steering for quite some time.

  3. I like to call it by digitalPhant0m · · Score: 1

    Japansportation.

    1. Re:I like to call it by DriedClexler · · Score: 1

      Koreanvented.

      --
      Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
    2. Re:I like to call it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Afghanistanimation?

      I got nothing

  4. southwest? by bob_super · · Score: 1

    > who no doubt cleared traffic to make the test a little easier

    There are lots of empty roads NorthEast of Tokyo, and not having a human in the car is actually recommended.

  5. Glitch = Possible Death by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What if it suddenly veers into a wall or oncoming truck due to an incorrect or faulty instruction. Fuck autonomous!

    1. Re:Glitch = Possible Death by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      What if it suddenly veers into a wall or oncoming truck due to an incorrect or faulty instruction

      What if it suddenly veers into a wall or oncoming truck due to the driver being drunk or sleepy or inattentive?

      Humans glitch, too. Far more often than computers.

    2. Re:Glitch = Possible Death by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Interesting

      What if it suddenly veers into a wall or oncoming truck due to an incorrect or faulty instruction. Fuck autonomous!

      You are obviously not an embedded system engineer with mission critical design experience. The proper way to design a system like this is to have multiple processes running on at least two separate CPUs. The most powerful CPU computes the car's speed and path, and another process running on a separate CPU performs sanity checks on the results. If something is clearly wrong (like steering into oncoming traffic), then the backup program applies the brakes and pulls off the road. Bits can be flipped by cosmic rays, or whatever, and a system like this is designed to deal with that. This is standard critical system engineering. Then you put it on the test track, and throw all the crap you can at it: turn off sensors at random, put corrupt data on the bus, flip bits in memory, etc. Keep hammering it and fixing the problems until it can handle any failure as safely as possible.

    3. Re:Glitch = Possible Death by savuporo · · Score: 2

      I have done a lot of embedded system design, coding and integration in my life - baremetal, RTOS, bigger combined systems with RTOS and desktop os collaborating etc.

      Read this
      http://it.slashdot.org/story/07/02/25/2038217/software-bug-halts-f-22-flight

      --
      http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.slashdot.org Errors found while checking this document as HTML5!
    4. Re:Glitch = Possible Death by Tom · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yeah, obviously nobody has ever thought about that possibility before, so engineers have certainly not worked on making the system fault-tolerant.

      --
      Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
    5. Re:Glitch = Possible Death by delt0r · · Score: 1

      Or worse. What if your driving it.

      --
      If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
    6. Re:Glitch = Possible Death by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Finish the sentence, man! What if my driving it... does what?

    7. Re:Glitch = Possible Death by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You are obviously not an embedded system engineer with mission critical design experience. The proper way to design a system like this is to have multiple processes...

      Do you have experience working for a large company? There is the proper way, and then there is the way that your employer will have you do it. Don't forget that we're talking about an industry that fought against the additional cost of installing seat belts so hard that it took government regulation to make them do it. There are going to be safety compromises everywhere you look. These things will occasionally fail and fail hard, but more to the point, they will have virtually no security preventing viruses and malware from being able to wreak havok on a scale that will be proportional to adoption.

  6. I think people just won't own these cars by GoodNewsJimDotCom · · Score: 2

    I think for a person to own a self driving car might be the exception to the norm. I think if self driving cars work, corporations will buy millions of them, and station them in semi-patroling routes. Then people will just summon them like cheap taxis. Some people will even schedule their work day around them. The software will do all the planning on who gets what car. A guy could ride one to work, not pay parking, then the car plays taxi for the day, and comes picks the guy up at work to take him home.

    If they work, they'll work big time, but I really worry about lawsuits.

    --
    God spoke to me
    1. Re:I think people just won't own these cars by bob_super · · Score: 1

      Meh, there are just too many people for 2D movement.

      Someone had better figure out how to reliably send me a drone to taxi me around.

    2. Re:I think people just won't own these cars by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Amazon?

    3. Re:I think people just won't own these cars by antifoidulus · · Score: 1

      One of the biggest potential long-term issues with these cars will be maintenance. If you look to autopilot in airliners as an example, autopilots only tend to fail/disengage when there is something wrong with the sensors on the plane. For instance if the pilot and co-pilots air speeds disagree(indicating a potential blockage in a pitot tube) etc. Now since the airline industry is heavily regulated and since airplanes are so expensive, the airline companies have a huge incentive to keep their sensors well-maintained. However, if you take a look around at how people treat their carsâ¦wellâ¦

      As any good coder knows, the base case is often times the easiest, what is going to be challenging, at least from a practical perspective, is how these autonomous cars deal with failures/inconsistent data in their sensors. My guess is that all these demos were done with relatively new, clean and maintained sensors, but what happens if someone just lets their equipment go to shit, what happens in rainy/snow environments where mud/snow may gum up the sensors, etc. I think that even 7 years might not be time enough to solve these problems, at least not without new, potentially unpopular legislation dictating that maintenance standards for automobiles come at least close to those of airliners.

      --
      Monstar L
    4. Re: I think people just won't own these cars by Vanderhoth · · Score: 1

      I don't see that as any different than someone not properly maintaining their manual car. I know lots of people that have been in accidents because of bad breaks or bawled tires.

    5. Re:I think people just won't own these cars by timholman · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If they work, they'll work big time, but I really worry about lawsuits.

      I tend to think the lawsuit fears are overblown. In the U.S. alone, 35,000 people die each year due to human drivers, at a cost of about $200 billion annually, paid for by everyone's insurance. We seem to have no problem living with that.

      If autonomous cars can cut that fatality rate to 3,500 or even 350 deaths a year, the savings will be so enormous that it will be cost-effective for the auto companies to partner with insurance companies and create a general fund to reimburse those people who may be injured due to an automation failure, regardless of fault. The federal government already uses this concept with the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. It provides no-fault reimbursement of vaccine-related injuries, because letting vaccine makers be sued out of business would result in more deaths and injures in the long run.

      And keep in mind that accident rates will only continue to drop as the automation improves with time. Moore's Law is inexorable.

    6. Re:I think people just won't own these cars by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Amazon?

      That'd be hot, but I don't think Amazon warriors would like it.

    7. Re: I think people just won't own these cars by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 4, Funny

      I don't see that as any different than someone not properly maintaining their manual car. I know lots of people that have been in accidents because of bad breaks or bawled tires.

      people shouldn't be taking a break while driving much less bad ones! how can they even stand with crying tires? dude, you know some messed up people.

      --
      Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    8. Re:I think people just won't own these cars by Opportunist · · Score: 0

      Just wait for cab driver unions to go berserk over it. It kills jobs! It's hackneys and RIAA all over again. Just you wait and see, these things will be outlawed inside the cities.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    9. Re: I think people just won't own these cars by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You should stop talking about cars. You've managed to misspell everything you typed about them!

    10. Re: I think people just won't own these cars by forkazoo · · Score: 1

      Except now the car can just take itself to a maintenance appointment while you are at work or overnight, so you never need to actively actually do anything. In any case, I think the cars will make the best estimate of the world that they can, based on a combination of sensors. It seems to be the case that you can drive a car optically (humans do it) so if the radar sensors go out, it's probably still perfectly safe to let it drive on lidar and cameras for a little while. It doesn't get scary until cheap econobox cars go autonomous without any real redundancies. But, they'll still be safer than human drivers.

    11. Re: I think people just won't own these cars by Opportunist · · Score: 2

      I think the main difference is maintenance cycles, delicacy of sensor and detection of failure.

      Brakes don't suddenly go from good to bad. They have a very graduate wear and it's easy to detect that they should be replaced in the annual checkup. And when it is detected, there's plenty of time usually left, not to mention that you notice a change in the behaviour unless you're very insensitive to your car's signals.

      Likewise, if you're lacking oil, it's trivial to detect that. There's a sensor that notices when there isn't enough oil and it works trivially easy. Covered in oil = fine, not covered in oil = warning light on.

      And if a light goes dark, it's either easy to notice yourself (when you don't see jack anymore) or some friendly cop will point it out to you (usually while cashing in some money for that service...).

      It's a bit different with the kind of sensors that you need to let a car drive itself. I think the moment you notice that some important sensor is covered in mud is the same moment that airbag goes poof in your face.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    12. Re:I think people just won't own these cars by timeOday · · Score: 2

      The subways in Seoul, Moscow, Beijing, Shanghai, and Tokyo together provide over 12 billion rides per year (cite). Tunneling is totally the way to go for dense transport. It's 3d, safe, efficient, relieves the open land of the blight of travel infrastructure, and the high initial cost of tunneling is super-amortized when ridden billions of times per year.

    13. Re:I think people just won't own these cars by GoodNewsJimDotCom · · Score: 1

      You know what makes me think it will fly:
      Since big time corporations will invest in them, they'll have big time corporation pockets to win lawsuits.

      I think relative safety is important in the end, but you know how court cases are, logic doesn't always prevail.

      --
      God spoke to me
    14. Re:I think people just won't own these cars by GoodNewsJimDotCom · · Score: 1

      Amazon Escort service?

      I was just also thinking of if an individual would let his car go make money for him instead of even being a corporation: Pimp My Ride could have a whole new meaning. "Okay car, you take me to work, and instead of me paying for you to park, you go play taxi all day and bring me money for my ride home."

      --
      God spoke to me
    15. Re: I think people just won't own these cars by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2

      I don't see that as any different than someone not properly maintaining their manual car.

      I see a big difference: with an automated car, the car will know that it needs maintenance. If it is a safely issue, it can limit its speed, or refuse to drive until the problem is fixed. Otherwise, it can automatically drive itself to a maintenance center while you are at work or sleeping.

    16. Re:I think people just won't own these cars by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think for a person to own a self driving car might be the exception to the norm.

      A hundred years ago, it was thought that a person that could own a car was exception to the norm too. Why do you need or even want a car, when a self-maintaining and self-fueling horse does the job?

      Wait 50 years and see that drivers will be limited to the two wheel vehicles.

      If they work, they'll work big time, but I really worry about lawsuits.

      Why do you worry? Are you the owner of a company making these cars or are you worried about lawsuits in general? Perhaps some liability insurance would ease your mind!

    17. Re:I think people just won't own these cars by bob_super · · Score: 1

      The RER A line in Paris claims up to 1.2 million riders a day, or 300 million rides a year. That's for one tunnel with one lane each way.

      I agree that tunnels are better for mass transit, but they won't dig one all the way to my house. No business case until they convert the whole mountain into condos. 2099 maybe.

      So in the meantime I'll take my DroneCab(TM) instead.

    18. Re:I think people just won't own these cars by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Unfortunately, people are messy jerks. And if identification is used to bring accountability, your privacy of travel is completely gone. Assholes: the reason we can't have nice things.

    19. Re:I think people just won't own these cars by chameleon3 · · Score: 1

      very well written, and I agree completely.

      The question is, will they put all those cash savings towards the loss in revenue from speed traps and red light cameras?

      Me? I'm betting they find new ways to fine us.

    20. Re:I think people just won't own these cars by GoodNewsJimDotCom · · Score: 1

      I worded it wrong. I meant some people obviously will get one. But for the masses, they'll just be summoning them with their smart phones.

      --
      God spoke to me
    21. Re: I think people just won't own these cars by Sardaukar86 · · Score: 1

      Brakes don't suddenly go from good to bad. They have a very graduate wear and it's easy to detect that they should be replaced in the annual checkup. And when it is detected, there's plenty of time usually left, not to mention that you notice a change in the behaviour unless you're very insensitive to your car's signals.

      Is it just here in NZ that brakes are typically of the "screamer" variety? I can't imagine we've any monopoly on them here. I occasionally hear them in cars around the place, yelling like tortured pigs because the meat on the brake pad is low. Very embarrassing and a good incentive for the owner to get them changed pronto. Happily, they don't seem to make any difference to the braking performance. It's quite a different noise from that one running the brake pads down to the metal and it certainly is rather motivational..

      --
      ..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
    22. Re:I think people just won't own these cars by Sardaukar86 · · Score: 1

      Sorry to reply to you twice in the same thread but it seems to me that this is going to be a common refrain over the coming years. Taxi and transportation companies ought to be thinking hard about the future by now, knowing the impact of autonomous vehicles will be gigantic. Especially so when accounting for the extra pressure the potential of drone deliveries brings. That's two strong areas of development (that have already proven themselves acceptably reliable and safe even this early on in their lifecycles) converging on a single economic sector. In time we're going to have to get used to the shrill protestations of unions across nearly every industry.

      And here I was shitting myself as a small-business network administrator fearing obsolescence due to the move to the Cloud...!

      --
      ..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
    23. Re: I think people just won't own these cars by zmollusc · · Score: 1

      The brakes on my car went from good to bad rather quickly when a seal failed in the slave cylinder, likewise my power steering failed entirely when a belt to the pump snapped.

      --
      They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
    24. Re: I think people just won't own these cars by zmollusc · · Score: 1

      Like when you have a stroke. Your brain knows that it is impaired and you go get medical attention.

      How many layers of sensors and redundancy will be enough?

      --
      They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
    25. Re:I think people just won't own these cars by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      keep in mind that accident rates will only continue to drop as the automation improves with time

      This is also something to keep in mind when people say that we shouldn't allow self-driving cars until their safety record is proven to be better than a humans.

      You have to consider that using self-driving cars in the real world will provide valuable testing that can't be simulated in a lab, and that the feedback from the car's logs when accidents do occur will provide information needed to program the cars to deal with exceptionally rare circumstances. For this reason, it's entirely possible to switch to using self-driving cars even before they're less likely to kill people than humans and still end up saving lives in the long run if doing so allows you to create better-than-human self-driving cars faster than you would be able to otherwise.

      Think of it like this: Humans kill 35,000 people in car accidents each year. Over the next 50 years (a conceivable estimate of how long the "OMG the machines will kill us" types might be able to keep self-driving cars off the roads) that 35,000 people/year turns into 1.75 million. Now imagine that with self-driving cars we can reduce that number by 90%, saving 1.575 million people over that 50 year period, but in order to do so, we'd have to put the cars on the road today in order to learn from their mistakes, and doing so will cause 500,000 deaths over the next ten years (43% more than humans) before we perfect the design so that the cars are only killing 10% as many people as humans would. (and indeed, that 500,000 may well be heavily weighted to the first year) Sure, that initial 150,000 deaths that wouldn't have occurred without those stupid machines on the road would suck, but it would end up saving over a million lives in the long term (50 year period), whereas waiting until lab testing perfects the design (waiting that 50 years) kills those people, but leaves us feeling better about it just because it was humans who killed them instead of machines.

    26. Re:I think people just won't own these cars by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I tend to think the lawsuit fears are overblown. .

      Check into something called the Morris worm. If autonomous vehicles become popular, adoption will steadily increase until one day when there is a spectacularly catastrophic event involving some percentage of a particular model of vehicle all at once. Adoption will immediately fall to near zero. Before you poo-poo the notion, consider that Elon Musk recently blurted out that they might just readjust the suspension height of all the Teslas out there with an over-the-air firmware update.

    27. Re:I think people just won't own these cars by RivenAleem · · Score: 1

      I think he was more worried about what would happen to all the poor lawyers when there is a massive drop in lawsuits. Somebody think of the lawyers!

    28. Re: I think people just won't own these cars by Vanderhoth · · Score: 1

      I'm sorry for that, I was writing on my phone and /. mobile really sucks. I have a Galaxy Note II, writing with a stylist, phone does auto correct and when I go back to correct spelling the phone sometimes goes into epileptic seizure with the scribe area popping up and disappearing randomly, conveniently over the submit button. There's no preview on /. mobile, it just posts.

    29. Re: I think people just won't own these cars by Vanderhoth · · Score: 1

      We do have those in Canada. I primarily hear them on Metro Transit buses around my city, which is kind of unsettling.

    30. Re: I think people just won't own these cars by Vanderhoth · · Score: 1

      The computer the sensors are connected to will know when the sensor isn't functioning. Cars from the last seven years, at least, have had this feature along with just about any machinery on assembly lines that work at high speeds. When the brake sensor on my 2007 Yaris goes a light tells me I need to take my car in.

      Aside with that what's wrong with redundancy? What you don't carry a spare tire in case you have a blowout while you're on the highway? Seems like a good safe idea to me to make sure there's an alternate or backup sensor of some kind that'll get you to the dealership for repairs.

    31. Re: I think people just won't own these cars by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Brakes don't suddenly go from good to bad.

      Tell Paul Walker.

      In fact, brake lines fail without notable warning all the time, as do other components like masters and boosters. So you're wrong there.

      Likewise, if you're lacking oil, it's trivial to detect that. There's a sensor that notices when there isn't enough oil and it works trivially easy. Covered in oil = fine, not covered in oil = warning light on.

      Actually, this isn't that easy. For example, one of the UPS drivers let me know that his Mercedes Turbo-Diesel powered delivery van was detecting low oil and shutting off when he needed power the most, going up bumpy hills. Almost killed him one time. The fleet mechanic defeated it for him so that he wouldn't die. So you're wrong again. Even Mercedes who has been making cars since time was time can get this one wrong.

      And if a light goes dark, it's either easy to notice yourself (when you don't see jack anymore) or some friendly cop will point it out to you (usually while cashing in some money for that service...).

      Look, it's not when a light goes dark, which is not easy for most people to notice. It's when a light comes on. When there's something wrong, a light is lit. If your brake fluid is low, your BRAKE light is on. If your vehicle is producing excessive emissions, your MIL is lit. If your manufacturer bothered to also create a CEL, then if there is also likely engine damage occurring, the CEL will be illuminated. When you disable traction control in cars which permit it, something lights up to tell you it's off, nothing goes off to tell you it's no longer on. So you're wrong again.

      It's a bit different with the kind of sensors that you need to let a car drive itself. I think the moment you notice that some important sensor is covered in mud is the same moment that airbag goes poof in your face.

      I think the moment you notice that some important sensor is covered in mud will be the same moment that the car tells you that there's a sensor problem, and that you're going to have to do your own driving.

      You are wrong about literally everything and your conclusion is laughable.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    32. Re: I think people just won't own these cars by Vanderhoth · · Score: 1

      I live in Atlantic Canada and have had brakes seize because of salt corrosion on the calipers, which isn't a fun thing to discover when you live in a city that's primarily one big hill. I already had a appointment to have my brakes serviced for the following day, but I wish I hadn't put it off that long. Luckily no one was hurt when I ran a stop sign and was able to eventually stop the car using the emergency brake and pushing really hard on the pedal. The brakes engaged, but then seized in the engaged position.

      I imagine for the first few generations of self driving cars there will be a safety override, just for peoples piece of mind, or at the vary least the car will fail in a safe way. The engineers that build these things aren't stupid and I'm sure any companies making self driving cars realize they're going to be under a microscope. One accident that was the cars fault and it'll be in every paper around the world.

      It's actually interesting because we're seeing this right now with Tesla and the three or four cars that caught fire after being in crashes. It's actually much more common for a non-electric car to catch fire, but Tesla is being called out on it after the battery pack in a couple cars ruptured in crashes. Why all the fuss when it's not all that uncommon for a gas car to catch fire *while idle*? because it's an electric car, people are wary of them and are looking for something to be horrendously wrong to prevent change. The media prints it because people eat up fear in the news.

      We are all going to be much better off with self driving cars. There might be some growing pains, no tech is perfected out of the gate, but no more inexperienced teens, drunks, old or distracted people ruining someone else's day seems worth it to me.

    33. Re: I think people just won't own these cars by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What system is in place today in case you have a stroke while doing 65mph in the left lane of a busy LA freeway?

      We can just replicate that.

      You stop adding redundancy when the cost exceeds the probability-weighted benefit. But critical system failure on an autoautomobile is your engine dying and your deadman's handle being applied (they can have this on driverless cars). So now you need this to happen while executing a critical operation such as: overtaking on the wrong side of the road with oncoming traffic that doesn't have enough time to stop before reaching you should you fail to move back. And that's the kind of batshit insane maneuver that driverless cars won't be executing in the first place, which is why we need them.

    34. Re: I think people just won't own these cars by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

      It's gonna be weird seeing cars and trucks driving around with no-one in them at first. Could open up some new and interesting avenues in highway robbery too, especially if all you have to do is set up a stop sign in the road and the computer automatically brings the vehicle to a halt.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    35. Re: I think people just won't own these cars by MarkH · · Score: 1

      shared insurance liability could be a great way of getting over what are likely to be a small number of high profile law suits in early days of adoption. as you say works great for vacination.

      on side note people always quote the deaths from auto accidents. don't forget to multiply the figure by about 3 for accidents resulting in serious injury where long term care and support needed.

    36. Re:I think people just won't own these cars by Vanderhoth · · Score: 1

      I don't know if I'd call three cars catching fire after being in accidents "a spectacularly catastrophic event". It's certainly more publicized, but it seems to me there are gas cars that catch fire, which does happen much more frequently.

    37. Re:I think people just won't own these cars by rolfwind · · Score: 1

      Some people will even schedule their work day around them.

      That would be counter to the whole point, imo. They'll be taxis, not busses. And with smartphones, easier to summon than ever. Although I agree ownership will decrease in urban and semiurban areas.

    38. Re: I think people just won't own these cars by chameleon3 · · Score: 1

      Could open up some new and interesting avenues in highway robbery too

      Doors are locked. If a window is broken and a door is opened, the car drives to the police station.

    39. Re:I think people just won't own these cars by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Unfortunately, tunnels just aren't feasible everywhere.

      Try digging a tunnel under San Antonio. After you get through about five feet of dirt, it's limestone all the way down.

    40. Re:I think people just won't own these cars by amalcolm · · Score: 1

      Sounds like a bus to me :)

      --
      Time for bed, said Zebedee - boing
    41. Re: I think people just won't own these cars by amalcolm · · Score: 1

      Did you mean bad brakes and bald tyres?

      --
      Time for bed, said Zebedee - boing
    42. Re:I think people just won't own these cars by brianwski · · Score: 1

      Engineers know how to tunnel through limestone, they created dedicated machines for it, here is an article: http://science.howstuffworks.com/engineering/structural/tunnel4.htm and here is an example where it was used: http://midwest.construction.com/midwest_construction_projects/2013/0729-deep-below-indianapolis-a-race-to-control-waste.asp

    43. Re: I think people just won't own these cars by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Little behind the curve aren't you. Two others already pointed that out to him and he responded with it was an issue between auto correct and the /. mobile site, but thanks for pointing that out again for those of us that didn't read the next two comments.

    44. Re:I think people just won't own these cars by Vanderhoth · · Score: 1

      Except the car won't leave until you're ready, you don't have to share it with 50 other gross diseased people hacking and coughing all over you, you'll actually be able to take your coffee to work with you, you won't have to make 100 stops between where you work and your house, the vehicle will go from point A to point B without having to drive all over the city first, you can get dropped off at your front door rather than a stop two blocks away, the last three mean the trip will be 15 minutes instead of 2 hours, there's much less risk of being mugged or raped (rare, but it happened), you won't have to deal with a asshat driver on a power trip, the car will go when you want rather than shutting down at 11PM leaving you stranded, car pooling with people will actually reduce the cost of owning the vehicle instead of everyone paying $60 each for a pass and then being charged municipal property taxes whether you use the bus or not, the car won't have that human fallibility current bus drivers are still susceptible to.

      There are a lot more, but lunch is almost over. Suffice it to say, public transit is not always great or a good option in every city. I bought my first car specifically because of all the draw backs with transit in my city. On top of that my wife and I were paying $60 each for a pass to use transit, then another $120 a month to travel to and from her parents place twice a month by provincial bus. Meaning we were paying over $4,300 a year, to be told when we had to be somewhere, when we had to leave and be forced to travel with people we didn't want to be around. I bought a car for $18,000, paid it off in 5 years, $4000 a year (because of interest), and now the cost of the car is on average $175/month in gas and maintenance, even with high gas prices. In another two years I'll have saved enough by not using transit to buy another new car.

      With the added bonus that I can go where I want, when I want, with who I want. My commute to work use to be 2 hours one way, my wife's was 3 hours. Now we drop our daughter off at daycare on the way to work, wife drops me off at my office and continues on. Then does the revers in the afternoon the whole commute one way for her is 30 minutes, for me it's 15, for our daughter it's about 10. So for us owning a car is cheaper and easier than taking transit.

    45. Re: I think people just won't own these cars by JazzLad · · Score: 1

      writing with a stylist

      There's your problem. ;)

      --
      "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
    46. Re: I think people just won't own these cars by Vanderhoth · · Score: 1

      I guess I should have made sure she actually graduated high school before letting her cut my hair and write my posts. That was all my mistake, sorry.

    47. Re:I think people just won't own these cars by amalcolm · · Score: 1

      Well, I agree in a way. The Genie is out of the bottle. But when we abandoned public transport form the '60s onwards (in the UK at least), we started down the slippery slope to clogged motorways, pollution and the like, largely because we can stand spending a few minutes sharing a public space with our fellows. An oversimplification for sure, but I think there's more than little truth there.

      --
      Time for bed, said Zebedee - boing
    48. Re: I think people just won't own these cars by JazzLad · · Score: 1

      Kidding aside, you did make some excellent points elsewhere in this thread - specifically regarding people doing makeup (or texting, whatever) being far more dangerous than automated cars.

      --
      "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
    49. Re: I think people just won't own these cars by Vanderhoth · · Score: 1

      Thanks. I do hate to sound militant about it, but I've had a lot of close calls driving and 99% of the time it's because of other people and it would have been entirely preventable if those people were to just do what they're suppose to be doing. So I just can't see how this technology could *possibly* be worse than the existing situation.

      Who hasn't been driving down the highway and seen someone texting, or shaving, or putting on makeup, or screaming at their four year old in the back seat. We just have too much to do to provide 100% focus on driving so it only seems logical we should let a computer do it for us. Sure the system isn't going to be perfect at first, but there's no reason it can't be made better and better over time.

      We put up people driving because it's just too convenient, regardless of the danger we're putting ourselves in, so if there's a way to make it safer we should be doing it. For starters it's way to easy for people to get drivers permits. I have a cousin that failed his drivers test four times and passed on the fifth try, he's crashed three cars in the last ten years and only stopped driving because he couldn't afford insurance anymore.

      We could also have mandatory retesting for the drivers test every five years or every two years after 65. My grandfather faked his way through his eye test when he was 78 and was allowed to keep driving even though he had had major eye surgery and couldn't even see anymore. That was until he almost killed an eight year old. Had someone gotten in a car with him they would have known he couldn't see well enough to drive. Mental faculties are also a consideration, as people get older and aren't as quick to react, which actually having someone in the car with the driver would be able to easily assess.

      There's no valid reason in my mind why this technology couldn't work and why we couldn't make it work in the situations it's less reliable. You can see people throwing everything they have at it, but almost always you can use the, "how is that any different than now?" argument and point out umteen billion situations where it would be more convenient (being able to go to a bar and have a car to take you home, blind/disabled people being able to have personal transport, not having to give up your car when you get old) and safer (no more issues with texting, distracted, drunk, fatigued, stupid drivers).

    50. Re: I think people just won't own these cars by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Great - so some punk kid throws a rock through my window, and when I open the door to clean up the mess, the car drives away. Wonderful!

    51. Re:I think people just won't own these cars by Vanderhoth · · Score: 1

      I don't disagree with the clogged motorways issue, which isn't a problem for me. Mainly because I don't live in a HUGE city. Although I think self driving cars and technology would help solve some of that issue.

      Halifax/Dartmouth is more of a small to medium size city so we don't have the commuter issues larger cities have, but our transit system sucks. If you want people to use transit then it has to work, it has to be more convenient or cheaper than owning a car. In Halifax it just isn't.

    52. Re: I think people just won't own these cars by Kjella · · Score: 1

      Brakes don't suddenly go from good to bad. They have a very graduate wear and it's easy to detect that they should be replaced in the annual checkup.

      The brake pads themselves, generally no. But you can have catastrophic failure in the brake fluid tubes and with no pressure, next to no breaking. Still overall mechanical failure is the reason for very few accidents compared to human error.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    53. Re: I think people just won't own these cars by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The car knows if you are in it, silly. Also, there would be a manual override for the owner, of course. Or, as many seem to think, it will be more like a fleet of taxis. So it won't be your car they vandalize, anyway.

    54. Re:I think people just won't own these cars by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Automakers will positively crush any cab drivers that might object.

  7. Lets hope they are like Johnny Cab by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If my wife is in labor and we need to rush to the hospital, I'm ripping the guts out of that thing and driving myself.

    1. Re: Lets hope they are like Johnny Cab by Vanderhoth · · Score: 2

      Labor last for hours after contractions first start. Trust me you'd have time. My first one was 16 hours from the initial cramping. My cousins wife was 36. I could go on, but I'm writing on my phone. Despite what TV and Movies tell you labor is no excuse to speed to the hospital, putting both your wife, kid and others in danger. If you really feel time is of the essence, call an ambulance, let the pros handle it.

    2. Re: Lets hope they are like Johnny Cab by Your.Master · · Score: 2

      I also do not understand why people think:

      a) Speed limit laws designed for human drivers will never change when driverless cars are common.
      --- to some extent in residential areas they still need a lower limit to account for children running out into the street, but anywhere you can go kind of fast now, the roads could be built for driverless cars to go much faster.
      b) Driverless cars will not have an emergency mode.

      Emergency situations are always a priority as transportation and communications infrastructure becomes commonplace -- think of 911 and then E911 etc.. The greater the percent of cars on the road that are driverless, the more you can just punch a "911" button and get to the nearest hospital quick with every other car automatically dodging out of your way, clearing a single lane of a multilane street just-in-time. Resisting driverless cars is tantamount to insisting that when you drive your wife to the hospital, you want to deal with random jackasses and you also do not want the police to know why you are driving like an idiot.

    3. Re: Lets hope they are like Johnny Cab by Vanderhoth · · Score: 1

      You make a very good point with the 911 option, that would be a very nice feature to have in case you were already on route to the hospital, or just out and about, and something causes a situation to become even worse, like in the case of someone all the sudden suffering from a heart attack or stroke. Also imagine driverless ambulance, with paramedics in the back, where the ambulance could signal to other cars wirelessly what route it's going to take to an emergency. Then cars either pull over or just reroute to continue on without getting in the way.

      I would like to see speed limits done away with if speed is no longer a factor for safty, but I think you'd still have to consider fuel economy. The faster a vehicle travels the more fuel it has to consume. So there probably will still be some "fuel optimal" speed limit.

      Just not having to worry about some crazy b*$%) who's doing her makeup on the highway on the way to work ramming into the side of my car, which has happens to me, is enough to sell me on driverless cars. I mean, she was passing me on a single lane highway doing 80Km/h with on coming traffic while putting on mascara. I looked over right at her and thought, this is it, I'm toast. I went off the shoulder of the road and took my foot off the gas while working hard not to tense up and keep the car going straight on the gravel shoulder while it slowed down, got out and promptly threw up. Luckily I got away with just a few scratches to my driver side, $2,700 to fix. Cops never caught her, I gave a description of her and the car, but was a little busy focusing on not dying to get her license plate. <== This is why we need driverless cars.

  8. Driverless 'Cash Cab' by mb-texas · · Score: 1

    ...with live streaming to web!

  9. Automotive networks have zero security by sinij · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Work by Dr. Charlie Miller showed that in-auto networks have zero security. It wasn't a problem up to this point because such networks were secured by air-gap. Unfortunately automakers decided that facebook integration for the car is worthwhile feature and decided to open Pandora's box. If you are planning to buy a new car, make sure it has no connectivity capability of any kind. This includes On-Star systems, this definitely includes any kind smartphone integration or mobile hotspot technologies.

    Car's CAN Bus is ring network with no authentication whatsoever and rudimentary priority system. If you can broadcast into it, then you can affect operation of the car in very drastic ways. Since it has to be real-time and responsive (e.g. controlling engine timing) there is no time for any kind of authentication. Insanity is allowing things like Entertainment/Navigation/OnStar system access to it, but this is how auto engineers do it. Why? Because they don't know any better, they are not IT Security guys.

    1. Re:Automotive networks have zero security by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If anyone interested, ISO 15765-2 is what used for CAN network. Here is the link to PDF presentation: http://www.countermeasure2013.com/documents/presentations/Miller_and_Valasek_Adventures_in_Automotive_Network_and_Control_Units.pdf

    2. Re:Automotive networks have zero security by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Forget the fire hazard, the scariest thing about Tesla is the remote software upgrade capability.

    3. Re:Automotive networks have zero security by Metabolife · · Score: 1

      So you get Pandora in your car, but you open Pandora's box. What's more important?

    4. Re:Automotive networks have zero security by jklovanc · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Car's CAN Bus is ring network with no authentication whatsoever and rudimentary priority system. If you can broadcast into it, then you can affect operation of the car in very drastic ways.

      Much in the same way as the PCI bus on your computer has "no authentication whatsoever and rudimentary priority system". The bus does not need to be secured. The entry points to the bus need to be secures much in the same way as the Ethernet card provides secure access to the PCI bus.

      Security researchers have taken control of in-auto networks by plugging hardware into the bus. You can do a lot to control a car if you can plug onto the diagnostic port and have a laptop sitting on the passenger seat. I think most people would notice that and be a bit suspicious. There has yet to be a wireless access into an unaltered in-auto system. If that starts to happen then worry.

      Insanity is allowing things like Entertainment/Navigation/OnStar system access to it,

      If the OnStar system is secured and only responds to a specific set of commands I see no "insanity". The whole CAN bus API would not be exposed through the OnStar API. I used to work a a company that facilitated disabling vehicles and locking their doors (It was an application designed for an exotic car rental company. They wanted to be able to disable the vehicle if the vehicle was miss-used). Through our API those were the only commands available. There was no way a hacker could do anything else. The connection to the vehicle was authenticated and encrypted. Every entertainment system has authentication if it uses Bluetooth as authentication is built into the Bluetooth pairing protocol.

      Authentication on the bus is not an issue; authentication at entry points is.

    5. Re:Automotive networks have zero security by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So you get Pandora in your car, but you open Pandora's box. What's more important?

      So compelling, so pretty, until they open their legs.

      Then.. the smell of fish. Ugh.

    6. Re:Automotive networks have zero security by Sockatume · · Score: 1

      Sounds almost laughably, inevitably fixable.

      --
      No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
    7. Re:Automotive networks have zero security by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

      The problem is that it is now quite common for the main dashboard computer system that controls the radio/CD player, air con and sat nav to be attached to the CAN bus. If you can hack that remotely and run arbitrary code you could gain access to the CAN bus.

      It's all very well saying that things like OnSat have a "secure" API with a specific set of commands, but what about exploits? Many cars have GSM modems for internet connectivity that contain complete TCP/IP stacks. What if the parser that downloads weather data or sat nav map updates has a buffer overflow issue that lets an attacker run their own code? It isn't unusual for such systems to have no security system, or to simply run all applications as root.

      Even the radio app decodes RDS data, and spoofing your own RDS messages was demonstrated years ago with low cost hardware bought on eBay. Wireless tire pressure sensors are now mandatory on US cars, so what if there was a vulnerability in the message handler for those which is, of course, connected directly to the CAN bus?

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    8. Re:Automotive networks have zero security by sinij · · Score: 1

      >>>Much in the same way as the PCI bus on your computer has "no authentication whatsoever and rudimentary priority system". The bus does not need to be secured.
       
      Absolutely correct. CAN bus itself does not need to have internal security mechanism - it just has to be properly isolated. By an air gap.
       
        >>>The entry points to the bus need to be secures much in the same way as the Ethernet card provides secure access to the PCI bus.
       
      I don't think I have to explain that "much the same way" is largely unsuccessful in case of Ethernet. Moment you add application layer, be it in a form of infotainment system or Car-to-Car communication for self-driving applications, all lower-level security gets circumvented.

    9. Re:Automotive networks have zero security by sinij · · Score: 1

      The question is not "what if there was a vulnerability", the question is when people realize these systems are out there and start looking. The answer is - now. We had similar conversations about Internet during 90s, this is the same thing, only now we know how it all turned out.

      Have you followed Toyota runaway acceleration court case? They were forced by courts to undergo low-level code analysis for Toyota's control software. Verdict was that code was unmaintainable. I think they lost the case because they couldn't even demonstrate that it would be possible to know with certainty that known bugs could be fixed!

      We both know automotive guys have nearly zero domain expertise in InfoSec. Up to this point this was acceptable, but then they started networking things. Just like SCADA systems. It just a matter of time until someone figures out how to index connected cars. Plus we know these cars will be on the road for DECADES! Good luck trying to secure 2015 model year car in the year 2030!

    10. Re:Automotive networks have zero security by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Security researchers have taken control of in-auto networks by plugging hardware into the bus. "

      Security researchers have rediscovered the need of physical security, but to show how cool they are, they ingnore and just plug into the computer, much like accessing a keyboard and logged in, cause they have the physical key to power on the system. Sure a great way of justifiying their services.

  10. best application: the elderly by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 2

    at age 65, fatal accidents go waaay up. i blame the old people sunglasses and old people.

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    1. Re:best application: the elderly by RivenAleem · · Score: 2

      And what does Japan have in excess?

    2. Re:best application: the elderly by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 1

      And what does Japan have in excess?

      oww, i know this one! rice balls!

      --
      Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
  11. and who is at fault when there is no driver in the by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    and who is at fault when there is no driver in the car and some thing happens?

  12. Integrating existing logic by jones_supa · · Score: 1

    Imagine how the control of a car will become very accurate when the self-driving part is integrated to the existing computerized parts of a car (stability control and whatnot) and all the components can extremely quickly adapt to the conditions reported by each other.

  13. Re:and who is at fault when there is no driver in by tibman · · Score: 1

    If you are in a no-fault State then it wouldn't matter. Just keep paying your insurance bill : )

    --
    http://soylentnews.org/~tibman
  14. autonomous bicycles, too by turkeydance · · Score: 1

    if it's good for them, it's good for you.

  15. what about legal liability as tickets to criminal by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    what about legal liability as tickets up to criminal stuff that can get you locked up.

    What if a auto car hits someone? and drivers away as some sensors failing may read it as some thing that is on the safe to drive over list.

  16. what about felony damage and or vehicular assault? by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    what about felony damage and or vehicular assault?

    Will your insurance offer your an criminal defense attorney, job loss support, and bail?

  17. pull off is not always an option or may be a very by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    pull off is not always an option or may be a very bad / not the best one.

  18. all the cobalt-60 may not be accounted for: by volvox_voxel · · Score: 1

    "The container holding cobalt was found about a kilometer away from the truck and had been opened, he said." ..."At around 1 a.m. Monday, a man armed with a handgun knocked on the passenger window. When the passenger rolled down his window, the gunman demanded the keys to the vehicle, Morales said. Both the driver and his assistant were taken to an empty lot where they were bound and told not to move. They heard one of the assailants use a walkie-talkie type device or phone to tell someone, "It's done," Morales said." http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/04/world/americas/mexico-radioactive-theft/

    1. Re:all the cobalt-60 may not be accounted for: by volvox_voxel · · Score: 1

      oops -- please disregard, I meant to post in another thread. I'm trying to find a way to remove a post once made, but I can't seem to find it.

  19. Re:what about legal liability as tickets to crimin by Your.Master · · Score: 1

    This stuff can happen today, eg. brake failure, so it's not unprecedented. In the case of brake failure, the liability is typically in the hands of the manufacturer and/or the dealership. Only extremely rarely is that a jailable offense (in the sense that vaccination injuries would only very rarely be a jailable offense).

    This isn't a new kind of liability problem, it's just a different scope.

  20. insurance/leasing will take care of this... by schlachter · · Score: 2

    Not a problem...lots of biz models
    1. insurance includes mandatory and included in your premium sensor/systems maintenance
    2. car is subscribed to or leased which includes maintenance in monthly fee
    3. cars are not owned; just used like taxis; so they're maintained by a company under strict regulations ...and the cars will maintain themselves. a loaner car can drive over while your car is worked on.

    --
    My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
    1. Re:insurance/leasing will take care of this... by Vanderhoth · · Score: 1

      1. insurance includes mandatory and included in your premium sensor/systems maintenance

      The advantage to this would be everyone pay's the same rate, it won't matter if you're male or female, young or old. All cars will have the same, tiny, equal chance of failure so the insurance company won't be able to get away with the, "You're a male so you pay twice as much as your wife, even though she's had three claims in the last year and you've never had so much as a warning in your life."

  21. Re:what about felony damage and or vehicular assau by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Owner of the car will be required to have insurance that covers whatever damages the car might inflict. Hmmm...this sounds a lot like...car insurance. Like we have right now.

    Not sure exactly where criminal comes in -- if you can prove criminal, you've got a person behind it. If the car accidentally runs over someone, it's not criminal (Though large sums of cash may change hands. See: Insurance).

    Look, you need an example?

    You're driving along the highway. Suddenly, a rock falls off the side of a hill and crushes your car, killing you. There's no past history of rock falls there, but something recently washed it loose and it fell as you were going by. This was not criminal, though large sums of money may change hands as a result of it.

  22. Re:and who is at fault when there is no driver in by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That's a good question. It won't and shouldn't be answered here, but debated within the communities that want these cars. And it will be. Laws will be changed if necessary.

  23. Get off my lawn! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Also, don't steal a few cents of electricity for your Leaf, in Georgia.

  24. criminal incompetence or worse by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    Let's say it's due to poor software aka software that will never pass FAA review for airplanes but made into an car as there was no FAA like oversight.

    Or lets say some ones make to back room deal and bad sensors got put in?

    1. Re:criminal incompetence or worse by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The software's never going to be perfect, this needs to be dealt with as a contingency.

      Say out of every 10 road deaths today, driverless cars avoid 9 of them, but bugs in the software introduce 5. So the software's still better than human drivers, but compared to a "perfect" driver it's flawed. Does this really need special pleading around FAA certification or do we just say the computer's imperfect but it's better than a human? What if the computer can pass a regular driving test, or even an advanced driving test?

      I think these questions illuminate the fact that we are going to have to move somewhat away from a culture of blame, and more towards a culture of accepting that errors can and will occur. But where does that leave us psychologically? Is this worse than say relinquishing personal control by getting on a bus, and expecting the bus driver to be competent (but still bus crashes may occur)?

    2. Re:criminal incompetence or worse by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

      well maybe the code should be at the FAA certification level with the same code reviews that kind of software get's.

  25. will also need an NO eula / blame passing law by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    So that the big players can't hide under one leaving the victim and non end user holding the bag.

    Do you want to be in the hospital after being hit by an auto drive car with bills racking up and bill collectors calling each day after you get out as the courts / attorneys fight over who pays? and what you say to do get payed up front and later it turns out that due some Eula BS you have to pay that back in full at the full uninsurance rate.

    1. Re:will also need an NO eula / blame passing law by Sardaukar86 · · Score: 2

      Make sense. You can't contract your way out of your basic obligations to society (e.g., you might be able to coerce your employees into signing a contract that says they work 80 hours a week for $1 per hour but you'll sure have some questions to answer if you try to actually enforce it) so it seems wise to think about preventing legal slipperyness before it really gets started. If there's one thing common to business around the world it's that given an inch, most will take a mile.

      --
      ..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
    2. Re:will also need an NO eula / blame passing law by Sardaukar86 · · Score: 1

      Erk, sorry, *makes* sense.

      --
      ..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
  26. Autonomous recharging by Forever+Wondering · · Score: 1

    Given the following:
    http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/12/04/1817227/ev-owner-arrested-over-5-cents-worth-of-electricity-from-schools-outlet
    what would happen if the car decided to recharge itself? Would the car be arrested?

    --
    Like a good neighbor, fsck is there ...
    1. Re:Autonomous recharging by shentino · · Score: 1

      I believe they already call that civil forfeiture.

  27. Everybody gets this far. Then it gets hard. by Animats · · Score: 1

    All the highway autonomous vehicle projects got as far as freeway driving. BMW, Cadillac, and Mercedes have all demonstrated this level of automatic driving. Then it gets hard.

    This is about as far as you can go before entering the "deadly valley", where the vehicle can drive autonomously but isn't smart enough to recognize when it shoudn't. Google is further along; they can drive around on suburban streets.

    1. Re:Everybody gets this far. Then it gets hard. by Qzukk · · Score: 1

      Freeway driving is trivial: you don't hit what's in front of you, you don't hit what's beside you. Basic sensors can pull off both of these feats. You get bonus points if you can stay in a lane, but plenty of shitty human drivers manage to pull it off following those two basic rules.

      Getting off the freeway is where it starts getting difficult. Even google maps sometimes misses the exit and tells me to turn right while I'm doing 60 over an overpass.

      --
      If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
    2. Re:Everybody gets this far. Then it gets hard. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Google CLAIM to be able to drive around suburban streets.

      Not. One. Independent. Appraisal.

    3. Re:Everybody gets this far. Then it gets hard. by Vanderhoth · · Score: 1

      Missed this gem from back in 2010 did you?

    4. Re:Everybody gets this far. Then it gets hard. by m00sh · · Score: 1

      Freeway driving is trivial: you don't hit what's in front of you, you don't hit what's beside you. Basic sensors can pull off both of these feats. You get bonus points if you can stay in a lane, but plenty of shitty human drivers manage to pull it off following those two basic rules.

      Getting off the freeway is where it starts getting difficult. Even google maps sometimes misses the exit and tells me to turn right while I'm doing 60 over an overpass.

      Freeway travel everywhere is pretty much the same.

      On local streets, there are quirks.

      However, this problem can also be solved by doing a Google street view style of predetermined intentions of how the roads were designed instead of computing them on the fly.

      The traffic signals are also not standardized. The yellow in a 45mph road going downhill is shorter than the yellow at a 20mph road. Also, this behavior changes with time of day in some lights. So, when the light turns yellow, the car has to make a decision to keep going or brake for a stop.

      So, here also the entire traffic light timings need to be recorded and stored to make right decisions.

      Construction again changes things. But, they are easiest because they can be easily standardized.

      Snow in Michigan changes things but I guess if you can automate the snow plows also, then it will make things easier for self-driving cars since the snow is plowed in some pre-defined method.

      When a majority of the cars are self-driving, then the problem will be simpler. It is the phase when a few cars are self-driving and most are human drivers, then it becomes tricky.

      But hopefully in the next decade, all the cars will be self-driving.

      Perhaps all cars will be rentals in the future. You can have a car pick you up and drop you off and then go somewhere else. This will make car sizes smaller because people will not have to buy cars with the worst case use in mind. I see huge trucks with just a single driver on the freeway all the time. People will rent cars depending on passengers and how much stuff they have to move.

    5. Re:Everybody gets this far. Then it gets hard. by Politburo · · Score: 1

      You wouldn't need to record light timings. Upon yellow light, determine if safe stop is possible based on distance to light and current speed. If yes, then do so.

    6. Re:Everybody gets this far. Then it gets hard. by m00sh · · Score: 1

      You wouldn't need to record light timings. Upon yellow light, determine if safe stop is possible based on distance to light and current speed. If yes, then do so.

      There will always be a grey area in the decision between if it is safe to stop or not.

      Whatever the condition to determine if it is safe or not, there will always be situations when it will be close the decision boundary.

      Out of the millions stop light encounters, there will be thousands where the decision on either side could be taken depending on the variability of measurements. Two cars taking two different decisions because of minute variations in their sensor measurements could result in a crash.

      If you take the light timings out, you increase the margin to probably unacceptable high levels.

  28. Viruses by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What's that? We haven't been able to figure out how to secure anything that's Turing complete against viruses and malware, and the payload for something infecting a drive-by-wire car can kill the occupants? Lalalalalala! I can't hearrrrr you!

    1. Re:Viruses by Vanderhoth · · Score: 1

      What's that? We haven't been able to figure out how to secure anything that's biological against random heart attacks, strokes, drunkenness, fatigue, drug impairment, or stupidity and someone behind the wheel of a car can kill the occupants? Lalalalalala! I can't hearrrrr you!

      FTFY

  29. Herding cars by grewil · · Score: 1

    Will it not be possible to "herd" an autonomous car, forcing it in different directions simply by driving up very close to it, triggering it to steer away from the approaching object (that is you in your car). If you and your friend sit in two cars, it will even be quite easy I guess. Imagine how annoying that would be to the passengers of the autonomous car!

    1. Re:Herding cars by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 1

      Well, the passenger of the autonomous car will have both hands free to hold and point that 12-gauge at your tires. Have fun!

      --
      If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
    2. Re:Herding cars by neminem · · Score: 1

      Because you totally can't force a car being driven by a human in a direction you want just by having cars on either side of it and driving them close to your target. Oh wait, yes you totally can. At least this would be safer - a prankster pulling that sort of thing on a human-driven car would probably have a better-than-even chance of causing a car accident.

  30. Re:pull off is not always an option or may be a ve by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So, tell me, what a bad human driver will do in this particular case? even an average one? Will he or she always pick the best option?
    Even when said driver is drunk, sick, sleepy, tired, has a heart attack .... ?
    Autonomous cars are not the silver bullet, but from what I have seen on the roads, it will be an improvement most of the time ...
    Glitches will happen, they already happen without cars being autonomous! Will there be more of them? Not that much if the governments do their jobs like they do with planes ...
    Not saying that autonomous car design will not e an engineering feat in itself, so I think we can still fight about it for 10 to 15 years before cars are fully autonomous, but in the end we'll get there ...

  31. bad journalism by Tom · · Score: 3, Insightful

    who no doubt cleared traffic to make the test a little easier.

    Nothing in the article nor in the video backs up this assumption. So why was it in the summary? Having been to Japan, I doubt they would've done this, as the whole point of running the test on a public highway is to show it can cope with other traffic and real-life conditions, and making the test invalid in such a stupid and public way would mean quite a bit of lost face.

    --
    Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
  32. Google invented the autonomous car! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No, this can't be true. The Japanese, Swedish and Germans can't possibly have autonomous cars ready for production. Google invented the autonomous car just recently and their prototypes only run properly on empty highways in New Mexico and California.

    Totally impossible a couple of Japanese and Europeans beat the gods from Silly Con Valley employing the 'best and brightest' of the world.

  33. auto safety is different by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What if it suddenly veers into a wall or oncoming truck due to an incorrect or faulty instruction. Fuck autonomous!

    You are obviously not an embedded system engineer with mission critical design experience. The proper way

    Yeah, we have to stop you right there. You are obviously not an automotive company engineer.

    Automotive engineers have already (GM) deployed millions of cars which linked the CPU that controls the life-critical function of airbag deployment to the entertainment system such that replacing the radio with an aftermarket model would disable the airbag system ... because it saved a few pennies per car. People who refuse to engineer a life-critical system the "proper" way will certainly not do it for a system that is merely mission-critical.

    I'm with the OP - until there is an agency with comparable regulatory authority to enforce DO-178C on all automotive computer systems, fuck autonomous cars.

  34. no need to park at all... by schlachter · · Score: 1

    it can head out to run some errands, drive other members of your family around, or you can send it out in taxi mode, to make some extra cash for you. well, all that assumes you own the car and care what happens to it after it drops you off.

    --
    My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
  35. Re:pull off is not always an option or may be a ve by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Better option than face-forward into an oncoming truck, no?

    If most cars are automated, then the cars behind you would slow down automatically :-)