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When Cars Go Driverless, What Happens To the Honking?
blastboy writes "The potential upside to getting rid of drivers: 'Today car horns are still a leading source of noise pollution in urban centers. India's honking problem is so severe that the response to it—from both activists and government officials—mirrors the response to an actual epidemic. Officials in Peru, meanwhile, began treating honking like a serious crime in 2009, threatening to confiscate the cars of people who honk when they shouldn't.'"
They said driverless not hornless. Those in the car are free to honk their asses off. :)
K
I imagine that driverless cars will honk quite frequently, just to be on the safe side. They will be able to communicate silently to other car 2.0s but the old style drivers and the pedestrians will need warnings that there is a car that they might not be aware of.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Ridiculous premise is ridiculous.
It's been weeks, if not months since I've heard any car honking, I'm sure it's happened, but I can't remember it. I know it's been years since I've honked deliberately, though I'm kinda bad at using the horn on my car anyway, it's hard to use.
Seriously. Use the on board radar to spot idiotic behaviour and let 'er blast!
Three Squirrels
Don't like honking? Come ride in Vietnam sometime. Honking just means "HI! I"M COMING!" or turning.
ws day?
Actually where I live honking isn't as much of a noise problem as the ricers with fart cans and pickup trucks with dysfunctional mufflers.
1. Aways yeld to idiots and jackasses.
2. Maneuver to avoid accidents, honking does not help much.
Very seldom, if someone fell asleep at the traffick light, I give it a very short blip.
If all horns were uninstalled tomorrow we would not loose much. Now let's discuss sirens and light pollution.
the purpose of the car horn was not to express anger at other drivers but to warn of an emergency. there will still be people dangerously stepping into the street and the cars will honk to warn them that they may get hit. that's not to say it will warn them only when they will be hit but rather when the probability of being hit drastically increases. pedestrians are highly unpredictable and the cars have been programmed to act accordingly. also, if someone in a manually driven car might be in the process of causing an collision (e.g. turning into an occupied lane) the car will honk.
the real question is if people will give other people the finger in traffic.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
We will not have a "horseless carriage". Ever.
Anybody who thinks this is unlikely has never driven on back roads. Will they get rid of horns? I hope not.
Well, we've got the Roomba. And driverless cars do potentially present a lot of advantages. They also seem to be fairly practical, and would probably become moreso if the industry settles on standards for car to car communication. The biggest issues are those of the infrastructure, both legal and physical, being tuned towards the human drivers we've grown accustomed to.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I really wish I had the ability to make a more subdued honk sometimes, for alerting a pedestrian, or whatever. It seems like an obvious enhancement, and yet AFAIK such a thing has never been standard or even available, except maybe as an aftermarket item.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
I think your comment tells us just what is stupid. Hint, it's you.
wtf, every truck in india has a huge sign that says please honk. it's considered rude NOT to honk in india. not being sarcastic. honking is viewed positively there.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
Do you not understand the difference? Just because something happened once doesn't mean that now anything can happen. Jesus Christ the people with this childish "counterexample".
I'm curious why you think this is the case? There are driverless cars right now. They cost millions of dollars, but I've seen a few things drop in price in the technology department in my few decades.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
in the event of danger. This is the law. In the US people follow the law. People here ned the law, not as much as those germans tho. Man, talk about robots. In peru, they really don't need a special law to take all your stuff. Laws really aren't needed there. People just assume that if you are doing something bad to them, you are from the government. I hope we get chip implants soon. Breathing on my own is a chore.
The horn is an easy to access button that makes a noise. And like the other primates, if we have an emotional response we press the only button available because it is THERE.
We give babies toys that make a noise when you press different buttons, and adults we are little different and still enjoy pressing the button that makes a noise.
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
We'll have driverless trucks first. At first required to only operate at night in clear weather but eventually the machines will develop a dependable track record of safety.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Check back in ten years, we'll see who was stupid. OK, 20? 50?
...I'd say treating honking as a serious crime isn't working terribly well. At times, the horn became a nearly continuous background noise.
I agree on the general principle of "just because fancy tech happened before doesn't mean every wishful idea will be achieved" (e.g. faster-than-light travel) --- but self-driving cars aren't an exotic future possibility outside the present domain of human knowledge. They're working prototypes cruising around today, and doing a pretty good job of it. At this point, there's a big burden of proof to establish why they won't become common, rather than whether they might be possible in theory.
When Cars Go Driverless, What Happens To the Honking?
It Will Stop.
Next?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Have gnu, will travel.
For every driverless car honk a tree falls silently in a forest...
Say the people standing to make a lot of money from them (and their fanboys), yes. The problem is that reality tracking technology and heuristics are not even close to making a safe autonomous street robot. The clues are all about us in the non-critical technologies we have already, like voice recognition. It's been 20 years, and it still can't tell what someone's saying when the person has a cold, or even get it 99% correct in ideal conditions. it's slow too. Face recognition is getting slowly better, probably because of tons of government interest in the ability to auto-track everyone, but even that is easily fooled with a bit of makeup or disguise. 'Brittle' programming like this has no business at the top of the driving decision 'train', or any other critical situation.
I see it happening to trains because a fixed point to point track that dictates the physical movement of the vehicle is far simpler to predict than random events in an open terrain. Even then, I'd still want a human engineer at the console in case something happens. Computers may be faster, but humans are still much better at contextual awareness.
No I don't know the difference. Educate me. Experience tells me that if humans can do it, then we will do it. At least once.
Can a civil eningeer, or social/civic engineer please chime in here?
Let's please, I beg of you all, think about why we are driving so fast to go nowhere... ?
For a robotic, self-extending middle-finger. Gonna make a ton of money on this.
Google is already doing it. Their cars have driven hundreds of thousands of miles without an accident. Do you they are lying?
I live in Minneapolis and it is extremely rare to hear cars honking, rare enough that when a car does honk, everyone turns their head to see what all the commotion is about.
The bus drivers like to lay into the horn once in a while, but buses always have right of way so that's acceptable.
I'm actually delaying buying a new car until I can get one that can drive for me. I mean door to door. I can see this as viable in the next 2-3 years, with me able to afford it in a couple more after that. :) As my current repair bills are far lower than a car note would be, I'm quite happy to keep fixing the minor bit that falls off and keep this baby on the road a few more years. So yeah, I think it is going to be a reality. Soon. The hard problems are basically solved. All that remains is establishing liability and letting mass production driving costs down. I mean, cd players were EXPENSIVE not 20 years ago. Yep. Doable. And Awesome!
Bot is botting, better bot next time?
It's getting bot in here, so take off all my close.
But in reality the reason why they (and other third world countries) use their horn like crazy is because there are no traffic rules or enforcement. Meaning there are no stop lights, lanes and such. Everyone does their own thing and communicate with each other by honking, otherwise it would be impossible to get anywhere. So in the countries that refuse to add traffic laws and enforcement, honking will not stop, and self-driving cars won't exist because it'll be too expensive for the mere ants in the cog to afford.
Will honking go away? Not any time in this century and probably not in the next. OP forgot that the US economy is tanking faster than paris hilton in an orgy. 17trillion and rising to 20+ in just 2 years is more debt than this generation or the next and the one after can afford to pay of. That's the reality and only the wealthy "upper class" can/will be able to afford self-driving cars unless they manage to bring down the cost of vehicles by a substantial amount.
No one said we won't have self-driving cars. They said we won't have driverless cars. There is a difference. In the self-driving car, the car is the driver.
You are absolutely right. Those Google cars currently tooling around the country are purely imaginary. As are that other company's that can drive F-1 cars around Nürburgring in the pouring rain with professional-grade lap times(IIRC). The technology is already pretty much there, one more order-of-magnitude improvement and it will be pretty unquestionably superior to human drivers in all but the most contrived of corner-cases. After that the question is just cost and public acceptance.
Cost can reasonably be expected to diminish rapidly thanks to independent advances in computers and computer vision systems for other, more immediately profitable products.
And I'll bet you small automated "mall trolleys" that smoothly shared the walkways with pedestrians while averaging 10-20mph would go a *long* way towards generating public acceptance, while also increasing mall profitability. Hell, make it a "bug bounty" game - put big signs on the trolleys
"If this car is at fault in *any* damage to you or your property,
get $10,000 within 24 hours just by calling --- --- ----,
with the time and license number,
so that we can learn from the recordings of your creativity.
WARNING: clearly fraudulent claims will be prosecuted."
Give it a couple years, let the thrill-seekers get bored with jumping in front of the things hoping to cash in on a stubbed toe, and I bet you people are perfectly willing to let it do the driving for themselves and their neighbors as well. Meanwhile it will probably be one of the cheapest and most viral marketing campaigns *ever*. I mean who *doesn't* have a hilarious and heart-pounding personal story of some lunatic at the mall trying to throw themselves under the wheels of your trolley? And the personal realization that the automated systems had gracefully dodged an outcome that would gave given you nightmares for years if you had been at the wheel.
People would be beating down the car makers' doors for the things, especially if they would save enough on insurance premiums to pay for the auto-chauffeur within a couple years.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
So, the horseless carriage was never invented, because the motor is the horse? Rather, "driver" has, in common meaning, indicated the person controlling the car; and, if you see a car coming down the street towards you without a person at the wheel, you think "holy shit, that car has no driver!" (just like someone might have thought "holy shit, that carriage has no horse!").
> a more or less even humming is far more tolerable
Yeah, but it has no *style*. How about Hollywood-esque hovercar sounds? Or for the retro-inclined the sounds of a team of long-legged horses running on soft ground (because nobody wants to listen to a team of horses galloping down a cobblestone street). We could have a whole *palette* of soundscapes to play with as phttp://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/01/31/2331231/when-cars-go-driverless-what-happens-to-the-honking#eople got accustomed to the idea.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Human train engineers make mistakes all the time. Just recently we've had two "going around the corner too fast" fatal incidents. Those are two accidents that would not have happened with a robot at the wheel. Now, you might be correct and the robots might be less able to react to "random" events - but then how rare are random events compared with engineers dozing off, spacing out, or showing up impaired? In any case, most systems still stick a guy up there, even if he doesn't drive the train under normal circumstances... so that probably covers both cases. So sure, you still pay a driver, but you gain safety and you gain the ability to run trains closer together.. capacity.
I can certainly see the same thing happening with semi trailers. Computer reaction times are fantastic, so the semi trailers can tailgate one another for aerodynamic efficiency. If the human can sleep while the vehicle is underway, then driver fatigue no longer needs to be the limiting factor and vehicles can keep their speeds down for further fuel savings. When the truck is ready to exit the easy highway driving, it can alert the operator to take over. If it encounters a situation it can't handle, it can pull over or even panic stop and let the operator take over.
Even for passenger cars, we are seeing baby-steps toward automation. One Infinity, the Q50, no longer uses a steering column... it is fly-by-wire. It will stay in it's lane by itself, stay a safe distance behind the car in front, even take curves. Mercedes has similar technology. BMW has a system to automatically parallel park the car. I expect luxury cars to slowly become self-driving, without people even realizing it, and the technology to trickle down as it becomes more affordable, and as people demand it for insurance rate benefits.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Cars can sneak up behind people, you know. Most people look forward, not behind.
Walking around on the sidewalk in China, for instance, is incredibly dangerous. Electric scooters are very common there, and people drive them on sidewalks. The problem? They are nearly silent and you cannot hear them come up behind you over the noisy road traffic. I've almost been run over a few times. Same thing with electric cars. No matter how diligent you are, it's not too hard to get hit by a car you just didn't see. A little noise goes a long way.
One driverless car works. All of them? Come on. We invented bikes, people still walk. We invented cars, people still bike. We invented planes, people still drive. Enough of these bold predictions about a technology that will only affect the 1% of the 1%.
As in the kind that are about 5 ft in diameter and bouncing across the road at about 30 mph.
I do hope they have that case in the computer. I'd hate to get a panic-stop reaction or go into the ditch as the computer franticly tries to avoid the "obstruction."
Who said all cars would be driverless? More likely, drivered cars will go the way of the horse-ful carriage: a specialty item for enthusiasts off the major highways. And, why do you assume there's anything that will limit driverless cars to the 0.01%? In mass-production mode, there's nothing overly expensive needed for a driverless car --- a few cameras and scanners (which are mainly pricey now due to low production, rather than fundamental materials/manufacturing barriers), plus some clever software (which has zero marginal cost to reproduce). If you can fit enough computers in a car today to drive it, then you'll have enough computers in every telephone in another decade or two (the timescale needed for legislative updates plus people replacing old cars).
The car horn will be used for wireless communication between cars because radio and light are just not cool enough anymore.
Human train engineers make mistakes all the time. Just recently we've had two "going around the corner too fast" fatal incidents. Those are two accidents that would not have happened with a robot at the wheel. Now, you might be correct and the robots might be less able to react to "random" events - but then how rare are random events compared with engineers dozing off, spacing out, or showing up impaired? In any case, most systems still stick a guy up there, even if he doesn't drive the train under normal circumstances... so that probably covers both cases. So sure, you still pay a driver, but you gain safety and you gain the ability to run trains closer together.. capacity.
I don't understand why we don't have driverless trains (aside from a few airport trains) today. It seems like such a simple problem - no need to steer (aside from negotiating track switches), well defined stop/go/speed signals that could easily be followed by an automated engineer, and far superior vision to detect obstacles on the tracks. Is there some other skill needed that only a human can provide?
Can we please get rid of the damned backup beepers? There is no reason I need to be able to hear a truck backing up inside my apartment two blocks away and seven floors up.
In mass-production mode, there's nothing overly expensive needed for a driverless car
Indeed. Once self driving cars become pervasive, they should be cheaper than today's cars: The accident rate is predicted to fall by at least a factor of ten, allowing acceptable safety levels with lighter material and smaller engines. Insurance rates will also be far lower.
No.
Insurance rates will also be far lower.
This reminded me: Who will buy the insurance? For example, in the UK apparently the actuary tables are messed up enough when it comes to young teens that it's often cheaper to buy a new car where the manufacturer covers the first X years of insurance than it is to buy an equivalent used car and insure it.
It might not work in the regulatory framework of the USA as it currently stands, but if you drop insurance costs to roughly 1/10th of what they are now, combined with no more variable driver records, I could see the costs of 'insurance' being covered by the car maker as a feature.
I think we're almost to the point of saying 'screw the breath-tester, install an auto-drive system on a drunk's vehicle' point. But then there's all sorts of legal issues to work out there as well. We've seen some pushback on giving people DUIs for being drunk while asleep in the backseat of the bar parking lot, how would you handle a drunk person asleep in a self-driving car that's driving him home(because he's not driving) that doesn't have a bypass mode for manual operation?
For that matter, what will many jurisdictions do as they lose the revenue from traffic violations? Speeding should be right out(I imagine that the AI will follow the speed limit and if I'm reading/playing a game I don't really care about getting there faster anymore), plus if they screw up the timing on a red light so badly that a self driving car with reaction times measured in the milliseconds still ends up 'running the red', you don't just have some random person's word that they either didn't run the redlight or it was impossible to NOT run the red light. Depending on the setup, the car company can present logs(including possibly video), AI decision chains, and other information that would end up costing the department far more money than they gain.
Honking is an interesting sub-division. I wonder if they'll enable the cars to auto-honk? Heck, that leads to the idea of using honks as a sort of broadcast announcement to other self-driving cars - a sort of warning system for things like 'There's an accident around me, be aware!' that has the cars slow down and increase following distance. Have some sort of flow control system so it's rebroadcast no more than 5 times, and it doesn't even have to be audible to humans.
I don't read AC A human right
You mention trains, because they're 'much simpler to predict'. There is some truth to this, same with drone aircraft - fewer obstacles to worry about, orders of magnitude less clutter.
Thing is, an AI train system still has to worry about things next to the rails, because they might intersect with the train by the time the train gets there. There's still 'random events in an open terrain' to worry about, it's just that the possible AI responses are much more limited - increase throttle, decrease throttle, brake, or even just maintain.
Consider Wiredlogic's proposal: 'At night in clear weather'. I'd actually modify it a bit: Only in clear weather on uncongested highways and designated access roads to staging areas located right off the highways.
The idea is that the trucks travel known routes, normally away from pedestrians, on relatively clear areas. Only a step more complicated than the AI manning the locomotive. In-city routes would still be human manned, though as you stop bugs and develop more techniques/capabilities, the range of robotic vehicles will spread.
I don't read AC A human right
There will always be honking.
that's a cute reasoning, but porsche only switched to water cooling because their lineup began failing to meet more stringent air resource board standards. Cooler engine = less nox = allowable cars for sale in the united states
You know what's really funny? Modern IC cars are so quiet that they did a study - for most conventional vehicles, not hybrids or EVs, road noise is the dominant factor. IE tire noise on the road, gravel crunching, all that. The EVs and hybrids they tested were identical on a Db level.
As speeds increase it simply shifts to wind noise - the engine being loud enough to be a signficant factor is actually the exception and generally indicates an ill-maintained defective vehicle.
Anyways, a driverless car can probably do away with the warning sounds for the most part, it should be aware enough that it doesn't back into people.
I don't read AC A human right
People who buy Harleys will continue to do so.
Just a nitpick but Harleys are actually fairly quiet stock. It's the aftermarket pipes that remove the muffler system that make them loud.
I don't read AC A human right
Self-driving cars without a human operator will likely exist. Perhaps only in the form of public transport or replacing taxis.
signature is pants
In America, honking your car horn is an expression of anger. It is calling the other driver out that he is doing something unsafe or stupid. If someone doesn't move when a light turns green, you have to "bip" your horn by tapping lightly. A full-on honk might make the other driver get out and try to kick your ass.
Overseas, it's different. Honking the horn just says, "I'm here." It's an auditory announcement of where you are. This is very important, as other drivers frequently don't watch where they're going. When you pass, you need to honk the horn so the other driver doesn't suddenly decide to change lanes into your car. I ride an electric moped, and my electric piezo horn is my most important safety device other than the brakes. It announces my presence so people don't hit me. Taxis honk when they pass me - it doesn't mean they're mad, it just means "I'm here."
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
We will not have "driverless cars". Ever.
"That the automobile has practically reached the limit of its development is suggested by the fact that during the past year no improvements of a radical nature have been introduced."
--Scientific American, January 2, 1909
You never know who is honking at you or why, even though you're already paying attention because -- guess what -- you're fucking driving.
We will not have "driverless cars". Ever.
"A rocket will never be able to leave the Earth's atmosphere."
--The New York Times, January 13, 1920
They exist
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Up until 2009, the Washington Metro system was all run automatically, with a human watching to brake in an emergency. But there was an accident that happened in part due to bad signaling not letting the computer system see a track was occupied, which during the investigation showed previous similar incidents happened (but without serious accident), so the trains now run manually.
Ludditism. Really, that's all. The first time a "driverless" vehicle kills someone, everyone will fight over who gets the blame. Everyone will be sued for billions. Even if it's something that has happened before, like a car trying to beat the train, missing and hitting the train.
Learn to love Alaska
"I don't understand why we don't have driverless trains"
For one, unionized train personnel has a lot of power by the threat of striking. I once talked to an engineer doing railway systems design. He told me that they have to tread very carefully when introducing any technology that might appear to take away the autonomy of the driver.
Another thing is that a train driver is supposed to be able to deal with hardware malfunctioning, maybe even getting out to move a stuck switch.
Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
But if your train is driverless, a driver's strike would have no effect, would it?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Not really. Complete automation usually happens when people are expensive. Compared to the rest of the train, its operators aren't that expensive. Besides, modern train protection systems like LZB in Germany actually allow for automatic operation. It is seldom used in that capacity because it is not available on all the railroads, just on some lines that allow speeds higher than (in case of Germany) 160 kph. Autopilot is used on these tracks, though.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
We already do, it's called the Navitron Autodrive system, but the trucker's union doesn't want the public to know about it.
... they will still need to be warned.
Yes, they do, but trains are actually easier to automate as they have fixed start and destination points, with preferred arrival times. The open road is nothing like this. There are just too many variables, even if every car was automated, nevermind the reality we live in. I'd rather have the engineer involved in driving the train simply so he's got something to pay attention to. Make him sit there, and he'll doze off. Same goes with human car drivers.
Well that's nice for fuel economy, but if one of those trailers hits a vehicle in front of it (or a vehicle hits it) the others are instantly lost as well. Set them to travel further apart, and now there will be cars cutting between them. It's not a good idea to tailgate regardless of how the vehicle is controlled. I think we already have a happy medium for driving automation: cruise control.
Yes, some automation is ok, though I find most of those features annoying, and they cause me to lose discipline, so I shut them off. I'm talking about those proximity alerts. They don't always work right. Get a bit of dirt on the sensor and suddenly it's useless. I wouldn't trust auto-parallel park either simply because if it gets it wrong, the computer doesn't have to pay the bill for the damages to both your car and the one or more that it hit. I've seen it used, and it is pretty cool, but again, all it takes is some dirt, a broken sensor, or a software bug to ruin your day. Needless complexity just adds stress to life. Ever drive on I95 through NYC? If GPS can't discern whether you're on the highway or a two lane road that runs along side, there's no way there's enough accuracy for the robot to know where it is at all times. That is extremely unsafe. It's bad enough that people are already driving through walls just because the computer told them to. Now they want to remove all humans from the controls and just let the computers do whatever? I'll pass.
The insurance stuff is really scary because the companies will insist on it out of technical ignorance (been sold a bill of goods by government/auto makers/google). all they really care about are their statistics.. However, statistics are really shitty at predicting individual circumstances. They're only good for trends. I dont' want to lose control of my immediate situation so some asshole can bank more of my premium money (because you know the rates will go right back up when they get everyone on those orwellian 'good driver' tracking programs).
Oh I dont know [even tho this was repeated several times] the computers would communicate with each other asking 'what the problem is'?
yes.. under carefully controlled circumstances monitored by the engineers who designed the hardware and software.. and with overrides that the end consumer won't get or will lose eventually, like google does with every other product they make. There have been just too many circumstances where people have trusted computers (and the programmers who programmed them) to get it right when they didn't... and these were far simpler situations with far better defined inputs than what a typical driver has to deal with.
I guess we'll find out when these start hitting the roads, but the probability they won't tracked and hacked is virtually zero.
... in the bedrooms
it was fun, but your beta has turned me off forever...
it's a cultural thing. maybe the peru got their car culture from spanish/portuguese. because they honk.
I'm spending the winter in thailand.. and the traffic is interesting to say the least(you can get by ok once you remember that people only follow red light rule and apart from that there are no rules that people go with).
but the interesting thing is that despite the traffic looking like chaos and everyone just fitting in through where they can nobody uses the horn in traffic(except to notify someone who is merging in, but really rarely actually).
but they seem to be using it mostly for notifying that they've arrived to pick someone up, that they're bringing post or stuff like that.
perhaps it is that if one honked in traffic here.. you would be honking 100% of the time ! so just as well might not honk.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Safe as in comparison to say industrial robots, no that might be hard to achieve indeed. But you dont need that, you only need "safer than human" rating, and as tech development goes that is easy pickings.
I just saw evidence of this system the other day. The teamsters sure are lazy
I propose that your car horn be installed into the drivers seat.
The first time you honk your horn at someone it will be your last.
The horn will be automatically shoved up your ass where it belongs.
Drive through small towns where roads are built for cars with no thought for pedestrians. Many roads built in the last 50 years do not have sidewalks. Roads built before that will have had maintenance done by the town, but leave sidewalk maintenance to the adjacent landowner.
Where do new businesses build? On the edge of town. Really disheartening to see wheelchairs mixing it up with cars in 4 lane traffic.
Good sidewalks only exist in a few densely populated cities in America.
Trucks, (say) the Melbourne to Sydney run, which is already a modern freeway and a busy overnight trade route for shipping containers of "stuff", freeways are much simpler for an autonomous car to navigate than a suburban street and they already exclude animals, pedestrians, push bikes, basically everything except cars, trucks, and motor bikes. I don't see it as "far fetched" that automated forklifts and trucks could move the bulk of goods between those two cities in the foreseeable future anyway. Slipstreaming the trucks in a tight convoy would result in significant fuel savings and only the lead truck would need the fancy compass, the rest just follow the leader. I suspect that at first they will either be piloted or restricted to 10km/h through the few towns still on the freeway route.
Having said that, I think it will be quite a while before autonomous trucks are running Sydney to Melbourne via the coast road.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I attached a motorcycle battery and car horn to my bicycle?
Would they considerate that??
Maybe there's a market in Peru for that, I'll start a website www.PissoffPeruvianGov.com and sell those types setups so people could walk around the city with a car horn honking.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Perhaps some Indian can jump in, but anyway from my time in India I'd say it worked like this: People drive on which side of the road they wish, usually right in the middle, and in a curve they honk. The other driver hears the horn and from the sound of it judges whether the other car is bigger than his or not. If yes, he dodges, otherwise he keeps driving in the middle of the road.
My suspicion is that, unless this algorithm is implemented in Indian driverless cars, they will soon be driver- and passengerless.
Make him sit there, and he'll doze off.
The theory seems sound, but they already do this - we've had two fatal accidents this year alone. I think the reality is that robotic trains are more reliable.
but if one of those trailers hits a vehicle in front of it (or a vehicle hits it) the others are instantly lost as well.
That's true today as well. Inattentive drivers are probably more common than failed sensors, especially if said sensors are redundant and a failure of a single sensor results in the vehicle entering a fail-safe routine.
It's not a good idea to tailgate regardless of how the vehicle is controlled.
The definition of "tailgating" is a function of braking performance and reaction time. It is not tailgating if the safe distance is shorter because of improved reaction time.
Ever drive on I95 through NYC?
:) More like a parking lot than a highway. GPS doesn't work well on the bottom level of the GW bridge, anyway... pretty much useless. I suspect that reliance on GPS cannot happen for these machines. But we don't rely on GPS - we look at exit numbers and such. No reason a computer can't do this. Heck, the government might even install navigation aids for the computers. As you said, people are already doing stupid things on the highways like driving through walls. With over 30,000 dying on the roads each year and thousands more injured, the computers don't exactly have a high bar to overcome.
The insurance stuff is really scary because the companies will insist on it out of technical ignorance
I doubt it - they will rely on actuarial data. If these systems are a liability, you will pay more to have them... like a turbocharger or a penis. They are one of the few industries with almost carte blanche license to discriminate. In general, I agree that statistics are a terrible way to discriminate - but you would have to give up significant privacy if you want personalized rates. Some people do this now voluntarily, by letting the insurance company monitor their driving habits with an on-board data collection device. They already personalize your rates somewhat through your public driving record. In any event, you will pay more once computers are, in aggregate, safer drivers than humans.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Well, the unions fight pretty hard on this. NYC has had an automated line (the 7) for a couple of years now, but the union until recently made them man it with two people even though the driver was largely superfluous. The conductor has been superfluous for probably 30 years, but that's another discussion...
Personally, I don't mind taking the automation path slowly. Because of human nature, even a single incident could doom automation - despite the fact that there were dozens of human-caused errors in the meantime. And incidents like those in DC a few years ago show that even automation can be unsafe when stupid people chose to ignore repeated errors - the train-sensing circuit had been on the fritz for 18 months. There's probably a fault in the design of a system that can result in a crash after a single circuit fails, but I don't want to go there unless you do :)
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
They go off so often that nobody even notices them anymore. It would probably not change the accident rate to simply get rid of horns altogether.
Pardon me, wrong decade
Don't you people spend any time on the road? Human drivers have to take calculated risks all the time you would never allow an AI to take.
- Taking the hard shoulder with the wheel crossing over the tarmac into the dirt.
- Taking a nearly blind corner next when one side of the road is blocked.
- Responding to directions of non official traffic directors.
Hell I wouldn't trust a programmer to create an algorithm for taking a left turn on a crossroads in busy traffic. We'll get driverless cars when we get human level AI.
People keep talking about driverless like it's a done deal.
Like it's something we're all going to migrate to. It isn't.
Sure, there's the technical know-how to do it.
But the legal, legislative and social pressures involved may eventually kill it.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I'd be cool with on-ramp to off-ramp, even, as long as it could handle traffic.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
yes.. under carefully controlled circumstances monitored by the engineers who designed the hardware and software.. and with overrides that the end consumer won't get or will lose eventually, like google does with every other product they make. There have been just too many circumstances where people have trusted computers (and the programmers who programmed them) to get it right when they didn't... and these were far simpler situations with far better defined inputs than what a typical driver has to deal with.
I guess we'll find out when these start hitting the roads, but the probability they won't tracked and hacked is virtually zero.
I don't think California streets are "carefully controlled circumstances" and Google's cars have shown the ability to successfully drive on them. It seems like you think that these cars must drive perfectly to replace existing drivers - they only need to be marginally better than humans to be a benefit which isn't a very high bar to top. Humans are terrible drivers and kill or injure millions of people each year through their poor driving. Even if the computer driver screws up once in a while it will still be better than what we have now.
Enigma
"When Cars Go Driverless, What Happens To the Honking?"
Honking will be automatic, of course.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Flying cars, also known as helicopters, have not become cheap, true, but they have existed for a very long time. The trouble is they cost a lot more than regular cars, inherently, both to build and to maintain (eg. fuel).
The marginal cost on self-driving cars is in software, so it's virtually zero. Maybe some sensors, but many of those sensors are coming to driving cars anyway.
So if self-driving cars are like flying cars in other ways, then they will exist and they will be affordable.
Was the jetpack actually oft-predicted or was it always just sci-fi babble like warp drive?
Why are self-driving cars a stupid idea? And why is it not cool? I'd love to be able to just read or play games in the car (without being beholden to bus routes and schedules).
So first off, the number of years it takes has nothing to do with whether the idea is stupid or cool. But that's okay because you'll be proven wrong within 20 years (my prediction). Actually I bet there will be some commercial ones on the road within 10 years, but not all that common, so 20 years is the safety. Your fifty year prediction is so out of touch it's ridiculous. You know we have prototypes of this *right now*? You know the technical problem is of a type known to be soluble and solved in other situations, unlike, say, true Artificial Intelligence, which is believed soluble but not solved in any other situation?
Yes there's one thing if it is technically possible, another if people actually want it or not. You could have the most awesome technical invention ever. If people don't see the use for it or feel belittled or even intimidated by it, it won't become a widely used product.
The whole thing of freedom and independence and the romance of having control of your veichle goes away if you are turned into a passive passenger. If people don't want that, automated cars will probably flop.
Driverless trains have been around for years. London's Docklands Llight Railway is a case in point.
Train attendants sit up front mostly because it turned out the public tend to be disconcerted by the things being unmanned, but the only thing they do is push the "go" button. There's no way for them to emergency stop, etc.
At least one other London Underground line is automated to the extent that "drivers" simply push the "close doors" button and then the "go" button and has been for 20 years. The only remaining purpose for drivers is to hit the emergency stop if someone jumps/falls on the tracks - and given the amount of trauma a train driver goes through if this happens (or worse, they actually hit someone), there are good arguments for automating them right out of the cabin (this would also stop the drivers' union holding London to ransom on a regular basis)
Peruvians are completely mad about their car horns. The problem is so bad, I was walking down the street in Cuzco with my Peruvian wife, talking about how everybody was honking their horns so much. Mid-rant, some yokel comes cruising past us, grinning ear to ear, & *playing* his car horn like it's some kind of musical instrument. (There wasn't even another car nearby!) I could hardly believe it! "See? THAT'S what I'm talking about!" :|
Owned a 300SDL years ago. Turns out the horn was right in front, just behind the grill. Oh what fun it used to be. Couple of chicks in front of me gawking at a light? Hit the horn and watch them jump! I used to so look forward to that and it really made my day.
Now I drive a Caddy and it's not behind the grill. It is fairly loud. They still jump but not as high. Just last week I got a guy driving a prius. Yes, he thought he was so smug in his POS hybrid, not paying attention to the light. I waited a full 5 seconds - then HORN! I think he hit his head on the roof. Heh.