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.'"

Comments

I imagine it will stay

[wisnoskij]

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.

Re:I imagine it will stay

[KiloByte]

Electric cars could eliminate noise pollution. What did our bright lawmaker mavens did? Legislate it so electric cars must play artificial noise, because someone might be jaywalking with a nose in their smartphone.

So I'd expect 50 years of the equivalent of having a person walk before the car waving a red flag before we can enjoy the benefits of new technologies.

Re:I imagine it will stay

[JustOK]

Ridiculous! Utter rubbish! They would use that fluorescent orange colour.

Re:I imagine it will stay

[clemdoc]

The same argument was made every time a new generation of cars became more quiet than the previous one.
I do not fear that regulations will force cars to be louder than necessary, at least not for long.
Reason: People will get used to and appreciate quiet cars. Politicians will do so as well. And even if cars are forced to produce some noise - which I don't think will last for a long time - a more or less even humming is far more tolerable (at least to me) than the ugly whining of engines revving up and down and the tank-like grunting of broken exhaust pipes. YMMV (SCNR).
And after all, you still have tire noise, that's unlikely to go away anytime soon.
So I agree with GP: It's far easier to add noise to a silent car than to silence a noisy car. At least I will not miss the noise and I do not think that the blind people you mentioned will either.

Re:I imagine it will stay

[icebike]

Still, the car ought to be able to tell that someone is there, standing or walking toward the street.

After all, the noise was demanded because there were drivers in silent electric cars, and the cars had no smarts to tell them about their surroundings.
Driver-less cars will have cameras and radars and should be able to make noise only when appropriate. Of course, appropriate means everywhere on a busy city street, so a huge racket thrown up by otherwise quiet cars.

It would be cheaper to offer free pocket car sensors to every blind person, than to inflict that noise on everyone.

Re:I imagine it will stay

[turkeydance]

no one inside of a current car with the windows up hears honking, anyway. too many other things making enough noise to overwhelm anything outside.

Re:I imagine it will stay

[icebike]

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.

Liability worries will probably make that the norm.

Who will dare sell a car that does not give the same warning that a conscientious driver might?
There will be people diving in front of driverless cars attempting to empty the deep pockets of the manufacturers.

Re:I imagine it will stay

[CastrTroy]

To be fair, the only way for me to get to anywhere from my house by walking is by jaywalking. There's only a sidewalk on one side of the street and I'd be walking on the side of the road if I didn't cross straight in front of my house. In winter snowbanks stop me from walking on the lawns until I get to a safe crossing point. Also the road is curved, so its hard to see when cars are coming. I often use my ears, as well as my eyes to determine when cars are coming. Sound is probably the more important factor since I can't really see that far down the road.

Re:I imagine it will stay

[Dan541]

Good, natural selection at work. Don't play on the road, idiot.

Re:I imagine it will stay

[Jeremi]

Electric cars could eliminate noise pollution. What did our bright lawmaker mavens did? Legislate it so electric cars must play artificial noise, because someone might be jaywalking with a nose in their smartphone.

Or they might be blind, and really have no way to know that a silent car is approaching them. Or they might just be used to the idea that they can hear cars approaching, having never encountered a "ninja Prius" before.

The noise doesn't have to be loud, it only needs to be projected in front of the car, not everywhere, and it only has to operate when the car is going slow enough that its road noise isn't inaudible. This particular noise isn't going to bother anyone any more than the traditional engine noises it's meant to replace, and it's going to save lives. In this case our bright lawmaker mavens did the right thing.

Re:I imagine it will stay

[Dan541]

There will be people diving in front of driverless cars attempting to empty the deep pockets of the manufacturers.

People already dive in front of regular cars, just try driving around any major city. People care more about answering that text message than they do about looking for traffic.

Re:I imagine it will stay

[femtobyte]

In this case, you don't need a honking horn, just, e.g., an audible engine-like rumble when cars are approaching intersections. I assume (hope) you don't lean on the horn every time you see a pedestrian at the corner. And, if a blind person is crossing, you should never have a need to honk --- you should have brought your car to a stop at the intersection and given pedestrians their right of way (not be caught unawares blasting through a stopsign). Self-driving cars will probably, on average, do a lot better job of this than humans.

Re:I imagine it will stay

[Anubis IV]

Why the fuck are they walking in the road?

I feel like this is the start of a bad joke, but the honest answer is "because they want to get to the other side". Blind people need to cross streets too, in case that thought hadn't occurred to you, and knowing if there is a car sitting at the corner that may be about to make a turn across the crosswalk they're using is something they may interested in knowing. Or they may want to know if a car is nearing them in a parking lot. There are plenty of reasons for a blind person to want to know where cars are located, and, surprisingly, they all pretty much line up with the sorts of reasons why you might want to know where the cars are located when you're near traffic.

Re:I imagine it will stay

[Anubis IV]

My grandfather was left blind for reasons that were not related to his genetics, so natural selection is hardly at play, and even if it were, the fact is that the blind have just as much reason to want to know where cars are as you do. If I'm in a parking garage, I oftentimes hear cars before I see them, and the way that some of those drivers careen around corners, it oftentimes falls to me to keep myself safe from them, since they aren't looking out for me. And if I'm crossing the street at a crosswalk, cars can still take a turn at the corner and go over the crosswalk I'm using. Understandably, I may be interested in knowing if that's happening, since I've had to avoid them in the past when they look out for oncoming traffic but forget to check for pedestrians.

Suggesting that this is about blind people playing in the streets and that they deserve what they get is just moronic.

Re:I imagine it will stay

[Jeremi]

There will be people diving in front of driverless cars attempting to empty the deep pockets of the manufacturers.

I don't think that's going to work too well -- the car will have a complete record of its sensor inputs at the time of the incident, from which it should be pretty obvious what actually happened.

(Not that that won't stop a few opportunists from trying, of course -- it will be interesting to see how a self-driving car handles deliberately dangerous behavior)

Re:I imagine it will stay

[clemdoc]

You're right, of course, but it's very limited in scope.
I actually hadn't thought of it, but now that you mention it, I still don't think it matters in terms of noise prevention.
Most vehicles are bought (I think/guess/believe) without giving a second thought (iaw shit) about the noise they cause.
They're bought because of price / space / availability / whatever. If that behaviour stays the same and cars overall get more quiet, there will be less noise. That's cool with me.
People who buy Harleys will continue to do so. Those machines are bought, as you wrote, because of their image (getting bitches all wet). They are cool, great, fantastic and they will get bought. AFAIK, Porsche invested quite some money to *keep* the sound of the 911 the way it was when they switched from air cooling (VW Beetle! proud former owner of a 1302 speaking) to water cooling (which is far more efficient) in the second half of the nineties.
If the majority of cars will be less noisy, I shall be pleased.

Re:I imagine it will stay

[hawguy]

There will be people diving in front of driverless cars attempting to empty the deep pockets of the manufacturers.

People already dive in front of regular cars, just try driving around any major city. People care more about answering that text message than they do about looking for traffic.

The driverless car will likely have stored video to show what really happened.

Re:I imagine it will stay

[tlhIngan]

Electric cars could eliminate noise pollution. What did our bright lawmaker mavens did? Legislate it so electric cars must play artificial noise, because someone might be jaywalking with a nose in their smartphone.

Well, electric cars are silent under 30kph or so. Above that, the dominant noise cars make is road noise caused by the tires rolling on asphalt.

Though, it's not even necessarily people paying attention - in a parking lot, the sound of starting engines usually indicates a car is coming out (you could try to look for lights, but a bunch of people just waiting to pick up people often leave their lights on). An electric, or even a hybrid doesn't give an obvious notification that the driver is about to pull out so if you happen to be walking and in the blind spot, well, that can be s surprise.

And the blind spots created when a large vehicle shadows a small hybrid or electric, well...

Of course, the option is to walk in the middle of the road (give you more time to react), but that has other issues, like holding cars up.

Re:I imagine it will stay

[mark-t]

When the car is going slow enough that road noise isn't easily audible (bearing in mind that many blind people rely so much more heavily on their other senses that they can and often do notice sounds or vibrations that most other people could not), stopping distance is short enough that the driver can reasonably be responsible for avoiding an accident, even if the other person did not see him or his car.

Should we also force electric wheelchairs or scooters for disabled or elderly people to make more noise than they otherwise do so that blind people will also hear them?

Point being that these vehicles travel slowly enough that an responsible operator can be trusted to not cause an accident. I see no difference between that and an electric car that is moving at slow enough speeds that you can't hear its tires on the road (which is really quite slow, by the way... a veritable crawl).

Re:I imagine it will stay

[Dahamma]

Maybe that explains why drivers in California (with way too many sound insulated Lexuses and BMWs) seem COMPLETELY unable to comprehend that you need to pull over for an emergency vehicle...

Re:I imagine it will stay

[Dan541]

The driverless car will likely have stored video to show what really happened.

Let's start thinking up names for the TV show:

America's Dumbest Pedestrians.

Road Kill - When man and machine come together!!!.

Re:I imagine it will stay

[Dahamma]

In the US, at least, very few people actually honk as a measure of courtesy or to "warn" pedestrians. It's mostly to (rightfully) tell drivers not paying attention at a light to get off their phones/daydreams/whatever and GO or (wrongfully) in fits of road rage that often tends to end badly. Neither generally has much to do with safety.

Re:I imagine it will stay

[blackraven14250]

Someone blind is more likely to hear the tire roar than the engine anyway because it's much louder at anything other than heavy acceleration or total stop, idiot.

Re:I imagine it will stay

[blackraven14250]

That's exactly how people started handling the "divers" in Russia - a huge number of people hooked up dashcams to have proof in court when someone decides to jump in front of their car.

Re:I imagine it will stay

[amorsen]

For the majority of cars, you will hear the tires before you hear the engine.

Re:I imagine it will stay

[gottabeme]

Nah. At 30+ mph, stock mufflers can make the engine quieter than the tires on the pavement. Electric cars won't eliminate noise. Besides, electric cars won't stop boom cars and rednecks with loud pickups, not to mention loud trucks of all sorts.

It's actually a good idea for electric cars to make a reasonable amount of noise at low speeds. Blind, elderly, distracted, children, etc., all can easily miss the nearly silent approach of an electric car at low speed. One day, you could be in one of those categories!

Re:I imagine it will stay

[TapeCutter]

Russians hook up dash cams to qualify for the discount on their insurance premium, it's main benefit to the insurance company is that it avoids the need for a court battle between insurance companies when both parties are insured. The two companies simply review the tapes and settle it out of court.

Re:I imagine it will stay

[ultranova]

the driver can reasonably be responsible for avoiding an accident

They could, if they weren't busy eating, talking to their cellphone, playing with the radio, daydreaming, etc. Most people are unfit to handle the responsibility of driving, since they keep on downgrading their estimation of risk every time nothing bad happens and blaming someone else when it does, yet we can't keep them from driving, since modern city planning is pretty much built around the idea that people can drive.

Self-driving cars are a heavensend and need to be legally mandated ASAP. Make roads safe again by removing every "I'm a better than average driver" fucktard from them and letting them play at Gran Turismo or something.

Re:I imagine it will stay

[TapeCutter]

Aussies will sometimes give a short beep to warn daydreaming pedestrians, and sometimes a loud blast from musical air-horn to say goodnight at 3am.

Re:I imagine it will stay

[GravityStar]

There are lots of stupid drivers on the road that do not look to see if there is anything behind them while they reverse their vehicle. At least this way pedestrians have a chance to avoid the idiots.

Re:I imagine it will stay

[DarkOx]

I don't understand the problem. You walk against traffic along the road until you reach an intersection or cross walk.

Re:I imagine it will stay

[mark-t]

I'd dare suggest that the number of accidents that may be prevented by a car's noise compensating for the inattentiveness of an irresponsible driver is negligible.

Re:I imagine it will stay

[dr2chase]

A conscientious driver would use the brakes instead; they work better. Honking a horn depends on the person who needs to hear it, hearing it, figuring out that it applies to them, figuring out the appropriate response, and responding. They could be deaf. They could be distracted. They could be mentally disabled in some way (we have friends with an autistic son, he went walkabout one fine morning, quite the panic, till he turned up two miles away). Or, you can just step on the brake, stop the car, and wait for the problem to clear more sedately.

And yeah, you might be delayed a few seconds. I think that's less important than not hurting people.

Re:I imagine it will stay

[dr2chase]

I think your homemade statistics are correct. A few years ago I came to a similar conclusion, and decided that I would not use my horn if it were possible to solve the problem with my brakes instead.

Re:I imagine it will stay

[icebike]

You make it sound like its so difficult for a pedestrian to stop at the curb , an in the same breath, suggest trying to stop a 1 or 2 ton object moving at speed, with another 2 ton object right on its tail, and another behind that.

All this to avoid a little toot on the horn?

Re:I imagine it will stay

[dr2chase]

The car does have brakes, and "at speed" is not that large if you're a conscientious driver in a place that's already got pedestrians in it. If people are tailgating you, then you driver slower yet, so as to reduce the stopping distance that they'll need or increase your ability to stop both cars quickly. And yes, I know that you can get rear-ended stopping for pedestrians, it has happened to me, and I saw it happen to someone once who stopped for me (at a crosswalk, thank you very much). The law (at least in Massachusetts) is pretty plain; you have an obligation to not hit the pedestrian. You do not have any obligation to yield to the non-emergency vehicle behind you. Arguably, honking your horn to indicate "I intend to break the law" is also a safety issue.

The issue is also one of self-training -- if you train yourself to always hit the brakes instead of preferring the horn, then when you come across the pedestrian who doesn't hear, is too young, or mentally not all there, you'll still stop fast.

Re:I imagine it will stay

[icebike]

We are talking about a driverless car. Reformat your argument with that in mind, and it might make some sense.

And, you know, its entirely possible to brake AND honk. (I know, right? who would ever think out of the box!).

Re:I imagine it will stay

[dr2chase]

I think driverless cars are going to travel more slowly near pedestrians, though they will also take advantage of knowing exactly where they can swerve in a pinch and that will reduce their constraints somewhat. Humans take stupid chances because they think they're better drivers than they really are; deep pockets will be responsible in the case of the driverless cars, and they'll be accordingly more careful.

You also have to consider the possibility that some pedestrians may be quite aggressive; certainly, if a driverless car tries to push its luck at a crosswalk, sooner or later it's going to get a shopping cart shoved into its grill, or get the studded tires of an (ahem) icebike rammed into its side. I know dads of kids at the local elementary school who would throw snowballs at the windshields of cars that didn't stop at the school crosswalk (no crossing guard, the police said it was "too dangerous").

Re:I imagine it will stay

[icebike]

But you also have to consider that pedestrians may get rather bold, especially when it becomes known that driver-less cars A) slow down in their presence, and B) are programed to do everything to avoid hitting them.

City streets may become unusable for driver-less cars simply due to the number of jaywalkers.

Jaywalking is illegal, but there aren't enough cops to enforce it, and it has historically been enforced by fear of injury.

Re:Ridiculous premise

[Shompol]

Ridiculous premise is ridiculous.

Haven't heard a honk in a while

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Haven't heard a honk in a while

[sunderland56]

It's been weeks, if not months since I've heard any car honking

Go to any parking lot; wait for someone to lock or unlock their car. Honk.

Driverless cars will still need to be locked, so they will presumably still honk on a regular basis.

Re:Haven't heard a honk in a while

[Algae_94]

Not every car honks when the doors are locked. Many cars have this as a configurable setting now.

Re:Haven't heard a honk in a while

[Tim the Gecko]

My driving instructor used to lean across to blow the horn and wave when he saw one of his former students. I noticed that a high proportion of his former students seemed to be pedestrians.

We both used to confuse "left" and "right" too, which sometimes worked out fine.

Re:Haven't heard a honk in a while

[zippthorne]

That usually happens the second time you push the lock button on the remote. Because that's not for locking your car. It's for finding your car without un locking it.

There's an App For That

[rueger]

Seriously. Use the on board radar to spot idiotic behaviour and let 'er blast!

There is no need to honk. Ever.

[Shompol]

Although I can imagine that driving in NYC is not a bad as India, the traffic gets pretty busy here. My driving algorithm is as follows:
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.

Re:There is no need to honk. Ever.

[Anonymous Coward]

As an idiot and jackass, please let me be the first to thank you for your constant yielding.

Re:There is no need to honk. Ever.

[csumpi]

There is no need to honk. Ever.

Very seldom, if someone fell asleep at the traffick light, I give it a very short blip.

Awesome. So you are an asshole. That thing is not there to wake people up, but to avoid accidents.

.

Re:There is no need to honk. Ever.

[mysidia]

Sure there is... how else would you propose we signal, when the car just in front of us is driving at 10 miles per hour on a 30 mph road, when a pedestrian is taking too long to finish their crossing, a car in front of us is slowing down or taking too long to complete their right turn, or the car in front of us is stopped and signalling left in the middle of the road, spending forever at the stop sign, failing to take a right turn on red, stopping at a yellow light, failing to accelerate immediately after the light turned green, etc, etc.

Re:There is no need to honk. Ever.

[__aajfby9338]

Very seldom, if someone fell asleep at the traffick light, I give it a very short blip.

Awesome. So you are an asshole. That thing is not there to wake people up, but to avoid accidents.

Right! That's why I never honk to wake up somebody in front of me at a traffic light. I just ram them. It's the polite thing to do!

Re:There is no need to honk. Ever.

[Shompol]

It is pure optimisation, actually. If you dangerously cut me off I can a) give way at the cost of 0.5 seconds of my time or b) slam that accelerator, which will result in either you reconsidering your driving habits or clipping a mirror and a body panel it is attached to. Given that you aready indicated a lack of mental capacity, there is a fat chance of spending the next hour waiting for police in your company.

... to stay on topic, I can also honk and be flipped a bird in exchange -- a mutual understanding, which will flow into a pleasant conversation and invitation for a dinner while we pick up lost bumpers and sidings off the highway.

Re:There is no need to honk. Ever.

[Swave An deBwoner]

I would propose that you calm down and think that perhaps the person in front of your car is moving slower than you would like for a good reason.

Although it's always possible that they are purposely trying to make you late for your appointment, it's also possible that they need to think a moment more to avoid making a dangerous mistake. Or that slow moving pedestrian might be experiencing a bit of pain from the bullet that lodged in his leg back in the war and it might be slowing him down a little.

Most times it won't kill you to chill out. No need to smile though.

Re:There is no need to honk. Ever.

[hawguy]

Sure there is... how else would you propose we signal, when the car just in front of us is driving at 10 miles per hour on a 30 mph road, when a pedestrian is taking too long to finish their crossing, a car in front of us is slowing down or taking too long to complete their right turn, or the car in front of us is stopped and signalling left in the middle of the road, spending forever at the stop sign, failing to take a right turn on red, stopping at a yellow light, failing to accelerate immediately after the light turned green, etc, etc.

In your driverless car, you won't even notice, you'll be too busy playing Angry Birds to see your surroundings.

When driverless cars are commonplace, a GPS outage will leave millions of drivers stranded away from home because they will no longer know how to get home on their own, not even if they are within walking distance. GPS is bad enough, but at least they generally know which roads they take, but when driverless cars are the norm, drivers won't pay attention at all to where they are going.

Re:There is no need to honk. Ever.

[mysidia]

When driverless cars are commonplace, a GPS outage will leave millions of drivers stranded away from home because they will no longer know how to get home on their own

Wait.... GPS outage? If humans can find their way around without GPS; I see no reason a driverless car shouldn't be able to.

Hell... they can have a huge map database in the car.

All the car needs to do is use its last known position plus data from sensors and dead-reckoning based navigation to identify its current position.

Certainly, the driverless car would be unsafe, if it relied on continuous perfect GPS reception to work.

There are many places --- such as inside parking garages, or on roads in deep forested areas: where a usable GPS signal cannot be received. Plenty of times in urban areas; it's ordinary for GPS signals to be interfered with so much so that GPS devices give up and say satellite connection lost.

Re:There is no need to honk. Ever.

[hawguy]

When driverless cars are commonplace, a GPS outage will leave millions of drivers stranded away from home because they will no longer know how to get home on their own

Wait.... GPS outage? If humans can find their way around without GPS; I see no reason a driverless car shouldn't be able to.

That's the problem - people are becoming reliant on GPS and can't find their way around without GPS. One of my coworkers has lived here for almost a year and can't find his way to a restaurant 3 miles away (that he's been to a dozen times) without GPS.

Hell... they can have a huge map database in the car.

All the car needs to do is use its last known position plus data from sensors and dead-reckoning based navigation to identify its current position.

Most Inertial sensors are only good for a short time before they become too inaccurate to use. Manufacturers could have the car use pattern mapping to match its surroundings with onboard maps, but when GPS available "all the time", why bother implementing something that will rarely be used.

Certainly, the driverless car would be unsafe, if it relied on continuous perfect GPS reception to work.

There are many places --- such as inside parking garages, or on roads in deep forested areas: where a usable GPS signal cannot be received. Plenty of times in urban areas; it's ordinary for GPS signals to be interfered with so much so that GPS devices give up and say satellite connection lost.

I've never driven on a road where my standalone GPS couldn't get a signal -- even within cities and driving in forested areas. I've had it take a while to get a lock in cities, but once the GPS gets a lock, it's always been able to maintain it.

Re:There is no need to honk. Ever.

[gnasher719]

As an idiot and jackass, please let me be the first to thank you for your constant yielding.

I pay a lot less insurance every year than you do :-)

Re:There is no need to honk. Ever.

[gnasher719]

I've never driven on a road where my standalone GPS couldn't get a signal -- even within cities and driving in forested areas. I've had it take a while to get a lock in cities, but once the GPS gets a lock, it's always been able to maintain it.

Come to London. TomTom in some areas in Central London is an absolute pain.

Re:There is no need to honk. Ever.

[r2kordmaa]

And how often do GPS outages happen? There is also GLONASS and a few others out there. If they are all out it means you are in a war zone, being jammed, and your maps not working is probably least of your problems.

Re:There is no need to honk. Ever.

[r2kordmaa]

Inertial navigation for cars, on road network? Overengineer much? Theres this invention called a map out there. Turn left you are now on this street, turn right you are now here. Not exactly rocket science. For driving cars, GPS is a convenience, life will not stopp if you dont have it.

Re:There is no need to honk. Ever.

[hawguy]

And how often do GPS outages happen? There is also GLONASS and a few others out there. If they are all out it means you are in a war zone, being jammed, and your maps not working is probably least of your problems.

That's my point -- GPS is so reliable that there's no need to spend money on a backup system, aside from something to take you a block or two in the city when you lose sight of the satellites. So if the GPS network does go down, then cars won't be able to navigate, and the people in those cars won't have been paying attention to where their cars take them for years, so they won't be able to navigate either. No one's going to have paper maps in their cars, and navigation systems may just say "Sorry, I can't find your location" if they try to pull up a map.

Re:There is no need to honk. Ever.

[hawguy]

Inertial navigation for cars, on road network? Overengineer much? Theres this invention called a map out there. Turn left you are now on this street, turn right you are now here. Not exactly rocket science. For driving cars, GPS is a convenience, life will not stopp if you dont have it.

For people driving cars GPS is just a convenience, but what about self-driving cars?

Re:There is no need to honk. Ever.

[zippthorne]

It doesn't need to be inertial nav. although that can certainly be a part of the total navigation solution. The collision avoidance features will probably have elements to detect lane markings and possibly even road signs. If the car can read road signs, it will be just as good (or better, as the car will probably have cameras mounted all over the place to watch multiple angles at once) as a driver in the same circumstance - the car will probably do very well outside of New England.

Re:There is no need to honk. Ever.

[Enigma2175]

Hell... they can have a huge map database in the car.

All the car needs to do is use its last known position plus data from sensors and dead-reckoning based navigation to identify its current position.

Most Inertial sensors are only good for a short time before they become too inaccurate to use. Manufacturers could have the car use pattern mapping to match its surroundings with onboard maps, but when GPS available "all the time", why bother implementing something that will rarely be used.

Not really - inertial sensors can be quite accurate. The gyros in my RC autopilot are able to track the plane's position quite accurately even if the GPS is malfunctioning, in normal operation it integrates the GPS and inertial sensors. This is in a cheap off the shelf chip, I would imagine a purpose-built sensor for an automobile would be even more accurate. But all that is beside the point, if you are in a car you have tires that are rolling on the ground that tell you exactly how far you have traveled. Combine that with a compass and you have a fairly accurate way to localize the car. Add a vision system and you have more redundancy and an ability to correct for drift. My home-built robot can keep track of itself on a map using just wheel and IR sensors, why couldn't a car with much more sophisticated sensors be able to do the same thing?

Re:There is no need to honk. Ever.

[Your.Master]

Still just a convenience. They still have local information (they can see what you can see), they'll have maps loaded, and when not in complete wilderness they'll also have wireless signals to locate them.

Re:There is no need to honk. Ever.

[mysidia]

No one's going to have paper maps in their cars, and navigation systems may just say "Sorry, I can't find your location" if they try to pull up a map.

Remember: GPS is not functional when driving through parking garages or tunnels. How are you going to navigate Le tunnel sous la Manche; if your driverless car cannot tolerate GPS unavailability?

I believe the driverless cars are going to have to put through heavy scrutiny for safety, before they become available to consumers. INCLUDING options for safe operation -- and backup options for the human to navigate their vehicle, in case GPS is unavailable.

Re:There is no need to honk. Ever.

[hawk]

Nah, he's right.

I shouldn't have honked at that guy who drifted across the center while looking down, and just let him hit me.

Same for the folks who change lanes without looking; there's usually another car in the yet next lane to push me into for a cozy metallic sowdown . . .

hawk

Re:There is no need to honk. Ever.

[hawguy]

No one's going to have paper maps in their cars, and navigation systems may just say "Sorry, I can't find your location" if they try to pull up a map.

Remember: GPS is not functional when driving through parking garages or tunnels.
How are you going to navigate Le tunnel sous la Manche; if your driverless car
cannot tolerate GPS unavailability?

I believe the driverless cars are going to have to put through heavy scrutiny
for safety, before they become available to consumers.
INCLUDING options for safe operation -- and backup options for the human to navigate their vehicle,
in case GPS is unavailable.

Short distance navigation is easy through simple inertial sensors, or distance sensing, but navigating 15 miles from work to the office may not be possible if the designers decided that there's no reason to read road signs or other pattern mapping to match the real world with maps. GPS is reliable and ubiquitous, so why spend money developing a backup for something that will never fail.

Re:There is no need to honk. Ever.

[russotto]

There's not all that much honking in NYC since Adolf Giuliani had all the honkers arrested and sent to the South Bronx. But if I had a car accident every time I've honked my horn when someone was moving their car into the space my car occupied, I'd be pretty upset.

Re:There is no need to honk. Ever.

[dr2chase]

Believe it or not, in more than one state the vehicle code says that the horn is only to be used when reasonably necessary to avoid an accident. Your recommended use of the horn is illegal in many places, though the law is practically never enforced.

Re:There is no need to honk. Ever.

[dr2chase]

I wait to see how long they'll stay asleep.

Re:There is no need to honk. Ever.

[mjwx]

Although I can imagine that driving in NYC is not a bad as India, the traffic gets pretty busy here. My driving algorithm is as follows:
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.

And you're a worse driver than the idiots and jackasses.

As long as you tolerate their behaviour, you support it's expansion.

Now not everyone who makes a mistake is a jackass. Sometimes people reverse and don't see you so a quick toot to the horn lets them know you are there. Most people will be apologetic at this point as they've made a genuine mistake. Thats fine, we all make the odd mistake so live and let live.

Secondly, you rarely can manoeuvre in an accident without having a worse one. The best thing you can do in most circumstances is brake as you want less kinetic energy in an impact.

Misuse of the horn is an indication of bad driver training, however what you have suggested is an indication of shocking driver training and a complete lack of common sense.

Re:There is no need to honk. Ever.

[Shompol]

As long as you tolerate their behaviour, you support it's expansion.

So you suggest we honk to indicate that we don't tolerate behaviour? Like a teaching tool? I am afraid that is the problem they have in India -- everyone is a teacher, no students left.

Secondly, you rarely can manoeuvre in an accident without having a worse one.

There is a very safe one, it's called brakes. (unless you are tailgating).
When someone is shifting into your lane you can either honk or dodge. Unfortunately shifting into my lane happens so often here I just gave up and accepted it as part of life. Moreover, if you drive in Manhattan -- there are no lanes. Traffic weaves in and out around obstacles, like a snake.

it will return to it's original purpose

[Gravis Zero]

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.

Re:it will return to it's original purpose

[king neckbeard]

With two hands free, the number of middle finger may come close to doubling.

Re:it will return to it's original purpose

[shapano]

A crime in Peru, eh? It doesn't surprise me at all. When I was in Lima in 2008 the honking was totally out of control. I couldn't figure out why they were all doing it.

At least the finger is silent. And silence is golden.

Re:it will return to it's original purpose

[Zynder]

"may come close" I like it! Gave me a chuckle.

Re:it will return to it's original purpose

[Ichijo]

And by making fewer mistakes, driverless cars would elicit less honking from other drivers, except when they drive at or below the speed limit, which will be all the time. So it's hard to say what the overall result would be in the USA, at least until humans are banned, for safety concerns, from operating motor vehicles on public roads.

No horns?

[OldeTimeGeek]

Ok, let's assume in this wondrous future, you are being driven (can't exactly call it driving if you're not in control) on some country roads and you encounter a very large bull standing in the middle of the road. Your car recognizes that there is an obstruction, stops and waits patiently for the road to clear. The bull waits patiently for the car to go away. Unless they've come up with automated cattle in the future you've got a problem. Since the car has no horn, you (the passenger) have to figure out a way to get the bull to clear the road. You try waving your arms. The bull ignores you. You yell at it, fueled by you annoyance. It calmly looks at the source of the noise and goes nowhere. The car finally figures out the obstruction is permanent, executes a perfect u-turn and runs out of gas because it didn't include having to backtrack when it calculated your course.

Anybody who thinks this is unlikely has never driven on back roads. Will they get rid of horns? I hope not.

Re:No horns?

[damnbunni]

In my experience cows are rarely impressed by car horns.

And moose ignore them completely. You sit there till the moose decides to wander off to do whatever it is that moose do when they're not blocking traffic.

I'm not gonna ask. A moose's business is its own.

Re:No horns?

[50000BTU_barbecue]

You should read Incompetence by Rob Grant...

Re:No horns?

[valdezjuan]

I'm not gonna ask. A moose's business is its own.

Amen to that!

Re:No horns?

[mysidia]

Ok, let's assume in this wondrous future, you are being driven (can't exactly call it driving if you're not in control) on some country roads and you encounter a very large bull standing in the middle of the road.

This is why you should always, always bring firearms, flares, and some device to scare away bulls with you, when driving on country roads: especially in driverless cars --- never be without them.

When you encounter the bull, you load your gun with a blank.... fire off the warning. This will surely draw the attention of the bull, better than a horn blow.

If no response; grab a pellet/BB gun or other firearm -- after a few hits, the bull is sure to leave.

Re:No horns?

[gman003]

I don't know about moose or cows, but the deer I've encountered seem to respond more to an engine rev than to a horn. I guess it sounds more like a predator?

Re:No horns?

[Anonymous Coward]

PSA: Don't honk at cows. If your horn sounds anything like the feed truck, you're gonna have a bad time when you suddenly get surrounded by 50+ hungry cows that think it's time to get fed. And honking again just makes them come running faster.

At least that's how it works in Texas. ;)

Re:No horns?

[Greyfox]

Mostly just hanging out with Squirrel.

Re:No horns?

[Jeremi]

You're imagining a car with no user inputs at all? No steering wheel, no manual override, not even any way to program a new route?

Also, this car won't be smart enough to factor in the amount of gas remaining in the tank when making its routing calculations?

I'm guessing that wouldn't be the most popular model.

Re:No horns?

[gnasher719]

Ok, let's assume in this wondrous future, you are being driven (can't exactly call it driving if you're not in control) on some country roads and you encounter a very large bull standing in the middle of the road. Your car recognizes that there is an obstruction, stops and waits patiently for the road to clear. The bull waits patiently for the car to go away. Unless they've come up with automated cattle in the future you've got a problem. Since the car has no horn, you (the passenger) have to figure out a way to get the bull to clear the road. You try waving your arms. The bull ignores you. You yell at it, fueled by you annoyance. It calmly looks at the source of the noise and goes nowhere. The car finally figures out the obstruction is permanent, executes a perfect u-turn and runs out of gas because it didn't include having to backtrack when it calculated your course.

You honk. Bull gets annoyed and tries who is stronger. Fortunately the manufacturer foresaw the possibility that your car needs to revers faster than a bull can run :-)

Re:No horns?

[Bugamn]

DId a moose bite your sister?

Re:No horns?

[dotancohen]

Ok, let's assume in this wondrous future, you are being driven (can't exactly call it driving if you're not in control) on some country roads and you encounter a very large bull standing in the middle of the road.

Do you really think it a good idea to deliberately get into a competition of "who's stronger with their horns" with a bull?

Re:No horns?

[Cro Magnon]

Once while driving, a family of geese crossed the street ahead of me. When I honked at them, they just honked right back at me!

Re:Cars are not going driverless...

[king neckbeard]

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.

Why are horns still only top volume?

[PapayaSF]

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.

Re:Why are horns still only top volume?

[Demonoid-Penguin]

Because young people are still only top volume.

Got pasted by one the other day. I was leaning on the horn, but he didn't hear it, because his music was cranked. Backed right into me assuming I wasn't there, never even looked.

Next time try while you're in a car.

Re:Why are horns still only top volume?

[Jeremi]

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.

FWIW the Chevy Volt comes with just that.

Re:Why are horns still only top volume?

[sunderland56]

Copied from the Citroën DS - it had the regular horn for in-town use, and a wake-the-dead horn for highway use.

And yes, if you accidentally hit the highway mega-horn when a little old lady was crossing the street in front of you, it was embarrasing.... not that I'd know that myself, of course, just heard rumours.

It is a tad surprising how many swear words a 90 year old lady actually knows.

Re:Why are horns still only top volume?

[xaxa]

Trains in Britain have two tones. They're usually used together (daa-DAA ), but sometimes I hear just the quieter one (I live near a busy line). I think the quieter one is only if the train is going slowly, perhaps to warn people maintaining the track. The two-tone sound is very distinctive -- I assume the frequencies are strictly regulated.

There's an entire series of videos of British train horns: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... I'm not sure whether to be surprised or amused.

(Which can't compete with the noise of an American train, which seems like it could wake up half a city.)

india asks for honks!

[schlachter]

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.

Re:Driverless Cars

[ShanghaiBill]

They said driverless not hornless. Those in the car are free to honk their asses off. :)

Simple solution: Put a horn meter in every car, and charge a 10 cent tax each time they honk it.

Re:Ridiculous premise

[MightyYar]

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.

A Button For Humans To Press

[TrollstonButterbeans]

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.

Re:A Button For Humans To Press

[plover]

May I suggest you visit India some time, and experience the noise for yourself? The drivers there are completely undisciplined. People honk because everyone else honks. They honk to announce they're tailgating, they honk to announce they are moving left or right (calling it changing lanes would imply they cared about lanes), they honk to announce they're about to enter an intersection, and they honk if someone cuts them off; as it's the only way anyone drives, the honking is almost continuous. When I got back, the silence on Minnesota streets was remarkable. It was almost three weeks before I heard an actual horn honk in traffic.

People aren't compelled to push the button just because it's in front of them. People push it because they don't know any better.

Re:A Button For Humans To Press

[master5o1]

Are their cars powered by sound?

Re:A Button For Humans To Press

[rossdee]

Driverless cars are never going to happen in India

Re: A Button For Humans To Press

[Peyna]

Cairo was very similar when we visited in late 2010. For added excitement, not only do the drivers there honk nonstop, they also drive with their headlights off at night.

Re:A Button For Humans To Press

[Anti-Social Network]

No, it is so they can steer by echolocation!

Re:A Button For Humans To Press

[chuckugly]

Actually the culture is just different, mostly they honk to say "i'm here"; in fact cars with air conditioning often announce it on the rear window so following vehicles will know they are less likely to hear the horn, and trucks have signs on the back that ask "Please use horn". Much of SEA is the same way, to a slightly lesser degree.

Re:A Button For Humans To Press

[Your.Master]

Why? Why India in particular?

Re:A Button For Humans To Press

[TheLink]

Yep. Maybe even the blind can drive in such countries? Just add some soft bumpers that beep on collision.

OK maybe not- I think the cyclists might not be happy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:A Button For Humans To Press

[plover]

Better traffic laws and better enforcement of those laws produce disciplined drivers - the only traffic police we encountered in Karnataka were standing in kiosks near busy intersections, or on foot near highway checkpoints. Better traffic signage, road markings, and standards of safe construction would make the road conditions predictable. Those improvements make driving much safer than the chaos we experienced, and without needing to rely on horns. But they're expensive. And I'm not sure you'd want to give up all the land we use for our roads.

Re:Ridiculous premise

[wiredlogic]

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.

Re:Driverless Cars

[Garridan]

See, this is the thoughtless sort of legislation that makes the world an awful place to live. I immediately see your tax as an incentive to hardwire the horn on. I pay at most $.1 per trip in horn tax, and still get to use it as much as I like.

Having been in Lima, Peru recently...

[jdeisenberg]

...I'd say treating honking as a serious crime isn't working terribly well. At times, the horn became a nearly continuous background noise.

Re:Having been in Lima, Peru recently...

[r2kordmaa]

The correct way to treat it is to establish a fine and treat it as free income to municipality. Problem gets solved real fast.

Re:Driverless Cars

[SJHillman]

But then manufacturers will offer Free Nights and Weekend Honking, and contracts for 1000 honks per month (minimum 2 yr contract). Eventually, we'll get some good prepaid honks, but they won't always be as up to date as contract horns.

Re:Ridiculous premise

[femtobyte]

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.

Dumbest headline question ever

[wonkey_monkey]

When Cars Go Driverless, What Happens To the Honking?

It Will Stop.

Next?

Re:Dumbest headline question ever

[xaxa]

Only if there's nothing else on the road. In China you also need driverless bikes, otherwise cars will still need to warn people (or ask them to get out of the way).

In Florence, some sort of regulation prevents most vehicles from driving round the narrow city-centre streets. The taxis, which were mostly electric or hybrid, had beepers, roughly as loud as a bicycle bell, to alert people or ask people to move. Much nicer than honking a horn.

Re:Driverless Cars

[Zynder]

I don't know what's wrong with the humor centers of my brain lately but I can't tell which one of you are joking. I thought Bill was but your comment falls into that category of sounding so insane that many would take it seriously. I'm so confused!

They can have ...

[PPH]

... my La Cucaracha horn when they pry it from my cold, dead hands!

Won't someone think of the trees?

[Demonoid-Penguin]

For every driverless car honk a tree falls silently in a forest...

Re:Ridiculous premise

[epyT-R]

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.

Re:Ridiculous premise

[Zynder]

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.

I'm filing a patent application

[RogueWarrior65]

For a robotic, self-extending middle-finger. Gonna make a ton of money on this.

Re:Driverless Cars

[rusty0101]

After 5 years, some provider will offer unlimited honking as part of their standard contract at lower than competitor's prices, but you'r car will only operate on limited access roadways and your horn will be bufered through the network with random failures to deliver horn notifications in a timely manner and occasionall complete loss of horn notifications. Subscribers will point at the low prices as evidence of better than expected service, impressively inovative and the customer service representatives will be rated higher than any of the competition.

Regional problem

[sir-gold]

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.

Re:Ridiculous premise

[dead_user]

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!

"so severe in india"

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Driverless cars are already here

[Immerman]

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.

Re:Ridiculous premise

[femtobyte]

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!").

Mandatory car sounds not so bad?

[Immerman]

> 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.

Re:Ridiculous premise

[MightyYar]

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.

Edge case: tumbleweeds

[Mspangler]

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."

Re:Ridiculous premise

[femtobyte]

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 could be used for communication

[funky_vibes]

The car horn will be used for wireless communication between cars because radio and light are just not cool enough anymore.

Re:Ridiculous premise

[hawguy]

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?

forget the horns

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Ridiculous premise

[ShanghaiBill]

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.

Re:Driverless Cars

[Firethorn]

Well the obvious solution here, especially given that I'm less offended by a 'beep' than a 'HOOOOONNNNNKKK", is to charge $.10 per second.

Insurance rates for driverless cars

[Firethorn]

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.

Re:Insurance rates for driverless cars

[amorsen]

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.

The tables are not messed up. The new cars with X years insurance are very small cars that have little appeal to the young males who are likely to be in accidents. The top speed is naturally limited and the cars do not feel safe when cornering at speed, which also helps safety. Worst case, the car is unlikely to do all that much damage to something else (limiting third party liability) and the car manufacturer offering the insurance can make a replacement cheaply.

This takes the safest drivers out of the pool for generic car insurance, which obviously makes that even more expensive.

Re:Insurance rates for driverless cars

[Firethorn]

The tables are not messed up. The new cars with X years insurance are very small cars that have little appeal to the young males who are likely to be in accidents.

The problem with this little statement is that I said 'EQUIVALENT used cars' for a reason. I know they're shitboxes. Thing is that you can get older shitboxes and still insure them for about the same or less than a new car. You have a point that the manufacturer can likely fix/replace the car for less than the insurance company, but they're covering liability as well, which means paying medical bills and fixing competitor's cars.

This takes the safest drivers out of the pool for generic car insurance, which obviously makes that even more expensive.

I think I'm missing the context here, because 'young males' are not the safest demographic group by far.

Re:Insurance rates for driverless cars

[amorsen]

I think I'm missing the context here, because 'young males' are not the safest demographic group by far.

The unsafe young males are not taken out of the pool. The young women and the slow-driving young males are, they buy the manufacturer-sponsored insurance.

Older cars tend to be bought by people who don't mind having to do a bit of work on them. Again, not the demographic you really want to insure.

Re:Insurance rates for driverless cars

[Firethorn]

The unsafe young males are not taken out of the pool. The young women and the slow-driving young males are, they buy the manufacturer-sponsored insurance.

Ah, that makes sense. As for the older cars bit - I'm talking about 'the free coverage has expired' old, not 'requires extra maintenance' old. I think the age was 4 years old.

And why are people willing to do a bit of work on their vehicles not a good demographic to insure? For that matter, it's always in my interest to insure somebody so long as they can make the premiums I charge. Competition with other insurance companies gives me a reason to cut my rates, which is where I need to subdivide my potential customers so I can tell who's most likely to make claims. It's a minor but important distinction in my mind. It's not that any one sub-group is so much 'bad' as 'doesn't qualify for the lowest rates I charge'.

Re:Insurance rates for driverless cars

[TapeCutter]

In Australia third party medical insurance is compulsory, run by the state, and billed as part of the yearly registration fee. The government runs the scheme at a profit, that money is (to a large degree) put back into road safety in an evidence based effort to reduce road accidents. Sure it's a "socialist policy", but results are what count, and our state's annual road toll has halved since the "TAC" was tasked with managing it in the early 90's. Most of the legal drama has gone with the old (US style system) but you still need to seek legal counsel when making a substantial claim. If your unlucky enough to be hurt by an unregistered car the driver is liable for the medical costs, but the government pays you regardless. Wether or not the driver pays the government depends on how much the Sherriff's office can extract from the driver's assets at auction.

Third party property is optional and provided by the private sector, personally I would like to see it become mandatory, an 18yo burger flipper can easily rack up tens of thousands of dollars in damages with nothing more than the arrogance of youth and a $500 rust bucket. Debt collectors for the victims insurance company will hound said teenager for decades, dragging him into court every couple of years to review the garnishing of his wages. The only people who benefit under that scenario are the debt collection agencies.

Re:Driverless Cars

[Garridan]

It's a simple matter of economics. You get the most honking for your buck. It's clearly an obvious no-brainer.

Driverless vehicles

[Firethorn]

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.

Re:Driverless vehicles

[epyT-R]

I suppose barriers could be put up to mitigate, but like I was trying to say, that's all that can be done. It still takes a human to say "oh look there's something on the track that might derail the train, time to stop". Good luck getting a computer to recognize that reliably. If I owned amtrak, I wouldn't bet the safety of my passengers (and the long term viability of my company) on a machine alone.

This is even more true with trucks on public roads, so they'll need the public to drive them. While they do spend a lot of time on the relatively simple point-to-point limited access highways, their size and mass (especially the ones that carry volatile material) make them a threat to every other vehicle. While we do get the occasional drunk trucker, he's still less likely than a failed sensor, software bug, or servo control board going bad after years of neglect. Complex machines can do powerful things, but they tend to fail more often and require more maintenance. Trucks, trucking, and the roads are anything but the safe, dry, non-corrosive, static free, regularly maintained environments that microcircuitry requires. Even with current cars, all that computer circuitry drives up failure rates. Replacing those black boxes is crazy expensive. I'm waiting for the lawsuits to crop up from people being hit by others who grew dependent on those anti-collision features on luxury cars when they suddenly stopped working. I really do think this is a situation where keeping it simple/stupid is a better deal. We should be encouraging attentive, alert driving by removing distractions, not removing already half distracted drivers (cell phones) from the controls, handing them to algorithms that can't possibly be ready, and then adding to the distractions.

Re:Driverless Cars

[davester666]

This honk sponsored by Pepsi. The choice of the last generation!

Electric cars aren't silent

[Firethorn]

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.

Re: Electric cars aren't silent

[Peyna]

but the bicyclist or pedestrian that doesn't hear the car coming, Might dart out In front or turn in front of the vehicle more quickly than it can respond. Something they wouldn't have done if they knew a car was there.

Re: Electric cars aren't silent

[Firethorn]

The point is that if you're going to make EVs and hybrids be artificially noisier you need to do the same for modern IC cars, because they're all about equally quiet.

Motorcycle nitpick

[Firethorn]

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.

Re:Motorcycle nitpick

[drinkypoo]

Just a nitpick but Harleys are actually fairly quiet stock.

They seem to still have pretty free-flowing exhausts. Is there any chart or other evidence which might prove this one way or the other?

Re:Motorcycle nitpick

[Firethorn]

Just anecdotal from trying a number at the showroom. Replacing the mufflers with louder pipes is one of the most common 'upgrades'.

Re:Ridiculous premise

[master5o1]

Self-driving cars without a human operator will likely exist. Perhaps only in the form of public transport or replacing taxis.

Honking is different overseas

[DNS-and-BIND]

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."

Re:Honking is different overseas

[slart42]

While it is very true that horn usage has very different cultural implications around the world, characterizing every country outside of the US as "overseas" is a wrong over-generalisation. Most northern-european countries have a very similar interpretation of the horn as you described in the US (minus the part why people get out to kick your ass, usually).

Re:Honking is different overseas

[Hazelfield]

In Sweden, there is one and only one situation where honking is acceptable: when a traffic light turns green and the driver in front of you doesn't notice.

Re:Honking is different overseas

[hawk]

In Nevada, this is actually a moving violation!

The only lawful use of a horn is as a safety warning, and waiting is not a safety issue.

One of my partners recently handled a ticket for someone who managed to get charged with this.

hawk

Re:Ridiculous premise

[drkim]

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

Re:Ridiculous premise

[drkim]

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

Re:Ridiculous premise

[mark-t]

They exist

Re:Ridiculous premise

[AK Marc]

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.

Re:Ridiculous premise

[hankwang]

"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.

Re:Ridiculous premise

[maxwell demon]

But if your train is driverless, a driver's strike would have no effect, would it?

Re:Ridiculous premise

[dunkelfalke]

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.

Re:Ridiculous premise

[oobayly]

We already do, it's called the Navitron Autodrive system, but the trucker's union doesn't want the public to know about it.

Unless pedestrians don't go brainless

[koinu]

... they will still need to be warned.

Re:Ridiculous premise

[epyT-R]

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).

159 retarded comments

[AssholeMcGee]

Oh I dont know [even tho this was repeated several times] the computers would communicate with each other asking 'what the problem is'?

Re:Ridiculous premise

[epyT-R]

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.

The honking will continue

[larpon]

... in the bedrooms

thai perspective

[gl4ss]

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.

Re:Ridiculous premise

[r2kordmaa]

" The problem is that reality tracking technology and heuristics are not even close to making a safe autonomous street robot."

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.

Re:Ridiculous premise

[TapeCutter]

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.

What if

[g0bshiTe]

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.

Re:Ridiculous premise

[MightyYar]

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.

Re:Ridiculous premise

[MightyYar]

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 :)

Honking is like a Car Alarm

[EmagGeek]

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.

Re:Cars are not going driverless...

[r2kordmaa]

Just stop this alread. Personal computers aren't a cool idea, they are just stupid.

Pardon me, wrong decade

Re:Ridiculous premise

[Pinky's Brain]

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.

Not when "If"

[Chas]

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.

Re:Ridiculous premise

[zippthorne]

I'd be cool with on-ramp to off-ramp, even, as long as it could handle traffic.

Re:Ridiculous premise

[Enigma2175]

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.

I'd think it would be obvious

[roc97007]

"When Cars Go Driverless, What Happens To the Honking?"

Honking will be automatic, of course.

Re:Cars are not going driverless...

[Your.Master]

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).

Re:Cars are not going driverless...

[Your.Master]

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?

Re:Ridiculous premise

[stoatwblr]

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 y sus Bocines

[ChoosyBeggar]

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!" :|

Used to love my Mercedes horn

[ebvwfbw]

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.