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Kids With Wheels: Should the Unlicensed Be Allowed To 'Drive' Autonomous Cars?
Hallie Siegel (2973169) writes "From the Open Roboethics Research Initiative: Earlier this month, when we asked people about your general thoughts on autonomous cars, we found that one of the main advantages of autonomous cars is that those who are not licensed to drive will be able to get to places more conveniently. Some results from our reader poll: About half of the participants (52%) said that children under the legal driving age should not be able to ride driverless cars, 38% of the participants believe that children should be able to ride driverless cars alone and the other 10% also think that children should be able to drive autonomous cars with proven technology and specific training."
no. the idea of an autonomous vehicle with no possible driver to override it is just plain stupid.
http://pinopsida.com
It's not like the guy sitting in the seat is the actual "driver" of an autonomous car.
And it's not like anyone is actually required to sit in that seat.
Note that if an "autonomous car" that requires someone to sit in the driver's seat and pay attention, you might as well not bother making it autonomous. If I have to pay as much attention as if I were the real driver, I might as well drive it myself, since the act of driving at least helps me keep my attention on the traffic.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Should kids be allowed to ride trains/metros all by themselves? Same answer.
If the autonomous car is reliable there should be no need for a drivers' license, for the same reason I wouldn't be required to have one if driven by a chauffeur.
Who ordered that?
Put a camera in the car so that the helicopter parents can watch their little flower for the entire duration and parents will be putting their toddlers in self-driving cars that autonomously drop them off at the non-custodial parent's house. It is just too convenient for them not to.
Hell, we are going to see autonomous cars with no drivers at all - like home-delivered groceries. Forget amazon's drone PR stunt, we well see autonomous amazon home deliveries before we see drone deliveries.
Is there a scenario in which the unlicensed will be required to operate the vehicle themselves?
If yes, the unlicensed can't drive.
If no, they can.
For a partially autonomous car requiring occasional driving an unlicensed user obviously can't use it.
For a fully autonomous car there should never be a necessity to drive since an autopilot failure will require a graceful break down mode regardless. Even if there's a manual drive mode an unlicensed user won't be allowed to use it and the car will essentially be broken down on the road.
The only time it comes up is with a partially autonomous car requiring occasional non-driving guidance. Then it's simply a question of whether you design an alternate certification process for the unlicensed and it really depends on the degree of user interaction required.
I stole this Sig
For every Frankenstein pre-emptive handwringing stops, you'll kill a million improvements which will make the world a better place.
Well, you COULD give every passenger a virtual control stick on a display panel on their back seat, and let democracy fly the plane.
It worked for Twitch Plays Pokémon.
The government would jail you for leaving your child at home alone. If your autonomous vehicle is as safe as being at home, then the government should also prevent children from operating such a vehicle. Perhaps the child could be allowed to ride alone only if a parent or guardian programmed the destination....
Or perhaps we need to go back to the 1970's and allow children as much freedom and autonomy as I had when I was eight or ten, when my mother would tell me "Go out and play, and be back before dark."
The reimagined Battlestar Galactica copped a lot of (somewhat) deserved flak for its filler episodes, but my favourite episode of the entire series is also one of the more blatant filler episodes ("Scar").
In particular, I loved the scene where it is revealed that Cylon raider-ships also reincarnate, just as their fleshy biological counterparts do. Sharon even spells it out for the characters.
Starbuck: Raiders reincarnate?
Sharon: Makes sense, doesn't it? It takes months for you to train a nugget into an effective Viper pilot. And then they get killed and then you lose your experience, their knowledge, their skill sets. It's gone forever. So, if you could bring them back and put them in a brand new body, wouldn't you do it? 'Cause death then becomes a learning experience.
This is why, I believe, the future will eventually belong to automated drivers. The initial ones are already very good, but there will be holes. There will be headlines like "automated car drives headlong into school, killing 10 of the world's cutest orphans". Human drivers have similar issues and events like that are almost everyday occurrences all around the world. The problem is, as Sharon pointed out, when those drivers die their experience is lost. With an automated system, the skill set improves. Someone discovers that, for example, hey, if a drunk passenger opens the door to a self-driving car at low speed and falls out the system doesn't realise they're gone and blindly drives away.
So the system improves. The car's internal systems track passengers, and if one exits the car, the vehicle will double back and pick them up. Or contact emergency services if the speed is high enough, and form a roadblock so that this person isn't hit again. Or simply lock the doors to begin with. Or any number of more sane actions. The point is: the accident becomes a learning experience. With a human driver, we spend months training people to become drivers. Then one day they make a stupid mistake -- one other drivers have learnt to avoid, but not this driver -- and become a red smear. Their skill set, their experience and training, is lost.
With automated systems, every mistake is an opportunity to grow. I personally believe that automated driving systems are already better than humans, but this massive evolutionary benefit (directly learning from the mistakes of others drivers as though they were that other) ensures that they will continue to improve, whereas human lifespans are finite and so ours will not.
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
Ergo, the "autonomous cars" of now aren't really what they claim to be, whereas those answering the question as it was given should have imagined far enough ahead to when we would have such cars.
In that future, it makes no sense whatsoever to require an override, although I would like adult drivers to retain the right. It also makes no sense to deny children access to the vehicles under computer control.
This is just silly. Depending on the laws in your area, you could be jailed for putting a child in a possibly bad situation.
Imagine if there's a breakdown on a hot summer day. An infant or toddler will soon die in a hot autonomous car without someone of responsibility to intervene.
Use your brains, people, instead of getting all giddy about technology.
First the dirverless cars need to be ridden by people of the general public who can take over if it is necessary. When driverless cars prove to be trustworthy, then it'll make little difference who the "driver" is. All I know is that taxi drivers are going to go the way of the buggy whip makers.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Anyone who responded postively to that idea should be neutered immediately.
We already let tons of unlicensed drivers on our roads (and I'm not referring to "illegals").
20% of fatal accidents in the US involve an unlicensed driver http://abcnews.go.com/Travel/story?id=118913 so it can only make our roads safer if we can put them in even semi-autonomous cars.
There are three broad topics that I feel need to be addressed before allowing minors to ride around unaccompanied in automated vehicles:
Liability: Who is responsible for the safety of an unaccompanied minor in the event of an accident or vehicle malfunction, especially if the vehicle is a long distance from home? More importantly, who will be willing to accept that kind of liability and at what cost?
Capacity: Is there enough room on our roads and in our parking lots to accommodate children riding around in their own personal vehicles? Will the efficiencies of automated vehicle traffic be enough to overcome an overall increase in vehicle traffic? How much will associated expansion projects cost? Can we afford to pay for them?
Energy: Can we afford the increase in energy consumption associated with increasing vehicle traffic at a time when the capacity of available energy reserves is questionable and energy policy is all over the place?
An autonomous car should not allow human input. It should come to a stop if the controls fail and remain stopped until help arrives. This is perfect for getting kids to school and picking them up from school as well. We might even be able to eliminate school buss drivers.
A common thing that people claim is that this will reduce accidents caused by drunk drivers... I would trust my son or daughter to drive more then I would trust myself to drive drunk.. As I would trust a autonomous car to drive us better then either of us.
Now what really concerns me is what if the computer of a driverless car is under the influence of ethanol? :P
Hmm, the humour and sarcasm seem to have been be lost on you.
Out of curiosity, when you pack a bunch of these on the road, will their laser systems ever confuse one another? How much power are they using anyway? I have a hard time thinking they can get away with just a few mW. Any fear of blinding pedestrians?
I have just so many low level questions.
Wait.... this "Roboethics Research Initiative" (wtf?) is using a Slashdot poll for semi-serious purposes? Aren't you... not supposed to do that?
"Should the Unlicensed Be Allowed To 'Drive' Autonomous Cars?" Hell, no! Not any more than non-pilots be allowed to operate aircraft! It'll be decades, if ever, that so-called 'autonomous' cars are actually reliable and tested enough to be trusted to have no qualified driver at the controls, and even then if I had anything to say about it that will still never happen. People should always be properly trained, tested, licensed, and checked periodically for competency if they are to operate any sort of motor vehicle. It's bad enough out on the roads as it is, the last thing we need are people who have no idea how to drive, or more to the point, what to do in an emergency situation.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
1) If you need to take control it's probably going to be Right Effin Now!!!! If the car is driving itself what are the odds you're paying any attention to the road?
2) If the car has been driving you around for a couple years with no intervention from you, how good a driver do you think you'll be in an emergency?
In the next few decades there'll be plenty of elderly that need to get around: They're a huge part of active society, yet for simple physical reasons (eye-sight or limb coordination issues) many of them can no longer drive, and a lot of them are homeowners that live in the suburbs, far away from public transportation. I'd say that's a much bigger market, especially in the next 30 or 40 years.
lets assume that cars are completely autonomous and dont require input should you need a licence probably not but its all up to the insurance agency in the end there will most likely be a minimum age requirement.
Personally i am for a licence for autonomous vehicles because then you know that if the car bugs out and crashes by your fault or other party fault you know that the occupant is "mature" enough to know what to do next.
But in the end this question is a non question until all of the users of the road are autonomous (with all users i also mean bycycles, motors and everybody else who is on the driving surface of the road. yes that is including pedestrians)
so in the end a licence is always required.
I'm a parent of four precocious kids in a small college town in the mountains of NC.
We have taxpayer-funded public transportation here. 12 years old and up are allowed to ride the bus alone (to go to the library, etc). Would I let my 7-year old if he were allowed? No. Would I let him go with his 12-year-old brother who has a way to stay in touch with me? Probably.
I don't think the issue here is automotive safety. A fully-automated car should be safe enough for kids to ride in by themselves, or it shouldn't be on the road. I think the bigger concern is, when is it okay to let your kids out in public without supervision? 72% of the people who said flat out "no" did so because they have the impression that parents should be attached to their children at the hip, or because there was no option for, say, 15 and up. Maybe kids should be able to earn the freedom of being out without their parents with good grades above a certain age, etc. The survey sucked. There should have been an option for unlicensed adolescents but not younger children, etc. Parental consent and discretion should be part of the equation as well. We're the ones responsible for our kids, and with that responsibility should come some discretion on our part.
On a side note, I think autonomous cars will reduce the need for us to go out for non-social things. I mean, aside from losing the ability to pick the best produce, I certainly wouldn't mind telling my car to make a run to the grocery store for me. For me, shopping is just time I'd rather spend with my family.
Autonomous cars do not exist and will not exist for the forseeable future. What Google has doesn't even come close.
A practical autonomous car requires HAL 9000 level of artificial intelligence. It's not even on the radar. These conversations about policy are hugely premature.
I was thinking the same thing about the blind and the blind drunk, but the problem is at the start and end points. The car may not know how to get out of a parking garage (scan for exit signs?), and it probably won't know how to find a parking spot in congested metro areas (heuristic search?) so at some point you're going to have to take over.
An autonomous car should not allow human input. It should come to a stop if the controls fail and remain stopped until help arrives
IF it is safe to stop here.
IF help arrives in time AND IF the kids remain in the car until it does.
It really speaks for itself!
When I was growing up, there was a question: Should kids be allowed to use a cell phone?
In general, the answer was: no.
Realize, the question wasn't "Should kids be allowed to use their own cell phone at school?" Nay, this was just whether they were allowed to use a cell phone. And, like cameras (which used film that cost money, and then converting the film into photos required paying a place called a photo developer), using cell phones cost money. So kids rarely got the parental permission to do this at all, and when children did get to operate the equipment, the usage was generally quite limited.
People discussed the idea of the theory of children having their own cell phones. The general consensus was: if cell phone prices actually did drop, then it could be nice for children to have cell phones. Maybe, perhaps. Although, of course, there would be limits. When children exceeded the allowed talk times, there would be penalties, such as confiscation of the phone ("grounding" them from phone usage). As society and technology develops, the idea seemed conceivable.
Although, no way would society be crazy enough to allow children to take a cell phone into a classroom. Such a thing would only be a possible distraction for a student. There's no way that society would ever be crazy enough to start permitting that.
Okay, so those were the attitudes of the late 1980s. Fast forward 25 years. Now a teacher is told that confiscating a cell phone, because the student was violating the teacher's rules about using it in class, is an infringement on the rights of the student and the rights of the parent who wanted to talk to the student (at 11:30am when the student was in class). Expecting that the parent would call the school's office, so that the school's office could send someone to inform the student of an actual emergency, would be too intrusive of a requirement.
Today, people are asking the question about whether a minor should be permitted to be in a vehicle. Over half of the respondents are saying "no". They probably weren't thinking about how nice it would be for little Suzie to be able to get a ride home from Aunt Marie's house, because this enables Suzie to spend more time with other family members (instead of being at home watching TV).
Society absolutely will find some usage cases on why trusted automated transportation of children will be a good and useful thing. To anyone who thinks that society's current discomfort with the idea will safely protect us from implementing that idea in the coming years, I have this to say: Think of the cell phones.
There's absolutely no way that, since the 1980's, we have sufficiently evolved into heeding the advice so that we avoid being doomed to repeat that recent history.
So it's better to have the child driven by a sleepy, irritated or texting parent or, worse, barely legal, sibling? Why not just think of an autonomous car as a trackless train that can take passengers to designated places without worrying about the precise turn by turn navigation? This way, the child would have as much control over the car as a train driver. Put a "brake" or "force stop" button that will park the car in the nearest safe location.
Also, the car AI should already have a built-in restriction against dangerous actions or any actions that violate laws or existing vehiclular regulations. So no driving on the sidewalk, unless absolutely necessary to avoid injury, nor whould the AI "obey" any instructions to "Car, run down that pesky police officer".
Hi My daughter is legally blind (achromatopisa if you're noisy). In most of the world she is too blind to drive to see - although there are a few states in America where people with achromatopisa can drive (they can own guns, why not let them drive?). I would love her to be able to use an autonomous car one day. My mother is elderly and has developed epilepsy following the removal of a brain tumor. It would open up her world again if she could drive an autonomous car. Mind you - we've got to get the cars working really, really well but I don't see any real reason why this shouldn't happen.
I like how when mentioning unlicensed people it automatically assumes children. There are adults that don't have a drivers license whether through choice or not. If the car is fully autonomous then I would hope that unlicensed people could use them.
When I was about 12, I would have been a fine driver, but not all kids 12 years old have the capacity to do it, so they picked 16.
At first, cars will require manual override. Maybe 20-30 years into it when the manual override is no longer needed we can talk about younger kids using them, but at first, due to manual override, kids should have their drivers license.
God spoke to me
Was the year 2000 so long ago?
http://youtu.be/GYSfncB4peU?t=...
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Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
I know autonomous cars will be "oh so safe". At the moment I'm just as worried about what these things will make people do to people.
[OPENING OVERATURE]
Your driver liability insurance policy has come up for review. We have been recently been acquired by AAAA, the quadruple-A company -- the "Autonomous AAA of the future" and what that means for you as a member is -- it has never been easier to upgrade to an a-car! Financing is available! [link] Due to increasing pressure in the political, legal and underwriters' arenas, we regret to inform you that the cost of your driver policy will be rising this quarter in order to begin collection of fees for the Federal National Driver Insurance Pool, and rising at a steady rate thereafter. It will continue to rise over time despite your [good to excellent] driving record. Now that the Autonomous Vehicle Safety Act is law, and blanket liability accident investigation procedures have been approved by Congress, the legal liability of autonomous vehicles is capped nationwide. While this grants the manufactures freedom from risk of direct criminal penalty and potentially unlimited civil liability, it places human drivers in a difficult position. Most a-car accidents will, of historical necessity rather than actual circumstances, be "no-fault". Since human drivers and any victims claiming injury from them are still obliged to use traditional law enforcement and legal means of redress -- and the cost of these continues to rise -- underwriters are pressuring insurance companies to drop human drivers altogether. We do not intend to do this, but we can no longer provide policies for extended periods. Your new maximum policy period is now [one month]. Thank you for insuring with AAAA.
[INTERMISSION]
Meanwhile...
Dear editor: DRIVERS cause accidents. A-CARS prevent them. That's what the billboard says -- and if Howard County Referendum passes this September manually operated cars will soon be a thing of the past here. What started as a discussion at a hearing after last year's tragic accident grew into a full heated debate, and to think it all started with the parents who provide their children with a-cars pinning the blame squarely on other peoples' children. But then, after co-opting the national campaign with its slick literature and canned answers for everything -- NOW the fault is with human drivers themselves. And then in an astounding feat of lunacy they claim that it's only fair to place the blame on everybody. Not just the drunk, the aged or infirm, the inexperienced, the distracted or the just plain stupid. But no one's stupid in their book, we're just behind the times is all. They are like the drum majorettes of some utopian humanist parade. I say, SAVE US from these rich hippies, their weird toys and their broken ideals. Now I know a lot of these people, even like some of 'em, but aside from this national 'sideline the humans' campaign they're pushed at us (and WHO is paying for those TV spots I wonder) let's not forget that this debate started around kids. Kids who need to learn to drive as surely as they need to learn to push a pen and spell their name. It's like swimming, who would discourage their own children from practice in swimming, to become expert swimmers, because water is dangerous?? Every kid will need to drive some day, or suffer harm or hardship by not knowing how. These a-car parents even forbid their kids from riding in cars being driven by folks they've grown up with, trusted for years. At the parent conferences we even sit on opposite sides of the table, we can barely be civilized even, because this crap has gotten so deep. Well I say they are making a big mistake and don't seem to get it. It's not just that everyone who cannot afford these a-toys will be walking or begging rises on a-buses or buses wi
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
Ya know, they're either autonomous or they're not. If they're truly autonomous, I should be able to train my dog to get inside and hit the "home" button and it should be just as legal and appropriate as if it were an elevator. If they still need an adult behind the wheel, they're not what I would call autonomous.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Kids should definitely not be allowed to use driverless cars as a transportation option, just like they can't ride bikes, take public transit, or use taxis today. Wait.
If you let these things on the road then there's no point having a license at all.
It loses all meaning. An autonomous car doesn't need passengers or drivers. It goes from point A to point B navigating traffic, roads, right of way, etc...
Or it doesn't.
If it does, then whomever is on board is irrelevant.
If it doesn't then their requisite licenses are as irrelevant as that same person riding as passenger while a drunk took the wheel.
Either the robot is competent or it is not. These things are not being billed as sophisticated cruise control which means if the robot makes a mistake you will NOT intercept it. The consequences will happen.
And when they do... and they will because software isn't perfect.. the legal clusterfuck when someone tries to establish who is to blame for the pile up... the damages... the possible loss of life.
The current idea is to just make the insurance company responsible. But that means criminal liability is impossible. The insurance company just pays out whatever the policy says and that's the end of the story.
These things are a bad idea. I think they make sense under controlled conditions. For example, in the long straight highways between cities and only in that case used by long haul trucks. Effectively turning the trucks into road going trains.
But in a city? Moronic. For the average user? There are people I wouldn't trust with a car that get licenses... and I guess it would trust a robot over those people. But look at the damage the automatic transmission caused. Stop and go traffic is literally caused by the automatic transmission. It didn't happen before the automatic and would be unthinkable if all the cars were manual.
In any case... this is likely going to happen whatever my opinion is on the matter.
Just get ready for people to have thought this through very carefully... because they haven't... the unintended consequences are whistling down and are as usual most likely to hit the people that don't hear it coming.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I DONT THINK SO!!!!1111 ;)
I am sure there were some reservations about using the Docklands Light Railway,London in 1987 as it operates as a driverless, computerised system instead of the normal London Underground driver based system. Nowadays up to 500k people per day (at the height of the 2012 Olympics) treat it as perfectly normal. All over the world systems are running in the same manner. It's only a matter of time before we percieve cars, buses and Johnnycabs in the same way. Eventually of course we will lose the ability or desire to take manual control and a driving licence will become a thing of the past in first world countrys, only required if you want to keep antique vehicles. Travelling to less developed countrys will then be even more of an exciting rollercoaster ride as people still control the roads in absolute meyhem.
What's the point of allowing fully autonomous vehicles on our roads if they need a capable driver?
How capable will a driver be if he gets his license and doesn't actually drive for years?
We are fortunate, then, that your political system ensures you will never have anything to say about it (anything that will be taken notice of, anyway).
Huh?
"Catch with that." What?
It's not like the guy sitting in the seat is the actual "driver" of an autonomous car.
No, but maybe if you're going to have a bit of heavy machinery rolling along the road, someone needs to be "in charge" and responsible.
My guess is that an "autonomous" car will need an emergency kill switch (required on virtually any bit of machinery) and maybe the ability to be manually 'driven' at 5mph with a full symphony of flashing lights and warning beeps, so that if the computer gets stuck it can be manoeuvred out of the way.
It also seems sensible that it should be accompanied by a 'responsible person' with some minimal training in emergency procedure who can call the emergency services when needed (or *stop* the vehicle calling the emergency services unnecessarily). Nothing like the sort of training required a driving license, but AI has a long way to go before it can deal with anything the world can throw at it.
So, age requirements could be relaxed - but not removed. I'm sure a 14-year-old could cope. Some of the stricter drink-drive limits could also be relaxed - but that doesn't mean its a good idea to be paralytically drunk in one of these.
Yes, there are driverless trains, but (a) they are on rails, which limits the sort of scrapes they can get in to, and (b) there are humans on-call, at a much higher human-to-vehicle ratio than you could ever expect with domestic cars.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
From self-drive engage:
for them instead of gathering facts and basing on most of that. We still have a long way to go
We're a long long long ways away from a totally autonomous car. The first self driving cars will definitely require a driver.
So you are against driverless cars driving themselves to a parking spot, or picking you up from the bar?
To take longer to roll out than necessary. The car drives it fucking self needs no driver that is what driverless means. You can put your fucking cat in the car tell it where to go and it is off. Will send an email then honk when it gets to the destination like the vet.
IMO it's not a question of letting kids drive autonomous vehicles, but whether we should let them be transported by them without any adults on board.
It would be simple enough to not allow children to give the vehicles any instructions regarding their destination, but perhaps such vehicles would also have to be made "child proof". They should not be able to influence the vehicle's behavior even if they tried and it would be preferable if an adult could intervene remotely at any time in case the vehicle got into trouble, or was stopped by e.g. a police officer. For instance, it would be good if the car had lots of cameras and microphones, as well as a few screens and speakers with which the vehicle's owner could see and speak to the child (say, via a smartphone), as well as anyone else inside or outside the vehicle, and possibly give the vehicle a new destination.
However, things can get more complicated if an incident occurs, no matter how seemingly innocuous, and the kids manage to get out of the car. Who's responsible for them at that point: the police officers, who might have wanted to search the vehicle? The garage owner, who needed to fix a mechanical problem? Or the parents, shouting at them from the car's speakers? Ultimately the latter, of course, but there will probably be situations that are not so clear.
There is very little point in an autonomous car in which you 'have to be on the alert' and 'be ready to take over in case of a possible accident'. You may as well be driving yourself. The point of an autonomous car is to take away the requirement you pay attention to the road to free you up to do other things, i.e. read a book, watch a film, have a nap, stare out at the lovely scenery in the distance, have a beer, none of which are possible if you are required to be able to take over if something goes wrong, you simply wouldn't be able to switch context quickly enough, so the car will have to deal with any emergency itself.
So assuming we're talking about the only type of automomous car which makes sense, no license should be required as no driving skill will have any impact.
Obviously we are going to need to be able to override driverless cars for when we want them to do something that they will refuse. For instance I might want to park it in tall grass and it thinks that I am driving it into a wall. Or at a construction site I might need to just go all over the place avoiding what I know to be bad but it can't figure out.
So the most likely time that I can "crash" a driverless car will be in manual mode. So why not limit manual mode to 2 MPH if you aren't a licensed driver?
There problems solved.
I would actually say the problem is: What is the youngest age you should send kids off alone? Do you load the driverless car up with an infant and send it to daycare? Or say none less than age 12? It seems that sending your 12 year old to school in a driverless car is fine but what about on a NYC to LA trip?
I suspect that there will need to be a single cut-off of where children can't be alone in a driverless car but beyond that it would be more a standard case of child neglect for the stranger edge cases.
Now imagine the car is able to monitor even in a limited way the physical well-being of its passengers and if daddy forgets the toddler in the back or granny has a heart attack it could alert someone or better drive the car to the ER ...
Can a child be held legally responsible for:
- Failing to correctly maintain the car, causing an accident?
- Purposely causing a traffic jam by constantly re-routing the GPS in a circle?
- Requesting the car cause non-moving violations, such as parking in a handicap space?
- Damaging the vehicle internally (feeding the cooling vents his cereal milk), causing an accident?
- Any contract the car has which states the occupant takes on all legal responsibility of dangers that the car may present to them (ie: Other cars smash into it, harming the child?)
- Buckling their own seatbelt?
- Hacking the computer on the car to reprogram it with "police mode", bypassing all red lights?
I recognize a couple of those can be fixed with more automation, but this issue comes down to responsibility. If a 5 year old managed to do those things, we blame the parents for not stopping them. But they're not in the car. So who is at fault? Will you lock up the 5 year old for doing what 5 year olds do (making poor decisions?)
"I don't see why we couldn't 'have faith' in central city command and control centers which are paid for by ... taxpayers"
The ACA website was after all flawless.
This isn't about children being allowed to ride a driverless car without a driving license - chlidren should not be allowed to be alone anywhere for their own protection. But they should be allowed to be accompanied by another adult that also has no driver's license. Because, as a programmer, I know none of our algos are 100% foolproof. The children will need to be taken care of at the time of an accident/incident. I guess the next question is what is the minimum age for a child to be considered an adult for the purpose of riding solo in a driverless car. I doubt it's far from the 16/17 border that most states have, as I think that's when most children have enough sense to act like an adult when an incident occurs.
Maybe now would be a good time to abolish driver's licenses completely? There are two reasons for driver's licenses - to protect the driver and to protect everyone else FROM the driver.
* Existing child abuse and negligence laws cover incidents where guardians let a child ride an unsafe vehicle.
* The requirement for strict liability insurance on the vehicle will internalize the cost of collisions IFF it's actually enforced. Then it's up to the vehicle owner to decide if they want to insure it for various riders, including kids, and the insurance company will have an incentive to factor in how child-proof the manual override is.
I'm sure I'll get a lot of criticism for this since it would allow rich drunk drivers to get on the road again, but I think more hours of human life will be preserved by driving time saved - not to mention the benefit of whatever activity those kids are being driven to.
Mythbusters (almost as accurate as wikipedia) tested the myth of an untrained pilot landing a plane with coaching from the ground. They concluded it was "plausable".
But their second go-round with coaching assistance from an air traffic officer was much smoother sailing. Though the coach wasn't inside the simulator with Jamie and Adam, he was able to point out the gauges and controls and how to use them to correctly maneuver the plane. After being talked through how to steer and land step-by-step, Jamie and Adam each brought their imaginary planes safely to the ground, leading the MythBusters to rule this one "plausible" for someone actually flying the friendly skies. And at the end of the show, they said had they used the automation available, it would have been much easier....
see: http://www.discovery.com/tv-sh...
I hate to break it to you, but I know for a fact their are aircraft in the air, right NOW that the pilot will do nothing from the moment the roll out, until they have landed.
" Try talking someone in from the ground"
it's trivial:
Push this sequence of buttons. After which the craft will go to the proper airport and land itself.
Of course you know as well as I do that has never happened, outside of the airport movie's.
"By the way, doing an automatic Cat 3 approach is actually more work than a normal manual approach and requires special training and certification. "
WHAT? Automated landing systems are REQUIRED for Cat IIIa, Cat IIIb, and when in operation Cat IIlc landing.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
What I want to know is when autonomous cars will be equipped with wet bars rather than drivers' controls.
One more reason why the autonomous vehicle is just the next Segway, aqua car or flying car. Who will take over when a system fails if there is not a driver ? Systems aways fail, many auto failures are catastrophic. Probably the best solution is a hybrid where the auto has sytems to help the driver but not in control. That will be safer than either auto or manual. When the POTUS goes around in an autonomous car you know it is perfected.
Here is a great way to monetize a self-driving auto - pay extra for the uber safety mode so that no Google autonomous vehicle will ever hit another Google, it will hit the Yahoo or Facebook car instead, if a choice is possible. Translated into market speak -Google (or whoever) will have a cooperative collision avoidance system.
If this were some railway based 'single car' type system, maybe..
But for a regular car, for a VERY VERY VERY long time, there will almost certainly be a need/possibility of having to take over manual driving.. Thus one would need to be licensed to do the manual driving.
I lived in Idaho in the 70s and I got my driver's license at age 14.
What about groups of autonomous vehicles containing kids that are monitored on their
way to and from school by the school or some service or authority? This authority is
responsible for maintaining contact with the vehicle and dispatching help if there is a problem.
Kind of like a 3rd-person view taxi or schoolbus.
You idiots label me flame bait and then the next day google says they have a car without a steering wheel...
which means I was right and you're stupid.
Eat it.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I can live without my car and my cellphone, you idiot.
I can't live without the fleets of trucks that carry food and goods to my vicinity, or the factories and heavy farming equipment that create it, or the sophisticated weapons that keep foreign armies from invading my home and murdering me, or the elaborate communications systems that coordinate all of that.
And neither can you. And if you think you can, then congratulations on achieving the impossible by being an even bigger idiot than I thought.
You are NOT the model of self-sufficiency that you're trying to hard to appear to be.