Slashdot Mirror
Would You Need a License To Drive a Self-Driving Car?
agent elevator writes Not as strange a question as it seems, writes Mark Harris at IEEE Spectrum : "Self-driving cars promise a future where you can watch television, sip cocktails, or snooze all the way home. But what happens when something goes wrong? Today's drivers have not been taught how to cope with runaway acceleration, unexpected braking, or a car that wants to steer into a wall." The California DMV is considering something that would be similar to requirements for robocar test-driver training." Hallie Siegel points out this article arguing that we need to be careful about how many rules we make for self-driving cars before they become common. Governments and lawmakers across the world are debating how to best regulate autonomous cars, both for testing, and for operation. Robocar expert Brad Templeton argues that that there is a danger that regulations might be drafted long before the shape of the first commercial deployments of the technology take place.
If "yes," then it's not self-driving.
There will be detractors, luddites, and evangelists, sociopaths and attention whores all vying for a moment in the sun.
Welcome to the human race. I'll go get my popcorn.
Silence is a state of mime.
Do pilots still need licenses in the age of autopilot? Well yes because machines aren't infallible.
For a long time, an autonomous car will not be driverless. People need to get over this notion that next year a car will drive itself and you'll sit in the back with a Martini and the paper. That probably wont happen in our lifetimes.
Initially, fully autonomous modes will only be permitted on certain roads (think limited access roads like highways, freeways and autobahns). This will last years as engineers are even more conservative than law makers. The next step is likely to be special lanes on A roads. It will be a long time before autonomous cars are good enough to operate on a B road or suburban street.
Ultimately, because the law requires someone to be responsible for the operation of the machine it means a qualified operator will need to be at the controls whilst in operation. Same with a lot of other automated systems (such as long distance trains).
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
An interesting problem. You might have an individual who was out drinking heavily, with the expectation that the car can drive him home. But if the car comes across something it can't handle, the car owner would be in no condition to take over control.
if you can't manualy control it do you really own it?
Oh Gawd, they'll be licensed like Windows:
"Car, please plot a course to Milwaukee and engage."
"I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that. Automotive Pro is limited to trips of 500 kilometers or less. Please enter your Automotive Ultimate license code."
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
The concept of a full autonomous driving car is still really far way, I estimate in the range of 20-30 years or even more. My understanding is that current autonomous vehicles don't cope with rainy or unknown conditions. The more interesting aspect would be how augmentative safety technologies might reduce insurance premiums, or even reduce certain kinds of legal requirements. For example if your vehicle has auto assisted braking could that allow some one to drive at a different alcohol limit range? It might be that autonomous vehicles at first must be licensed to travel on specific routes. So you would have to register your autonomous vehicle only on specific routes you have 'taught' it first. Only then you could allow it to be 'autonomous' and be able to pay no attention while being transported ( i.e. you don't need a license to be in the vehicle).
Should all car drivers be accomplished horse riders? Well yes obviously! You never know when your car will break down, run out of gas, etc. and you'll need to hitch up a horse to get you home.
I think that it's pretty clear that within a few 10s of years the car with a driver will be the anomaly. The economic advantage in large areas of transportation (trucking, taxis, deliver, etc. etc.) are so huge that the technology will be adopted, and the transition to home vehicles is inevitable because the cost is minimal and the advantages great.
These discussions will look really stupid, probably before mid-century.
And I stopped listening right there.
Only fucking MORONS want this sort of thing.
When you're in a piece of heavy machinery, like a car, even if you're NOT driving it, you DON'T want to be impaired in case of an emergency.
So, drinking in a self-driving car is pretty much out. And for many of the reasons this dipshit talked about. MALFUNCTIONS.
Before you bring up bus and rail transport. Keep in mind, there are people actually driving those. And, in the case of long distance trains, crews full of people. All better trained at running the transportation than you are.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
This also makes me think, will you need insurance for a self-driving car? If two self-driving cars are involved in a collision, who is responsible for the damages? You could say the manufacturer is responsible - but what if it's a collision between a self-driving car and a human-driven car? Or, will manufacturers be willing to take on the burden of providing insurance for each car they sell?
So let me get this right. You are in a 'driverless car'. Yet your job is to painstakenly hover over the controls trying to double guess the AI every single second you are in the vehicle?!???!! Good luck with that because if the AI fucks up you have a second or two tops to stop yourself from becoming road paste. It sounds like a massive copout from manufacturers wanting to sell autonomous features before the technology is mature enough to realistically insure and assure customer safety.
or interchanges. If the cars are well guided and coordinated you could have full speed ground level crossing where the cars just space out enough to weave past each other. Would be terrifying at first but people would get used to it.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
They do not exist, and they are unlikely to exist for the foreseeable future. All of the demos:
1. Rely on highly process intensive data capture and analysis,
2. Do not handle changing road conditions
3. Do not handle road hazards.
4. Do not handle emergency signals.
An automated car that I have to be attentive to 100% of the time is worthless. A automated car that I have to be attentive to 10% of the time is an accident waiting to happen. The expressway equivalent to a rail line may be possible (carefully controlled, monitored externally, special lanes etc...), cars driving thru city streets and neighborhoods is a pipe dream.
Say what you want about automated pilots on airplanes, but a medium size city has more cars on the road at one time than the entire world has planes in the air.
[A curmudgeon tired of marketing BS]
Why don't we just incorporate them?
Then they'll legally be people, and they can get their own driver's licenses!
When the automobile debuted, the UK passed the infamous Locomotive Acts (otherwise known as the Red Flag Law), requiring someone to walk in front of a "horseless carriage" waving a red flag.
Requiring a license for a self-driving car is the modern red flag to avoid spooking the lawyers.
IMHO the invention of the mouse "by apple" spawned one of the darkest ages of humanity: noob computing. The mouse enabled people to (ab-)use computers without having the least bit of insight -- enabling stupidities like facebook, X11, or slashdot beta.
And Anonymous Cowards posting drivel in Slashdot comments.
Judging the recent trend in Microsoft products, it'll be a subscription service costing you $5000 per year to own and operate the self-driving car.
This is like saying "if you're going to be in a cab, you'd better be prepared to take over if the driver has a heart attack".
All you have to do is make sure that the rate of such incidents and the accidents they cause or can't avoid is less than what a human driver, even a somewhat below average one would experience. Let part of the purchase price of the vehicle go toward insurance. If the manufacturer can get the accident rate down, then they will make more money. The incentives are right, just let the market work.
But it win;t be called a ;drivers licence , it will be called a government issued photo ID
You need one now to cash a check, vote etc.
(I would have used the term "state issued ID" but SCOTUS still has to decide whate the term 'state' means.
Note to grammar nazis - would have is pronounced would of
The state needs the ability to track the movement of the populace. If they had unlicensed cars on the road, people would be able to move about freely, without being surveiled. Imagine the safety implications there...
Also, they would lose an avenue for much needed recurring revenue, and something to hold over the head of criminals.
It's almost like you think you live in a free country?
Until self driving cars can be held individually responbile for mishaps humans must be ultimately responsible for whatever damage they cause. I can forsee a future where self driving cars don't yield to pedestriasns walking againjst a lightl. A human would respect life and stop simply because a life is a life and humas respect life above all else., a self driving car would insist it was their right to run the pedastrian down simply because that was the rules of the road.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
You should know better than to make false assertions when we have plenty of evidence countering your assertion that technology will ever be this good. Since the 1960s we have been automating space travel and airlines, and still need pilots and astronauts because when the shit hits the proverbial fan humans are required to intervene. Sometimes to correct problems with the technology, and sometimes to bypass it and fly by hand.
Drones require people to pilot them too, so don't try to go down a bad path.
I don't see this as a problem of litigation, I see it as the only sensible approach to having technology. Nothing, and that is an absolutely nothing, has ever been made by man which has been perfect. We try for "the best we can" but stuff breaks and the unexpected does occur. With an estimated 250,000,000 cars on the road chances are high that something will go wrong pretty damn fast. With motor vehicles already being the number one killer in the US annually, we want human intervention early and often. That means trained drivers behind the wheel.
As stated above, a half a century has not perfected "self driving" anything else. It's much better today than 50plus years ago but not even close to the point where you can fly without a human.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
When the automobile debuted, the UK passed the infamous Locomotive Acts (otherwise known as the Red Flag Law), requiring someone to walk in front of a "horseless carriage" waving a red flag.
The first Locomotive Acts were passed in the 1860s.
Forget the "horseless carriage." We are talking about road trains, huge and heavyweight steam powered agricultural tractors, bailers, threshers, bulldozers, steam shovels and the like.
To this day flagmen and escort vehicles serve the same purpose.
I didn't bother to read TFS.
Yes. You do. Ask if the author (or any sane person on this planet for that matter) would fly in a plane that didn't have a pilot.
The difference with automated trains and trolleys is that they are on tracks.
Funny, I find the opposite. I'm most alert when I'm driving in the city, with plenty of action around me. I may not like it as much, but it keeps me alert.
I have trouble staying focused (and awake) on long trips of over an hour outside of city limits. Driving the 2+ hours between my college town and parents' house when I was at school was awful. Driving the 8 hours from home to my relatives' house in the next state is murder.
Got support for those grandiose statements to begin with? I wasn't able to find "driving a car" in my copy of the bill of rights.
I can't wait for everyone to have one. Not a big fan of driving myself anyway, but I'm sick of the everyday accident on the way to work, or traffic slowed down because ONE jackass is screwing around on his phone and doing 50 in the 65 mph zone.
I swear I see that every day. If people can't be bothered to actually drive their cars, and that's a demonstrable fact for some, fine, give me (and them) autonomous cars.
You would need a 'driver' for a driver-less car as much as you need a horse for a horse-less carriage.
I think the key to making cars that are really 'self driving' will be to have the on-board systems backstopped by a call center rather than anyone sitting in the vehicle itself. Autonomous aircraft are really designed with a computer to handle the routine flying and then pass things off to a remote pilot for the interesting bits. An autonomous car could handle the freeway and major streets by itself quite well but might need to call up a licensed operator to negotiate a parking garage or a work zone.
Something I can see happening to lead to this will be commercial trucks that are self driving, and unmanned, on the freeway but that pull into special truck stops where a pool of local drivers are available to get the truck the last few miles to its destination.
But if the car comes across something it can't handle, the car owner would be in no condition to take over control.
At that point the car says "Sir, would you mind if I hand control over to a licensed remote driver? An inebriated silence will be allowed as acceptance". Then the car will do the equivalent of todays On-Star system, and have a professional take over.
Lets say my self driving car runs someone over... who is liable?
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Also, logged-in morons quoting said Anonymous Cowards after they have been modded down below the threshold.
Thanks, moron.
So, it is your opinion, that government may declare anything, that's not explicitly enumerated in the Bill of Rights to be a privilege?
Walking on a street? Cooking a barbeque? Having children — or an abortion, as the case may be? Oh, wait!..
Of course, you may be onto something — because even something, that is explicitly enumerated as a right, is routinely treated as a mere privilege nation-wide... Point is, of course, it should not be that way...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
... car drives license. License drives you.
I think a more interesting question is will gaurdians be allowed to put children in cars alone?
( Jimmy, your parents just called and said they would be late, I'm going to call yoiu a robotaxi. )
The computer, having detected the loss of brakes, will not ask the magical human to save it, it will just activate the emergency brake and flashers, maintain control of the vehicle, stop in the lane, and call roadside assistance.
Then the car will ask you to do a manual chore. Pushing the car off the road. And there is absolutely nothing about the brakes going out that makes the human suddenly better at controlling the steering wheel, avoiding accidents, or obeying traffic laws.
Humans are too stupid to operate cars now that they don't have to. They actually even think they're better drivers... than the existing self-driving cars! Only in the snow, Bub. Only in the snow.
Nonsense, the insurance would never get shifted onto the manufacturer, because maintenance happens after that, and is part of the accident risk. The vehicle owner will be required to pay for ongoing insurance, and will be required to be licensed (for the purpose of purchasing insurance!) until the car insurance requirements get shifted so that non-licensed drivers can buy insurance on self-driving cars.
But I like the taxi analogy. And it keeps working too; just like in that situation, the most likely thing an idiot does is grab the wheel and crash into something, or run over some pedestrians while trying to save their own ass; even though if there are modern airbags and collision detection, the taxi is likely to stop in time anyways. Even the human-driven new cars are getting safety features... where it is the computer that takes over to stop the vehicle when the human screws up, rather than the other way around.
Pretty sure I got in before the mod did. I'd happily do the modding if I had the points for it.
No, certainly not. The 10th amendment deals with that. But to protect something so vehemently, you usually need a bigger piece of collateral than the 10th amendment.
States have the right to regulate commerce within their state, and Congress the right to regulate interstate commerce. Driving a vehicle falls well within the regulatory bounds of commerce, and can easily be argued within the government's domain of regulation, and not a unilateral right of the citizen.
So, I'll ask again. Do you have anything that supports your claims?
lag and bandwidth issues make remote control a poor choice. Also data roaming costs for live video can very fast hit the cost of a new car.
Do pilots still need licenses in the age of autopilot? Well yes because machines aren't infallible.
This is a terrible analogy. First autopilot for a plane cannot taxi the aircraft so it is not feature complete. Secondly the consequences of mechanical failure in a car are far less severe and you can probably solve most of the ones which do not themselves involve the engine dying by having a kill switch and a steering wheel: all you have to do is yank the switch and steer the now rapidly braking car out of trouble. A kill switch on an aircraft is a somewhat less viable option which is why you need a pilot. This is also why commercial pilots have far more training than bus drivers.
Unfortunately "it freaks me out" is the same reason that someone could argue that a driver's license is required for a self-driving car. And that is still poor justification for both arguments. Our laws should be driven by facts, not fear.
hardware sensors reliability is an issue as well look at air france 447
Why don't we just incorporate them?
Just what we need a bunch of robot cars going around telling us that "You will be incorporated". Will they come with a red laser pointer strapped to the roof too?
car makers need to have patches for at least 5 years for free and no you must go the dealer from them.
let's see how bad can things get then they say after 1 year no more updates go buy a new car.
Trained drivers may be what we want, but we'll have autonomous cars first.
No, it does not. Not any more than walking does. Commercial driving today requires commercial licenses and that might be acceptable... But pleasure driving — taking kids to see grandma? No way...
Unfortunately, Chief Justice Marshall disagreed with you. Traffic falls under commerce just as much as trade. Take it up with SCOTUS if you have an issue.
Since you don't have anything to support your claims, and SCOTUS ruled that traffic is regulate-able commerce over 200 years ago, there's nothing left to rebut here.
Since the 1960s we have been automating space travel and airlines, and still need pilots and astronauts because when the shit hits the proverbial fan humans are required to intervene.
We have pilots to make passengers feel good. We have astronauts because we can't make a robot as dextrous as a human yet.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Nothing, and that is an absolutely nothing, has ever been made by man which has been perfect.
A self-driving car does not have to be perfect. It just has to be better than the alternative.
With motor vehicles already being the number one killer in the US annually, we want human intervention early and often.
Isn't the fact that motor vehicles are already the number one killer in the US annually actually an argument for automated cars?
As stated above, a half a century has not perfected "self driving" anything else.
Five centuries of work before that never perfected heavier-than-air flying machines either, until one year, presto, all the necessary preconditions were finally met and airplanes became a reality. There's nothing linear about progress.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Figuring out who will give them the most money now, who will give them the most money in the future, and figuring out how to maximize that income.
/cynical?
// not me
/// nosirree bob
//// Re: Jeb Bush and Terry Shiavo
Well, they say the law is blind, too.
Really, if someone has some scenario of the car malfunctioning, and a hero driver catching it before it hits a wall or goes over a cliff, they have another think coming. Nobody would be that quick. These self-driving cars are going to either be good enough that you can get in and snooze all the way to work, or they will be worthless.
The thing that will really stop SDC's from happening are the laws. The gov't isn't much going to like giving up its highway robbery known as speeding tickets so will not alter the speed limit. The SDC will have to be programmed for the speed limit, while "regular" cars will go flying by probably 15 - 20 mph faster. SDC occupants will not only be in grave danger from getting hit from behind, but will be unhappy at taking far longer to get anywhere than the lawbreaking "regular" drivers that are supplying the state will all the ticket revenues.
SDC's will work most everywhere else in the world except the USA.
Well, above 0 miles per hour the automobile is a lethal weapon, so I guess from a 2nd amendment point of view you might have something there. Does the NRA have anything to say about this?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Why does a free citizen of a free country need government's permission to drive on public roads to begin with?
The pragmatic answer is that some regulation of the roads is necessary in order to avoid bloodshed and chaos.
Originally there were no laws restricting how people could use their automobiles on the public roads.
Then certain people started causing problems by driving recklessly, not maintaining their vehicles, driving drunk, etc, and they were causing unacceptable levels of damage to other people and property.
To address the problem, people came up with laws to regulate driving in order to make the streets tolerably safe for everyone.
As you've probably noticed, the real world is driven more by necessity, than by abstract ideological principles. The Constitution is not a suicide pact.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
I do not â" nor do I need it. Unless you are going to claim, walking or riding a bicycle may also â" some day â" become a privilege... Because there is no "clear bright line" between driving, which is a privilege already, and those other activities, which are still rights...
Actually, there is a clear bright line, and that line is the "public" in "public roads".
If you are on your own private property, you are free to drive/ride/bike however you want to. You can race non-street-legal cars at 300 miles per hour while drunk, blindfolded, nude, and not wearing a seat belt, if that's what you feel like doing.
The public road system, on the other hand, is not your personal plaything. You share it with everyone else, and as such your rights to the use of the public roads stop where other peoples' rights to that same road system start. In particular, you do not have the right to endanger other peoples' lives or property. The various rules and restrictions on how/where/who can drive all follow logically from that.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
I'll just use the same license I will have for my fucking starship. Because seriously, if the mathematics is discovered to make hyper advanced software necessary to make self driving cars even REMOTELY feasible, it will also allow breakthrough physics enabling faster than light travel. I mean shit, can slashsuck stop with the hipster startup paper quadrillionaire stock fluffery for just five seconds???
The point of having pilots in modern airliners is precisely to intervene when automation fails. This happens. There are procedures for it.
My biggest issue with them is I can't get people to tell me how they work. If you are coming up to a blind corner, and the "safe" speed (the speed at which you could stop if there was a hidden brick wall at the point of least visibility) is 20 mph, yet the average driver takes the corner at 55 mph, and the car can physically take the corner at 80 mph, would you, shoud you program the car to go 20 mph, or 80 mph, or some other speed?
The problems with the discussion are that we don't know what we want it to do, not that we are worried it won't do it. Can the "driver" tune the car to "most safe" or "best time" or "average traffic" modes?
Whether it works is not up for discussion until someone can answer what "works" is.
As stated above, a half a century has not perfected "self driving" anything else. It's much better today than 50plus years ago but not even close to the point where you can fly without a human.
That's a legal, not technical issue. We have self-driving drones. But we won't trust a self-driving drone with flying a human around. That's the difference. We have 100% automatic driving (cars and planes), but don't use them for legal, not technical, reasons.
Learn to love Alaska
For every anecdote of a human taking over and saving the day, you can find a similar one of the human taking over and crashing. It mostly boils down to the amount of training that the pilot has had - and even the ones that end up crashing in situations where the automatic systems would probably have managed have had vastly more training than almost any driver on the road...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The point of a self-driving car is that you don't drive it. It drives you (there's a soviet Russia joke in there, somewhere) Do you need a license to get into a taxi?
There's a whole raft of issues with getting autonomous cars to work how we want them, but I don't think any of the problems are insurmountable. With regards to a blind corner, it would be neat if the first vehicles taking that corner would be cautious (20mph), but as they uploaded information about that particular corner to some kind of driving knowledge base, subsequent cars would be able to take that same corner quicker. Also, if the cars could share sensor information, then it would be possible for a car to "see" round the blind corner if there was another car already round there.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
We have trained operators in cars. What we need is a higher percentage of competent operators.
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
Then, the DMV. No traffic violations, car chases, or accidents. Why would anybody be required to carry a license or other ID except as a method of social control.
It is trivial to envisage situations that occur every single day during a commute that would baffle a self drive vehicle and would cause it to want to hand control back to to a human.
The closest that we are likely to come to driverless cars are those operating on closed loops, e.g. between airport terminals where the road layout and the number of parameters is manageable. Even then there is probably some guy sat in a booth somewhere who can take over the controls if the car does something dumb or gets confused.
The recent trend where Microsoft is lowering the prices of their most-used products, and offers well-priced subscriptions for some, and outright ownership for others? Wow.
The story of the AF447 crash is precisely that: the human took over, and crashed.
What I wanted to show by bringing up this example is that in current airplane design, there are circumstances in which automation is known to fail (in this case, unreliable/defective sensors). In these circumstances, the systems are designed to give control back to the pilot. The rationale for this is quite clear. It could be argued that fully working automated systems are safer and more reliable than humans. However, automated systems with detected failures are not.
So the pilot is not there to make passengers feel better: he is a part of the automation backup system. Of course, sometimes this backup does not work: no system is perfect.
For automated cars, the situation is a bit different. As you pointed out, drivers are not trained for such contingencies. And if a problem happens, the car can just stop on the side of the road, while the plane does not have this option.
Sure. It will work similarly to the way it does today. In order to have a valid vehicle registration you will need to provide proof of insurance on the car. In the event of a collision or other incident which causes damage, law enforecement will record information about the incident, lawyers will argue fault, and a judge will determine the outcome. In the case of an autonomous incident, the carmaker will almost certainly be listed as a defendant, and will have a staff lawyer as part of the defense team. Or, as more likely happens, the lawyers for the insurance companies will get together and decide the outcome out of court.
Car makers already have insurance for legal problems (and/or are self-insured). Every manufacturer does. It's part of the modern landscape.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Actually, this would be a problem. The USAF is currently struggling with some of this - they automated their drones too much, operators don't have enough to do to keep proper attention on the drone in case something does happen. They're actually considering removing some of the automation...
I don't disagree that this is the most likely current situation, but it's going to be virtually impossible to keep the driver from doing other things as you remove more responsibility and control from them.
I don't read AC A human right
I like driving too, but I only get to drive for pleasure a handful of times during the year. I often have to sit for extended periods - sometime stretching to hours - unable to do anything else productive (or entertaining) while travelling between destinations.
To be honest, I don't own a car which is a pleasure to drive. I own a minivan for transportation of equipment and people, and a truck for hauling things and for when my van breaks down. If could drop in a self-driving option in the van, I'd do it yesterday - there is no pleasure in that vehicle. Maybe I could even get more work done while on the road and make enough to buy a car I could drive for pleasure.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Have you never heard of faulty brakes, faulty accelerators, faulty [insert car part here] which have resulted in human deaths, and both human and property injuries?
Those things don't change with a driverless car. Liability still exists. And just as an "accidental" fatal impact with a human by a human driver becomes primarily a financial burden (usu. involuntary manslaughter, suspended or limited sentence for otherwise "good" person), the financial implications to a automotive manufacturer are significant.
When a driver hits someone, the car is reviewed in excruciating detail to determine if any failure of the automotive systems caused or contributed to an accident. The driver is also scrutinized. The victim is also scrutinized and if they have a car their car is evaluated for faults. A driverless car removes the ambiguity of the driver from the fault path.
Plus, as the sibling poster points out, the systems in a driverless car are going to be engineered with additional fail-safe mechanisms which reduce the overall performance/utility in favor of safety in the case you posit.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I think there will still be requirements for a license but it will be about the state apparatus' interest in controlling movement of citizens and not about driving the car.
At first, it will still be about "driving" as I think that the transition to self-driving cars will be somewhat gradual. I don't think it will be the case that this year's model is manual and next year's is fully automated. Automation will be phased in where the car can handle more and more routine driving situations until eventually no driver control will be required, and during this transition it will still be possible (and necessary) to actually drive the car.
Even the first fully automated cars will probably allow some kind of user overrides as to where the car goes, how fast, etc, so you will still need to have a driver responsible.
But after cars become fully automated, it won't be about "driving" anymore, it will be about the state's interest in controlling who can go where and when.
Some more:
1.1 Explorer program (1958â")
1.2 Pioneer program (1958â"1978)
1.3 Echo Project (1960â"1964)
1.4 Ranger program (1961â"1965)
1.5 Telstar (1962â"1963, commercial project with NASA contribution)
1.6 Mariner program (1963â"1973)
1.7 Lunar Orbiter program (1966-1967)
1.8 Surveyor program (1966â"1968)
1.9 Helios probes (1974â"1976)
1.10 Viking program (1975)
1.11 Voyager program (1977)
1.12 High Energy Astronomy Observatory 1 (1977)
1.13 Solar Maximum Mission (1980)
1.14 Infrared Astronomical Satellite, IRAS (1983)
1.15 Magellan probe (1989)
1.16 Galileo probe (1989)
1.17 Hubble Space Telescope (1990)
1.18 Ulysses (1990)
1.19 Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite, UARS (1991)
1.20 Discovery Program (1992â"2011)
1.21 Clementine (1994)
1.22 Mars Global Surveyor (1996)
1.23 Cassiniâ"Huygens (1997)
1.24 New Millennium Program (1998â"2006)
1.25 Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (2002)
1.26 Earth Observing System (1997â"2011)
1.27 Mars Exploration Rovers (2003)
1.28 MESSENGER (2004)
1.29 New Frontiers program (2006â"2011)
1.30 Mars Scout Program (2007â"2008)
1.31 Dawn (2007)
1.32 Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (2009)
1.33 Mars Science Laboratory (2011)
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
A self-driving car does not have a human driver. The question that should be raised (to show how flawed the article is):
Today's passengers have not been taught how to cope with runaway acceleration, unexpected braking, or a car that wants to steer into a wall.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
People seem to be conflating licenses and training, which is cute considering y'all just got done beating up on tech certifications in another thread. Should you need government permission to travel in your automated car? Hell no. Should you know what you are doing when climbing into one? Ideally, yes.
quite a few those had human initiated burns to make their their trips, so how driverless is that?
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
So which is it ... do we legislate GMO foods to make sure they are 100% safe before they are ever sold, or not legislate self-driving cars until crashes happen and we know what to do to make them safe.
Ah ,,, the hypocrisy and FUD in it all. The GMO group wants to outlaw things they don't want and deny them from everyone because they know what is best, while the other group doesn't know enough yet and wants to make sure no one stops them from getting what they want.
I sure as hell don't want the first batch to be driven without someone behind the wheel for a few years. And that person needs a regular driver's license and the ability to take over if anything either fails or the car can't cope with a situation.
As someone who just drove over 2,000 miles, some of it in snow, I would love to have some of the tech that self-driving cars are making available. But 100% door-to-door service with 100% accuracy?? I just don't see it happening anytime soon. The GPS I used sent me the wrong way twice, and I just updated the maps before I left. Once was not a big deal, it just picked a route that wasn't as efficient. The second failure took me to a non-existent gas station which appeared on the map to be in the middle of a corn field.
We do need regulations. Or do you really want to see a bunch of people killed by an automated car, and the heavy-and of the law come down then.
There is no overriding reason to rush these to market, the percentage of the population that really needs them is very small. For the rest of us, they are just a convenience factor. It's possible they could lower traffic accident rates. Or it's possible that they could increase them since in the beginning, only a very small percentage are going to be automated, so they will have to deal with the millions of bad drivers out there.
I do have one prediction though .. self driving cars are not going to be the market share everyone thinks. Why?? I can almost bet that very few drivers/riders will tolerate a car that follows all the traffic laws, such as not speeding and coming to a complete stop at every stop sign.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
Five centuries of work before that never perfected heavier-than-air flying machines either, until one year, presto, all the necessary preconditions were finally met and airplanes became a reality. There's nothing linear about progress.
The most intelligent comment I have read on Slashdot in years (possibly ever), if only I had any mod points.
"He is so stupid. And now back to the wall!" Moe Szyslak
What I wanted to show by bringing up this example is that in current airplane design, there are circumstances in which automation is known to fail (in this case, unreliable/defective sensors). In these circumstances, the systems are designed to give control back to the pilot. The rationale for this is quite clear.
Yes, like I said, it's to make the passengers feel good. Because as we have seen, the pilots depend on the same sensors that the autopilot does. Airliners aren't fighters, you don't fly by the seat of your pants. By the time your inner-ear-gyro tells you that there's a problem, you're already screwed. Which was precisely what happened.
How in the shit are pitot tubes still icing anyway? Why is heating the tube not a thing which works? Heating elements are not new technology. We should really be able to manage this by now.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Drones require people to pilot them too, so don't try to go down a bad path.
How about people driving remotely, then? Someone who wants to play Car Driving Simulator can drive while I get to sleep/knit/watch tv for the whole trip.
And that's different from walking and bicycling on the same roads how?
Walking and (to a lesser extent) bicycling are inherently less hazardous to other people, in that there is less mass moving less quickly in areas where other people might be. As a consequence, walking and bicycling are less heavily regulated than driving.
That said, there are also regulations governing walking and bicycling -- bicyclists have to obey traffic laws when on public roads, the same as any other vehicle, and even pedestrians are forbidden to jaywalk.
Or are those activities not rights either?
You seem to think that if there is a right to do something, then that activity cannot be regulated by the government for safety reasons. The law (and common sense) disagree with you.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Which bloodshed and chaos is avoided by making driving a privilege?
To give one example: chronic drunk drivers can have their licenses revoked. After that, they can no longer drive, and therefore are no longer a danger to the public.
But that ease is abuse-prone. We deliberately make it harder for the government to fight other "bloodshed and chaos"
As always, there are trade-offs to be made between freedom and safety. You clearly lean towards the "freedom" side, and that's fine, but society is not required to share your opinion about where the best place is to draw that line.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
No, we don't. We have pilots with training who can take over in an emergency. Landing in the Hudson is probably the most famous case, but plenty of similar less dramatic events have occurred.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Figuring out the laws of physics required for lift is not the same thing as automating a complex task that limited numbers of humans can perform. I gave the example in automation, and you simply plucked something out of the air to say "nuh uh".
Show me where automating flight has been perfected to the point where we no longer require humans. We have not done so, and that is the measure we need to make.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
So, where is that "clear bright line" you claimed existed?
At the boundary between your private land and the public road system.
My whole point is that the right to drive a motorized vehicle on a public road has disappeared while we weren't paying attention. It is not a right any longer. It is a privilege.
It's not clear what the distinction you are trying to make is. What is the significant difference between "a privilege" and "a right subject to safety regulations", exactly? Call it what you want, either way you are allowed to drive as long as you follow the traffic laws, but if you abuse the right/privilege, it can be taken away from you.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Of course! But that's red-herring â" I'm not against driving laws. I'm against the licensing requirement â" which turned the right of free movement into a privilege.
How else would you suggest that society could make sure that people driving vehicles on public roadways have at least some basic knowledge of how to safely operate a motor vehicle? The honor system?
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Nonsense, the insurance would never get shifted onto the manufacturer, because maintenance happens after that, and is part of the accident risk.
Over in England, the cost for insuring a young/new driver is apparently so out of whack that car companies are selling their cars with 3 years of full coverage insurance included. Now, yes, these are cheap cars of the type that aren't likely to do as much damage even if they hit something else, but the manufacturer is already including the maintenance and insurance for the first 3 years in the price.
At a big enough discount that there's apparently not much of a 2nd hand market for these cars.
I don't read AC A human right
Obv. you've never flown in an Airbus.
That means trained drivers behind the wheel.
Sadly we have very few trained drivers behind the wheel.
Wrong on just about every account. It is not a matter of the alternative, it's a matter of what happens when an incident occurs and how a human is still the fail safe. Under many circumstances I would agree that auto-pilot is better. Long boring drives where the weather is good and the car operates normally being one of those. Where the automatic goodies fail is always when the unexpected occurs. A deer jumps out of the trees in front of the car, road debris too small for sensors or human eyes destroy a tire, weak pavement gives way, a patch of ice on a stretch road, etc.. etc.. We see the exact same thing in flight, and interestingly people here attribute a crashing plane to the human even when the human had to intervene because the plane was crashing despite automatic controls.
One day all of these exceptions can be built into software making the computers reaction better, but we are not there yet. TFA is not talking about having untrained people in cars in a decade, it's equating with current technology. So are you by the way. Arguing that we have all of these things covered in autopilot is provably false. Google cars can't drive today in poor weather, and a blowing paper bag is see as the same thing as a concrete block to sensors.
As I said below you can't compare automating complex issues like this to figuring how the physics for how lift works. It is not the same thing and not the same level of complexity.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
It's a 2013 model and has a really incredible and awesome laser system for adjusting the cruise speed. I use it every single day in slow or fast traffic. But, it is not perfect. If I get behind trucks that tow a grid trailer (think, lawnmower trailer), then the system can't get a solid lock and speeds up/slows down continually. On occassion I've tried to set the lock when I was a little too close to a vehicle, and it acts like that vehicle is invisible and wouldn't slow down for it automatically. But 97% of the time it's good.
Every single mission you mentioned required massive amounts of manpower to get into flight. Every single mission still requires humans to review data and make adjustments if necessary. I cautioned about using drones as an example, and should have included space missions in that warning. Sadly people can't make distinctions on their own when it may harm their fragile belief system.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
3 years is still term insurance. New cars are often under full warranty for over 3 years, so they can roll in "full coverage" insurance for the price of liability, and market it as a savings. They might be getting a better profit margin on that insurance than the insurance company! ;)
Being credulous of bundled offers doesn't stop that from being term insurance. You can probably find an auto lease somewhere in the world that includes insurance, but it still all term insurance.
3 years is still term insurance. New cars are often under full warranty for over 3 years, so they can roll in "full coverage" insurance for the price of liability, and market it as a savings. They might be getting a better profit margin on that insurance than the insurance company! ;)
Which is why I said 'out of whack'. The car makers have realized that young drivers, at least in cheap cars, are less of a risk than what the insurance companies think.
Ergo, the car companies can reduce the total cost of ownership of said cheap new automobile down to less than the cost of a used car + loan + insurance.
Yes, it's still 'term insurance'. But my point is that it's entirely possible for the car companies to build the liability into the cost of a self driving car, especially if the computer is less dangerous than the average driver, much less less dangerous than a new driver.
I don't read AC A human right