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Software Update Adds Autonomous Driving To Tesla's Bag of Tricks (nytimes.com)
An anonymous reader writes with the news that Tesla owners today found their cars had been upgraded with the company's new autopilot feature: "That means the next time you see a Model S cruising next to you on the interstate, look closely: It may be driving itself."
Adds the submitter: Well, I guess some of you will be celebrating this; but this submitters' fear, is that if this technology becomes pervasive, the skill of operating a vehicle will be lost, as is any skill that isn't practiced regularly. It is unlikely that 'self-driving cars' will reach a point where they can handle 100% of all driving circumstances without human intervention, emergency circumstances being the first and foremost example of what an automated system could not adequately handle unaided; what will we do then, when injuries that could have been avoided or when lives are lost because people aren't competent to operate a vehicle any longer?
It costs $2,500 to unlock this new software feature.
Better known as 318230.
One might argue that many drivers on the roads today already aren't particularly proficient at controlling their vehicles. While it might be that some persons skills would grow worse with disuse, I think there are a goodly number of individuals out there who would be safer 'drivers' if they weren't in direct control over their cars themselves. And I don't mean just those who have poor eyesight or slow reflexes.
... "I read part of it all the way through." -- Movie Mogul Sam Goldwyn (and some slashdot readers)
People barely have any skill at that *now*.
I told them when GM introduced its new fangled hydramatic transmission, it is going degrade the driver's skill, soon no one would know how to declutch and shift. And I was proven right. I was just bragging about my prediction coming true the other day and my grandpa chimed in. "Son, the slippery slope goes way back. I never liked them self starter anyways ... Nothing like cranking up the old tin lizzy with a cranking rod to fully wake up in the morning" he went.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Computers:
* See and process information from all directions at once
* React in a millisecond to changing conditions
* Never get bored, tired, or distracted
* Don't drive recklessly for thrills
The notion that humans will actually react better than an automated system in an emergency seems backwards to me. I expect a computer to react much more competently and predictably, if for no other reason than the computer can analyze and react a thousand times faster. It's humans that are *causing* most of the emergencies in the first place by needlessly driving into each other at high speeds.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Sure humans might lose some of their proficiency at controlling a vehicle but the self-driving car would make those skills less necessary.
Which would have fewer fatal accidents: automated vehicles with a human with poor skills or a standard car with normal everyday drivers?
I am betting the automated car wins. Sure the automated car may have some accidents that the human might avoid but I'm betting the total goes down.
Now I don't want an automated vehicle but that is because I really enjoy driving but the accident thing is IMO a red herring.
but but but but what if Scotty beams down 500 orphans with their arms linked in a circle around your car while you're going 200mph?! What will your car do then?!?!
I am getting tired of all of the "Which should an autonomous car hit" questions when the answer is "Neither because if the car is functioning correctly, the car sensors should have picked up the little old lady as soon as she stepped into the street, and the busload of school kids when it came around the corner a block away, and will have decided the path to take to avoid every single obstacle within a few milliseconds or come to an ABS-assisted stop." I think people have joked so much about the light pole just jumping out in front of you that they are actually beginning to believe that can actually happen. Sure, someone might throw themselves off an overpass immediately in front of you and they're gonna die, but a human would have hit them too.
There are serious objections to autonomous driving (sensor reliability being the top one) but people are fixated on whatever moral alignment the car will have (sign me up for Lawful Evil).
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I can't speak for everyone but I have these type features in my car (adaptive cruise, lane assist, proximity warnings, blind spot detection, etc) and I can say without a doubt for me it surely hasn't made me a better driver. I get into my other car without all of that and find myself making noob driving mistakes (not checking blind spots, not keeping consistent speed, much longer parallel parking, etc). It's actually kind of unnerving at how fast I came to rely on the car to do these tasks for me.
I haven't seen any studies so maybe I'm just a goof but I consciously try not to rely on those things because I don't want to forget how to actually drive.
So what if driving skills are lost. How many people can genuinely start a fire without a match, lighter or some other ready to go ignition device? How about those people who can actually remember the composition of gunpowder, and if they can know a way to actually get those ingredients? Ok, now about how to skin an animal, how to hunt, how to build shelter?
If driving a car goes the way of riding horses then skills are lost to the general public and only retained by those with a particular interest in them. And you know what? Nothing of value was lost.
Actually, I think bad weather is one of the places where automated cars will make a very positive impact on safety. We already have a limited form of this technology with things like anti-lock brakes, traction control, stability control, etc. If you've spent your entire life driving cars with these safety features, they probably feel normal to you. But, as the article suggests, once you come to rely on these features, you lose your ability to handle the vehicle safely in the absence of them. Have you ever pumped your brakes to prevent skidding? Do you know how to steer out of oversteer? Can your brain detect these conditions and react to them before you are in a dangerous situation? For most people, the answer is "probably not".
How well do they handle signals by flagmen, police officers and so on? As far as I know, no autonomous system to date has the ability to see and correctly interpret traffic control flags or hand signals. (for that matter, how would one program a car so as to recognize a cop or construction workers hand signals but treat bicyclists hand signals differently and ignore non significant gestures by pedestrians, other drivers etc?)
Right now, as far as I know, they will correctly avoid barrels or pylons, but only by treating them as static objects to be navigated around, stopping if it can't figure out a safe path between or around them. There is no special rule set that tells it "objects of these shapes and colour combinations indicate a construction zone or accident site, switch to rule set B (for slower speeds, more weight given to moving objects in the sensor periphery etc)" Back when I was on the road crew, close calls by confused or distracted drivers was a daily occurrence. Sure, the computer is never distracted (one hopes!, the computer equivalent I guess would be wrongly weighting one set of inputs over another) but it would be easier to confuse it, especially when there are multiple workers in safety vests pointing and signalling to each other within the same view arc as the flagman or cop.
A related issue would be properly navigating the thicket of pylons or traffic "barrels", correctly following the temporary lane(s) and not mistakenly taking an opening in the pylon line right into the work site. This particular problem could be at least partly dealt with by more standardization on work site markings, minimum and maximum distances between pylons tightened up. On the car end, the software would have to allow for correct navigation between said pylons when the usual road markings are absent, indeed, even the usual pavement is missing.
As it stands now, construction and accident sites I think are places where the autonomous vehicle just gives up and signals the driver to assume control. Thing is, one of the hoped for benefits of autonomous vehicles is the ability to have a non-driver, sick, sleeping or drunk driver to safely get from A to B. And I'm sure the transport industry is looking forward to when they can have only a single driver or perhaps even no driver at all, allowing the truck to go non-stop. None of that is going to work very well if the vehicles can't handle a construction site.
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