Google, Ford, Volvo, Lyft and Uber Join Coalition To Further Self-Driving Cars (reuters.com)

Google, Ford, Volvo, Uber, and Lyft are forming a coalition to help speed self-driving cars to the market. Until now, these five companies have all been working on their own driverless car initiatives. According to a statement, the new effort, dubbed the Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets, "will work with lawmakers, regulators and the public to realize the safety and societal benefits of self-driving vehicles." David Strickland, a former top official of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, is coalition's counsel and spokesman.

Comments

Jetpacks and Segways

[Anonymous Coward]

We are nowhere close on AI, ergo we are nowhere close on self-driving cars. Can't even get Siri or chatbots to answer questions in any way that represents an ability to make a decision. Hell, even Deep Blue had to be fed the Jeopardy questions via text because it could not parse natural language.

The idea that this all solved for something with a 180 horsepower engine is downright silly.

Look closely at all the reports, these are all really, really constrained experiments with gaping holes (drivers taking over, pre-programmed zero-decision routes, following lockstep behind human driven vehicles, etc., etc.).

Re:Jetpacks and Segways

[ShanghaiBill]

we are nowhere close on self-driving cars.

Tesla Autopilot is already installed in ten of thousands of cars. My wife has a Tesla, and it "self-drives" for 80% of her commute. Google SDCs have driven millions of miles on public roads, and have a safety record far better than human drivers.

Can't even get Siri or chatbots to answer questions

Natural language processing is a far more difficult problem than navigation and collision avoidance.

Re:Kick Uber Out

[vtcodger]

> There's very little confusing road signage in the US; if you know it in one place, you know it everywhere.

Sadly, that turns out not to be quite true. There's a code. But not everyone complies with it. And when it changes many traffic control devices aren't redone to code until they need to be upgraded for some reason. Moreover, it's common practice to modify the normal rules with signs. I'm far from sure that's going to work with autonomous vehicles unless there are rules about sign size, placement, wordage, etc.

When I hit Google to make sure I wasn't dead wrong, I found that there used to be, and maybe still is, at least one place in California where a blinking red left turn arrow meant that -- if you can believe this -- a train is approaching the grade level crossing on the street you are contemplating turning into.