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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.
I think UBER without the driver could a very interesting business.
Trolling driverless cars.
Brake checks, lane changes, etc.
These companies have no idea what awaits them on the road.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
From the description (I didn't read the article since there wasn't a link), this sounds like an advocacy group to deal with legal matters and public opinion. This has nothing to do with working together to actually develop the technology. We'll likely also get some patent pool groups much like the MPEG licensing group.
Certainly the group they're forming could be expanded to include both patent pool licensing and technology development, but for now, they're just talking advocacy.
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.
In other words, these major corporations have formed a special interest (super?) PAC to lobby congress and the regulators, led by a former regulator from one of the groups they'll be lobbying.
Yay?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The important thing in all this is to keep it simple. There are numerous special interests that want to push regulators towards their own proprietary and expensive "solutions" to problems that don't exists.
The last 60 years is littered with popular mechanics articles about guide wires in the roads or wireless beacons that need to be installed everywhere to make driverless cars a reality. The one lesson in all of this history should be that if you need specialized infrastructure or special roads to make it a reality then it is a dead end technology. Hopefully regulators don't get swayed into expensive dead end demo proof of concepts on special tracks. Roads need to work for both computer and human drivers. And that means smart cars need to work on dumb roads using the least amount of processing power and least number of sensors.
The idea that this all solved for something with a 180 horsepower engine is downright silly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
http://www.cat.com/en_US/suppo...
In other words, these major corporations have formed a special interest (super?) PAC to lobby congress and the regulators
Yes, and that is a good thing. Legislators and regulators should receive input from people and organizations that actually understand the issues. Their interests in promoting this technology are pretty well aligned with the public interest, so I don't see any major problem here.
This tech could put millions out of work.
The purpose of economic activity is the production of goods and services, not "keeping people busy".
Perhaps the government could pay the unemployed drivers to throw rocks through windows to generate jobs for glaziers.
Are you suggesting this is a bad thing? Sure, there's money involved in it for them, but personally I hate driving in the morning commute. I'd like it if I could rest or eat breakfast on the way instead of having to contend with my fellow maniac drivers in the morning. My cousin, who has epilepsy, can benefit from more independence. If it takes a superpac to make this happen, to overcome the "omg skynet, think of the children!" crowd, then so be it.
There are plenty of skills that were very common 50 years ago and are gone now. How many people here under 30 are competent horse-riders, or know how to pickle fish? All of my father's family (well, the men at least) are competent at hunting, trapping, skinning animals, logging, and basic carpentry. People still hunt, but many fewer would be able to really feed their family that way (as my father fed us).
Lots of skills still exist, but are much less common then they were even 20 years ago. Fewer drivers would be able to change their oil, rotate their tires, or perform other basic maintenance.
Things are moving fast in the world now. There will be skills that are lost with every generation - heck, there's some skills that came and went within a generation (eg. identifying and replacing failed vacuum tubes, VCR repair, making a config.sys that could run Wolf3d) - and skills that are new to each generation. When that cycle stops is when we'll have to start worrying about whether our civilization is advancing.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
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.
No, you missed the parable of the broken window. The point of work is that we get to have nice things and nice services. If we can have those things without having to work, that's a good thing.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Willing to pay up in cases of death / injury?
Assuming that the auto-drive was on and there was no tampering of the system then, it should be payed out the same way as no-fault insurance (a model we should have moved to decades ago).
Who will do the jail / prison time for criminal cases of car accidents?
Again, assuming auto-drive and no tampering, there shouldn't be criminal cases. It was an accident! Exception: If shortcuts were made by the self-driving car software; such as the VW emissions-tempering case.
Willing to be open to FAA like code audits / tests?
I would certainly advocate to force this. How about you?
What about tickets both ones that go to the car (owner) and ones that go to the driver?
There should be few if any traffic tickets while in auto-drive mode as the code is supposed to be designed to follow the law (see above line item). Some police departments are actually terrified of this fact as they will no longer be able to use traffic tickets to help fund their departments.
DUI issues can you get a DUI just for being in a auto drive car in auto mode?
Probably early on as the auto-drive systems cannot be fully relied upon for safety but, this will fade in time as systems become more reliable.
Can have a drop out to manual mode just before an accident to get out of having any liability?
These systems, thus far, keep a log so the police would find out you did this and you can be cited/charged accordingly.
Can they force to have dealer only service?
There are already quite a few laws on the books saying that this is illegal. I don't see that changing.
Can they force updates on you and make you pay data overeager and roaming fees? Where an 1-2GB update can cost as much as a new car?
This is probably the messiest issue you've brought up. FCC rules on wireless and wireless charges are crap to non-existent. If I were you, this is what I'd really watch for.
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
This happens all the time with new technologies. Cab drivers and truck drivers will join the ranks of buggy-whip manufacturers one day. Same shit, different day.
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
I cross a crosswalk in downtown Mountain View every day to get to the office, often it has self-driving cars on it. I can tell you with 100% certainty that I would rather myself or someone I love use a crosswalk in front of a self-driving car rather than a human driver. At least 15% of the time you're not sure if the human driver is going to run you down or not, or doesn't yield right of way. 100% of the time self driving cars yield to pedestrians. Penalties for pedestrian death by vehicle are going to go way, way up when people realize how little attention impatient human drivers pay to pedestrians.
Self-driving cars also don't slam down four pints of beer and then try to drive home on the highway sleep deprived at 2am, like a lot of college age kids do.
moox. for a new generation.
> Yes, and that is a good thing.
Maybe. Someone telling lawmakers about the needs for uniform, computer (and human) readable road signage, consistent traffic signals (what the hell does a blinking red left arrow mean? And does it mean the same thing in Michigan as in British Columbia?) and similar issues is almost certainly a good thing.
But if these folks devote their efforts to self serving legislation to limit competition or to sacrifice safety for profits, then it's not such a good thing.
Time will tell.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Why would I order it? I helped write it.
If you have a perfect mine site where nothing ever changes topologically, then there might be an extremely limited scope, akin to virtual train track operation.
Want to talk more about what you don't know?
> 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.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey