Self-Driving Features Could Lead To More Sex In Moving Cars, Expert Warns (www.cbc.ca)

An anonymous reader writes: According to CBC.ca, "At least one expert is anticipating that, as the so-called 'smart' cars get smarter, there will eventually be an increase in an unusual form of distracted driving: hanky-panky behind the wheel." Barrie Kirk of the Canadian Automated Vehicles Centre of Excellence said, "I am predicting that, once computers are doing the driving, there will be a lot more sex in cars. That's one of several things people will do which will inhibit their ability to respond quickly when the computer says to the human, 'Take over.'" Federal officials, who have been tasked with building a regulatory framework to govern driverless cars, highlighted their concerns in briefing notes compiled for Transport Minister Marc Garneau. "Drivers tend to overestimate the performance of automation and will naturally turn their focus away from the road when they turn on their auto-pilot," said the note. The Tesla autopilot feature has been receiving the most criticism as there have been many videos posted online showing Tesla drivers engaged in questionable practices, including reading a newspaper or brushing their teeth.

Comments

And the problem is?

[Virtucon]

What's the issue here? Shit if the car is driving you to your destination then what you do inside the car is your own business. Besides we all worry about people becoming too absorbed in games/VR and other tech that we'd face population decline. This way the nerds can reproduce.

Re:And the problem is?

[khasim]

Yeah. Not much of a "warning". More of an "advertisement".

Re:And the problem is?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sex! Sex is the problem. Fornication without the godly intent of reproduction to strengthen the army of his lord and savior is a vile abomination and the most gravely mortal of mortal sins. Right up there to self abuse while watching pornographic materials on the internet, which we all know is just a tool for Satan

Re:And the problem is?

[Wycliffe]

When a car stops in the middle of a difficult situation because the AI is confused they will make that situation even worse ... humans need to take over quickly and keep traffic moving if possible.

As long as most traffic is still human driving is an exercise in risk mitigation, not a problem with clear stop/go decisions.

That's like a pilot stopping and deciding to defer to the passengers on the plane. If the AI isn't up to the task then it's not a self-driving car. Almost all dangerous situations are high speed situation. Even with human drivers switching drivers at high speed is a hard thing to do. The best thing to do is stop and then switch drivers and once you're stopped the difference between a 10 second switch, a 60 second switch, or even a 10 minute switch is minimal.

Re:And the problem is?

[Dunbal]

Government overreach is the issue. Oh heavens. Good lord! We can't have people having sex on the PUBLIC roads!

Re:And the problem is?

[wierd_w]

I can hardly wait for that episode of "sex sent me to the ER."

"Female subject was hospitalized after suffering a 70MPH front impact while having sex."

Seriously, people are dumb enough to not only let the car drive while they are having rabbit sex in the driver's seat, they are likely to do it even when the weather conditions are highly inclement, such as when roads are icy, or there are other hazards that would render any autonomous system dangerous.

I imagine some wealthy fuck and his floozy fucking on the way to a hotel for "business trip" on an iced up road, colliding with the center partition doing 75mph, with all the trimmings.

Re: And the problem is?

[tysonedwards]

Well, it is the definition of //public// indecency. Might be interesting in the odd state that regards vehicles as an extension of private property... What a wonderful time to be alive!

Re:And the problem is?

[guises]

Some people have the idea that self-driving cars should not be totally self-driving, but occupy some nebulous intermediary region. This, of course, completely invalidates the point of having self-driving cars, but these people are more fearful of robots of unknown incompetence than they are of human drivers of proven incompetence.

Re:And the problem is?

[amiga3D]

I remember having sex in my car "while" driving when I was young. Not to mention all the blow jobs I received. I think it'd be a lot safer with a self driving car. I just did manage to stay on the road but I was all over it.

Re:And the problem is?

[TsuruchiBrian]

I trust an autonomous car to perform evasive maneuvers to avoid accidents or mitigate their damage much more than I trust the general population. I trust a wealthy fuck in an autonomous car more than a trust someone putting on makeup or texting in a regular car.

Re:And the problem is?

[phantomfive]

The only negative I can see is that you'd want to remain buckled in, even with a self-driving car. So it wouldn't be very safe, but you know......

Re:And the problem is?

[wierd_w]

Inclement weather is not accident avoidance. Especially ice.

That is "Oh shit, I lost traction control on three of my tires!"

The autonomous system cannot determine if the road 100 meters ahead is covered in a thin sheen of black ice or not.

People ARE dumb enough to be fucking behind the wheel while the autonomous system tries to navigate iced up roads.

The best an autonomous system can do is aggregate road data from other autonomous cars nearby to attempt to determine if there is ice ahead. -- a fat load of good that does if your autonomous vehicle is the one that skids out on it first, or if your vehicle is not receiving such telemetry for whatever reason.

I trust the idiot fucking behind the wheel of an autonomous vehicle about as much as I trust a politician not to lie. That is to say, not at all.

Automation makes the driving experience more predictable by removing human error. This is both good and bad. It leads to conditions where the vehicle will make predictably bad choices, but the occupant will believe otherwise.

Re:And the problem is?

[TsuruchiBrian]

Inclement weather is not accident avoidance. Especially ice. That is "Oh shit, I lost traction control on three of my tires!"

It is accident avoidance, because if there was no chance of an accident, then losing traction wouldn't have any negative consequences.

Cars already have anti-lock brakes, because a simple machine is already better at preventing you from losing traction that you are. This is precisely the sort of thing that I expect autonomous cars to excel at.

The autonomous system cannot determine if the road 100 meters ahead is covered in a thin sheen of black ice or not.

Why not?

People ARE dumb enough to be fucking behind the wheel while the autonomous system tries to navigate iced up roads.

What the fuck is a human supposed to add to the equation? bad judgement?

The best an autonomous system can do is aggregate road data from other autonomous cars nearby to attempt to determine if there is ice ahead. -- a fat load of good that does if your autonomous vehicle is the one that skids out on it first, or if your vehicle is not receiving such telemetry for whatever reason.

Yeah autonomous cars can do that. And I don't see how being the first human driver to skid out of control is any better.

I trust the idiot fucking behind the wheel of an autonomous vehicle about as much as I trust a politician not to lie. That is to say, not at all.

And like a lying politician, you don't have any better alternatives. Do you really want the guy with the bad judgement in charge of the death machine? The less control humans have the better.

Automation makes the driving experience more predictable by removing human error. This is both good and bad. It leads to conditions where the vehicle will make predictably bad choices, but the occupant will believe otherwise.

If they are making predictable errors, then that makes it all that much easier to fix the errors.

Re:And the problem is?

[khallow]

I imagine some wealthy fuck and his floozy fucking on the way to a hotel for "business trip" on an iced up road, colliding with the center partition doing 75mph, with all the trimmings.

Because automated cars driving 75 MPH on ice will be a thing. And drivers who are alert, rather than fucking their floozy are going to be relevant. If you're going to automate driving to the point that the human sitting behind the wheel isn't actually doing anything except in rare situations, then I don't see the point of having the human in the loop.

Re:And the problem is?

[ockegheim]

If the AI isn't up to the task then it's not a self-driving car.

And if the human has to constantly be alert and on standby in case he or she needs to take over, there’s not really any point, is there?

Re:And the problem is?

[ockegheim]

That’s the only downside I came up with. Once most cars are autonomous, you might be able to have a seatbelt-free mode where the car moves slower and avoids sudden acceleration or deceleration. Then people will see a slow-moving bumping car and nudge and wink.

Re:And the problem is?

[wierd_w]

Like I pointed out-- IR cameras detect the radio opacity of the surface they are trained on. Ice and liquid water both absorb IR light. The camera will not be enough to tell the car that there is ice, instead of water.

Granted, for safety, a wet surface should not be driven faster than, IIRC, 35mph due to hydroplaning. The reality is that occupants will complain mightily about their autonomous vehicle driving that slow because it sprinkled a little, and the car is unlikely to observe such a restraint as a consequence.

Without other data telling it that the opaque road surface is from ice instead of rain, or slush, the vehicle will think the road is wet, not icy. Being alert when the car is barreling down the road unaware of the hazard, and telling the car "hey, slow down, there is ice!" is a good safety check for the autonomous system. it doesnt mean you have to drive for it, it just makes the drive safer because the car has another system (the occupant) to help it make driving decisions.

Automated sensors that might let it know that it is ice instead of slush or rain include thermometers. Those might not be accurate either though, especially if the county/city has been spreading salt all over. It could well be below zero, and still be slush, not ice. Likewise, it could be warming up after the ice storm that left the ice, but the road is still frozen.

Another system that might work would be integration with weather radio broadcasts, but that too has the potential to foul things up with erroneous weather report data based only on radar indications.

The best system in the vehicle for evaluating road conditions is still the occupant.

Re:And the problem is?

[ShanghaiBill]

It's hilarious to me that people cite "ice" as an example of their precious human drivers being superior to machines,

Indeed. When a big snowstorm was predicted, Tesla sent out an email to inform owners that they should use Autopilot during the storm, because it would handle the hazardous conditions better than most human drivers.

Re:And the problem is?

[ShanghaiBill]

The autonomous system cannot determine if the road 100 meters ahead is covered in a thin sheen of black ice or not.

Yes it can. Tesla cars transmit data back to a server, which can then inform other cars in the area. I don't know if it transmits traction data, but it certainly could.

Also, black ice tends to form in the same stretch of road when the conditions are similar. So an automated car could reference historical accident data for the road it is on, and slow down before reaching hazardous spots.

Re:And the problem is?

[TsuruchiBrian]

(why cant autonomous systems detect ice 100 meters ahead?) IR cameras detect if the road is reflective or absorptive of IR spectra. Water in general is IR absorptive. IR cameras cannot tell the difference between a wet surface and an icy one. Likewise, it cannot tell ice from snow, or slush, even if it has a thermometer to tell it that it is below the freezing point outside. (which would itself be prone to anomalous temperature readings from wind chill, or from engine heat.)

It's photons. Surely the human eye is not magic.

The issue with antilock brakes you mention is only partially correct. Most drivers do not know how to properly brake on ice. For drivers that do, they consistently perform better without antilock brakes.

If humans can do a good job of maintaining traction on ice, then we just need to transfer whatever it is we are doing right into an algorithm, so a machine can do the same thing, but with many of orders of magnitude higher precision.

Most drivers are just bad drivers. So, the antilock brakes save lives overall. That does not mean human drivers that know how to actually drive on inclement surfaces are inferior.

The same logic can be applied to autonomous cars.

For starters, they can instruct the vehicle to drive with more caution-- avoiding going 75mph on the icy highway, for instance.

I don;t really trust people to make this decision. I would fully expect idot drivers to tell their cars to go the maximum speed allowable at all times. For that reason I would rather the car decide when conditions are potentially unsafe (i.e. cold, wet, foggy, etc).

Distracted occupants (and I dare say, a person fucking in the car is going to be quite distracted, or else the sex will have to be really bad.) are not going to be so mindful, until the vehicle mistakes an icy road for a wet one, loses traction and either puts them into the center wall, flips them over, or puts them in a ditch.

On the contrary, I'd say that an autonomous vehicle that realizes it's cold and wet and drives more cautiously as a result, might very well drive better than this same douchebag getting a BJ driving down an icy road.

Re:And the problem is?

[armanox]

The biggest error is people going out in conditions that they shouldn't be on the roads in the first place. See it all the time here in Baltimore - people who call out of work but can drive to the mall because they want to. It's one thing if you are going to work (and you should probably call out if you can in some of these storms), or have to work in it (EMS, hospital staff, road crews, automotive mechanics, etc), and another to be that guy that just wanted to go to the bar. People are stupid, plain and simple.

Re:And the problem is?

[Roger W Moore]

When a car stops in the middle of a difficult situation because the AI is confused they will make that situation even worse ... humans need to take over quickly and keep traffic moving if possible.

If I have to sit in a self-driving car fully alert of the surrounding traffic and always poised to take over from the computer then exactly how is this any better than normal car? I might as well save the money and drive myself.

Re:And the problem is?

[armanox]

Who says they aren't attempting to reproduce? You don't know that! They could be a married couple attempting to fulfill their duty!

Also, religious fail. Fornication is not one of the worst sins, much less a deadly sin. Feel free to try and find a reference otherwise, because the Church has never classified it as such. There are some right wing heretics in the States that might agree with you, but like I said, there is no reference in Church dogma nor the Bible itself (which most of those heretics scream Sola Scriptura...) claiming it as such. There are multitudes of offenses much greater then that.

Re:And the problem is?

[dbIII]

It's photons. Surely the human eye is not magic.

Human pattern recognition may as well be magic as far as current "A.I." is going. One situation at a time is going into what is effectively a big collection of lookup tables but it's going to take a while.

Re:And the problem is?

[wbr1]

If the autonomus system makes fewer bad choices than normal drivers would on average, then it amnet gain and safer.

Re:And the problem is?

[TsuruchiBrian]

Yes the human eye is not magic. Whatever photons we can detect, we can make machines that can detect those photons and more. The fact that we choose to use a limited subset of sensors in some applications, is simply a reflection of our confidence in our ability to get by with less. If we need more/better sensor data, we will put more/better sensors in our stuff.

What the human can do, is realize there is icy conditions when it steps outside on the way to the car.

I would definitely place any trust in each individual human driver to determine whether conditions are too icy or not.

The car lacks this wide array of additional information the human has access to.

Many humans lack this ability as well. Furthermore I'd say it is quite the opposite. The car *can* have all this information and additional information that humans can't.

It is limited to what the connected fleet tells it, and what its much more limited sensors tell it.

Meaning that the car is limited by all the information it can glean from it's many sensors + all the information that a global network of sensors knows. This doesn't mean it knows everything, but it will know a lot more than any individual human. This "limit" is nothing compared to the limits of human knowledge.

Sensor data can be faulty. A failsafe is needed.

Yes sensors can be faulty. And yes failsafes are needed. Should those failsafes be humans? Maybe... Or maybe we will have the option of failsafes that are more reliable than humans (e.g. redundant sensors, etc).

There will come a day when autonomous cars will be orders of magnitude safer than even the best human drivers.

Re:And the problem is?

[cfalcon]

> It's hilarious to me that people cite "ice" as an example of their precious human drivers being superior to machines

Not sure if trolling or serious, but the ability of a human to drive well in rough weather is, currently, absolute and true.

It is true that antilock brakes can automate a function that allows novice drivers to stop as well as good drivers, and that's an excellent innovation. It is also true that, at some point in time, computers will do everything better than humans. But, that time is not now. Frankly, it looks like it is a long way off.

In snowy weather, roads can lose a whole lane. Four lane roads become two lane roads become three lane roads. Watching a car subtlety veer as it runs over an ice patch, and knowing how to handle that (avoid the spot, coast over in neutral, whatever) is something that a good driver will do instantly, and a computer can't yet handle- nor does anyone seem to be working on that issue.

Why will infrared see black ice as different than the snow right next to it? Hell, infrared is hard pressed to function at all in light weather, because the useful wavelengths are so damned big, and the snow and rain just eats that stuff up.

Right now, autonomous cars are ABSOLUTELY UNDRIVABLE in the snow. Sure, one day they'll be better than people- but weather will be the LAST thing autonomous cars master. You might have whole generations of useful auto^2 mobiles that can't drive in the snow, and have to creep along in rain, before you finally start to see them able to handle weather at all.

Oh, one last thing- an airplane is a much easier design target because the plane's environment is way more homogenous than a car's. Passenger jets don't fly in formation mere feet away from each other, and landing strips are maintained in ways that roads are not. Autopilot is NOT a good comparison point- it is MUCH simpler than an autodriving car.

Re:And the problem is?

[cfalcon]

> It's photons. Surely the human eye is not magic.

There's like a zillion layers of processing behind the eye that a robot can't match. There's also reasoning behind the eye that a robot can't match. Why do you think captchas are a thing? Pattern recognition is pretty much something animals do better than any robot, so far.

In principle? Sure. But we're talking about in practice, currently or in the near future. The fact is, no one has a car that can drive for shit in weather, and mostly they just refuse to autodrive if there's even light fog, much less snow and ice.

And if your comparison is, "can a car in 20 years drive better than a guy getting roadhead", I'm not sure whether you are making a comparison or pitching a porno.

Re:And the problem is?

[TsuruchiBrian]

My comment was in response to the claim that machines can't differentiate between water and ice because of the limitations of cameras.

Re:And the problem is?

[Macman408]

The problem is that a lot of companies (and, at their behest, some of the regulators too) are going for a slow takeover of driving by computers. Today they can do a little bit of driving mostly on the highway. Next year, they'll handle some city driving too. The year after that, they'll handle areas without good lane markings, the next year get a little better still, etc. But they still need a person there, because what if the car encounters a woman in an electric wheelchair chasing a duck around an intersection with a broom and doesn't know what to do?

This is one reason why Google's approach is better - build the car to handle everything, even things it has never seen before. Otherwise, you end up with a human who hasn't been paying attention for the past 15 minutes and is suddenly expected to come up to speed (or get his girlfriend's pubic hair out of his face) and take over driving in the next second in order to avoid an accident.

Re:And the problem is?

[dgatwood]

In snowy weather, roads can lose a whole lane. Four lane roads become two lane roads become three lane roads. Watching a car subtlety veer as it runs over an ice patch, and knowing how to handle that (avoid the spot, coast over in neutral, whatever) is something that a good driver will do instantly, and a computer can't yet handle- nor does anyone seem to be working on that issue.

How is that anything more complicated than merely providing additional training data? I'm assuming that all self-driving cars will involve machine learning, no?

Re:And the problem is?

[tinkerton]

It does appear that they're concerned a lot more about occasional sex in driving cars than about webbrowsing , gaming and texting while driving which will happen orders of magnitude more often.

Re:And the problem is?

[aXis100]

Pretty sure that if a computer doesn't know what to do, it can always just apply the bakes and stop.

Brilliant! Problem solved! Wasn't so hard now was it?

Re:And the problem is?

[silentcoder]

I live in Cape Town. A city where, especially in Winter, it is common for there to be weeks of continuous rain. We are USED to rain.

Yet, apparently, in a city of some millions, there are about 7 who know how to drive in rain.

Re:And the problem is?

[nukenerd]

If I have to sit in a self-driving car fully alert of the surrounding traffic and always poised to take over from the computer then exactly how is this any better than normal car?

It isn't better, it is worse, because for example the scenario in the headline of TFA, and less spectacular lapses of concentration. It is also worse because if you must maintain as much alertness as if you were driving yourself, but are not, it is going to be very mentally stressful and even harrowing (as I find when I am passenger to any driver with a different style from mine). It seems to me that the only thing it would save is some lightweight arm movements and slight foot movements - but what is so hard about them?

You won't be saving money when the self-driving feature becomes standard (or even compulsory). It will be like PCs without pre-loaded software costing more than bare PCs because they are subsidised by the crapware. Like self driving software will be sponsored by McDonalds, and will drive you there when it's lunchtime.

Self-driving needs to be 100% self-sufficient or not at all.

Re:And the problem is?

[AmiMoJo]

The best an autonomous system can do is aggregate road data from other autonomous cars nearby to attempt to determine if there is ice ahead.

The last few cars I have owned have all had a little icon and warning beep that appear when a simply temperature sensor notices that it is cold enough for ice on the road. The car's manual usually recommends you slow down when that happens.

Re:And the problem is?

[Paradise Pete]

Not much of a "warning". More of an "advertisement".

And what is this "expert" thing? Expert how? More like Captain Obvious says...

Re:And the problem is?

[jittles]

Sex! Sex is the problem. Fornication without the godly intent of reproduction to strengthen the army of his lord and savior is a vile abomination and the most gravely mortal of mortal sins. Right up there to self abuse while watching pornographic materials on the internet, which we all know is just a tool for Satan

I don't know what you're talking about. Everyone knows that Satan retired years ago.

Re:And the problem is?

[fluffernutter]

You find a way to stop live every time it snows and get back to me.

Re:And the problem is?

[fluffernutter]

What happens when there is a car in front of you? How is an IR camera going to see ice through a car and prepare to drive accordingly? A human can anticipate when there will be ice just by looking at the surrounding ground but an IR camera actually has to see it.

Re:And the problem is?

[fluffernutter]

simply assume the worst case

It's going to be so awesome to be driving with cars that assume the worst case and drive 6mph ALL THE TIME.

Re: And the problem is?

[fluffernutter]

An automated car isn't supposed to have a pilot, only passengers. If it needs to have a pilot, then it isn't fully automated.

Re:And the problem is?

[khallow]

Like I pointed out-- IR cameras detect the radio opacity of the surface they are trained on. Ice and liquid water both absorb IR light. The camera will not be enough to tell the car that there is ice, instead of water.

Even if we were to assume your claim is true, and it is not, you still have the matter of the human eye not being any better at the task.

Granted, for safety, a wet surface should not be driven faster than, IIRC, 35mph due to hydroplaning. The reality is that occupants will complain mightily about their autonomous vehicle driving that slow because it sprinkled a little, and the car is unlikely to observe such a restraint as a consequence.

Because exposing the manufacture to huge liability is better than customer complaints? Not feeling it.

Without other data telling it that the opaque road surface is from ice instead of rain, or slush, the vehicle will think the road is wet, not icy. Being alert when the car is barreling down the road unaware of the hazard, and telling the car "hey, slow down, there is ice!" is a good safety check for the autonomous system. it doesnt mean you have to drive for it, it just makes the drive safer because the car has another system (the occupant) to help it make driving decisions.

The occupant still has to be relevant in order for this to matter. You still have yet to explain how an observant human (who let us note, wouldn't really be that observant due to the lack of engagement and the lack of useful sensory apparatus) is going to be any improvement over the examples of humans having sex. Throwing on another system to help make driving decisions doesn't necessarily lead to an improvement in safety.

Re:And the problem is?

[sh00z]

To put it another way, I don't see the point in spending my money on an autonomous car unless it's actually capable of functioning without a human in the loop.I'll drive when I want to drive, and if the car is driving, I want to be a passenger (and be able to eat, read, have sex or whatever else).

Re:And the problem is?

[sh00z]

If I have to sit in a self-driving car fully alert of the surrounding traffic and always poised to take over from the computer then exactly how is this any better than normal car? I might as well save the money and drive myself.

Precisely. And if every Bozo out there is also empowered to take over from their computer, then there will still be traffic jams and accidents, and we'll NEVER see the benefit of self-driving cars.

Re:And the problem is?

[fluffernutter]

The car *can* have all this information and additional information that humans can't.

One thing that you have to address is that humans don't drive because of what they see, they drive because of what they know. I already know what I'm going to have to do at every primary intersection because I can see snow on the ground and I know from experience where I live what road conditions are like just from driving on the same roads year after year following various types of weather. When I go on the road, I continue to observe the amount of snow on the sidewalks and yards and just generally outside to further establish how I will drive. An automated car isn't going to get a weather report, nor is it going to know what to do with that information. It's not going to have a way to assess whether there is an inch or three feet of snow on a yard beside an intersection, or understand snow banks or furrows left by a plow. An automated car will be like a person who is new to my city driving for the very first time in bad weather and trying to navigate purely from what they see on the road. The automated car won't even be able to get information from the whole road because there will be a car 10 feet in front blocking the view of the road, assuming these IR cameras cannot see through cars. So at best the AI car will be like a new driver looking directly at 10 feet of road in front of the car. Yes, the computer has a much faster reaction time, but tires steering on an icy road don't. It will be very difficult to get it to work I think.

Re:And the problem is?

[ColdWetDog]

You should come to Seattle. It rains all of the time and the majority of drivers are expert at it. They just cram as many cars on the freeways as is possibly.

And then stop.

Perfectly safe.

Re:And the problem is?

[tlhIngan]

The only negative I can see is that you'd want to remain buckled in, even with a self-driving car. So it wouldn't be very safe, but you know......

Hard to believe, but it's already happening *now*. Yes, people are driving and having sex at the same time (massively distracted driving). And yes, it includes those who are going solo, as well as couples.

The main reason we're even contemplating self driving cars is because you can bet at least 90% of the driving public (in North America at least) doesn't give a damn about driving. It's a chore they have to endure and would rather be doing anything other than driving. And it can be quite boring. Even worse, there's no alternative - you can't say "get off the road" because they still need to get around and in many places, the only way is by car.

Re:And the problem is?

[Lab Rat Jason]

While I agree with you in principle, there is a ftfy I'd like to point out:

the ability of some humans to drive well in rough weather is, currently, absolute and true.

A human driver can choose NOT to go out in bad weather. A human can estimate the depth of water flowing over a road and decide not to cross (bridge may be washed out). A human can sense how slippery the snow on the road is, and choose a different route with a more favorable grade. Self driving cars currently lack this intuition, but I'm sure it will be just a few years before manufacturers are integrating those ideas.

However, the important thing is that self driving cars are already better than some human drivers, and self driving cars don't require all cars on the road to be self driving, therefore, there is no reason for some people to adopt self driving cars now... as they get better, more and more people will find a favorable use case, and will make the switch.

Re:And the problem is?

[Kevin by the Beach]

My first thought exactly!

The eventual problem would be that the counties/cities/towns/etc... will not have any revenue stream from traffic tickets. If you are not driving, how will the state extort money for drivers licenses and insurance? (or cancel your license for not paying some arbitrary fee/fine/etc..) What will happen to traffic schools and ambulance chasers?

It may be a dystopian future for us all.

Re:And the problem is?

[Nethemas the Great]

...because ice and water have similar IR signatures. ...because, wheels cannot detect slipping. ...{...} Respectfully, I'd rather trust a computer than a human. Computers are engineered systems that can behave predictably and perform reliably up to their respective level of sophistication. Humans are the rogue element that I'd rather be occupied with f**king than with expressing their emotions, inattentiveness, incompetence, drunkenness, etc. behind the wheel.

Re:And the problem is?

[Nethemas the Great]

That's OK, Volvo claims their version is superior because it will come to a complete stop.

Re:And the problem is?

[Cederic]

Who here hasn't gotten a blowjob while driving?

Most of the female Slashdot readers, for a start.

I also don't know anyone who crashed getting one.

The motor insurance industry doesn't differentiate on why young men are a higher risk than any other group, but I think it's reasonable to suggest it isn't just correlation.

Re:And the problem is?

[Dcnjoe60]

What's the issue here? Shit if the car is driving you to your destination then what you do inside the car is your own business. Besides we all worry about people becoming too absorbed in games/VR and other tech that we'd face population decline. This way the nerds can reproduce.

The concern raised was about being distracted in a way that the driver would not be able to take over in a timely manner in a situation where the AI could not deal with. Same concern is raised with autonomous vehicles being the solution to drunk driving. If the driver must be able to take over, then they really shouldn't be behind the wheel.

With regards to autonomous vehicles being used for sex, personally, that would be one big reason not to let my autonomous vehicle be available for others to use while I am at work or otherwise not using it.

Re:And the problem is?

[Dcnjoe60]

I trust an autonomous car to perform evasive maneuvers to avoid accidents or mitigate their damage much more than I trust the general population. I trust a wealthy fuck in an autonomous car more than a trust someone putting on makeup or texting in a regular car.

You seem to trust the technology more than the people designing it, then.

Re:And the problem is?

[Dcnjoe60]

How is that anything more complicated than merely providing additional training data? I'm assuming that all self-driving cars will involve machine learning, no?

You know, the railroads have a saying that the rule book is written in blood, meaning for every rule in it, there was an accident caused the change. Wouldn't autonomous vehicles be the same thing? After all, they are assumed safe until they aren't in which case, there is an update to the system.

Look, these cars are being developed by engineers in an industry that looks at risk in terms of the cost of a lawsuit versus the cost of doing something in a different way. The more safe a vehicle is, the more costly it is, so there has to be a trade off if it is going to be affordable.

Simple case, a non autonomous vehicle is coming down the wrong side of the road, does your autonomous vehicle go to the left or to the right to try and avoid it? At best the car will guess correctly 50% of the time. Now, add other traffic, pedestrians and what ever other real world obstacles you want and it gets increasingly complex.

The reason people have accidents is because they can't factor in all of the variables in the time allotted before a decision must be made, so they use pattern matching to come up with the best option given what they know. The same will be true with autonomous vehicles. Yes, they can process faster, but they can't take into account every variable or factor. There is a reason why weather models are less accurate the further out the forecast goes. There isn't a computer around that can factor in all of the variables and all of the possibilities for them to interact. There is no doubt that an autonomous vehicle will make the best choice given the information it has available to it. But, so does the weather models and they are less than accurate more often than not.

Re:And the problem is?

[TsuruchiBrian]

I was responding to a claim about the limitations of IR cameras.

Re:And the problem is?

[TsuruchiBrian]

It also takes a while to train a human baby to drive (e.g. 16 years), and even then it is not very good at it. Once the AI is trained to drive, it will have the additional skills of orders of magnitude faster reaction times and much more precise control, and much more information (e.g. from central servers, from other nearby cars, from sensors, etc) that it can aggregate more quickly.

Re:And the problem is?

[khallow]

The car in front of you tells your car where the ice is. I might not buy all the arguments that the self-driving car advocates dish out, but some of them stick.

Re:And the problem is?

[khallow]

It strikes me that a highly automated car which requires a human driver is the worst of both worlds. It inherits the foibles of the human driver; puts them in a situation where they will be guaranteed to be bored, inattentive, and in the long run poorly skilled; has them act only at the worst possible times when the automated system gives up; and probably will make the driver financially liable for the result.

Sure, a human driver can benefit from a higher degree of automated support. But my view is that either the driver should be highly engaged or not at all. There is no middle ground here.

Re:And the problem is?

[TsuruchiBrian]

Yes, I trust people (a group) to be capable of designing good software more than I trust every individual person to correctly control a hunk of metal going 80mph.

I don't trust every designer to make good software. But it's not like everyone will be riding a car designed by themself. Everyone will be riding in cars with the best designs by the the best designers.

I would trust human drivers a lot more if everyone could become the best driver like neo learning kung fu every time they got behind the wheel.

Re:And the problem is?

[fluffernutter]

Man so now we're talking about open interconnectivity between cars and being able to trust what the other cars around you are saying. There's a whole different hornet's nest that is not likely to be viable in reality.

Re:And the problem is?

[david_thornley]

The autonomous system cannot determine if the road 100 meters ahead is covered in a thin sheen of black ice or not.

Speaking as a human driver, how do I tell if there's a patch of ice 100m ahead? I'm hardly perfect at it.

Re:And the problem is?

[TsuruchiBrian]

Simple case, a non autonomous vehicle is coming down the wrong side of the road, does your autonomous vehicle go to the left or to the right to try and avoid it? At best the car will guess correctly 50% of the time. Now, add other traffic, pedestrians and what ever other real world obstacles you want and it gets increasingly complex.

For a human being with limited reaction time, this decision this is a 50/50 coin flip. For an autonomous car that sees the world advancing in microsecond increments, it should be pretty easy to avoid just about anything it wants to. That part is easy. The hard part is deciding what to avoid. If the autonomous car can successfully determine what needs to be avoided and what doesn't, it should be able to accomplish it's plan with very high precision.

Autonomous cars can compensate for a lack of good judgement to a very large degree with quick reaction time. For example, while a human might have to decide in a split second between hitting another car or running over a crowd of pedestrians, an autonomous car may have several options to avoid all collisions through very precise control that human drivers are not capable of.

Re:And the problem is?

[RockDoctor]

I have a new invention which will also increase the number of people having sex in cars while driving.

It's called "the chauffeur".

Signed - 1904

Surely

[liqu1d]

If the computer has to say "take over" then it's not ready yet.

Re:Surely

[Dunbal]

Needing an "else" is just shitty programming. I bet you use GOTO as well :P

Re:Surely

[Dunbal]

Arguably human level AI gets you all the traffic fatalities we have today. You need to BEAT human level AI...

Re:Surely

[cr0nj0b]

my self driving car better have a GOTO or else

Re:Surely

[TsuruchiBrian]

When will humans be ready to drive safely?

Re:Surely

[ockegheim]

But you only have to beat human level AI at the specific task of driving a car. Given an autonomous car is able to look in all directions at once, that’s a huge start.

Re:Surely

[silentcoder]

You haven't really learned python until you've implemented Conway's game-of-life with no if statements or forks in the code at all.

Yes. It can be done. There are several ways actually. The easiest one is to build each condition handler as a function, and set up a dictionary with the test values as keys and the functions as values. Then it's a simple case of: some_dict[test_value]()

Slashdotters won't have a problem with this

[Anonymous Coward]

They won't have a problem driving with one hand.

Even if they are driving alone

[EmperorOfCanada]

Not only will it be couples and singles wailing away, there will be an increase in mobile prostitution. I say increase in that the last time I was in Vegas I was given "promotional" literature advertising that I could get a happy ending limo back to the airport.

While this is sort of a funny thing it is not inconsequential in that most of the time prostitution takes place in an alley or some dark spot near the stroll. I once worked in an office in the shadier part of town and we joked that we had a rubber tree out back as the discards were often thrown into its branches.

Now they won't have to pull into some dark corner but just circle the block for a short while.

Just a few of the zillion cultural and economic changes that self driving cars will impart.

Re:Even if they are driving alone

[GrahamCox]

last time I was in Vegas I was given "promotional" literature advertising that I could get a happy ending limo back to the airport

Since that's a very short ride, I imagine they'll be driving round and round the block. Just another way to inflate the charges, really.

Re:Even if they are driving alone

[rmdingler]

last time I was in Vegas I was given "promotional" literature advertising that I could get a happy ending limo back to the airport Since that's a very short ride, I imagine they'll be driving round and round the block. Just another way to inflate the charges, really.

My, erm, charges had better wind up inflated, since who knows what the hooker limo's going run me.

Re:Even if they are driving alone

[aquabat]

I think Uber just found their next business model. I'd like to see the cab companies compete with that!

Re:Even if they are driving alone

[silentcoder]

To be fair, that's a relatively minor one compared to the changes that CARS made. The Model-T offered relative privacy and comfort outside the house to the masses for the first time in human history - and a VERY large portion of the next generation were conceived on it's back seats.

Headline

[NotQuiteReal]

He died doing what he loved.

Re:Headline

[thebes]

what^H^H^H^Hwho

Re:Headline

[Mitreya]

He died doing what he loved.

Trying to quickly take over the wheel in a self-driving car?

Proving that AI is not ready to be "self-driving"?

Causing a very complex death liability lawsuit?

Debugging car AI for "unusual conditions"?

"Expert Warns" ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is there such a thing as an "expert" on sex in moving cars ?

What are the requirements to become one?

1... Find a partner.
2... ???
3... Profit !

Re:"Expert Warns" ?

[wisnoskij]

It is commonly believed that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert on something.

Re:"Expert Warns" ?

[Chrisq]

It is commonly believed that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert on something.

Well obviously this guy has had 10,000 hours of sex in moving cars.

Re:"Expert Warns" ?

[Nethemas the Great]

Lucky bastard

Re:Great

[GrahamCox]

There are a lot of assumptions baked into that rather flippant remark. I actually know some women, and most of them actually like sex. Some even enjoy it in cars, though now we're (long) out of our teens, it's not terribly appealing.

If the only way you can imagine having sex is by pressuring a woman into doing something she doesn't want to do, that says much more about you than it does about women. I feel sorry for you.

Re:Headline grammar....

[GrahamCox]

I'm just amazed there's such a thing as a "sex in moving cars expert".

Let me be the first to say...

[paulpach]

I am predicting that, once computers are doing the driving, there will be a lot more sex in cars

Fucking AWESOME!

Seriously, I would be hard pressed to come up with a better ad for self driving cars.

Re:Let me be the first to say...

[Virtucon]

well if it looked like a VW camper bus with a Z-bed in back with a Grateful Dead sticker in the back window.... Definitely better.

Re:Let me be the first to say...

[nukenerd]

if it looked like a VW camper bus with a Z-bed in back with a Grateful Dead sticker in the back window.... Definitely better.

No thanks, not my style and those VW vans were F*#i%ng awful. A hooker around my way was advertising rides in a stretch limo while being chauffered aroung town.

Re:Let me be the first to say...

[dasgoober]

"rides" ?

Uber?

[valnar]

I see a spin-off of the Uber service coming real soon...

Re:Uber?

[forty-2]

Füker?

Re: Great

[PPH]

The only difference in the game of love over the last few thousand years is that they've changed trumps from clubs to diamonds.

Autoerotic

[goombah99]

bada boom. I'll be here all week. Try the meat loaf

Re:Great

[PPH]

Not being able to bitch at the driver?

Re:Headline grammar....

[Mitreya]

there's such a thing as a "sex in moving cars expert".

There isn't.

This expert is the very first self-taught scholar from the rather large community of "sex in parked car" experts.

Re:Headline grammar....

[sexconker]

The reason is because "expert warns" isn't attention-grabbing. It's not just the headlines, all of journalism is rife with terrible fucking grammar and sentence construction.

Not self-driving

[Firethorn]

If the computer even has the option of saying "take over" before coming to a safe halt out of traffic somewhere in a worst case scenario, then I agree. It's not ready yet.

I'm fine with 'take over' for prototypes, where they're logging everything in order to expand capabilities. I'm not fine with it in production.

Though as I understand it they've started getting serious with collision avoidance systems - the car will stop itself if it thinks it's going to hit something.

As such, I find his "when" assumption that the computer WILL tell drivers to "Take over" at some moment's notice to be off.

Re:Not self-driving

[lgw]

Tesla cars aren't really self-driving - but they're misleadingly marketed as such. My (cheaper) car has smart cruise control (with collision avoidance) and lane keeping, so on the highway it's safe to take my hands of the wheel or be distracted - for a second or two. I'd never confuse it with self-driving, though apparently and idiot or two has. Tesla's system is a bit better, so more idiots confuse it with self-driving, abetted by the was Tesla markets the feature.

That's just it, it's not a matter of "self-driving" vs "not", it's a spectrum of automation levels, and people will get confused, or just reckless for convenience.

Re:Not self-driving

[TsuruchiBrian]

It's definitely self driving if you can put your tesla in autopilot, go to sleep and wake up the next morning hundreds of miles away from where you started. It may not be safe. But it's hard to argue that this happened purely by luck.

Re:Not self-driving

[Firethorn]

My (cheaper) car has smart cruise control (with collision avoidance) and lane keeping, so on the highway it's safe to take my hands of the wheel or be distracted - for a second or two.

Here's a question to get back to my point - What are the respective failure modes?

You mention that your car has collision avoidance. Have you looked into how smart that is? Is there ever a point at which it'll basically shit it's pants, tell you 'you drive', and disable itself completely? Or would it continue to do it's best to avoid hitting something until it comes to a stop because something is wrong?

Remember, I consider an 'autopilot' prone to unsafe deactivations to be unsafe and unready for the public market. That being said, I can be convinced that an assistive system could be sufficiently better to be safer, while not being a full auto-driver.

But that comes with the presumption that if it's a safety system that it be good enough that it's there to backup the driver - which means it has to be more reliable than a human drive, at least at that task. Lane following, collision avoidance, etc...

Re:Not self-driving

[lgw]

No, it's not, because "safe" is part of the definition. If something goes wrong, you have to take control of the Tesla on short notice, so it's unsafe to be too distracted. For a proper self-driving car, when something goes wrong it needs to pull over safely and stop on the side of the road, and only then make you take control.

Re:Not self-driving

[lgw]

For my car, it will never stop trying, but it's merely fancy cruise control. Worst case, it will be applying maximum power to the brakes during a collision to reduce the impact (this is an actual feature, along with seatbelt pre-tensioning and whatnot). No idea about other failure modes - construction zones etc, because I don't trust it enough to find out. No one sane would confuse it with self-driving (but there's always one guy in a crowd).

Tesla, I think, is in the uncanny valley, where it's good enough to fool you but has ugly failure modes.

Re:Not self-driving

[Nethemas the Great]

I can imagine that working well in the middle of LA rush hour. A Volvo shill are you...?

Re:Not self-driving

[Firethorn]

Tesla, I think, is in the uncanny valley, where it's good enough to fool you but has ugly failure modes.

Which could be a problem, but I'm willing to wait and see, hoping that they've put more thought into it.

If I hear about a slew of distracted driving accidents in Teslas, then I guess they didn't go good enough.

Re:Not self-driving

[lgw]

Ask yourself this: what's needed for a car without a steering wheel. That's a self-driving car.

We talking about various qualities of auto-pilot, but even recent airliner auto-pilots still need pilots in case something goes wrong, and no one would think of them as self-flying planes. Still, we could imagine a self-flying plane that just wouldn't need a pilot in the first place, right? That's the difference between "autopilot" and "self-driving".

Re:Not self-driving

[TsuruchiBrian]

So are human drivers that are unsafe not really drivers as well? Are drunk drivers not really drivers, because safety is part of the definition of a driver? That's just silly.

My wife's uncle got into a motorcycle accident when a huge spider crawled into his helmet. Is he not a driver (or in this case a rider) because he wasn't able to pull to the side of the road properly in an emergency?

There will always be circumstances for both human an autonomous drivers where it is known that good decisions can no longer be made. The fact that human beings get into car accidents all the time is proof that humans aren't perfect decision makers. Often times part of the problem is that they don't know when they are making bad decisions.

Obviously if a car beeped at the passenger in the driver seat to takeover every 2 minutes, I would agree that this car is not doing a whole lot of driving. If it can drive trough the night without incident, it's driving. How safe this driving is, is debatable, but it's definitely driving.

Re:Not self-driving

[lgw]

Think about airplanes: we call the automation "autopilot" not "self-flying plane" because a human pilot still needs to be there in case something goes more wrong than the autopilot can handle. A Tesla is the same way - it has an "autopilot", but you had better be able to return to control of the vehicle if you need to. When the automation is good enough that you could sell a model with no steering wheel, then it's a "self-driving car". The latter isn't that far off, so the difference matters.

Re:Not self-driving

[TsuruchiBrian]

There are different levels of autopilot. The simplest autopilots can maintain altitude course and airspeed. The more complex autopilots do not require human pilots, and there is everything in between.

A Tesla is the same way - it has an "autopilot", but you had better be able to return to control of the vehicle if you need to.

The difference being that there is a really good chance the tesla won't actually ask you to take control. You are thinking about it from the human's perspective (i.e. "can I stop paying attention"), and the answer is no you can't if you want to be safe. That doesn't mean it's not really driving from a technical perspective.

When the automation is good enough that you could sell a model with no steering wheel, then it's a "self-driving car". The latter isn't that far off, so the difference matters.

That's when it will be 100% obvious to everyone that the car is self driving. It will have been self driving before that point.

A good analogy is the turing test. The turing test proves beyond any reasonable doubt that a machine is intelligent, but machines will be intelligent long before any can pass the turing test.

And in other news, water is wet

[mark-t]

Can I mod a headline down as -1 Obvious?

Re:And in other news, water is wet

[jbmartin6]

Or maybe just suggest an alternative: "When freed from one thing, humans will do other things instead"

Re:And in other news, water is wet

[mark-t]

Well, more specifically, when freed from one thing, humans will tend towards practising something else that they would rather be doing.

And if you'd ever rather be doing something else than having sex when you otherwise have both sufficient energy and the free time then I would suggest that either you or your partner are just plain doing it wrong.

Re:And in other news, water is wet

[jbmartin6]

I would suggest that either you or your partner are just plain doing it wrong.

I have it on good authority that it is me.

This is what I have been saying about autos!

[nintendoeats]

My belief is that the automatic transmission has had the same effect. In order to make a manual work you need to pay attention to what is ahead of you and you need to have both hands available. Automation allows people to get distracted without consequence, making things all the worse when their attention is needed.

Nothing New

[twmcneil]

If like me you are old enough to know what a horn ring is, you may have encountered the dilemma I once faced. Approaching a curve while her hair was caught in the horn ring. What a decision...

Sex - guaranteed to get the attention

[wvmarle]

Of course they refer to sex, that always gets the attention. It is just one of many activities people may engage in as passenger of their own car, after all, the moment a car is truly self-driving there is no such thing as a "driver" any more. Everyone in the car is a passenger, and can not be counted upon to pay attention to the road - not even to have a driving license and the ability to do anything useful.

A self-driving car should NEVER try to hand back control to a human driver, without the human initiating the transfer. In case for example highway driving would become automated first, the self driving car may try to alert a human driver to take over when leaving the motorway, but without the human somehow accepting the takeover the car should simply come to a stop next to the road.

A car is self-driving, or it is not. This should be really clear to the people inside of it. Do you have to constantly pay attention - like now as driver - or can you dream off, go to sleep, play computer games, whatever, while the car is getting you to your destination? Whenever a self-driving car suddenly says, "help, human, take over this instant and get me out of this hairy situation that I can't handle", an accident will follow. Humans are way too slow in reacting to the request, then figuring out what's going on, and what they could possible do about it.

O, Canada,

[mxyztplk]

Maybe you should be somewhat more worried about automated car bombs.
Just a thought to get your minds off sex.

Are they self-driving?

[FrozenGeek]

If a "self-driving" car still requires a driver to be available at the drop of a hat, what's the point of the "self-driving" aspect? So I get to pay extra for the computer, the software, the sensors, but I still have to be ready and able to take over if the system cannot cope? What's the up-side for me?

Re:Are they self-driving?

[Chelloveck]

What's the up-side for me?

More sex. It's right there in the headline!

So what??

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

The car is self-driving, isn't that whole idea supposed to be about you not having to pay attention to the car?

What exactly is the problem? This is like complaining that the cruise control on your car "tries to maintain a steady speed".

Theoretically you should be able to drink, have sex, read a book, or play a video game if the car is actually self-driving. (Or do all four at the same time if you're creative.)

it's

[DougDot]

about fucking time.

Re:Headline grammar....

[shawn2772]

The reason is because "expert warns" isn't attention-grabbing. It's not just the headlines, all of journalism is rife with terrible fucking grammar and sentence construction.

Then clearly the sentence should have been written as: "Sex In Moving Cars Could Be Increased by Self-Driving Features, Expert Warns".

Gotta get the attention-grabber right up front.

You don't need a self-driving car

[mschuyler]

to have sex in a moving vehicle. It's done every day.

Breaking news

[undecim11]

When not preoccupied with boring shit, people will find something else to do. More at eleven.

Re:Not could, but will

[epyT-R]

or they need to realize that respecting liberty is more important than diminishing returns on safety.

Re:These sales ambassadors will stop at nothing.

[epyT-R]

Welcome to the future of being ruled by soccer mom sensibility..

So? Humans won't be ready.

[Mal-2]

Let's face it, humans pretty much suck at multitasking, especially when one of the activities is difficult -- like watching the road closely, at the level required to drive, but without actually doing the driving. Nobody except the most trained are going to be able to sustain this, even if they want to, and most won't want to in the first place. Any system that allows inattention to road conditions will inevitably lead to inattention to road conditions. The only proper response of a self-driving car to conditions it cannot handle is to pull off the road and give up. It should never, ever try to force control back onto a human driver while in motion, simple as that.

This is the crux of the problem, not the couple going at it like rabbits in the passenger compartment.

Won't anybody....

[meglon]

think of the fine Corinthian leather!

Centre of Excellence, huh?

[RightwingNutjob]

We've got 'Centers of Excellence' all over the place in my little corner of the Military Industrial Complex. Sometimes I think America's number one export is our bullshit. But at the same time I'm not sure whether to hang my head in shame for us or in embarrassment for the rest of the world that seems to eager to buy what we're selling.

Re:Not could, but will

[Joe_Dragon]

What about

bucket trucks? can they moved in to place even when braking the rules / off road of the road to work on stuff?

construction?

secret service protection no way they will let some auto drive system that can do what it takes even if that may be running someone over?

armed forces?

High risk / High value cargo?

Jail / Prison transport?

Is this a warning?

[SpaghettiPattern]

Or an insider's tip?

Re:Is this a warning?

[DutchUncle]

tip of . . . . what?

Expert at what?

[aquabat]

Now I'm really curious what Barrie Kirk's job duties entail, such that he has been having so much sex in the self driving cars, that he has become an expert at it.

Re: Great

[armanox]

Failure to consummate the marriage is grounds for annulment in some religious institutions...

Re: Great

[armanox]

And that is your prerogative to do so, just as plenty of other women choose to engage in sexual activity (and some even against the man's will). I have met women that will refuse to date a man if sex isn't part of the deal.

And this is bad because???

[Pepebuho]

And this is bad because???

Re: Great

[bsolar]

Failure to consummate the marriage is grounds for annulment in some religious institutions...

In many forms of non-religious marriages too.

The dead will drive!

[JumpSuit Boy]

I just wonder if the Tesla cars have a protocol to detect a dead passenger and what the the car will do with a non responsive passenger?

Re:The dead will drive!

[tinkerton]

We'll need some driveby autorecharge feature but then we'll finally be able to read the headline "Car Drives Around for Months with Dead Driver in it".

Caudine forks

[iTrawl]

There is no middle ground. The car should either drive itself safely (and pull over if there's a problem, like Volvo brag about theirs) or not have any self-driving ability at all. Half-ability with the human expected to instantly take over so the car doesn't go flying off a bridge is just stupid.

Why not?

[divide overflow]

It seems they use sex to sell everything, so why not use it to sell autonomous cars? We barely have enough free time anymore to have sex in the usual places. And if horny people provide greater incentives to make car guidance and accident prevention more reliable who am I to complain?

Juvenile Nutters or Experts?

[prefec2]

First, the average number of car passengers (or should I say inhabitants, as in the US people tend to live in their cars) is approx 1.3. This includes parents with children. Therefore, most cars are used by only one single adult which would imply that these people had to masturbate to meet the experts assumption. Second, what is it with you US citizens? Why do you need to have sex in uncomfortable places? Go to the beach, public park or your flipping room. Cars are so uncomfortable (exceptions are campers and vans).

Re:Juvenile Nutters or Experts?

[MBGMorden]

Go to the beach, public park or your flipping room. Cars are so uncomfortable (exceptions are campers and vans).

Well the first two are quite likely to get you arrested and on the sex offenders registry, which basically screws up the rest of your life. The second one is generally fine for adults, but teenagers often can't just go to their room and have sex because their parents are home, nor can they legally rent a hotel room, so they end up doing it in cars a lot.

Heck even as an adult it happens. If you live too far from where you're hanging out or have other people staying with you (ie, roommates who have children or children of your own if you're a single parent) then you can't just bring home some chick from the bar, though admittedly for adults a hotel room is a better option there.

Re:Juvenile Nutters or Experts?

[DutchUncle]

You only think it's an uncomfortable place because you're too young to remember big wide cars with a back seat you could sleep on.

Re:Not could, but will

[silentcoder]

Add all those up, assuming none of them decide self driving would actually meet their needs more, and you still have driving being a niche skill acquired by the tiny proportion of people who still have a need/interest in it. Much like horse-riding is now.

2/5000 mile high club

[j_l_cgull]

I'm sure a whole lot of folks have been waiting to get into the 2/5000 mile high club !

Most of the time I'm driving alone...

[Patent Lover]

... so this could get weird.

Much ado about nothing

[MBGMorden]

This article is crazy. Automated cars, when they happen, will certainly NOT have a fall back mode of saying "Take over!" while flying down the road at 75MPH. That will never be safe regardless of ice or any other road hazards.

IF there is a built in fallback when manual control is required, it will by necessity be a slot handoff. If the car's sensors are such that the computer can't navigate the terrain I'd expect it - much like a human driver - would be attempting to do so and slower and slower speeds until it reaches a point where the car pulls over or stops, shifts to neutral, and asks a manual driver to take over.

Will there be some times when it can't complete that process and an accident inevitably occurs? Absolutely. However if the RATE of accidents is lower under computer control then its still a net win.

There's around 18,000 accidents in the USA every day with human drivers at the wheel - trust me it's not as if the whole idea is a bust if a computer controlled car crashes every now and then.

The World According to Garp

[gachunt]

"...I had mine removed surgically under general anesthesia. But to have it bitten off in a Buick..."

Well...

[MitchDev]

if you have to be ready to take the wheel at a split second's notice, then your system is a waste of money

And this is a story because...

[evolutionary]

Hey, we're Canadians, we have a LITTLE British prudism in our blood. :D But, hey we see movies (see "Thinner" by Stephen King for example) where the lawyer's wife is giving him a blow job WHILE HE'S DRIVING. This stuff still goes on with or without robot cars. Would be a public safety benefit in this case. So I'm not even sure "more" sex in cars is even a logical conclusion. We are human, people with strong libido's are going to do this, in cars, out of cars, and on cars. (Hopefully not while moving...)

Warns?

[sabbede]

How about, "promises"?

Not as bad as it sounds

[Cro Magnon]

If people are going to have sex in a moving car, I'd rather it be an autonomous car.

Or.....

[TheCarp]

"Car expert's still not getting laid, Expert confirms"

New club...

[martinfb]

You've heard of the 'Mile High' club. Shall we call this the 'Mile Long' club. Presuming, of course, you can finish within a mile! ;)

Thinking this through

[AlanObject]

Of course what this means also is that you will have prostitutes working their trade from their cars. No need to pay for a room or take the risk of staying in a known location. The girl or boy would pick up the customer, program for a loop around the city or the park or whatever, and provide service in the custom reclined passenger seat. So how do you think the local mavens of moral rectitude are going to respond to that at the next city council meeting?

sex

[brunnegd]

Finally! The only good reason for self-driving cars

Damned Bucket Seats

[JimSadler]

Smaller cabins, as well as bucket seats, messed up car sex quite a bit. Bring back bench seats and bigger compartments and we can again enjoy sex while driving. Bucket seats killed drive-in movie theaters.

Nickelback, "Animals". And don't bump the switch.

[DutchUncle]

I seem to remember a (then) science-fiction story, a long time ago, about people bumping the "auto/manual" switch while performing non-driving activities.

Re: Great

[david_thornley]

Consenting to marry is typically consenting to have sex in general. It isn't consent for any particular time or place. If your spouse isn't as interested as you, talk about it sometime.

ambiguity

[eric_harris_76]

Didn't want to read the article until I knew what he was an expert in: self-driving cars, or having sex in a moving vehicle.

I'm guessing the latter. It's possible to have 5 or 10 years of experience in that, but not in self-driving cars.

not a problem

[osee]

That is so not a real problem. Just tint the windows. Or not.
More fun for me.