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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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.

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

[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.

"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" ?

[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: 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?

And in other news, water is wet

[mark-t]

Can I mod a headline down as -1 Obvious?

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:Surely

[cr0nj0b]

my self driving car better have a GOTO or else