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California Scraps Safety Driver Rules for Self-Driving Cars (nytimes.com)
California regulators have given the green light to truly driverless cars. From a report: The state's Department of Motor Vehicles said Monday that it was eliminating a requirement for autonomous vehicles to have a person in the driver's seat to take over in the event of an emergency. The new rule goes into effect on April 2. California has given 50 companies a license to test self-driving vehicles in the state. The new rules also require companies to be able to operate the vehicle remotely -- a bit like a flying military drone -- and communicate with law enforcement and other drivers when something goes wrong. The changes signal a step toward the wider deployment of autonomous vehicles. One of the main economic benefits praised by proponents of driverless vehicles is that they will not be limited by human boundaries and can do things like operate 24 hours in a row without a drop-off in alertness or attentiveness. Taking the human out of the front seat is an important psychological and logistical step before truly driverless cars can hit the road. "This is a major step forward for autonomous technology in California," said Jean Shiomoto, director of California's D.M.V. "Safety is our top concern and we are ready to begin working with manufacturers that are prepared to test fully driverless vehicles in California."
Should the owner of a self-driving car be required to have a driver's license? And if the owner is not required to have a driver's license, and he's not driving the vehicle, should he be required to have insurance? Shouldn't the manufacturer be the one insured against any liability if there is an accident?
You are welcome on my lawn.
and can you get a DUI in driverless car?
If we set aside the security considerations, I wonder if this offers a reasonable compromise. Until a car can be made fully autonomous, they could run on auto pilot until the computer encounters a problematic situation. For example, it approaches a construction zone on the highway. The car connects to a human driver in an op center that takes control, navigates the obstacle, then returns control to the computer. I wonder if this is what companies like Uber and Lyft are working toward?
Nothing! Is good idea!
- Not a Russian hacker
I stole this Sig
If we set aside the security considerations, I wonder if this offers a reasonable compromise. Until a car can be made fully autonomous, they could run on auto pilot until the computer encounters a problematic situation. For example, it approaches a construction zone on the highway. The car connects to a human driver in an op center that takes control, navigates the obstacle, then returns control to the computer. I wonder if this is what companies like Uber and Lyft are working toward?
You better have pretty low latency in these situations, because these can be the kind where every millisecond counts!
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
No, cross-country latency can be as low as 40ms and in these situations it would be perfectly acceptable to slow down and proceed cautiously. The car can stop and wait for instructions if it's so congested or pretty desolate.
My concern would be dealing with roads where the network doesn't reach. If you use 4g, you are going to find long stretches of PCH pretty undrivable.
You better have pretty low latency in these situations, because these can be the kind where every millisecond counts!
"Your journey is very important to us. Your driving emergency will be processed in the order it was received. There are currently THREE passengers before you. Thank you for your patience. Your journey is very important..."
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
satellite in motion link will have high pings
I'm amazed she could even keep a straight face when she said that.
She immediately followed up with:
"One of the main economic benefits praised by proponents of driverless vehicles..."
ah ha. NOW we're getting to why this legislation passed.
... they could run on auto pilot until the computer encounters a problematic situation. For example, it approaches a construction zone on the highway. The car connects to a human driver in an op center that takes control, ...
Kind of like a reverse Clippy: "It appears that I need to navigate through a construction zone. Can I get some help?"
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Driving is not some poky video game that one can pause.
Tell that to the people on the CA 405.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
The car connects to a human driver in an op center that takes control, navigates the obstacle, then returns control to the computer.
That would be an incredibly high-stress job. Can you imagine working the "call center"? Perpetually being thrown blindly into real-time situations that require you to assess the situation and act immediately with dire consequences for failure... That would royally suck. These cars had better fail safe.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
With proper sensors, the latency could be less important.
I almost rear ended a truck this morning. I was switching lanes by checking my rearview, and got distracted by a box van in the opposite lane carrying a load of wood on the busy highway with it's back door open. My mind went to what would happen if those boards fell out. When my attention came back to center, I was uncomfortably close to the pick-up in front of me that was stopping for traffic without brake lights. A quick lane change is what saved me, as there is no way I could have stopped in time.
A remotely controlled AV would have a simulated 360view camera, and a range sensorst that would have detected the pick-up slowing before I did.
On a rainy or foggy night, the AV would have infrared or even sonic sensors to detect obstacles. Possibly even around a corner. It could have an algorithm matched to a internal map that would let it know exactly how fast it could go around a corner without exceeding its ability to detect and stop before hitting an object.
There are things that computers are good at. There are things that humans are good at. We need to be realistic about what each can do.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
So, maybe automated cars aren't going to work for BLM dirt roads or blizzards. It doesn't mean they don't have a place, and can't replace a lot of the cars on the road.
We really are new at the self-driving thing at this point. And it's already better than a lot of drivers in a lot of situations. I think we're on the exponential upswing in self-driving tech, and not at any sort of plateau. The amount of money and engineering that's being poured into it now is already rapidly producing results, and will continue to produce results in the future.
I don't expect that this will be solved in one day, but I also expect that we're going to see some radical shifts in our commuting. Maybe an automated commute around Billings won't be in the cards in the next five years, but I'd be surprised if a commute around Houston or LA wasn't. I'm in the upper midwest, and the commutes for my wife and I would be largely doable at this point, except for a week or two every year when the road conditions would likely be too bad for the current tech to handle. But then again, those two weeks are bad enough that the current humans can't really do it either, drifting around because they can't see the lines, sliding off the road, sliding through stops, etc.
I do agree with your skepticism, but only in part. Most of those issues are issues today, and there aren't large-scale issues with them. Yes, OnStar can be hacked, and does get hacked once in awhile. Keyless entry gets hacked. Humans are shitheads. None of that changes with autonomous cars. The same laws still apply. If you're dangerously interfering with a driverless car, you're going to get arrested same as if you were doing that with a regular car.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
Soon the NSA will be able to drive people away to their secret bases for "interrogation".
Soon the terrorists will be able to simultaneously turn THOUSANDS of cars, all over the country, into drive-through-the-crowd projectiles - without requiring thousands of suicidal drivers to operate them.
AND without even having to pay for a rental.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way