The vehicles tell each other explicitly where they are.
So suddenly this discussion has turned from, can a robot car work effectively, to every car must be a robot car for it to work, and all humans and pets and wildlife and loose rubbish must carry tracking devices to ensure the robot car works properly. Seriously, that is your sales pitch?
When they're stuck in traffic and look over to see the guy in the next car over watching a movie or working or napping
People do that already:)
Maybe you live somewhere where driving is still fun, but I live in the mid-Atlantic and most of the time, it's just a chore.
Where I live we have dedicated bus lanes. So a 15km commute in a car takes an hour, whereas the bus takes 30 minutes. No amount of robotics will improve the car's situation.
The liability insurance, at least, should be almost negligible, and far below the rates I'm currently paying.
Should be, but won't be. Why not? Because when a human goes wrong, it affects 1 or 2 other humans. When software goes wrong, it could affect thousands.
The risk profile to the manufacturer is far greater since punitive damages are often calculated on the value of the company (ie a negligence suit against Google could see a payout in the 9 figure range)
Bleating out "millennials" is not "critical thinking", even if it's in support of your argument. You'd know that if you were employing critical thinking.
And frankly, it seems to me that the people who think autonomous vehicles are literally an impossible technology, lack both vision and imagination. They should hand in their Slashdot ids and go start a subreddit or something, and maybe they'll improve the quality of both sites...
Well I haven't seen that argument being made anywhere. What I have seen is the whole concept of viable personal transport being simplified into a safety argument.
I dispute for a few of reasons:
1. There is a lot more to driving than safety (eg we accept certain risks in the name of freedom of choice, and quality of life)
2. If safety is your main driver, how about starting with mandatory seatbelt laws? Mandatory helmets would also help, but see point 1 above.
3. The biggest issue in large cities is not safety but congestion. A robot car does nothing to solve this (in fact it could make it worse as public transport will now have less efficient competition.
If you love the technology, then why not robot buses and trains? The car simply does not scale, so any car, petrol, electric, human or robot driven all fails the same scale problem.
Would you feel safer if your 17 year old / 71 year old / relative./neighbor rode in a driverless car or a drove themselves.
Also, would you feel safer in a NYC cab driven by an immigrant or in a driverless car.
Those aren't the right questions for most people who don't have those requirements. Or do you honestly think that loading the question to suit you preferred answer is really a robust method?
For the distance driven by autonomous cars, human drivers would statistically have had a couple dozen crashes already.
Yeah because human drivers drive on more than just one stretch of road over and over again.
You'll excuse me if I wait til some real world tests are done, on unknown roads in unknown conditions, you know like humans have to put up with...
For some reason, your comment (and many others) reminded me of Caveman Science Fiction. It's strange how many Luddites there are on Slashdot...
What's strange is how many so called "nerds" leave their critical thinking at the door as soon as "cool new technology!" gets published.
Or do you own a Segway too?
When the automobile first arrived on the scene, many of the people who shouted "get a horse" in the wake of a "stink wagon" likely would have expressed a fear of going for a ride in one. We humans tend to be conservative that way; up to a point, it's a survival trait.
Remember when the Segway came out and it was the future of personal transport? Yeah, not all technology is successful...
No one is disputing that America has a lot of cars, but I don't see how that relates to people moving to self-driving cars?
TFA says most people don't want them. I understand this is a nerd forum, and nerds love technology even when it makes no sense, but you have to accept that a lot of people probably don't care for automated cars*.
Note: I do some some value in a robot car for some people (old, young, drunk etc), but there's a whole lot more where people actually want to drive themselves.
Driving isn't even a right, it's a privilege, tell a judge that takes away your license for DUI that he's violating your constitutional right to drive, and he'll laugh you out of the court.
Yet owning an AK47 is. Don't you find that absurd?
I do have children, but don't worry, they are all grown up so I can't poison them with my crazy thinking anymore. Neither one has a car because they both live in World Class cities with adequate transit (NYC & Paris)
Good point. Do you think they'll ever own robot cars? Cars make no sense in well designed large cities, since as you say good public transport can do it better.
People are just not good drivers, surely you can admit to that?
But not all people. Most people get through their whole lives without dying in a car accident.
You won't even notice that you bought a self-driving car because it's not going to be a revolution, it's going to be a slow-evolution.
I'll know because it'll cost more. Or do you think all cameras, radar, sonar, liability insurance etc is free?
Lets see, a computer with a sample rate of 1000 Hz always on, always watching 360 degrees or Grandma that hasn't had to renew her license since she started losing vision or a teenager trying to take a selfie.
But can't recognise the safer option between running over a sandbag or hitting a bus.
And most people aren't grandmas, but nice attempt at a strawman.
I don't care if it takes twice as long to get anywhere (30 MPH max), as long as I can turn my brain off and do something else I'm happy.
You already have that option, it's called a public transport.
If you don't think very hard about it. There isn't much you can do in the way of slowing down from 2 mph,
You can stop can;t you? The stupid google car couldn't even figure this out, hence the crash.
so the only way it could have avoided the accident is speeding up to get out of the way
Also an option, but wouldn't be permissible with AI. Hence we can conclude that the stupid google car is more stupid because it's crash avoidance options are limited
...here you are suggesting that the problem with the AI is that it can't legally be impatient like a human, implying you would have went in front of the bus same as the safety driver.
Because you, like all drivers, are so much better than the average driver.
I've never crashed into a bus, so I'm doing better than this stupid robot car. I will also bet you my house that I can get to my destination quicker than it most of the time.
So yeah let's not play around with vagaries, get back to me when those very real, measurable metrics improve.
There is nothing arbitrary about it. On the road there exists the actual road rules, and animal instinct. It doesn't matter if the road rules say I have right of way, If I see a bus barrelling towards me I'll do whatever is on my power to avoid it. AI can't have that programmed into it's logic and still remain legal.
It should be kept in mind that if both vehicles were autonomous, they could have automatically negotiated what to do before either moved an inch, and this type of incident would never happen.
Sweet so we'll all be moving at 2mph. Good luck selling that dream...
Slashdot Mirror
The vehicles tell each other explicitly where they are.
So suddenly this discussion has turned from, can a robot car work effectively, to every car must be a robot car for it to work, and all humans and pets and wildlife and loose rubbish must carry tracking devices to ensure the robot car works properly. Seriously, that is your sales pitch?
When they're stuck in traffic and look over to see the guy in the next car over watching a movie or working or napping
People do that already :)
Maybe you live somewhere where driving is still fun, but I live in the mid-Atlantic and most of the time, it's just a chore.
Where I live we have dedicated bus lanes. So a 15km commute in a car takes an hour, whereas the bus takes 30 minutes. No amount of robotics will improve the car's situation.
The liability insurance, at least, should be almost negligible, and far below the rates I'm currently paying.
Should be, but won't be. Why not? Because when a human goes wrong, it affects 1 or 2 other humans. When software goes wrong, it could affect thousands.
The risk profile to the manufacturer is far greater since punitive damages are often calculated on the value of the company (ie a negligence suit against Google could see a payout in the 9 figure range)
Bleating out "millennials" is not "critical thinking", even if it's in support of your argument. You'd know that if you were employing critical thinking.
I didn't say that...
And frankly, it seems to me that the people who think autonomous vehicles are literally an impossible technology, lack both vision and imagination. They should hand in their Slashdot ids and go start a subreddit or something, and maybe they'll improve the quality of both sites...
Well I haven't seen that argument being made anywhere. What I have seen is the whole concept of viable personal transport being simplified into a safety argument.
I dispute for a few of reasons:
1. There is a lot more to driving than safety (eg we accept certain risks in the name of freedom of choice, and quality of life)
2. If safety is your main driver, how about starting with mandatory seatbelt laws? Mandatory helmets would also help, but see point 1 above.
3. The biggest issue in large cities is not safety but congestion. A robot car does nothing to solve this (in fact it could make it worse as public transport will now have less efficient competition.
If you love the technology, then why not robot buses and trains? The car simply does not scale, so any car, petrol, electric, human or robot driven all fails the same scale problem.
How bad was it about 100 years ago when people had to trust their lives in mechanical vehicles instead of those trusty horses. Same logic really.
Yet horses still exist...
They're only of average intelligence. Who cares what most people think? Kind of hard to argue with science.
Actually it's quite easy, since we live in a democracy...
Here are the right questions.
Would you feel safer if your 17 year old / 71 year old / relative./neighbor rode in a driverless car or a drove themselves.
Also, would you feel safer in a NYC cab driven by an immigrant or in a driverless car.
Those aren't the right questions for most people who don't have those requirements. Or do you honestly think that loading the question to suit you preferred answer is really a robust method?
For the distance driven by autonomous cars, human drivers would statistically have had a couple dozen crashes already.
Yeah because human drivers drive on more than just one stretch of road over and over again. You'll excuse me if I wait til some real world tests are done, on unknown roads in unknown conditions, you know like humans have to put up with...
Yeah, the rest of us don't freak out when we're in taxis.
speak for yourself...
For some reason, your comment (and many others) reminded me of Caveman Science Fiction. It's strange how many Luddites there are on Slashdot...
What's strange is how many so called "nerds" leave their critical thinking at the door as soon as "cool new technology!" gets published.
Or do you own a Segway too?
The numbers were higher for the flying car...
When the automobile first arrived on the scene, many of the people who shouted "get a horse" in the wake of a "stink wagon" likely would have expressed a fear of going for a ride in one. We humans tend to be conservative that way; up to a point, it's a survival trait.
Remember when the Segway came out and it was the future of personal transport? Yeah, not all technology is successful...
If there is a safer way to do things and the only downside is not being able to drive on main roads, then we should go for it.
I think that's the same reasoning they used to implement the TSA...
No one is disputing that America has a lot of cars, but I don't see how that relates to people moving to self-driving cars?
TFA says most people don't want them. I understand this is a nerd forum, and nerds love technology even when it makes no sense, but you have to accept that a lot of people probably don't care for automated cars*.
Note: I do some some value in a robot car for some people (old, young, drunk etc), but there's a whole lot more where people actually want to drive themselves.
Driving isn't even a right, it's a privilege, tell a judge that takes away your license for DUI that he's violating your constitutional right to drive, and he'll laugh you out of the court.
Yet owning an AK47 is. Don't you find that absurd?
I do have children, but don't worry, they are all grown up so I can't poison them with my crazy thinking anymore. Neither one has a car because they both live in World Class cities with adequate transit (NYC & Paris)
Good point. Do you think they'll ever own robot cars? Cars make no sense in well designed large cities, since as you say good public transport can do it better.
People are just not good drivers, surely you can admit to that?
But not all people. Most people get through their whole lives without dying in a car accident.
You won't even notice that you bought a self-driving car because it's not going to be a revolution, it's going to be a slow-evolution.
I'll know because it'll cost more. Or do you think all cameras, radar, sonar, liability insurance etc is free?
They wouldn't feel safe in a mechanical beast.
Lets see, a computer with a sample rate of 1000 Hz always on, always watching 360 degrees or Grandma that hasn't had to renew her license since she started losing vision or a teenager trying to take a selfie.
But can't recognise the safer option between running over a sandbag or hitting a bus.
And most people aren't grandmas, but nice attempt at a strawman.
I don't care if it takes twice as long to get anywhere (30 MPH max), as long as I can turn my brain off and do something else I'm happy.
You already have that option, it's called a public transport.
At 55 mph, it takes roughly 1/1000th of a second to travel an inch. With radio communication and the speed of computer hardware, that's a long time.
Assuming AI image recognition works as well as a human, which it doesn't.
There wouldn't be any perceptible lag, unlike with human drivers, who can take seconds to move after the light turns green.
Unless there was a sandbag on the road, then it would drive into a bus...
My point is that the money is there already, it's just not being used very wisely.
Or it's both. The current funding could be applied better, but once that is sorted, more of it will help.
If you don't think very hard about it. There isn't much you can do in the way of slowing down from 2 mph, You can stop can;t you? The stupid google car couldn't even figure this out, hence the crash.
so the only way it could have avoided the accident is speeding up to get out of the way
Also an option, but wouldn't be permissible with AI. Hence we can conclude that the stupid google car is more stupid because it's crash avoidance options are limited
...here you are suggesting that the problem with the AI is that it can't legally be impatient like a human, implying you would have went in front of the bus same as the safety driver.
Er no, better go back and read it again...
Because you, like all drivers, are so much better than the average driver.
I've never crashed into a bus, so I'm doing better than this stupid robot car. I will also bet you my house that I can get to my destination quicker than it most of the time.
So yeah let's not play around with vagaries, get back to me when those very real, measurable metrics improve.
There is nothing arbitrary about it. On the road there exists the actual road rules, and animal instinct. It doesn't matter if the road rules say I have right of way, If I see a bus barrelling towards me I'll do whatever is on my power to avoid it. AI can't have that programmed into it's logic and still remain legal.
It should be kept in mind that if both vehicles were autonomous, they could have automatically negotiated what to do before either moved an inch, and this type of incident would never happen.
Sweet so we'll all be moving at 2mph. Good luck selling that dream...
Are you assuming that they can't do this better than the average human right now?
They can't do better than me, and when I'm thinking about my next car purchase, that is all that counts.