Slashdot Asks: How Long Before Self-Driving Cars Become Mainstream? 381
Here's the thing, regardless of one's stand on self-driving cars, they are no longer a futuristic idea. Major car companies such as Tesla, BMW, and Mercedes have already released an autonomous vehicle or plan to release one soon. Sergio Marchionne, an Italian-Canadian executive who is currently the CEO of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, recently said: It isn't pie in the sky. People are talking about 20 years. I think we will have it in five years. ZDNet has published its interview of Jim McBride, technical leader in Ford's autonomous vehicles team, who thinks self-driving cars are five years away from changing the world. At the same time, we must acknowledge the talks about these smart vehicles killing many jobs, and the security vulnerabilities we read every once in a while. What's your take on this?
Of course (Score:4, Insightful)
Just all those other projects that were only 20 years away, since the 1960's.
Re:Of course (Score:5, Funny)
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Except that self driving cars are already here. Tesla's autopilot for one.
Don't forget that airplane autopilot only used to fly the straight, constant altitude bits. Now they can do the whole lot including take off and landing. Similarly Tesla autopilot and similar technology, plus parking assist, and auto collision avoidance, are there now, and will evolve towards covering more scenarios.
Meanwhile the technology will meet with the Google approach of doing everything but in beta.
The gap between the two will
Re:Of course (Score:5, Insightful)
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Maybe if I could travel an interstate with no interaction, that might qualify.
You can. Tesla autopilot doesn't do intersections, or on-ramps, but once you are on the freeway, you can engage it, and it will self-drive until you reach your exit.
In Teslas with Autopilot, all the hardware is already present for full self-driving, and new features will be added as the software matures.
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Maybe if I could travel an interstate with no interaction, that might qualify.
You can. Tesla autopilot doesn't do intersections, or on-ramps, but once you are on the freeway, you can engage it, and it will self-drive until you reach your exit.
In Teslas with Autopilot, all the hardware is already present for full self-driving, and new features will be added as the software matures.
Or until you run into snow, poor lane markings, etc.... But hey, in ideal conditions it kinda works... It's a step forward, but there are still miles to go...
Re:Of course (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe if I could travel an interstate with no interaction, that might qualify.
You can. Tesla autopilot doesn't do intersections, or on-ramps, but once you are on the freeway, you can engage it, and it will self-drive until you reach your exit.
In Teslas with Autopilot, all the hardware is already present for full self-driving, and new features will be added as the software matures.
Or until you run into snow, poor lane markings, etc.... But hey, in ideal conditions it kinda works... It's a step forward, but there are still miles to go...
Yes, it is a step forward. And it is an important step forward. In terms of bootstrapping technology and making iterative improvements based on real world requirements, you now have a consumer car that can autonomously drive from point A to point B on the highway and then have a person take over. Combine that with already available features like self parking, and autonomous braking and you have most of the autonomous abilities you are talking about for fully autonomous. If all that is left is cars that have difficulty driving in poor weather and bad roads, then you are at least on-par with human drivers.
And better than human drivers if the car tells you to not drive in bad weather. The best way to drive in bad weather is not to.
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Killing jobs? (Score:2)
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' Self driving cars still require a human to take over whenever it doesn't know what to do...'
And if you believe that humans can do this after several hours or days of nothing happening, you're wrong.
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This is what I was thinking. It's an all or nothing situation.
If you car is driving itself you are not going to be paying any attention. You may be expected to. You may be at fault for not doing so. But you will not.
Even if you were paying as much attention to the road as you normally would, after a while your response time may start to lapse. At the very least, your normally unconscious decision making will be thrust into the conscious mind which will cause you to choke and make bad decisions.
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I would still want the manual controls left in place. Just in case I need to go off road.
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' Self driving cars still require a human to take over whenever it doesn't know what to do...'
And if you believe that humans can do this after several hours or days of nothing happening, you're wrong.
You are certainly correct that self driving cars cannot assume a driver is being attentive. But they could identify a problem is up ahead and give up control if it can warn the driver perhaps at least 30 seconds before he needs to take control. One example could be construction ahead.
Re:Killing jobs? (Score:5, Interesting)
In order to kill jobs, you have to have a fully autonomous vehicle which is not 5 years away.
Not so. The needs to replace long-haul truckers are a lot different from the needs to replace New York cabbies. A lot of jobs are of the low-hanging variety that can be easily replaced. Others may take more work, but suggesting that it won't happen until it can cover every specific need is like arguing that the printing press won't replace copying by hand because it can't do calligraphy.
As for concerns about sudden and unexpected obstructions, no amount of smarts, whether human or artificial, will allow a car to avoid hitting, say, a guy who suddenly lands in front of them after jumping off a highway overpass to commit suicide. But an autonomous car doesn't need to be able to do that to be better than us, since we can't do it either. For the stuff that is avoidable, the sensors on many of these cars are already good enough that they detect children running into the street and respond appropriately before a human has even noticed the issue. I've heard about a few cases where passengers wondered why their car was suddenly slowing down, only to realize as they moved forward that the car had apparently seen the feet of someone walking out from behind a parked car and taken the appropriate steps to ensure it didn't hit them.
Which isn't to say that the future is now, but it IS close.
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Why can't you anticipate that the man who looks like he's about to jump might actually jump?
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Why can't you anticipate that the man who looks like he's about to jump might actually jump?
In my head, he's jumping from the side of the overpass you can't see from below so that he won't see the car coming, so all you'd see is him falling at the last second. Regardless, feel free to insert your own unavoidable obstruction example in place of that one. ;)
Rnous trucks?e:Killing jobs? (Score:3)
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Some certainly do, but that's not true for most of them, let alone all. Most are owned and operated by companies that maintain fleets, rather than by owner-operators. There's nothing stopping owner-operators from buying autonomous vehicles, as you said, but that's not true for the majority of drivers who are simply employed to drive.
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Really? All of them?
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It's estimated that in the U.S. only 1 in 9 truckers is independent [truckinfo.net], with the majority of those being owner-operators. Because all owner-operators are independent, we can safely say that at least 8 out of 9 truckers do not own the truck they drive.
Re:Killing jobs? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ditto. People come up with all of these oddball scenarios (A dozen kids suddenly appear in the middle of highway. Hit them or run into a wall?), but fail to recognize the fact that a typical human driver would have only have looked up from his phone after he felt his car bowling over kids like tenpins.
To be successful a self driving car doesn't need to be perfect. It just needs to avoid killing 30,000 people a year as well as avoiding about 5.5 million auto accidents that in turn injured 2.5 million people.
Humans sort of suck at driving, actually, and I've got to think a vehicle with 360-degree sensors that can see and react to conditions in microseconds can do a lot better than us tired, distracted, drunk, road-raging meatbags.
Re:Killing jobs? (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously this. People are always coming up with rare occurrences where a computer might fail when humans fail at driving in huge numbers across the country on a minutely (is that a word?) basis. Dear lord, I drive in Atlanta traffic and if a self driving car can use a blinker, stay in their lane, and navigate a roundabout it is already leagues ahead of meatbag drivers.
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Agreed. I've seen a self-driving car signal, move safely towards the right curb when the bike lane changes from solid to dashed, stop at the red light, and then turn.
Most human drivers in the Bay Area can't even signal, let alone do "advanced" stuff like being in the right place or stopping at a red light. I get a great view of their antics from my perilous place in the bike lane.
Re:Killing jobs? (Score:5, Interesting)
no amount of smarts, whether human or artificial, will allow a car to avoid hitting, say, a guy who suddenly lands in front of them after jumping off a highway overpass to commit suicide.
Actually, the self-driving car is more likely to avoid an accident in a situation like that because it will react from 700 to 1500 milliseconds faster. At normal highway speed, that means about 100 feet (or 30 meters) of extra braking distance.
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Absolutely true. That example was merely making the point that if we're talking about contrived, unavoidable obstructions, it doesn't matter that an autonomous car can't dodge them, since we can't either. For situations where it's theoretically possible to avoid a collision, cars are already better than us in some areas and worse in others, but they are quickly catching up. It's just a matter of time. And, as you said, their ability to react faster is one that will eventually allow them to exceed our capabi
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e.g. say a plastic bag blows off the bridge in such a way that the car thinks it's a person jumping.
Cars use a multitude of different sensors. A plastic bag is easy distinguished from a "solid" body. E.g. it won't show up on radar.
Re:Killing jobs? (Score:4, Interesting)
Others may take more work, but suggesting that it won't happen until it can cover every specific need is like arguing that the printing press won't replace copying by hand because it can't do calligraphy.
Best analogy yet.
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If you're not actively driving, your attention will wander. Yerkes-Dodson law. By the time the alarm has alerted you, you'll be several car lengths beyond the red smear in the road.
I can only conclude, or at least hope, that you don't drive and never will.
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or if fails to see child running into the road...
A human is much more likely to do this than a self-driving car. The car doesn't get distracted, and a malfunctioning camera should be detected and result in the car taking itself out of service, since it should have redundant sensors. Those disagree too much, problem.
if you're driving in an extreme weather situation
I'll say that this alone is a reason to, more often than not, to simply stay home. Or even at work if you're there already.
That being said, I won't consider a car 'self driving' until you could take out the steering wheel and I'd still be ab
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Kill off freedom of association. Have only the government tell you what you can buy. When you can buy it and who you can buy it from.
Yes. Let's kill capitalism.
While we are at it (Score:2)
What are next week's lotto numbers?
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One, two, three, four, five.
Re:While we are at it (Score:4, Funny)
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Lou Bega is that you?
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I guarantee that the winning numbers will be some combination of the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 0.
Joke's on you! My lotto runs in hexadecimal.
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Is there some dead beef served by a cafe babe as a prize?
I'm leaning toward the 20 years estimate (Score:5, Insightful)
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I think the change is going to be gradual over 20 years. Within five years I think you'll see some companies pitching the idea of self-driving pods instead of light rail systems for local transport. Something like the Heathrow T5 pods but able to detect pedestrians in the way and stop. These would still require the roadway upgrades you need when you install a tramway, but would offer a more personalized service, better demand management and lower costs (no drivers, power delivery rails etc). The tech for th
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... We can certainly get there, but it isn't going to be cheap for a while yet.
Indeed. Furthermore, it will require a number of subsystems responsible for data collection and processing to be implemented in HA fashion. Possibly on both hardware and software level. Short of that, a SPOF could lead to some nasty scenarios. That means significantly higher production/maintenance costs than a comparable 'standard' car. I for one enjoy driving my car myself and have no interest in swapping it for a self-driving one until the day I can completely disconnect from the driving part without
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"Interestingly, I think highway driving is going to be an area that happens later."
There are many cars on the highway today that already have lane assist, lane centering and adaptive cruise control. I've logged thousands of miles in mine.
And as I pointed out above, you don't need the system to be perfect. It just needs to avoid some 5.5 million auto accidents that in turn injured 2.5 million people and killed 30,000 others.
Could some hardware failure run a car into a wall? Maybe. But that's one death vs all
Re:I'm leaning toward the 20 years estimate (Score:5, Insightful)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but we're not quite at the stage where you can just take a car off the road, slap on some sensors and some jazz in the steering wheel/pedals, and the car is ready to self-drive.
Regardless of how soon/distant the mechanics of a self driving car will be along, I would imagine that its going to be the insurance/legal industry that is going to dictate acceptance in the USA (and also for most western countries).
This sort of thing is going require a radical change in their thinking EG if a self driving car fails and causes a death, who is responsible: the owner? the car company? the engineer who signed off on the safety tests? The guy who performed the last software update? Whose insurance pays: the owner? the car company? the bureau that certified the car as safe?
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The non "driver" driver / rider / owner / renter may have to take the blame at least hope they don't pull some DMCA / EULA bs to with hold logs / source code from the jury.
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I would imagine that its going to be the insurance/legal industry that is going to dictate acceptance in the USA (and also for most western countries).
Agreed. All it takes is one "disaster scenario" where a self-driving car gets stuck in an unexpected situation and ends up causing multiple deaths, and this could cripple the industry if liability hasn't been properly worked out ahead of time.
This sort of thing is going require a radical change in their thinking EG if a self driving car fails and causes a death, who is responsible: the owner? the car company? the engineer who signed off on the safety tests? The guy who performed the last software update? Whose insurance pays: the owner? the car company? the bureau that certified the car as safe?
Yes. And that doesn't even get into the more murky moral waters of potential real-life trolley problems [wikipedia.org]. If an autonomous car is faced with a scenario of either killing its owner or potentially killing more people, what should it decide? If a car is ever programmed
Re:I'm leaning toward the 20 years estimate (Score:5, Informative)
"Volvo has announced it will accept "full liability" for accidents when one of its cars is driving autonomously"
https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
This has actually been discussed here before. The manufacturers seem to have a pretty good idea of how they want to do it. So at this point I don't see insurance being any significant hurdle.
Re:I'm leaning toward the 20 years estimate (Score:4, Informative)
Color me skeptical but I don't buy the manufacturers being altruistic - especially in the US. Case in point GM's ignition switch, or Ford's Pinot.
They're not being altruistic. Over in England/Europe there are a number of companies selling 'starter' cars that come with X years of free full coverage insurance. Insurance costs for new drivers over there have reached the point that it's often cheaper to buy the new car with included insurance than it is to buy an older used vehicle and pay.
Personally, I think that's a sign of a distorted market that isn't pricing risks right, but there you go. Companies offering insurance as a feature to sell the car.
Now introduce a self-driving vehicle that the company knows is going to get into accidents at 1% of the rate of traditional cars, much less the new driver cars. "Don't have to worry about liability insurance" can be a huge load off the mind of new drivers, drunk drivers, bad drivers, etc...
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has to be optimized for this
Not much. This is the autonomous car problem that I worked on in college. The dynamic models are all done, but you still have to characterize some parameters such as mass and dynamic motor response. There's about three dozen variables, some which are known a priori and others which can be measured as needed such as vehicle weight (can be calculated from strain measurements on the axle or other weight sensor). Optimal dynamics can be used that are as close to theoretically perfect as you can get.
As an OT:
All it takes is one bad bug (Score:3)
I have the feeling the real litmus test would be the first time they have a really bad bug, like permanent injury or death where you just have to admit the car was dead wrong. You can compare this with for example the medical industry or industrial accidents, a lot of people have died from human error. But despite all the checklists and routines and safety procedures people recognize that there's always the human factor. With medical equipment and industrial robots on the other hand, there's no tolerance fo
Self driving cars will make everything better (Score:2)
Osborne? (Score:5, Informative)
I think we will have it in five years
Sounds like a good candidate for the osborne effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Didn't see the benefit (Score:2)
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IMO you're still only seeing the edges of this.
> Pull up out front, get out, and have the car park itself
Why have the car park itself at the mall at all? Why not have it head home so someone else can use it while you shop? For that matter, I think car ownership itself will become much rarer, and membership in car collectives will be a much more common. Why spend $500 or more a month to have a car, plus insurance maintenance and gas, parking costs, etc, when a self driving car collective can give you a
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That's going to increase traffic congestion.
Anyway, we have already solved [sfpark.org] the problem of finding parking, and the technology is much simpler.
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IMO you're still only seeing the edges of this.
> Pull up out front, get out, and have the car park itself
Why have the car park itself at the mall at all? Why not have it head home so someone else can use it while you shop? For that matter, I think car ownership itself will become much rarer, and membership in car collectives will be a much more common. Why spend $500 or more a month to have a car, plus insurance maintenance and gas, parking costs, etc, when a self driving car collective can give you a vehicle on demand right to your door that will take you to transit, shopping etc and cost a lot less?
Expect this to be brought up a lot by opponents: "They don't want self-driving cars, they want removal of self-owned cars and -- little-by-little -- eventually the wholesale banning of them (via legal/financial/liability regulations)"
Based on some of the comments I've seen, they might be right.
I'll feel a lot more confident about self-driving cars when they're being promoted by people who DON'T live in mega-urban areas like New York and San Francisco and don't have an underlying hatred of car culture to beg
Re:Didn't see the benefit (Score:4, Insightful)
Why have the car park itself at the mall at all? Why not have it head home so someone else can use it while you shop?
Several reasons: 1) you're wasting a lot of gas having a car drive itself empty back home, 2) that's going to increase the traffic, and 3) how do you know exactly what time you'll be done shopping? Most likely the car won't be able to get back to pick you up when you're ready, so you have to sit around and wait. The whole point of having a car is to go when you want, and not have to wait for someone else's schedule.
For that matter, I think car ownership itself will become much rarer, and membership in car collectives will be a much more common.
Perhaps, but it seems like it'd be a lot cheaper and easier to just use RoboUber or RoboLyft. Big companies like that will be able to buy huge fleets of self-driving cars, and put together the infrastructure to dispatch them most efficiently. With so many of their cars on the road, your wait time will be tiny, whereas if you co-own a robocar (or even a few of them) with a handful of people, that one car won't be able to pick you up quickly since it likely won't be nearby when you summon it, or it'll be in use. I think you're right about car ownership becoming rarer, but not about the collectives. We'll just have a handful of big corporations owning most of the cars and we'll just pay for automated rides. Overall, though, it probably will be better and cheaper overall: far fewer vehicles will be needed (most cars just sit parked most of the time), and the total transportation cost for most people will probably be less, and we can also stop wasting so much land on parking lots, which will improve density.
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OVERLOAD (Score:4, Interesting)
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Will my one-month old son learn to drive? (Score:2)
When talking about self-driving cars I often ask questions similar to this
"Will my one-month old son learn to drive? Will my 2 y.o.? My 5 y.o.?"
A few years ago, those questions would get a laugh. Over time they've been given much more consideration.
Re:Will my one-month old son learn to drive? (Score:4, Insightful)
A few years ago, those questions would get a laugh. Over time they've been given much more consideration.
I've always figured that self-driving cars would cause driver-operated cars to go the way of the manual transmission in the USA - limited to the cheapest end of the market, the specialist, and the enthusiast.
Because, really, after the drunks are forced into them, I figure the next step is to get Johnny one because it's so much safer than him having to drive -and he likes it because he can do his cellphone stuff while going someplace.
Then, when it's time for him to buy his own vehicle, he'll pick another self-driver because he doesn't know how to manually operate one, and might not even have a license to operate.
Plus, with them out there, it becomes much easier to start raising the standards for a driver's license.
It's a matter of congestion (Score:2)
*If* self-driving cars can reduce congestion significantly, the changeover will be a tidal wave.
I live near enough to San Francisco, that I could make the trip easily enough for a relaxing day in a great city. Unfortunately, traffic is a nightmare. So I avoid it. Driving on the freeway to Sacramento is ridiculous. I avoid that too. Once there is a reasonable percentage of autonomous cars, that traffic should be greatly reduced by being more efficient. (Not the number of cars going down, but the overal
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Actually study traffic dynamics... (Score:3)
Actually, there's a lot more to congestion than just the amount of cars on the road. Adding lanes is actually counterproductive past a point. There's actually an amazing amount of overlap with fluid dynamics.
Roughly speaking, bigman's point about self driving cars reducing congestion could be true - with fewer accidents, not to mention distracted, stupid, lost, or road-raging drivers, you can go from a turbulant flow to a laminar flow, which can result in a much higher effective capacity.
Though I agree wi
Sex in cars (Score:2)
Bull (Score:3, Insightful)
There are no self-driving cars today. A self driving car is a car that can follow any standard road, anywhere. They can't. They are plagued by weird things of all sorts. Maybe we're five years away from ones that can handle the city roads. And another five years from ones that can handle effectively all roads. Then adoption can begin.
Video phones have existed since the '70s. I wouldn't say that they became popular until last year. And they still aren't anywhere near the majority.
I don't want to sit in a car, bored to tears, when I could be spending my time driving; driving's fun, and it's certainly more fun than sitting and waiting.
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Yes good points regarding difficulty of all roads.
I don't want to sit in a car, bored to tears, when I could be spending my time driving; driving's fun, and it's certainly more fun than sitting and waiting.
The efficiencies they're talking about are more along the lines of a trip taking a reasonable amount of time. Where my trip to work should be 25 minutes (no traffic), today it was 40 minutes. One woman in front of me was driving stupidly as she put on her makeup. If she were in a self-driving car instead, then she wouldn't have contributed to the traffic problem. Removing these inconsistent drivers would lead to less time on the road. So therefore, your choi
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I don't want to sit in a car, bored to tears, when I could be spending my time driving; driving's fun, and it's certainly more fun than sitting and waiting.
Yeah, driving in bumper-to-bumper stop-and-go traffic is a real blast! **rolls eyes**
Unknown Unknowns (Score:3)
My feeling is that we're "20 years" away from general, broad deployment of self driving cars, mostly because we don't know how they will work when taken out of the hands of the developers and given to the general population.
There's nothing preventing self-driving cars from working just fine in highly controlled situations - local shuttles on private property, maybe in bus lanes. We'll probably see some form of that first, along with self-driving features augmenting car's control systems (adaptive cruise controlling being one that we already have). I hope we see some of these applications in the next 5 years.
But, it's all the things that never occurred during testing that turn out to happen regularly in a broad deployment that will slow down general adoption. Not just in dealing with road hazards, but also in dealing with how everyone else drives.
My personal anecdote with a Google car in Austin highlights this: I was crossing a major street (Burnet) from a side street and was two cars behind the Google car. The Google car crossed with a green light and I entered the intersection with a green light. The Google car quickly slowed down and almost stopped in the middle of the lane immediately after crossing the intersection, leaving me and the car in front of me stranded in the intersection as the light proceeded to change. I doubt the Google car driver ever realized the hazard they created.
Beyond that, there's the liability issues. Self driving cars will kill people, that's a given. We can argue forever about whether or not their programming and decision making/judgement is better than a human's, but the fact remains that accidents will happen that are the direct result of decisions made by the car's software. Until the legal framework for handling this is worked out, even perfectly functioning self driving cars will have a hard time with broad adoption. The legal system moves slowly and it will likely take 5-15 years for these issues to be worked out to everyone's satisfaction.
So, "20 years" is probably right for some definition of "20 years".
-Chris
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Did you know that cross traffic is legally prohibited from entering the intersection until it's clear? Maybe we need more Google cars that understand traffic law to protect us from drivers who don't.
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Did you know that cross traffic is legally prohibited from entering the intersection until it's clear?
Yeah right, I seriously doubt you wait until the intersection is empty before entering it. You probably look ahead of the car in front of you and see if there's room, just like everyone else.
20 years before they are legal (Score:2)
The *tech* might be 5 years away (along with those transparent, 100% efficient solar panels), but legally, you can't put these cars on the road without a driver for another 20 years.
So "jobs" are still safe, sorta. There will have to be a human controller in the driver's seat for liability purposes at least until government catches up to the tech. And that's easily decades away, perhaps in the United States, the least progressive of all industrialized nations, that could be 100 years away.
We'll have single
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We'll have single payer healthcare before we have "driverless cars", because the insurance industry lobby will prevent it. If everyone had a perfectly-run, accident free, computer controlled vehicle that obeys every law and will always avoid an accident, they'd have to lower rates. And you *know* they aren't going to do that.
That would apply equally well to self-driving cars with a hands-off designated "driver". The insurance industry may be able to hold up the legalization of truly driverless autonomous vehicles, but I doubt they have the necessary influence to significantly delay self-driving technology altogether. If automated vehicles really do reduce accident rates as much as some expect, insurance rates will be forced to drop long before the laws regarding human drivers are revised.
Buggy whips. (Score:2)
Perhaps we can just require all self-driving cars to come with a decorative buggy whip?
Relevance of Italian-Canadian? (Score:3)
> Sergio Marchionne, an Italian-Canadian executive who is currently the CEO
I don't see any relevance at all to mentioning Marchionne's nationalities.
Particularly when there's no mention of nationality for the second person mentioned:
> Jim McBride, technical leader in Ford's autonomous vehicles team
Re:Relevance of Italian-Canadian? (Score:5, Funny)
> Sergio Marchionne, an Italian-Canadian executive who is currently the CEO
I don't see any relevance at all to mentioning Marchionne's nationalities.
Particularly when there's no mention of nationality for the second person mentioned:
> Jim McBride, technical leader in Ford's autonomous vehicles team
I often wonder why they do that. To me, it's an annoying interruption to the flow of the story.
And piling on ... they didn't say which parent was the Canadian or the Italian (although the name is a clue), and whether or not it was the immediate parents for a 50-50 genetic split, or if it was just a single male great-grandparent that was Italian.
If they're going to tell us he's Italian-Canadian, then why wouldn't they tell us which nationality donated the Y chromosome, and who donated the mitochondria? Without that knowledge, it's just pointless to say "Italian-Canadian".
Furthermore, there's cultural issues at stake.
If the mother was Canadian and the father Italian, then who did the cooking? Is it possible that Sergio had an Italian parent and was raised on Canadian food? If so, how would that affect his outlook on life? If that happened to me, I would be angry all the time.
Are we supposed to infer that as a Italian-Canadian he waves only one of his hands when he speaks?
Or it's possible that Starless is correct, and that the nationality is irrelevant.
Inequality (Score:2)
Another aspect of the "self driving car" discussion that I don't hear often is how it will cause inequality to increase. Driving into work I past at least 5 cars that are "for-sale by owner" that are under $2000. When, if ever, will the price point for an autonomous vehicle or even a pure electric now be down to the point where those with very limited income can afford one? I remember when the whole "cash for clunkers" promotion happened early in the Obama administration. That destroyed the market for inexp
Human drivers have "security vulnerabilities" too. (Score:2)
Flooding a human driver's "optical sensors" with laser light is a pretty effective DoS attack, when you come right down to it.
Can't wait (Score:3)
Humans, by and large, are terrible at operating motor vehicles, and can't be removed from the road soon enoug. Unfortunately, I think it's pretty much a given that the Dunning Kruger effect is going to dominate here and the last people to have the steering wheels pried from their hands will be the worst drivers.
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Humans, by and large, are terrible at operating motor vehicles, and can't be removed from the road soon enoug.
Agreed -- as soon as AI cars are significantly better than human drivers, their widespread adoption should save many lives.
Unfortunately, I think it's pretty much a given that the Dunning Kruger effect is going to dominate here and the last people to have the steering wheels pried from their hands will be the worst drivers.
I don't think it's a competency issue as much as a control and perception issue. Sure, many people will doubt the competency of the AI systems early on. But compare people's fear or cars vs. fear of planes. It's not just that a plane is flying through the air: people fear their lack of control, and they fear flying because the perception of large plane crashes captures their imaginat
Uhm, most of you haven't been paying attention (Score:2)
Nissan and Google have had actual working examples on the roads for a while now. If you still believe that 'it can't be done', then you are just fooling yourself. If you think 'a few sensors' and a microprocessor can't outperform a human, may I remind you of all the deaths that occur every year due to drunk drivers. The adoption of autonomous vehicles is limited only by schedules and regulation at this point. It is proven.
As to job loss, cars will have little to no impact in that realm. Yes I think tax
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I think you're being incredibly naive about the actual ability of Nisaan and Google's self-driving cars. Its still a LONG way from being ready for release into the wild and to the public.
You have no idea how endlessly creative the ignorant masses are in coming up with ever more stupid shit that they will inevitably presume the car must be able to automatically cope with.
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Heck you could even do things like refueling in motion. We do that with planes already, I can't image that getting it to work with a truck would be more difficult.
We could do it, but there's a reason most planes refuel on the ground. It's way easier.
Finally as to adoption, lets be realistic. No one over the age of about 40 right now will buy one of these. It's called inertia. Those of that age group may have witnessed the technological revolution, but they didn't grow up with it. They don't trust it. They will always believe themselves to be a better driver, despite evidence to the contrary.
I think older people (70+) are a prime market for these things - eyesight failing, reactions slowing, a self driving car is perfect.
Tech-Business-Politics-Culture: it all depends (Score:2)
Take it from the drone world. Car will learn from the drone industry...
FAA realized autonomous flying in 2007 (basis for the 2012 act). The tech became realized in 2013 (6yrs) and cool in 2014 (7ys). And "niche mainstream" (i.e. single purpose camera drones) this year (10yrs). Regulations are finally catching up and we'll really hit mainstream in say 2019 as long as a regulation disaster doesn't happen & companies continue to grow with new applications.
The same will happen for autonomous cars... just 50
It will happen in stages (Score:2)
It could be fifty years before self-driving cars completely replace the current transportation networks. I expect the vehicles will make significant inroads in contained areas within five years. Airports are probably already testing automated vehicles for use on the tarmac. Facilities like seaports and factory complexes won't be far behind. Anywhere that you can easily separated human drivers from robotic vehicles should be easy to convert.
I expect the second stage to happen within 15 years. This will invo
Define "mainstream" (Score:2)
If "mainstream" means "the majority of cars on the roads", then it'll be at least 20 years. Why? Because the effective lifetime of a car is approaching 20 years these days. People are not going to be going out and buying a new car to replace a perfectly good car, even if the new (expensive) car is self-driving.
That said, once it's an option on (most) every car, when people replace their car(s), the replacements WILL be self-driving.
They won't (Score:2)
Hybrids are readily available, but they aren't mainstream. Sure, people can purchase them, but the cost and performance differentials keep many from doing so. Likewise, cars that can automatically brake or self-park have been available for some time, but people don't buy vehicles for that feature, its more of a perk. Even with wide available, it will be decades before cars with these features are in the majority or mainstream. The same will be true of autonomous vehicles. They will be available, but they
Re:Wha' happen!? To the NASA story? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Wha' happen!? To the NASA story? (Score:5, Funny)
Are we actually trying to keep dupes off the front page now? Wow times they are a changin.
Thanks for letting us know.
Re:Wha' happen!? To the NASA story? (Score:5, Interesting)
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You've been doing a good job, manisha.
Re:Wha' happen!? To the NASA story? (Score:5, Interesting)
Pulling it is the worst thing you can do, even if it's a dupe, because *comments*.
If you can't detect dupes before putting them up, don't bother.
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Forget about the rural dirt roads with snow - those are easy.
What I want to know is how they will handle my urban dirt (and paved) roads (yay Michigan!) whose pothole topology changes daily. And these are not small holes, but knock-your-fillings-out-destroy-your-suspension holes.
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I can see that self driving cars will be a lot better than I am at avoiding potholes, and the car in front can warn others behind of any tricky ones.
I imagine that at least initially the cars might refuse to drive in some conditions (like 2 feet of fresh snow); while this might well irritate people, way too many drivers overestimate what they and their car can do in those types of conditions. AWD cars with all season radials aren't magic...
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Everyone that keeps saying that the autonomous cars are just around the corner all live in big cities. To get to the point they work without a steering wheel (aka manual mode) these companies have to solve for rural driving. Until the cars can reliably drive up a back woods, rocky, single lane mountain road they are worthless.
70+% of Americans live in cities or suburbs. And they produce almost all the GDP. So it's hardly "worthless" if driverless cars have a problem with places that people rarely need to be.
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If you own a steering wheel free self-driver, I'd imagine that getting a manual vehicle would still be easy. Using an app on the latest device, you decide which vehicle you want to rent. Then, if it's capable of self-driving, you simply step out your door at the appropriate time and it's waiting for you and your camping gear.
If it's not capable of self driving, you load up your stuff, and your car takes you to the manual drive lot, that might actually be just outside of the park where you need manual driv