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Post by ganews on Jan 5, 2017 15:58:25 GMT -5
Time to make a thread for this great idea/terrible idea. I know this is going to work great and the tech will be perfect and there will be no drawbacks for poor people so stop worrying, but the trial in Boston was cancelled for rain. Better figure that one out, guys, it rains sometimes. |
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Post by pairesta on Jan 6, 2017 11:14:39 GMT -5
Surely I am not the only one who heard "self driving car" and immediately got excited about how drunk I can get now and never have to worry about how I'd be getting home.
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Post by rimjobflashmob on Jan 6, 2017 11:32:53 GMT -5
Does this mean we can finally make Knight Rider a reality?
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Post by pairesta on Jan 6, 2017 11:39:28 GMT -5
Yes, but tragically, not Knight Boat. Damn fjords.
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Post by rimjobflashmob on Jan 6, 2017 11:48:40 GMT -5
I guess that means Knight Aeroplane Over the Sea is out of the question.
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Post by Floyd Diabolical Barber on Jan 6, 2017 16:31:55 GMT -5
As somebody who has worked in electronics technology for decades, and pretty much seen the day to day realities of the entire life chain of various products from manufacturing to installation to service and maintenance, I'm against it. I think it's a terrible idea that will likely have some really bad unintended consequences. But take my opinions with a grain of salt. I think elevators are death traps, and I'm still not entirely sold on the automatic transmission.
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Post by nowimnothing on Jan 6, 2017 19:52:36 GMT -5
It is amazing how far they have come in so little time. But it wasn't real to me until they started incorporating pieces of the technology into production cars. Jumping right into full automation is just too big of a leap. You have to ease the public into it with expansions of things we are already comfortable with like cruise control. So we start to get automatic parallel parking, emergency braking and lane assist. Once we are comfortable with that then we can slide into more and more automation. I think it is unavoidable at this point though, humans are terrible drivers. If terrorists killed as many people as traffic accidents no one would ever leave their house.
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Post by pairesta on Jan 6, 2017 20:04:06 GMT -5
It is amazing how far they have come in so little time. But it wasn't real to me until they started incorporating pieces of the technology into production cars. Jumping right into full automation is just too big of a leap. You have to ease the public into it with expansions of things we are already comfortable with like cruise control. So we start to get automatic parallel parking, emergency braking and lane assist. Once we are comfortable with that then we can slide into more and more automation. I think it is unavoidable at this point though, humans are terrible drivers. If terrorists killed as many people as traffic accidents no one would ever leave their house. A self-parking car would sell itself. Drop you off at the front of the mall/restaurant, you summon it like Batman when you're done. |
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Post by haysoos on Jan 7, 2017 12:01:52 GMT -5
The biggest problem I see with driverless cars is the insurance issue. When an accident does occur with one of these vehicles, who will ultimately be responsible? Is Google really ready to take on the liability shitstorm that will result? How ready will juries be to entertain the possibility that a software error was the cause of the malfunction? How many multi-million dollar payouts will it take before they abandon the project?
That said, I can easily see a day within the next 30 years where you will have to pay a massive insurance premium for the privilege of being able to pilot your vehicle yourself. When all the other cars are able to communicate with each other, and you're the sole rogue element on the road, it will be the end of the "freedom of the road" we regularly kill ourselves for now.
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Post by ganews on Jan 7, 2017 19:07:06 GMT -5
The biggest problem I see with driverless cars is the insurance issue. When an accident does occur with one of these vehicles, who will ultimately be responsible? Is Google really ready to take on the liability shitstorm that will result? How ready will juries be to entertain the possibility that a software error was the cause of the malfunction? How many multi-million dollar payouts will it take before they abandon the project? That said, I can easily see a day within the next 30 years where you will have to pay a massive insurance premium for the privilege of being able to pilot your vehicle yourself. When all the other cars are able to communicate with each other, and you're the sole rogue element on the road, it will be the end of the "freedom of the road" we regularly kill ourselves for now. Someday, someday it will happen in a big way. That necessitates that someone somewhere has to be the last sucker to pay full price for a new manual drive car off the lot. And if conventional cars become illegal or prohibitely expensive, it will leave behind a great swath of poor people with hundreds and thousands of dollars invested in outmoded technology. The best way to press forward full driverless adoption would therefore be to make the tech-backwards compatible. (Even then that's extra money required, a tough deal if you could barely afford the beater you bought to get to work.) But there's currently no money in selling to the bottom of the market like that. |
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LazBro
Prolific Poster 
Posts: 10,278 
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Post by LazBro on Jan 9, 2017 15:30:32 GMT -5
I believe that full automation is in our future, and I hope that future is far enough away that I'm dead before I see it. I absolutely love driving, it is one of my favorite activities, and I would absolutely be one of those chodes who, during the transitionary period, would pay to drive if I could afford to do so.
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Post by ganews on Jan 9, 2017 18:23:36 GMT -5
I rather dislike driving, aside from being alone where I can turn op the music real loud. If only the robots were perfect. But they won't be, not in my lifetime. I mean perfect in that the car has no steering wheel and I sit in the backseat. If I have to drive at some point, or someone at a remote center does, it ain't "driverless". The goalposts will move as far as they need to to get precious funding dollars to go to driverless tech startups instead of mass transportation infrastructure. |
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Post by nowimnothing on Jan 9, 2017 19:30:49 GMT -5
I rather dislike driving, aside from being alone where I can turn op the music real loud. If only the robots were perfect. But they won't be, not in my lifetime. I mean perfect in that the car has no steering wheel and I sit in the backseat. If I have to drive at some point, or someone at a remote center does, it ain't "driverless". The goalposts will move as far as they need to to get precious funding dollars to go to driverless tech startups instead of mass transportation infrastructure. Well Americans are lazy but they really value their independence. Combine that with a huge country with spread out population centers and mass transit never really had a chance outside of high density areas. There is a train that runs a couple of times per day between Indianapolis and Chicago but I never use it because: 1. It takes longer than the drive does 2. It costs probably 5 times what the gas would cost and that is for one person, for a family it gets outrageous. Even adding in Chicago parking it never balances out. 3. It is only twice per day (one direction then the other) so the schedule never works. I know a lot of this could be solved if the train was more popular, but it won't get more popular without solving some of those problems first so I don't know the answer. |
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Post by Pastafarian on Jan 9, 2017 20:56:42 GMT -5
I drive as part of my job, sometimes up to 6 hours or more in the same day. Being able to let Siri take over while I catch up on emails or make dumb jokes here would be pretty rad.
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Post by Not a real doctor on Jan 10, 2017 10:16:13 GMT -5
I'd be all in for a car that allows me to do other things during my commute (accepting that mass transit that lets me do that isn't going to be a reality where I live). A car that still requires me to be present behind the wheel? No thanks, that's just more cost and complication without much benefit. The latter is what I think is most likely as we see larger implementations of things that already exist (parking assist, lane change helpers, emergency stopping detectors, etc.). These are all improvements for safety but don't solve the "my commute sucks up a chunk of my day I could be using for something else" that true driverless technology would.
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Baron von Costume
TI Forumite
Like an iron maiden made of pillows... the punishment is decadence!
Posts: 4,683
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Post by Baron von Costume on Jan 10, 2017 18:45:21 GMT -5
The biggest problem I see with driverless cars is the insurance issue. When an accident does occur with one of these vehicles, who will ultimately be responsible? Is Google really ready to take on the liability shitstorm that will result? How ready will juries be to entertain the possibility that a software error was the cause of the malfunction? How many multi-million dollar payouts will it take before they abandon the project? That said, I can easily see a day within the next 30 years where you will have to pay a massive insurance premium for the privilege of being able to pilot your vehicle yourself. When all the other cars are able to communicate with each other, and you're the sole rogue element on the road, it will be the end of the "freedom of the road" we regularly kill ourselves for now. Someday, someday it will happen in a big way. That necessitates that someone somewhere has to be the last sucker to pay full price for a new manual drive car off the lot. And if conventional cars become illegal or prohibitely expensive, it will leave behind a great swath of poor people with hundreds and thousands of dollars invested in outmoded technology. The best way to press forward full driverless adoption would therefore be to make the tech-backwards compatible. (Even then that's extra money required, a tough deal if you could barely afford the beater you bought to get to work.) But there's currently no money in selling to the bottom of the market like that. The funny thing is, I think we (Canada) present a weird mix of challenge and opportunity. Winter driving hereabouts (and across large swaths of the country) is really challenging technically... ice, snow, ice ruts, changing lane sizes etc etc etc... Yet at the same time, the amount of salt and crap we put on our roads to make them drivable (particularly in some areas) means you see far fewer really old beaters on the road here so if they made a concerted effort to break in here it would probably go well from the new(er) car purchase standpoint. I mean I'm far from a rich dude but in my circle of friends a couple levels above/below me on the finances scale no one owns a daily driver older than 20 years and 95% of them are probably 10 years old or newer (even in two car households and with summer only cars excepted.) It's really surprising how the number of pre 2000 cars on the road just skyrockets as I drive south on a road trip. |
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Post by Pedantic Editor Type on Jan 11, 2017 10:49:36 GMT -5
It is amazing how far they have come in so little time. But it wasn't real to me until they started incorporating pieces of the technology into production cars. Jumping right into full automation is just too big of a leap. You have to ease the public into it with expansions of things we are already comfortable with like cruise control. So we start to get automatic parallel parking, emergency braking and lane assist. Once we are comfortable with that then we can slide into more and more automation. I think it is unavoidable at this point though, humans are terrible drivers. If terrorists killed as many people as traffic accidents no one would ever leave their house. A self-parking car would sell itself. Drop you off at the front of the mall/restaurant, you summon it like Batman when you're done. This is exactly what I want and what I think the best use of the tech is - self-valeting cars. Never worry about driving around to find the best space, or wandering around a garage trying to remember where you parked. |
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Post by pairesta on Jan 11, 2017 10:52:24 GMT -5
A self-parking car would sell itself. Drop you off at the front of the mall/restaurant, you summon it like Batman when you're done. This is exactly what I want and what I think the best use of the tech is - self-valeting cars. Never worry about driving around to find the best space, or wandering around a garage trying to remember where you parked. The powerful valet lobby will NEVER STAND FOR THIS! |
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Post by ganews on Jan 11, 2017 11:17:19 GMT -5
A self-parking car would sell itself. Drop you off at the front of the mall/restaurant, you summon it like Batman when you're done. This is exactly what I want and what I think the best use of the tech is - self-valeting cars. Never worry about driving around to find the best space, or wandering around a garage trying to remember where you parked. It would be an interesting thing to see the roads full of completely empty cars. Every place where parking costs more by time than the price of gas will see cars programmed to circle the block until called for, clogging urban roads and taxing the environment. They can all be electric cars, but unless they're powered by wind and solar that's just a different source of carbon to the atmosphere. The cars might be able to communicate to reduce traffic congestion, but at some point there are simply X too many cars on Y square footage of asphalt for everyone to move at speed. We could pass a law against programming your car to circle, but we can't enforce it when many empty robot cars are legitimately on the way to pick someone up. I'm sure there will be programming limiters, and there will be people to jailbreak them. HipsterDBag makes a much more reasonable point to get around the potential environmental disaster: no more widespread ownership of private cars. Everyone will use robot taxis. Of course, that has its own consequences for people living in rural areas. |
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Post by HipsterDBag on Jan 13, 2017 11:07:07 GMT -5
This is exactly what I want and what I think the best use of the tech is - self-valeting cars. Never worry about driving around to find the best space, or wandering around a garage trying to remember where you parked. It would be an interesting thing to see the roads full of completely empty cars. Every place where parking costs more by time than the price of gas will see cars programmed to circle the block until called for, clogging urban roads and taxing the environment. They can all be electric cars, but unless they're powered by wind and solar that's just a different source of carbon to the atmosphere. The cars might be able to communicate to reduce traffic congestion, but at some point there are simply X too many cars on Y square footage of asphalt for everyone to move at speed. We could pass a law against programming your car to circle, but we can't enforce it when many empty robot cars are legitimately on the way to pick someone up. I'm sure there will be programming limiters, and there will be people to jailbreak them. HipsterDBag makes a much more reasonable point to get around the potential environmental disaster: no more widespread ownership of private cars. Everyone will use robot taxis. Of course, that has its own consequences for people living in rural areas. A system of driverless taxis with no, or very limited, private car ownership is absolutely the future (although admittedly it works less well in rural areas than urban / suburban ones). The "circle the block" thing wouldn't happen -- you could just tell the car when to pick you up, and it would drop you off, drive out to a more remote location where parking is available freely, and then come back in to the more congested area to get you. So if you're, say, me, commuting into Manhattan, your car could drop you off in Manhattan, leave to go to New Jersey or something where there's plenty of parking, and then come back to pick you up at the end of the day. The efficiences should be pretty easy for the car to calculate as to what the best / most efficient process would be. |
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Post by sarapen on Jan 13, 2017 12:24:57 GMT -5
I don't see why some advocates are saying robot cars will eliminate congestion. The same number of people will still be on the road, it's just that they'll all be drunk or high or masturbating.
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Post by Generic Poster on Jan 13, 2017 12:25:23 GMT -5
It would be an interesting thing to see the roads full of completely empty cars. Every place where parking costs more by time than the price of gas will see cars programmed to circle the block until called for, clogging urban roads and taxing the environment. They can all be electric cars, but unless they're powered by wind and solar that's just a different source of carbon to the atmosphere. The cars might be able to communicate to reduce traffic congestion, but at some point there are simply X too many cars on Y square footage of asphalt for everyone to move at speed. We could pass a law against programming your car to circle, but we can't enforce it when many empty robot cars are legitimately on the way to pick someone up. I'm sure there will be programming limiters, and there will be people to jailbreak them. HipsterDBag makes a much more reasonable point to get around the potential environmental disaster: no more widespread ownership of private cars. Everyone will use robot taxis. Of course, that has its own consequences for people living in rural areas. A system of driverless taxis with no, or very limited, private car ownership is absolutely the future (although admittedly it works less well in rural areas than urban / suburban ones). The "circle the block" thing wouldn't happen -- you could just tell the car when to pick you up, and it would drop you off, drive out to a more remote location where parking is available freely, and then come back in to the more congested area to get you. So if you're, say, me, commuting into Manhattan, your car could drop you off in Manhattan, leave to go to New Jersey or something where there's plenty of parking, and then come back to pick you up at the end of the day. The efficiences should be pretty easy for the car to calculate as to what the best / most efficient process would be. Or, your car would just Uber people around Manahattan until its time to pick you up so it's actually earning instead of sitting somewhere quietly depreciating in value. |
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Post by ganews on Jan 13, 2017 13:35:50 GMT -5
A system of driverless taxis with no, or very limited, private car ownership is absolutely the future (although admittedly it works less well in rural areas than urban / suburban ones). The "circle the block" thing wouldn't happen -- you could just tell the car when to pick you up, and it would drop you off, drive out to a more remote location where parking is available freely, and then come back in to the more congested area to get you. So if you're, say, me, commuting into Manhattan, your car could drop you off in Manhattan, leave to go to New Jersey or something where there's plenty of parking, and then come back to pick you up at the end of the day. The efficiences should be pretty easy for the car to calculate as to what the best / most efficient process would be. Or, your car would just Uber people around Manahattan until its time to pick you up so it's actually earning instead of sitting somewhere quietly depreciating in value. It has to be a taxi, or there has to be enough Uber demand for people to use the rush hour volume of cars during mid-day. If you have private ownership of robot cars instructed to drive miles away to find day parking and return at the end of the work day, you've just doubled the amount of gas consumption/carbon output. And because an equal number of cars still exist on finite roadspace, you've still got rush hours. Except now with empty cars driving out to park you get a clogged reverse-commute! If cars are just dropping people at the grocery store, it's definitely a circle-the-block situation. Don't let anyone tell you that driverless tech is a green solution. Any efficiency gained by widespread robot control will be cancelled out by greater car usage, like building a bigger road to reduce congestion and attracting more people. |
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Post by nowimnothing on Jan 13, 2017 13:36:34 GMT -5
I don't see why some advocates are saying robot cars will eliminate congestion. The same number of people will still be on the road, it's just that they'll all be drunk or high or masturbating. The idea is that the cars will communicate with each other and with the roads. Road construction ahead? Automatically divert some cars to one detour and other cars to another detour. Anything that reduces the reliance on individual decisions that evolve into mob mentality will increase efficiency. Certainly there is an upper limit to the number of vehicles on any given road but humans are the cause of most of the congestion. Just think of all those autonomous cars performing a perfect zipper merge at speed. |
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Post by ganews on Jan 16, 2017 22:28:19 GMT -5
I don't see why some advocates are saying robot cars will eliminate congestion. The same number of people will still be on the road, it's just that they'll all be drunk or high or masturbating. The idea is that the cars will communicate with each other and with the roads. Road construction ahead? Automatically divert some cars to one detour and other cars to another detour. Anything that reduces the reliance on individual decisions that evolve into mob mentality will increase efficiency. Certainly there is an upper limit to the number of vehicles on any given road but humans are the cause of most of the congestion. Just think of all those autonomous cars performing a perfect zipper merge at speed. That relies on every car on the road having the tech. Even after an adoption transition period, there will have to be a legal mandate. And as "driverless" tech currently adds thousands of dollars to sticker price, it needs to be made into a backwards-compatible adapter with a government subsidy so poorer people who already invested in traditional cars get screwed less. |
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Post by Desert Dweller on Jan 17, 2017 0:43:57 GMT -5
This won't really work for me unless it is truly driverless. Like, I can kick back and read a book.
Philosophically, it seems kinda silly to me to be investing this much money and time into something like this rather than improving mass transit. Especially in cities. The reason I drive is because the bus takes too long and there is no rail of any kind that runs out to the suburbs.
With current configuration of roads and freeways, I don't see how driverless tech is going to make this commute any faster. There are just too many cars on the roads. I use Google maps every time I make this commute. I know that every possible transit route is going to take an hour+. I have tried about a dozen different routes. It all takes an hour+. Bumper to bumper cars.
The new Southwest freeway connector the city is building will do more to help the traffic situation.
Rapid mass transit from the suburbs into the city would be a better option.
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Post by Floyd Diabolical Barber on Jan 17, 2017 1:38:18 GMT -5
The more I think about the repercussions of driverless cars, the more I come to this conclusion:
As a rural individual, I can see us getting the infrastructure upgrades to support driverless cars at least several decades after we finally get high-speed internet and reliable cell phone service, which is probably never. The idea of it becoming mandatory drives me into a full "old man yelling at clouds" rage, for many reasons. I see it as an intrusive, expensive, unwarranted pain in the ass. We already have a growing problems with commercial airline pilots who are getting only a very minimal number of hours of continuing flight time, due to the almost total use of autopilots, except during takeoff and landings. There is growing concern that this has, and will increasingly, contributed to some very tense situations in the air, so why not do the same with automobiles?
I'd like to see them take a bunch of that sweet transportation infrastructure upgrade money and build some fucking railroads along major interstate right-of-ways so maybe I could get to St Louis or Indianapolis, or maybe even somewhere I'd actually like to go, without needing to take the truck. Give Amtrak a cheeseburger, scratch it's ears one last time, lead it out behind the barn, and put it out of it's misery. Then build a light rail system throughout the country, and set a feeder system so that the damn buses go to the train stations, and the trains run to the airports, and get the airports out of the middle of the cities....
Oh, man. That started to escalate quickly. I had to throw the brakes on hard to keep from spiraling off into a frothing rant in a dozen different directions, and I honestly don't even care about this all that much.
I have gone through the last year or so listening to so much insanity, and mostly keeping quiet instead of offering my reasoned opinions and supremely pissing off the majority of the people I spoke to. That may have taken more out of me than I realized.
I think I need to pencil in a few hours next weekend to go out in the woods and scream at the squirrels.
Please forgive this outburst. I did not mean to go so far off course.
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Post by Pastafarian on Jan 17, 2017 9:35:02 GMT -5
Someday, someday it will happen in a big way. That necessitates that someone somewhere has to be the last sucker to pay full price for a new manual drive car off the lot. And if conventional cars become illegal or prohibitely expensive, it will leave behind a great swath of poor people with hundreds and thousands of dollars invested in outmoded technology. The best way to press forward full driverless adoption would therefore be to make the tech-backwards compatible. (Even then that's extra money required, a tough deal if you could barely afford the beater you bought to get to work.) But there's currently no money in selling to the bottom of the market like that. The funny thing is, I think we (Canada) present a weird mix of challenge and opportunity. Winter driving hereabouts (and across large swaths of the country) is really challenging technically... ice, snow, ice ruts, changing lane sizes etc etc etc... Yet at the same time, the amount of salt and crap we put on our roads to make them drivable (particularly in some areas) means you see far fewer really old beaters on the road here so if they made a concerted effort to break in here it would probably go well from the new(er) car purchase standpoint. I mean I'm far from a rich dude but in my circle of friends a couple levels above/below me on the finances scale no one owns a daily driver older than 20 years and 95% of them are probably 10 years old or newer (even in two car households and with summer only cars excepted.) It's really surprising how the number of pre 2000 cars on the road just skyrockets as I drive south on a road trip. One thing I like about having moved up here, lots less ugly smoke belching cars on the road to look at. |
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Post by Generic Poster on Jan 17, 2017 12:39:47 GMT -5
I assume the driverless taxis will be programmed to try to murder you if you stiff them on the fare, a la the Johnny Cabs in Total Recall.
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Post by ganews on Jan 24, 2017 11:43:41 GMT -5
Yesterday I thought to myself that a True Perfect Driverless Car must not only be able to "see" the road, other cars, pedestrians, etc., it must be able to "hear" the sirens of emergency vehicles so that it can pull itself over. It must be able to pull over to the side of the road or, if in traffic or at a stoplight, nudge just over to the side a bit so that the vehicle can get past. Not all of these sirens are identical, so it needs to know what a siren generally sounds like across many variables so that it doesn't react to random noises. It has to be a real True Perfect Driverless Car, too; we can't just rely on people to wake up and take the wheel before the ambulance is on top of them. Some of us are heavy sleepers.
Because we cannot instantly have driverless tech in every car, the emergency vehicles can't just broadcast a notification to plow the cars out of the way. (And any such tech would need to be provided free to the many municipalities who don't always have extra money.)
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