In reply to 4cylndrfury:
I tend to believe 3D printing will allow for parts availability we can only imagine of right now. The potential is there for parts to be stronger, cheaper and easier to get.
Either way, trying to predict the future is a fool's game.
Yes - considering truck driving is one of the nation's largest employers, the prospect of all of those people becoming unemployed has not gone unnoticed.
In reply to FlightService:
Add to that, the expected lives saved by autonomous vehicles every year (15-50,000 in the US alone based on numbers earlier in this thread), and however many warehouse workers (950k total in the US) or manufacturing workers (12.4 million) who will be out of jobs when their facilities go "dark" and are fully automated.
What we don't know is this is all silly because a meteor is going to crash into the earth and erase humankind on August 11th, 2018 at 2:22am
After nearly having the someone merge into the front right quarter panel of the MS3 at 70 miles an hour for the second time this month on a basically open highway, autonomous cars can't get here soon enough. Yes she passed me on the right and thought she could shoot the gap between the car in front of her and me when only 3/4 of her car could occupy the entirety of the space (berkeley physics I have a Subaru.) Luckily the brakes on the MS3 are quite large.
I'm so tired of other people putting me at risk because they apparently have somewhere super duper important to be.
Bobzilla wrote: What we don't know is this is all silly because a meteor is going to crash into the earth and erase humankind on August 11th, 2018 at 2:22am
Promises, promises... get my hopes up and then dash them on the rocks. Damn you.
If autonomous cars become widely accepted, financially viable, and overcome the legal hurdles- I foresee cars becoming disposable appliances, like most electronic devices. Depleted battery packs will be harder and more costly to replace, and I could see "cars" no longer being able to take the latest software updates. Time to recycle and get a new one.
In reply to Boost_Crazy:
Absolutely, but one could easily argue the industry has been moving towards that goal for some time now.
ProDarwin wrote:iceracer wrote: I recently spent three days in the Fairfax/DC area. Lots of traffic and I mean LOTS. All flowed well and no jams.This is not possible.
LMAO!!!!
As a former DC Metro resident, I can only imagine the government was not working those days or you were going reverse commute in a big way!
OK I am probably way to late to this thread but why not....
Autonomous cars will happen in some form. It has been considered the next step for too long such that it is ingrained as the only future option. In Metro Detroit a recent mass transit bill failed a vote and I heard a lot of commentary about buses and light rail being old fashioned and that the plan should be autonomous flexible transit thingies. I think as a society the USA is not recognizing driving training and culture as the prime areas to fix the issues with auto accidents. I think things would be a lot better if people stopped tyring to run the yellow or beat the train crossing gates or "win" the battle to change three lanes before the next red light. Going autonomous does get the drivers' emotions out of things but that isn't the only solution. Automation in aviation is very successful because all the pilots are highly trained to handle system errors or natural occurrences that the automation can't. Plus most relevant to us, they won't try to "flash" their plane's software to make it faster or more aggressive etc.
Putting on my infrastruture engineering hat I don't actually worry about the cars themselves as much as I do worry about the systems they use to maintain safe control. At the end of the day people maintain and control the system at some point. GPS is not secure or perfect. Even the best software evaluating the video data from cameras/sensor is written by someone and updated by someone. I don't see the USA government or business entities in a position to secure the infrastructure to make autonomous driving safer than current. What corporate lawyer is going to actually say that their system is 100% reliable without the "". 100% reliabilty claim is only for vehicles operated on closed circuit roads with enhanced positioning signals and a pack of guide dogs.
The most deadly metro accident in the DC area was due to some maintenance issues with the automatic train control location system.
All that being said our society views this as THE way to go. It will fix everything, as long as you ignore the other risks created by the tech everyone will be happy until the autonomous thingies are commanded to "Disable organic component" to improve efficiency and profitability of the transportation company.
In reply to Advan046:
For what it's worth, It's a little dated now, but a few autonomous vehicle manufacturers have stated that they will accept legal liability if their tech is found to be responsible for a crash.
I can see it now: "BMW - The Ultimate Riding Machine"
By the way, you wanna trust your life to a computer? Who's gonna accept liability for it?
"There was an accident. Let's go after the programmer." Yeah, right.
As a young man I came back from Vietnam and my grandfather who had suffered a severe stroke a decade earlier was driving my Grandmother to and from the grocery store.. She would slide over on the bench seat and sit right next to him being his eyes. ( cataracts )
" A little left Leonard. A little more. Ok we're coming up to our corner now•••••••• "
They we're in their 70's Living-in a small rural town in Wisconsin. Trying to maintain independence. Yes they drove in broad daylight slowly on almost deserted roads. Finally his hearing almost gone, sight completely gone, they asked me to ruin the car so he could no longer drive. Then gave up and put him in a nursing home to die.
Today it's possible to maintain that independence much longer. No, Self Driving isn't perfected yet. But it would be workable enough to keep Seniors independent longer.
Someone was asking about the 5 million people who make a living driving losing their career.
Same as saddle makers, Black Smiths to shoe horses, buggy whip makers, and the whole industry devoted to horses. They will change or evolve. A tiny handful will remain and new industries will be created. The only constant about life is change.
Why is everyone so sure that self-driving cars means the end of cars that you drive yourself? I mean you can still operate a horse and buggy or ride a horse or a bicycle on public roads. I see no reason why non-self driving cars wouldn't also be allowed on the road with self driving cars.
Edit: dang it zombie thread.
In reply to 93EXCivic :
Oh, I intend to keep a vintage ICE or two while using an EV with self driving to provide me with transportation into my senility.
I'm thinking ICE cars might depreciate enough to provide some interesting choices for pocket change kinda money.
frenchyd said:Oh, I intend to keep a vintage ICE or two while using an EV with self driving to provide me with transportation into my senility.
I'm thinking ICE cars might depreciate enough to provide some interesting choices for pocket change kinda money.
Why does everyone assume that self driving cars have to be EVs?
Also, don't hold your breath. I suspect self-driving cars are going to be like practical fusion power -- 5-10 years away for 30-40 years in a row.
In reply to codrus (Forum Supporter) : A lot of the needed features are already in a few well equipped ICE cars.
However I'm in no illusion that my MGTD will ever be able to self drive, nor will most ICE cars.
As soon as the average owner realizes the cost penalty of pistons going up and down, there will be a massive flood away from petrol.
Features like self driving like Tesla has will reduce insurance rates but not enough offset the premium of self driving.
There will always be a market for a bare bones vehicle just as there is a market for loaded vehicles.
Well we won't have GRM anymore...
Somewhere in the ether, our self driving cars can have their own forum for how to deal with idiot passengers. And when they figure out they don't need idiot passengers, humanity, the true cancer on this earth will be extinguished.
I can envision some new forms of Motorsports.
For example... man vs machine. Just as people have obsessed for decades about beating a computer at chess, why couldn't we compete against our own car's computer? Take 1 run on full autonomy, then switch it off and try to beat the time manually.
It would give us an ability to "ride along" and experience wide open driving at the extreme limit (while watching from the driver's seat), then try to mimic it, or improve.
It's like the ultimate roller coaster ride.
maj75 (Forum Supporter) said:Well we won't have GRM anymore...
Somewhere in the ether, our self driving cars can have their own forum for how to deal with idiot passengers. And when they figure out they don't need idiot passengers, humanity, the true cancer on this earth will be extinguished.
While you may be correct regarding the cancer. That cancer is also responsible for beautiful music, great art, wonderful cars, love, life, and an infinite mystery of the creation of AI
frenchyd said:In reply to codrus (Forum Supporter) : A lot of the needed features are already in a few well equipped ICE cars.
However I'm in no illusion that my MGTD will ever be able to self drive, nor will most ICE cars.
I'm not talking about retrofitting (I feel pretty safe saying that that's never going to happen), but there's nothing about "self driving" that means it only works on EVs.
As for the "needed features", it depends a lot on what you mean by "self-driving". I may well have said this earlier in the thread (too many pages for me to go back and check), but to me "self-driving" means the car can drive itself with nobody in it. Like you can use it to go to the airport and then tell it to go home and park itself in the garage, and then come back and pick you up in a week when you return.
I feel fairly safe in saying that's not happening anytime soon. It needs "strong AI", and that's not something that our current "machine learning" technology is going to deliver.
In reply to codrus (Forum Supporter) :
I hadn't even considered that level of self driving. To me self driving involves me sitting behind the steering wheel and not focusing on driving.
( hey, is that what a teenage girl does?)
I mean if I'm the meat package, I'm at least going to watch what's going on on the off chance something needs my attention.
Auto pilot taught me that. "Trust, but verify."
With cruise control, power steering and a good book on tape in the CD player I can eat up a lot of freeway miles pretty relaxed.
SVreX (Forum Supporter) said:I can envision some new forms of Motorsports.
For example... man vs machine. Just as people have obsessed for decades about beating a computer at chess, why couldn't we compete against our own car's computer? Take 1 run on full autonomy, then switch it off and try to beat the time manually.
It would give us an ability to "ride along" and experience wide open driving at the extreme limit (while watching from the driver's seat), then try to mimic it, or improve.
It's like the ultimate roller coaster ride.
Oh, but then you miss the thrill of control. Without any risk. It might as well be an amusement park ride.
frenchyd said:SVreX (Forum Supporter) said:I can envision some new forms of Motorsports.
For example... man vs machine. Just as people have obsessed for decades about beating a computer at chess, why couldn't we compete against our own car's computer? Take 1 run on full autonomy, then switch it off and try to beat the time manually.
It would give us an ability to "ride along" and experience wide open driving at the extreme limit (while watching from the driver's seat), then try to mimic it, or improve.
It's like the ultimate roller coaster ride.
Oh, but then you miss the thrill of control. Without any risk. It might as well be an amusement park ride.
If you let physics be the limit instead of fragile humans, then no one will miss the thrill of control because no human could withstand those forces and/or environments. The basic assumption is that the human brain's ability to make fast and not so bad decisions in complex situations/environments is the only reason we tolerate the rest of the fragile architecture of humans in high performance vehicles (like fighter jets, racing vehicles, submersibles, spacecraft, etc).
If you change the assumption and assume that the human does not need to be the primary decision maker, and the human is just along for the ride, then there is no point in having the human on board at all, as the machine capability will need to be artificially limited only for the sake of human needs.
Dealing with the 'logical algorithms' that govern human action is the only reason we don't already have automonous passgenger and transport vehicles, which only need to get from one place to another on very clearly defined paths. Autonomous fork lifts and the like have issues too, but not just getting from one place to another.
In reply to grpb :
I hear you, but I don't buy it 100%.
If that was 100% true, then no human would ever be able to beat a computer at chess.
And chess doesn't have very many real world dynamics to contend with.
I think it's just a different competitive game. Like the movie "War Games". Sure, the computer figured out that Tic-Tac-Toe is a stupid game. But the HUMAN figured out that it was a game against the computer, and winning meant steering the computer to make the decisions you want it to.
Learning will always be the realm of human existence, not machines. Analyzing is the realm of machines, but they can only do it to the extent in which they are programmed to do so.
Computers are always changing and improving. The definition of "improvement" being defined by humans. Computers still haven't figured out how to exist without programmers. Even if they eventually could, they will always be in a mode of self-improvement. That means every race, and every autocross run is still a new game, and will be for an extremely long time (longer than any of our lifetimes).
Shall we play a game? 
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