"Right to Drive" vs. autonomous vehicles

Torkel said:

Autonomous cars are much further along then most people think. Volvo has already for some time been doing live tests in Gothenburg, in traffic, with excellent results. That is driving in a busy city, with bicycles, pedestrians, trams, busses, busy intersections, etc. Not only where there no issues, the autonomous cars are already now reactive faster and safer to sudden issues, such as people stepping out into the street, or similar.

There has been 1 accident involving an autonomous car to date: The test car was hit from the side by a driving running a red light.

Perhaps 1 with one of Volvo's test cars, but there have been a few with autonomous cars in general. Just off the top of my head:

- Volvo was going to sell a car with auto-park but without pedestrian detection. A demonstration model therefore tried to park where an auto journalist was standing, knocking him over.

- Tesla X speared itself on a Jersey barrier, killing the driver.

- Tesla S filleted itself on the side of a semi-trailer while the driver watched Harry Potter (a very undignified way to die).

- Another Tesla S rearended a parked fire truck.

- Uber test vehicle was being tested with lowered pedestrian detection threshold and an inattentive test driver, so it never touched the brakes for a woman crossing the street, killing her.

- Google's test cars have been the victims of a few crashes

Not that this is a terrible record. I'm sure at least that many human-driven cars crashed just in the US while I was typing that.

Grizz said:

In reply to mtn :

I'm talking feasibility, not where benefit lies. Or at least for the idea of "pool of auto vehicles that just go out when you call them" instead of privately owned ones. My town doesn't even have buses, and barely has taxis, because there's not enough use for them, low pop areas would get told to pound sand because there isn't enough cashflow to justify the cost in servicing them

Also a better solution to the issue of piss poor drivers is to actually teach people how to drive. Drivers ed here is 4 days of telling people what road signs mean and then a day telling people not to drive under the influence or look at their phone. And it's not even a matter of the cars getting better so we don't need to teach X anymore, it's just laziness.

That is one of the reasons I'm not convinced about the "fleet" of vehicles instead of privately owned ones. That, and the tech isn't going to be that expensive in 10 or 20 years. Hell, a $75k Tesla has autopilot NOW. $75k isn't that expensive when you consider that a Camry can come in at $35k.

GameboyRMH said:

Torkel said:

Autonomous cars are much further along then most people think. Volvo has already for some time been doing live tests in Gothenburg, in traffic, with excellent results. That is driving in a busy city, with bicycles, pedestrians, trams, busses, busy intersections, etc. Not only where there no issues, the autonomous cars are already now reactive faster and safer to sudden issues, such as people stepping out into the street, or similar.

There has been 1 accident involving an autonomous car to date: The test car was hit from the side by a driving running a red light.

Perhaps 1 with one of Volvo's test cars, but there have been a few with autonomous cars in general. Just off the top of my head:

- Volvo was going to sell a car with auto-park but without pedestrian detection. A demonstration model therefore tried to park where an auto journalist was standing, knocking him over.

- Tesla X speared itself on a Jersey barrier, killing the driver.

- Tesla S filleted itself on the side of a semi-trailer while the driver watched Harry Potter (a very undignified way to die).

- Another Tesla S rearended a parked fire truck.

- Uber test vehicle was being tested with lowered pedestrian detection threshold and an inattentive test driver, so it never touched the brakes for a woman crossing the street, killing her.

- Google's test cars have been the victims of a few crashes

Not that this is a terrible record. I'm sure at least that many human-driven cars crashed just in the US while I was typing that.

I don't have the time to do it now, but it is worth a little more research/description on these crashes. For instance, the Tesla fatality had warned the driver to take over and he did not do it. The google cars have, to my knowledge, been in low speed impacts (and were most the fault of other drivers or did I make that up in my head?). The Uber driver one, while it SHOULD have hit the brakes, the woman probably still would have been killed and was crossing in the middle of the street in the middle of the night (thought it was lighted). 

Not trying to discount them at all, they're all at least important and in some cases tragic, but like you said, "not that this is a terrible record"

02Pilot said:

Am I the only one reading this who immediately started thinking about the lyrics to "Red Barchetta"?

 

Haha!  No!  I came here to post this, but I am not surprised that I have been beaten to it!

Autonomous cars are what happens when you let the left and right coasts think they are the only place people live in the country. It's the same issue with Electric vs hybrid vs fossil fuel cars. This country is too vast, too diverse for any single solution to work everywhere. What works in NYC or LA doesn't work well for BFE Wyoming or New Mexico. 

We've seen this repeatedly with things like energy production as well. 

frenchyd said:

Horses still used the roads well into the 1930’s and later, 4-5 decades past the acceptance of the car.  In fact in some states horses still share the road with cars. For examples come to Amish country.  Their buggy’s only concession is the slow moving vehicle triangle  on the back.  

Horses are still ridden and legal to be ridden on streets in some communities.  Not to mention on private areas like ranches, horserace tracks, etc. 

In case you fail to make the connection, just because there are autonomous automobiles does not automatically mean that driving a car will disappear.  Probably not in your lifetime. Most definitely not in mine.  Less than 1% of cars on the road have any pretension of Autonomous capability.  

This smacks too much of a certain group that has become convinced that anybody who doesn’t love their item must be against it and want to take it away.  

Frankly most don’t care!  

The problem with horses, is that they went from being affordable transportation to being a rich person's toy. Race cars and hobby vehicles are already deep in the land of rich person's toys, but regular cars becoming a rich person's toy is a problem for society, especially for those at the lowest end of the income spectrum. They're the ones that are often most reliant on a vehicle to get to/from work, where they probably have the least amount of job security in the work force. These people obviously won't be able to afford a new vehicle with autonomous tech, so they'll either have to pay more for vehicle insurance to drive themselves around, or they'll have to pay more to hail a ride anytime they need to go somewhere, or pay more to have items brought to them. All of these options end up squeezing the people on the bottom even more. You can't get blood from a turnip as they say.

The article ignores the 800 lb gorilla that can push the general public towards self-driving cars far faster than any laws could: Insurance costs.  When self-driving cars become more common and real-world safety numbers can be quantified, the insurance companies will have the power to make human driven cars unaffordable to all but the wealthy, save occasional-use classics. 

Federal, state and local governments won't need to be involved.

mtn said:

GameboyRMH said:

Perhaps 1 with one of Volvo's test cars, but there have been a few with autonomous cars in general. Just off the top of my head:

- Volvo was going to sell a car with auto-park but without pedestrian detection. A demonstration model therefore tried to park where an auto journalist was standing, knocking him over.

- Tesla X speared itself on a Jersey barrier, killing the driver.

- Tesla S filleted itself on the side of a semi-trailer while the driver watched Harry Potter (a very undignified way to die).

- Another Tesla S rearended a parked fire truck.

- Uber test vehicle was being tested with lowered pedestrian detection threshold and an inattentive test driver, so it never touched the brakes for a woman crossing the street, killing her.

- Google's test cars have been the victims of a few crashes

Not that this is a terrible record. I'm sure at least that many human-driven cars crashed just in the US while I was typing that.

I don't have the time to do it now, but it is worth a little more research/description on these crashes. For instance, the Tesla fatality had warned the driver to take over and he did not do it. The google cars have, to my knowledge, been in low speed impacts (and were most the fault of other drivers or did I make that up in my head?). The Uber driver one, while it SHOULD have hit the brakes, the woman probably still would have been killed and was crossing in the middle of the street in the middle of the night (thought it was lighted). 

 

Not trying to discount them at all, they're all at least important and in some cases tragic, but like you said, "not that this is a terrible record"

The part that I bolded is my biggest issue with the tech as it currently stands. It seems like when the tech gets into a tough situation, it basically throws all responsibility onto the human and then they hope that the person 1) was paying attention 2) understands the situation/danger 3) can then make corrective action in a timely manner. All of this can happen in a matter of seconds, and when you're on the road with tons of other vehicles around, and numerous potentially dangerous interactions seconds are a really big deal.

The tech works fine in easy cases, where humans tend to also do fairly well. But when the systems struggle, they do it in situations that humans also tend to struggle with and expect them to just work it out in limited time, potentially under duress.

Two words:  Elitist snobbery.

mtn said:

Grizz said:

In reply to mtn :

I'm talking feasibility, not where benefit lies. Or at least for the idea of "pool of auto vehicles that just go out when you call them" instead of privately owned ones. My town doesn't even have buses, and barely has taxis, because there's not enough use for them, low pop areas would get told to pound sand because there isn't enough cashflow to justify the cost in servicing them

Also a better solution to the issue of piss poor drivers is to actually teach people how to drive. Drivers ed here is 4 days of telling people what road signs mean and then a day telling people not to drive under the influence or look at their phone. And it's not even a matter of the cars getting better so we don't need to teach X anymore, it's just laziness.

That is one of the reasons I'm not convinced about the "fleet" of vehicles instead of privately owned ones. That, and the tech isn't going to be that expensive in 10 or 20 years. Hell, a $75k Tesla has autopilot NOW. $75k isn't that expensive when you consider that a Camry can come in at $35k.

And that $35K  Camry is more than my yearly wage. More expensive than I'm willing to go in debt for. And I'm slightly above the median wage. For more than half of the country a $35K car is out of the question, let alone an "isn't that expensive" $75K one.

In reply to Ian F :

Enjoy the massive uptick in uninsured drivers who have to get to work in their 800 dollar E36 M3boxes.

In reply to Grizz :

That really puts a target on their backs to be pulled over though. Pretty easy to spot an old beater surrounded by shiny new autonomous vehicles. It would be like shooting fish in a barrel for law enforcement, who would need to write more tickets to offset the loss in revenue from the fancy, new autonomous vehicles that obey all traffic laws.

Nick Comstock said:

mtn said:

Grizz said:

In reply to mtn :

I'm talking feasibility, not where benefit lies. Or at least for the idea of "pool of auto vehicles that just go out when you call them" instead of privately owned ones. My town doesn't even have buses, and barely has taxis, because there's not enough use for them, low pop areas would get told to pound sand because there isn't enough cashflow to justify the cost in servicing them

Also a better solution to the issue of piss poor drivers is to actually teach people how to drive. Drivers ed here is 4 days of telling people what road signs mean and then a day telling people not to drive under the influence or look at their phone. And it's not even a matter of the cars getting better so we don't need to teach X anymore, it's just laziness.

That is one of the reasons I'm not convinced about the "fleet" of vehicles instead of privately owned ones. That, and the tech isn't going to be that expensive in 10 or 20 years. Hell, a $75k Tesla has autopilot NOW. $75k isn't that expensive when you consider that a Camry can come in at $35k.

And that $35K  Camry is more than my yearly wage. More expensive than I'm willing to go in debt for. And I'm slightly above the median wage. For more than half of the country a $35K car is out of the question, let alone an "isn't that expensive" $75K one.

 

I own a car that I paid $3,000 for. Actually, the seller would likely argue that I paid about $2,000 for the car, and $1,000 for an extra set of wheels that came with it. That car cost $47k new, 18 years ago. With inflation, that is approximately $68k today. Give it 20 years. By that point, the expensive cars will have depreciated and the Corollas, Elantras, and Cruze's of the world will likely have the technology. 

For a similar illustration, in 1983 an Apple Lisa was about $10k. Probably $25k after inflation. In 1990, an Apple Powerbook was $2k; $4k adjusted for inflation. 1998, iMac was $1k, inflation $2k. Today, I can buy an iPad Pro for $800, an iPad for $330, a Mac mini for $800, Macbook for $1000.... And these are the "Tesla's" of the computer world. I can get a Corolla--an HP laptop, for $250. Right now, we're in the "Apple Lisa" stage of self-driving vehicles. 

I stand by my point that the technology is not that expensive. 

They'll have to pry my chaps and my whips and my harnesses from my cold, dead, fingers. 

er, wait, what are we talking about again?

Carbon said:

I’m gonna drive, berkley them.  I bet I can outrun autonomous cops. My hope is that the cars are better at being predictable than these idiots are so I can safely treat them like the orange cones that they are. 

Please worry about a real issue.  It’s  not going to happen because less than 1% of cars in the country have any pretensions of autonomous capability.  

Second, horses were used along side cars well into 40 years past their initial acceptance. In fact go to Amish country and horses still share the roads with cars. 

Third, as you age out, your choice will be autonomous cars, waiting for a family member to give you a ride( probably in an autonomous vehicle) Or staying in the nursing home.  

Robbie said:

They'll have to pry my chaps and my whips and my harnesses from my cold, dead, fingers. 

er, wait, what are we talking about again?

So you're into necrophilia? Gotta be honest, you never struck me as THAT much of a weirdo, obsession with British cars be damned.

Nick Comstock said:

And that $35K  Camry is....More expensive than I'm willing to go in debt for. And I'm slightly above the median wage. For more than half of the country a $35K car is out of the question, let alone an "isn't that expensive" $75K one.

 

This.  My daily driver is old enough I've been looking at shiny new vehicles....I can't stomach the price.

mtn said:

 

 

I stand by my point that the technology is not that expensive. 

I still stand by the point that the maintenance and durabilty will be the key issue with these. We all know what it's like when cars aren't maintained properly. Imagine hopping into that $5k autonomous car that has been "serviced" by Jim-Bob's backyard shop. for the last 10 years. With your kids. 

Some of these "cars" do not even have steering wheels !  How do you drive out of trouble without a steering wheel?

Sunday I drove out in the boonies of Los Angeles , I missed a turn and Google maps sent me down a neat winding canyon road ,  there is no way there would ever be 5g out there , and there are 1000s of these roads 

So does the car just pull over like a stubborn horse and refuse to go that way ?

Let's go another way , Hybrid cars that use 80 percent battery / 20 percent hydrogen , self driving in town, self parking at a parking lot around the corner , 

But still drivable out of the downtown area with the computer looking out for you , crash avoidance, etc.

Just a thought....or 2

re: "technology is expensive"

let's take a recent example like ABS. A couple questions. How many years between when the first car had ABS to when basically everything had ABS? (I'm guessing about 5-7). Then, how many years went by before the cars with ABS were in the sub $3k range? (I'm guessing 7 more). 

In 15 years, will you be able to buy a Tesla for peanuts? Judging by the fact that 20 year old XJRs are solidly challenge eligible, my guess is YES (however, I think there is something to be said for Tesla cars seeing a temporary reversal in depreciation when they can be used autonomously to make money for the owner, but in the end they are still a machine like any other and will wear out mechanically). 

californiamilleghia said:

Some of these "cars" do not even have steering wheels !  How do you drive out of trouble without a steering wheel?

I thought everyone here knew that you drive out of trouble with the gas pedal, not the wheel. 

bobzilla said:

mtn said:

 

 

I stand by my point that the technology is not that expensive. 

I still stand by the point that the maintenance and durabilty will be the key issue with these. We all know what it's like when cars aren't maintained properly. Imagine hopping into that $5k autonomous car that has been "serviced" by Jim-Bob's backyard shop. for the last 10 years. With your kids. 

I definitely agree, but I think that maintenance will be easier. An electric motor is way simpler than an ICE. The true maintenance parts will be the same as current vehicles, namely suspension. Batteries, if we're taking the Volt as the example, are proving to be super reliable and long lasting--although this could be the downfall from the environmental/depleting resources point of view, and we don't have long-term data yet. 

STM317 said:

mtn said:

GameboyRMH said:

Perhaps 1 with one of Volvo's test cars, but there have been a few with autonomous cars in general. Just off the top of my head:

- Volvo was going to sell a car with auto-park but without pedestrian detection. A demonstration model therefore tried to park where an auto journalist was standing, knocking him over.

- Tesla X speared itself on a Jersey barrier, killing the driver.

- Tesla S filleted itself on the side of a semi-trailer while the driver watched Harry Potter (a very undignified way to die).

- Another Tesla S rearended a parked fire truck.

- Uber test vehicle was being tested with lowered pedestrian detection threshold and an inattentive test driver, so it never touched the brakes for a woman crossing the street, killing her.

- Google's test cars have been the victims of a few crashes

Not that this is a terrible record. I'm sure at least that many human-driven cars crashed just in the US while I was typing that.

I don't have the time to do it now, but it is worth a little more research/description on these crashes. For instance, the Tesla fatality had warned the driver to take over and he did not do it. The google cars have, to my knowledge, been in low speed impacts (and were most the fault of other drivers or did I make that up in my head?). The Uber driver one, while it SHOULD have hit the brakes, the woman probably still would have been killed and was crossing in the middle of the street in the middle of the night (thought it was lighted). 

 

Not trying to discount them at all, they're all at least important and in some cases tragic, but like you said, "not that this is a terrible record"

The part that I bolded is my biggest issue with the tech as it currently stands. It seems like when the tech gets into a tough situation, it basically throws all responsibility onto the human and then they hope that the person 1) was paying attention 2) understands the situation/danger 3) can then make corrective action in a timely manner. All of this can happen in a matter of seconds, and when you're on the road with tons of other vehicles around, and numerous potentially dangerous interactions seconds are a really big deal.

The tech works fine in easy cases, where humans tend to also do fairly well. But when the systems struggle, they do it in situations that humans also tend to struggle with and expect them to just work it out in limited time, potentially under duress.

You fail to allow for the speed new tech is created to solve previously unsolvable problems. I started out with a green screen and a printer that required special paper.  That appeared just 40 years ago?  The idea of something I could hold in my hand (or on my watch)  was still decades away.  

Problems will be solved. New issues will come up and be solved.  Just like aviation technology will improve things but come with a few issues that too will be solved. 

Yes Boeing lost a few hundred passengers with their latest problem. Flying is still massively safer than any other way of getting around.  

All this talk of Amish and horses leads me to believe we should form a religion that requires we self drive.  "As God intended" (in our opinion.) 

This could be a job for FSM. 

Or, bring back JmfnB and the church of the Orange Cone

In reply to John Welsh :

Not really, the right to have horses  on public roads isn’t restricted ( except freeways etc) however the Amish wanted black buggies  but were required to put SMV triangles on for safety reasons. 

See there are restrictions on religions along with nearly every other freedom we enjoy.