I can turn off my VDC (Vehicle Dynamic Control). I do this when I don’t want a tiny bit of wheel slip to cut engine power taking away the momentum I need.
Yeah, everyone thought traction control was the tits until it kept you from getting un-stuck on ice or snow. My father-in-law fought that one in a rental car that had TC that you couldn’t turn off, for something like 400 miles. He was holding up traffic on I-30 every time he had to move. Ugh. I would have had the same problem in my Mini if I couldn’t have turned it off.
tL;DR: The human seamlessly enhanced by the computer will be the best solution for emergency situations, until you have an actual rally driver for an AI.
To anyone who thinks I’m a Luddite or am scared of the car taking over: I’m not, but conceding control to the computer to the point where it’s mandatory in the short term isn’t really feasible at all. The human being enhanced by the machine is the state of the art in driving, and it’s going to be for the near future.
To illustrate: My car is a WRX. It has ABS/Stability Control/Traction Control. They are effective, but I don’t have to turn them off to get the car to be unstable. If I’ve decided to floor the throttle and things slip, it does not cut the throttle completely, it applies brakes to the slipping wheels, and moderates the throttle to keep brake wear at a minimum. It does not completely eliminate wheel spin when active, but relies on the AWD system to try to manage the power, and generally go where the monkey points it.
I have to go to work no matter what the weather. Snow, ice, rain, the dark of night, etc. So, I was heading to work on a snowy/icy night, and was entering the freeway at approximately 15-20mph. I was behind a Camry, following far enough away to be safe as long as no one did anything completely insane.
Of course, the Camry is piloted by a madman. The roads are not bad, but the bridges are sheet ice. As soon as their rear wheels get to the end of the entrance ramp and on the first bridge: they nail the brakes, spin into the jersey curb, and they come to a stop faster than almost any car can on dry pavement – much less ice. I don’t have time to stop, and I don’t really have space to steer around the Camry, since he’s now taking up more than one lane.
I’m aware enough that I know the next two lanes aren’t occupied, so I crank the wheel over, spin the car, and floor it across two lanes. I might spin out into the other side of the bridge or glance my back end off the other car; but I’m not just gonna blast into the side of this Camry, which is now stopped perpendicular to me.
So as I get into the far lane, I turn into the spin and ease off the throttle, and the stability system goes into full force. Instead of me flinging the ass end of the car back and forth (or just doing donuts) and praying that I’m good enough today to get my ass out of what I’ve gotten myself into: it settles the car down in a manner that I never could, no matter what controls were available to me. The car and I slide into the third lane as if it was all a choreographed stunt. 46 miles later I arrive at work tired, but unscathed.
Now, if you have me in a race of 21 drivers, I’m going to lay my money on my coming in 10th or 11th. I am the definition of an average “skilled” driver. Without AWD, I would have certainly crashed that night. I would not have had the traction necessary to avoid the accident on ice without it. Without the automated systems, my route to regaining control of the car would have doubtless been a very exciting trip, even if I didn’t hit the other side of the bridge.
Again, I’m average, and the safety systems on my car are a bit primitive (hey, depending on the system, automatic braking would be nice), but I’d say that the self-driving car would have to be at least our equal in that sort of situation (and really a great deal more variety of situations than that) before it would be wise to make the self-driving car mandatory.
Your claim was ‘state of the art’ which would be a non-production prototype. State of the art is currently computer in primary control - as per my cites.
I bet that when self-driving cars become available, they’ll be let in HOV lanes even with a single driver (like electrics are now) and soon HOV lanes will be restricted to them. When I drive home I frequently go much faster than the HOV lane because some drivers there are road boulders and some slow down to get out of the lane to exit. (Unlike LA you can leave our lanes from anywhere.) Self-driving cars would improve the flow of traffic significantly.
I’ll bet an autopilot wouldn’t purposefully fly a plane into a mountain like the Germanwings incident.
Let me tell you a story.
A number of years ago I worked for the Canadian Standards Association, which is a private company despite the name. We were trying to convince the various ministries and departments of transportation across North America that we could help in carrier safety (trucking safety).
I had occasion to go a conference of all the Ministries of Transportation of Canada’s provinces in Winnipeg one June. The ministries all send dozens of bureaucrats and technocrats to discuss any number of matters over four days of nice hotel stays and meals at taxpayer expense. Many private interests also came, and I actually did a spiel on Day 3. But in the meantime we decided to attend some discussions.
One discussion I stupidly chose to attend was a two-hour all-province discussion on whether or not they should all have the same rules regarding how you affix reflective tape onto truck trailers. You know the red and white striped tape, that stuff. It was the most boring thing I have ever witnessed, as technocrat after technocrat droned on about this stupidity. How they could not agree on one way of doing it in, like, ten minutes, I could not comprehend. I leaned into the observer next to me and said “jeez, this is boring, I don’t think they’re going to wrap this up in two hours.”
“Oh,” he said, “this is the eleventh year in a row it’s been discussed.”
As it turns out that horrifying revelation was a portent of things to come. For years we tried to convince government people we could do something useful, and for years they did nothing. Nobody took any responsibility, ever. Anything that presented any sort of risk, no matter how small, was to be avoided at any cost.
The problem isn’t technology. Everyone’s talking about technology, and that’s an irrelevance. The technology problems will be solved, either in 2017 or 2020 or 2027, I don’t know and it doesn’t matter. The reason driverless cars won’t be on the roads in 2020 is that it’s against the law, and it is completely impossible that that will change in five years. It is totally, utterly beyond the capability of any Department or Ministry of Transportation to pull it off that fast. There is no chance whatsoever that any major North American jurisdiction will legalize the driverless car that soon.
The technological hurdles that have to be overcome are not as high as people think they are, and I think they’ll be beaten soon. The bureaucratic and political hurdles are ten miles high.
I believe they are already legal in California (and Nevada?). The difference between driverless cars and your tape example is that there is very little incentive to create rules that govern tape. There is a huge market (and boon to society) in driverless cars.
Good post. You mentioned the bureaucrats and the politicians but from a US perspective you left out the very powerful labor unions who tend to own the politicians.
Labor unions in the US are major money contributors to both parties but tend toward the Democratic party. Does anyone think that the Teamsters are going to roll over and let autonomous trucks replace their jobs? That is laughable. Not unless there is a Teamster sitting there reading a book while the truck drives itself. UPS drivers belong to the Teamsters union, if Amazon’s pie in the sky drone delivery system ever gets ‘off the ground’ you can be sure that the union will be the operators of the equipment.
Does anyone think that the Democrats or Republicans are going to ignore the cash donations that unions provide? Which party will embrace this technology? Neither.
At this point self driving vehicles are interesting toy technology, that may have real life applications in limited venues. But to ignore the political implications is kind of naïve.
Now I want you to imagine that I work for Scotch Tape, and I have created a new patented reflective tape that I think will be great. I host the meeting next year, but host it for senators, not technocrats, and I feed them a really nice dinner, and I have a super-slick presentation showing how awesome my new tape will be. I present them with draft language for a bill that standardizes reflector tape regulations.
Do you think it’s gonna take 11 more years of discussion?
No, the driver already had control of the car. What you were proposing was a manual override, which is a button that the passenger can push to take control away from the driver. I wouldn’t allow that in any car I rode in even if I knew that the passengers were good drivers, and I certainly wouldn’t allow it if the passenger was half-blind and mentally retarded, which any human is compared to a computer.
It’s very likely that the Teamsters will collide with other moneyed interests, and if you’ve been following US politics at all, you know the unions are not all that powerful compared to the corporations.
Yes.
What you’re describing is precisely what we did, albeit on a different subject. We tried going to the politicians, and aside from the fact that getting to them is very hard, they do not care unless it enhances their shot at re-election.
bup, what appears to be legal is that a vehicle may have an autonomous mode, but must still have a driver who can take over, or so I interpret the law. That is different from a truly autonomous vehicle - one with no driver.
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Yeah… but nothing enhances your chance at re-election like buckets and buckets of cash. And Google is one of the wealthiest corporations on Earth. How much money did the Canadian Standards Association have to throw around?
Yes because while your company has the superior Conspicuity tape, you have many competitors trying to beat you at the game and they do not meet the standards that you have set…your company also has ethics rules that make what you propose against corporate rules.
I don’t see that as relevant, with respect to what you say is the problem - bureaucracy.
Or are you saying that red tape and politics will be the problem for a truly autonomous vehicle, but not for one that allows a driver to let the car drive itself and is just there as a backup?
IIRC My first prediction that autonomous cars will be mandated by law within my lifetime (I am currently 40), was in 1995 or so.
So the current model can’t handle snow? So what? This is not remotely an insurmountable problem. The next hardware and software upgrade will handle snow much better. Eventually, snow won’t be a problem at all.
Eventually, inevitably, the hardware and software will be better, faster and safer than a human driver.
Social concerns and inertia? That’s a real issue. But each generation is used to and more reliant on computers than the one before it. How many elementary school kids do you know who are better at operating iPads, smart phones, smart televisions, etc than their parents?
Legal issues? We can work those out. I agree that there’s more money on the side for autonomous cars than on the side against.
I’ve repeated my prediction in many SDMB threads. With two decades down, I was wrong on one aspect. Things are happening much faster than I predicted.
ETA
Don’t forget seniors.
We have more seniors than ever before, and the percentage keeps growing. All too often hearing, sight, reflexes, flexibility and even judgement decline as the years pass. But many seniors who should not be driving refuse to give it up. What if, they didn’t have to? An autonomous car means that no matter how impaired you are, you still have freedom of travel. I see AARP pushing for autonomous vehicles to be legal too.