This thread about self driving cars and speed limits got me thinking.
I have a long commute for work (about 45 highway miles each way) and I hate, hate, hate that I can never just set my cruise control and, you know, cruise.
I always end up coming up on someone traveling slower. This despite setting my cruise either at or slightly below the limit.
As a driving enthusiast, I really do love to drive. In fact, I purposely own a manual transmission car to enhance my driving pleasure. It’s not unusual for me to drive an hour away just for the hell of it.
So self-driving cars are a bit scary to me, in that I obviously don’t want to give up driving.
BUT, if they do happen, then at least my long commute could be less frustrating.
Seriously, if you are ever on a long highway drive, try setting your cruise to any speed, and I will bet you will come to someone going slower. The best part is passing them, and then they speed up.
For all of people’s fevered imaginings, I think driverless cars will be the bomb!
No more worries about people texting, putting on make up, eating, do whatever you want, watch a movie!
The baby boom cohort is fast approaching ‘time to surrender your keys’ range. They are not going to give up the independence as willingly as their parents generation, in my opinion. Driverless cars would fix this issue without a lot of fight, I should think.
Driving under the influence will be a gone concern. Drink what you like, no worries about a designated driver. Bar owners get big boost in business, the party never ends, liquor sales rise, drunk driving disappears from the earth.
When you think about it so should speeding and illegal parking, a LOT of issues, one solution, kinda.
Insurance costs SHOULD drop! Okay, it’s a long shot, but still.
Imagine the improvement in access to people with disabilities, where medical issues preclude driving. What an improvement in life they’ll get!
For those who have been driving for decades, I think self driving cars will be utterly terrifying. Even worse than taking a teenager out on the road for their first driving lesson. The interstates might be orderly, but I picture myself rigid with fear as the computer car whizzes around twisty country roads. Giving up control is not going to be easy. And I’m supposed to trust the thing? Over the years, Google chrome has crashed on me numerous times. Android phones have completely locked up. But I’m sure the cars will be immune to software glitches.
Picture yourself sailing along at night when suddenly a herd of deer run out into the roadway. You might choose to brake and hit the deer rather than steer into the oncoming car to your left or the stone wall on your right. The Googlemobile might have other ideas. Who knows? It’s going to take decades before all the bugs are ironed out.
Believe me, I do understand the overall benefits of removing humans from the equation. I’m just glad that I’ll either be dead or too infirm to drive when it becomes reality.
I think that it is an absolute no-brainer that self-driving cars will be far, far, better than 99 percent of human drivers, and that the number of people in the future who will actually want to drive their own cars will be roughly equivalent to those who eschew automatic transmissions today.
That’s the one thing that worries me. I don’t think I’ve ever owned a computerised device that hasn’t locked up or crashed at least once. Considering the complexity of a self driving car, can it really be expected that they will never ever glitch out? I mean, if your PC freezes, then you just have to reboot, and maybe lose a bit of work at the worst. If your car freezes, then the first thing you’ll know about it is when it goes straight on at a bend at 50mph. :eek:
Realistically, I would imagine they’d have some sort of backup system that detects the main computer has crashed/frozen and maybe bring the car to a stop or something, but that’s still not ideal.
Otherwise, I can imagine self driving cars to be awesome in so many ways (pretty much as elbows says) - and that’s coming from someone that considers themselves an auto enthusiast. I mean, I love driving, but doing the same old commute every day? Not so much. Give me a car that drives me to work and back every day while I have a snooze or catch up on some TV - perfect.
I imagine that self-driving cars would be implemented using redundant hardware. You’d have one or two totally independent systems monitoring the system that’s in control and ready to metaphorically grab the wheel if the main system flakes out. The tricky part here is making sure that it isn’t the secondary system glitching out and grabbing control when the main system is actually fine. That’s why engineers make the big bucks.
Also, if you have critical mass of self-driving cars, you can expect them to be able to communicate about road hazards, so even if the ultimate failsafe mechanism is just to panic brake and come to a dead stop in the middle of the freeway, you won’t have to worry about someone text messaging and rear ending you at 80mph. In theory, at least, the other self-driving cars should all avoid you, merging far more gracefully than human drivers would.
Because newer cars have a heck of a lot of things going on controlled by computers, and the frequency of those computers crashing and leaving people stranded on the road because the fuel injection (or whatever) has got the BSOD is pretty rare. Same with any jet you’ve been on for the last many years. You’ve probably owned quite a few devices that have never crashed, and probably never will.
Fuel injection and engine management systems, even on the most modern cars, are actually fairly simple systems. They take inputs (throttle position, coolant temperature, etc) and adjust their outputs according to a fairly rigid set of programming. They only really have to deal with a few, fairly predictable variables within a set range. A system capable of reacting to and making decisions based on thousands of random and unpredictable events is several orders of magnitude more complicated.
Comparing an engine management computer to an autonomous vehicle system is like saying your windows PC is crashproof because your digital watch has never had a problem. It would be more analogous to compare it to semi-autonomous systems like lane assist or active cruise control - which can, and do, fail.
FWIW, I’m not some luddite that thinks autonomous cars are evil and will never be as good as human drivers - I’m actually looking forward to the day when they become a reality - I just hope that when they do come, they have some pretty robust redundancies in place.
Take a look into what is referred to as embedded systems
Generally thinking, they are orders of magnitude more reliable. Comparing it to a typical windows computer is not an apt analogy. A personal computer, to be useful, has to give users the freedoms to do all kinds of things and install all manner of third party hardware and software at the whim of the user.
Embedded systems are purpose built with a far narrower scope of operation, thus simpler to program, and less likely to have issues.
I find it amusing that people expect these things to be absolutely bulletproof. Will there be glitches, yes. I don’t expect them to out drive 99% of people, I expect them to outdrive 70-75% of people which pretty much is already a HUGE improvement. The kind of situations many people are bringing up like some times of accident avoidance or chosing to hit a parked car instead of a kid that runs out into the street, are things that happen once every few years per person. People suck at these situations, I dont expect the computers to do much better initially. As situations arise, the systems will become smarter and better able to cope with a variety of situations.
I have been driving for 27 years, I used to drive ambulance in a major US city. I am a trained driver, and I say “bring on the computers”.
Self-driving cars will change a lot, lot of things, including the very concept of vehicle ownership. If I’m the first on the block to have a self-driving car that’s licensed to, well, drive itself, the 93% of the time I’m not using it, I’m gonna hook it up to a cell network/website and have it out there pimping itself out, picking up fares and earning me money.
Yes, I know what an embedded system is - see my post above.
And here is where the problem lies - embedded systems, as they stand, are generally enclosed systems that are specifically designed to do a small range of things and not much else. That’s part of their strength - they’re fairly simple systems.
The best minds in the field have been working on autonomous cars for years now and they’re still nowhere near ready for mass market yet - as far as computing goes, this is kind of the exact opposite of ‘simple’. We’re talking about a system that has to account for any number of variables and unpredictable scenarios - far, far more than could ever be reasonably programmed in, so the system has to have (in computer terms) a fairly high level of intelligence. It has to make decisions and judgements on the fly, rather than just programatically responding to a set range of inputs.
Embedded or not, the more complex a system is, the more likely it is to fail - and these systems are, at the current time, pretty much the definition of a complex system.
Glitches or not, I fully expect autonomous cars to be a whole lot safer than human drivers. Yes, there will be glitches, and yes, there will be accidents as a result of those. It’s very likely that sooner or later, someone will die as a result of one of these glitches. And yes, that does worry me. But on balance, I would expect autonomous cars to save many more lives than they cost.
The legal implications are going to be interesting, though.
I’ve been driving for 22 years and I’m a trained driver, too (although I’ve never done the ambulance thing - kudos to you, that looks kind of tough!), and I completely agree.
I suspect all the, “I’ll never set foot in one!”, crowd will be singing a different tune when they are about to lose their licence because of some infirmity, or when they’ve had too much to drink!
Yeah, my guess is that a generation from now, owning a car will be just slightly less novel than owning a boat. It isn’t rare, but most people would just not have interest in spending money for something that’s kind of a pain in the ass.
