Nearly half of Americans don't want a self-driving car

It will be easy to take driving away with this kind of stuff happening https://www.ketv.com/article/omaha-motorcyclist-killed-in-crash-police-arrest-driver/22755599

24 year old driving on a suspended license and speeding and possibly intoxicated kills motorcyclist. One site was reporting that her license was revoked 5 times previously.


Father showed up to the wrong school to pickup their kid, then drove to the next one where he blew four times over the legal limit when cops picked him up. It was the second day of school. https://www.ketv.com/article/dad-cited-for-dui-outside-of-elkhorn-school/22752160
 
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Rushie said:
Not a problem. My current 1986 model will last til I die.
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Gives me an additional incentive to have the electrical problems in my 1999 Jeep Wrangler fixed. Keep it on the road forever. That 4.0 l I-6 engine is bulletproof.

tspear said:
CA is nothing compared to the bad drivers in Boston. I have probably driven in every city in the USA with over 250K people in it, all over Europe, some in Brazil, lots of Caribbean islands.... Nowhere are they as bad as Boston; and I prefer the unpaved roads in Rio compared to some of the Boston streets.

Tim
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I had long wondered why Boston drivers are so bad (I agree, they are the worst in the US). Then, driving in Rome a number of years ago, it came to me. There are lots of Italians in Boston. It must be hereditary. Actually, driving in Boston is easy. All you need is one hand on the wheel, one hand on the horn and one foot on the gas. If you are changing lanes, whatever you do, don't look first. If the other driver sees you look he will assume you see him and he will cut you off. Explains all the left front and right rear dented fenders.

That said, the only place I've ever been where I feared for my life in a taxi was in Shanghai. They made Boston drivers look like angels.
 
Ghery said:
That said, the only place I've ever been where I feared for my life in a taxi was in Shanghai.
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The worst drivers I've seen were in Nairobi. Or maybe they were the best, since I was sure I was going to witness an accident, but I didn't.
 
1RTK1 said:
If you drove in kalifornia with all the traffic problems and stupid drivers you would welcome autonomous cars.
I'm all for it, BUT there must also be a manual mode where you can turn off all the NANNY components.
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And one reason supporting your last sentence is that there are roads I've been on in some areas of California that autonomous cars would have no hope of driving safely on. Forest Service roads in mountainous areas are an example.
 
Salty said:
People in big cities have been living without cars for decades and they’ve managed to figure out how to cope with those issues. I think you’ll figure it out somehow.
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Some people have a need to carry enough stuff with them so that it would be a major hassle to unload everything (and store it somewhere) at every stop. Others don't. Being dismissive of the needs of those who do is not going to solve anything.
 
Velocity173 said:
With around 35-40,000 fatalities on the road every year, I think a computer can do better than most people. I trust the computer to get a drunk home over the human. I trust a computer not to fall asleep at the wheel. I trust a computer will allow someone to text and drive and I trust a computer to drive at a safe speed for conditions.

Now, 100 % trust? Heck no but if every vehicle on the road had mandatory self driving capability, I trust it’s failure rate over the vast majority of human drivers.
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We don't need autonomous cars to be perfect, but we do need them to improve the accident statistics over human drivers. Data that were posted in another thread showed that we are still a LONG way away from achieving that. And I am among those who feel that the difficulty of reaching that milestone is being seriously underestimated by many folks.
 
Palmpilot said:
Some people have a need to carry enough stuff with them so that it would be a major hassle to unload everything (and store it somewhere) at every stop. Others don't. Being dismissive of the needs of those who do is not going to solve anything.
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Hey, I agree with him. But I also see the writing on the wall. His scenario is simply due to being used to what is available now. It’s going to change. All sorts of businesses will pop up around these issues that will alter the way we do things.

You won’t leave things in your car anymore, because it won’t make sense to do that any more.

Again, don’t get me wrong. I hope I’m dead before we get there, or at least old enough that I don’t want to drive anymore.
 
Ghery said:
I had long wondered why Boston drivers are so bad (I agree, they are the worst in the US). Then, driving in Rome a number of years ago, it came to me. There are lots of Italians in Boston. It must be hereditary.
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They talk with their hands and drive with their mouths.
 
Everskyward said:
So do I. Pedestrians are unpredictable. How do the sensors figure out whether a figure standing at a corner is waiting to cross in one direction or perpendicular to that direction, looking at their, phone, or waiting for a bus or Uber? Then there are bicyclists, lane-splitting motorcycles, vehicles that stop in a travel lane to unload or parallel park, construction zones, emergency vehicles, city busses, etc.
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Meh, just automate the pedestrians, problem solved.

spock_controlled.jpg
 
There will be self-driving cars. It's inevitable, especially since we humans can't seem to be trusted to be responsible. (And the current generation doesn't seem to think they should be held accountable for their actions.) It won't be the government that forces us to let the automation do the driving, it will be our insurance companies. First, the vehicle insurance companies will offer reductions for those who use automation. Then it will be health insurance, who won't cover you when you're injured because you were driving manually. Then the auto insurers will start refusing to insure manually operated vehicles. In the beginning, cars will still be designed to be manually driven, but with automation assistance. We already are seeing that. The next step is auto-pilot on the highway. (Which I would welcome.) Then it will be in the city. Just like manual transmissions have become an option instead of "standard", "Manual mode ability" will become an option. (And an expensive one at that.)

To appease those who see driving as a hobby, there will be roads/tracks were one can self-drive their antique "manually operated cars".

I'm okay with it. While I enjoy driving, I have NEVER done it for fun. I drive to get to places that I cannot walk to. (And because I loath public transit.) I just want a self-driving car before I'm to old to drive. That will make my senior years a lot more tolerable.
 
Salty said:
Hey, I agree with him. But I also see the writing on the wall. His scenario is simply due to being used to what is available now. It’s going to change. All sorts of businesses will pop up around these issues that will alter the way we do things.

You won’t leave things in your car anymore, because it won’t make sense to do that any more.

Again, don’t get me wrong. I hope I’m dead before we get there, or at least old enough that I don’t want to drive anymore.
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I'm saying that this would create costly logistical issues for some. I don't see what good it does to pretend that certain needs don't exist. Doing so increases the chances that predictions about what will be commercially viable may turn out to be fatally flawed.
 
Rykymus said:
There will be self-driving cars. It's inevitable, especially since we humans can't seem to be trusted to be responsible. (And the current generation doesn't seem to think they should be held accountable for their actions.) It won't be the government that forces us to let the automation do the driving, it will be our insurance companies. First, the vehicle insurance companies will offer reductions for those who use automation. Then it will be health insurance, who won't cover you when you're injured because you were driving manually. Then the auto insurers will start refusing to insure manually operated vehicles. In the beginning, cars will still be designed to be manually driven, but with automation assistance. We already are seeing that. The next step is auto-pilot on the highway. (Which I would welcome.) Then it will be in the city. Just like manual transmissions have become an option instead of "standard", "Manual mode ability" will become an option. (And an expensive one at that.)

To appease those who see driving as a hobby, there will be roads/tracks were one can self-drive their antique "manually operated cars".

I'm okay with it. While I enjoy driving, I have NEVER done it for fun. I drive to get to places that I cannot walk to. (And because I loath public transit.) I just want a self-driving car before I'm to old to drive. That will make my senior years a lot more tolerable.
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The insurance companies won't be mandating self-driving cars until they have a better safety record than human drivers. So far, that's a LONG way from being true, and the technical challenges in achieving it are very non-trivial, which makes such confident predictions about what "will" happen very bold.
 
Palmpilot said:
The insurance companies won't be mandating self-driving cars until they have a better safety record than human drivers. So far, that's a LONG way from being true, and the technical challenges in achieving it are very non-trivial, which makes such confident predictions about what "will" happen very bold.
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I think it will be progressive. Offer a discount if the car has lane assist...
Over a twelve year cycle (average age of a car in the USA) insurance companies will push toward partial automation. The partial automation will make full automation more likely through both incremental progress and also making behavior more predictable.

Tim

Sent from my LG-TP260 using Tapatalk
 
Palmpilot said:
That had to be the absolute worst Star Trek episode ever!
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I have always been bothered by the fact that Spock should be suffering sequelae from a number of horrific assaults that were "fixed" on the fly by Dr. McCoy. Having his brain removed and reinstalled, that puppet master one celled creature in "Operation: Annihilate!" that was killed (by light) while wrapped around his spine and nerves but apparently its remains were left in place? Having his blood cells reproduce at an abnormally large rate to save his father - this one was caused by McCoy and his experimental stimulant. And let's not forget actual death from massive radiation.
 
Everyone will have a different opinion when the kids come to take your keys away. . .
 
azblackbird said:
The issue is not the snow or rain itself. It's all the slush, grime, mud, and road spray afterwards that will coat all the lenses of the sensors, cameras, etc. and make them absolutely worthless.
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And how do you see through a windshield if it is raining....
Or use a microcam, with an electric static charge that keeps it clean (same premise as the sensor cleaners on high end CMOS cameras).....
Or switch to radar, or sonar....

Tim
 
skyking3286 said:
Everyone will have a different opinion when the kids come to take your keys away. . .
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That's pretty much what the keynote speaker said several months ago. Palmpilot said there's a thread that shows that autonomous vehicles have a worse safety record than regular cars, something I haven't seen. The stats shown at the presentations I've attended all show autonomous vehicles having a much better safety record. But stats can be skewed to show pretty much anything.

These guys can be pretty convincing though, talking about reaction times, etc. It was easy to convince me, an early nay-sayer, that autonomous vehicles will save lives.

Rykymus is right though. It's the insurers who will demand them, and price you out of the market if you resist.
 
All software sucks. Don't care if the result is a net gain in life's saved. Safety is never the goal, or shouldn't be, of any human endeavor. I'm good with more casualties, if life is more fun - most of us here are flying SEL, many at night, some in IMC, mostly with almost no systems redundancy. Do any of you really beleive that is "safe"? (refernce to self delusion here) - We'll all be dead in a hundred years; quit dicking around with pseudo-safety championed by the wall crawlers and bean counters - you are doomed, so have some fun before the hammer falls. Rant complete.
 
Palmpilot said:
Which one is that? I don't recognize the screen shot.
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The last episode of season three, Turnabout Intruder. Mentally sick Janice Lester switches bodies with Kirk.
 
Rushie said:
The last episode of season three, Turnabout Intruder. Mentally sick Janice Lester switches bodies with Kirk.
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Episodes like that seem more like fantasy than science fiction, but to me, they have artistic merit as drama, because it's fun to see the actors portraying the others' personalities.
 
Palmpilot said:
Episodes like that seem more like fantasy than science fiction, but to me, they have artistic merit as drama, because it's fun to see the actors portraying the others' personalities.
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You hit the nail. I love when Bill Shatner or Leonard Nemoy get to stretch their acting and go completely out of character like Kirk being a bitter jealous female trying to pretend she's Kirk while she's in his body. Or any time Spock has to repress emotion but he can't quite. That sort of stuff is what made that show, not the plots or the science which really was bad sometimes.
 
It occurs to me that a discussion of science fiction is oddly appropriate for a thread on self-driving vehicles. ;)

https://www.wired.com/story/ike-self-driving-truck-startup-nuro-software-deal/

Excerpt:

"If anything has changed between today and the halcyon days of 2016, it’s that those building and marketing self-driving tech are now less... promise-y. The robots are still coming, the software developers and hardware mavens and balance sheet-wielding CEOs insist. But more and more, they emphasize that this work is hard, the problems varied, the risks manifold, the regulations slow in coming. Even Waymo, the putative leader in the industry flush with Alphabet funding, which plans to launch a commercial service this quarter, is having trouble teaching computers to be competent drivers."​
 
Here is my prediction:

1. Self driving cars
2. Pilotless airliners
3. GA is killed off as humans are not to be trusted flying small planes
4. Extinction of the human race.

Time span? 20 years. Enjoy your last few years fellas.
 
azblackbird said:
I'd love for Google to come to Denver and test those cars right after a nice snow storm in rush hour traffic. They know better. :yesnod:
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Well yeah. They don't do it because they know their technology can't do that. If it could, we'd have fully autonomous cars right now. In a word, duh. But just because they can't currently do it doesn't mean its impossible nor does it mean the solution is 100 years out. Or 50 years out. Or 30 years out. Its coming and its coming faster than you may think. There are lots of kids being born right now that will never learn to drive a car.

As for the title and subject of the thread and whether people want them or not? The Henry Ford quote comes to mind. "If I had asked people what they wanted they would have said faster horses." This technology is coming. It will be here sooner than you think. And when it gets here, you will like it or at the very least not hate it.
 
Juliet Hotel said:
This technology is coming. It will be here sooner than you think. And when it gets here, you will like it or at the very least not hate it.
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I can't wait. Drivers seem to be more distracted than ever. We need to take the privilege away from them.
 
There's a tendency on the part of some to underestimate the difficulty of the task.
 
I love those that think humans can't drive safely and should be replaced by autonomous vehicles.

Humans can't drive safely, but they can build ultra-complicated machines that can drive safely. Yeah, sure.

The irony is that those that think that are the real luddites. They'd have to know nothing about software development, AI, and robotics to think it's going to be any safer.

But they'll win in the end. We now live in a world of lowest common denominator. We solve problems in the laziest way possible. If one guy with a gun can't behave, take the guns. If one driver can't drive, take the cars. ad infinitum......
 
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