noisebeam

coominya

I have these new upgrades for your consideration my master

jon c. 

No kids, so that would be hypothetical, but yes, they would make me nervous. At first. It's a gut reaction to the unfamiliar. And I know there will be failures resulting in fatal accidents. But logically, I know there won't be accidents due to dozing at the wheel, or drinking at the wheel, or just being a dumbass at the wheel. And I know those things will amount to more accidents. I honestly believe that even the technology today is safer than human beings. And the technology will get better quickly.

A lot of folks thought the automobile was crazy dangerous when they first saw one. Within a decade they were pretty common. I think society generally moves fairly quickly in overcoming collective fears. But I'll probably keep a distance from the first ones I see.

MikeOK

I believe that instead of autonomous vehicles there will be improvements in auto braking, pedestrian warning, lane assist etc. I can already get a discount on my insurance if I had auto braking. But a car that can drive itself? We are a very long time away from realizing that. It may never happen outside the cities.

noisebeam

Also consider how more self driving vehicles on roadways will affect human driver behavior. Some will abuse self driving vehicles knowing they will respond with caution and don't have emotion. There may need to be some laws to address this.
Others may give up on intimidating other 'drivers' as they may not know if automatic or not. That will depend on the level of auto vs. not ambiguity. While there was never a good point in tailgating a human, what will be the point of tailgating a robot?
I wonder if automatic drivers will need some 'emotion?'

MikeOK

Another negative with autonomous vehicles is the rednecks around here will have both hands free to chunk beer bottles at me instead of one hand. There will be double the chance of me being hit instead of them harmlessly wizzing by my head like they do now.

coominya

Car jacking will be easier, just push a shopping trolley out in front of one and when it stops push another one up behind it. Imagine too the case where an occupant has a heart attack. The car will just merrily drive past hospital after hospital until it reaches its destination and then sit and wait. And no one has yet answered my question about who's going to clean all the urine and vomit out of the ride-share ones on a Friday and Saturday night? Before the next user gets in...

Amitoj

Precisely. And the technology already exists for making this better.
1. Drunk Driving: Make ignition interlocks mandatory on all cars. It is not fool proof, but a higher penalty for bypassing this check will help.
2. Distracted Driving: Technology already exists that tracks whether the driver is looking ahead or elsewhere or is dozing. If the driver is not paying attention to the road, slow the car down or deliver a small electric shock to the driver



Good point there too. It is a possibility that autonomous vehicles can lead to more road rage.

noisebeam

I was thinking the reverse. Even idiots know that raging at robots is futile.

Ninety5rpm

How do you carjack a car that has no steering wheel?

Ninety5rpm

People are insisting self-driving cars are 30 years away in the same thread where others are reporting encounters with them today.

The drivers in these cars are doing less and less all the time.

Amitoj

You give too much credit to idiots. You've never seen people yelling at computers, ATM machines, vending machines etc etc?

Ninety5rpm

Link?

Ninety5rpm

Mike, you're talking about technology available in production vehicles for years as if it's still coming in the future.

Can a car drive itself? A very long time from realizing that? Noisebeam reports encountering one today (albeit he's not sure if it happened to be driving itself at the time).

noisebeam

I encounter them daily. They all have test drivers in them, but likely are usually in self drive mode. They are easy to merge in front of as they back off immediately.

MikeOK

I read it in an investing app, they had an article about it awhile back.

Ninety5rpm

Perhaps you misread or are misremembering. The only Tesla test cars I've heard of are the ones used in the NHTSA crash tests.

MikeOK

It's certainly possible, I've tried to find a link to that article with no success. The main reason I remember it was because their stock took a big hit for several weeks.

Ninety5rpm

I thought that was after the Florida crash which was on May 7, 2016.
Tesla stock did drop after that.

MikeOK

It may have been, but I don't think so. I looked through the seeking alpha old stories and they will only let me go back through June. I did find an interested article that Tesla was the first auto maker to be able to legally test autonomous cars in CA. And the article said that they would be testing with 4 cars, so I really doubt anyone is seeing them daily.

prathmann

marketwatch.com reported in Feb. '17 on the autonomous vehicle annual reports for 2016. For Tesla they report:
"Tesla’s TSLA, +0.64% autonomous vehicle program had four test cars on California roads last year, starting in October, which was also the month when most of the trips took place (one of the cars drove 20 miles in November). The four cars drove a total of 550 miles, mostly on suburban roads. Most instances of disengagement occurred on wet roads, with only a handful on dry roads, Tesla reported. There were no accidents, emergencies, or collisions, Tesla said."

MikeOK

That may have been it then, but I could have sworn what I read happened in CA. It was about that time that I read it. Regardless, with only 4 cars on the road and only 550 miles driven I don't think they are seen daily, if ever. I will be like Will Smith in that futuristic movie that had self driving cars, he always put it in manual because he didn't trust them.

cellery

There were some hiccups with (I believe it was Uber?) having AI cars detect bicyclists. But the cool thing about this is that we're only at the very early stages of this technology, and it is already incredibly capable. Think about where we will be in one year... 5 years. There are teams of the best software engineers working on this stuff. And with the added competition of various companies entering this market - it will induce an incentive for automated car companies to produce the best product they can compete with. Since in 2017 automated cars are already largely better than humans at not only detecting, but driving carefully and correctly around pedestrians and cyclists, I am optimistic we will be looking at a much better cycling world once they become commercially viable to mainstream car buyers.

cellery

I am guessing by your location we ride in the same areas. I see them almost daily as well - Waymo and Uber. Guessing they are all in automated mode for the most part. From what I have observed, they are among the most cautious vehicles I see driving around.

Clyde1820

For me, it comes down to: safer when, in what situations, and for whom?

I can see the first step being autonomous vehicles that don't ever miss a step when it comes to standard roadway signage, lines, signals. I figure that making them bomb-proof when it comes to coping with other cars, including autonomous ones, would be next. I'm betting it'll be vastly tougher to deal with the sort of rapid-fire movements that a smaller motorcycle can make, let alone a bicycle or pedestrian. IF each of those situations can be proven to be 100x (or however much) safer and more-reliable than human-operated vehicles, then at that point I'd be for it. But I suspect we're a good decade and more away from that point. Probably several times that.