Self-Driving Cars, Who Will Be The First To Win?

Every self driving truck will require a union driver to be present in case something goes wrong....lol

http://video.foxnews.com/v/4611092436001/#sp=show-clips&v=4611092436001

Everyone? Rubbish. I'm certainly not.

Autonomous vehicle racing?

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/217202-yamahas-motorbike-riding-robot-wants-to-be-world-champion

The lawyers!! The whole idea will be road-kill once an AV gets into an accident that involves more variables than it was programmed for, or some hacker figures out how to hijack it and turn it into a weapon. The ICE will be dead long before that type of litigation works its way through the courts.

Yes.

lawyers and insurance companies will reap the biggest profits.

Fleet operators might embrace the technology, but whoever can produce the cheapest, nominally safe vehicle will win market share.

The missing part of any auto drive system, is the regulatory component. Just like the FAA, the DOT needs to create standards and specifications. To me the only way I can see this system working is for the moving machines to communicate with each other. There will be no heavy traffic density as the only safe thing to do is slow down to maintain safe spacing distances. You can't allow non automated operations mixed in. All it takes is a damn lane changer to screw the flow up.

I don't see the DOT stepping up to this task. Until this happens, auto drive will be a manual operator trying to keep themselves from dying.

This spells doom for hitchhikers.

It will only work properly if all the vehicles sharing the road are automated.

Once the human factor is removed it will be faster too.

What limits vehicle speed in most cases is allowance for the unpredicted event that encroaches on stopping and reaction distances.

Remove the unpredictable element and it's alot faster to get around.

Less chaos, more speed.

I doubt you will ever get rid of manually driven vehicles and you will always have to deal with animals, bicycles, and pedestrians.

.....animals, cyclists and pedestrians could be chipped too....

Good luck with that!

The natural follow-up question is: Who will be the first to lose?

It may be whoever is first to have a fatal accident, especially if preventable by human intervention.

I just wonder who will win the race through the inner cities once we have these cars established.

I guess one will be able to download and app, flash the software of the car and start unlawful (is to come) street races testing who can go fastest through New York or other city during peak hours. Car will be driver less in case something bad happens (and it will) nobody will be charged.

I can foresee lots of fun our societies will be having with this sport.

Will we be prepared?

Probably, yes. I am sure there will be an OnStar-like kill switch for the police.

The registered owner of the car will most likely assume (be held) responsible, unless they can prove theft.

This will be hard to judge.

"Sorry officer its a driver less car it just took off by itself!"

"I did not know the kill switch was tempered with"

We are heading for interesting times!