Self-Driving Cars

If the mistake rate for computers is less than for humans, then what is the problem?

Modern motor vehicle statistics indicate that almost all accidents are due to user error (the driver), not the vehicle hardware or software.

In the end it is fear of change and human nature that is the problem (this is a completely natural human response), self driving vehicles by their very nature will be far safer. Just as flying is far, far, far safer than driving. You have no control their either, but it doesn't stop hundreds of millions a year enjoying being Chauffeured around at 30,000 feet.

But in most cases you have a highly trained pilot doing the chauffeuring in a highly developed vehicle with many levels of redundancy. Spread out over 200 passengers, we can afford those very expensive, highly regulated and controlled systems. Not to mention that the airlines keep those birds in motion as much as possible to maximize the ROI.

Think of this: There is very little infrastructure for aircraft once they are in the air. Automobiles need infrastructure for every inch they travel. The costs for comparative safety for automobiles will be unaffordable.

I saw the new single seat plane with twin tiny propellers, and wow, it actually flies!

I suppose we will have the Jetsons car before long. One of the key features should and will be crash landing avoidance by parachuting the plane down. Of course, another worthwhile feature might be jettisoning the passenger (if any) and/or pilot.

" But it doesn't stop hundreds of millions a year enjoying being chauffeured around at 30,000 feet."

Pilots and copilot's in fighter jets rely on the cubicle safety cage ( jettison) for safety.

Until passenger aircraft give up the house car mentality, that mode of transportation will never be truly safe and enjoyable.

So why single out Americans for special attention when individuals so labelled make up less than 5% of the planet's humans?

Apparently, only 5% of us matter, the rest of you all are on your own, LOL.

I suppose the sane arguments (not necessarily the same ones) would apply in Britain also, and some of the other fortunate countries on our list.

That's because Americans enjoy the privileges of exceptionalism, manifest destiny, and white man's burden. (Too bad that's the closest to a puke smiley on the menu.)

ROFLMAO at the alacrity of that reply! You meant this pukey, smiley face, Mr. Boaty Mac Boatface?

It's too early in the day for happy hour, even in your time zone.

I think I just got booted to a whole 'nother time zone! We are sort of near New Mexico at times. Today, the wind is howling out of the southwest, so we are on Mexico time, at least that is what the sand in the hour glass is saying.

13.6 Speed commencement indicator

I'm not 'afraid' of AVs (let's use the proper term - 'Autonomous Vehicles' or AVs, not the clunky phrase 'self-driving cars').

By the time AVs are widely available they won't look that much like the cars we drive now, just as the computers most of us use now (iphones, ipads, tablets, kindles, etc) look nothing like the computers of 15 years ago.

But I am concerned about our over-reliance on technology. Technology (and government help) will fail, and when it does people need to be enough self-sufficient to survive without being a burden to others.

This video is a parody, but it makes the point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrSUe_m19FY

Scott Adams says it all:

That "spoke" robot is a bad robot, recycle immediately.

If people dumb enough to think they are actually going somewhere when they are not, it might be time to go ahead and just open some parks and let them out of the cages. No animal wants to be in a cage. It is why our dogs hate when I have to take wife to doctor, four dogs and only three crates makes for three unhappy customers when we get home. At least we can trust the one dog that always gets sent to the TV room-yes he is watching Animal Planet, but I have caught him on CNN twice, and told him "Bad Dog, Bad Dog!"

It could have been MSNBC.

Driving your own car is just another freedom that will be taken away in the future. I hope I'm not still around.

This is how the old cowboys felt when they started putting up barbed wire. Then the old cowboys wanted barbed wire, but still wanted to ride horses while working. Then came the pickup truck, the jeep, and the helicopter.

Horses are for sport now. I absolutely hate ever seeing a horse behind a barbed wire fence.

68% of statistics are made up on the spot.

Just went to 69%.

Auto land autopilots are safe. This is because they are triplex design (redundant parallel computation channels), with dissimilar processing and computer code, to ensure no common mode design error.

Until the DOT starts working on a common auto drive system standard, it will be lawyer heaven when these first come out.

Seems we have folks that think they have auto drive already as they are texting and the vehicle is self driving. I can't wait for auto drive, my spouse and I, was almost killed when hit from behind and driven into oncoming.

True but the crew of the Air France Rio - Paris flight did all the wrong things when the auto pilot dis connected

As I understand it pilots are only really hands on with commercial flights at take off and landing and like this instance when things go wrong. It must be difficult to keep your mind on it all when hands off on such long flights and to switch back into actually flying this f***r mode.

Come to Korea we don't have AV yet but cab drivers already watch K-drama on their mini TVs while stuck in traffic or cruising along the highway.

There's another import that is rapidly catching on here.

Apparently American women are tired of watching Days of our Lives, General Hospital, The Young and the Restless,,

And would rather watch English voice-over K-Drama instead.

My comment was in response to the post about autoland. Autoland is very different from autopilot. I can assure you that when an aircraft has autoland engaged, the pilots are very much engaged. When an aircraft has autopilot engaged, they could be drinking coffee, checking Facebook or any number of things as you have a lot more time to react at 35,000 feet than 350 feet altitude. Those Air France pilots were not properly trained in emergency procedures. At altitude there is no reason to nose up an aircraft. Keeping the nose down (using the artificial horizon) while you figure out what happened to your instruments (hindsight is perfect) is a much better approach. Those pilots had the throttles at 100% with a 40 degree angle of attack. That's like a fighter aircraft taking off. Why weren't they trusting their other instruments? We'll never really know.

You have no idea how convenient this topic is. Yesterday (when this was published), Autonomous Vehicles was the main topic at the CEI Annual Meeting (in Madrid, Spain).

It is all becoming aboit marketing, instead of overcoming the technical aspects.

Apparently the CEI group has taken that leap of faith onto the invisible causeway already. Only the righteous may see it.

Leap of faith = leap of technology?? You tell me!

Ok, lets make one thing clear, computers only do what they are told. In all my years of working with and on them I have yet to see one come up with an original thought or take a physical action based on its original thought. I have, however, seen thousands of people blame computers for their inability to use the technology. I have seen computers struggle with bad inputs, poor maintenance, incorrect instructions or incompatible programming, or incorrect support equipment all of which can be traced by RCA to incorrect actions by humans.

Personally, I would trust a computer to drive a car safely far more than I would trust the average 16 year old out with his friends on a Friday night.

The problem is less about the computer, and more about the sensors. Making sensors as good as humans coupled with human's ability to interpret very subtle clues in bad weather is where autonomous cars come crashing down. Under favorable driving conditions, yes, we can get autonomous cars to travel well documented routes very safely. It's that 1% -5% of the time that we need those imperfect humans behind the wheel. I'd like to see an autonomous car navigate a mall parking lot on a Saturday.

Is the Autonomous vehicle going to notice kids chasing a ball and realize that if it goes in the street, some kid is likely to chase it out from behind a parked car?

Why not?

Lots and lots of safety critical programming to be done.

How does the system decide on what type of objects to slam on the brakes? A bouncing ball? An empty cereal box cartwheeling across the road in the wind? A squirrel vs. someone's cat? An African swallow swooping across the road? Coconuts?

Regardless of how good the computer system controlling the vehicle, the human that is considered to be the operator of that vehicle will be held accountable for any accidents. There will probably be laws that make penalties for texting or sleeping behind the wheel of a computer driven car far more extreme, than that of a car that is not computer driven, just to help make sure people continue to pay attention.

The implications of HG Wells' novel 1984 haven't even entered this discussion yet but they will be eagerly embraced by the powers that be.

Someone wrote a complaint on Twitter about his local representative?

Reroute him to the penitentiary for 10 years solitary while charges are being prepared.

Who believes that Google's self drives won't co-operate with Big Brother?

George Orwell (not H.G. Wells) wrote that.

Well at least George Orwell is relevant.

Here is my take on the current mess in the world:

La Marseillais

In the meantime, I here the word police singing Die Faterland in the background.

I say Vive' Libertie, vive' la France

A very big concern is how to prevent others from hitting me. A self-driving car can avoid hitting someone else, but how to keep others from hitting you? A very real scenario is: your car automatically stops to avoid hitting a pedestrian, but a following car without self driving controls, tailgates you. I'm sure the cost of fixing such cars is going to be expensive. If ALL vehicles were self driving, that would be one story. but a mix on the roads is a recipe for disaster.

I can read the headlines now:

"If you like your car, you can keep your car."

"This new federally mandated automobile program requires economical cars, and economical insurance too. But we have to pass this bill before you can read it."

"In order to qualify for the federal car insurance, you have to buy this autonomous car, and the insurance has a large co-pay, you can't afford the deductible, and by the way, you are still responsible for maiming, killing, and other misfortunes associated with driving the car."

The three great lies of the next mandate program where the government forces you to buy something.

Big Picture: technology got us to the amazing world we have today. And it will continue to advance our lifestyle unless we destroy ourselves. You can't stop progress; the self-driving cars are coming, and sure there will be bugs at first, just like there are bugs in all new technologies. But our kids will jump into autonomous electric ubers without a second thought. And they will go to museums to see the silly cars that were noisy and smelly and one actually had to operate by hand!

You have a lot of faith in our technology. I'm a bit more skeptical. I believe there will be cars with any number of driver assistance technologies like the ones we are seeing today, however, I believe totally autonomous cars won't be in our grandchildren's lifetimes (unless someone mandates that all cars MUST be autonomous, i.e. no mixing of driver vs. driverless cars.)

I belong to Skeptics Anonymous! Faith has little to do with it; there are already autonomous cars and trucks on the roads here and in Europe, albeit in test mode. Some Luddites and lobbyists and crony politicians will try to stop them, just like the same bunch are trying to stop solar energy, but it will only slow the inevitable. Automotive deaths, injuries and insurance rates will plummet. And, looking a little further into the future, personal ownership of cars will decline once one can just punch a button or tell Siri "I want to go to the airport!" and an uber appears to take you right to the terminal. Why buy and maintain an expensive asset when you only need it for an hour a day?

For the same reasons why I like to use public restrooms.

I thought you looked familiar! There was this time in Annapolis...

Lets not forget that Humans will drive outside of their ability, speed, dink/drive or use cars as weapons, which a computer, in theory, wouldn't. Also we rely on computers in Satellite navigation systems that the human then blindly follows in to situations. Who is at fault then? the computer or the human?