Driverless or Pointless - You Decide

There is no way I would buy a driverless car. (I don't even like automatic transmission.)

I can see that driverless cars will probably be phased in a robo-taxies. Folks in big cities are used to depending on public transportation, and will probably adapt to the technology, and I can even see big cities eventually banning manually driven cars. (Personally, that would be not much loss as I have no desire to drive in big cities.)

For as long as I am able, I want the freedom to drive myself where I want to go and when I want to go there! That's my vote.

Autonomous or Monotonous?? Rixter I am totally in your corner on that one, but there may be compelling reasons (in the future) to have this, but I would still like to have manual override in case of automation failure. The lifespan of your run-of-the-mill vehicle now would make implementation of this a nightmare, akin to the ACA.

On the other hand, it might be nice to have a valet robot aboard, just to go fetch things, grocery run, or tobacco run, or even beer run, while I continue to labor away at something I would much rather do in my shop/laboratory.

Me neither. I don't like electric handbrakes either. BTW why are they usually called "electronic" handbrakes? What's electronic about them? Electromagnetic maybe. On the subject of driverless cars there's a view that they will make congestion worse as they must be so fail-safe that in any unusual situation they will stop and cause gridlock.

See Piet Mondrian's "Broadway Boogie-Woogie"!

I really don't see the point, especially in the UK where they already have a good transportation system. Just make the trains automatic. They already do that in airports.

Just don't be surprised when they do this, even if not the greatest idea ever.

I'm old enough to remember not having indoor plumbing or phones.

The first hand held calculator I used had 4 functions and cost $75.00 USD in 1975.

This will come to pass. I see this starting in big cities and migrating into the suburbs.

Eventually, that cold beer will just be an eye blink away.

Is that calculator a "Bomar Brain"? I still have mine as a keepsake!

For the Me-Me's, the milleniums who what their CARs -- like everything else in their world -- to do everything FOR them, so they don't have to do it themselves!

Not for me, I know HOW to do things for myself, such as add, substract, multiply and divide, even square-roots (pen/paper or slide rule), and prefer to DRIVE for myself, including using paper MAPS for directions (Garmin be damned).

Amen, brother.

With the high automobile congestion during my suburban rush hour lately, I would like to just tell my car to get me to or from work while I did something useful in the mean time.

I think like a lot things, it may find its niche, but for me, I don't live in a major urban center, unless you call living on the outer fringe of a city of 225,000 major urban. I am country at heart, and that will never change. I suppose if cars get bad enough, I can either build my own, or buy a horse. Yes, I still see folks pleasure riding in town, but I am not sure that asphalt paved roads are any good on the horses hooves.

When I retire (that I should live that long), I plan to eventually return to the simple life in the country, where I really get back to be as nearly self-sufficient as possible. Maybe that will give me enough excercise to keep me going.

We'll gravitate towards a hybrid architecture. I see the big cities eventually strictly limiting or banning human-driven cars in high-traffic areas. Taxis and POVs will be replaced by fleets of battery-powered small capacity surface drones. Inner city travelers will love it, and walking/bicycling will then be much safer and pleasant. Cops will still have their own cars/tanks.

There will be a LOT more park-n-rides and/or suburbanites will use e-cab services.

For highways, I can't wait for HOV-type lanes for cars set to auto-navigate from point-to-point, with the human taking over at each end. (Will it be better to ban human drivers from these lanes, or just warn them and apply stricter driving rules? The machines' problem space needs to be constrained to help us produce a reliable system. "Reliable" includes "relying on it to not kill me.")

Everyone will still be able to own & drive their own cars if/when they want to, and most families will still own cars for the foreseeable future, with your truck-owning neighbor still being someone to maintain good relations with. There are too many good reasons to go a variety of places and haul stuff. But car ownership will gradually decline the closer one gets to civilization.

Automobile driving will eventually be like horse riding. Everyone can *barely* do it, but most will never bother. This is at least 50 years away.

We'll certainly have jet packs by then...

You will never get the chance to shift gears for yourself, or the thrill of awesome power.

I just picture all the required "safety" features that crooks can take advantage of.

Imagine you're behind the wheel moving through a bad neighborhood, all it takes is for a crook to step out in front of your moving vehicle. The car would automatically stop do to it's "pedestrian safety feature", said crook then pulls a gun and robs you!

At least he was kept safe!

Driverless cars will creep up on all of us as they have been doing for 25 years or more.

Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 121 from the late 70s, required a truck to stop from speed without moving out of a defined width of space. This was the first mandated anti-lock brake system for medium and heavy duty trucks. Why did we need that? Because too many good truck drivers were skidding all over the roads. Everybody got used to the truck being better at stopping than the drivers were. What about automatic traction control? Stuck driving on snow covered roads? No sweat, the engine will monitor wheel speed and vehicle speed. It will allow the driving wheel(s) to only drive 1% faster than the non driving wheels, no matter how hard you crush that gas pedal. Oh that was a handy aid to have wasn't it?

So now we have accepted devices that can both apply and release the brakes and also apply and release the throttle.

Backing into places is always a question of knowing how close the back of the car is to any object. Bingo, we give the car sensors to tell us how close we are to things behind us.

Well, if those sensors work so well in reverse, why not put them in the front also? Now we can have a cruise control system that can sense a car ahead of it when the cruise control is engaged. Well, the car already knows how to apply the brakes, so it just slows down so it maintains a safe distance from the car ahead.

Lets use the existing systems and parts to do one more thing We now know how close things are in front and behind us, so if the car notices that you are getting too close to something too fast, it knows that it is time to brake to avoid a collision.

If those sensors work that well, why not put them on the side mirrors to warn us of some jerk drifting into our lane of traffic?

Well, we finally got to our destination, and need to find a parking space. Oh crap, the only space available requires parallel parking, and I suck at that. No problem, with todays electric assist power steering, and sensors all around, my car can park itself.

And, all of you are telling me BS. I don't need any of that crap. I am a good driver. And that is the point. Good drivers do not need to have any of these systems invade your driving pleasure. These systems will only intervene if you have missed some important bit of information that could cause you harm.

I believe driver-less vehicles are here already. Warehouses with automated retrieval systems. Assembly plants that have automated assembly lines. The systems are being improved every day in safer limited decision required areas.