Odd thoughts on driverless cars | GTAMotorcycle.com

Odd thoughts on driverless cars

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nobbie48

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If some drunks take a driverless car home who is in care and control?

Who gets the speeding ticket unless of course the car is anally programmed to go exactly 100 kph on the 401 etc.

HTA 172 "Driver not in driver's seat" (The ultimate ghost driver)

Does the programmer need a driver's license? Can he lose it on demerit points?

I'm largely joking but the lawyers will be kept busy once these hit the roads, other cars, pedestrians, posts...
 
Current experimental systems follow every law to the letter to avoid ever being at fault for anything, and it causes predictable problems. Apparently it is really easy to befuddle them at 4 way stops.
 
Brian P said:
Current experimental systems follow every law to the letter to avoid ever being at fault for anything, and it causes predictable problems. Apparently it is really easy to befuddle them at 4 way stops.
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i can just imagine roundabouts and then there's the roundabouts of edmonton and london (UK)
 
nobbie48 said:
If some drunks take a driverless car home who is in care and control?

Who gets the speeding ticket unless of course the car is anally programmed to go exactly 100 kph on the 401 etc.

HTA 172 "Driver not in driver's seat" (The ultimate ghost driver)

Does the programmer need a driver's license? Can he lose it on demerit points?

I'm largely joking but the lawyers will be kept busy once these hit the roads, other cars, pedestrians, posts...
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You have it backwards. Ambulance chasers will be out of a job.

Something like 93% of all crashes are driver error. If we take the driver out of the equation that leaves us 7% of the collisions we have now. Assume the cars fail 2x more because they are more complex, that's still 86% fewer crashes. But not all failures will lead to crashes, especially since the algorithms drive the cars like grandmas with input from a dozen teenaged Schumachers.

Safety recalls are a known phenomenon, there's little that will change in terms of liability with autonomous vehicles.
 
fastar1 said:
Something like 93% of all crashes are driver error. If we take the driver out of the equation that leaves us 7% of the collisions we have now. Assume the cars fail 2x more because they are more complex, that's still 86% fewer crashes.
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How dare you throw facts and statistics into this conversation! ;)

Most of the problems on our roads will be solved when the human is removed from the equation. Yes, you'll still have to be there for times when the computer might be unable to handle a particular task, but the absence of idiocy will make things better for ALL of us.

For starters, traffic jams would be all but history once all cars are driverless. Our major highways can handle the amount of traffic that are on them at any point in time, but the jams are initiated by people. It only takes ONE clueless idiot who doesn't merge properly as traffic is building into rush hour (ie, the "Oh geeze, there's not a 2KM gap for me to roll into at 40KPH so I'd best stop on the onramp and then out of eventual desperation roll into traffic at half the flow speed!" dolts out there) that initiate traffic jams. It happens every freakin' morning at many highway onramps, which not coincidentally is where traffic jams start.

That, and the "I'm the most important person on the planet therefore I must weave from lane to lane to get 20 feet ahead of you all while alternating from rapid acceleration to desperate braking" drivers as well. And there's more - add in 1 stupid unnecessary "I was putting on my makeup and got distracted" fender bender sitting in the middle lane, and blammo...you have our average daily traffic jams.

Remove the driver from all that. Computers change lanes only when necessary and beneficial and do so perfectly and without speed fluctuations, cars merge and exit seamlessly without any disruption of the flow of traffic, accidents due to inattention or sheer stupidity are virtually eliminated. Traffic flow stays uniform and at a constant speed. Nobody is more important than anyone else, short of perhaps emergency vehicles. It's not difficult to imagine how much better traffic would flow.
 
PrivatePilot said:
Remove the driver from all that. Computers change lanes only when necessary and beneficial and do so perfectly and without speed fluctuations, cars merge and exit seamlessly without any disruption of the flow of traffic, accidents due to inattention or sheer stupidity are virtually eliminated. Traffic flow stays uniform and at a constant speed. Nobody is more important than anyone else, short of perhaps emergency vehicles. It's not difficult to imagine how much better traffic would flow.
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And when the driverless vehicle establishes and proves itself and becomes legislated requirement, say goodbye to manually-driven vehicles, including motorcycles and old school hot rods except in very limited circumstances such as off-road use and on-track competition.
 
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There is a fair chance that driverless cars will make traffic *worse* and make energy consumption problems *worse*.

Some idealists believe in a scenario where no one owns cars, they just summon (what we now call) ride-sharing services or (really) driverless taxis. Then every journey involves that vehicle traveling driverlessly to where you are, then taking you to your destination, then travelling driverlessly to somewhere else.

The average person doesn't treat things nicely when they don't own them. While you won't be able to abuse your driverless taxi by how you drive it (the only allowable accelerator positions on any rental car are 0 and 1), people are going to go driverlessly to McDonalds and leave trash and debris in the car. You know it's going to happen. Do you want to get a dirty rental car? No. So that driverless taxi is going to have to go to a home base for cleaning and inspection on a pretty common basis. More trips. More cost. More energy usage. More traffic.

I don't think this idealist scenario is going to play out all that well. As a replacement for normal taxi and ride-sharing, sure. In New York City - sure. Across the board - No.

And the traffic improvement really only works if ALL of the vehicles are driverless. We are probably 10 or 15 years away from the *first* truly driverless cars. The average age of a car on US roads is 11.5 years. This is a loooooong way off. The current autonomous systems don't work well in adverse weather, ice/snow, construction zones, police officers signalling traffic motions, etc. They only function in nearly ideal scenarios.

If speed limits on the roads are unrealistically low and the driverless system won't exceed it, people won't accept driverless operation. They'll switch it off and drive themselves if they can go 20 km/h faster.

Tesla had to back off with their "autopilot" system, which was put in place LONG before the software was ready for prime time, and its operation is now a lot more restricted.

We are going to see limited autonomous systems and driver assistance systems - no question about that. These are already happening. These are basically driver-assist systems to attempt to stop drivers from doing stupid things. Autonomous operation in limited circumstances will happen and Tesla's Autopilot system is already here.
 
griff2 said:
And when the driverless vehicle establishes and proves itself and becomes legislated requirement, say goodbye to manually-driven vehicles, including motorcycles and old school hot rods except in very limited circumstances such as off-road use and on-track competition.
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I think we are along way from talking about a full ban on any driven car or vehicle. It might be the opposite driverless cars may actually make motorcycle driving safer. Its way to early to tell were the level of technology will be like others have said we are 5-15 years at least away from seeing them on the road outside of their limited test capacity.
 
nobbie48 said:
Who gets the speeding ticket unless of course the car is anally programmed to go exactly 100 kph on the 401 etc.
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The law is the law and 100 kph is the limit.

The software must obey the law. Driverless Cars will be speed-limit aware, won't go any faster.

Therefore... There will be NO MORE speeding tickets. Over several years, thousands of people to lose their jobs as a consequence. Example, OPP and any other police force will cut down the number of officers on the road.

EDIT: And before someone says "well, I'll just hack the car so it goes over the speed limit..." that still would not result in a speeding ticket, but it would be prosecuted as a computer crime, which is a criminal offense.
 
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Brian P said:
There is a fair chance that driverless cars will make traffic *worse* and make energy consumption problems *worse*.

...

The average person doesn't treat things nicely when they don't own them. While you won't be able to abuse your driverless taxi by how you drive it (the only allowable accelerator positions on any rental car are 0 and 1), people are going to go driverlessly to McDonalds and leave trash and debris in the car. You know it's going to happen. Do you want to get a dirty rental car? No. So that driverless taxi is going to have to go to a home base for cleaning and inspection on a pretty common basis. More trips. More cost. More energy usage. More traffic.
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I don't see anything particularly wrong with the "more trips" factor. It is just like a taxi, moving all the time, so there is more cost, more energy use, BUT it is more efficient because it is busy (with passengers) most of the time.

"Cars are among the most expensive things most people own, yet they sit idle, on average, 96% of the time. That is justified by the convenience of having access to a car whenever you need it." The Economist regarding driver-less cars.
 
MarcosSantiago said:
I don't see anything particularly wrong with the "more trips" factor. It is just like a taxi, moving all the time, so there is more cost, more energy use, BUT it is more efficient because it is busy (with passengers) most of the time.

"Cars are among the most expensive things most people own, yet they sit idle, on average, 96% of the time. That is justified by the convenience of having access to a car whenever you need it." The Economist regarding driver-less cars.
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If I had the option of taking transit to my work that was within a reasonable amount of taking the car I would...however now my commute takes 20-30min depending on city traffic, and the TTC would take me close to an hour or more. That's double the time. Plus if my shift starts at 6am then I'd never make it there as subway service starts at 5:45 or so...I'd love the option to just chill and read on my way to work.

As for driverless cars...I'd like to see more on the road but I think we're still a ways away from practical use. What's the point of a driverless car...if the driver has to continually be awake/aware and take control when something goes wrong? Do you blame the car for the error, or the driver for being inattentive and not reacting in time?
 
Brian P said:
There is a fair chance that driverless cars will make traffic *worse* and make energy consumption problems *worse*.
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Over several million Kilometers I've driven in my commercial career, I couldn't agree less.

I spent a lot of time over the years crisscrossing North America in the middle of the night - the best time to cover ground. In the middle of the night, passing through some big cities (Chicago comes to mind) traffic is STILL heavy, but it's 90% trucks. Amongst professionals who are all on the same page, wanting to get from A to B in the most efficient manner without dramatic changes in speed (which are a PITA for us big truck guys), drivers who know how to merge, exit, change lanes and put ourselves in the best position to maintain the flow.

And traffic flows well....because you're sharing the road with professionals who are all on the same page and know the most efficient ways to drive, not a bunch of people in cars who could barely find their own *** with both hands if their life depended on it, think they're the most important person on the road, and got their drivers licence from a cracker jack box.

Touching on my earlier response, come out to Oshawa some morning at park yourself somewhere you can watch the Simcoe Street onramp. Not coincidentally this is where traffic almost always starts to jam up headed westbound, and the reason will soon become evident - some dolt who doesn't know how to merge properly...and the jam begins as everyone has to hammer on their brakes, change lanes at the last second, etc etc etc to avoid running down said dolt.

Remove the dolt, remove most of the issues.
 
Brian P said:
Current experimental systems follow every law to the letter to avoid ever being at fault for anything, and it causes predictable problems. Apparently it is really easy to befuddle them at 4 way stops.
Click to expand...

Nothing could be worse than a dead traffic light that should be treated as a 4 way stop. Can the DL cars read minds or do they come with crystal balls to advise them if the other vehicles are going to follow the law?
 
nobbie48 said:
Nothing could be worse than a dead traffic light that should be treated as a 4 way stop. Can the DL cars read minds or do they come with crystal balls to advise them if the other vehicles are going to follow the law?
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The way I understand it, the final result will be that all the cars will be aware of each other. They'll be running wireless connectivity, and be plugged into the network, each one of them as a node in the internet of things (IoT).

So, driver or no driver, each car will yield if necessary to avoid accidents, precisely because they are aware of the other three cars and their trajectories.
 
Exactly. These cars won't be operating completely oblivious of each other...quite to the contrary actually, they'll almost certainly be well connected to other vehicles around them, knowing what the other vehicles computer is planning to do before its even executed, and easily solving "issues" like a 4 way stop, if you want to try to make an issue out of that.

As for the laws related to liability and fault etc etc, I'm sure that'll come with time, the same as how all things adapt to technological advances.
 
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