Autonomous Self-Driving Cars

[jyl]

What do you think about the potential, risks, benefits, technology, appeal etc of autonomous cars? Self-driving cars, I mean, like the ones Google has been driving around.

My son has been reading about these. I hadn't really paid that much attention to them.

Apparently Google's fleet has self-driven 500K miles with no accidents, with an engineer sitting in the car but not controlling it. Well, there have been two accidents. One was when an engineer was actually driving one of the cars. Another time, one of the cars was stopped at a light and got rear-ended.

What is the point?

Here in Portland there is a company called Cars2Go. They have a fleet of Smart cars scattered around the city, you find the nearest one using a smartphone app, walk to it, drive it to where you want to go, then leave it parked there, where it sits until the next person finds and drives it. Cool, huh? But sometimes the nearest car might be 12 blocks away, or maybe all the Cars2Go in your area get driven downtown in the morning so there is none to be had. Seems to me these problems could be solved if you could simply summon the nearest Car2Go to drive itself to you.

One of the hard things that happen to people as they age is they eventually lose their ability to drive. Suddenly they are shut ins, without the independence of mobility. Sometimes they rely on taxis to go grocery shopping, which is expensive. If they could simply get in their car and have it take them where they need to go, they would have their independence again.

Heck, maybe you don't have to be old or car-less to benefit from an autonomous car. Many people get in the car every morning and commute for an hour or more each way. Some of them might prefer to get in the car, tell it where to go, and open the laptop, read the paper, have breakfast, or simply sleep. Not everyone likes fighting with rush hour traffic.

[onlycafe]

i find it very hard to sleep when someone else is driving, i can only imagine how much trouble i would have sleeping if no one was driving.

[Nickshu]

Lawsuits against carmakers for every accident is the concern for automakers. I read in Popular Science that carmakers are already lobbing for "immunity" laws for technology such as active cruise control, automatic braking, etc. Self driving cars are next.

[porwolf]

I am sceptical about self-driving cars. Though parts of the technology will most likely be integrated into regular cars, piece by piece. This will help drivers (if you can still call them that) avoid tricky situations, like parking, back-ups, lane changes, obstacles on the road, sudden vehicle stops in front, nearby motor cyclist and bicyclists, etc.

[GH85Carrera]

For the road warrior that commutes in heavy traffic or drives to another city for sales it would be great. Imagine the average commuter on the 405 actually relaxing or sleeping on the commute.

I know many older drivers that will not drive at night because they can't see very well at night.

I think those cars will have a place for the average driver that sees a car as a big appliance. As long as I feel safe driving I will continue to drive my old cars with no ABS or traction control.

[Seahawk]

I have a lot of experience in autonomous vehicles, both ground and air.

There are really no insurmountable technical challenges to prevent wide-spread use of autonomous cars. The biggest hurdles will be infrastructure related, insurance concerns and overall acceptance by the public.

The Federal Highway Administration has a lot of initiatives, MAPS 21 specifically, addressing smart roads, automated traffic management, etc.: autonomous vehicles are a natural extension.

As a a former pilot, I was initially skeptical of unmanned air systems. Then you realize that YOU are the weak link in the system. Humbling. The fly precisely, tirelessly, when and where you want them to.

The issues will be in programming non-standard behavior between peer autonomous cars and then between autonomous and manned vehicles. Can the vehicle anticipate and learn.

Then system degradations (road and car), taking control, relinquishing control protocols, etc.

[JavaBrewer]

I'll bet the passengers on that Asiana 777 would have preferred having the autopilot handle the landing.

Lots of potential with autonomous cars - elderly, injured, incapacitated, shuttle, commuting. Automated traffic management (per Paul) would virtually eliminate traffic jams. There will be some bugs to work out but overall I think it will change much about how folks run their day to day activities.

[jyl]

Of course "we" will worry about human driven cars being outlawed or otherwise discriminated against. Using the airplane analogy, I doubt that will happen. But hey, I think it's going to be hard to make a self driven motorcycle or bicycle.

[cstreit]

Im looking forward to autonomous car racing, as is my blender. He and my toaster are convinced that Michael Coffeemacher will win for years.






(sorry)

[gearya]

Anyone caught texting while driving should be forced to buy one.

[Nickshu]

Originally Posted by cstreit

michael coffeemacher

lol! :d

[TheMentat]

I read a cool article about these things:

Fasten Your Seatbelts: Google's Driverless Car Is Worth Trillions (Part 1) - Forbes

and firmly believe they will be a game changer... Consider the following:

As you mention, it makes car sharing easier, so much so that it will redefine car ownership. People will soon have difficulty justifying such a large investment in an appliance that sits idle 90% of the time!

Freeways will be able to accommodate much higher volumes of traffic since autonomous vehicles can drive in such tight formations. Furthermore, other infrastructure (on ramps, interchanges) could be designed much more cost/space efficiently. Taken a step further, countries like China will save trillions of dollars in infrastructure by skipping the whole "human friendly" phase of infrastructure development ( much like they haven't needed to install wired telephone services due to wireless technologies)...

It was an interesting read!

[NeedSpace]

I think they will be fine down the road in a few years, my biggest concern is the transition to get there. Once you have technology take the place of stuff you do, when you don't have it, you will be out of practice and forget.

Case in point, how many people have left their headlights on by mistake when you go from a car with autolights to one without? I am concerned if we start relying on traffic driving assistance that when people DON'T have it, they will forget to stop.