Self Driving Cars

Discussion in 'Taylor's Tittle-Tattle - General Banter' started by Diamond, Nov 7, 2017.

  1. Moose

    Moose First Team Captain

    If you look back over the last few posts you were first in with the assumptions not me. I reacted to yours. You just don’t recognise when you make one when you told us the ‘likely culpability’.

    From the way you write it seems as if there would be no evidence that could convince you that driverless cars may not be better, because logic tells you they must.

    You should really pause before you tell us that Tesla’s claimed 200m miles tell us anything other than Tesla has an aptitude for big time boasting. How many miles really, how many on road/on a track, how many times did the human intervene, what driving conditions and where?

    Human beings are in danger of getting squished in that kind of thinking, not just physically, but by who dominates social space.

    But I don’t disagree that cars are already a terrible problem in those respects.
     
  2. jw-

    jw- Reservist

    Self driving cars come across like another Silicon Valley vanity project. I wish people would focus more on public transport such a trains.
     
  3. Diamond

    Diamond First Team

    Driving in this morning I was thinking about this, (yeah the radio is that bad now). My reaction would be to swerve to avoid the pedestrian and likely smash into oncoming traffic as a result. I know the details are sketchy at best but maybe the self driving car did exactly what it was supposed to do in that situation which would be to brake but not deviate from the road as a human driver would do.
     
  4. I've already got a self driving car

    She does nag from time to time, but she always picks me up from the pub when I've had a few
     
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  5. Diamond

    Diamond First Team

    What if self driving cars meant no more traffic jams and less reliance on public transport?
     
  6. If it's possible to systemise and automate road transport why can't we systemise and automate rail transport? We could we have tens of thousands of self driving trains buzzing around nose to tail, switching between tracks etc 24-7-365.

    None of this decision making who do we run over stuff. And we wouldn't need all the safety signals and '1/2 a mile' between trains either let the computer systems run them nose to tail.

    How about small single carriage driverless trains on branch lines and for off peak and through the night, and which also double in town as trams?

    In peak times the carriages could join up to form longer trains, the whole thing fully automated.

    And they don't need to drive 150 mph high speed 2 nonsense. The average journey speed for a car is quite low so how fast does a train really have to travel to compare.
     
    Cthulhu likes this.
  7. jw-

    jw- Reservist

    Why is reliance on public transport bad? A good system would equally have no traffic jams, be more energy efficient, and would forfeit less power to tech companies.
     
  8. Diamond

    Diamond First Team

    What about those who live miles and miles from a station?
     
  9. Diamond

    Diamond First Team

    Even the best run public transport systems, (such as in Japan), don't make much of a dent in the traffic jams.
     
  10. jw-

    jw- Reservist

    Judging public transport today in a comparison with the self-driving car future is hardly a fair comparison. Are traffic jams not largely influenced by the cars on the road? Who is to say that if society fully committed to buses and trains that traffic jams wouldn't be significantly reduced.

    Why as a society should we be encouraging more people to stream into overcrowded cities--the living quality is already dropping with overpopulation. Is society really improving by having people seamlessly travel to work in their socially isolated self-driving boxes, only to get to their office or flat that is now half the size it was 10 years ago because we're so much better at getting people into cities.
     
  11. hornmeister

    hornmeister Tired

    The problem with public transport is that you have to share it with the public. No matter how cheap & efficient it becomes that's a huge disincentive.

    With the road network as it is in the UK I don't think self driving cars will ever work. What I can see and would actively encourage is a system which takes control on the motorway network, where you have managed access and less likelihood of unpredictable occurrences. We're almost there with these smart motorways anyway. What if the outside lane was reserved for autonomous cars only with a controlled maximum speed of up to 100? That would be a huge incentive for people to trade up. It could be phased so that as take up increases you restrict non autonomous cars to fewer and fewer lanes.
     
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  12. Diamond

    Diamond First Team

    I can't argue with that as you're correct. What I would throw in there is the fact that working from home is getting more and more common for office workers due to technology, which is far more socially isolating than the drive into work ever was.
     
    hornmeister and jw- like this.
  13. jw-

    jw- Reservist

    Yep very good point. Expecting those that can't travel to the city to work from home is trading one ill for another.
     
  14. There is never a silver bullet, transport has to be a combined strategy. but we could do so much more with rail if we threw out the current dinosaur model and went at it blinkers off. Why do trains have to still be built using 2 century old technology? Why do railway stations haver to look and function like they do?
     
  15. Moose

    Moose First Team Captain

    I can see how that might work on broad US streets in a simple grid city. I can’t see how it provides enough journeys at peak time in the UK without similar gridlock. The numbers of cars would be huge and where do they all go at off peak times? Not on my driveway that’s for sure.
     
  16. Moose

    Moose First Team Captain

    I also wouldn’t like to drive or cycle in a mixed road economy where every encounter with a driverless car must be the human’s fault because the machines are considered so perfect.
     
  17. Moose

    Moose First Team Captain

    Police have released the video from the car, which seems to support the view that the pedestrian made a poor choice in crossing a four lane highway in the dark. Nevertheless there is a lot more to learn about what happened, whether such incidents can be avoided and whether a self driving car could do better than a human in a similar circumstance.
     
  18. Diamond

    Diamond First Team

    We have to get used to the idea that people will die on the roads no matter whether it's a human or a computer in charge of the car. It will never become completely risk free. The fact that this one incident has caused such a news storm is testament to the fact that people fundamentally don't trust the technology. In the US 100 people die on the roads every day, all human driven.
     
    sydney_horn likes this.
  19. hornmeister

    hornmeister Tired

    Your're Elon Mush aren't you?

    I've had one burning question for one of the most intelligent men in the world.

    Why the f are you called Elon? What's wrong with a proper name?

    Now strictly speaking I understand that's 2 questions but you get my drift.
     
  20. Diamond

    Diamond First Team

    My parents named me, ask them.
     
    hornmeister likes this.
  21. hornmeister

    hornmeister Tired

    I think they wanted to call you Noel and were dyslexic.
     
    RookeryDad likes this.
  22. Diamond

    Diamond First Team

  23. Arakel

    Arakel First Team

    "Probably already purchased your last car" seems a bit optimistic given that the average length of time people own cars in the UK and US are 6 years and 3.5 years respectively. I don't see the revolution happening in even the 6 year time frame. Unless you just bought a car and tend to keep them for an uncommonly long time, chances are you'll get another before the future arrives.

    It's coming though, regardless of what the Luddites think. A cursory look at the companies developing the tech should make that obvious: they're all doing it. Tesla. Uber. Google. Toyota. Ford. BMW. Honda. Audi. Volvo. Nissan. GM/Lyft. Daimler. Hyundai. Bosch.

    They're not investing in developing this tech for fun, they're doing it because it's viable and inevitable. And many of them have targeted 2020/2021 to have their first robocars on the road, so we don't have long to wait until it all starts.

    One thing I'm confident about: kids born 15 years from today will grow up not knowing how to drive a car, just like virtually everyone in the modern world has no idea how to drive a horse and cart.
     
  24. Diamond

    Diamond First Team

    My 16Yo starts her driving lessons in January and I'm honestly wondering if it's worth it.
     
  25. Arakel

    Arakel First Team

    Probably still worth it at her age, but she sure as heck won't be driving herself to work by the time she's 35. The young will be the first to adapt. It's the old duffers who'll stubbornly hold out (while ironically being among the least safe drivers on the road).
     
  26. Jumbolina

    Jumbolina First Team

    Why is it viewed as an absolute choice? I quite enjoy driving on the open road in an expensive car, but more than happy for the car to do it if I want to have some drinks or am tired. Or in traffic of course. Win/Win imo. Will put cabbies out of business.
     
    RookeryDad likes this.
  27. Diamond

    Diamond First Team

    My fully comp insurance with all the bells and whistles is ridiculously cheap because I'm an old codger. There's a reason for that.
     
  28. Diamond

    Diamond First Team

    Because once this becomes the norm then humans will become the weak point in the system, (ie the dangerous bit).
     
  29. Jumbolina

    Jumbolina First Team

    Are you saying you would ban humans from driving? Do we get to drive on private racetracks in your world? Presumably it is a lot easier to have driverless tube trains and could have easily happened 5 years ago - that hasn't happened.
     
  30. Diamond

    Diamond First Team

    It would be nice to have an intelligent conversation on here without the c***ish remarks.
     
  31. Jumbolina

    Jumbolina First Team

    Good work resorting to the "C" word. I really like the technology but I don't see why you get to tell me when I have to use it. I remember your form anyway as you get upset if someone wears a 10k watch and think they deserve to be mugged. Guess you just get off on the idea of telling people what we can and can't do.
     
  32. Arakel

    Arakel First Team

    If you have a 16 year old daughter, I'd say you're at least a couple of decades shy of being an old codger.

    I'm talking about the likes of the senile or nearly senile who shouldn't be allowed near a car. :)

    Exactly. Once driving yourself becomes the exception, you'll be putting other people's lives in additional danger through the pure selfish desire to turn a wheel yourself. Public opinion will swerve pretty quickly once that happens.
     
  33. Its all about the definitions

    The Society of Automotive Engineers defines 5 levels of autonomy

    0 is fully manual
    1 has some light assistance occasionally, eg cruise control, ABS systems are level 1
    2 has some light assistance continually
    3 is called conditional automation, the car is able to perform functions under certain conditions but a driver must be in a seat behind a wheel ready to take over
    4 is high automation, the first level where a driver can watch TV, read a book, sleep, but still needs to be capable of taking over
    5 is full automation, all weather, all conditions, all locations - from the deepest muddy jungle track to the highest mountain dirt track, no need for a driver, at a budget price point everyone can afford, a 'pod' carrying people around

    The best you can buy in a dealership today is a level 2.
    What car companies really mean when they predict autonomous vehicles in 10 or 20 years is something which is a level 3 or a level 4.
    What we all think about when we hear autonomous cars is level 5, partly because that's the marketing BS spin. Forget it. Decades off. 2050 or beyond. Maybe never.

    So yes your 16 year old needs to learn to drive.
     
  34. Bwood_Horn

    Bwood_Horn Squad Player

    So you are talking about @Diamond.
     
  35. Diamond

    Diamond First Team

    Blimey, someone on this site appears to have been cloned. Don't know about you but for me peoples opinions on an anonymous forum are forgotten about minutes after being read. You appear to hold grudges. Maybe you should stay in the politics section?

    No arguments at this end.
     
    Bwood_Horn likes this.

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