Driverless Cars

[the_std]

I was reading this think piece from CBC and it got me thinking... Are driverless cars really inevitable? Are they the solution that everyone thinks they will be? What about the jobs they will replace, furthering the automation of the workforce? Are they truly safe enough?

I can't make up my mind where I fall on this, so I'd love to know what you think. Are you pro-driverless? Anti-driverless? Or is your heart full of neutrality?

[Andara Bledin]

Automation is inevitable.

That we, as a modern society, haven't figured out that that Industrial Age work week of 40 hours is no longer tenable as we move further into the Information Age, is not an indictment of the evils of automation; merely an indictment of our inflexibility to adapt to the world as it is, and not how it was half a century ago.

Once the kinks are worked out, automated cars will be safer than humans can manage, and that's just from the fact that human beings can't actually keep track of everything they need to in order to be perfectly safe as drivers. We can do enough to be mostly safe, but computers with the proper programming can reach a point of having 100% of the necessary information.

[HYHYBT]

There will be hiccups; for example, while cars will become safer in general, there will be individual accidents that wouldn't have happened with a human driver, which will get disproportionate attention.

[Lachrymose]

Watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU

Humans Need Not Apply by CGP Grey.

As he states, automated cars are here. And they only have to be as safe or safer than your average driver, not perfect. (As Andara also points out)

I don't know quite how I feel about the video overall because it ends on quite a somber tone, really. I mean I do realize things will be more and more automated as time goes on...who knows where that will leave us..

[Andara Bledin]

That will leave us working a lot less and doing other things a lot more.

I just hope that the societal expectations of how much work each individual should do and how much they should make for that work shift to match reality instead of trying to shove modern life into an outdated mold.

[mjr]

Automation is inevitable.

True. There's also an economic concept called "Creative Destruction" that kind of plays into that.

That we, as a modern society, haven't figured out that that Industrial Age work week of 40 hours is no longer tenable as we move further into the Information Age

Blue Collar work is still that way. There are tech companies like that, too. But there are a lot more tech companies that want 50 or 60+ hours out of their employees. Which is odd, because studies have shown that beyond the 40 hours, performance and production start to drop -- rapidly.

And really, with modern technology, you can do more with less -- if it's done properly.

There will be hiccups; for example, while cars will become safer in general, there will be individual accidents that wouldn't have happened with a human driver, which will get disproportionate attention.

True. And if you think about it, some cars are already equipped with "accident avoidance" systems that either brake for you, or warn you if you're drifting into another lane or if there's a vehicle in your blind spot.

As he states, automated cars are here. And they only have to be as safe or safer than your average driver, not perfect. (As Andara also points out)

I saw recently where Audi (I believe it was) actually had a driverless car that they tested on a track. They actually got the car to respond well at 140 MPH (225 kph).

One major issue with these will be price point.

I don't know quite how I feel about the video overall because it ends on quite a somber tone, really. I mean I do realize things will be more and more automated as time goes on...who knows where that will leave us..

It's looking more and more like automation is where things are heading. Unless governments step in and say, "You can't automate that".

I mean, in Japan, they're working on "personal service" robots that look a little too human.

Could be in 15 or 20 years you walk into your favorite department store, and the only human that actually works there is the manager, and he's probably got some sort of technical skill, so he can maintain the self-checkouts (or the robot cashiers) and do basic troubleshooting on the robots that hang/fold clothing.

Go into your favorite fast food restaurant. You might run into the same thing. You order your hamburger, and a computerized system of robots starts cooking it for you.

Not saying it's gonna happen...but creative destruction does occasionally cause things like this.

I could even see a future where some sort of computer programming or technical course (or multiple courses) are required for every college degree.

[s_stabeler]

actually, I' m pretty sure that in the future, most shopping will be done online.Think about it- there is pretty much nothing that you can purchase in stores that you can't do online.

but seriously, I DO think that driverless cars will be the future, but the true benefits wont' be seen for potentially another generation. Why? simple: we're only now seeing the true potential benefits of the internet when there are people who've more or less grown up with it in common use entering the workforce. Dtriverless cars reach their full benefit when everyone on the road are using them. ( specifically, because if everyone is using driverless cars, then they can communicate their exact speed to each other, allowing far more accuracy in judging if there is enough time to pull out.

However, there are two things that need to be improved: 1. they need to iron out the remaining bugs in Satnavs. I'm talking about the fact that you occasionally hear of some dumbass paying more attention to the Satnav ad going down an unsuitable road/d own traintracks/ into the sea. you can roll your eyes at it when it's human error, but when the car does it without the human driver being able to tell it it's an idiot? 2. Security. I can more or less guarantee thta two seconds after the first widespread driverless car goes on the market, someone is going to at least try to hack it. That could cause either a small issue ( if, say, the hacker simply limits everyone's speed to .001mph) or a major disaster ( hacker sends them all going to the same pace at 1000mph)

[Shangri-laschild]

I think I would mind the idea of automated cars less if there was an option to override the computer if I needed to. If something in the autopilot was going wrong, I'd like the ability to take control. It could just be my cynicism with how often electronic things break. I do get that it could potentially still be overall safer than non automated but having the backup option would still be nice. I don't think I agree with it ever becoming a requirement down the road though.

[Jetfire]

We are probably a generation away from driverless cars, mainly for the reasons you say. For now, the tech is still too new, with too many bugs and unknown factors (including driver-driven cars). That's not to poo-poo the efforts going on now, because they really are needed as baby steps.

Most likely, I suspect we'll start seeing communities banning driver-cars and only allowing automated ones. You park at a park and ride and switch to an auto-taxi to continue on if you live outside; inside you might own your own driverless car (maybe with a driver mode for if you head out). It will probably also expand into transit too, with the buses going driverless. Eventually we'll start seeing driverless highway lanes/highways themselves and it'll grow from there.

[TheHuckster]

Driverless cars work in the sprawling and relatively modern thoroughfares of the west coast. I would think the west coast would support driverless cars before the sometimes bizarre northeast where you really need a human to best judge what's going on at times.

I'm in the northeast, and the recent snowstorms made some of the narrow two-way streets very difficult to maneuver (mainly due to idiots ignoring parking bans), and I'd be interested to see how a computer would approach such a situation where you're essentially playing chicken at 5mph with a car that's 100 feet ahead of you (e.g. the road is wide enough for two cars where you are at, but if both of you proceed, you'll reach an impasse half-way where there's a long bottleneck). Things like this often depend on who flashes who to proceed, which depends more on drivers' personalities than right of way rules.

[Jetfire]

Situations like that would be where the driver vs driverless cars would have the most difficulty. If both cars were driverless, then assumably the computers would be communicating with eachother, and one can yield to the other. When the computer is dealing with an unknown, a new protocol needs to be set up; most likely the computer would need to default to "Wait and let them proceed." which could be frustrating to the passengers.

[Andara Bledin]

In driverless vs driver cars, I suspect that it'll be as Jetfire says, at least in the beginning. Driverless to driverless will communicate and will yield based on objective factors, such as which vhicle reaches the bottleneck first. But in driverless vs driver cars, the driverless will yield to the lesser predictability and imperfect knowledge of the human actor.

Generally speaking, though, driverless cars will be much, much safer than a car with a human behind the wheel for a vast variety of reasons that only start with being able to take in massive amounts of data and having perfect perception. Not to mention that computers can take in a variety of data that people just aren't equipped to process.

[blas87]

We're making the mother boards to prototypes at my work, working up to the driverless cars, or so I've been told.

[TheHuckster]

The ability for the cars to communicate is intriguing. I could see a situation where a pileup in whiteout conditions could be prevented simply by having one car ahead of them warn the others behind it of an impending obstacle or hazard, which allows them to slow down before the passengers even see it.

The first car might still hit the obstacle (e.g. if something truly unavoidable occurs) but in most situations like that the human drivers simply can't see what happened until it's too late, causing a domino effect, whereas the driverless car would emit a distress call that the other cars could receive and stop in time.

[Andara Bledin]

That's one of the advantages.

Then again, what is a white-out condition for a person isn't so much for a machine.