Driverless Cars

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GetUrban
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Driverless Cars

Post by GetUrban »

What do you people think of this?

Driverless Cars

The simple explanation: Musk believes computers will do a much better job than us to the point where, statistically, humans would be a liability on roadways.

"I don't think we have to worry about autonomous cars, because that's sort of like a narrow form of AI," Musk told NVidia co-founder and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang at the technology company's annual developers conference today. "It would be like an elevator. They used to have elevator operators, and then we developed some simple circuitry to have elevators just automatically come to the floor that you're at ... the car is going to be just like that." So what happens when we get there? Musk said that the obvious move is to outlaw driving cars. "It's too dangerous," Musk said. "You can't have a person driving a two-ton death machine."
Sounds like a solution looking for a problem....which will create a whole category of new problems and liabilities. Personally, I like driving.
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BRoss
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Re: Driverless Cars

Post by BRoss »

I think it's a great solution for drunk driving, especially in cities without good mass transportation.
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GetUrban
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Re: Driverless Cars

Post by GetUrban »

HR Paperstacks wrote:I think it's a great solution for drunk driving, especially in cities without good mass transportation.
That's a good point! They do cite "reducing traffic fatalities" as the main reason for cars to drive themselves. We'll have to wait and see how long it takes computers to do a better job driving than humans. It would be awful if computers did worse and actually increased fatalities. There is a wide variation in driving ability among humans though.
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RNcyanide
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Re: Driverless Cars

Post by RNcyanide »

HR Paperstacks wrote:I think it's a great solution for drunk driving, especially in cities without good mass transportation.
Perhaps they should pilot this idea here then.
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Coyote
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Re: Driverless Cars

Post by Coyote »

I could have sworn I read an article last night about a driverless car making its way around Omaha, the picture looked cool, but now I can't find that article, I havent a clue where I read it...
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Re: Driverless Cars

Post by TitosBuritoBarn »

Here in Chicago we've begun to discuss legislation on driverless cars at the regional planning level. There is a concern that these cars could come with an option allowing them to drive to a destination without anyone physically in the car. If that becomes the case, people visiting downtown Chicago could simply have their cars circle the block while they go shopping or conduct business and not pay for parking. This would lead to lost revenues and increased congestion.
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Dundeemaha
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Re: Driverless Cars

Post by Dundeemaha »

I think this is coming and coming fast and I think it's going to have a massive impact on the economy.

Both Google and Uber are investing huge amounts of money.
- http://www.forbes.com/sites/benkepes/20 ... desharing/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
- http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/22/tech/inno ... prototype/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

But the bigger impact on the economy will be from freight transport. According the the Department of Labor (http://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iag48-49.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;) there are nearly 1 million truck drivers in the US with a median wage of $40,350. What happens when/if those jobs are replaced with autonomous trucks?
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GetUrban
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Re: Driverless Cars

Post by GetUrban »

I still can't imagine vehicles driving around without anyone in them. That sounds like a recipe for disaster. Just think, you could shop around for the best deal in the country and have the car drive itself to you. Car thieves would become hackers. Having your car drive around the block while you're doing your thing would be crazy. I guess this will keep governments busy for a long time writing new laws.

Maybe we should be looking at automating the streets instead....like a big moving conveyor belt. Just hop on or off wherever you need to go. There would have to be two different levels...east-west and north-south.
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Seth
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Re: Driverless Cars

Post by Seth »

In our highly-litigious culture, I think the question of liability is going to be huge. Currently, if an accident is caused by driver error, their insurer pays out a claim up to their maximum, and unless the driver was wealthy or on the clock for a large corporation, that's about the end of it. Now, consider the same accident, only caused by a computer malfunction in a driverless car. Any entity with money behind that driverless car (i.e. the car maker, software subcontractor, etc) is going to get sued before the day is over.
GetUrban wrote:Maybe we should be looking at automating the streets instead....like a big moving conveyor belt. Just hop on or off wherever you need to go. There would have to be two different levels...east-west and north-south.
That's been a not-uncommon subject in Sci-Fi: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_wal ... ce_fiction
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Dundeemaha
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Re: Driverless Cars

Post by Dundeemaha »

GetUrban wrote:Having your car drive around the block while you're doing your thing would be crazy.
Or don't even own a car. Just pay Google for a subscription to Google Car and Google will use an algorithm to balance the position of cars around the city so that subscribers have a < 2-5 min wait for a car at any given time that will pick them up and take them to their destination. ZipCar+Uber on steroids.
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GetUrban
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Re: Driverless Cars

Post by GetUrban »

Dundeemaha wrote:
GetUrban wrote:Having your car drive around the block while you're doing your thing would be crazy.
Or don't even own a car. Just pay Google for a subscription to Google Car and Google will use an algorithm to balance the position of cars around the city so that subscribers have a < 2-5 min wait for a car at any given time that will pick them up and take them to their destination. ZipCar+Uber on steroids.
You know, I could actually see something like that working if it was done super-efficiently. It could almost be considered mass transit. The difficulty would lie in integrating it with vehicles that were still manually driven by humans. And the cars would still need to be stored somewhere when demand was low...maybe underground garages dispersed throughout the city, or you could rent-out your garage or driveway. You'd never know when the car would be there. Maybe they could try it out with street sweepers first, like a Roomba on steroids.

Nix the previous moving street/sidewalk idea...it would be too slow anyway if it moved less than 30-45mph.
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Seth
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Re: Driverless Cars

Post by Seth »

GetUrban wrote:Maybe they could try it out with street sweepers first, like a Roomba on steroids.
Awesome idea!

Although, this situation would be a lot gnarlier:

South Korean woman's hair 'eaten' by robot vacuum cleaner as she slept
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GetUrban
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Re: Driverless Cars

Post by GetUrban »

I'm skeptical this will take-off anytime soon....and that might be a good thing.

Yahoo Finance article
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Dundeemaha
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Re: Driverless Cars

Post by Dundeemaha »

I think driverless cars will make the roads a ton safer in the long run. As far as if the technology is ready to go in the near term in all conditions, I doubt it. But I don't really have any information backing that other than anecdotally my car's adaptive cruise control has trouble in fog/haze.

http://www.transportation.nebraska.gov/ ... facts.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Forty-four (44) people were injured each day in motor vehicle crashes in Nebraska during 2013 and one (1)person was killed every 42 hours.

Alcohol related crashes in 2013: 1,709
Distracted driving crashes in 2013: 2,201

Crashes with Pedestrian or Cyclist: 375 + 274 = 649 (I included these because the largest reported cause is the driver not noticing the cyclist/pedestrian)
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GetUrban
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Re: Driverless Cars

Post by GetUrban »

The time period when we have a mix of human-driven and driver-less cars on the road seems to be the most risky. The technology still has a long way to go, from what I've seen. Hopefully fatalities won't actually increase during that time.

I've noticed recently, on foggy days, there are a surprising number of cars that don't have their headlights turned on. I attribute this to automatic headlight sensors that detect the brightness of daylight, but not the opacity/clearness of the air. That is an example where technology has actually made things more dangerous, since the sensors can't detect fog. In fog, being seen is as important as seeing.

Another example is cruise control actually makes things more dangerous on ice and snow. The technology will eventually advance to overcome these problems, but at what cost?
He said "They are some big, ugly red brick buildings"
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