HH that’s a really interseting post

You’ll start to see more and more “driver assist”, such that to all intents and purposes, the car only lets you have control up until the point it thinks you will have an accident (like a 747 that creates a performance envelope doesn’t let the pilot stall).

In this situation, the driver is still 100% responsible.

Many people would say that in the situation described there with driver assisst, the driver would likley become less engaged with the driving environment, as the car would be managing things….until a moment of crisis when the car hands back control….to a driver who hasn’t been paying attention, and is a long way behind the curve, and has a very short period of time to make a life changing/ending decision. It sounds like a technology version of what would be called a hospital pass in rugby

Now it can be argued that the driver should always be paying attention (and no doubt manufactures will argue that), but they have delierately engineered an environment which encourages the driver to be less engaged, throwing him further behind the curve and harder for him to react.

as the car would be managing things….until a moment of crisis when the car hands back control….to a driver who hasn’t been paying attentio

Thats the reverse of what would be happening.

The driver is managing things until the car senses an accident could occur, then the car takes action to avoid it. if the car can’t avoid the accident, its still the drivers fault for getting the car into that situation in the first place. Like a super advanced ABS system.

Its a very “hidden” way of providing extra safety compared to seatbelts for example, so likely create less risk compensation, though ultimately you can only determine this through testing.

I like the idea of extra backup systems, this seems like a good thing.

But cars are already extremely easy to control (for a 2 ton machine that can travel at 150mph with a small movement of the foot) and at some point with these technologies, the sane owner will say ‘why should I do anything, the car is so capable’

Motorway driving is already massively dull, so a car that keeps in lane, overtakes etc for you will make it even more tedious. When it gets so tedious that you want it to be fully autonomous, I think that will be the tipping point.

Human-driven cars seem pretty good at creating gridlock.
Did you try and get through Brixton this morning after the flood at Oval?
Self-driving cars could have re-routed people across a much wider area and kept the roads free. As it was, even on a bike it was impossible to make any progress…

Indeed they will, but the problem isn’t that someone would get run over, more that cars will almost never make any progress since they automatically brake every time someone crosses the road.

I’m sure the designers and software engineers involved will have thought of all this sort of stuff and will build in systems to compensate. Things like pedestrians crossing the road can be assessed and the car can slow down to the appropriate speed etc Same sort of thing with cyclists, even those taking the lane. The car will wait for a safe overtake.

The idea that folk will suddenly start walking in front of cars because they think it’s safe to do so seems off too. Would you want to take the chance that although the car is breaking and slowing down as fast as possible it can only slow down so fast. They’ll still have the potential to kill but they should be a lot safer as all of the stupid accidents that happen due to poor driving should be removed.

Motorway driving is already massively dull, so a car that keeps in lane, overtakes etc for you will make it even more tedious. When it gets so tedious that you want it to be fully autonomous, I think that will be the tipping point.

This is how I see it. I hate driving: it’s dull, irritating and gives me back ache. Driverless cars sound amazing to me- taking a lot of the danger and all of the general rudeness out of a car journey can only be a good thing. It’s an interesting point about where the cyclists fit in though- theres a chance that society might end up needing to make a decision between the two, which would be sad.

Cheers HH – theres a bit today on DC Rainmakers blog from MWC about Fords autonomous tech.

need to read down this link a bit

http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2014/02/earbuds-automated-avoiding.html

It’s bound to happen, but it’s going to be the end of my soul. I will resist self-driving cars as long as it’s humanly possible, purely because I love driving. I don’t even mind being stuck in traffic.

As for start-stop because of P-takers – possibly, but with any luck they’ll not be that sensitive and p-takers will have to know to get the hell out of the way as with trams.