[Closed] Who wants driverless/fully automated vehicles?

Edinburgh city centre to glasgow city centre. £14.70 iirc off peak return. 95 milesish

Manchester to Leeds is similar; £15.00...And if I don't want to go to Leeds?

i often get the train to Newcastle as a couple or a family. It’s much more pleasant then driving and I can have a few drinks too as a couple or a family. It use to be a lot cheaper than taking the car but now it’s more than using the electric. Still do it know as it makes a nice day out.

We went to York a couple of weeks ago 5 of us with a car full of cricket gear. Cost less than £30 door to door plus a run into York itself for a some refreshments. Yes, I know there’s the outlay of the car itself but have a car for my wife to get to work and now myself too.

Absolutely a big investment is needed into public transport.

I can’t believe this has never been discussed before.

British treat their cars like Americans treat their guns, and the arguments for and against have the same range of valid through moronic.
Its hugely complicated, and OBVIOUSLY in an ideal world we would be able to sack them off all together, through joined up public transport, magic self driving taxis, and things like working from home and grocery deliveries!

But there ARE valid reasons for having them, and at the end of the day many people LIKE having them. (im not one of them, for clarity)

I dont think just turning around and legistlating them away will work, as there are so many and so ingrained in our current world (see also, americans and guns)

I would however, like to see better alternatives posed.

and a reduction in idiots frees up the roads for people who wantor have to drive for whatever reason

One way or another (Legislation or whatever) it should be enforced that taking a journey by public transport should NEVER cost more than the cost of fuel to drive. Why would i take a train to a place near(ish) to my destination for twice or 3 times the cost in diesel to drive myself to the door? it might be cheaper in admin just to make Public transport free at point of use. People might use it then!

But I’d much prefer some infrastructure that meant I didn’t have to share busy roads with either mad people or robots

I would choose robots every day. Robots dont fall asleep, or get impatient, or look at their phone, or fiddle with the radio, or make dicey decisions and shady overtakes.

I dont think just turning around and legistlating them away will work

Is that even an argument? As much as I despise car culture I’ve never once made that argument and I don’t know anyone who does? (except for public zoning)

Again, as per title of thread does anyone know who is actually pushing the drive for self-driving cars?

It always amuses me when people claim cars are cheap. they are not.

Absolutely correct TJ, but most of it is a "hidden" cost. The only immediately obvious price is fuel and even that is a bit displaced from the actual journey.

Plus if you are acutely aware of the hidden costs then you are just as likely to fall into sunken cost fallacy. "Well it is going to deprecate anyway so I might as well use it"

Again, as per title of thread does anyone know who is actually pushing the drive for self-driving cars

Isn't it just tech companies that will make millions from selling the systems?

I can do and regularly do a 100+mile return trip by train for £14. A car would be £40+ total cost not additional cost. Even the additional cost would be more than the train

I like trains... but the issue is that whereas a car costs £X to make a journey, it's pretty much the same if there's jsut me, or 3 others.
Wheras a TRAIN IS £y FOR ME. aND £4y IF 4 OF US MAKE THE JOURNEY.

dRp

(ARG....caps lock madness!!)

I think cars should be ‘owned’ in the same way I ‘own’ a plane…
Call for it when I need it.

An automated self driving car could meet me WHEN I need it. Then drive off to the next person who needs it.

That's Uber isn't it?

Absolutely a big investment is needed into public transport.

I can’t believe this has never been discussed before.

I've always said that when they make me emperor for life I'll make public transport (trains, trams, buses, river ferries etc) completely FREE to everyone at point of use.

Radical, but think how that would alter habits and the "need" for a car.

To go back to the OP I am generally in favour of self driving cars but we are a long long way from it being practical yet.

Which again raises the question of who is actually pushing for these automated cars?

Car manufacturers are the only ones pushing as could in future mean more profit for them in a build it and they will come approach.

Don't think that many consumers are that bothered about it and to really make change would need to be along the lines of summoning a car when needed and never needing to own a car personally as mentioned above.

The other thing to consider is if we hand over the roads and cars to computers, it should all become much more efficient. One of the biggest factors for getting people out of cars is the traffic, and the delay it causes, fundamentally that issue will be solved (to a large measure) by letting computers control when and how fast you can travel, It scuppers one the big incentives to get people out of their cars.

Fully automated vehicles will put millions of people out of work, and save companies/corporations a LOT of money. Not a good idea in my eyes

Fully automated vehicles will put millions of people out of work

To go back to the OP I am generally in favour of self driving cars

But have you been involved in the push for it, ie were you asked? It’s like so many other things, it’s seemingly an ‘inevitability’*

Which will lead to more and more roads and less and less public transport.

*But is it being lobbied and pushed through by anyone?

I think about this a lot

The big advantage will be having one central AI moving everything will mean we can travel at much higher speeds without the need for traffic lights and other things needed to control slow, dumb mushy humans. We’ll just be doing 300mph passing a few mm from each other’s vehicles, meshing across junctions etc

I think there will be a few steps before that but that has to be the ultimate end goal, until we can expand transport vertically of course

I expect a lot of reluctance from people until they realise they get places faster, stress less and die less. And of course can also have a drink or whatever we take in the future. Quick DMT trip on the way to work anyone?

Yes please!

Which will lead to more and more roads and less and less public transport.

Self driving cars may well be the future of public transport.

At the moment - SDV isn't being pushed at all - it's seen as the next great opportunity for the automotive sector, the next differentiator. It'll be like EVs vs. ICE. It starts niche and premium and gradually becomes the yardstick by which cars are judged. SDV vs. the rest.

Does anyone want an ICE car these days if they can afford and EV? It's aspirational, it's seen as sustainable, but most of all, it's highly desirable. SDV is that, but a few years down the line.

Once the technology is proven to work reliably and is accessible through multiple manufacturers, you'll see others start to develop disruptive concepts around it.

One of those concepts will undoubtedly be the purchase or rental of a fleet of vehicles to replace rural public transport and community support vehicles. The economics of that will be studied to determine if it could replace local rail at less cost and greater and more flexible availability.

Yes/No/Maybe????

Some Humans are fantastic, attentive, patient drivers... But a noticeable proportion really aren't.

So in principle removing the fallible meat sack from the control functions of a 2 Ton heap of speeding metal is something I am in favour of.

But then it all feels a bit like another verse of "Technology will solve all our Problems" and I can't help not really believing the failure rate of a distributed/connected AI or whatever ends up driving your car will be lower than the previously mentioned meat sack.

Realistically the best way to reduce the various impacts of cars on peoples health and the environment is to not use them, better yet to not even own them.
And of course once a car drives itself, where's the real point in owning it Vs summoning it with an app? You're not going to be Driving 'vigorously' or 'making progress' like you were able to in the good old days...

Ultimately I would like to be cycling and using public transport more locally and Trains for longer distance journeys, driving as the exception not the rule, but all too often we default to the tin box, I'm very aware of how car reliant (over reliant) our family has become.

Case in point; I chose to pick the kids up from a Saturday morning club they both do, which is less than half a mile from home. I turned up on a bike intending to walk back with them, both of them complained immediately that they were going to have to "all the way home" like peasants... Cars are ruining my kids by making them lazy, OK Me and My wife are making them lazy with our car by getting them accustomed to not walking.

Self driving cars won't fix the whole being lazy thing, they'll make it worse. But I'm hoping a confluence of circumstances: Squeezed incomes, Expensive cars and a post covid period of people wanting to get out and be sociable again, will lead to a growth in "Active transport" use, not a growth in people financing a self driving car...

Self driving cars may well be the future of public transport.

One other point I always get to when discussing this with people is they will always come out with " oh but it will have to be super safe, can't have any malfunctions". Which of course is a good sentiment but let's bear in mind that the current system is shocking. A quick Google suggests almost 1.5 million deaths a year so as long as the robots only kill a million that's a huge improvement

I'm exaggerating there of course but the point is that it shouldn't be a zero tolerance thing, I can see the media latching on to that first AI caused SDV accident so we need to be careful to compare to what we have, not what we think we should have

the point is that everyone will still want one each then expect some genius to remap the thing to do XYZ like the pops and bangs remaps we all love to hear with obvious consequences

You’re not going to be Driving ‘vigorously’ or ‘making progress’ like you were able to in the good old days…

It will be shocking for some of these drivers when they realise they've arrived at their destination at exactly the same time it would have taken for them to 'drive vigorously' there.

I have a revolutionary idea. Please stop me if it blows your brains...

...choice!

Choose to use a driverless car when the situation fits, take a train when suitable, have your own car if you like, hells teeth man, you could even have a bike as well!

Once driverless cars become significantly safer than human driven one then it will become harder ad harder to justify driving as you put everyone else at risk

But the transition will not be for many decades yet IMO

And of course once a car drives itself, where’s the real point in owning it Vs summoning it with an app?

Same as now?

Convenience, greed/lack of fwd planning to the nth degree?

For instance those with a serious disability/health problem currently have to book/wait for a lift to arrive ie to plan ahead. Yet I can’t see the gen. pop. choosing that option. They will continue to opt for the cars for short local trips as far as not walking or cycling and choosing instead to use a car (unlike disabled who have no choice but to), but the gen. pop. won’t want to plan ahead/wait around? They want it right now and they want to keep their own mess/belongings in it. A car became a house extension and an instant gratification. I’m sure not many of us want to walk that one backwards now we’ve got everything and a bag of chips (and costing nothing but a huge chunk of income and the Earth)

Then there is the biggie: Status + owning things? Once ppl catch on to their favourite purveyor of freedomsTM now trying to rent them something instead? Something that tracks your every movement. This sounds like a dystopian nightmare from their favourite Infowars/Russell Brand-branded conspiracy (‘you will own nothing and you will be happy’).

Add in all of the decent arguments (ie filth, litter etc

Look at the way people treat those hire-scheme city bikes?

Choose to use a driverless car when the situation fits, take a train when suitable, have your own car if you like, hells teeth man, you could even have a bike as well!

Well, I couldn’t afford to take a train the other night so I had to take the old banger Which was still a quarter of a train trip cost (even at nearly £2 a litre for fuel). As for cycling, have you seen the cycling infrastructure? This isn’t and shall never be the Netherlands.

So much for ‘choice’. I see a future of endlessly increasing cars/car-usage, more and more roads, and most of the revenue funnelling to billionaires.

I really like cars- I enjoy driving, done trackdays and such, spent a lot of time fannying around with them. Just got me a little mx5 which might well be my last fossil fuel car and it makes me feel a bit sad.

Buuuut, I think I'd trade all of that for being able to just put the bike in the back and sit in the front with my kindle and go "car, take me to fort william"

public transport (trains, trams, buses, river ferries etc) completely FREE to everyone at point of use.

Radical, but think how that would alter habits and the “need” for a car.

Scotland recently introduced a free bus pass for all people aged under 22yrs.
The result has been a vast increase in young people using the buses.
The same thing happened when the over 60s passes were opened up for all buses rather than just local ones. (Around 2006?)
I agree with the poster above, free buses/trains would reduce a massive amount of cars.
Btw, I’m a bus driver, bus passes make my job a frickin ton easier, not having to deal with change etc.

“car, take me to fort william”

Then you go to sleep and wake up in Billingham in Teeside.

Not in my lifetime and likely not in your kids'.

My car has all manner of driver assistance technology. Adaptive cruise control is great except occasionally when passing a parked car or a vehicle in the Right Turn lane it shits itself, slams on the anchors and starts screaming.

Trains still need drivers and they're on rails. Sort that one out first and then get back to me about cars.

Trains still need drivers and they’re on rails. Sort that one out first and then get back to me about cars.

They really don't. The ONLY reason that trains still have drivers is Unions. DLR is the prime example of this.

I can build a feedback control system into a Lego train using a Raspberry Pi and radar sensor which can compensate for speed and weight and stop perfectly everytime whilst maintaining a schedule.

Me. I hate driving. I hate being driven by someone else, and the sooner I can hand the job over to a computer the better. If I get squashed under a driverless car while on my bike I’ll know that it’s a genuine accident as opposed to a driver misjudging their punishment pass.

Law could be updated now to formally assign liability to the driver of the vehicle who’s turned off safety aids because they think their driving is so good they don’t need them. Once self driving is here then you should definitely assume personal liability in the event of an accident, regardless of the cause, if you’re driving manually.

Martymac (bus driver) is my hero - vastly underpaid for what the job entails, especially in relation to train drivers (huh? What's that about?)! I did the training a couple of years ago pre-Covid, thought '**** that' and moved on. Good example of a job where the skills required are in no way related to the pay - and also a great illustration of how driverless vehicles (at least in a country like the UK) are a distant dream....

Adaptive cruise control is great except occasionally when passing a parked car or a vehicle in the Right Turn lane it shits itself, slams on the anchors and starts screaming.

That's like saying we shouldn't have computers flying planes because my laptop keeps crashing. The tech that'll go into driverless cars will be completely different to adaptive cruise control and will be regulated to be far more reliable. With adaptive cruise the onus is still on you.

Is your car a VW by the way? My Hyundai has never done anything weird with regards the cruise feature.

– and also a great illustration of how driverless vehicles (at least in a country like the UK) are a distant dream….

Or not. And yes, I know this isn't the UK but honestly, it's the countries that seem like they would be impossible for machines to navigate that are the most in need of autonomous driving.

RAILLYNEWS.COM "https://www.raillynews.com/2022/05/If-you-get-in-without-a-driver,-e-Attack-has-started-to-carry-passengers-in-Norway./"

And to be brutally honest, given the standard of the human bus drivers around here, the sooner the current crop are in another line of work the better.

Cougar
Full Member

Trains still need drivers and they’re on rails. Sort that one out first and then get back to me about cars.

Trains need staff, they don't necessarily need permanent drivers. TBF they'd probably be better with driverless trains and with the driver released from the plate to work the rest of the train.

Of course, triain companies usually see driverless/guardless/inspectorless trains as a way to cut costs and staffing, or to use less qualified staff, but it doesn't have to be like that. Unions get criticised for fighting it all on those terms, but that's basically because that's how it is.

TBF they’d probably be better with driverless trains and with the driver released from the plate to work the rest of the train.

So that'd be the guards and conductors that've been the source of numerous strike actions over the last five years, causing massive inconvenience, citing 'passenger safety' as a concern, but who hid in the end carriages throughout Covid rather than enforcing basic safety protocols, and almost never IME confront the routine antisocial behaviour that discourages so many from using trains?

That’s like saying we shouldn’t have computers flying planes because my laptop keeps crashing. The tech that’ll go into driverless cars will be completely different to adaptive cruise control

Well, no. The first is comparing planes with laptops, the second is comparing car automation with car automation. If the tech going into driverless cars is going to be "completely different" from current technologies then why can't we have those technologies instead? Surely the stuff we have now is a precursor to what comes next.

Is your car a VW by the way? My Hyundai has never done anything weird with regards the cruise feature.

Honda. It's brilliant on motorways but it can't cope around town. I guess that's not really what it's designed for.

IMO the driver of this change are tech companies set to make a fortune. See Tesla.

Free public transport is probably a cheaper and more immediate 'win' societally and environmentally.

So many people when they imagine the nirvana of robot cars and no private car ownership don't live in rural places...

tjagain
Full Member

Once driverless cars become significantly safer than human driven one then it will become harder ad harder to justify driving as you put everyone else at risk

Why? Trains are already far safer than cars but there is no push to ban cars on safety grounds where the train is a realistic alternative.

When you look at absolute risks car deaths are low risk. If we are going to be justifying modes of transport on a risk basis then the first thing to ban is motorcycling.6 miles on a motorbike carries the same risk as 250 miles in a car.

PLUS.MATHS.ORG "https://plus.maths.org/content/os/issue55/features/risk/index"

Understanding uncertainty: Small but lethal | plus.maths.org

So many people when they imagine the nirvana of robot cars and no private car ownership don’t live in rural places…

I think autonomous buses will be common long before autonomous cars.

Of course, at some point the line between buses and cars will start to blur. Some of the autonomous buses they have been using here in Norway are probably smaller than a ten seater minivan. The newer ones are much bigger and are used for busier routes in the centre of town.

The beauty of it is that you no longer have to make all your buses 50+ seaters because you won't have the same issues with training and retaining drivers that you currently have.

When you look at absolute risks car deaths are low risk. If we are going to be justifying modes of transport on a risk basis then the first thing to ban is motorcycling.6 miles on a motorbike carries the same risk as 250 miles in a car.

It's not clear from your link whether it's all deaths caused by cars or just the deaths of the occupants.

If you are driving a car then you're pretty safe. It's all those pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists who tend to get killed.

irc
Free Member

When you look at absolute risks car deaths are low risk. If we are going to be justifying modes of transport on a risk basis then the first thing to ban is motorcycling.6 miles on a motorbike carries the same risk as 250 miles in a ca

Sure but that's not a good comparison, because so much motorbike use isn't transport. You need to separate out recreational use, which is much more common for motorbikes, and also riskier than transport use. You'd see a very different number if you have pure transport use.

Surely the stuff we have now is a precursor to what comes next.

Only in the same way that a Sinclair Spectrum is a precursor to a Macbook Pro. Your (and my) adaptive cruise is noddy, only has one sensor of one type, and is not certified to do anything at all. A driverless car will be covered in loads of visual cameras and lidars, have far more computing power, and 1000x the lines of code, and it will have to go through a rigorous certification process.