Self-Driving Car

firstly, why are you driving, because you enjoy it, or because you have to get somewhere?
secondly what causes car accidents?

on those two details a car that drives itself would be nice, you can do something else when commuting, and as most crashes are the result of human actions, might save a few lives as well.

I’m not keen on flying. Given the choice I’d fly the plane myself. I realise I’d probably crash and die, but at least I wouldn’t be letting someone else be in control of my fate.

So, no, I don’t like the sound of it much. Besides, driving gives you something to do on the journey.

Trust that 17year old in the chavved up nova to be a sane driver, that exec reaching for the dropped CD to keep a straight line, that mad woman who’s doing her make up in the mirror in the middle lane not to veer randomly.

oh yes. get in car, punch in destination, open book, have a snooze, wake up on arrival.

Humans are the most useless unreliable parts of the control system. The more control we take away from them, the safer the roads will be.

All for it, will just need to find something to do to keep me entertained.

I like the idea of autonomous cars. Select destination and the car checks the traffic reports (and polls frequently to check for new information), maps the best route and wakes you up when you get there. Even parallel park for you!

I imagine that every vehicle on the road was autonomous then it’d be a pretty safe system. Not sure I’d want to mix autonomous vehicles with human driven vehicles though…

Also, if you like this idea then check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge.

Sounds great. I’ll never be sober again.

I want the railway lines to be tarmaced over and just to be made available to “fly by wire” vehicles travelling at set speeds. And bikes, I suppose I need to add.

Not being a fan of long-distance driving, I searched for an alternative that would get me to my destination without me having to drive. Someone else already had this idea apparently and invented the train.

yes for long journeys probably not for short journeys. Not sacred of the technology as it is unlikely to be worse than human error.

Bring it on. It would remove the vast number of complete morons out there who are utterly incapable of driving a car. I think most of them were driving on the M1 last night at the same time as me. They were usually in the middle lane doing 65mph while the outside lane went from 80 to 60 to 70 to 40 to 80 as all the muppets tried to get past. I was in the empty inside lane doing a steady 70mph.

Why are people so keen to let a computer take on responsibility for driving their car? I bet it’s because people like the idea of switching the autopilot on and then sleeping, reading. Kind of like using trains, buses and taxis, but with added status symbol.

I’m not comfortable about trusting my life, my passenger’s life, and my car’s dent free panels to a computer programmer. His or her life doesn’t depend on it, unlike a bus driver or a pilot.

Surely, you haven’t forgotten how frustrating it can be when you see the blue screen of death when your PC crashes? Programmers are fallible, too…

Surely, you haven’t forgotten how frustrating it can be when you see the blue screen of death when your PC crashes? Programmers are fallible, too…

Programmers may be fallible, but their code gets to be installed in thousands of units, and as a result any obvious failures will be come apparent pretty early on. Current software for autonomous cars is pretty well tested before it even gets to a car.

I love the idea of an autonomous car, but I imagine the early transition period could be a little daunting.

The idea of the “obvious” failures being fixed quickly is reassuring, but not to the early adopters involved in motoring accidents. Moreso if these people pay a premium to get the new tech.

Remember the Millenium Bug?

Oh, OK, that didn’t turn out too bad 😉

I wonder if there’s a legal issue with software updates. If the software is faulty, there’s surely a case to claim (lots of money) against the software provider? They could try all they can to avoid a payout, and wouldn’t providing a software update indicate liability?

I guess we’d be more careful when reading the terms and conditions linked with the software and updates?

Little daunting – potentially an understatement.

Seeing as the system responsible for driving a car will not have to compete for processing power with the various pop-ups, adverts and malicious stuff that a normal PC collects as its user hops from file sharing to pron to dodgy email links to buggy 3rd party software applications, I would assume that it would not be prone to crashing or the blue screen of death. I mean how often do you get stranded on the runway due to the flight instruments of an airliner going a bit loopy? (the computer itself, not the various fail-safe sensors or mechanical bits) I’m pretty sure the captain can’t go surfing for a snazzy screensaver or download some jailbreak that lets him customise the colour of the instrument displays 🙂

I love driving so given the choice I would probably select ‘manual’ unless I was particularly fed up, in which case it would be nice to have an ‘auto’ mode.

There is no doubt the roads would suddenly become many times safer, and obviously insurance premiums would (or should!) collapse 🙂

His or her life doesn’t depend on it, unlike a bus driver or a pilot

Do pilots do much programming these days?

I’m not comfortable about trusting my life, my passenger’s life, and my car’s dent free panels to a computer programmer careless idiot coming the other way.

FTFY.

If EVERYONE had one the roads would be way safer.

Surely, you haven’t forgotten how frustrating it can be when you see the blue screen of death when your PC crashes?

That’s why they don’t use Windows for proper safety critical systems. Learn a bit about real time programming. When was the last time your landline crashed, as in you picked up the phone and there was no dial tone? (Orange Broadband customers excepted).

Seems to me that the majority of car drivers already prefer the car in front to do the driving for them – going so close that all they can do is constantly react to what the car in front does; always on the brakes because the car in front dabs; unable to see the road ahead so relying on the other driver’s view.

If you are really enthusiastic about driving your own car yourself, then do everything you can to get away, further back, from the car in front.

As for the OP – things like this will come in more and more as we realise that our car is not part of our castle.

There was an article about this I read yesterday with an unfortunately probably very true point; we tolerate thousands of deaths a year from driver error but a single failure of a computer driving system and the whole idea would be set back years.

I’d love cars that would drive themselves – no more having to deal with idiots, no risk of accidentally doing something stupid, the ability to do something far more worthwhile with your time… count me in!

we tolerate thousands of deaths a year from driver error but a single failure of a computer driving system and the whole idea would be set back years.

Along these lines I imagine that no company will be enthusiastic to put the first autonomous car onto roads with proper traffic. Unless they had a pretty watertight contract stating that they can’t be held responsible for death (could they even do that?) then I imagine most companies would be more than a little worried about lawsuits!

On the subject of not trusting a computer, don’t planes all but fly themselves these days?

I’m not comfortable about trusting my life, my passenger’s life, and my car’s dent free panels to a computer programmer. His or her life doesn’t depend on it, unlike a bus driver or a pilot.

Your life depends on computer programmers in any modern plane, even when it isn’t on autopilot there are computers between the controls and any physical action on the engines or wing surfaces or whatever.

Same goes for cars for that matter, you rely on whoever programmed your engine management system.

My car has never crashed.

My computer does it frequently.

I would like to remain in control of a mechanical device, not just sit in 70mph computer.

If it lessened the effect of driving bringing out everyone’s inner massive ccok then I’d be all for it.

I’m increasingly thinking that the car-centric society we have at the moment really does bring out the worst in society, and that people really do identify themselves with their car and how they drive. If a system like this was a step away from cars being an aspect of people’s personality and more towards them being a way to get around then I reckon that’s be a good thing.

joemarshall said…

Same goes for cars for that matter, you rely on whoever programmed your engine management system.

Maybe recent experience has taught me to be wary of cars too. I’ve been on the motorway in my car (2 months old, at the time) with the cruise control on. It has then accelerated towards the car in front, for no apparent reason, and on another occasion, due to me indicating to overtake the car in front. As I was paying attention, I switched the cruise control off and didn’t cause an accident. If I thought the car was completely in control of the journey, do you think I’d have averted that situation?

To me, cruise control is pretty simple. But there was a problem with the electronics (which took 3 months to sort out).

I would like to remain in control of a mechanical device, not just sit in 70mph computer

Too late, you already are.

I’m increasingly thinking that the car-centric society we have at the moment really does bring out the worst in society, and that people really do identify themselves with their car and how they drive.

+100

It has then accelerated towards the car in front, for no apparent reason, and on another occasion, due to me indicating to overtake the car in front.

Are you sure you didn’t brush the cruise lever? Easy to do both on VW and Toyota.

And you lot are missing the point. We don’t have the technology yet, and if we did it would NEVER be adopted if there was ANY doubt about it at all. This is a hypothetical thread. The question is IF we had a perfectly reliable system or as near as dammit*, what would you think? So saying it wouldn’t be reliable is not allowed on this thread.

* like in planes.