How Google's Autonomous Vehicles Work 295
An anonymous reader writes "IEEE reports that Google's autonomous cars have logged more than 190,000 miles driving in all kinds of traffic, and the company is also testing a fleet of self-driving golf carts on its campus. In a recent talk, Sebastian Thrun and Chris Urmson of Google gave details of the project and showed videos of the robot cars driving themselves and even doing some stunts. The goal is that the technology will help reduce congestion, fuel waste, and accidents."
If Perfected, This Is Huge (Score:2)
We desperately need this tech. Aging populations drive less well after some kinds of age-related degradations, where automatic driving mechanisms could maintain mobility for affected people. Cars could also take kids to school, and park themselves in the parking lot, making the kids much less vulnerable to child molesters and bullies, as well as freeing Mom and Dad from transportation duties.
For everyone else, automation in driving will do a better job than people that are blabbing on cell phones, eating,
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we still can't even perfect automated train signaling systems... there are still people in the loop because sometimes equipment fails, or is programmed incorrectly...and this is a simplistic cart-on-rails A leaves houston at 90Mph, and cart-on-rails B leaves chicago at 87Mph.. style problem compared to the result you speak of. at most you're dealing with a half dozen trains with known speeds and precise routes.. forget about piles of cars on streets.
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Legal framework (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm all for autonomous vehicles but I think before it goes forward (ha ha) shouldn't there be some sort of legal framework in place? I mean the first fatal accident that can be even possibly attributed to an autonomous vehicle could very well kill the industry for a while at least. (I'm reminded of how the fatal crash of one of Buckminster Fuller's super efficient teardrop shaped 3 wheeled vehicles killed that concept).
How about for all "certified" (through rigorous federal testing) vehicles, there be "no-fault" collision insurance (or limits on damages). Unfortunately I'm neither a transportation expert nor lawyer so I'm just guessing.
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Agreed. I've always loved the idea of automated cars, even since I was young. There are so many benefits: greatly reduced traffic fatalities, alleviation of most traffic jams*, optimized stoplights, higher fuel efficiency--and, of course, convenience. But, there would almost inevitably be deaths and injuries caused by the machines. Liability for traffic fatalities nowadays is pretty much on the human behind the wheel. Even if the machines lower traffic accidents greatly, I don't see how the company that pro
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There are similar potential benefits to networked cars in regular traffic. For instance, you could optimize light timing in real-time so that a bunch of cars get through without having to stop at multiple lights.
Think bigger - you don't need lights - the car already knows where it needs to go. Make new intersections traffic circles, and for legacy ones just allocate time slices to routes or perhaps treat them as circles anyway (if the intersection is large enough you could just pretend there is a concrete barrier in the middle). You could also make roads one way and use all the lanes, and dynamically adjust that allocation - turning entire blocks into traffic circles essentially.
Cars of course would be spaced pro
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From the Article ( I know, hersay... )
Nevada bill:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/artificial-intelligence/nevada-bill [ieee.org]
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No. Economics ended Concorde travel well before 4590. It was just prestige flying of an overpriced dinosaur, and the crash ended that era.
If there had been a serious market for concorde flights, they would still fly, and they would still be built, crash or not.
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If there had been a serious market for concorde flights, they would still fly, and they would still be built, crash or not.
There was a serious market for Concorde flights until the US government got into a huff about losing the 'SST Race' and banned supersonic flights across the country.
Richard Branson offered to buy the Concordes after the crash, but AFAIR Airbus said they would no longer provide maintenance support so they were no longer allowed to fly.
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Sorry, perhaps I phrased that wrong (Again I'm not a transportation expert or lawyer). I'd fully expect these big companies to pay for their errors in design or construction but in order to keep these costs predictable (otherwise they would have no idea whether or not it would be practical to enter this field) they should pay into an insurance fund with set damages etc.
If it doesn't make sense (if every tenth drive ends in a fatality) then obviously these companies should go bankrupt/not make cars. Howeve
kid in front, semi in the back. (Score:2)
When I was learning to drive, my teacher told me before you dodge (or brake for) any deer on the road, always check rear view mirror to make sure a semi trailer isn't following you to brake and kill 15 people behind that. It's easy to say deer.
But what if it's a kid. Gets harder right?
I am glad this robot car takes that decision off my hands yeah? :D
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You mean the "Speed up and turn on the windscreen wipers" decision? :D
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Of course! It wipes faster as you speed up too ;)
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Good advice but I rather doubt you have the time to check your rearview if you are in a dangerous emergency break situation.
As far as I can remember i never had it.
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True. But the preceding lesson was always be aware of your surroundings. :)
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Whenever I hit the brakes hard I always check the rearview just as I come to a complete stop for inattentive flat-tired idiots skidding out of control behind me. Usually there is one. At that point I'm already putting the car into first gear and looking for a way to get out of the idiot's path.
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The decision is the same. You brake. How hard you brake depends on traffic behind you. A good driver always knows if there is something behind them, so no need to check the rear view mirror before braking (you should have checked it 10 seconds ago already).
I certainly would not endanger my live and the live of those behind me because a deer/kid/granny is in a spot they donot belong.
Re:kid in front, semi in the back. (Score:5, Insightful)
the kid/granny in front of you are not at fault. if you hit them you are at fault.
someone who is behind you *must* be at a safe distance to stop even if you perform emergency braking. if they hit you, they are at fault.
fill the rest yourself. in short you are just plain wrong. and dangerous.
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You must have never hit a deer at speed. Your car will stop whether you hit the brakes or not. Then the guy behind you will still hit you if you are following to closely. Plowing through an accident works in NASCAR, but not so much on a public highway.
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...I am glad this robot car takes that decision off my hands yeah? :D
Oh, and I can't wait for a major solar flare to occur that takes out the navigation backbone very quickly, causing a major pile-up wherever these automated cars exist.
Nobody mentions that in any article I've read, including all of the subs, now or at any point in the past.
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They mentioned it in this article. Watch the movie. The car always works off the laser 3d mapper, the GPS just assists as GPS isn't even accurate enough to drive by.
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They mentioned it in this article. Watch the movie. The car always works off the laser 3d mapper, the GPS just assists as GPS isn't even accurate enough to drive by.
Crap. I don't know how I missed that. Thank you for pointing it out! Much appreciated, Coren22.
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My driving teacher told me that you should know what's behind you at all times.
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When I was learning to drive, my teacher told me before you dodge (or brake for) any deer on the road, always check rear view mirror to make sure a semi trailer isn't following you to brake and kill 15 people behind that. It's easy to say deer.
But what if it's a kid. Gets harder right?
I am glad this robot car takes that decision off my hands yeah? :D
If there's a semi on your ass and you haven't slowed down to allow for their lack of breaking room, then you are at fault for not diffusing a dangerous situation.
You should always be checking your rearview mirror, and taking tailgaters into the overall account of danger. and reducing it accordingly.
how does this thing handle higher level decisions? (Score:3, Insightful)
Like:
Can it, like I do, notice that the baseball rolling down a driveway may be followed by a child who is currently invisible behind a parked SUV?
Can it, like I do, notice that the driver *behind* me is distracted by her cell phone, has started late at the last three lights, so I should give myself more than average room between me and the car in front of me, so in case it stops suddenly, SHE won't have to stop as suddenly and will be less likely to rear-end me?
Can it, like I do, notice that even though the road has been clear of ice and snow, the next curve up ahead is deeply shaded and is likely to be slick?
Can it, like I do, notice that the baby deer is one one side of the road and his mother on the other, and even though he isn't charging across, it looks like he's about to do so, so I better slow down? Because this happened to me not one week ago, and it DID charge across.
Can it react to the highly dynamic and unpredictable world in ways that require human intelligence? And before you claim it's going to be a better driver than I am, note that I got my license in 1973, and have YET to have any sort of accident. Because I can provide human intelligence to the task of driving, and unless you want to claim the machine is as smart as a person, I am not so sure I believe I want to leave these choices up to it. I'll gladly fly on a computer flown aircraft, because that's a very, very different kind of task. No children appear in the sky from behind parked vehicles, and the pilot stands by the entire time to take over if something doesn't go right. Car drivers won't be that alert: they'll just doze off or play with their phones and not even glance out the window the whole time.
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I wouldn't claim the machine is smarter then the smartest humans, but I would be willing to bet it is smarter then the average human (Just look around walmart, what you see represents the majority of the people on the road).
I would bet the machine is dumber than sh*t. It might be able to react quicker, but it isn't smart. All it will do is analyze a bunch of algorithms and choose what it is programmed to choose as the best one. That doesn't make it smart, just efficient.
Besides, Mr. Spock was definitely smarter than Captain Kirk, but Kirk seemed to excel at making the better choice.
Reduce congestion it will not. (Score:2)
If automatic drivers initially reduce congestion (due to smoother driving) that effect will soon be diminished by increasing amounts of traffic.
Judging by my friends, most of them seem to prefer driving their own car if it will take them no more than 1.5 times as long as using the subway. If they had automatic drivers, they would probably accept even longer delays, so they might take their car instead of the subway even in rush hour when it would take more than 3 times as long.
This will also reduce incentiv
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yes, after all, the point of taxation is to modify behavior that goes against the collective good, not to simply fund a service we all share a need for. this creates lots of good will among the citizenry...
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Unless all cars, or at least the vast majority of cars, are google cars, then it is hard to see how there will be reduced congestion on the highways. Congestion isn't caused by a bunch of people doing stupid things, just a few and then everybody else has to react to it.
Bad Math (Score:2)
Yes, people doing dumb things can be the final straw, but the idea that roads can take
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No, congestion is caused by having too many cars for the the amount of road. If you are on an 8 lane highway, a there is some dumbass swerving back and forth across the lanes, and you and him are the only people on the road, there will be no congestion. Conversely, if you are driving on a two lane highway that is at full capacity. Adding hundreds of extra cars will cause congestion even if everyone driving perfectly.
Yes, people doing dumb things can be the final straw, but the idea that roads can take an infinate amount of traffic as long as people don't do dumb things is a myth.
Congestion is not caused by too many cars on the road, it is caused by what any individual car is doing. Look at the Indy wreck at Las Vegas. While the cars were all traveling around in the pack, things were tight, but not congested in the traffic sense of slowed traffic. It wasn't until one car did something that caused another car to shift that problems tragically began.
Traffic follows fluid dynamics, just like water through a pipe. Yes theoretically a highway or a pipe can only suppor so much, but fo
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Put 22 drivers on a 1 lane track and ask them to drive at 30km/h. You will get a traffic jam. you just need one car to slow down, the following to slow down a little bit more in reaction, and the following reacting even more to get at the end a traffic jam where everyone should stop. And you don't need to be at full capacity to see that effect.
See it for yourself: Shockwave traffic jams recreated for first time [youtube.com]
whoops! (Score:2)
i love the summary. the technology will help reduce congestion, will help fuel waste, and will help accidents. whoops :)
This seems nice but I remain sceptical (Score:2)
Until it gets tested by an independent group, it's still just a company's claims about their own product.
Killer app, Driving you home from a bar! (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously. And it's more than enough reason to get it legal on the streets.
Just have a way to lock out the manual override until you can pass the built in breathalyzer. It can transmit encrypted times and duration of computer control to local police vehicles in addition to the fact that you locked yourself out so they won't bother pulling you over.
Of course you will probably have to pre train it to park. Or have a parking assist mode that you can engage even while intoxicated that won't let you get into an accident. And of course a button to pull over just in case you need to throw up.
No more drunk driving or risking the fine and you have your car to get to work in the morning. And no $50 one way taxi ride or having trouble getting a taxi at last call. Besides most people would probably prefer to nap on their way home anyway.
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Wouldn't it be simpler not to just get drunk/wasted? Buying a $40,000 vehicle to save on $50 taxi rides doesn't seem to offer a good ROI.
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Buying a $40,000 vehicle to save on $50 taxi rides doesn't seem to offer a good ROI.
Say you're right, that the self-driving car was $40k. According to Toyota's website, **BASE** price for a Prius is $24k. So, if you were even contemplating a new car purchase, you'd only really have to justify the extra $16k for the self-driving option.
$16k at $50/taxi ride is 320 rides that you'd have to eliminate for the feature to pay for itself. If you only use the self-drive feature when you're going out drinking, and go drinking one night per week, the feature pays for itself in 320 weeks. That's 6.1
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Buying a $40,000 vehicle to save on $50 taxi rides doesn't seem to offer a good ROI.
Say you're right, that the self-driving car was $40k. According to Toyota's website, **BASE** price for a Prius is $24k. So, if you were even contemplating a new car purchase, you'd only really have to justify the extra $16k for the self-driving option.
$16k at $50/taxi ride is 320 rides that you'd have to eliminate for the feature to pay for itself. If you only use the self-drive feature when you're going out drinking, and go drinking one night per week, the feature pays for itself in 320 weeks. That's 6.15 years. (6 years, 8 weeks) -- Certainly not an unreasonable expectation of the car's useful lifetime. Last several cars I've had lasted > 10 years before they either died or were replaced for other reasons.
Actually, since you are paying the extra $16,000 up front vs the $50 over the six years, assuming a 3% annual interest rate, you would need 382 trips for the car to break even. At one trip per week, that comes out to 7.35 years which is well above the average time most people keep vehicles. Also at 7 years a prius will most likely need a new battery pack to have any decent resell value. If you are going to have to finance the extra $16,000, then the ROI is even worse.
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You underestimate the ability for people to spend money on things they don't need.
BSOD (Score:2)
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You can already get automated parking on some cars. I don't remember which ones, but I remember seeing on Top Gear.
Motive? (Score:2)
This is interesting, but I have to ask, why is Google doing this? What is in it for them?
It's nice that they are doing it, but as a business, they can't be sinking money into it (and risking being sued or damaging their reputation) without the expectation of a reasonable return.
So, how are they making money on this? Perhaps while you are driven around you have more time to make use of Google ad-supported services?
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This is interesting, but I have to ask, why is Google doing this? What is in it for them?
Once the system is in place, they'll be able to track everyone wherever they go. And they'll be plastering you with ads. 'Do you really want to go to Fancy Restaurant? Based on your past trips I'm sure you'd prefer Burger King, where we can offer a personal two for one combo deal.'
as a cyclist I would welcome these (Score:4, Insightful)
right now I put my life in the hands of the other people on the street. the ones already playing with their phones or yelling at their kids in the back (commute is past 3 schools, 1 a HS)
If the drivers aren't watching the road now, at least put in a computer to watch for them. Hell, just have it apply the brakes if something gets in front of the car and it'd be an improvement
Mixed feelings for me (Score:2)
I would love to take my commute and shove it. That and be able to go out, get hammered and then have a computer safely drive me home. And I do believe I will see self driving cars within my lifetime, its a no-brainer with all the technology we have at our disposal.
Then again I do enjoy driving from time to time. I went down to Street, MD the other week and then drove up through Lancaster, PA to Litiz for a truck show. I had a great time driving through the country, such beautiful scenery. I even had fun nav
I wonder... (Score:2)
Don't crowd me off the roads with this. (Score:2)
The video talks about how they want to drastically increase the number of cars on the roads since the computers can drive very close to each other.
Sorry but we don't need more cars on the roads. What we need is to stop our crazy unsustainable growth in traffic.
They mentioned that the traffic is growing at a rate of 2.9% per year. Doesn't seem like much right? Well that's an exponential rate and it means that traffic will
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I'm very much in favor of my car driving instead of me. I'm sure it will drive safer and better. For me the daily commute is a chore and I'd be very happy to leave it to a machine.
I'm sure there will be viruses/sabotage. But I'm also sure human drives cause more accidents than viruses/sabotage will.
Markus
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yeah the instances of it will be less, but when they do happen, they'll happen en masse. think about it.
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This Google experiment proves that you can build a self driving car who can drive safely for thousands of miles on actual public roads. Yes, there are some additional conditions which are not practical (like the driving the path manually before to record a precise map), but it has been done.
Most drivers are not very much 'observing', I just read somewhere that the Blackberry outage caused vehicle accidents to drop by 20-40% in some Gulf states. Observing drivers, Ha !
Just compare how many accidents are ca
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It seems unnecessary to buy a 2nd RT ticket if you're purchasing a transfer (the whole point of a transfer is to avoid charging a double fare).. but since you neglected to identify the system you were trying to use, your post is kind of worthless.
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Insurance and to some extent maintenance is a sunk cost. You pay it whether you're driving the car ten miles per month or a thousand. Thus, the only people for whom that enters into the equation are the one who conclude that they can reduce their number of cars by one or more.
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This is the crux of the matter - once you have a car, the cheapest option is almost always to use it. Only if parking is impossible/very expensive at your destination does the equation shift.
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Actually even if you don't have a car you have to pay car insurance. Or at least if you did have a car. My friend totaled his car which the insurance company covered, but he elected to not replace it immediately. The insurance company did not really care he no longer had a car and proceeded to charge him monthly regardless - for what they could not say.
Think he could have avoided this cost by cancelling the insurance? Not really. If he cancelled he would have had to pay ridiculous premiums for a) rece
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Sorry, no.
Let's assume your car is older and paid for, like mine, so we'll ignore car payments, as that greatly increases your cost per mile.
Even with the car itself effectively free, you have to pay for 1) tires, 2) maintenance, 3) repairs, 4) insurance, and of course 5) fuel. Tires is really part of maintenance, but it's such a huge item that I gave it its own category. For most decent cars, a set of tires probably costs around $300; for 20,000 miles of service, that comes out to 1.5 cents/mile. But it
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I then look around and realize that they have entire train coming out here on a Saturday afternoon to pick up four people.
Well, it depends on whether you want people to use cars less or not have one at all. After all, there's a lot of sunk costs just having a car for weekends if you go by public service on week days. I've taken a lot of bus and tram lines that in isolation are probably a loss. But if those lines weren't going, I'd cancel my whole subscription and drive instead.
Trains are often mismanaged though, here it's not price as much as reliability. By skimping on the rail maintenance and trains not being very good at pa
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You ever hear of these things called "buses" or "trains"?
James May Quote (Top Gear) on a self driving car (paraphrase):
They invented self driving cars ages ago. You get in and tell it where to go and just sit back. They call them taxi cabs!
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..only as good as the programmer who programmed it..
But unlike a human proven with age (Score:2)
A new program has unknown reliability, But a production program gains refinement and confidence with age. While it can still fail it becomes less likely. Just look at all the Fortran code still running.
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A system like this will be written by a team of programmers, some of them very experienced, backed up by quality assurance folks and thousands of hours of experience.
On the human side, you're only as safe as the least safe driver. Older people with slower reaction times and diminished sight, brand new drivers with only a few weeks of experience behind the wheel, intoxicated drivers, and the whole slew of distracted drivers out there on their cell phones. Stand at an intersection sometime and count the num
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Computers can drive better than people right now. Ask any F1 engineer and they'll tell you that the only reason the cars aren't driving autonomously is because a lot of people would stop watching.
airline software (Score:2)
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Does it prove that the software design operates correctly, or the implementation? I'd think you'd still want to run some tests.
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How are self driving cars supposed to account for all possibilities. What about those two way cycling lanes in Montreal where you have to turn left over the cycling lane, and cyclists are coming from in front and behind you?
Well, the computer is much better at dealing with this than you are. It has a 360 deg field of view, you have about 120 deg. Also, if you watch the video, it does deal with cyclists, and cars, they even mention a cyclist that overtakes the car at a stoplight and show the system tracking him.
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I think the first place to test automated cars would be on the large multi-lane highways. Instead of a HOV lane, have an automated car lane, where a control system keeps cars in the lane and properly spaced out, but at a higher speed than regular traffic (to give people an incentive to use them). If you want total control, don't drive in that lane, use the regular ones. I don't want a computer controlled car when I'm on the fun backroads, but why not have the option for the long and frankly boring long dist
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I wouldn't mind a computer driving my commute for me. As long as I can disable it for drives I take for enjoyment, I don't really have a problem with it.
I think your feeling is common, so I'm not saying your out of the norm. It being a common attitude points out one of the big reasons that I can't take the "driving while talking on a cell phone should be is evil" crowd. I don't know how you feel about cell phones, so I cannot speak about you personally, but there is huge overlap between the people that claim anyone on a cell phone is an asshole because they are "endangering those around them", and the people that feel it is perfectly OK for them to do pl
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The system includes safety bypass. The driver is still ultimately responsible for what the car does.
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Unfortunately, our feelings are very poor at gauging safety. Hence the explosion of unsafe SUVs, because being higher feels safer.
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It's a bit late for that thought. Traffic lights and modern braking systems have been electronically controlled for many years...
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If you've ever been on a modern aircraft I have some bad news...
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compared to the logistics of driving, those systems are simplistic, only requiring a few inputs of simplistic data sampled at low rates, and one or maybe two outcomes based on that data (deploy airbag/antilock brakes etc).. even the cars that have auto-max braking concern me because they may anticipate when I most definitely do not want it to. computers are faster than humans, no question, but they are not as aware. hell even the electronic throttles in modern cars overanticipate, often getting the wrong
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I had the 'pleasure' of driving a 2011 with electronic everything, including throttle. it's a crapshoot whether the car will do nothing for a second, or rocket out from under me after a light change.
The behavior you're complaining about is probably caused by the transmission rather than the drive-by-wire components. I've driven many automatics of varying vintages, all of which exhibit that behavior. My manual with electronic throttle, OTOH, always behaves exactly as I expect it to. This actually confirms your base point, though - with a manual transmission, I'm able to select the gear I want for the conditions, rather than having the computer guess for me.
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And those safety systems are well known to backfire and produce unexpected results exactly when you need them.
More accurately the very few incidents when they go wrong are widely reported. You don't hear the many hundreds of thousands of "Man saved from skid by ABS", or "Electronic Stability Control keeps car on road during snow" that you would get if the successes were reported. -- ~~~~
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you are the cause of the problems, then; not the TC.
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That depends on if you ended up on the wrong side of the road, and therefore it was only luck that stopped anyone else from crashing into you even if you were sure that you weren't going to actually go off the road.
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Even the recent Toyota issue with engines randomly racing wasn't attributed to mechanical error. The people in the cars were hitting the wrong petal, or causing the floor mat (which always had a hook holding it back since 2002 at least) to slide forward and capture the gas pedal.
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Well, you'll soon be sharing the road with cars without drivers.
I wonder if this push the number of occupants per car (including driver) to under 1?
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It's actually very good idea. You may send a package to your wife in automatic car instead of driving there.
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It's actually very good idea. You may send a package to your wife in automatic car instead of driving there.
I'm sure there's probably some law against sending explosive devices in automatic vehicles. :)
On the other hand, I'm sure terrorists would love the idea...well, except for missing out on the 72 virgins.
Strat
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I'd prefer to be driving rather than soaking up pre-made entertainment while I'm being driven around by some condescending dumbed down Googlemobile because apparently driving is too big a task for my tiny brain to handle
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Reminds me of the long automatic taxi ride (filmed in Tokyo) in Solyaris. Filmed in 1971 it correctly predicts that time freed from driving does not make your happy - the protagonist of that scene is a disgraced astronaut who just broke up with his long time friend. Disaffection, disentanglement from society is only enhanced by him being a passenger in a robotic car in the lifeless freeways of Tokyo.
Beautiful scene.
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I can see Sony from here: We'll stop all your cars unless you pay your royalties! We 0wn you 'cause you bought the latest Britney Spears album !
I should be fairly safe, then.