What is The Reason We Will NOT Be in Self Driving Cars?

@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

just as some airliners are pretty much autonomous , cars will probably become like that (minimal human intervention except in leaving nd entering home territory)

Maybe they will, but not soon. After all, the environment cars drive in is far more complex and unpredictable than the environment airliners fly in. Mass-produced self-driving cars were supposed to be 10--20 years in the future when I went to elementary school in the late 1970s. They have been 10--20 years in the future to this day. If they remained 10--20 years in the future for a long time to come, that wouldn't surprise me at all.

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@Thomas,

Quote:

But if you're asking why it's taking so long

My premise is along the lines of "we cant have nice things", largely because we are stupid and have bad systems. I dont see technology being a problem re self driving cars, we could have them, I just dont believe that we will. Think High Speed Rail.

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@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

I dont see technology being a problem re self driving cars, we could have them, I just dont believe that we will.

In that case, we do disagree about the premise of your question. I do think technology is a problem with self-driving cars.

hawkeye10 wrote:

Think High Speed Rail.

I agree that politics is the reason America doesn't have better high-speed rail, at least in the North-East corridor and in Southern California.

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@hawkeye10,

Quote:

My premise is along the lines of "we cant have nice things", largely because we are stupid and have bad systems. I dont see technology being a problem re self driving cars, we could have them, I just dont believe that we will. Think High Speed Rail.

I can see auto systems in very narrow and control situations that had been design for them but not on everyday roadways.

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@Thomas,

Quote:

In that case, we do disagree about the premise of your question. I do think technology is a problem with self-driving cars.

we already have self driving trains and planes, humans dont even need to be onboard, why is doing cars so hard that you dont know that we can do it?

FYI: Pilots still fly planes some because it was found that if computers always do it then the pilots get too rusty to be able to do the job in an Emergency, technology is not the problem.

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@hawkeye10,

Planes and trains have far more fix situations that they need to deal with then cars and once more I wonder if you would be willing to get into a plane without a human pilot.

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@BillRM,

BillRM wrote:

Quote:
Self-driving cars will significantly lower the number of deaths.

Sorry but I am not at all sure that in the real and very complex world computers can deal with all the situations on the roadways that humans do as a matter of course.

An the first time a computer control car decided that a roadway continue into a lake and as a result drown a family it will be front page news worldwide.

Right now 33,000 people die each year based on automobile accidents. We accept these deaths just fine.

If the use of computer controlled cars significantly reduces this number then the technology is a clear win. One tragic story of a family wouldn't mean that 10,000 fewer deaths in total is a bad thing.

There are tragic stories of families who died in fires caused by electric lighting. We still gladly use electric lighting because the alternative was much more dangerous. The same will be true of computer controlled cars.

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

Quote:

One tragic story of a family wouldn't mean that 10,000 fewer deaths in total is a bad thing.

Wrong as human nature is such when we hear of someone dying due to his own bad decisions we normally tell ourselves that we would never made those bad decisions so we are safe from dying in that manner.

However if a self driving car go out of control and killed it passengers that could indeed happen to us and we can see ourselves dying due to some software error. A death that would not have occur with us in control of the car.

That manner of thinking may not be logical but it all too human.

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@BillRM,

Footnote I used to fly an ultralight and over the years a number of the members of my flying club died when flying.

After hearing the details of how they met their ends I found myself thinking while I would never had done that or I could have handled that problem and landed safety being a more skillful flyer.

It human nature and trying to force people to placed their lives in the hand of some computer programmers likely in India instead of their own hands after a few accidents will not go over in my opinion.

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@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

we already have self driving trains and planes, humans dont even need to be onboard, why is doing cars so hard that you dont know that we can do it?

Because, as I already said in my response to farmerman, the environment cars drive in is more complicated and harder to predict than the environment plains fly in and trains run in.

1 Reply

@Thomas,

Computer power has gotten really cheap, and for the same reason facial recognition is getting good we should be able to hook up powerful computers to video sensors placed around the car and make the computer altra aware of its surroundings. Self driving cars should be able to sense and then adapt to the kid running after a ball in the street better and faster than humans do, for example.

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Wait a minute. Some of you guys are expecting me to learn how to tell (program) these wretched machines to get to where I want to go and when I want to stop for coffee? At least airlines have specific and limited destinations.

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@roger,

Do you tell your GPS where you want to go? It isn't really programming... you just enter an address and then press confirm.

We can put a coffee machine in the space where the steering wheel used to be.

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@maxdancona,

Quote:

Do you tell your GPS where you want to go? It isn't really programming... you just enter an address and then press confirm.

GPS? have you ever been taken to the completely wrong location using a GPS system such as the back of a warehouse when you was looking for a science museum?

Or told to take a right turn when there is not a road there to turn onto?

I guess with a computer control car you are going to do some offroading in such cases.

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@maxdancona,

I don't tell my gps nothing. I don't have one. I did try for driving instructions for I-40 and Juan Tabo. Didn't work till I ginned up a phony address that kind of matched where I really wanted to go. The same technique more or less worked for "the second brick house on the left".

1 Reply

@roger,

Try this

Boston to 1-40 at Juan Tabo

The current batch of map/GPS programs are very good at providing directions. The auto-driving cars will simply follow them.

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The reason some people won't be in self driving cars seems very similar to why my dad won't get the internet. He's scared the minute he goes online internet hackers will empty his bank account. That will happen even if he does not register for internet banking. He has experience of money transfers in the 1980s, so he knows and won't be told otherwise.

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@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

What say you?

I believe that we will be in self-driving cars. No idea of the time frame however.

1 Reply

@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

US military drones were supposedly secure, but iran hacked one and brought it down. This is new very expensive technology.

The odds that Iran hacked that drone are pretty close to zero.

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@oralloy,

oralloy wrote:

hawkeye10 wrote:
What say you?

I believe that we will be in self-driving cars. No idea of the time frame however.

I hope you are right. I want to be able to drink as much as I want and then get one of these to drive me home, safe from the law.

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What is The Reason We Will NOT Be in Self Driving Cars?

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