Autonomous Car by 2020

[Hijacker]

http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/27/tech/inno ... erless-car

TMS was right. God help us all!

Part of me thinks this is cool on terms of technology, but I can't stand the idea of havinvg a car drive itself.

[MinisterofDOOM]

So I have a little over 6 years to stock up on laser scramblers, radar noise emitters, ultrabright LEDs, and IR blasters? Sweet. I'm going to blind and confuse the @#$% out of every self-driving car I can see until it pulls over and gets off my road. Hopefully I break something so it can't get back ON the road.

Roads are for sentient, problem-solving, reasoning beings. NOT for computers. You can list all the scanners, processors, and other awareness-tech you want. NONE of this changes the fact that computers are BY NATURE incapable of anticipating future events. They lack the reasoning and information-iltering capacities. People talk all the time about how much more "powerful" computers are than the human brain. About how many different sources of info a self-driving car has at its disposal. All of this is irrelevant, because it's not an even comparison. The way computers and humans USE the data they gather is entirely unsimilar. Humans DO MORE with the information available. Humans have the ability to remember, predict, anticipate, and plan. Computers can ONLY REACT. Reacting is not enough. It will never be enough. I can watch the small changes in body-language of both the driver next to me AND his car, and tell whether he's about to shift into my lane without warning. Or slam on his brakes. Or not notice that deer that ran in front of him because he's on his cell phone. A COMPUTER CAN NOT DO THIS. It is NOT mentally equipped to drive a car. As soon as you start throwing reality at it, it will either lose its mind, crash, or cause mayhem for EVERYONE ELSE around.

They do not belong on public roads. I don't care if it's an interstate, a rural highway, a surface street, or a parking lot. I will not share my roads with them. There is too much unpredictability. Too much margin for error. I refuse to put myself and my car and my passengers at risk by sharing the road with these things. They're like the flying car: a pipe dream that's never really going to happen, because there's just too much reality in the way of the ideal.

My very favorite argument in favor of self driving cars is "well computers fly airliners!". Right, and now please tell me about the last time an airliner was cut off by another plane, caught in an accident caused by a nearby plane, required to share streets with bicyclists and pedestrians, asked to make fine maneuvers without obstructing other traffic, expected to follow navigation instructions dependent on lane position and correct GPS and signage information, faced with a flat tire, brake failure, or mechanical problem WHILE UNDER COMPUTER CONTROL. Oh, you can't think of an example right now? That couldn't possibly be because it has NEVER HAPPENED, could it? The HUMAN PILOT does the hard work (the taxiing near other aircraft on the ground, the approach and departure legs of the flightplan, the disaster-recovery) that requires ANTICIPATION AND REASONING. The computer just sets a straight-line heading and maintaines altitude. That's it.

Call me again when we've figured out artificial intelligence. Until then, cars should not drive themselves. It WILL be a disaster, and it might involve me in my trustworthy human-operated car. I refuse to be okay with that.

You want automated transportation? TAKE A TRAIN. If you're not interested in DRIVING, get off the ROADS.

[Dattebayo]

I said it in the last thread about this and I'll say it again: a computer would be more capable of making good driving decisions than most drivers on the road NOW. Traffic in my city is mainly caused because of drivers who have an inability to understand how to merge and blend with traffic. That, and large truck drivers who don't do their job very well. What some people had said on this forum regarding running to the end of the merge ramp and then stopping being a "efficient use of lane space" is what I view as a menace to the efficiency of the freeway operation as a whole. If speeds and acceleration are synchronized, the lag from a stop or slow-down from a merge would be eliminated. People aren't going to actually learn the proper methods because they're idiots, so the creation of such a system would most likely take away all the little BS and attention problems that clog up our roads. I'd like to believe that they would actually make a decent train system here in the USA, but I don't believe in miracles like that.

But when they make it all available to the general public, they better damn well separate the traffic from manual drivers. I can see the right lane becoming the new "autodrive lane" or whatnot.

[Looneybomber]

Mixing digital and analog systems is always hard, that interface and means of conversion are what take all the work and where the problems arrise. In this case, mixing digital pilots with analog pilots and other analog noise (pot holes, animals, etc...) makes for a very hard system to control. All digital and you're great, all analog and you're golden. Blend the two and there's trouble.

[Bubba1]

I suspect my neighbor will be among the first to buy an autonomous car...for his wife. She drives a new Mini but every few weeks fresh scratches/dents appear or passenger side trim pieces get knocked off.