Self-driving cars more dangerous

GreatApe

MisterMotivated wrote: »

As a petrolhead and a keen 'biker, I'm firmly against truly self-driving cars, which seem to be aimed at people who have no interest in cars whatsoever.

There are so many decisions to be made on every single driving journey, I don't think I'll see them in my lifetime, unless tech/healthcare advances mean I live to be 200. Driving autonomously around the grid-pattern streets of New York City is one thing, but roads in Britain are quite another, especially with tight country gravel lanes full of massive potholes, people on horses (can the car tell an agitated horse from a calm one), or urban rat runs with cars parked either side and limited space to pull in and let other cars past (will you be stuck there indefinitely if no oncoming cars let you through?). There's a narrow bridge over a railway near me where you can only pass another car by mounting the (similarly narrow) pavement - will autonomous cars do this, or will they just sit there forever/try to reverse back off the bridge? Not to mention, the road leading to the bridge is littered with hundreds of potholes on one side of the road so you pretty much have to drive on the wrong side (assuming it's clear obviously). What if I'm driving and see a friend walking in the rain - can I just pull up and offer them a lift? They get in and tell me they're going to a relative's house, but don't actually know the address, just how to get there - where do I tell the car to go? What happens if a regular car hits your car then drives off? You can't exactly enter "follow that Honda" as a destination. Likewise if I want to, say, go to the beach. What if I don't like the section of the beach the car chooses to take me to? What if I just want to go for a drive, to enjoy the open road and clear my head?

As was mentioned previously, kids will have great fun 'testing' reactions of autonomous cars by stepping out in front of them.

Did you think 30 years ago you would have a devise that fits in your palm which was able to access all known human knowledge which could track you within a few meters anywhere on the planet which enabled you to speak to or see anyone else on the planet and which could play you high definition video and take photographs with more resolution than your eye has cone cells which you could use as a digital wallet and access your bank instantly with and you could use it to translate into dozens of languages a devise you could use to buy anything and everything online and a way to find a date or a partner plus a million other things ??

Takedap

GreatApe wrote: »

Did you think 30 years ago you would have a devise that fits in your palm which was able to access all known human knowledge which could track you within a few meters anywhere on the planet which enabled you to speak to or see anyone else on the planet and which could play you high definition video and take photographs with more resolution than your eye has cone cells which you could use as a digital wallet and access your bank instantly with and you could use it to translate into dozens of languages a devise you could use to buy anything and everything online and a way to find a date or a partner plus a million other things ??

The devices you mention are great. The technology is not in doubt.

But if all the world's accumulated knowledge is there for all why are a significant proportion of people getting dumber instead of smarter?
The problem is fully automated cars won't be the technology, it'll be when they have to interact with the non-automatic.
The only way to overcome this is to have a completely new infrastructure for the new tech. No "non-smart" vehicles & no mixing of pedestrians etc with moving autonomous vehicles.
Why isn't the tech being trialled in such a way? IE, Railways where the vehicles can be moved on pre-selected lines. Aircraft which have an extra dimension & hence more separation. Ships which can be programmed to be miles apart. All of which are kept away from squishy, unpredictable humans.

AnotherJoe

MisterMotivated wrote: »

As a petrolhead and a keen 'biker, I'm firmly against truly self-driving cars, which seem to be aimed at people who have no interest in cars whatsoever.

.

Do you mean you personally wouldn't use one on a journey, rather than you'd ban them even for "people who have no interest in cars" ?

MisterMotivated wrote: »

There are so many decisions to be made on every single driving journey, I don't think I'll see them in my lifetime, unless tech/healthcare advances mean I live to be 200. .

That I agree with, there's an awful lot of edge cases to be dealt with. I think we are a long long way away from "Johnny Cab" technology.

MisterMotivated wrote: »

As was mentioned previously, kids will have great fun 'testing' reactions of autonomous cars by stepping out in front of them.

Really? Why don't they test the reactions of human drivers now?

michaels

Tesla are bringing full self drive including in towns allegedly this year (note this is still a driver supervised system not a turn it on and go to sleep system)...so they claim

AJGuy

Scary thought... considering people are already sleeping in tesla’s on the motorway!

Pennywise

AnotherJoe wrote: »

Really? Why don't they test the reactions of human drivers now?

Children have played "chicken" with cars for decades and still do.

Even adults play Russian Roulette by just walking in front of cars and assuming the driver will manage to avoid hitting them.

AnotherJoe

Pennywise wrote: »

Children have played "chicken" with cars for decades and still do.

Even adults play Russian Roulette by just walking in front of cars and assuming the driver will manage to avoid hitting them.

Then its not a new problem so its disengenuous to pretend this would be an all new thing against autonomous cars. I suspect the "chicken"problem is also self solving its not something you read about much if at all (I know of just one idjut (FOAF a few times removed) who got brain damaged doing this perhaps 30 years ago).

However, i also think we are so far removed from Johnny Cab that all these hypothetical discussions about what would happen if this and that transpired, well, they are just hypothetical.

MisterMotivated

AnotherJoe wrote: »

Do you mean you personally wouldn't use one on a journey, rather than you'd ban them even for "people who have no interest in cars" ?

I personally wouldn't use one. In future, I hope there's a middle ground at the very least. There are those who enjoy driving, and those who don't. I'd hate to see those who enjoy driving have one of life's pleasures removed from them without their opinions being taken into consideration. There are so many news stories about the march towards self-driving cars, but I've never been asked if I WANT self-driving cars, nor has anyone I know.

Really? Why don't they test the reactions of human drivers now?

Some do! But see posts further up as to why it's not more common. - i.e. there's a risk the driver will just keep going (either by failure to act, or by choice), or get out and chase them. With autonomous cars it will become a new game of chicken; how close will you let that oncoming car get before you jump out in front of it?



A (very unpleasant) village near me had a terrible issue last year with 'yoofs' setting up road blocks to force buses to stop and then throwing rocks at them. Imagine how much easier it would be if you could just stand in the road and force them to stop (not that I advocate bus drivers running down children, but the drivers can decide on a more suitable course of action that a computer would struggle with).

MisterMotivated

GreatApe wrote: »

Did you think 30 years ago you would have a devise that fits in your palm which was able to access all known human knowledge which could track you within a few meters anywhere on the planet which enabled you to speak to or see anyone else on the planet and which could play you high definition video and take photographs with more resolution than your eye has cone cells which you could use as a digital wallet and access your bank instantly with and you could use it to translate into dozens of languages a devise you could use to buy anything and everything online and a way to find a date or a partner plus a million other things ??

Yes, I did, though perhaps not to the extent of finding a partner (I was under 10). Did you never watch Star Trek? People 30 years ago thought we'd be living on Mars right now and some even thought we'd be able to make food (and people) materialise out of thin air. It's not like we were all living in caves until Steve Jobsus Christ showed us the light from his iPhone torch. But the technology you describe is based on a relatively straightforward set of processes, it doesn't have to make constant judgements to safely navigate an almost infinite number of hazards at any given time.

MisterMotivated

AnotherJoe wrote: »

Then its not a new problem so its disengenuous to pretend this would be an all new thing against autonomous cars.

Consider this scenario (all names based on celebrity children's names)

Moxie: oooh nice, there's one of those new self-driving Bentleys.
Pilot: oh yeah, it's supposed to have some fancy advanced crash avoidance system.
Audio: Oh yeah? Let's see what happens when I do this....

Kids love trying to break technology. It's like when BBC computers were introduced to schools - the first thing kids did was figure out how to crash them/send them into infinite loops of printing rude words.