The future of convertibles in the electric era?

motorguy

ElefantEd said:

motorguy said:

I dont get the drive (ha!) towards autonomous cars.  I'm not sure what it really achieves - free up more time for work?  More time to be on social media?  Not sure i get the point really.  

Better safety record? Even though there are occasional horror stories about autonomous cars crashing or doing something unexpected, humans are even worse. Robots also probably don't deliberately jump red lights or look at their phones because they are in a hurry/tired/bored. Which isn't to say they can't and shouldn't be improved.

No-one turns a hair at autopilots onplanes (including landing) - they are simply better than human pilots and less prone to error.

Most people view cars as a method of getting from A to B and I would wager most don't particularly enjoy driving. Most modern cars are very similar to each other anyway.

Given the sheer volume of journies the actual number of accidents and fatalities is tiny.

And we're not talking about robots here, we're talking about your car having enough sensors to hopefully be able to navigate traffic.  Computers cant "see" either.  They just rely on sensory information.  That child on the footpath 30 foot away might be perfectly visible to you and you might well think that it might run out round that car in front of you, but a computer has no comprehension of that as it cant interpret 3d images as actual objects.  

Simple things throw them too - as the unfortunate passenger (now dead) in an autonomous car where the car thought that big lorry crossing in front of it was actually the sky.

Landing an airplane is difficult enough, but ultimately is about the air plane and its speed in relation to the ground.  Successfully driving down a main road where there is 1,000 unpredictable things moving also is a different ball game altogether.

Norman_Castle

ElefantEd said:

No-one turns a hair at autopilots onplanes (including landing) - they are simply better than human pilots and less prone to error.

People trust there is a pilot monitoring what is happening and ready to take control if needed.

ElefantEd

What do you think "seeing", "hearing", "smelling" and so on are, if they are not "sensory information"?

AI is getting better all the time and could certainly identify an 'object' as a 'child', with the characteristic of unexpected sideways movement, and apply some deceleration just in case. Incidents like a child running out into the road are not unpredictable - they are entirely predictable, as you've just shown! You don't know whether a specific incident might happen, but you know that it could - and just like a human a computer can be programmed to anticipate these. And could certainly be programmed to drive slowly past schools for example, unlike some humans who intentionally break safety rules.

The statistics are that autonomous cars have fewer accidents per mile than humans - it is normalised for the number of miles taken - both percentages are small, of course, fortunately, but the computers are better. You could certainly argue that the data for autonomous cars takes place under more limited circumstances and in more controlled conditions than for the general run of human controlled motoring, and clearly there needs to be a lot more testing under realistic conditions. But so far the data says that the robots are better.

As for autopilots, it's true that people like to have a human pilot ready to take over. The reality is that they aren't really needed 99.9% of the time, it's a comforting illusion. Do humans take over when landing in fog or high winds? No, they switch on autoland and make reassuring announcements!

motorguy

ElefantEd said:

What do you think "seeing", "hearing", "smelling" and so on are, if they are not "sensory information"?

AI is getting better all the time and could certainly identify an 'object' as a 'child', with the characteristic of unexpected sideways movement, and apply some deceleration just in case. Incidents like a child running out into the road are not unpredictable - they are entirely predictable, as you've just shown! You don't know whether a specific incident might happen, but you know that it could - and just like a human a computer can be programmed to anticipate these. And could certainly be programmed to drive slowly past schools for example, unlike some humans who intentionally break safety rules.

The statistics are that autonomous cars have fewer accidents per mile than humans - it is normalised for the number of miles taken - both percentages are small, of course, fortunately, but the computers are better. You could certainly argue that the data for autonomous cars takes place under more limited circumstances and in more controlled conditions than for the general run of human controlled motoring, and clearly there needs to be a lot more testing under realistic conditions. But so far the data says that the robots are better.

As for autopilots, it's true that people like to have a human pilot ready to take over. The reality is that they aren't really needed 99.9% of the time, it's a comforting illusion. Do humans take over when landing in fog or high winds? No, they switch on autoland and make reassuring announcements!

we have a brain that translates that in to the world we see and understand.  A computer is either getting a series of pictures or effectively a radar signal as to how far away things are.  Ultimately its getting terabytes of data that its trying to translate.

And whos putting out these statistics about autonomous cars being safer?  The manufacturers of them by any chance?

And currently a lot of autonomous testing is being done on highways, not in busy city centres.  

And its the 0.1% of the time when the autopilot cant cope that a pilot takes over.  Extrapolate that out to how many car journies are made and how many interactions there are per journey and see how big the number is that computers cant cope.

Clearly, we're going to have to agree to disagree.  I guess we can regroup in 20 years time and see how it panned out

Jenni_D

journeys

Just saying  

ElefantEd

The point is that humans can't cope significantly more of the time!

For every Tesla that fails to spot the lorry in front of it, there are dozens of humans that do something similar (normalised to the number of miles driven). Search youtube for "idiot drivers" or similar and you can be entertained/thrilled/shocked.

motorguy

ElefantEd said:

The point is that humans can't cope significantly more of the time!

For every Tesla that fails to spot the lorry in front of it, there are dozens of humans that do something similar (normalised to the number of miles driven). Search youtube for "idiot drivers" or similar and you can be entertained/thrilled/shocked.

Yeah, i'm sure we'll see more clips like these, soon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfmAG4dk-rU&ab_channel=DriveTeslaCanada

Ectophile

Norman_Castle said:

ElefantEd said:

No-one turns a hair at autopilots onplanes (including landing) - they are simply better than human pilots and less prone to error.

People trust there is a pilot monitoring what is happening and ready to take control if needed.

Sometimes, the problem comes when the computer was doing fine by itself, but the pilot decides to override it.  When the computer is more reliable than a human, the best thing to do is eliminate the human pilot entirely.

Norman_Castle

Ectophile said:

Norman_Castle said:

ElefantEd said:

No-one turns a hair at autopilots onplanes (including landing) - they are simply better than human pilots and less prone to error.

People trust there is a pilot monitoring what is happening and ready to take control if needed.

Sometimes, the problem comes when the computer was doing fine by itself, but the pilot decides to override it.  When the computer is more reliable than a human, the best thing to do is eliminate the human pilot entirely.

Connect the ejector seat to the computer, problem solved.

Car_54

Norman_Castle said:

Ectophile said:

Norman_Castle said:

ElefantEd said:

No-one turns a hair at autopilots onplanes (including landing) - they are simply better than human pilots and less prone to error.

People trust there is a pilot monitoring what is happening and ready to take control if needed.

Sometimes, the problem comes when the computer was doing fine by itself, but the pilot decides to override it.  When the computer is more reliable than a human, the best thing to do is eliminate the human pilot entirely.

Connect the ejector seat to the computer, problem solved.

Won't work during Covid - the pilots are all working from home.